L065B - Mon 7 Dec 1998 / Lun 7 Déc 1998 1
The House met at 1832.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
HOUSE SITTINGS
Hon David Turnbull (Minister without Portfolio): I move that, notwithstanding standing order 6(a), the House shall continue to meet commencing Monday, December 14, 1998; and
That, pursuant to standing order 9(e)(i), the House shall meet from 6:30 pm to 12 midnight on December 14, 15, 16 and 17, 1998, for the purpose of conducting government business, at which time the Speaker shall adjourn the House until the next sessional day.
We have sat so far 115 sessional days in this session. If this motion is passed, we will have sat 130 sessional days before the House rises. This is actually more sessional days than any other Ontario government has ever sat in a single calendar year.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): You count the afternoon and the evening as a day.
Hon Mr Turnbull: My good friend from St Catharines has a certain amount of editorial on this and he agrees that we have in fact sat a lot more because we have been sitting in the evenings in addition, so this is a rather record-breaking session by the Legislature. It is, of course, in line with the fact that we made commitments to the electorate that significant changes had to be made in the economy of Ontario so that we would once again enjoy the prosperity that Ontarians have been used to.
During this period since the government was elected, we have had the creation in this province of 461,000 net new jobs, not as some of my colleagues on the opposition benches would like to say, McJobs, but predominantly high-tech, high-paying jobs which are predominantly full time. Ontario is at this moment leading the G7 in terms of job creation and economic growth. We now have an unemployment rate in this province of 6.9%. This is the lowest unemployment rate in a decade. Through careful shepherding of the economy, we have now got the deficit down to an annual rate projected for this year of $3.6 billion. I want to reflect on the fact that when we became the government we had a projected deficit that year of $11.3 billion. So $3.6 billion is the projected deficit this year compared with $11.3 billion.
Yes, we could have eliminated it entirely, but that would have meant we would have gone too quickly and we could have disrupted some of the economy. It was important that as we reduced the size of the civil service, we did this in a careful and thoughtful way, in such a way that would ensure that the private sector would be able to take up the slack in terms of job creation, and that's indeed what has happened.
When we became the government we were spending $1.2 million every hour of the day, every day of the year, more than we were taking in in revenue. We are delighted to point out that we are well on track to achieving our balanced budget projection, which we set out in the document that we put out one year before the election, of balancing the provincial budget in the budget year 2000-01.
The interesting thing is that my friends on the Liberal bench have suggested that we're going too fast, and yet at the same time those very same people will complain that we have continued to run a deficit in those years. Clearly it isn't possible to not run a deficit if you are slowly reducing the size of the civil service and slowly cutting the size of government. You have to do this in a considered and gentle way and that is what we have achieved. This is why we have this spectacular growth in the province.
We are now spending $18.5 billion on health care. That's fully $1.1 billion more than the last NDP government, and this, despite the massive cuts by the federal Liberal government to health care. Only a few weeks ago I listened to a speech by the president of the Ontario Medical Association pointing out that when Canada went into the Canada Health Act, the federal government was paying 50 cents on the dollar. They're down to nine cents on the dollar, which has meant considerable difficulty for both the last NDP government and the present Conservative government in achieving their health care targets.
Why are we asking for a one-week extension of the sitting? The fact is that we have more important legislation to pass. For example, we have to pass the Tax Credits and Revenue Protection Act, which includes the Ontario child care supplement. This is a tax credit of $85 a month for families which qualify.
Our government has only passed 18 bills so far this session, but this includes legislation such as reduced red tape, reform of the energy market in Ontario and further income tax cuts for all working Ontarians. It might be useful at this juncture just to give some of the statistics as to the amount of time that has being spent on passing legislation. As I say, we have only passed 18 bills in this session.
In the same second session of the NDP government, they passed a considerably larger number than we have passed now. They passed 32 bills in the second session. The Liberals passed 89 bills during that session. This undoubtedly was due to the amount of cooperation that the opposition parties gave at that time. The average amount of time that was spent on second reading of a bill during our government has been five hours and 49 minutes, as compared with the average amount of time spent on an NDP bill in the second session of three hours and 55 minutes, and for the Liberals, guess what? Only one hour and 38 minutes in second reading.
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The third reading of bills is also quite revealing. We have spent an average of one hour and 47 minutes; the NDP, two hours and two minutes; but the Liberals, 15 minutes. So if the NDP wonder why it took so long to get through third reading and our members wonder why, we see how co-operative previous governments were towards them.
Committee travel is also very revealing. During the 36th Parliament, the PC government has spent 773 hours and 29 minutes; the Liberals spent 349 hours and 45 minutes; the NDP, 645 hours. Undoubtedly, in terms of the amount of consultation on our bills, we far outstrip previous governments. This is the reason we have been forced to time-allocate 14 bills in this session. We wish we didn't have to time-allocate, but the problem is that with some quite insignificant bills, we're still spending an awful lot of time, and this has forced us to move it along, but we have still spent considerably more time in considering all bills than previous governments.
The real reason for this session tonight is just to ask the members of this Legislature to agree to sitting one week longer. It is in fact one week that the NDP took away from the House calendar. We used to sit on that extra week, but in point of fact the NDP, when they changed the House rules, truncated the session. We're just asking them to put that back.
I'm sure my good friend from St Catharines will have some sage words to utter over what I have said, and my good friend from London Centre no doubt will join this.
Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): London Left.
Hon Mr Turnbull: London Left, yes, and a good job too. I look forward to hearing what my colleagues have to say.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Further debate.
Mr Bradley: I'm pleased that the member has left me considerable time to make up for his relatively short speech this evening. I appreciate his moderation. He wasn't bombastic. He was trying to be charming to the House, no doubt, as he is to the Conservative caucus all the time when he's trying to keep them in line.
I remember a letter I saw, I think from Garry Guzzo, the member for Ottawa-Rideau, a rather lengthy letter that was read out in the House.
Hon Mr Turnbull: He's a big fan.
Mr Bradley: I don't know what that means.
I think he was complaining about favouritism being shown to the member for Nepean over certain bills in that area. I don't know why that is, and I don't know the inside; all I know is that it was a three-page letter and provided some rather interesting reading for members of the House.
I want to say, first of all, that we all know that if the government would only bring its legislation in earlier in the session, instead of scrambling to do something early in the session, we could deal with legislation in a more orderly fashion. We could allocate less time to those bills that were not so significant and contentious, and we could allocate more time to those pieces of legislation that require greater analysis and debate in the House. But the government comes in at the last minute with bills and then puts the gun to the head of the opposition - I don't mean a real gun - and says, "You have to pass these bills." Then they phone up the interest groups and say, "Well, we want to pass this bill, but the opposition won't let it go through." Of course, what we really know is that the bill was brought in very late in the session and that was the game plan of the government.
I notice that on contentious issues particularly, the government is quick to use its closure motions, that is, motions cutting off debate. On bills which are not so significant or where the government feels there is probably a good consensus in the province and not much opposition to them, they tend to let those debates go on at some length. They want to hold hearings on bills where nobody requests the hearings just so they can parade into certain communities and try to make a point on a piece of legislation they believe is popular but that nobody really cares much about one way or another.
I want to deal with a number of issues that are before us. There is, of course, the broad issue of education out there and the way in which the government has dealt with education. First of all, let me say that if you went across the province and talked to people who support the Liberals, Conservatives or NDP, any one of those parties, or had no particular affiliation, about some of the things that are forthcoming and have been for the last several years in education, you'd find a consensus. For instance, if you talked about establishing a new curriculum, that's an ongoing process. Nobody objects to that. They may talk about specific pieces in the curriculum or how quickly it is put into effect, with what kind of notice and who is writing it, but essentially if you said, "Is anybody in the province opposed to an updated curriculum?" they'd say no.
Then you'd talk about standardized testing. If you said to any of the three political parties in this House, because all three have been involved in it in some way or other, "Do you think we should end all standardized testing?" everybody would say, "No, of course not." You have to use the standardized testing in an appropriate way, you have to implement it in a reasonable way, but if you asked people, "Should we end it?" they'd say, "Of course not." So there's no argument over that. If you talk about standards in education, I think most people want to see high standards in education. So there are a number of issues that you look at out there. Do you want to have parental input? Of course you want to have parental input into education, in a meaningful sense.
What has happened is that the government has decided, rightly or wrongly, depending on who you talk to, to pick a fight with those who deliver education on the front line, largely the members of the teaching profession, although others within the education system would say the same. I know there are members who would like to think, as they like to paint it, "Well, it's not the teachers; it's the teachers' union," as they would say on the other side. But you have to talk to individual teachers and see that they in fact are very perturbed by what they see happening - not everything that's happening. If you said, "Do you want to have report cards which are updated, which everybody can understand?" again, I think people would agree.
If you look at the way this is being implemented, the devil is in the detail very often. If you look at the detail, you may find some real problems with it but, by and large, you'll see that people want to see those kinds of ongoing changes taking place in education. But this government has done it in a very disruptive way and has openly picked a fight with the teachers who deliver those services in the classrooms across the province and with some of the administration, particularly at the school level.
As a result, we have today, in my observation, and I think most people who have looked at education over the years would agree, the lowest morale that I have ever seen in education. I just haven't seen that kind of low morale before. There have been ups and downs from time to time as issues confront education, but is it ever depressing to see people who otherwise are enthusiastic about their jobs, who look forward to going to school every day to work with the students and so on, just depressed by those circumstances, or the large number of people who retire the very day they can retire. I can remember not that long ago when people didn't retire even in the year they could legally retire or in which they were eligible. Now I see people who leave the day they can leave. That's how depressed they are by what they see happening in education. I wish that weren't the case, I really do. I wish you could see the kind of enthusiasm that we used to see in years gone by in education.
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A lot of it was the government deliberately picking a fight with teachers in the province. I know that plays well with some people. It plays well with a certain crowd who never liked teachers or who never liked people in the public sector. That goes over very well. So when they come to the fundraiser, they'll applaud when the Premier makes some disparaging remark about members of the teaching profession or others who are involved in education.
But, boy, do you pay a price for that in terms of morale. It would have been much better if you had worked to develop a consensus, and I think it could have been done, to enlist the support and the enthusiasm of people, particularly those again who deliver the front-line education services. If you could have done that, you could have made some changes in education which people would be enthusiastic about and excited about.
You see, what you essentially were doing in many cases was going back to the future. Both the education system and the students in it today are far different than they were when most of us went to school. We all tend to think of education in terms of when we were there and what it was like. For instance, when you look at the number of students in a classroom, people will say, "Well, I can remember when there were 35 or 38 people in a classroom." Keep in mind that in that classroom it was likely that two or three might have come from what we would call dysfunctional families. Now, whether we like it or not, so often the case is that over half the children in that classroom are from dysfunctional families, and they have special challenges to meet, special difficulties to confront. Having been there a number of years ago, I can tell you that when I look at the situation today, it's much more difficult than it was a number of years ago to be in the classroom.
That's unfortunate and it is a challenge. Whether we like it or not, there's much more social work for those teachers to do than was the case before. Ideally, what you would want is that they would come in and teach the children either the academic skills or the technical skills, and there might be some social skills there and cultural opportunities and sports opportunities. But today there's an awful lot of social input that has to be part of the education system.
So it's much more difficult, and yet what Bill 160 did in effect was to eliminate, by the minister's own count and estimate, 7,500 teaching positions from the schools of Ontario. Now, you say, "Well, they are hiring new teachers." Yes. Some people have retired. In fact, a significant number have retired. But overall, you will have removed from the system 7,500 positions, according to Dave Johnson, the Minister of Education, in the hallway in the Whitney Block when he was putting in his last-minute amendments to Bill 160.
Even on that occasion the government said, "We want to see more contact time between teachers and students." Probably a lot of the public wanted to see that. So those representing the teachers in the negotiations said: "We'll solve that. Why don't we make the school day longer? Why don't we eliminate a couple of the professional development days?" In other words, they came up with a proposal. That was rejected by the government. The reason it was rejected by the government was that the government's whole intention was to get rid of 7,500 teaching positions and take over $1 billion out of the education system. You will see the amount in raw numbers increase, but you will also see a substantial increase in the number of students in the system, so on a per capita basis, what we have is a reduction of the investment in education.
I think the government thought it would score some real marks with people, some real points, by taking on the teachers and showing everybody. But they forgot that the teachers are the wives or husbands of people, the daughters and sons, the aunts and uncles, the next-door neighbours, the best friends of people. So the government message which was being purveyed with million-dollar advertising programs on television and in newspapers and in pamphlets coming to our doors was counteracted by people who had personal experience in education and could share that with their relatives and their neighbours and their friends and others. What essentially we want in education is a grand coalition of people who want to work together to always improve the education system. Unfortunately, this government chose instead to pick a fight with the teachers of this province.
Really, the Bill 160 fight was not the government of Ontario versus the teachers of Ontario. It was a fight, if you want to use that term, between those who believed in a strong, publicly funded, vibrant, high-quality education system and those who did not. It was parents and students and teachers working together against Bill 160 because they recognized what would happen. We knew there would be school closings as a result of the new funding formula.
Now the government has bought peace for a year, they've thrown some money at it for a year, and people are relieved by that, quite frankly, but that is only for a year. If the government were to be re-elected, you would find that they would go back to the old method of funding and we would see schools such as Merritton High School in St Catharines or Lakeport or Lakebreeze or St Catharines Collegiate, all these schools that everybody mentions as being possible candidates for closure - you'd see that happening as a result of the government expenditure cuts.
We must recognize that those school buildings are not simply for use during the day to deliver straight educational services. They are also community centres. They are also centres where we have child care taking place, day care for children. Senior citizens use them from time to time. The Cubs and the Scouts and the Brownies and the Guides and other groups use those buildings. People use them for recreational purposes, for cultural purposes. They mean so much to a neighbourhood and to a community, and yet this government doesn't seem to care about neighbourhoods or communities but simply about finding money which was essentially, during their years in power, to fund the tax cut, which again helped the wealthiest people in the province the most.
So in education we hear the issues come forward. The government tried a lot of public relations. They were going to buy a lot of textbooks, but they had to rush because they had to have some photo opportunities for Conservative members, to show off at the door, as though the money came out of Conservative members' pockets for these textbooks.
The member for Fort William, Lyn McLeod, raised yet another issue today where one of the companies that received a letter - because they all got one. Every small business in Ontario got a letter paid for by the taxpayers saying what a great job they were doing, but some of these were denied the opportunity to provide textbooks: Ontario companies denied the opportunity to provide textbooks to our schools in this province.
So what we have is a chaotic situation. If you wanted to get fights going in education, if you wanted to set teachers against trustees, elementary teachers against secondary teachers, Catholic teachers against non-Catholic teachers, the caretaking and maintenance staff against somebody else, the secretarial staff, if you wanted to put the cat amongst the pigeons, you've been lucky. You've done that. You've got them fighting with one another, and I have to remind them from time to time that the real source of the problem is the Mike Harris government.
Remember, the trustees just a number of months ago were standing shoulder to shoulder with those who delivered educational services and the ancillary services that were involved in education, and yet we see the fights going on now because this government has decided through its funding formula that it's not going to have a system which is stable, which is non-chaotic, which has people working together. What you've brought about is instability and chaos. Surely that must end, but it will end only when you show respect for those who work in the educational field, and that is something this government has not done.
In the field of health care, we have seen again - you have to look at the overall policy of the government. At a time when you are running a deficit - I underline that: at a time when you are running a significant deficit - you are involved in a very substantial cut in income taxes. First of all, when you cut income taxes the way you have, the people who benefit the most are the bank presidents. They are applauding. The senior people in industry who make lots of money got the most money back from the 30% tax cut.
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If you could stipulate - and you can't, of course; it would be silly to say so - that everybody who got the 30% tax had to spend all of that money in Ontario on Ontario-made goods or services, then you might have seen some effect, but very largely, particularly among wealthier people, it just meant putting more into an RRSP or paying off some personal debt or perhaps going on another foreign holiday or buying a luxury good that may have been produced somewhere else, so that its stimulative effect was virtually non-existent.
Even conservative economists - I have quoted many times Dr Joseph Kushner of Brock University, referred to by some columnists as "Frosty the No man" or "Professor Negative" or "Dr No" because he has always been a person very careful with the public tax dollar, as a member of St Catharines city council - he and others of his ilk, small-c conservative professors, would tell you that the combination of deep cuts in services, in programs provided by the government, combined with a tax cut has in fact a contractionary effect. However, countervailing that has been the boom in the United States economy. The province of Ontario trades very substantially with the United States, and the United States has had low interest rates.
By the way, we in Canada have had low interest rates. There are a few positive effects of this that we should know about it. Remember when the Mulroney government was in power, and many of the people here supported the Mulroney government, they had high interest rates. Some say no and I won't say who, but they had a policy of high interest rates, so we were going to see Ontario governments, if they were borrowing money, paying high interest rates.
We have low interest rates now, so when the Ontario government borrows money at this time, it gets it at a much more reasonable rate, and that's a benefit. But it also stimulates the economy. There is no question that low interest rates are a great stimulus. That's what Bill Clinton has done south of the border. I would think that Premier Harris has probably already sent a letter to Bill Clinton thanking him for his economic policies, which have had such a great stimulative effect on Ontario; or if he wanted to give credit to the Republican Congress, he could write to them.
But I'm going to tell you that if the US economy ever goes into the dumper, there's a problem here in Ontario. Remember when people used to say, "Look at British Columbia, it is recession-proof," back when we in Ontario had a recession. That's because British Columbia has a substantial amount of its trade with the Far East. The Far East was not in recession at that time. Now, however, British Columbia is not enjoying that kind of economic growth because they rely on huge exports to the Far East and the Far East is in recession.
I know I'm going to get a copy someday of the letter that the Premier has sent to Bill Clinton thanking him for his policies, which have had a huge spillover effect in Ontario.
I want to go back to the issue of health care and what is happening in health care. I knew there was trouble coming the day the government introduced Bill 26. You will remember that was introduced the first year the government was in power, in December 1995. The government wanted to ram this bill through. It altered or amended some 47 or 48 statutes of the province. It was called an "omnibus bill," or as a previous speaker referred to it, an "ominous bill." I agree with him it was ominous. It was an ominous omnibus bill.
We in the opposition called it a "bully bill" because it had so many huge powers which would be concentrated in the hands of a few cabinet ministers and of course the advisers to the Premier, the always present and all-powerful, non-elected advisers to the Premier, the people I call the "whiz kids." One of those provisions was the establishment of what was called the "Ontario Health Services Restructuring Commission"; I call it the "Ontario hospital destruction commission." It was to be all-powerful and have the ability, without any legislation, without any consideration by this House, to close hospitals, to drastically alter the role of hospitals and to merge hospitals, and close hospitals it has. What's the last count now? Forty-five various kinds of hospitals have been either forced to close or forced to merge in this province, including Maplehurst in Thorold, Ontario. That's one people haven't mentioned, although I saw the president of the union write a letter saying how perturbed he was about this, and I agree with him, but I must say to him that it was inevitable, with this government's policies, that you were going to see hospitals like that close.
The chief government whip would want me to mention Hotel Dieu Hospital in St Catharines. We have three excellent hospitals in St Catharines: the Shaver Hospital, which is a chronic care and rehabilitation hospital - adjacent to it is the Niagara Peninsula Rehabilitation Centre, by the way; we have the St Catharines General Hospital, which has provided and continues to provide outstanding service to the people of our community; and we have the Hotel Dieu Hospital.
Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): So how many hospitals do you have?
Mr Bradley: What we have needed is all of those hospitals and all of the services they provide. However, the government decided that it would start withdrawing funding from the operating costs of the hospitals, that is, the everyday costs of operating the hospitals, and then it had a local commission set up that said, "Tell us how to restructure," and the plan would be to take away I think it was $44 million from the operating costs over a few years. So of course they're going to come in and say, "Close hospitals."
Then we had the Health Services Restructuring Commission come into town to slam the door shut on the Hotel Dieu Hospital, board up the windows, bolt the doors tight and say, "Everything is moving down the street to the general hospital." I was on the general hospital board and I can tell you it is a top-notch hospital. It has good people working with it, it continues to provide excellent service to people in our community but it is not -
Mr Tom Froese (St Catharines-Brock): Where do you stand on the issue?
Mr Bradley: The member asks me where I stand. I stand four-square in favour of all the hospitals in our community. I'm standing behind every one of our hospitals, shoulder to shoulder with those who believe we need all the hospitals in our community, so I'm glad my friend from St Catharines-Brock asks.
I want to see the Hotel Dieu Hospital stay open to continue to deliver the services it does in terms of oncology. Chemotherapy is delivered at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in a very compassionate way, with some excellent physicians and nurses and supplementary staff there to assist. We have a kidney dialysis centre. I met with Dr Broski from that hospital, by the way, a young doctor who is very expert in the field of kidney dialysis and kidney diseases, who said that the projection that the commission had for the future needs for kidney dialysis in the Niagara region was way out of whack. In other words, they underestimated the investment needed in terms of dollars, and they underestimated significantly the space that would be required.
There's a wonderful palliative care unit at the Hotel Dieu Hospital. There are educational services provided for diabetics. There's a detox centre which is part of the operation. There's a huge helicopter pad for emergencies, when needed. There are services for people who have autism and the challenges that have to be met with autism. It's wonderful hospital, and I knew how wonderful it was because I heard my friend from St Catharines-Brock read a letter from the Premier on their 50th anniversary this year. I don't know whether it was framed or a scroll, but he had a wonderful presentation to make. The Premier said, "You've done a wonderful job, and good luck in the future."
The good luck they got was that when the card game came along, they didn't get any aces dealt to them, they got all deuces and the doors were shut. The boots were put to the Religious Hospitallers of St Joseph. "They're gone, they're out the door," he said. I remember well the leaders' debate in May 1995. Robert Fisher, one of the panellists, asked the question, "Would your health care changes involve the closing of hospitals?" and the Premier said - the member for Chatham-Kent knows this and I'm going to repeat it again - "Certainly, Robert, I can guarantee you it's not my plan to close hospitals."
A couple of years later we have at least 45 hospitals with the doors closed or forced to merge or drastically altered. We have a lot of others under a cloud. Yes, maybe for now, before the election, some of these rural hospitals are OK, but what happens after the election if this government gets re-elected? I think there could be some more closures coming if that were the case.
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I remember Dr David Foot, author of the best-selling Boom, Bust and Echo, coming to speak to Brock University. There was a sellout at night. I managed to get in in the afternoon session when the students were there because they were sold out at night for the business community and others.
A student got up and asked him a question, "Dr Foot, looking at the demographics of the Niagara Peninsula, because that's what your book's all about and that's what your speech was about, looking at the demographic picture of the Niagara Peninsula which has now the largest number per capita of senior citizens anywhere in Ontario, what advice would you give to Mike Harris?" He said, "Don't close hospitals." Of course if you read his book, the section that deals with health care, he says, "If you close hospitals, you're going to end up opening them 10 years from now."
I know hospital care has changed because now they kick people out the door in a quicker and sicker fashion. If you want to know why, ask the people who receive them at home. Ask the people who are now at the nursing homes or at the senior citizens' homes. They will tell you that the patients they get coming back to them today are certainly not in as good condition as they once were. I know people at Linhaven in St Catharines, for instance, would know that the kind of care required for seniors who come back to Linhaven is a much heavier and more comprehensive kind of care than was the care before the government decided that people had to get out as soon as possible.
You have women who are delivering children who are now asked to leave hospital pretty abruptly. People here used to make jokes about other countries where you'd see people who had to leave the hospital right away and go out and work in the fields or something. I'll tell you something, we're not far from that when you think that women have to leave hospitals now at a much earlier date than before.
Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): Are you committing to keep them in longer, Jim?
Mr Bradley: My good friend the reverend from the west end of Toronto knows that, that you have people now who have to leave much more quickly. There are a lot of complications that can take place as a result of pregnancy, and I see the problem. I hear from the people; they call my constituency office. They'll be perturbed today when they hear that to make money to operate all these machines, the MRIs - they love to see the MRIs, but everybody thinks that somehow Mike Harris comes down and hands people a paid-for magnetic resonance imager. You know how much they paid for it? They paid nothing for it, and then there are the operating costs. They pay about one sixth of what it costs to operate an MRI. All they do is give permission for it to be there, and we're always happy to see that, but they don't give the money to go with it to operate it.
We have a situation now where to get money, some special people are able to get their MRI ahead of time or they now have animals who are able to get an MRI before human beings, because the hospital has to make money to be able to run the MRIs. If they get a magnetic resonance imager in the hospital, what you have to know is that since they get only about one sixth of the cost to operate it, they have to start gutting, or as the member for York South said, cannibalizing their other services to be able to operate this high-tech equipment, and that's most unfortunate.
What I'm saying to this government is, the commission may have told you one thing, and you like to think they're at arm's length, but I'm going to tell you, you should keep Hotel Dieu Hospital open. I have petitions in my desk with 6,000 names on these petitions from people in St Catharines. This adds to the over 60,000 names which have appeared in petitions in St Catharines against the closing of the Hotel Dieu Hospital.
Mr Bert Johnson (Perth): You read it twice already.
Mr Bradley: People are not always cognizant of the precise way in which they must be filled out, so when they're presented, they can't always be accepted. But we have them. We have the signatures. They're from people all over the Niagara region, not just St Catharines, I say to my friend from Perth, but people all over the Niagara region who have received that outstanding service at the Hotel Dieu.
We need a strong, vibrant St Catharines General Hospital to deal with all the excellent programs, procedures and projects they have there. We need the Hotel Dieu and we need the Shaver, and we don't need Mike Harris closing our hospitals in our community. I'm confident that all the members in the Niagara region would agree with that particular proposition, just as St Catharines city council passed a resolution in favour of that, and so did Niagara Falls council for that matter.
People will say, "What is all this advertising about, then?" What we see nightly on our television sets, daily in our newspapers, weekly coming into our mailboxes - and the member for St Catharines-Brock holds up one of them. He can bring it over here and I can hold it up if he wishes. These are pieces of advertising all paid for out of the pockets of the taxpayers of this province.
I remember that my friend the member for Lincoln used to be the president of the taxpayers' coalition in our community. I would think his colleagues must be enraged by this squandering of millions upon millions of dollars on self-serving, blatantly political partisan advertising of the kind we're seeing. The government has spent, by our calculation now, close to $50 million on that kind of advertising.
They announced a new advertising program today because they wanted to deflect some of the criticism away from their self-serving advertising. This is the kind that advertises Ontario south of the border. I asked my good friend Al Palladini, because he used to say "my pal Al" in his own advertisements. I asked the minister -
Mr John R. Baird (Nepean): What ads were those?
Mr Bradley: When he had his Ford business, he said that. I asked him, "You will ensure it would not be the case of course that those ads would appear on television stations along the border to be viewed by Canadians, would it?" Of course the answer is yes. Once again, we'll see the smiling face of Mike Harris and all the song and dance about how great Ontario is.
If they did that in Kentucky, as they're going to, I applaud - I say we need that; no problem - if they did it in Seattle or California, but guess where they're doing it: New York state, Ohio, Michigan; people can get these channels in Ontario. They can't even do that without some kind of twist to it that's favourable to the government, though that is not, I want to say to the member for Kitchener, the kind of advertising to which we object.
I thought a good bit about advertising they could do. Let me say what you could do that I think would be applauded by the people of this province. If you were to advertise substantially south of the border about the low Canadian dollar and how favourable it is for American tourists to come here to Ontario, let me tell you, you'd be bringing a lot of business to this province in terms of tourism and that would be good.
1920
Mr Toni Skarica (Wentworth North): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: The members of the public who watch the House regularly must think this is a rerun. The member for St Catharines brings the same speech. I was wondering what he's talking about. It's supposed to be the House calendar motion. He's made no reference to it now in almost 40 minutes.
The Acting Speaker: If you had paid attention to your colleague also, you would have noticed that he didn't follow what was on the order paper. I'm trying to be lenient. If you want me to be stricter, I'd be very pleased to do so.
Mr Gilles Pouliot (Lake Nipigon): Speaker, we want some excitement on the order paper. He is as dry as dust.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Nipigon, the Speaker has the floor.
Interjection.
The Acting Speaker: Please.
Mr Bradley: What I'm talking about are some of the issues I wish were on the calendar that perhaps - who knows? - may appear on the calendar. The member for Dufferin-Peel understands that. He has heard me speak in this House before. He knows I am talking about that very thing.
Let me talk about some other subjects, since I seem to have annoyed the government over the advertising, although I must say one other thing: They talked about this Drive Clean program, and the only thing we've seen from it yet is the advertising, that it's coming. So are the Russians. Remember that movie, The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming? It seems to be advertising that. We haven't seen anything on that.
My friend from Belleville, from Quinte, is here. He would want me to talk about gas prices. It's not a very good time to talk about them. Gas prices are down to 44 cents now, so maybe it's not a good time. I know the member would like to bring this forward. Heaven knows he's probably being blocked by some people in the cabinet. That's what I think it is. He would like to see, as I would like to see, a predatory pricing law which doesn't allow the oil barons to sell to their own gas stations at one price, a lower price, and to the independents at a different price, a higher price.
What that does in the long run is drive the independents out of business. That's why in this calendar I'm waiting, and in the last two weeks maybe the government will bring it in. I heard the Premier huffing and puffing about prices this summer. He sent out - what was that crowd called? - the gas-busters, or something like that. They got out there with their Brownie cameras and took pictures of the prices. The prices went up on the long weekend anyway.
There are two things the government could do. They could actually freeze prices of gasoline. The member will remember - he is as advanced and as up in years as I am to remember - when Bill Davis, in 1975, when we were both kids, brought in none other than a bill freezing the price of gasoline for 60 days. I know some cynics said: "That was just before the election in 1975. That's what that was all about." I'm not cynical like that. I didn't believe that for a moment. I think Bill Davis just saw that those prices were soaring and that the provincial government had the power to stop it. What does this government do? They say: "I'm going to get my big brother after you. We're going to get the feds after you." They don't want to do anything about it. That's gas prices.
Mr Baird: And they cut their price right away when Doug was on the case.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Nepean, you don't have the floor yet.
Mr Bradley: I want to talk as well about the new election rules. I thought maybe in this calendar motion we would see reference to a bill which would rescind the previous bill allowing money to play such a role in politics.
Members of the House will remember that Mike Harris was not happy enough with the bill which put caps on all expenditures that could be carried out by political parties during a campaign. There was a cap on it. Now the sky's the limit on such things as polling and research. The definition of that can be as wide as the definition of on-topic speeches in this House. I can tell you there's a great worry that this Conservative Party will spend millions upon millions of dollars on that.
Second, they've allowed a greater expenditure at the riding level, which means the party with the most money has the greatest advantage. It means the party that caters to the richest and most powerful people in the province will be able to get the most money in. What you've done now as a government is that Mike Harris said: "The limits now for giving to parties are not high enough. Let's raise them. Let's get them up so Mr Barnicke," or some of the other big givers to the party, "can give even more money to the party." I look at that and say that's not good for the democratic system.
Look what happened south of the border, where money plays such a significant role in politics. You see senators, congressmen, assemblymen, almost anybody in politics greatly influenced by money and by who gives the money. That's not healthy for the system. I think the government has made a big mistake in doing this. Yes, it gains a temporary advantage, because that party has lots of money; there's no question about that. But the democratic system overall does not benefit when money continues to play a role, or even a more significant role, as it will in the future.
I'm looking for a bill that will rescind that particular bill. That's why I'm addressing that matter in this motion this evening, dealing with the parliamentary calendar.
There's something else that some of us may have gotten calls about and I hope the government would change its mind on it. I've mentioned this in other speeches in this House. That is the prostate-specific antigen test, the PSA test, which is one tool which may be used to detect cancer in men.
I've had telephone calls and letters from people. I got one the other day from a person who lives in Ernie Eves's riding - he's a friend of Ernie's and a friend of mine at the same time - who wrote to me about going through the procedure. He's being treated for prostate cancer at this time. He mentioned how happy he was that he had taken this test, because it was a major factor in detecting it. That's not covered by OHIP, yet there are other tests which are covered, and should be covered; for instance, many of the tests to detect breast cancer, which is a terror for many women in the province, the very word of it. There is not a cost for those, nor should there be. That's exactly as it should be. Those costs should be covered by OHIP.
Many men, particularly as they advance in age, have the same concern about prostate cancer and would hope this government would remove that cost, that user fee, and cover that under OHIP. That's something that probably has support within the three caucuses in this House.
I want to talk as well about municipal downloading. There's a new mantra from members of this government. They want to blame local government for increasing property taxes. Of course, what we're seeing is exactly what we saw in the state of New Jersey. That's where Mike Harris patterned his actions after. New Jersey cut the state income tax by 30%, downloaded a pile of responsibilities on municipalities and property taxes went up. It's easier sometimes to point the finger at somebody who's close by. When people get the property tax bill, they often relate that to the local government. Remember, the Harris government passed a bill in this Legislature which censored municipalities, in other words, did not allow municipalities to put on the property tax bill the amount of the increase which was due to the downloading of responsibilities from the provincial government on to local government.
In the Niagara region, the difference has been some $18 million. I can tell you that over the years I have not been one of the defenders of regional government, but in this particular case I think they got the short end of the stick because the downloading went to not the area municipalities, the local municipalities, but to the regional government.
They had to assume responsibilities such as land ambulances, public housing, some of the social service costs, public health costs, nursing homes and so on. There were a number of shifts and changes that took place while the negotiations were on, but ultimately the local government was faced with the unenviable choice of making further cuts, and let me tell you, local governments have already cut their expenditures and had user fees. They had to do three things. They had to cut services even more, pretty essential services, at the local level; they had to raise property taxes, which never makes anybody happy, because property taxes do not take into account a person's ability to pay as income taxes do; or they had to raise user fees. User fees are not a great imposition on people of wealth but they are on people of somewhat modest means. So we see, for instance, in our national winter sport of hockey, there are children today, I tell you, who are not able to play hockey in leagues because the cost is too high. Even though everybody tries to help them out, the cost is very high. That's most unfortunate but that's what user fees are about.
1930
I notice members, particularly in this case my colleague the Conservative member for Simcoe Centre - usually three quarters of his speech is denouncing the federal government and the other quarter is denouncing the two opposition parties, unlike the member for Brampton South, for instance, who I thought gave a pretty good speech in this House the other night. It dealt with a bill and it was very straightforward.
Mr Baird: Brampton North.
Mr Bradley: Brampton North it was in that case. Sorry.
He said something like: "Why doesn't the federal government do something about all the tobacco sales that are taking place? Isn't that awful?" Well, this government has a chance to join in a suit against the tobacco companies. I wish I had the front page of the Eye newspaper that had Premier Harris's photograph on it; perhaps I shouldn't have it. The article really explained that this government did not want to take on the major tobacco companies. Yet I'm going to tell you, in the United States, both Democratic governors and Republican governors and state legislatures and the President have all taken on the tobacco industry, the huge cigarette-making conglomerates, in a huge suit. British Columbia has decided to do it. This government says, "Oh, the feds should do something." They have it within their own power and responsibility to do something and they're afraid of those huge tobacco companies and will not enjoin in that particular suit.
They could obtain from the suit a lot of funding that would go to the health care system, because tobacco has caused some very considerable problems for people in terms of their personal health.
I look at the Ministry of Transportation office in St Catharines. When the announcement to move was made in 1989 or 1990, when Premier Peterson announced that it was moving to St Catharines, there were to be 1,400 jobs as part of that operation. Then the NDP came along. My good friend Gilles Pouliot, Minister of Transportation, was there for the shovel-turning, I believe, or something of that nature. The building was going on and he was there. There was some equipment out there and he had his photograph taken near it. He invited me down to be part of the operation, very nicely. They announced it was down from 1,400 to 1,000 jobs, but people said, "Well, at least there are 1,000 jobs." Now, of course, it's way down. It's about half of those actual jobs at that particular centre. The stimulus we were looking for for downtown St Catharines, which could have been tremendous, was much more modest as a result of this hacking and slashing by the provincial government in that particular office.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the subject of gambling in this province. I remember Ernie Eves and Mike Harris when they were simply members of the opposition, when we didn't have to put the word "honourable" in front of their names, and Mike Harris said: "I don't want anything to do with those gambling revenues. Take them away." Well, since then we've seen nothing but a growth in gambling revenues. "Explosion" is a better word. It boggles the mind. Their goal was to have video lottery terminals, the crack cocaine of gambling, in every bar and every restaurant, in every neighbourhood, in every community, in every town, village and city in Ontario.
There was a hailstorm of objection to that, so they started to scale back a bit and said: "Why don't we have these so-called charity casinos?" - not the tourist casinos which tend to bring in people from afar, particularly from the United States, the ones in Niagara Falls and Windsor, for instance - "Let's put them in all the communities, put all these slot machines out there." They coerced the local people by saying, "If you don't take them, maybe there won't be money for your charities." Then they had what we call a bribe. I don't mean that in the sense of a violation of the law, but an incentive, shall we call it, to communities that said, "We'll give you $1,500 a machine for the management of these."
The municipal election came along and a heck of a lot of communities turned them down, because they recognized that these charity casinos essentially aim at the local folk. The catchment area - there's a name they call it, the "feeder area" - is within about 10 miles probably, and then another feeder area within 100 miles. They prey upon the most vulnerable people in our society: the people who are down and out; the people who don't have the good connections to get the best jobs in the province; who may not have had the money to get a good education; who may, for one reason or another, not be in a position to obtain a good job; who may be at the low end of the pay scale. Those people in desperation often turn to their one big chance. Then there are the addicted, a growing portion of the population addicted to gambling who are going into these places.
The government, again under a lot of pressure from the opposition, from the public and I suspect from some of their own members, sounded the bugles of retreat and said: "Oh, no, we're not going to have 44 Mike Harris gambling halls in this province, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, bleeding money from the local community, money that people would otherwise spend on other services or goods. It's not new money. We won't put any new ones in except in four places" - and there was even some objection in those four places - "and we'll have a municipal plebiscite, a vote, on it."
Let me tell you something: The government is putting the slot machines in through the back door. If you think that many of the racetracks where they're putting in slot machines are not casinos, that's exactly what they are. They'll do anything they can to avoid the term "casino," but they're taking racetracks, where people had jobs, where, had the government maybe taken less of the take, they could still continue to operate, and they're putting in slot machines, and they think that's the salvation of the horse racing industry. It is really a back-door attempt by this government to bleed even more money out of desperate people, out of the most vulnerable, the most addicted people in our society.
If I can think of one thing this government has done that really has long-term effects - and there are a lot of things I may oppose - it's gambling initiatives. I wish they had abandoned them. I would have been the first to applaud in this House and in public if this government had said, "Enough."
I think we have to have a moratorium. I don't think we should have any expansion of gambling. It may be impractical to go back and remove that which is there now, but I think we should call a moratorium. Enough is enough. No more. I suspect that probably the majority of government members agree with me on that. Governments are becoming addicted to it and it's tearing at the social fabric of our province.
Professor Kindt was here from Illinois this past week. He's no raving left-winger or pious person; he's a professor of law and commerce at the University of Illinois. He analyzes the economic impact. He said: "You know something? They're not a benefit to anybody. All they do is take money that would be spent somewhere else and put it in the pockets of those running the casinos." Remember, a lot of that money is going south of the border, out of this country, not staying in the country, not staying in the community.
I hope the government will reconsider that. I fear that if re-elected, the Harris government will move forward drastically with the expansion of gambling opportunities. That's probably reason in itself for not re-electing this government, though there are plenty of others.
1940
Disabled people in this province were deeply disappointed by a piece of legislation that came in which was essentially window dressing. I talked to many of them. They wanted meaningful consultation, first of all. I am not one who asks questions about, "Will you meet?" because I often think they're not very hard-hitting questions. But all they were looking for this summer was meaningful, public consultation on a bill that would be helpful to this province.
People will say that the bill is better than a kick in the shins, that it's a start, but this government could have been so innovative. It moved so drastically in other areas. It moved so substantially in other areas. The disabled community in our province would have applauded if this government had brought in a meaningful bill which would have significant ramifications for the people of Ontario. Instead, we got essentially window dressing in a bill that was brought forward to deal with their many challenges.
Although I'd like to talk about the urban sprawl problem, about the Niagara Escarpment Commission and how I believe it's being altered drastically to allow development right across the Niagara Escarpment, where there shouldn't be widespread development, I want to simply talk in the last moment about being very wary of getting on the side of the present Premier of Quebec. Keep in mind there's a different agenda there. I'm not meddling in their affairs, but Premier Lucien Bouchard has a different agenda than most people in this country.
I suspect that if you all gang up on the central government, on whoever happens to be in power in the federal government, and try to dismantle it and give the power to the provinces, that won't satisfy Lucien Bouchard. That will just be a step and a further erosion of what we in Ontario consider to be essential national power for our national government, to be able to redistribute, to be able to look at our country as a nation.
I simply say to the government, be very wary about joining hands with Lucien Bouchard when you go into negotiations over what you call a social union, because essentially we must continue to have in this country a strong central government which will speak for all Canadians, and not just those in one particular part of our country.
Mrs Boyd: I think I should start by coming back to what we're discussing tonight, because those who haven't been in the chamber for the entire course of the member for St Catharines's speech may wonder what we're discussing. What we are discussing is a motion for this House to sit for an extra week, up until December 17, and to sit until 12 midnight all four of those days.
Anyone hearing that would think that the reason we would be doing that would be the pressure of very important, very urgent business that needed to be done, business that could be completed and wind up what is certainly widely touted to be the last time this particular Parliament will meet together in this place. But when we look at what is on the order paper and what there is to discuss, it becomes a little less clear to the average person in Ontario why the government would want to rush things through.
If the government wanted to get second reading done of some of the bills that are there in order to permit committees to meet over the intersession, to permit consultation throughout the province, that would be one thing. But it has been made quite clear to us by the ministers sponsoring bills - I think particularly of the Minister of Community and Social Services, whose bill, the Child and Family Services Amendment Act (Child Welfare Reform), is surely one of the more important pieces of legislation the government has introduced.
The minister tells us that there will be no hearings, that the government wants no hearings on the Child and Family Services Act amendments, even though there are many people in the field of child protection, many people who work hard in their communities to maintain safe communities, who have said to the government, "It's really important that we talk about the changes you have brought in and the implications of those changes."
The Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, while it certainly to some extent supports the bill, has real concerns about the fact that the government neglected to follow the information of its task force and to add to that bill many elements that are considered essential if the revised Child and Family Services Act is to have the impact people think it should have.
There are a number of small bills that are in front of the Legislature that with the additional time presumably would be able to go through, but there's no sense on our part that the government actually intends to do that, and every sense, at least from the boastful comments of the Premier last week, that other pieces of legislation are still to be introduced that the government wants to have in its hand as it goes to the electorate the next time around.
So we are here debating whether we will stay an extra week and whether we will sit until midnight every night of that week, without having any assurance or any real sense of what it is we will be debating, with what urgency and with what purpose. If the government is in the decision-making mode about whether or not this Parliament will be called back at all, it begs the question of what it intends to accomplish by pushing bills through second reading when it probably knows very well they will never come before the Legislature again.
It's my own hope, frankly, that we can do some constructive work this week and next week. There are some important issues that need to be discussed. As we hear in letters time after time from our constituents, many people in Ontario feel that the important issues are not the ones that get discussed by this government.
The whip for the government party was very proud to give statistics about how many hours of hearings this government has had compared to the previous Liberal government or the previous NDP government, but the number of hours of hearings masks what those hearings were about. On many occasions, this government has taken bills out to committee that need no discussion, where there is no substantive disagreement among the parties, but the government has decided it is a piece that is safe for them to take out into what has become for them a very hostile atmosphere in many communities.
I'll give you the example of the very hard work that the standing committee on social development did on a bill brought forward by the member for Sudbury. This was an important bill. It was a child protection bill designed to declare that children who engage in prostitution or are forced to engage in prostitution are children in need of protection. The member was proposing measures that could be taken to give that kind of protection to young people who were engaged in prostitution. It really was the kind of bill that people want to talk about. The committee held hearings and talked to large numbers of interested groups that were concerned about this issue and wanted to bring forward some of those concerns.
Then we went through the discussion in committee about amendments to the bill. It wasn't a time-allocated bill so there was a considerable chunk of time left to have some of that discussion. But what became very clear was that all the time that was spent by the committee, by the committee's staff, by all those people who made presentations to that committee, was wasted, because it became very clear as we went through clause-by-clause discussion that the government never had any intention at all of allowing that bill to proceed. Of course, it passed at committee, but the government members, particularly the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Community and Social Services, made it quite clear that although the bill had passed through these forums of discussion, although the bill appeared to be proceeding through the Legislature, that bill was dead in the water and would never be called for third reading.
1950
This is not the first time the government has carried out a charade like this, having hearings, incurring the cost of hearings, incurring the lost hope of hearings, when it has no intention of entertaining any of the amendments that come forward, has no intention of heeding any of the expert advice that is brought forward by people who come to make presentations to committee, indeed has no intention at all of changing its view of a particular bill.
When we talk about a calendar motion that puts us into what is quite frankly the pressure cooker of a last week in the Legislature, with the prospect of having the Legislature sit till 12 midnight every night, with the House leader for the government party pushing the other parties to make deals to allow what the government absolutely must have before the break, it becomes a bit of a political game. It's not a surprise that people out there in the communities wonder what on earth it is we're doing here, wonder whether or not this whole process works on behalf of the public it is supposed to serve. I think there are times when some of us in here wonder whether that may be true too.
That's not surprising, because this was a government that came in absolutely determined to call into question the democratic process, that had such a strong ideological fix on what it wanted to accomplish that it had no compunction whatsoever about changing the rules of this place, about changing the conventions that had arisen over many years around the discussion in public of issues that come forward, had absolutely no compunction about calling for discussion to end whenever the going gets tough. We see that again and again with the closure motions that the government brings.
Most of us who've been around for a while know that when a government is constantly dependent upon closure motions, is constantly dependent upon using the brute force of its majority to ensure that it gets its own way, it's usually a government in trouble. When the government whip stands up and talks about how many hours of discussion everything has taken compared to other governments, what he doesn't remind people about is that there has never been a government in Ontario whose measures have been so opposed by so many people.
This government does not work to achieve consensus before it brings forward a piece of legislation and it has no intention of achieving consensus once it has introduced legislation. All it's interested in doing is going through the motions. For many of the members in the government party, this is simply a place where you go through the motions of democracy. There's very little passion about what democratic process is all about and why it's important.
When the government whip says that this particular government has had more discussion of its bills than, for example, the Liberal government between 1985 and 1990, most people would shrug and say, "Why would you be surprised?" There has never been a government that has brought forward such a succession of bills that have offended so many people, have trampled on the rights of so many people and in fact have brought the province into a situation where it now has been censured by the United Nations for some of these actions that this government has bulled through.
It is always important when we have a procedural motion like a calendar motion, a motion around the hours that we spend in this place. We're asked to examine what it is we're doing, what the value of the democratic process is and whether or not the government of the day is being true to the whole purpose of democratic parliamentary government. Quite definitely, there are many people in this province for whom the answer to that question about whether or not this government is respectful about democratic process would be a resounding no.
The government says that people are afraid of change and that's why there's so much opposition to what they're doing. Change is difficult. It is difficult for people to adjust to change and there is a certain inertia at the very least, sometimes resistance to the whole notion of change. Most people who govern understand that and most people who govern try not to impose too rapid or too great a change on the people they govern at any one time.
Of course that's not the method this government takes. This government has bulled through this Legislature massive changes in virtually every system of government, in virtually every system of government that affects people in our communities, and does it in a very reprehensible and, I would say, cavalier way.
It is not surprising that people become very cynical and very suspicious of a government that ran its election campaign on the notion that yes, it would make change, but change would not destroy; change would simply supplement what people were used to. But many of the services that we have been so proud of in Ontario, services that grew up under a former Progressive Conservative government, have been decimated by this government, not just by its funding mechanisms, not just by its budget cuts, but by the rules under which it requires those services to be provided.
As is typical of a right-wing government, when this government was running for election, it talked about the perils of big government and it talked about getting power back into the hands of local people. They kept saying it was much more efficient and effective if local decision-making actually guided the policies of the province.
What a turnaround. As soon as they moved from their little ponds, their little municipal ponds, into the bigger pond, the lake of the Ontario Legislature, all of a sudden we see a move to grasp all of the decision-making, all of the power into the hands of the government of the day. Gone is the ability of local school boards to guide the educational process in their own communities. Gone is the ability of local district health councils to make local decisions about the delivery of health care. Gone is the ability of municipalities to try and work out with neighbours whether or not it's going to be more effective for them to join together, whether that's going to provide better government for their communities - gone.
We suddenly see a government that has decided it knows better than any local community. We see the power for education centred in the Mowat Block. We see the power for decision-making around hospital closures and services in the health care area relegated to an unelected, appointed commission. We see the Minister of Municipal Affairs imposing forms of local government on local communities. Just a few examples, and I could go on.
2000
Although the Progressive Conservative Party had always previously talked about the need to ensure that local communities had some decision-making over their own services, it is not surprising, in one sense, to see this government deciding that local communities don't have the ability to make those tough decisions. That, of course, is the kind of language that's used. Why does the Minister of Education say he grabbed all the power around education, around curriculum, around the funding formulas, leaving absolutely no freedom to school boards? Because you can't trust local school boards to make the right decisions.
Time and time again in this place, against very clear, very serious expert advice, this government casts that advice aside and says, "We know better than anybody." I can remember during the Bill 104 controversy, the then Minister of Education kept talking about how his plan was right. It didn't matter what anybody else said. It reminded me - and I reminded him - of the old saying about the mother watching the troops walking by after World War I and saying, "Oh, look, everyone's out of step but my Johnny." Well, that's the way this government behaves. It doesn't matter what experts disagree, it doesn't matter whether the community disagrees, it doesn't matter whether, in a referendum which this government pretends to think is an important vehicle of democracy, local communities disagree; this government believes it knows better than anybody else.
As we come to the end of this particular sitting and we see the government extending its time for a week and its hours to midnight every night, the government can't be surprised that people are apprehensive. The government can't be surprised that people in the province are waiting for yet another shoe to drop. That's the kind of rush that makes them suspicious, and with very good reason.
The government whip went on at some length about how very much the government has consulted. Generally, on issues like the extension of a calendar, the consultation includes a very clear idea of what the other parties can expect to come forward during that time. Very often, calendar motions haven't had to have a lot of debate because the House leaders have sat down and they have a very clear agenda of what needs to be done, and it's possible for people in the other parties to simply agree that they will go along with that. There's a little dickering around an attempt to get some private members' bills passed by the government that might not otherwise be passed but, generally speaking, the issue of working an additional week or working some additional hours is not the issue for opposition parties. They don't have a concern about the amount of time they spend. What they have a concern about is whether that time is well spent and whether the process of democracy is working well. If it simply becomes a pressure-cooker situation in which the government finds itself able to drive through bad public policy, which this government has done on a number of occasions, it isn't a positive outcome.
My colleague from St Catharines used the occasion of this motion to talk about some of the bad public policy and the effects of bad public policy in his own community. I understand why he thinks that's relevant to this discussion, because part of our job here, part of the reason we are here, is to bring to this place some clear information about how changes in public policy affect our community. Part of the debate here is supposed to be for us to be the speakers, to give voice to the concerns that our local communities have. Many of the issues that the member for St Catharines raised are issues that are of concern in every single community throughout the province.
He talked very briefly about property taxes. I was surprised he was so brief about property taxes, because one of the reasons this government needs to extend the time is that it has taken seven tries to get the property tax right, and as we know in our communities, it still isn't right. They still won't listen to the experts, the professionals who work in the field, who could give them the assistance they need to get it right. They have refused to listen to the Association of Municipal Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario. They have refused to take the kind of advice that is needed when you are looking at such massive downloading on to municipalities and trying to get the balance right.
When we look at the property tax issue, how many times have we been here discussing how to fix the mistake in the last bill? That takes a lot of time. Whereas if the government had thought the issue through, taken advice from those who actually know how the system works, and worked it through in consultation, they probably could have done this huge, massive change with virtually no conflict and with no mistakes. Instead of that, we're constantly back here with yet another bill, trying to correct the mistake they rushed into making the last time.
Certainly, those of us who are in contact with our municipal colleagues know there's no confidence on the municipal side that this is going to work now. There's no confidence that this particular measure that is in front of us now in Bill 79 is actually going to be better. In fact, in my community there's some real evidence that this enforced phasing-in is going to make things worse, because in our community different choices were made under other bills over the last year that have put into place a system that disadvantages small business under Bill 79. Obviously, our municipal counterparts are terribly concerned about this and are saying it's because this government goes at everything with such a focus on what they think is right, doesn't listen to advice, thinks that every community is the same and that the cookie cutter they apply is going to work properly all over the province. But it doesn't.
When we're talking about being here for extra time, there's a part of us that wants to say, "If you had been able to do this properly, if you had done the consultation, if you had worked with the experts, if we had had to deal with only one property tax bill, you would have had time for six other bills and we wouldn't have to be here talking about an extension of this time."
The mythology about the ability of right-wing governments to manage so much better than anybody else is just exactly that. We have seen this government stumble from one mistake to another. We've seen them destroy the family support plan and take months and months to get it back up and running. Even though the government members won't admit it, they see the horror stories as much as we do. They know it isn't working even now. Although they are gathering more money every month, which is the defence the Attorney General uses all the time - of course they are, because about 1,200 families come on to the plan every month and at least 25% of those are paying some money, so of course there's more money every month. But there are also more and more families that are not getting the support they need because the government is not prepared to put the right resources in to make the plan work.
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The auditor was very clear that that's the problem in service after service. The government blithely - we hear at one point it's 13,000 people and then we hear it's 15,000 people and then we hear it's 16,000 people - let these people go, these people who had the expertise in delivering community services, and in many cases privatized the jobs that they did, and then can't understand why the system isn't working. It's a terrible travesty. We see the government now saying, "There are another 16,000 civil servants we plan to let go."
I think it's very clearly time for people in Ontario to say: "This isn't about better services to people. This is about spreading around the kinds of dollars that used to go to civil servants, who were committed and dedicated to their jobs, to their private sector friends."
When the auditor talked about Andersen Consulting and we heard that the consultants at Andersen were making more in one hour than a single person gets on welfare for an entire month, it became very clear what was going on. This is a blatant shift of resources from those who can least afford it to those who can most afford it, and it's happening in every area.
Let the civil servants go. Push them out the door, force them on to an employment insurance plan which is paying people less and less because of the cuts the federal Liberals are making in employment insurance, on to a plan where there's no retraining available for those people. Push them out the door and then put even more dollars into paying consultants the kinds of consulting fees that people are getting from the government. The number of consultations that are being had, the frankly useless plans that many of those consultants come back with that are of absolutely no use to the government, even it wouldn't touch some of those plans, is all a movement of dollars from secure salaries for families living in communities, enabling people to support their communities, to pay taxes, to put their children through school, to pay their mortgages, all of it flowing to consultants, many of them like Andersen Consulting with an American base or American ties, dollars flowing directly out of Ontario.
When we talk about spending more time here with more bills coming forward, there's a kind of feeling on the part of certainly many of my constituents that they would like the opposition parties not to agree to this, to try and make sure that it's not possible for the government to have more time, because they're very fearful of what the government might do.
You know, the press was convinced that the general public wasn't very interested in the rules that govern this place, and they're right. There's nothing more dry than talking about parliamentary procedure and there's nothing harder for people to grasp, if they don't spend a lot of time here, than the rules that govern debate. But the people of Ontario are beginning to understand that government can force through measures over their objections much more quickly now, that it takes very little time for this government to get through the most repugnant legislation, and there is no obligation on the government to consult with the general public or to even give the general public an opportunity to know what's happening.
When we look at the kind of legislation that could be introduced sometime this week and thrust through by the end of next week with no consultation, with no ability on the part of people in our communities to understand what's going on, then you have to understand where the resistance comes from. This is not a minor little request to have an extra week, an extra four days and an extra four days to 12 pm. It's a possibility for you to ram through another raft of repugnant legislation. People understand that. You thought they wouldn't but they do.
It's interesting that we in the opposition parties are painted as being obstructive. I keep reminding the government that that's our job. You did not win the majority of votes in this province. You won the majority of seats but you didn't win the majority of votes. There's a huge proportion of people out there who do not agree with your policies and it's our job to give those objections voice here.
From the very beginning of this Legislature there are people, particularly backbenchers, in the government party who have tried to suggest that any kind of a debate is simply obstructiveness. Part of that is because they never listen to the facts, they don't want to be confused by the facts of the debate, and they certainly don't want to be put off message because they know that their success within their caucus depends on their ability to manage to keep that message, not to be put off that message, to really march to the tune that comes out of the corner office.
Debate becomes a painful thing because people in the opposition parties raise issues that are dangerous to the overall propaganda message the government is trying to put out. When the government wants to be able to just keep repeating its messages through all its $47 million worth of advertising, most of it paid for by us, the taxpayer, repeat the message, repeat the message, it's kind of like the book Nineteen Eighty-four - it's actually a little bit more like 1954 most of the time around here, but the book Nineteen Eighty-four - where if you keep on forcing people to doublespeak, to doublethink, they lose track of the real story. That's what is happening here. Ministers get up and they read from their paper, "This is what I must do." They don't dare to deviate from that or they may find themselves out of their seats.
Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): They're not allowed to question.
Mrs Boyd: Not allowed to question what goes on, just allowed to carry the message like little messengers. That's not our job. I don't think it's yours either, incidentally, but it certainly isn't our job.
Our job in the opposition is to question very thoroughly what the motive of the government is in making a change, what the motive of the government is in bringing forward a motion, what the issues are inherent in a supposedly benign piece of legislation, finding out what devil is in the detail. That's our job.
What one does in a Parliament is to discuss, to debate, and always in Ontario before to try and come at least to some compromise most of the time, to come to some kind of consensus where people could be comfortable that this is a progressive move that's being made, even if they fundamentally disagree with some of the elements. We've lost that in this Legislature. That's what has been lost under this government.
It's interesting, the government whip was trying to suggest that we would object to having four more days in the Legislature. Believe me, four more days of question period is a dream to us. We love that. We love to be able to call the ministers to account. It's very important for that process to go on, so we don't object to the calendar motion from that point of view.
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I will object, and I'm sure most of my colleagues on this side of the House will object, and in their hearts if not through their mouths many of the government members will object, if these extra days are spent pushing through a piece of legislation like the so-called ODA legislation, Bill 83, the betrayal bill that the Minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation has brought forward.
One of the most disgusting things I have ever seen in my life is that minister trying to defend this indefensible piece of legislation. It's not worth the paper it's written on. It does not need legislation to accomplish it. In fact it was the policy of a government for five years to do everything that is in that piece of legislation, and the minute the Tories came into this place, it was set aside and there were no more programs to deal with the disabled, because this government didn't think it was important.
Now we find that as they come towards the end of their term of government the order from the corner office is: "Get something in there. Call it the ODA, and try and fool people into believing a promise made is a promise kept." It isn't going to wash. It is the height of cynicism to bring forward this piece of legislation.
Mr Gerretsen: I don't think it's the minister; I think it's the government.
Mrs Boyd: The minister in a responsible government, whether she likes to do it or not, is responsible. One of the things that's very interesting about this government is there seems to be an assumption on the part of some ministers that if they in their hearts don't like something that's done, they somehow are not responsible. In a responsible government every member of the cabinet is responsible for every decision of the cabinet, whether they like it or not. It is quite bizarre to hear some ministers go back to their home communities and try and pretend that somehow they're not just as implicated as every other cabinet minister in every piece of legislation that passes through the whole legislative process here in the Legislature.
It's not the same for backbenchers. Backbenchers are not the government. They're part of the government caucus, but they're not the government, so one can allow the backbench a little bit more leeway, although we don't see too much of that leeway too often, and the sword falls rather swiftly on those who get out of line. What we need to be dealing with when we deal with bad legislation is people who have the integrity and the courage to say, "No, I won't have my name connected to such a cynical piece of work."
So I'll be very upset, and I'm sure there will be people all over this province who will be very upset, if this extra time we're to spend in here over the next week is spent with the government attempting to foist that non-piece of legislation, Bill 83, down the throats of Ontarians, so that they can call it "a promise made, a promise kept."
From our perspective, it's a great opportunity to point out the cynicism of this government, but it is so indefensible to raise the hopes of people who are disabled, to promise them in your own discussion paper that you are going to move to actually make their world more accessible. To come up with this piece of trivial nonsense is absolutely disgraceful. If the government thinks for a minute that we are going to stop talking about how disgraceful this Bill 83 is, they've got another think coming. At every chance we will point out the terrible cynicism and the political opportunism that is being displayed here.
Another bill, about which we wonder whether it is going to come forward just for second reading, is the Child and Family Services Act. We know the minister doesn't want it to go out to hearings, but it's very important that it go out for hearings. It is an example of how the government has selected a certain number of people to talk to about a very important piece of legislation, without the benefit of having the discussions public. They have that select group come forward with a task force report and then move forward, after cherry-picking a few pieces out of that task force report, with a bill that purports to amend the Child and Family Services Act.
Here we are again with a situation where there has been very little public discussion about the implications of that act, and we hear the minister saying day after day, "We're not going to go out to public hearings on that act; we've already consulted."
Again and again this government talks about consulting when what they do is hand-pick people, usually Tory hacks, to sit in on a committee and repeat back to them what they want to hear. Where that doesn't happen, where people refuse to participate, as the member for High Park can tell you the disabled refuse to participate in that kind of charade, then we see the travesty of a Bill 83 result. What we have a subversion of the whole process of government, when a government like this government decides it is going to get its own way come hell or high water, with no regard to what the people of Ontario say.
When we look at what can be accomplished in the amount of time we're talking about, we're talking about not four days, but because this government has decreed you can have two days in one day, we're talking about eight sessional days, and in eight sessional days a great deal more damage can be done.
I think the government is hoping that people are so concerned about getting ready for the holidays, and is hoping that people have so been enjoying the balmy weather that may finally be turning into winter but has not been winter up to this point, in southern Ontario anyway, and not a typical winter even in the north, that people are kind of sleepwalking through this period of time.
I would say to the people who are watching at home, don't be fooled. We're talking about eight sessional days packed into one week in which this government, with the rules it has changed, can thrust through this Legislature pieces of legislation that may not even have been introduced at this point. Don't get so wound up in your Christmas cards and gift shopping and plans for going away and all the seasonal fun that happens; keep an eye on what's going on here, because we find it ominous - not omnibus, Mr Speaker, but ominous - that the government wants to extend this period of time without having a definite agenda that they say they need.
I'd be happy to go on for the rest of the hour that I have to speak, which is about another 14 minutes, but I want to give an opportunity for others to speak to this very important issue. So I'm going to close with one warning for the government.
Very often as you go to an election it's tempting to try and clean up the loose ends, to try and thrust into the last few days all of the things that you think you've got to have in order to say you kept your promises. We have seen so much haste and so much waste of time in this place, so much waste of energy on the part of people who really care across the province, and so many serious mistakes in legislation, that all I can say to the government is you will not go to the electorate making a very good impression if you blow it because you're trying to get all your ducks in line by thrusting and pushing and bullying things through this Legislature. I really hope you will heed that advice, because I can tell you, last impressions are very important with the electorate. It's important for you all to be very aware that if you continue to show a disregard for democratic process, if you continue to show that "My way or the highway" is your motto, you will find that you will not make a good impression on the electorate as we move towards an election.
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Mr Michael Gravelle (Port Arthur): I'm glad to have an opportunity to speak on the notice of motion this evening as well, the calendar motion for us to have sessions until midnight next week. Like most members of the House, most members of the opposition are very glad to have an opportunity to have more time in the Legislature to discuss the legislation before us and, perhaps just as important, to have an opportunity to debate here the issues that we feel simply don't receive enough debate, the issues that need to be brought forward on a daily basis, hopefully until this government recognizes that they cannot continue to carry on in the fashion they have and ignore some of the realities in the province.
As a member from the north, from Thunder Bay, from the riding of Port Arthur, I could spend more than the time I'm allotted discussing some of the concerns we have up in our part of the province that are directly a result of either this government's actions or, frequently, inaction. One looks at legislation that has gone in the past, back to three years ago, Bill 26, the massive omnibus bill, where we had an extraordinary event in this Legislature which I'm sure you recall, Speaker, and I know many members of the Legislature do. We literally were forced to sit overnight. The member from Scarborough, Alvin Curling, became quite a hero at that time for staying here and fighting until we got a guarantee that we would have hearings on a piece of legislation -
Applause.
Mr Gravelle: Yes, indeed; thank you - that has had an extraordinary impact on this province since that time, an extraordinary impact because one of the things that came out of Bill 26 was the Health Services Restructuring Commission. Being a resident of Thunder Bay and the member representing Port Arthur, I know that the Health Services Restructuring Commission came into Thunder Bay first and made a number of decisions that we have been fighting ever since. It has had an impact on health care delivery in our province in a dramatic and pretty frightening way. I wouldn't mind using part of my time tonight to try to speak to some of the areas that I think are still incredibly inadequate, that we need to have changed and that this government needs to understand are as a result of that legislation.
Next week we'll be discussing other legislation as well, having an opportunity to debate various other bills. We look forward to that eagerly. But it's important that we understand that there are many things happening on a daily basis that are hurting people in a dramatic fashion. If one looks at the situation in terms of my riding, in terms of northwestern Ontario, we know that the number of acute care beds in our hospital system have been cut drastically. We know that as a result of those cutbacks, we have a constant situation where people going to our hospitals for a variety of services and need an acute care bed but cannot get those beds. The reason is because the restructuring commission has put extraordinarily tight and restrictive time lines on our system.
We also know this government took $800 million out of the hospitals themselves while this was going on. They were doing cutbacks and pulling money out of the system at the same time as they were restructuring the system. This continues to go on, and we're seeing the results of that in a dramatic fashion.
I have a constituent who recently had an extraordinary experience where his wife became very ill. He called the ambulance to take her to one of the two sites presently in Thunder Bay, and the ambulance service was not able to take her to the site where her doctor had said to take her. They were not able to do so. Because of the cutbacks, that emergency service was not in place. It was an extraordinary situation, where he had to get her there. He found a way to get his wife to the hospital. The ambulance attendants were put in a position of saying, "We can't take her there, but we can follow you there and we can help you take her out of the car and bring her into the hospital if there's a doctor waiting for you, but we aren't allowed to do so." Stories like that were absolutely unheard-of in the past, and now that's the kind of health care we're being forced to live with. This is unacceptable.
We know that the situation in terms of long-term care is extremely alarming. We had the minister making an announcement some time ago about a significant amount of money being spent on long-term-care beds. In terms of the allotment for northwestern Ontario and the Thunder Bay district area, we're talking about 192 more long-term beds. The problem with that is that the waiting list for long-term-care beds as we speak, right now, is about 350 to 400. So over the next eight years there will be a commitment to 192 more long-term-care beds, but unfortunately the waiting list right now is so massive we're not going to ever be able to catch up to it.
We have seen the formation of the community care access centres, one-stop shopping installed, in essence, in terms of home care, in terms of the right kind of care for people who have to leave the hospital. We know people are leaving the hospital sicker; we know they're leaving quicker. As a result, pressure is being put on the community care access centres to provide care that they really shouldn't frequently be trying to provide. The people should still be in the hospital. As a result, the pressures on this particular agency are enormous. The people trying to run this organization are under extraordinary pressures, because they also aren't receiving the level of funding they need.
There are some pretty interesting and important statistics about the community care access centre in Thunder Bay district. I think it's important that members of the Legislature hear this. The fact is that the district land mass of the CCAC in the district of Thunder Bay is larger than any other CCAC in the province. It's an important fact to know that the over-65 age group is higher than the provincial average. These are all statistics; these are all facts. The truth also is that the prevalence of disease and the rate are higher than the provincial average. For example, circulatory diseases are 26% higher than the provincial norm; injuries are 32% higher than the provincial norm; in northwestern Ontario, in the district of Thunder Bay, the incidence of diabetes is third-highest in the world, and all causes of death for the district of Thunder Bay are 12% higher than the provincial norm. Hospital utilization is 55% higher than the provincial average, a factor that the restructuring commission did not take into consideration when it was making its decisions and directives, and something that we continue to fight.
Health care restructuring has driven the caseloads for the CCACs upwards. In the first quarter of 1998-99, the acute client caseload has increased by 21%; and the acute care program service utilization has increased, in terms of nursing 34%, homemaking 110% and 72% in other important areas. The fact is we cannot get that message across to the minister, and it's one we have to continue to push.
I appreciate the opportunity for us to be here next week until midnight every night to try to make these points. The fact is, my part of the province is not treated fairly and not treated in the same manner as is the rest of the province. We learned last week, for example, that, other than hospital-based physiotherapy services, there will be no such opportunity in northern Ontario as of April 1, when they eliminate the G code listing, delist OHIP from this.
In the rest of the province there are what are called schedule 5 clinics. I'm sure you're familiar with them. Under the schedule 5 clinics, those services will continue after April 1 and be direct-billed to OHIP. In northwestern Ontario, in entirely all of northern Ontario, that is not possible. The minister says she's reviewing it and I appreciate that. The fact is, it's a problem that needs to be solved. It's of great concern to all the people who need care: to the seniors, to people on social assistance, to all those who need physiotherapy care. It's totally unacceptable to imagine that it's all right for this part of the province, as of a certain time period, not to have that kind of care outside of hospital-based care. The important point about that, of course, is that the waiting lists for hospital-based care, as they stand now, are very long and only the high-needs or high-priority clients are getting that care at this time. One can't imagine what will happen when you realize that at this stage only 15% of the clients are being served out of hospital-based care.
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These are the issues that concern me as a representative of the people trying to get that point across. We have so many other examples. We've been trying to get an eating disorders clinic set up at St Joe's care group in Thunder Bay. It's an important service, one that's provided in other parts of the province. We've lobbied the minister very hard on it and cannot get the appropriate funding for that. The whole issue of eating disorders is one that is extremely important, that we need to support and that has funding in other larger centres. It's extraordinary to me that I should be standing here in essence begging for it, but I suppose I am. We should not be doing so. That care should be there, and the minister should be supporting it.
We know there are some real problems in terms of children's mental health. Last week my colleague Lyn McLeod, the member for Fort William, and I met with the Lakehead Regional Family Centre, an extraordinary group that has been working out of Thunder Bay for about 10 years now. They are an accredited children's mental health centre that provides assessment, treatment, counselling and support services to children, adolescents and their families. It is funded through the government, and it is legislated under the Child and Family Services Act. They came to us, as I think they had come to their ministry officials, and said, "We think we're doing a pretty good job, we're working hard, but our caseload has doubled." Even with the caseload doubling, they know and we know that the vast number of children with mental health problems who need some counselling, need some help, are not being reached.
We're living now in a society where agencies such as the Lakehead Regional Family Centre are under extreme pressure financially as their funding gets cut, as it has been cut in the last five years. Because they're doing a good job, their caseload increases, and because the need has increased; and because of this government's policies, the need has increased. There is no question that the jump in cases happened quite significantly after the 21.6% cut to social assistance.
The government can't have it both ways. They can't say, "We're trying to provide better care," when we know that children's mental health is not a mandated service regardless; it comes under the Ministry of Community and Social Services. But we know that government decisions have created increased problems and stresses for families who are living below the poverty line.
So here's an agency that wants to provide the care, is living with quite extraordinary financial constraints, has a caseload that has doubled, has a waiting list right now of somewhere in the area of 300. That's a very sad story all by itself. Children have gone to the agency and need the help, and the agency is desperate to give them the help, meets with them, but because of the situation they're in, they don't have the staffing they need, because they've had to cut some staff as well, to look after these children who need some counselling, who have some problems and can be helped by the system. In fact, the success rate of the Lakehead Regional Family Centre is extraordinary.
We also know, for example, that the restructuring commission announced there was going to be a 12-bed adolescent treatment centre put into the Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital. We've seen nothing of that. It's an important service. At the time, it was agreed it was needed. We have not seen it. The minister reannounced it when she was up in Thunder Bay to announce that indeed the community's battle to get a new hospital had been won.
There's another issue. Here we've got the Premier and the minister convinced that indeed a new hospital is an appropriate decision for Thunder Bay. Having said that, they won't fund it at the same level that they'll fund everything else they've decided to build in the province. Everywhere else in the province, when the restructuring commission comes in, despite all the concern and arguments out there, when a final decision comes down about what capital project is going forward, the province will fund 70% of that. In the case of Thunder Bay, we have a situation where they will fund 56% only. They will not recognize that the cost of the retrofitted general hospital was much higher than they would have believed it was. Even if they used those figures of what the retrofitted general hospital would have cost to build - it would have been very close to the cost that was calculated of the new hospital - they should be funding us to 70% of that funding, and they're not.
This is a battle that we've got to carry on. There is a great deal of concern in Thunder Bay and indeed the entire area about the costs of the new hospital and how we are going to raise that. The fact is that the Premier and the Minister of Health gladly came into Thunder Bay to say they were pleased to be able to award us a new hospital, but they're not prepared to provide us with the funding that everybody else gets in the rest of the province. That's an issue I have brought up before and brought up in the Legislature, and I will bring it up again. There are just so many areas of concern.
Back, if I may, to the Lakehead Regional Family Centre. The fact is that the province can help. If they can provide a very small amount of money, the agency will at least be able to hire people on a contract basis, on a short-term basis, to eliminate that waiting list. It is our responsibility as legislators to try to hold the government's feet to the fire when they say they really want to take care of the people who need help. If we've got the solution to it, we need to try to persuade the government to do that. This is an extraordinarily important agency. It provides a service that's very much needed, and nobody is going to argue with that. If we can get the government to provide us with some support - I hope that will be coming forward - we can perhaps deal with the waiting list, and then we can start dealing with the longer-term problems. Either we believe that this is a service that must be provided or we don't. I think it's the responsibility of this government to listen to that.
Again, having the opportunity to discuss and debate those kinds of issues next week, as the motion states, is an opportunity that we all look forward to, as I enjoyed very much the opportunity to stand here tonight to talk about some of the issues that mean a great deal to me and a great deal to the constituents I represent and indeed to all the people in northwestern Ontario, because we do find ourselves fighting battles all the time that we don't think we should be having to fight. You shouldn't be arguing about trying to get the same service and having the same service level as the rest of the province. In many ways, that is rather an absurd kind of a debate to have, but here we are doing it, and it's something we'll continue to do.
Mr Gerretsen: They just don't listen.
Mr Gravelle: They don't listen. We have to continue to fight to get our point across.
There are so many other elements of the legislation that have come before us. Look at Bill 79. This legislation is turning into a true embarrassment for this government. It's astonishing. This is, what, the eighth piece of legislation related to this aspect? This one may be the worst. This is the one that has people most upset. I am quite convinced that the government, if they could, would like to get out of this. Here you've got the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the Association of Municipal Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario, the Municipal Finance Officers Association of Ontario, the Association of Municipal Tax Collectors of Ontario, all of them, saying: "Stop it. Stop this bill. Stop it while you can."
Mr David Caplan (Oriole): Stop the madness.
Mr Gravelle: Stop the madness is right. It's quite extraordinary. The member for Nepean is laughing, and I'm surprised to see that he is, because I'm sure that the municipalities surrounding him are also very upset about this situation they've been put into. It's not funny.
I received a letter today from one of the municipalities I represent, the township of Shuniah. They are desperate to have Bill 79 dropped. They're absolutely stunned by it.
Interjection.
Mr Gravelle: No matter which member over there is choosing to heckle me, I'm sure they're hearing from their own municipalities. Maybe the truth hurts. This is a piece of legislation that is just turning into a disaster.
The township of Dorion wrote a letter. They are desperate: "...for your immediate action. We would appreciate your assistance in this urgent matter."
They are all totally desperate in terms of what their jobs have to be, and this government is not allowing them to do their own jobs. It's really quite astonishing. We have to talk about that, so to have the opportunity to talk about an issue such as that next week is an opportunity we are all grateful to have.
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There are a number of issues that go on and on. We've all talked a great deal about the absolute mess in the education system. We are all very disappointed in the Ontarians with Disabilities Act that the minister put forward a couple of weeks ago. I'm hearing from many of the groups I represent who feel very strongly that unless there is some kind of enforcement, unless there is some clear way of making this act have meaning, it is an insult to them and one they are incredibly upset about. I spoke to a group last night at the 40th anniversary of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, and they're upset. They said, "If it isn't going to be enforced, can there at least be some real accountability?" I will look forward to speaking on that when that legislation comes forward.
My time has, unbelievably rapidly, come to an end. I can't believe how quickly 20 minutes goes by. I'm sure you're all disappointed that my time is up. I'm glad to have had an opportunity to express some of my concerns. They're all serious concerns and ones that I intend to continue to fight.
Mr Pouliot: Non seulement bonne soirée, mais bonne soirée avancée et aussi bonne fin de soirée.
If I can share a sentiment with you while I have your attention, Speaker, if you were to ask me, "As the member for Lake Nipigon, is there any other place you would rather be at 10 minutes to 9 on this Monday night?" I'd have to say, yes, there are other places I would rather be, and I will tell you why.
There is absolutely, totally no need to be here. I see some of the members opposite writing Christmas cards, paid for by the taxpayers, as opposed to being focused on the subject matter being addressed in front of their very eyes. They should be in their offices. I would rather be picking up the phone, listening to what the people of Lake Nipigon have to say, as opposed to being here. Why? There's no reason for being here, because the government, this session especially, has presented us with an agenda of absolute incompetence.
We've had a bill that affects everyone in Ontario, property taxation. It came in front of the House and then it went back. It's like a turnstile. It came back seven times, simply because they couldn't get it right. Every time it came back to the House, albeit under a slightly different title, it was to correct the bill before it.
No wonder we're here at 9 o'clock and we shall be here till midnight. The majority muscle, the absolute enforcement sitting opposite, has decreed not only this week but this motion says that on December 14, 15, 16 and 17 we will be here debating the mess left by the government. Of the 17 bills they've presented this session - Speaker, you are a student of procedure. I've watched you closely and I admire you. You're a stickler for definition and for rules. That's your job. I'm somewhat envious of your capacity to absorb, to assimilate all the details in the standing orders. But what we have here is that only seven of those 17 bills have reached second reading - they just cannot get it right - so they need House time.
I wouldn't mind being here 24 hours a day, energy permitting. This is very close to Christmas Eve. If we were to debate the real issues, for instance the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots, then I would feel most comfortable. I would say: "Maybe the message will begin to penetrate. Maybe the reality will get across so they can avail themselves of an opportunity best afforded to majority governments to ease the pain."
I know some of the members of the government benefit by that growing gap. They benefit personally. Their friends, the members they associate with, also benefit. Those are the people they court. What I have some difficulty understanding is the members of the back bench. Some of them are privileged on account of being younger, yet sometimes I wonder if youth is not wasted on those young people. I see them so much believe in this gap, and they themselves are not as fortunate as others of their colleagues. They sort of coattail - they like to hang around - and they have this dream that maybe one day they will enjoy the same richness as those people who have already arrived.
As someone from Texas would say, "Big hat, no cattle." They're only there as observers. They can't walk the walk, but there's a pretence. They try. You will see them in the corridor. They've tried to acquire that distinctive walk that the most fortunate present us with. They try to have the same allure, the same pizzazz, the same poise of presentation. They truly portray the confidence of ignorance in some cases, if I may be so bold.
Let's cut to the chase. Let's get to the facts.
The report by the Centre for Social Justice, a report funded by the Atkinson foundation, shows that the richest 10% of Canadians - this is the Christmas season for all of us - make 314 times more than the poorest. Eighteen years ago, the richest made one tenth of that, maybe 25 or 30 times more. Get the meaning, get what I'm saying? They make 314 times more, and the government puts some of those people - and I have nothing against them; I want to wish them well in fact, but a little more equality, to give everyone a relative chance to dream - on a pedestal. They become the heroes, the shakers and movers, the job creators.
Yet economists paint a different picture. They tell you that our wealth is based on consumption, on the ability of people to bridge the gap. It makes the rich more responsible, it makes the poor aspire to the middle class, and it makes the middle class more prosperous and more stabilized. But we're going in a different direction.
From 1995 to 1996, a period of one year, the poorest 10% of Canadian families with children under 18 saw their average after-tax income drop from $15,208 to $13,453. You've heard about the tax scheme, the reduction in Ontario personal income tax. The 10% among the rich, the richest, got a $15,000 tax break with the full implementation of the 30% tax rebate - that's $15,000 in disposable income, money in the jeans, money in the pocket - and the poorest got $150 per annum. Imagine, $150 per annum, but the BMW and other imported luxury cars crowd gets $15,000. They're the people who need it the least, so we're providing incentives for the people who don't need incentives.
You've heard the trumpet, you've heard the fanfare, the publicity about the 400,000 jobs - not jobs that the government has created but that the global economic climate has created. The majority are self-employed, and the majority of those self-employed jobs pay less than $10,000 per annum. What you achieve in numbers does not correspond to what the marketplace sees as a prosperous time.
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In 1973, 60% of families with children under 18 earned between $24,500 and $65,000. We're talking about 1996 dollars. By 1996, that middle class had shrunk, since only 44% of families with dependent children made $24,500 to $65,000. We've gone from 60% of people that you could classify as middle class to only 44%. That's an awful lot of people. That's an awful lot of money that's not reaching the marketplace. That's an awful lot of dreams, hopes that are not given a chance to materialize. There are far too many people who will not be like some others, and in reality, that's all they're asking for. That's a 26% difference, 26% fewer members of the middle class.
You can ask what happened to them. Did they get rich? No. Some 80% of that 26% gravitated downwards - that's four out of five of that 26% - and only one fifth, 20% of the dislocated, got a little better, on the fringe of, for them, unprecedented wealth. They're not wealthy, but they've done a little better, but only one out of five.
The basic findings and conclusions: These are some of the report's proposed solutions. If you are well intentioned, if you are a citizen, if you are concerned about the welfare of your community and your fellow people in it, most of it makes immense common sense, is most commonsensical: better distribution of working time; high-quality, low-cost education and child care. We read on the front page of today's Toronto Star, the largest daily-circulation newspaper in the country, that 1,500 day care spaces in greater Toronto will cease to exist. They will vanish, they will disappear, so 1,500 children will no longer have access to day care, which is contrary to the report's recommendations.
Employment equity legislation: We're talking here about gender. We're talking here about the right for everyone who has an opportunity to work in Ontario to be recognized and encouraged to the same degree.
Support unions: It's the right of people to organize if they wish - that's a long-standing right - but in Ontario at present, the government is most uncomfortable with the labour movement. Mind you, if you belong to an association of professionals, if you belong to the doctors' union, then it's OK. Those are the most powerful, and they can deal with that. They understand the most powerful; they are among the most powerful. I must say about doctors that they do present us with an essential service. We need them from cradle to grave, and we appreciate what they're doing. I can't say that about the government, that we appreciate them in the same fashion, to the same extent.
Raise the minimum wage: When some people from the government say we should cut the minimum wage or we should freeze it forever because it makes us less competitive, that the minimum wage is a burden, if 40 hours at your designated workplace at $5.85 an hour minus taxes is too high, I say to them, you ought to try living on it.
Interjection.
Mr Pouliot: Absolutely. You just can't do it, as my colleague from Nickel Belt says so well. You cannot do it. You need a second job, and that puts you past the 40 hours, and sometimes a third tenure, just to make ends meet, just to round out the month. The report says to raise the minimum wage. Give people a living wage.
Restore income support: We've talked a great deal about that. It speaks for itself. We need a helping hand, not the back of the hand.
More affordable housing: the right to shelter, the aspiration to have secure and comfortable shelter, a roof over your head. They shouldn't even have to write this. It should be happening, taken for granted. We shouldn't even have to be reminded.
Expand universal health provisions; improve access to higher education; enhance parks, libraries and community services.
Undo the tax system bias towards the wealthy: A lot of our ills are associated with the unfair allocation of the tax system. Governments, successive governments, have attempted to a limited extent to make the tax system more progressive, yet on the other hand, the loopholes, the opportunities not to pay taxes, have been rampant. I was reading an article over the weekend, part of my weekend must reading, about one Ross Perot, a very wealthy person, a former presidential candidate in the United States, who prides himself in year after year consistently paying less than 10% of the declared net income.
It's the world upside down, because Harry and Jane Smith at the factory down the street don't have the same opportunity; they're docked at the source and they pay and they pay again. They don't mind paying a few extra dollars - when I listen to them, that's what they tell me - for those who have less, for those who are under duress because of circumstances, be they temporary or permanent, but they mind paying a few dollars more to subsidize those who need it least.
The 10 richest, best-paid CEOs last year made $10 million each. If you go to Bombardier, M. Gratton - and I don't begrudge it him; go to it, Robert - it's $28 million. Since a lot of it is deferred, since a lot of it comes under provisions or options exercised, the likelihood is that those people pay a smaller percentage of income tax than someone working on the assembly line at General Motors, Chrysler or Ford who works 40 to 60 hours a year of overtime. Their level of taxation, on a percentage basis, is higher than any one of the 10 best-paid CEOs, and they've increased their lot in one year - sure, it was a good year - by 56% because of stock options, because of salaries, because of a tie-up with performance. What I'm saying is that there's a grave danger that if this casino, if this winner-take-all philosophy is perpetuated, the power of compounding will bring us to social upheaval.
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Do not deprive them, do not stop incentives and encouragement and individual drive. But by the same token, what we're seeking here is some equality. I would have loved to debate these real human dimension issues an awful lot more than to say, "We messed things up," "No, we didn't," "Blame everybody, but we will keep you here until midnight."
Out of this House there are a lot of people we have to listen to, and the New Democrats will do so. We believe we have the right approach. We believe we've reached equilibrium and we have a good understanding of what is taking place, not only for the rich but for all of us in Ontario.
Mr Jack Carroll (Chatham-Kent): Since the rotation has gone around a couple of times and it would appear it's going to go around a couple of more times, we may as well jump into the fray here and make a few comments.
It's interesting to listen to the member for Nipigon, a member of the last government of this province, the NDP government, offer some comments on a motion to extend House sittings, which basically involves us working a little longer and a little harder on behalf of the taxpayers of the province of Ontario. It was interesting to hear comments from the member for Nipigon, who was part of that famous government that virtually abandoned the people of the province during the last part of their particular reign of terror. It's interesting that he would offer some comments tonight.
What we're talking about here is working a little harder on behalf of the taxpayers. With the indulgence of the members opposite, I'd like to refresh their memories about a few of the things that have happened in the province in the last little while.
I think one of the first things we should remind ourselves of is the 357,000 fewer people who are trapped in the welfare system. Of those 357,000, there are 138,000 children who are no longer dependent on welfare because their parents in many cases have found some sort of gainful employment.
When we took over this province as the government in 1995, one out of every eight people in the province of Ontario was trapped on welfare. In what is arguably the richest part of the world, we had a system where one out of every eight people was trapped on welfare. We have been very successful since in reducing that number by 357,000 people.
We've done that because the private sector in our province has created 440,000 new jobs. They've created those new jobs in large part because of the environment that's been established because of the actions of the Mike Harris government: 66 reductions in taxes that have left people with much more money in their pockets. They can use that money to spend. In spending that money, they generate activity in the economy. That extra activity of course produces new jobs, and as a result we have 440,000 new private sector jobs created in Ontario since 1995. We now have 6.9% unemployment in Ontario, compared to 8.7% in the country.
Our friends in Ottawa will talk about this wonderful surplus that they've created and take the credit for it. For anyone who understands how the country works, they will know that the success that Ottawa has enjoyed, that Mr Martin has enjoyed, is totally the result of the economic activity that has been generated in Ontario thanks in large part to the policies of the Mike Harris government.
But now we have our federal friends, who have taken $19 billion in excess UI premiums, confiscated that money from the workers and the employers and used it -
Mr Alex Cullen (Ottawa West): On a point of order, Speaker: I don't believe there's a quorum in the House.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): Would you check and see if there is a quorum present, please.
Clerk at the Table (Ms Lisa Freedman): A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Clerk at the Table: A quorum is now present, Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker: The Chair recognizes the member for Chatham-Kent.
Mr Carroll: I want to thank the member for noting that there was not a quorum in the House, the member for Ottawa West, formerly of the Liberal Party, who now has found his rightful place with the New Democrats. I thank him for paying attention and understanding there wasn't a quorum.
As I was saying, the federal government, over and above having taken this excess of $19 billion out of the hides of workers and employers in the country, most of it out of Ontario, is now going to beat us up with some new CPP premiums come January. The federal Liberal government just does not understand the concept of giving more money to the taxpayers and keeping less to waste in government.
We should also make reference to some changes made relative to children's aid societies, because that's another area of concern in our province. Child welfare obviously is very important. The minister just recently announced that 760 new front-line workers will be hired to supplement the activities of the children's aid societies so they can provide better care for children at risk. There will be extensive new training programs offered so that those front-line people who are working with these young children, who are sometimes coming out of deplorable situations, know better how to deal with these young children at risk.
The minister has announced that there'll be an 85% increase in the stipend paid to foster families, to foster parents. We need to find 500 more new locations, foster parents who will provide care to these children who are at risk.
We also know that the minister has announced a new funding formula for children's aid societies, one that replaces what in actual fact was a very inefficient formula. The new formula has more to do with caseload. It will allow children's aid societies to manage their job or their performance better and to do more planning.
So there have been several changes announced there as a result of hard work by this government to improve the operation of children's aid societies.
We know too that one of the issues we have to deal with between now and the Christmas break hopefully will be final work on the new changes to the Child and Family Services Act, changes that will result in the Child and Family Services Act focusing on its paramount or number one objective: the protection of children. Too often in the past we've seen the rights of the child or the protection of the child somehow not being paramount when the decisions were made about children who were in jeopardy. The new changes that are proposed, if this House accepts them - hopefully that will happen before Christmas - will provide better safety and protection for children.
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We've also introduced a common risk assessment to allow children's aid society front-line workers to better assess a situation with children to make sure that there is a consistency as to how we interpret children at risk and what we do to protect them.
We also know that a new information database is being worked on that will link all of the children's aid societies across the province so that if a family moves from point A to point B, if they've had contact with the children's aid society in point A, that information will be available through the database to the children's aid people in point B, so that again we can make sure that we provide the utmost protection to the children who are at risk.
So a lot of changes are coming in that area, all of which still have to be passed by this House, one of the reasons it's necessary that we extend the sittings.
I want to mention the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children initiative. Some time ago the minister announced that we would be expanding funding of that program up to $50 million. Of all the programs that have come along in the last little while, this particular one focuses on those children who are identified as at risk at the time they're born so that we can assist the mother or the father or the parents or whoever in making sure that the child who is at risk gets all the possible advantages they can get so that as they grow and develop they're not shortchanged, they're offered all of the protection we can offer them and given all of the opportunity to blossom into participating members of our society and therefore improve the quality of their life. We've expanded dramatically the funding of that program we introduced and have announced that funding will eventually go from an initial $10 million up to $50 million.
I want to talk for a minute about some issues regarding safety. We all participated a couple of weeks ago in an announcement by the Solicitor General of funding for a 1,000 new front-line police officers to be dispersed around our province so that all communities -
Mr Ted Chudleigh (Halton North): Forty-two in Halton.
Mr Carroll: Forty-two in Halton, 17 in Chatham-Kent - so that all of us living in our communities can feel safer because we will have more front-line police officers patrolling our streets. That was an initiative put forward by the Solicitor General. It's a partnership between that ministry and municipalities to fund 1,000 extra police officers.
We also know that we recently, as of the end of November, introduced enormously expanded fines for people who are caught driving with their licences under suspension. We've even gone so far as to eventually impound their cars. At some point in time, we must have people of the province understand that to drive a car while your licence is suspended because of criminal activity will not be tolerated. We will not allow it, and if we have to impound their cars, then we are prepared to do that. So tough new safety features have been implemented by the Minister of Transportation.
Also, of course, at this time of year we're all very much aware of our expanded RIDE program that is designed to keep drunk drivers off the road. I heard it announced today in the news that the region of Peel has issued categorically, absolutely zero tolerance for drunk drivers. They will tolerate some other issues, I guess, but when it comes to drunk driving, zero tolerance for drunk drivers. Hopefully all communities in the province will pick up on that.
Those are some initiatives that have been put forward by ministries regarding safety issues.
We've done a lot in Ontario since we got started but there is so much more to do. When we talk about sitting for an extra four days and when we talk about sitting till midnight, it's tough to sit in the Legislature from 1:30 in the afternoon - I know, Mr Speaker, you sit long hours and I know how difficult that is some nights to do that and to sometimes listen to conservation that's somewhat less than stimulating and oftentimes repetitive. But it's about working harder, it's about working more effectively for the people of the province, because they're the people who are paying the bills.
Like you, Mr Speaker, I come from the private sector. I can remember, going back into the early 1980s, the private sector coming to grips with the fact that doing business as usual was no longer acceptable. The world had shrunk to the point where those of us operating in Ontario had to compete with those operating in other jurisdictions, many with much more efficient operations than we had, sometimes because they were new, sometimes because they had lower labour costs, but oftentimes because they had considerably less expensive government.
As I went through that whole process in the private sector, the one thing that always frustrated me as a private entrepreneur, a private sector operator being forced to find more efficient, better ways of doing things, was that every year my taxes kept going up. The provincial sales tax kept going up, and then we got the famous GST. The Prime Minister of the country said, "If I'm elected I will get rid of the GST," but it's still with us. All those taxes kept going up year after year, despite the fact that as a private businessman I had to find better and better ways to do my business and reduce my costs. It got to the point, of course, where for all of us the largest single expense in our lives was paying taxes.
I don't know of anybody I've met in my journeys through this place or through my previous life who minded paying taxes provided they could be assured that the money they were spending on taxes was in fact being efficiently spent. But that has not been the case. There is ample evidence that as the world went through restructuring, as the private sector went through restructuring, government did not understand what restructuring meant. They continued to suck more and more money out of the economy and take it to themselves.
During the 10 years that preceded our arrival in this place the two parties opposite raised taxes 65 times, with no regard for the fact that as they took more money away from the constituents, that left less money for them to spend to generate activity in the economy.
The private sector, where many of us come from, was fed up with the fact that they were the only ones trying to figure out a better way to do things. Government had not gotten to that point yet. We came here as a government with an enormous number of commitments we made to the people of Ontario, commitments to change how we do things.
I, for one, did not expect it to be quite so difficult. I really thought that all of us were here to make it a better place for our children and our grandchildren to live. I really thought that's why we were all here. I didn't fully understand the whole concept of the opposition thing. I really thought that all people here of common mind would say, "What is the best thing we can do for the taxpayers of the province?"
I find out, now that I'm here, that's not what everybody is interested in. There's a thing that gets in the way oftentimes that causes us not to concentrate on that. But that should not deter us from our goal that we stated when we asked to be sent here to represent the people and that we've worked on diligently since we got here, and that is to make sure Ontario is a province that affords the same kind of opportunity to your children and my children and your grandchildren, assuming you have some, Mr Speaker - and I'm not sure about that, but I have some - the same kind of opportunity we enjoyed when we were their age. It's a simple goal but an enormously complex task.
It's now almost half past 9; we will stay here till 12 o'clock tonight. We sit here because we have work to do. Despite the fact that it's approaching the Christmas season and that time of year when people start to relax a little bit more, we will be here all of this week, we will be here all of next week, we will be sitting till midnight every night because we have work to do. We must be committed to finishing that job.
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Mr Baird: We will never surrender. We will beat them on the beaches. We will beat them in the streets.
Mr Carroll: My fellow members jest, but we must be committed to finishing that job because it is in the best interests of the taxpayers we represent.
I hadn't planned on making any comments tonight, because I thought it was going to be a little different night than it was. But given the opportunity, I appreciate that. I want you to know that all of us on this side are prepared to do all that we have to do to make sure that once again Ontario is the driving engine of the economy of Canada.
Mr Gerretsen: I listened very closely to the member for Chatham-Kent. The first point I'd like to make is that when he said he thought it would be easier to work for the people of Ontario to try to get some changes to our system, and all those kinds of comments, the thought that kept going through my mind was, "Yes, let's make sure we make things better for the people of Ontario, but let's make sure we do it for all of the people of Ontario."
The thing I'm bothered by is this attitude of this government that somehow things are better when things really aren't better. Let me give you an example. Right in today's paper we read of the Progress of Canada's Children report, which is put together annually. It states that our kids' lives are worsening. The state of their "well-being is declining on more than half of nine indicators - from health to economic security.
"Poor children are getting poorer and they're suffering more."
That is not a partisan issue. That is something we should all do something about, irrespective of party. We should be working on that because that, to my way of thinking, is totally and completely unacceptable in a country and province that have as much to offer as Canada and Ontario.
Most of the people I talk to out there get the distinct impression that this government wants certain people in our society under certain circumstances to do better, but the gap, as we've talked about earlier already today, between the rich and the poor is widening all the time. I would think that is unacceptable, regardless of whether you're a Tory, a New Democrat, a Liberal or an independent thinker out there; it doesn't matter. This is an unacceptable circumstance and condition we find ourselves in.
There's another report in the same paper which refers to the fact that here in the city of Toronto 37% of our children, 400,000 children, live in poverty. That surely is unacceptable.
When they see the actions this government has taken over the last three years, most people I've talked to have come to the conclusion that a lot of the government's activities have been basically to attack these situations; not to attack them in the sense of trying to resolve them, but attacking in the sense of certainly not making it better for the people who live in poverty and the children who are poor in our society.
Today I picked up a little publication, a pamphlet that's put together by the Interfaith Witness for Social Justice and Compassion here at Queen's Park. Apparently, since October 1995 this organization has maintained a weekly vigil here at Queen's Park from 12 noon to 1:30 to protest the injustices of the Harris government.
We've had a similar group that has been operating in my community of Kingston, where for half an hour every Friday since August of 1995 this group, headed by the Sisters of Providence in Kingston, has been holding silent vigils to protest the cuts in social assistance and the cuts in services to the poor in our society.
What drew my attention to this particular pamphlet was a limerick which was inspired by the Harris government. I would like to take this opportunity to read it to you and to the people of Ontario. I think it's very well done, and it really tells a story in a different sort of way. It says:
We vigil every week at Queen's Park
In all weather - not really a lark.
So what's good use of leisure
Is quite hard to measure.
We hope we are making a mark.
There's a guy at Queen's Park called Harris
His program is beginning to scare us.
If he thinks it a cure
To take from the poor
Then, from common "nonsense," please spare us.
Downsizing is negative construction
Ideology of growth by reduction
But short-term thinking
Is a kind of hoodwinking
And the slippery slope to destruction.
The Tories are as mean as they come
For now each has a political plum.
But come next election
We'll make a selection
So they'll be the welfare bum!
A second term is Harris's goal.
For that he'll need a good poll.
So his sudden passion
For hep C compassion,
Is a kind of damage control.
Now nothing can be more obscene
Than Mike on the TV screen
But perhaps we'll get closure
From overexposure
And he'll soon just be a has-been.
We vigilers are birds of a feather
We witness in all kinds of weather.
In rain, hail or snow
We want you to know
Getting justice means working together.
If my friend the member for Chatham-Kent and the backbenchers in the government are really interested in working for all of the people of Ontario, I would just like to remind them about those kids, the 37% of our kids who live in poverty; or about the fact that the disparity between the rich and the poor is ever-growing in this province. That is certainly something they have done absolutely nothing about.
The other point I wanted to very briefly raise today - and I see that the minister is back in the House, and we welcome her; I've got a lot of regard for the Minister of Citizenship and Culture - deals with the Ontarians with Disabilities Act that has just been introduced. I know that groups out there have been complaining about the act. We have been complaining about the fact that the act really doesn't do anything.
I would like to read a very short paragraph in a letter I received that was an open letter to Mike Harris. I know all members of the Legislature received a copy of this letter as well. It's written by the president of the Ontario March of Dimes. I think all of us in the Legislature know of the tremendous hard work that the March of Dimes has done over the years for our disabled community. I know they operate in just about every community in Ontario. We can all be extremely proud of the work they've done. Let's just hear for a moment what they have to say about the current Ontarians with Disabilities Act as introduced by the minister. I'm reading from that part of the letter which deals with the ODA. It states:
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"As you know, during the last election, you" - meaning Mike Harris - "made a promise that your government would introduce an Ontarians with Disabilities Act during its first term. The three-page act your government introduced does nothing to address the vast range of barriers that confront persons with disabilities. The act does not require government to remove or prevent a single barrier. There is no requirement for consultation, there is no duty to comply. It does not bestow any increased rights, and it most certainly has nothing to do with the resolution passed unanimously in the Legislature on October 29, which called for a strong, meaningful and effective ODA.
"To refer to the proposed legislation as an Ontarians with Disabilities Act is misleading and unacceptable."
I'm reading from the letter. These are not my words; these are the words of Duncan Read, president of the Ontario March of Dimes. He continues:
"While there may be cost implications to implement a comprehensive ODA which conflict with the goals of the Common Sense Revolution, we had hoped that your government would recognize the economic benefits of full societal participation of persons with disabilities and make a genuine effort to remove physical barriers.
"Introducing legislation with the name Ontarians with Disabilities Act, but which lacks substance negates the goodwill of your government. There are 1.5 million Ontarians (close to a million voters), who will benefit by the effective removal of barriers, and a whole province that will benefit from an increasingly independent and productive population.
"We urge you to fulfill your promise and eagerly await the introduction of legislation worthy of the name Ontarians with Disabilities Act."
There is no way that anybody could say it better than the president of the Ontario March of Dimes, and it's not too late. It's not too late for the minister to go back to the cabinet table and say to Mike Harris and her fellow colleagues in cabinet: "The act that we have introduced simply isn't adequate. Let us do something meaningful. Let us live up to our promises. Let us introduce a meaningful Ontarians with Disabilities Act." I'm absolutely positive, from the people I've heard in my community, that there isn't anybody who has been awaiting this act who feels that the act as currently introduced is anywhere near adequate. Minister, please do the right thing. Introduce a meaningful Ontarians with Disabilities Act, as called for by Mr Read in his letter to your Premier on November 26.
The other thing I want to talk about very briefly in the few minutes I have left is the state of our Ontario health care system. I know many of us are going around seeing lots of people, maybe doing a little bit of pre-election canvassing to see what the mood of the people is out there. I have done so extensively over the last couple of months, and I can tell you that there is no issue about which Ontarians feel stronger than a good-quality health care system. I know that people in my area are confused with the system as it currently operates in my community of Kingston, feel that there have been major changes and that there is a deterioration of health care services.
As you know, we in Kingston have a medical health sciences complex and we have a medical school at Queen's University. It's the smallest of the five that operate in the Kingston area, and as a result of the Harris destruction or restructuring commission, one of our hospitals is being closed. The Hotel Dieu is being closed, a hospital that has operated in the Kingston community for 153 years. A petition was taken up to ensure that the Hotel Dieu would stay open, and it was signed by 66,000 individuals, which is quite impressive in a total community catchment area of probably some 150,000 people, but the way it is right now, depending upon what happens in the court action, it looks as if the government may actually get its wish and close the hospital.
When you sort out what has happened with all the finances relating to the hospital system, you pretty quickly come to the conclusion that a minimum of $25 million per year has been taken out of the hospital health care system in the Kingston area as a result of all this restructuring. Their total budget has gone from about $250 million to less than $225 million as a result of all the restructuring. This was always sold to the people of my area on the basis of, "Don't worry, we are going into a system of community health care which is different than the hospital-focused care we have had."
It's very ironic. In exactly the same week that the Hotel Dieu Hospital was given its final sentence of having to close as a health care facility, what was the other thing that happened of major consequence to my community? I'll tell you. Some 2,000 patients in the Kingston area were cut off from their home care services. The local CCAC, community care access centre, felt that because it didn't have the money, it had to cut off 2,000 individuals, people who had been receiving home care and could no longer receive home care, because it didn't have enough money.
As it turned out, none of the $25 million in health care costs that has been permanently taken out of my community has gone into community care. I have heard of some - not only heard of some but seen some very frightening situations. I was in a home the other day where a 74-year-old, not in very good health, said: "Mr Gerretsen, we don't know what to do. Our home care has been significantly reduced," I believe from two hours per day to one hour per week. I said: "I feel very sorry for you. Maybe there's something that can be done about it." Then the lady went on to say, "It's not for me; it's for my 99-year-old mother." She invited me inside the house, and there was a 99-year-old individual lying on a couch, not able to move, who had received nursing care for two hours per day and who, as a result of the budgetary cuts in the Kingston area, can no longer get that care.
I checked into it, and the executive director and the various other people at the CCAC said, "I'm sorry, we just can't do anything more than the one or two hours at most per week that we can now give this individual, because of budgetary cuts." The irony is this: As a result of this kind of home care cut, either one of two things will happen. I pray to God it won't happen, but it may very well happen. Either the lady is no longer going to be with us very soon, because as a 99-year old she needs care, or she is going to end up in a home or in a hospital at probably about 20 or 30 times the amount that it would cost to send a nurse in there for two hours a day. You tell me. I'd love to hear the minister's comments on this, because if she has an answer, then let's set all partisan differences aside and deal with this kind of situation.
Hon Dianne Cunningham (Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, minister responsible for women's issues): You should phone your community care.
Mr Gerretsen: I did phone my community care, and they couldn't do anything, because you have cut off their funding. This is only one -
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Order. In debate you address the Chair, please.
Mr Gerretsen: I apologize for that, Mr Speaker, but it was the minister who said to me, "Then you should talk to the minister and maybe the minister can do something about it." Is that any way to run a health care system? I can assure you that the people who are involved with the CCAC in Kingston darned well know their business. I'm sure they have good reason, in their limited budgeting, they cannot look after this individual.
All I'm saying is that I'm telling you the truth. That's what happened, and it has happened to many people throughout this province. I'm saying to you, Minister, why don't you do something about it?
Hon Mrs Cunningham: You've got a problem.
The Acting Speaker: Minister, order, please.
Mr Gerretsen: You're the person in a place of authority to do something about it.
Hon Mrs Cunningham: Why don't you -
The Acting Speaker: Minister, order.
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Mr Gerretsen: I am merely raising this issue to show the kinds of things that are happening in community care across the province. This isn't one instance. I can tell you of other instances where the same thing happened. These CCACs don't have enough money to provide the kinds of services they need to.
The minister talks about, "You people in the Kingston area have always had too much money and we're trying to bring it down to the same level all across the province," but what you totally fail to recognize is the fact that in some communities the community home care has been going on for so much longer and their programs are much more advanced and maybe people have been released out of hospital at a much quicker rate than in other places because of these kinds of services that were available.
Interjection: Because the doctors want it that way.
Mr Gerretsen: If you people have all the answers, then I wish you would come down to my community, deal with the CCAC, listen to them and try to deal with some of these horrible situations.
Obviously the government just doesn't get it. People out there are hurting and we should care about all the people of Ontario.
Mr Cullen: I'd like to compliment the member for Kingston and The Islands for bringing forward the concerns in his constituency to the attention of the House. It may not be the kind of message that members opposite want to hear, but he has been elected, as I have been elected, to present the concerns of our constituents to this House.
I have to tell you that in Ottawa West health care still ranks as the number one major issue. We are still seeing the government proceeding with the closing of the Riverside Hospital, of the Grace hospital, the downsizing of the Elisabeth Bruyère, the Montfort and the Ottawa Civic Hospital. These are real issues that concern the members of my community; so much so that the member for a riding near me has put out a special householder called Health Care Report: Special Edition, trying to assuage the fears of the community.
But people in this House know that it was merely three years ago that this government cut children's aid societies by 20%. I was on the children's aid society board for Ottawa-Carleton and we had to put into place Harris days. When you find yourselves five months into the year of your budget and you're finding yourself being cut by some 20%, how do you recover the money? Do you just shut down and not serve your community? Of course not. So what we had to do, unfortunately, was put into place Harris days. In other words, staff were given time off without pay so we could balance our budget.
Mr Baird: What about Rae days? What about your former leader?
The Acting Speaker: Member for Nepean, you don't have the floor.
Mr Cullen: It was even worse than the so-called Rae days that the member opposite talks about, which were there to save jobs.
So I'm saying to the members opposite here, when this government came into place, when the Mike Harris government came into place, not only did they cut the social assistance rates by 21.6% but they also cut children's aid societies by 20%, they eliminated the municipal support programs, funding for shelters was cut. The whole history is there.
Mr Speaker, I'm off topic. I was only wanting to compliment the member for Kingston and The Islands for presenting the issues of concern in his riding.
In my riding people are concerned about the schools that are being slated for closure as a result of this government's school closure policy. The community is in an absolute outrage because none of these schools will be closed based on program reasons. I know that if there is a program reason to look at whether a school should exist or not, that is certainly a viable reason to look at whether or not that's the best means to provide education for the children in that community. But that's not what's going on here whatsoever. That too is another issue, and I'm certainly more than happy to talk about property tax.
We're here at about 10 to 10 this evening, dealing with a motion presented earlier today that, notwithstanding our standing orders, the House shall continue to meet from 6:30 to 12 midnight on December 14, 15, 16 and 17 for the purpose of conducting government business. Here we are at 10 to 10 in a debate on a calendar motion that's going to go on to midnight. People may be wondering why we would spend time doing this. Quite frankly, it's the government's motion and it's the government's business that sets the order of the day here in this House.
Mr Peter L. Preston (Brant-Haldimand): You're a dipper now.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Brant-Haldimand, you're not in your seat.
Mr Cullen: When I look at votes and proceedings and the order paper for this Legislature, looking at the government agenda, we have some 25, 26 government bills, some 50 private members' bills, and in a week's time we're going to break, according to standing orders of this House, and not come back till March 22.
Mr Doug Galt (Northumberland): The NDP government only sat for three weeks in their last year.
Mr Baird: When we come back, you'll wish we hadn't.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Nepean, member for Northumberland.
Mr Cullen: I'm looking at about 24 bills, plus the 50 or so private member's bills that each of us who has presented bills has presented in good faith, and we're wondering, "Why is it that the time has been so spent that we're sitting to midnight this week, we're sitting to midnight next week, to accomplish this agenda, one third of which we know the government wants to, needs to get through, one third of which there would be, I believe, all-party consent in terms of the non-controversial aspects and one third of which the government really has no interest whatsoever in pursuing?"
I just want to pursue that a little bit further, because when I look at these bills - Bill 38, the Condominium Act; Bill 48, the Courts of Justice Amendment Act, dealing with family courts; Bill 53, the Law Society Amendment Act - these acts were introduced in the summer, they were introduced this fall. Then there's Bill 55, the Apprenticeship and Certification Act; Bill 56, dealing with the Greater Toronto Services Board; Bill 57, the Liquor Licence Amendment Act; Bill 61 - now this is a bill the government has to get through; this is the Property Tax Deadline Extension Act -
Mr Preston: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: The member opposite is deciding for this government what we consider to be important or not, and I don't think he is competent to do that or a lot of other things.
Mr Cullen: It's clearly the government that's incompetent in handling its own agenda, because here it has come in with a calendar motion extending our sittings to midnight, not this week but next week, and it won't even get its agenda done. As a matter of fact, if we look at these bills, how is it going to get this bill, the Property Tax Deadline Extension Act, which was introduced September 28, which is designed to extend the appeal deadline for property taxes past the end of September 1998 - what's the date today? Is this not December 7? This was a bill that was introduced at almost the last day of sitting in September to extend the deadline for property tax appeals and it hasn't even got it done yet? That's amazing.
We go on: Bill 68, the Legal Aid Services Act; Bill 69, the Integrity Commissioner and Lobbyists Statute Law Amendment Act; Bill 70, which seeks to sell Highway 407; Bill 72, dealing with intercountry adoption; Bill 73, the Child and Family Services Amendment Act; Bill 74, the Fuel and Gasoline Tax Amendment Act; Bill 76, the Social Work and Social Service Work Act; Bill 79, the Fairness for Property Taxpayers Act - this is another bill that seeks to amend the previous bill on property taxes that hasn't been passed by this House yet, and this is the eighth bill on property taxes.
As a matter of fact, if I could just take a moment to reflect, here Bill 79 is the eighth bill, not the seventh, but the eighth bill on property tax since this whole property tax reform business began some 23 months ago. Let's think here: eight bills over 23 months of the government trying to get it right and get it right again - made another error, get it right, made another error, get it right again. How much time has this government wasted on trying to correct its property tax errors?
When we look through each bill here - and this is a government that has set a record in terms of time allocation. Time allocation, as you know, is closure, is shutting down debate, and every time this government does it, it means that the process of considering legislation, what the opposition is here for, to make sure the legislation is well aired, is perfected, we criticize so that the government can take these criticisms and perfect the legislation, it doesn't do it. So what happens? Bill after bill after bill after bill after bill after bill after bill on property tax.
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We're talking about a calendar motion that seeks to extend our sitting time, our sitting period, because this government couldn't get its act organized to deal with property tax reform in an effective manner, refused to listen to the experts out there who deal with property tax. They wanted to come forward at committee, but unfortunately when the government passes time allocation it shuts down the committee process. You have a day to deal with amendments and if they're not done by such-and-such a time they're carried. Is this any way to run the government? Look at it: eight bills.
What is happening? This is December 12. When does the property tax year end? December 31. What are we dealing with? Two bills on property tax that have yet to go through the process, and on top of that, the government's going to come in with amendments. It has to in Ottawa-Carleton. The member for Nepean knows it has to in Ottawa-Carleton. He's got the letter from the city of Nepean saying, "Please amend Bill 79 to make sure that the payments in lieu of property taxes, that the federal government please amend it."
Mr Baird: We did that this morning.
Mr Cullen: Of course, so these amendments are tabled. For heaven's sake, why wasn't it done the first time? Why do we have to go through all this? Can the member for Nepean explain to us why this wasn't thought about 23 months ago when the government went down this path?
I'm only on Bill 79. As well, we have to deal with Bill 81, dealing with the outcome of the budget that was tabled last May. It's amazing: Last May the government comes in with a budget and then it tables for the first time on November 23 the legislation to bring into place the budget that it presented last May. Didn't they think about it at the time? Obviously not.
We have the Environmental Statute Law Amendment Act, Bill 82. Then Bill 83 - oh, it is sad. I have to pause at Bill 83, and I pity the poor minister who sponsored the bill. It can't have been her idea to come forward with this pitiful piece of paper that is called the Ontarians with Disabilities Act. I look at the preamble, and the preamble takes up almost all of one page. The preamble of course has no legal force, but I just want to quote from the preamble because it says here, "It is the shared responsibility of everyone in Ontario to identify, remove and prevent barriers to the participation of persons with disabilities."
One would think that this legislation would therefore provide us with the tools to ensure that these barriers are being removed so that people with disabilities could participate in our community on an equal footing with everyone else. But does it do this? Oh, no, not at all. In fact, it even goes on in this preamble. It says here, "Identifying, preventing and removing barriers will increase the contribution of persons with disabilities to the economic and social life of the province." That's true. That's something that all of us here would want to see happen, and we find all of us here willing to work to make it so.
It is so sad what's in this bill, because this bill, besides giving a section on purpose and one definition, then goes to section 3. There are only seven sections to this act: a purpose; one definition; section 3, dealing with ministry plans re barriers; section 4, dealing with a review of the act; section 5, recognition of existing legal obligations; section 6, the commencement; and section 7, the title.
In this short act you start looking for where the meat is, and you go to section 3, ministry plans re barriers. This is the meat of the bill. The meat of the bill says, "As part of each ministry's annual planning process, every minister shall prepare a plan for the identification, removal and prevention of barriers to persons with disabilities...." This is already part of the action plan for these ministries. The minister responsible for Management Board services would tell you that is already there, that the ministries are already doing this task, so this piece of legislation merely formalizes what they're doing.
How does this help the ordinary Ontarian who lives out in this community in achieving a reduction of barriers so they can go down the street, enter a store, go to the washroom, pay their bills at a bank, go to the hardware store, pick up their mail, go to their job, be able to access public transit, go to a child care centre to pick up their four-year-old daughter, go to their school to talk to their son's teacher, go to the hospital to visit their mother, go to a nursing home to visit their father, any of those things? Is that in this bill? Sadly - and it is sad - they are not. It's a failure of a bill.
I said earlier that there are so many bills before this Legislature, so many government bills, and I can't speak for the government, but I'm projecting from the comments made by the ministers. There are about a third there that need passage; there are about a third there that, generally speaking, as I said, with some work with the other parties, our party included, we would find common ground on; and about a third that are meant to go nowhere. I would say to you, this pitiful piece of paper known as Bill 83, the so-called Ontarians with Disabilities Act, merely enshrines review of ministerial policies, which if any minister had any guts would make sure were in place already. I'm sorry, that's clearly a bill that's not meant to go anywhere. It's for show, only for show.
It is sad because the disability community, which we know is a growing community, which we know seeks to participate because they have skills, they have things to contribute to our society, their expectations were so raised by this government, by the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, saying, with his pearly blue eyes, into the camera, "A promise made is a promise kept," and there would be a new Ontarians with Disabilities Act by this government during its mandate.
I'm sorry, we have this bill here and it is for show, simply for show, and it's a cruel disappointment for those people with disabilities who earnestly believed there would be some way that the government would use the mandate that it had to facilitate their participation in our community. This government has fired a cap gun and it is a blank. It is sad.
That's only Bill 83. We've got a number of other bills here: Bill 85, the Vintners Quality Alliance Act; Bill 90, the Automobile Insurance Consumer Protection Act; Bill 92, the Emergency Volunteers Protection Act; Bill 93, the Franchise Disclosure Act, and the government is promising even more bills coming down the pipe. We're sitting here only to the end of next week, sitting in midnight sittings. We're taking this time, now at five after 10, going on to midnight, to discuss this calendar motion the government has put forward, and yet we're expecting to hear an election next spring.
Maybe the House will come back in January, maybe not. The standing orders say that we don't come back until March 22, so I have to ask my colleagues around here, why this sudden thought in the last few weeks of December that we're going to have extended sittings to accomplish this? Why can't this House do its job properly? Why does it have to set the world's record here, certainly in Ontario, for time allocation motions? I mean, 24 time allocation motions, which shuts down the public consultation process, which shuts down the ability to properly consider legislation and look at amendments, and I just have to go back to that sad, sad story of all these property tax bills.
On January 16, 1997, we had the tabling of the first property tax bill, the Fair Municipal Finance Act, Bill 106. It was within weeks that we had Bill 149, the Fair Municipal Finance Act (No. 2), because they didn't get number one right the first time. Then we found Bill 160, which of course consumed a lot of time because Bill 160 took over the provincial administration of property tax for the purposes of education. Then we had Bill 164, the Tax Credits to Create Jobs Act, because, on the heels of Bill 160, they had to set new rules for the Assessment Review Board. Then we had Bill 179, more rules for the property tax assessment board.
That was the last session, and then we moved into this session where the government realized, "We've done all these tremendous changes to property tax but we need a toolkit for municipalities, and besides, we goofed on small businesses and we goofed on charities," so they came in with Bill 15, the Tax Cuts for People and for Small Business Act, and then Bill 16, the Small Business and Charities Protection Act.
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All this time consumed over property tax, property tax reform, and did they get that right? Not at all. They had to come in with Bill 61, which is still on the books here, which we have yet to pass, and now Bill 79, all dealing with the extensions of the deadlines for property tax.
I'm sorry, but here we are dealing with a calendar motion that has legislators sitting to midnight because the government doesn't know how to deal with its own business. The government is elected to bring the business to the Legislature, yet, in so doing, with the majority that it has, quite clearly fumbles the ball.
We're going to be here next week until midnight. We're going to have of course a high level of debate as the hours go on and on, and we'll be doing the business of the House. But I look to this government to bring us back in January, to have us do the work, send out the bills to committees. I'm looking forward to that process because that is the process by which we perfect legislation. Remember, it's the government that proposes, but it's the legislative process here that makes sure that we have good law, and I look forward to that opportunity.
Mr Galt: It has been very entertaining listening to some of the debate here this evening. Earlier in the evening the member for London Centre had some interesting comments about consultation and the amount of consultation that's been carried out. I think she would be interested in some of the facts and figures of how it has really been going on with this government.
If you look at the number of sessional days versus the number of bills that have been passed during the first three years, with the PCs in this 36th Parliament, we have been sitting for some 361 days and we have passed 89 bills. That seems like quite a little bit. The NDP, in the 35th Parliament, in their first three years sat for 278 days - almost 100 days less - and they passed 143 bills, and the member was criticizing about consultation and the speed of bills.
Mr Gerretsen: It's not the number of bills, it's the quality.
Mrs Boyd: It's the nature of your bills.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Kingston and The Islands. Member for London Centre.
Mr Galt: In their first three years, in the 34th Parliament - I guess the truth hurts a bit, but these are facts and figures. In the Liberal government, the 34th Parliament, in the first three years they sat for -
Mr Gerretsen: It's not the number of bills.
The Acting Speaker: Order. Member for Kingston and The Islands, you had your turn, please. Member for Northumberland.
Mr Galt: Thank you, Mr Speaker, for getting control of the House here. They were getting just a little noisy.
What I was saying when I was so rudely interrupted was that the Liberals, in their 34th Parliament, in the first three years sat for 297 days, a little more than the NDP, and they passed 183 different bills.
Mr Marcel Beaubien (Lambton): You've got to be joking.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Lambton.
Mr Galt: That's more than double what the PCs have passed.
I think the other part that's interesting here is during second reading. The people at home may not know, but that's when the extensive debate goes on over bills.
Let's talk about the first session and the average time at second reading in the PC government, the 36th Parliament, we debated for four hours and 50 minutes. How long did the NDP spend on each bill? One hour and 28 minutes. How long did the Liberals spend in the 34th Parliament? One hour and eight minutes.
In the second session, the PCs spent five hours and 33 minutes - we increased in the second session - while the NDP really came up too. They came up to three hours and 55 minutes. We have to congratulate them. The Liberals in the second session got all the way up to one hour and 38 minutes.
I think the thing that is really interesting - you should look at how much time was spent on the third reading. In the third reading, the 36th Parliament, the PCs in the first session spent two hours and 10 minutes per bill, the NDP spent a mere 48 minutes per bill, and when you get to the Liberals - this is the one I think is really interesting - the Liberals in the 34th Parliament, third reading in the first session, spent all of seven minutes per bill. We spent two hours and 10 minutes.
Mr Gerretsen: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: This is basically for the information of the members: The Liberal bills were all good bills as opposed to the bills that have been introduced here.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Northumberland.
Mr Galt: I was always taught to be honest and truthful in the House in the comments that I make. I hope the others will change just a little from that last comment. That was something else.
In the second session, the Liberals in the 34th Parliament more than doubled the amount of time they gave each bill for third reading and they went all the way up to 15 minutes per bill; the NDP, in the 35th, gave two hours and two minutes; and the Conservatives - oh, this is bad - one hour and 41 minutes. We shouldn't have covered that.
We moved down the amount of hours spent out on hearings. The member for London Centre was referring to consultation. I think she'd find it interesting that in our 36th Parliament, we've spent 773 hours and 29 minutes out on the road.
Mrs Boyd: No, not out on the road; mostly here.
Mr Galt: Well, in consultation.
Mrs Boyd: Mostly here.
The Acting Speaker: Member for London Centre.
Mr Galt: It's expensive out on the road.
The NDP spent 645 hours while the Liberals spent a mere 349 hours, less than half what the Conservatives were spending.
A lot has been said tonight about what the government's been doing.
Mr Gerretsen: What are you trying to do, lose our audience?
The Acting Speaker: Order, member for Kingston and The Islands. I'll just wait for a few minutes. Member for Northumberland, you only have the floor.
Mr Galt: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It's absolutely amazing how much noise three Liberals and two New Democrats can make in the House.
What I want to do is talk a bit about our track record. The opposition's been talking a lot about the track record and the bill. I think we should have a look at the platform and where we've been and where we've come from.
There's a summary here on page 3 of the Common Sense Revolution that talks about "Cut Provincial Income Taxes," "Cut Government Spending," "Cut Government Barriers to Job Creation," "Cut the size of Government" and "Balance the budget," things we've either accomplished or are about to.
As you move to page 4 of our platform, "Lowering Your Taxes," there's been a lot of criticism from the opposition about lowering taxes. I guess they stand for higher taxes, which is indeed unfortunate. We stand for lower taxes. It's interesting to see the chart in here showing that where taxes were increased, less revenue actually came in. We can check this one off as mission accomplished. It's been done. We've cut the income tax by some 30%.
I've just been passed some information here, "Bob Rae says Harris is right." That's refreshing coming from the NDP, but it's not surprising that an economist like Rae, who is quite a way to the right of the NDP and maybe even to the right of the Liberals, would understand this, I'm sure.
It's also interesting, and I quote from the Ottawa Sunday Sun, May 24, 1998, "`Liberals Lie,' NDP Boss Says," and "Provincial Party Plots Strategy." Then we have from the Toronto Sun, "It's Jobs, Jobs, Jobs in Ontario; 85% of 73,000 National Total." That was back on October 10. And I think this is the worst of all, and we've been seeing this, "McGuinty Vague On Purpose." There is absolutely no question that has been going on.
Getting back to the Common Sense Revolution, talking about taxes, certainly income tax has been cut. That's one we can stroke off. We've reduced corporate taxes. We got rid of the employer health tax. That was the one the Liberals brought in back in the late 1960s that was really a job killer. You can see where the number of jobs dipped significantly after that particular one came in. On taxes, we can check that off. Where did we get the employer health tax? Where did we get those dollars back? We got them in the fair share health tax, and that's for those making over $50,000. There's a levy of 0.2% for those making between $50,000 and $60,000, and it works its way up to 2% over $150,000.
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The opposition likes to talk a lot about the big tax cuts to the rich when in fact we've actually increased the taxes to the rich. It is compensated, of course, with the 30% tax cut, but they did not get nearly as much as the opposition would like to suggest.
We move on through the platform and the things accomplished to "Less Government Spending." We heard so many times today when we were debating the environment bill that both opposition parties obviously want to spend more money. They don't like the idea of putting a tracer on the truck or putting something on the load so you can follow it. One person can follow two or three loads simultaneously. Before it took five or six people to monitor and follow these loads so they'd know that the same material that went on the truck ends up at the destination. They know where it came from and where it's going to end up. They don't seem interested in doing things in new and different ways; they're only interested in spending more money and hiring more people.
I can understand them wanting people to have jobs, but this $9 billion that we're paying in interest on the debt, that's over $1 million an hour, every hour, that we pay in interest. Imagine: $9 billion. That's half the of total health care. We could increase our health care by another 50% if it wasn't for all this interest going out, just as one good example.
"Protecting Priority Services." We can check that one off as a job well done.
Under "Health Care," we have increased the budget significantly from the $17.4 billion when we took over to well over $18 billion now, crowding up to $19 billion.
Under "Law Enforcement," we just sent out enough dollars so that municipalities are able to hire another 1,000 police officers.
"Education." Certainly, there's priority there. We've actually increased the funding for education. We're now spending some $14.5 billion, and another $3.3 billion for universities and colleges.
Moving on to "Finding the Savings," "Fewer Politicians," we're committed to reducing the number of politicians in Ontario. We've certainly carried through on that with the fewer politicians bill. In the next election, there will be 103 elected instead of the 130 in the last election.
We talked about "Restructuring the Bureaucracy," another one that we have accomplished. We've accomplished this in many ways, laying off approximately 13,000 civil servants. It's unfortunate to lose those jobs but, like private industry, we know the job can be done with less administration, and it's being done very capably by the civil servants who are still working for the province of Ontario. We're also moving on customer service and restructuring, taking big steps forward in that particular area.
Under "Reform Welfare," we have reformed welfare significantly. The numbers are dropping. Over one third of the people who were on welfare when we took office are now off welfare and out working, most with permanent jobs, feeling so much better about themselves than they were prior to June 8 when they were caught in this vicious circle.
"Workfare" and "Learnfare" we can check off as accomplished and completed. The government is doing what it said it would, a real rarity in politics in the last 10, 15, 20 years, but we certainly have the reputation for doing what we said we were going to do. Regarding workfare, I just hear so many people who have been involved with workfare saying what a boon it's been to them, an opportunity to get out and prove themselves, to get a recommendation from a supervisor, and it gives them an opportunity to get back into the workforce.
Working with "Seniors and the Disabled," we've recognized a lot for seniors. Under the previous government, if they went out of province, they'd only get $100 a day from OHIP - a terrible blow to the seniors. We committed to returning that to $400 a day, which we did very quickly after we took office. I can't think of a government so terrible as to cut the seniors by 75% if they want to travel outside the province. Shame on the government of the NDP.
We've worked on "Welfare Fraud and Overpayments" and what was going on. When we took office, they were even paying many prisoners welfare. They were in the prisons, being fed and clothed and looked after, and the NDP was paying welfare to a very large number of people in our prisons. That's another one we've got under control.
"Reform Education": This is certainly one where we've made a mark, coming out with standardized report cards. We've brought out a new curriculum for the elementary panel this past year. We're also working on a curriculum for the secondary panel for this coming year. We've brought in standards for education, standards and testing for grade 3 and now into grade 6. This is starting to pay dividends just in the second year of testing of grade 3. You can see the improved results.
It's great to see that in the Toronto area they're very willing to publish the results of individual schools. I'm embarrassed that in my area, the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board won't publish the results of the various schools. They seem to want to hide them someplace or other. I don't know what the advantage of hiding is -
Interjection: Under a rock.
Mr Galt: Under a rock. They'd rather spend $4.2 million on a new headquarters. I know the chair of that board said a year ago, at Bill 160 time, that if that bill went through, their school board "wouldn't be allowed to buy a toothbrush," but they can spend $4.2 million on a new headquarters. That is not the way to run education. At that point in time we didn't have our funding formula in place. That started September 1. If that had been in place, I don't think they would have been able to dig $4.2 million out and use it that way.
I'm not going to have enough time to cover all of the issues here. We've reduced the number of school boards and that has reduced the number of trustees significantly. We've also brought it down to a reasonable amount of money that trustees receive. In Toronto it was like a full-time job. It was up to some $50,000 that trustees were making.
Mr Gerretsen: Five thousand is more than enough for them.
Mr Galt: The member for Kingston and The Islands thinks that's just fine: spend lots of taxpayers' money. He's so supportive of spending taxpayers' money. He believes in the philosophy of spend, tax and borrow, that tax, spend and borrow vicious circle -
Mr Gerretsen: On a point of order, Speaker: I hope you were listening to that. The member is trying to put words in my mouth that I've never said in this House before. I believe -
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Order. I don't think it has to do with parliamentary procedures, therefore, I don't see it as a point of order. The member for Northumberland.
Mr Galt: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for agreeing with what I was saying.
I'll go on and talk about "Tuition Fees." Yes, there's been some criticism about opening up tuition fees, but as we allowed them to increase by 10%, when they went up by that amount, we were also saying that 30% had to go into a fund to help students as a student aid fund.
Mrs Boyd: On a point of order, Speaker: I don't believe we have a quorum.
The Acting Speaker: Would you please verify if we have a quorum or not.
Clerk at the Table: A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Clerk at the Table: A quorum is now present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Northumberland, you now have the floor.
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Mr Galt: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
I'll just slip right along here and come to the heading, "Removing Barriers to Growth." That's certainly something this government's been doing. The subheading here is "Cutting Payroll Taxes." Man, have we cut payroll taxes, the employer health tax. Check that one off. We mentioned earlier the employer health tax. That was one the Liberals brought in, I think in about 1986 or 1987, back there, but it was certainly the 34th Parliament being run by the Liberals.
"Cutting Workers' Compensation Board Premiums": Those are certainly being reduced.
Interjection.
Mr Galt: I wouldn't discuss Patti Starr. That's too embarrassing for them.
"Labour Law Reform": We can check that one off. That was one of the first things we did here in the House.
"Doing Better For Less": That's certainly been going on in this government.
"Spending Smarter": there's just no question.
"Fact-Finding Commission": We haven't quite struck a fact-finding commission.
"Less Government": We've been encouraging municipalities to less government, and certainly there have been a lot of amalgamations. We brought in the triple majority, to put it in the hands of the local municipal politicians, and that triple majority has actually been working very well. I'm sure the member for Kingston and The Islands would vouch for that, that it's been working very well in that particular area, in the county of Frontenac and in Lennox and Addington.
Mr Gerretsen: It was forced.
Mr Galt: It has certainly not been forced. The member for Kingston and The Islands thinks it was forced, but in fact it was their decision. The legislation is written such that once the triple majority has voted, then the Minister of Municipal Affairs "shall approve." So it's totally left in the hands of the local municipality to make that decision and there are some checks and balances in there.
Just getting down to the last 30 seconds, the fifth point of our platform was "A Balanced Budget Plan." I can tell you that had it not been for the programs of this province, there would not be a balanced budget in the federal government. It's this government that has stimulated the economy to create the dollars for the federal government so they could balance, and I can assure you that in the year 2000-01 the province of Ontario will have a balanced budget.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate.
Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): I'm very happy to join the debate today, that is, a calendar motion that involves having us here for the balance of the week and sitting until midnight likely this week and next week.
As we sit working here and listening to the members opposite with their prepared texts that they pull off their system, what amazes me is that there are a couple of fellows in the House - they're not in the House, they're just behind the House, these staff members who work for the Conservative Party. They're right around the corner. I can't quite see them there. I don't know their names, I don't know how much they make working for the party, all I want to know is how much time -
Mr Baird: Bill Campbell.
Mrs Pupatello: Which one is Bill Campbell? That's Bill. I'm curious to know -
The Acting Speaker: Order. I think you should address only the members of this House and nobody else. I don't know who they are in the back. I can't see them. I'm only interested in the members here.
Mrs Pupatello: Thank you, Speaker. Bill Campbell is not, in fact, in the House but he does get paid by the government of Ontario to write these apparent research notes. I don't know how many long hours or intricate computer programs were required to calculate the number of hours per bill of successive governments of Ontario. How much does Bill make for a living? Is he making $90,000 a year? Is he making $70,000 a year? How much time did this $70,000-a-year man take to develop these kinds of research notes to talk about the number of minutes per bill of each successive government? Have you ever heard of it?
We're going to talk about something very relevant to the riding of Windsor-Sandwich and it has everything to do with what the government has done over the last three and a half years to introduce policy that has had an extremely negative impact on my community.
Specifically, I want to talk about children. I know that the member from the Sarnia-Lambton area will be interested in this, having visited his riding and spoken to individuals who are involved in residential beds for kids who need help. These are children who have severe emotional and behavioural problems. The Sarnia area also comes under the Windsor office of the Minister of Community and Social Services, under the same aggressive pattern across Ontario -
Mr Beaubien: They are doing very well. I met with them last week.
Mrs Pupatello: The member for Lambton says they're doing very well. The fact is that this government has been on a privatization bent, and it doesn't matter what the issue is. This government is prepared to pay more to a private operator of residential beds than they are prepared to pay to a non-profit organization.
Mr Beaubien: As a matter of fact, the CCAC just returned $400,000 back to the government. Can you believe that?
The Acting Speaker: The member for Lambton.
Mrs Pupatello: I find it very curious that this member would choose to heckle. Obviously, we're hitting a sore spot for some of them.
There are real problems in children's mental health agencies across Ontario. We talked about it today in the House. We brought examples in the House today, real-life examples of what our agencies and our schools and our teachers are dealing with in the classroom, not to mention the impact that these children, going without a proper level of care, are dealing with in the homes with families, with siblings, with parents, sometimes a single parent, parents who are overwhelmed by the behavioural problems of their children that they are not able to get help for.
We talked to some of our children's agencies and asked them how this has happened. What we know is that since 1993, all of these agencies right across the board received cuts. No one stopped to think what the impact would be and how many front-line workers would be lost. It was bad enough in 1993-94, but in 1995, when this government was elected, they actually solidified the social contract cuts so that that significantly lower level remained, regardless of the impact on children.
Shortly thereafter, about a year later, this government actually launched a minister responsible for children, who rarely answers a question in the House unless it's being asked by one of her own government members. If we ask the minister a question in the House, she simply offs the question to another ministry. Here is a minister of cabinet, swearing the oath of cabinet and being a full member of cabinet, refusing to answer a question in the House that is directly related to children, which supposedly is within the purview of that ministry. We have big problems with that.
In any event, today we ask what the Minister of Community and Social Services is doing for mental health agencies, dealing with children who have waiting lists that are insurmountable. These kids instead are left in a classroom, and with this newfangled funding formula for teachers and educators out there, they are not able to provide enough support in the classroom. These kids are on waiting lists, some with problems so severe that they should be in day treatment programs, should be in residential beds. They are in no condition to be educated at this time. In fact, in Windsor the waiting list for our children's mental health agencies is 600 strong, 600 children who are not in a program they require but are instead on a waiting list.
Can we look forward to this getting any better? No, we can't. The minister launched a program that went across Ontario called Making Services Work for People. Unfortunately, it's not making services work any better. We fear that it will be even worse, because under the guise of some new restructuring of children's services, we're finding excuses and ways to do even less with less funding, always using the term, "Helping those most in need."
What that means in day-to-day practice out there in the field for people who work with children - helping those most in need means that last week we had a 12-year-old boy whose parents were desperate to get intervention for their son, but he was simply put on a waiting list. They were told there was no room for him at the treatment centres. They couldn't get help for this child until the mother found a loaded gun under the bed of this 12-year-old and called the police, who in turn called the children's aid, and they said: "We can't. We have no room."
Evidently, that child was not one of those "most in need." You wonder how desperate it needs to become before some kind of intervention is brought to bear for these families struggling to cope with children with severe emotional and behavioural problems. The system simply cannot support the number of kids who need help today.
Your government instead is going to have fewer treatment day programs and fewer residential beds, even though the needs clearly point in the other direction.
The minister today denied all of this, so we had a look at exactly what the community and social services office in the area is going to be dictating to our community. They will be dictating more cuts to residential beds and the closure of day treatment programs.
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What is so significant about what the minister said today is that she said, "Oh, all that money isn't going to disappear. No, no, no. It's going to be poured back into other community supports," but what is happening is that the supports are simply not there.
Today in this House we asked the minister about a particular school in the Windsor area. Four students of this school, from about grade 4 through grade 8, should be in day treatment programs but instead were in school. The community supports simply weren't there for these children. Three of these four in this one school were suicidal. One of these children went out into the playground and was trying to jump off the top of the monkey bars in a suicide attempt and was eventually sent home. When the child got home he attempted suicide again. When he attempted to do that in the family closet, he was sent into the hospital.
So now we have the hospital system in Windsor coping with the child who should have had intervention well before it ever got to that emergency state. The family tried. It wasn't as though people weren't aware this child had problems. There was nothing left in the system for our children's mental health agencies to intervene. Instead, that child went to absolute crisis before the government then saw this child get the most expensive form, hospitalization. Then that child, because of the emergency state, jumps the queue of everyone else who was waiting on that list for children's mental health services.
Every time we hear those stories about parents at their absolute wits' end because they can't cope any more, they end up falling on the doorstep of the children's aid, which at this point is so crunched and cash-starved it is turning away children who have loaded guns under their beds. Is this what we've come to?
Tonight, when we have to sit and listen to the government members talk about all the wonderful things this government has done since 1995, they simply refuse to acknowledge the fact that there are real struggling families in Ontario for whom the government has done nothing to help. These are families who are the most vulnerable. Often these are single-parent-led families. They often are the same families who are hit innumerable times by this government's change in policies. Housing policy changes have left them in the streets. The decrease in the welfare rate has affected especially children.
A children's minister with this government could actually oversee removing, taking food monies away from pregnant moms because they were on welfare, and not one government MPP can stand up in the House and say, "We've made mistakes and we've done things we wish we hadn't done". Can not one of you stand up and realize that some of your policies have been completely, in terms of damage, irreparable to Ontario?
Hospitals are another exceptional example of the kind of policy that just hasn't been thought-out clearly. You should have thought about it in advance. The worst part about what you've done to our hospitals is that it was completely preventable and completely predictable.
In the Windsor area, you can never say that the MPPs from that area didn't tell you not to do that. We told you this was exactly what was going to happen. When two of the four emergency rooms closed in the Windsor area, we told you that you did not fund the remaining two sites and you didn't expand the remaining two sites, and we knew - it was obvious - that the overflow was going to occur at the remaining two sites. We knew that the thousands and thousands of families who always went to the Windsor Western site would have nowhere to go but the Hotel Dieu site. I told you repeatedly in this House, before it happened, that the ambulances wouldn't have room to pull up to the remaining two emergency sites, and in fact that's what happened.
Shortly thereafter, I sat in the waiting room and watched at 2 am on a Saturday morning, just to see what we knew we were going to see: paramedics rolling the gurney down the ramp from Ouellette Avenue to arrive at Hotel Dieu, because the ambulance didn't have a bay it could pull into at the Hotel Dieu-Grace site. That's what happened. We knew it was going to happen. We told you it would happen. Could all of you have sat there this long and not have heard us? Did we not know that taking that many millions of dollars out of our system without reinvesting in our community was going to cause an absolute crisis?
You owed our community rehabilitation beds, chronic care beds, long-term-care beds, mental health. You owed us all of those things. You owed us home care before you sent the patients out sicker and quicker because the hospitals didn't have room for these patients. Today in the Windsor area you have individuals who stay in the recovery room longer after an operation because there isn't a bed in intensive care. Then when they get into intensive care, they actually stay longer in intensive care than they ordinarily would because there isn't a bed to move down to. After that, they stay in the bed because they know that if they have to get home care, there may not be home care available to meet the standards the doctor requires for this patient.
It's a continual move through the system, an inadequate system, a system that simply isn't allowing proper care for these patients. The worst part about is that it was entirely predictable and entirely preventable.
For us to be here tonight - we'll gladly stay till midnight. We'll stay till midnight right through until Christmas and we'll keep talking about the things that your government has neglected to do. We will keep listening until you give your partisan speech prepared by the $90,000-a-year staffer sitting off to the side, which most of you over there make in any event. I don't know how many hours he must have spent trying to be creative and think of something you could possibly say about a calendar motion, that you'd actually do a computer tabulation of the number of minutes per bill of previous governments. It's ludicrous that they spent that kind of time.
Mrs Boyd: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I don't believe we have a quorum.
The Acting Speaker: Will you please check to see if we have a quorum.
Clerk at the Table: A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Clerk at the Table: A quorum is now present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Windsor-Sandwich may continue.
Mrs Pupatello: As I was saying, a $90,000-a-year staffer spends his time preparing these notes about a calendar motion, when you should be talking about exactly what you've done to the Windsor hospital. That's what we should talk about tonight. It's not as though any one of you could forget the horror stories.
We set up a patient health line; the number, for those who might be listening, is 254-0440. What it allows people to do, when they've had experiences with the health system in Windsor, is call. That voice mail they leave gets the message directly to the Minister of Health. That minister will hear directly from patients. What's really unfortunate is that the minister doesn't take time, evidently, to read them, because on the odd occasion that she sends me a brief note back, she's usually blaming the hospital boards, the doctors, the college, telling me that I should be reporting these people to their college or calling the OHA. Everyone is at fault except the Minister of Health and the Premier.
We all know in Windsor that you've completely botched the health system, that we had something going that was really quite tremendous. What we needed from government was a guarantee that before anything was changed the system was not going to be allowed to lose money, because we were already underfunded. But the minister at the time, Jim Wilson, in October 1997 made that fatal speech in this House in an answer to our question and said that the money was going to go somewhere else and not remain in the Windsor community. That was the death knell for us.
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To date, $41 million is what our hospitals have lost that has not come back to the Windsor community. For a population of some 350,000 people in Essex County, $41 million is an awful lot of money that could have been used for some much-needed home care, nurses etc. I have had the great misfortune of spending quite a lot of time in the hospital over the last couple of months with people I knew who were in there. What I saw myself was just like the people who called the health line and talked about what their circumstance was. We knew there weren't enough nurses on the floor. We knew the floors weren't being cleaned as often as they should be. We knew people were having their surgeries delayed. We know that on a regular basis all the elective surgery now has a greater chance of being cancelled than not, because before the patient can go under the knife that doctor must give the guarantee that there will be a bed waiting for him before he starts surgery.
We've had calls from patients who are actually on the gurney with that green outfit on, hooked up to the IV, getting ready to be rolled into the operating room and then they hear the nurse's voice on the telephone just up the hall: "No, I am not cancelling this surgery again. If I have to cancel it, you can come down here and tell the patient yourself." This is the kind of conversation you'll hear in the corridors of the Windsor hospitals; this is what our patients will tell us: "No, no, you will not cancel this surgery again." These are people already hooked up to the IV who are turned around and sent home.
One of these individuals happened to be a diabetic. Of course, before surgery you can't eat from 12 midnight the night before, and then you go the whole day without eating in preparation for surgery. Well, the surgery was cancelled. By the time this poor fellow got home, he'd been almost 24 hours without eating, which for a diabetic is completely unsafe.
This is the kind of thing that happens in the Windsor area because this government would not listen to the CEOs of our hospitals. Our hospitals have told the ministry officials that this is going on. They've told them that the beds aren't available, that you've cut too much out of the system, that we don't have the nurses available to help them. Can you imagine? The nurses and doctors make a conscious decision that the patient stay in an intensive care bed, at about $1,000 a day - in Windsor or Toronto or Wawa, that's how expensive they are - that the patient stay in a more expensive bed longer, because they know there aren't enough nurses on the other floors. This patient just needs more care; he doesn't need the ICU bed, but certainly isn't well enough to be left to his own devices, as is most often the case on the other floors because there just isn't enough staff around. Someone would have a bandage change begun at one moment, say at 12 noon, and at 4 o'clock it still hasn't been finished because the one nurse got called away to some other patient and couldn't get back. There just aren't enough nurses on the floor.
This is what's happening in hospitals today. It's not just happening here. Why is it that in the Sarnia area they are now wheeling adults out of surgery into the children's ward? Why is that? It's because there aren't enough beds in that hospital system in the Sarnia area, that's why. Why are we hearing in the Windsor office from Sarnia residents? Because our media markets are the same and they know we have a health interest -
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Your time has expired. Further debate?
Mr Blain K. Morin (Nickel Belt): Although it's late, I still must say that it's an honour to be able to sit here tonight and represent the constituents of Nickel Belt and debate the government's House calendar motion. This motion is about the House sitting until midnight through the final sittings, even though, since the Nickel Belt by-election of October 1st, this government has forced the House to sit almost every night this entire session. It has given itself probably the most draconian set of rules to force its agenda through.
Mr Preston: He found a dipper word.
Mr Blain Morin: I found a different word.
The members talk about democracy and about public consultation. I'd like to share a little story with you about democracy, especially around the Mike Harris government. I remember my very first visit to Queen's Park, in which I was a member of the gallery. I remember making the trip from Nickel Belt, my home, because I was really concerned, as a person who represented injured workers in Ontario - I know the member smiles, because he doesn't like us talking about injured workers and he doesn't like us talking about what this government has done to injured workers in Ontario.
They talk about public input. I remember sitting in Sudbury when the committee came to Sudbury on Bill 99 - the bill of death, labour called it - and listening to this government and how they didn't want to listen to people. I remember that as a member of a trade union - and yes, I was a proud member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and I still hold a card over at the Canadian Union of Public Employees, representing 160,000 workers in Ontario. I'm very proud to do that. I remember sitting in this gallery, because we had six days of limited public consultation in and around Bill 99 -
Mr E.J. Douglas Rollins (Quinte): That's more than you had.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Quinte.
Mr Blain Morin: You have to listen. It's very educational here. That's an act that affects 300,000 people who are injured in the workplace each and every year.
Mr Rollins: Let's get rid of some.
Mr Blain Morin: We're going to get rid of them because Bill 99 will make it impossible for injured workers to claim workers' compensation because this government doesn't like seeing that justice. I remember, after six days of hearings and being unable to speak in Sudbury, I came here to see a motion that restricted debate, because this government didn't want to talk about the Occupational Disease Panel it eliminated. It didn't want to talk about justice around the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal and how it limits the workers' compensation tribunal only to rule on policy issues.
My friend from Hamilton Centre, our labour critic, David Christopherson, the other day in this House raised another issue about occupational disease and what this Tory government has done to workers and working people in Ontario. I still have the CEP bulletin talking about occupational cancer and disease and how it must stop in Sarnia, Ontario. Mr Christopherson came into this House, and the people from Sarnia, the widows of those families where workers had died, were here. They were talking about former employees of the Owens-Corning Canada fibreglass plant where these workers in Sarnia were dying or have died from lung cancer, kidney cancer and other forms. They've asked the Harris government to recognize those workplace carcinogens.
Interjection.
The Deputy Speaker: Member for Simcoe East, come to order.
Mr Blain Morin: You can hear where you hit that raw nerve. They get really upset about that, really upset about the ODP and what they've done to workers, because you talk to those injured workers in Ontario today and they say, "We won't forget."
Let me tell you, there are more than 180 workers' compensation claims filed - I must say that the president of the CEP local said, "There hasn't been another tragedy like this since Elliot Lake." Who do you think the government of the day was then? I think it was the Conservatives again, but I hear silence now. Another Elliot Lake in Sarnia, Ontario, another disaster, people dying, and we change the rules again, we limit debate, we do all this.
Mr Baird: What do your brothers and sisters think of the social contract?
Mr Blain Morin: They say "social contract." I talk to a lot of people where I'm from and the president of my union, Brother Wyman MacKinnon - can I say "brother"? That wouldn't offend you? Wyman MacKinnon says, "It's good for northern Ontario and we should stay in northern Ontario because there are times now when the weather is getting so cold that Mike Harris has to keep his hands in his own pocket instead of coming after the middle-class people in the province of Ontario." Can you believe that? That's a quote.
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I'm glad that I'm getting into the flow and I seem to be upsetting the government when we start talking about this.
We have not a lack of House time; we have, as we've heard from speaker after speaker tonight, an unwillingness of this government to introduce legislation early enough for public consultation.
We've talked about Bill 79 tonight. I'd like to talk about my constituency and what I'm hearing from the constituents about - I believe it was eight times you reformed. Was it eight times?
Mr Beaubien: What did Shelley say about that?
Mr Blain Morin: Shelley's not talking. Shelley's a great representative out in Sudbury East, by the way, and the former Minister of Finance, Floyd Laughren, who served the area so well.
We've talked about the assessment act; we've talked about Bill 79. Some of the letters I'm getting from constituents - when we talk about commercial property taxes, I received a letter from Virg Hotel Ltd, Mr R.J. Miller, who is very concerned about Bill 79, who is very concerned as a commercial property owner about the new rules under Bill 79 - the eighth try at it, and we're going to amend that act again - and how there's a very adverse effect on his business and what it's doing. He writes:
"As a landlord I have always advised...the regional assessment office of any changes in occupancy," at the mall, which is the Montrose Mall. "If an area was vacant and became occupied or vice versa, I would advise them...and an adjustment would be made at the end of the year to the property tax bill. It worked well for many years. In other words, I as a landlord only paid property taxes on vacant units on a residential basis....
"Now the ruling states," since the changes of this government "that if a given unit is vacant for July, August and September and only these three months the landlord may claim for vacancy but must advise the regional assessment office by November 1, to claim vacancy for the coming year only."
He talks about how unfair that is: "What the government is saying [is] that they want the landlord to pay the new business tax on commercial property no matter what."
He talks about the effects this new legislation has had on him: "I have 30 leasable units and as most leases are due every three or five years and 50% do not renew their lease, I have an average of four units per year to re-lease. It takes about an average of five months for a vacant unit to be re-leased."
This new legislation has just cost this property owner in Sudbury $5,000 a year. He asks how you can stay in business with this legislation, another draconian piece of legislation that this government still has not got right.
I talk with great interest in my constituency to the reeve of Chapleau. They conducted a study because they know this government likes studies and they know we have to put forward logical arguments. We talked about the downloading and the impact of that downloading in northern Ontario. Northern Ontario is a lot different than the communities in southern Ontario because we don't have the population base there. We don't have the tax base. The reeve of Chapleau, with whom we've talked on countless occasions, is really concerned about Bill 79. Reeve Freeborn gives us a copy of the text and of the study. The study is conducted by KPMG, and it says that northern Ontario municipalities, including the district of Sudbury, are constantly far worse off in terms of the financial impact of downloading, because of the process, when compared to municipalities in other parts of Ontario.
The factors which contribute to that: The adverse effect of downloading on northern Ontario and the regions and the municipalities include higher costs associated with services being transferred from the province when compared to the remainder of the province, a greater reliance on municipal support grants than other municipalities located elsewhere in the province and lower-than-average education property tax revenue available to offset the costs of those transferred services.
We hear this government saying: "We gave you the tool box. The tool box had all the tools. You didn't have to raise property taxes. That's the reason for Bill 79, because we found out when we reassessed property tax across this province they went up so high."
The town of Chapleau, which is in my constituency of Nickel Belt, didn't raise taxes. In fact, they followed this government's example of what to do.
Let me give some merit to what this report is saying, because it says policing alone in Chapleau will cost a total of $576,000. The town's share of that policing is $110,000. It applied for the one-time funding under the special circumstances fund and received $94,000. Therefore, even under Mike Harris's math, there is still a $16,000 shortfall for the town and the residents of Chapleau, Ontario, in my riding of Nickel Belt to pick up. That's why, even after eight times, northern municipalities are still not happy with the haphazard revisions this government has put forth and continues to put forth because they can't get it right.
I'd like to read also from the regional municipality of Sudbury, which is also really concerned. They passed a resolution. I talked to the regional chair on the weekend, Mr Mazzucca, and I had the opportunity to talk to him at a Christmas dinner. I asked him how he felt about Bill 79. He said basically, if you're from northern Ontario, and I quote, "You're screwed."
Even the council of the regional municipality of Sudbury passed a resolution about Bill 79 and the higher property taxes, especially how it's hitting people in northern Ontario. I know this government doesn't believe there is much more province after Parry Sound, but the resolution, which was unanimously passed, said:
"Whereas the provincial government introduced the Ontario fair assessment system for 1998, and the future taxation year is based on the current value assessment; and
"Whereas the proposed legislation is a broad-brush approach that is not applicable to all municipalities...." I want to make sure the government heard that: It's a broad-brush approach that is not applicable to all municipalities.
Let me try to give you the definition of that. It means the government obviously does not want to understand the plight of northern municipalities, because the ministers in this government continue to talk and we continue to see legislation like Bill 79 come forward, which is going to totally devastate the communities in my riding of Nickel Belt. This government, with its arrogance, as on the day I was up in the House on Bill 99 trying to figure out why they didn't want to talk about destroying the ODP, don't care. They don't want to listen to people in northern Ontario.
It's not only that. It's a wide variety of issues. For example, today I had the opportunity in my constituency, in the community of Rayside-Balfour, to talk to the community health centre. What they do is they talk and they help us, especially around funding in underserviced areas with physicians. They provide an essential service to our community in providing francophone services to the people of Rayside-Balfour and to the people of Valley East.
I know Mr Laughren, and I know the government wants me to give equal billing to my caucus member Ms Martel, helped secure permanent resources for the centre in October 1997 for both Rayside-Balfour and Valley East. They've attached the present budget. But the funny thing is that even though we've secured the funding and even though the government has seen the need for it, the government put a freeze on the development of any new community health centre or expansion for the existing ones.
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In our community, which is an underserviced area, in these cases they've never received any kind of funding for things like rent, phones, postage, supplies, cleaning, computers etc. Thank goodness for the caisse populaire in the area that has allowed the community health centres to use part of their building at no charge, because goodness knows the Mike Harris Tories haven't helped and haven't assisted in the area. We don't understand.
They want the House to sit until midnight because they've dropped the ball on certain issues. A couple of interesting things: A prime example is Bill 82, which is the enhanced enforcement bill. We should give credit where credit is due. Mr Wildman from Algoma was pretty well the author of that piece of legislation. But we heard the minister the other day talk about the enforcement. He said, "With the enforcement, we really have some teeth behind Mr Wildman's bill."
We asked the question, and we still haven't heard the answer: "But what about enforcement? When you lay off all these public sector employees, where are you going to get the enforcement?" He said: "Oh, we're not going to lay off public sector employees. We're going to keep the enforcement in place."
Yet if you look at the article in the Toronto Star, it says, "Less is more for the Tories," and the Mike Harris Tories say they are thinking of dumping another 13,500 public servants, on top of the 16,500 they've already said goodbye to.
Just to follow up and conclude, I see an interesting article in the Sudbury Star of Friday, December 4, where it says: "Tories don't care about ordinary folk." It was written by Judy Sumner and Brian Dumontelle from Capreol.
"Yet another Progressive Conservative pre-election leaflet arrived in our mail last week. This one glorified the health care policies of the Harris government."
They go on to say: "Do they think we are stupid?
"Do they think that a glossy leaflet will stop us from noticing the long waits in hospital emergency rooms, the lack of staff in nursing homes, the increasing number of ordinary families needing food banks and threats of schools closing schools for lack of education funding?"
The message is: Stop the commercials. We know the cuts to education and health care and the increases in tuition fees for university students are drastic, but put that $48 million back into the communities where it belongs.
The Deputy Speaker: The member's time has expired. Further debate?
Mr Bart Maves (Niagara Falls): It's a pleasure to rise tonight and to follow some of my colleagues on this discussion about the calendar motion.
I was moved to think about a couple of things when the member for Windsor-Sandwich was up, the win-win committee member from Windsor, who I believe when she was on that committee actually advocated the closing of a hospital. She always neglects to remember that, but when she was on that committee that's what they did.
Mrs Pupatello: You don't get away with that crap in the House, Bart. Go back to Niagara and take care of your hospitals.
The Deputy Speaker: Member for Windsor-Sandwich, come to order.
Mr Maves: We're touching a raw nerve. The member opposite doesn't like to hear about that.
Interjection.
The Deputy Speaker: Order. Member for Windsor-Sandwich, I'll not warn you again.
Member for Niagara Falls.
Mrs Pupatello: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I'd like you to rule on whether or not members opposite are entitled to come in the House and actually give information that is completely inaccurate.
Interjections.
The Deputy Speaker: Order. The member for Windsor-Sandwich knows the rules of debate much better than to try to make that into a point of order.
The Chair recognizes the member for Niagara Falls.
Mr Maves: I know the good member for Northumberland gave a wonderful 20-minute speech where he ad libbed the whole thing. He worked very hard at discussing some of the things that have happened over the past three years. He didn't have a single note in front of him. He referred to the Common Sense Revolution and a little bit of the red book but didn't have a single note in front of him.
The member opposite, without watching him, immediately jumped to her feet and said, "He spoke from a prepared text." Nothing could be further from the truth. "The prepared text," she said, "came from the staff in the backrooms." This is one of these silly myths that the Liberals have continued to propagate for three and a half years now, this feeling that the Conservative Party and the government of Ontario have all this staff and nobody else over here does any thinking or any writing of their own materials or any of their own speech-making. It's as if the Liberal Party, the opposition party, has no staff, but we know better.
For instance, the "whiz kid" term they use, where did that come from? Let's just talk about some of the Liberal staff. You know what? It's actually remarkable how many staff they have, and I'd love to know who the heck these people are. Where are their offices? These are secret people and it seems like whiz kids.
Matt Maychak, the principal secretary to Dalton McGuinty - it was Dalton McGuinty's brother initially and then the public said, "No, Dalton, you shouldn't be hiring relatives, so you'd better move him along." I don't think Matt Maychak has ever been elected a member, yet he's making decisions, he's telling the Liberals what policy they should follow or what policy they shouldn't follow, or maybe he's telling them, "Don't make policy at all." I think that's Matt Maychak.
Monique Smith, there's another one. I don't remember her holding elected office, but she's running the show over there. We're not sure, but we think that she initiated the term "the backroom boys." We're not sure, but we know that these members sure didn't come up with it. We think Monique did. Who else have they got back there?
Mr Baird: How much money does she make? How come that's not public?
Mr Maves: I don't have that. They're probably pretty close to $100,000 or something like that. We're not sure, but maybe we should check into that. The member makes a good point.
Rod MacDonald, there's another one. Doug Lauriault, Kelly Legris - I think we all know Kelly; Kelly has been there a long time - Bob Lopinski, Gordon Cobb, Lisa Clements, Elaine Flis, June Bonvivere.
Mr Baird: How many do they have? All those spin doctors.
Mr Maves: It goes on. Duncan Fulton - every time the Liberal Party puts out a press release, at the bottom of the press release it doesn't say to contact one of the MPPs; it usually says, "Contact Duncan Fulton." That's the spin doctor. I think he came up with that term "spin doctor," or he might have been the one who came up with the term "prepared text," which they've been told to use for years and years now.
Mr Gerretsen: On a point of order, Speaker: I would seriously request the member to stop naming these individuals because I know they'll all be in tomorrow morning looking for a raise. They are not whiz kids. They are hard-working, dedicated people, but they're not whiz kids.
Mr Ed Doyle (Wentworth East): We know they're not whiz kids.
Interjections.
The Deputy Speaker: Order. That is not a point of order. The Chair recognizes the member for Niagara Falls.
Mr Maves: I'm sorry Mr Gerretsen doesn't have a very high opinion of the staff that he has. They may all be quite clever and they might take offence at your saying they're not whiz kids.
The member for Guelph reminds me. Matt Maychak is the guy who came up with the leader's new haircut. I think he has connections with the barber downstairs. I'm not sure, but I'm told that he's the brains behind the new haircut.
Who else is there? There are more, folks. There are a lot more people here. In community outreach there are just tons of these people.
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Mr Galt: These are all Liberals?
Mr Maves: All Liberals: Rod MacDonald, Ethel Forester, Rod Cumming, Steven Del Duca, Andrew Lang, Cameron Summers, Mike Watcher. It goes on and on: Hans Feldmann, David Harvey, Monica Testa, Maria Paez-Victor, Ann Wales, Christine Bome. It's unbelievable.
The Liberals want people to believe that only the government of Ontario, only the PC Party -
Mr Gerretsen: On a point of order, Speaker: One of the names that the member mentioned is incorrect. It's pronounced Christine "Bomay," not Christine -
The Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order. The Chair recognizes the member for Niagara Falls.
Mr Maves: I recognize that I'm touching a nerve with the members opposite. They don't like it revealed that they have all of this very expensive staff.
Mr Baird: Merchants of fear.
Mr Maves: Merchants of fear, as the member for Nepean tells me.
Communication services: A lot of the stuff that gets put out by the opposition party, all of the slick PR they put out there, forces us to do all kinds of communications to correct the record for the people of Ontario; all of the myths they create.
Mr Baird: Who are these people? Who's the PR flak?
Mr Maves: My understanding is that Bob Lopinski does a lot of this. He sends it over to Mike Bonazza, who makes sure all this gets printed up, and then Mike send it down to Pierre Moutier and David Innes and they take care of getting it all prepared. Then it gets sent out on taxpayers' dollars.
There is a note we've been given about Dalton McGuinty -
Mr Galt: Where is Brenda? Is Brenda's name there?
The Deputy Speaker: Order. I want order. I realize it's getting late at night and you may be restless, but the member for Niagara Falls has the floor and I want to hear him. I wish you would let him have it. The Chair recognizes the member for Niagara Falls.
Mr Maves: Just going back again -
Mr Galt: We want to know about Brenda. How much did Brenda get paid for the ad?
Mr Maves: We're not sure about that. We can look that up.
There's an article saying, "McGuinty acknowledges there has been `some refocusing' of his image." It talks about the "43-year-old has been working on his image in the two years since he became Liberal leader, The gangster-like dark shirts have been replaced with paler shades." Of course, some of the highly paid staff over there would say, "Get rid of those gangster-like shirts," and we can understand that. They like his new haircut.
It goes on and on. There's more staff. There's just reams of it, and I can go on and on.
Mr Baird: The merchants of fear.
Mr Maves: They are. It appears that that's the case, and we've talked about it. We're now discovering who is in those backrooms and how much money they're getting paid and all the spin-doctoring they're doing. There are only usually six or seven of them in the backroom right here in the backstage for the Liberals.
The member for Guelph has handed me an article in the Ottawa Citizen. It's called "Style."
"Ontario Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty, a babe? Yes, according to party polls suggesting Mr McGuinty is much more attractive to women than is Mr Harris.
"Why? Start with the fact that he's not well-known among voters, who possess little on which to base an impression other than his youth and hip haircut."
The haircut has gone a long way. It was high-priced information, high-priced advice, but that haircut appears to have gone a long way.
The member for Windsor-Sandwich is upset, and I understand why. I remember after the election they had a little retreat. I just quote from an article here. I'm quoting from an article -
Mr Galt: Where was that retreat? What did it cost them?
Mr Maves: I'm not sure where they went. It was at a swank southwestern Ontario resort town, though. It was just after the Tory landslide. Outside the meetings some Liberals expressed concerns that the party would be handicapped in opposition by a campaign platform that advocated many of the things the Tories are now doing. "`We are all singing from the same song sheet,' said rookie member Sandra Pupatello of Windsor. `How can we go in guns blazing when we would've been doing the same thing?'"
Mrs Pupatello: You guys are desperate over there.
Mr Maves: On a night like tonight it's unusual that we would actually be here to 12. We thought we had an understanding with the opposition Liberals to come in here tonight, do a little bit of debate about this calendar motion, which is what we're spending till midnight debating, and then we would move on to more -
Interjections.
The Deputy Speaker: It's not in order to do any heckling, but certainly not from anyone else's seat. The chair recognizes the member for Niagara Falls.
Mr Maves: We thought we would perhaps be moving on to other business tonight, or finishing up before midnight so we could all be well rested and have more serious debate tomorrow, but lo and behold, 8 o'clock comes and the opposition party seems to break its promises and carry on and on. It's decided, "We're going to keep everyone here to midnight tonight to debate this motion." It's just another broken promise.
That shouldn't really surprise anyone at home because you can look back at the history of the Liberal Party and look at all the broken promises.
Back in the 1974 election, they had the famous wage and price flip-flop.
In 1980, the gas tax: They went crazy about Mr Clark's government, on his proposal about the gas tax. They won the election in 1980. They brought it in; they brought in their own. They completely flipped.
In 1988, the free trade election: They were completely opposed to free trade, the worst worse thing that was ever going to happen. When they got into office in 1993, they enhanced it. In 1993 they were against NAFTA, the North American free trade agreement. What did they do when they got in office? They signed it.
What else? Of course, let's not forget the most famous of all, the GST promise during the 1993 election: "We'll get rid of that. You can trust us." It's 1998 and it's still there.
Mr Gerretsen: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Is it not imperative that in the provincial House we talk about provincial matters? Everything this member has talked about in the last 10 minutes deals with federal matters or matters that are well beyond the means of this House. Would you please direct the member to stay on the point -
The Deputy Speaker: I was going to remind the member that it is the House calendar motion. It allows for a little latitude because some speakers are bringing in the things that they think may have to be used because of the motion going till midnight. There has been some latitude. With all deference, I want to indicate to you that I don't think the speaker from Niagara Falls is outside of the bounds that I have experienced.
Mr Gerretsen: Speaker, if I may -
The Deputy Speaker: No.
Mr Gerretsen: It's on a different point.
The Deputy Speaker: No, I'm sorry. I might think you were arguing with the chair if you did something like that. The chair recognizes the member for Niagara Falls.
Mr Maves: We just talked about GST.
Helicopters: The federal PCs said it was urgent. The military said it was urgent. They said helicopters would fall out of the sky if nothing was done. The Liberals ran against it. They said, "No way, not a nickel." Now what are they doing? Buying helicopters, a little bit late. They're already dropping out of the sky and people are dying.
What else? The Pearson airport: They were totally against the Pearson airport. What's going ahead now? Pearson expansion.
They want to talk about their own record. They want to talk about provincial politics. I'm happy to talk about that too. I remember when in the 1990 election they campaigned and said, "The books are balanced." It was the whole campaign, "The books are balanced." The poor NDP comes in and they find out they've got a $3-billion deficit. Not only that, but the Liberals before them have just put expenditure levels up so high that when the recession hit, they didn't have the courage to pull back and reduce spending. In fact they thought they'd increase spending dramatically over the first couple of years. They did even worse. But the Liberals left them with the mess.
Let's just talk about the last election, 1995. Let's talk about some of those Liberal red book promises, things they said they'd do if they got into office. They were going to cut spending by more than $4 billion. That's right there in the Liberal red book. Every single expenditure reduction we've had in this government, they've opposed.
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Mr Gerretsen: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I know that what the member has to say is important, to the member anyway. There ought to be enough members in the House to listen to him. I do not believe that at this point in time we have a quorum in the House. I would like you to check, Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker: Is there a quorum?
Clerk at the Table: A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Clerk at the Table: A quorum is now present, Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker: The chair recognizes the member for Niagara Falls.
Mr Maves: They also said in the Liberal red book that they would cut taxes by 5%. They've opposed the tax cut and every other tax cut we've brought in since we've been here. They say one thing in the election and they do something totally opposite.
Eliminate welfare fraud: Everything we've advocated to eliminate welfare fraud, they've opposed.
Cutting political staff: I think I just demonstrated clearly that they certainly haven't cut political staff. The amount of political staff they have unbelievable. I think I just showed that clearly.
Reducing the small business corporate tax rate: We've introduced that. They were up in arms against it. "How can you do that?" they said. They ran on that.
It's just the history. It goes on over and over. You can read the red book.
Freeze WCB rates paid by employers: We did that. They complained. We said we'd do better. We've reduced them by nearly 20% now. They complain about that.
Change the makeup of the WCB board of directors to make it less partisan and more accountable to a wider range of stakeholders, the people of Ontario: I sat in the public hearings. Both those parties completely opposed that change.
They run on one thing; they do another. It's the history of the party at all levels: at the federal level, at provincial levels, over and over again. We could continue to go through this red book and find all of these promises. When we brought those promises in, they just voted against them.
You know what? I guess they say it best. I just read the quote from the member from Windsor about: "We're singing from the same song sheet. How can we go in guns blazing as an opposition when we would've been doing the same thing?" But I think there's even a better quote from Windsor-Walkerville MPP, Dwight Duncan.
Mr John O'Toole (Durham East): Oh, not him; he ran for the leadership.
Mr Maves: He did run for the leadership.
Mr O'Toole: What did he say then?
Mr Maves: This is what he said about his own party, "We've been far too fuzzy for far too long." He says more: "We're going to have to someday decide what we stand for and then stand for it. We have some serious navel gazing to do."
I suggest that navel gazing hasn't occurred yet because every day a member of that opposition gets up and announces a new policy. The poor leader, Mr McGuinty, winces and says, "Oh, I didn't know I was going to promise that." Then another one announces another policy, "I didn't know I was going to do that." They've really got to get it together. Whatever you say, here's what they've established over the years: Whatever they tell you they're going to do, they probably won't do it.
The Deputy Speaker: Further debate?
Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): I feel as though I should begin tonight with an apology to all of the staff members, both present in the assembly chambers and back in our offices, for the fact that we are continuing this debate at some length, as it is now 11:30 at night. I make the apology not because they didn't expect to be here when they came in to work today, because we were scheduled to sit until midnight, but because when I came into the House earlier this evening there was certainly some discussion going on that might have led to some expectation that the House would not be sitting this late in the evening.
Contrary to what the member for Niagara Falls has said, however, the discussion that was going at the point when I came into the House this evening was on the part of government members, who were hoping that we would all agree to simply not take part in the debate and that if that was the case, we wouldn't be moving on to other business, as the member for Niagara Falls has suggested.
There was no other business before us that the government had brought forward. The government had nothing else on the agenda tonight. The government members wanted to negotiate a chance to go home. Well, we've chosen to stay and debate. To the staff, who are weary and want to go home, I apologize if their hopes were raised that perhaps the House would have adjourned earlier in the evening.
I've chosen to stay and participate in the debate at this late hour of the evening because I actually feel it's important to say some things about -
Mr Wettlaufer: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: The member points out that she thinks it's hideous that the government members wanted to go home early. I don't recall the members of the government saying that we wanted to go home early, but I do notice that there are only two Liberals in the House.
The Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order, and indeed it's not parliamentary to point out that members aren't here. The member for Fort William.
Mrs McLeod: We of course have had a member here to participate in the debate each time it was our turn to participate, according to the rules of the House, nor have I suggested that anything was hideous.
Mr Galt: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I think her comments earlier about the Conservatives wanting to leave early are quite serious. In fact, it really was an agreement that the opposition parties were only going to put up one or two speakers for a few minutes. That was the agreement, that we were going to be out of here by 7 or 7:30 at the very latest, when in fact they just kept putting up speaker after speaker after speaker and we're going on to midnight.
The Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order.
Mrs McLeod: Mr Speaker, that is not a point of order, you're quite correct, nor was there any agreement on the part of this caucus to limit the number of speakers.
What is at issue here is a motion that I would actually like to speak to. There is a government motion that this House sit next week. I want to speak in favour of a portion of the motion and express my concerns about another portion of the motion, the portion that says we will sit until midnight next week. I'll come back to why I am supportive of one part but have reservations about the other part.
I'm very supportive of us being here next week. In fact, I was delighted when we were going to be able to extend the session to have at least four more sitting days with question periods. I can tell you, I wish we had a lot more question periods. This fall session seems to have been very short, shortened with both the constituency week and then another week, quite unusual to take off, for doing committees. What that has meant to us in our caucus is that we have a whole raft of issues that we know are of concern to people across this province, that we have wanted to raise to do our job of holding this government accountable, to seek answers from the government ministers, although admittedly we never get them, and we simply have not had enough opportunity to raise all of the issues.
I hold the position of education critic, and I just want to indicate why I'm glad we're coming back next week: because I may have an opportunity to get on to question period some of the issues that I have been wanting to raise.
Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): On a point of order, Mr Speaker, and I'm sure you'll rule that this is a point of order: I hope the member opposite is also going to take the time to address some of the issues raised by the member for Niagara Falls, and to that end, I don't believe there's a quorum present. I wonder if you'd be kind enough to check.
Clerk at the Table: A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Clerk at the Table: A quorum is now present, Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker: The Chair recognizes the member for Fort William.
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Mrs McLeod: I was about to say that I'm looking forward to the sessions next week in the hopes of being able to raise a number of the issues that, as education critic, I feel the need to raise before the end of this session. I have, for example, been extremely concerned about the statements that were made by the Premier that suggested that students didn't need to worry about the escalating debt they're experiencing because of deregulated tuition fees and tuition fee increases. In fact, the Premier said they didn't need to worry about it because having a debt like that just meant they had to postpone buying their BMW for another year.
I note that the Premier has subsequently, on the defensive about having made that statement, tried to claim that the average debt load for students was only about $15,000. We want to have an opportunity to question the Premier about the fact that that is not considering the kinds of debt sanctioned by government before there can be any loan forgiveness, which leads any student who requires the maximum amount of support available with a minimum debt of $28,000 after four years of university. Then you add on to that, for any student going into a graduate program or a professional program, the tremendous debt which deregulation has brought. So that's one of the issues we'd like to raise and I hope we'll have an opportunity.
I want to raise the issue of school closures, which of course did get quite a lot of attention earlier in the session. The government would like to think that this issue is over and done with, but what the government hasn't talked a lot about is the fact that they still are requiring every school board to have 100% occupancy of all their schools and close any space which is in excess of that 100% occupancy before any school board can get any money to build new schools in a new area, an area of enrolment growth.
I left the House for about half an hour this evening to take a phone call from a parent who was, at that point, meeting with a group of parents trying to figure out why their school is still faced with closure, given this government's intention, the statement of the Premier, that no school would now have to close. So I hope we'll have an opportunity to raise some very specific questions about the current policies that are forcing school closures on the part of this government.
I'm looking forward to having an opportunity to raise the fact that the government is forcing some school boards into attempting to charge parents mandatory fees for required services, certainly a first step into kinds of privatization that says, let those who can afford it pay for the kinds of services that traditionally we have provided free of charge to all students. I hope I'll have an opportunity to raise that issue.
I'm most anxious to get back to the issue, before the end of the session, about mould in portables. I was present at the meeting at which a former Minister of Education, now one of the members from Mississauga, assured all the parents present at this forum that the money was coming from his own government. He absolutely assured them. He said, "Trust me, the money will come to replace the mouldy portables in the Peel area." But as yet, there's still no money to replace the mouldy portables, so I hope we'll be able to get some answers to that before the House adjourns at the end of next week.
I'm hoping that before the end of the session we'll get more opportunities to raise the issue of this so-called secondary reform which a number of members on the other side of the House have raised tonight, because what I'm hearing over and over again from secondary school teachers is the question, "Where is the curriculum?" It is now almost the middle of December. The curriculum was supposed to have been announced in November. Nobody has seen it yet, except for some draft documents that were leaked and are on the Internet.
The curriculum is apparently not going to be released until March or April. Textbook producers are now wondering if they should be producing textbooks based on draft curriculum so we don't get caught in the kind of fiasco we had with the elementary school curriculum last year when there were no textbooks available and they had to be rushed into print and, as a result, we ended up with erasable texts. There's a lot of concern that that's exactly where we're heading with secondary schools come this winter and spring.
I'm very much hoping that we'll get a chance to ask the Minister of Education exactly when we are going to see the secondary school curriculum and how he is going to avoid the kind of fiasco with no textbooks to support a new curriculum. I really, truly hope that the Minister of Education doesn't think that all we have to do is book a photographer early so we can make sure we get the photo opportunities on the secondary school textbooks and reform.
One of the issues I would like to raise and I just haven't been able to get on the agenda -
Mr Galt: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: It was interesting the member opposite mentioned photo opportunities for books for the secondary panel. She should note that same suggestion was there for the elementary books. They got totally sucked in, they went out and campaigned and helped us advertise the books when they came in. We really appreciate that, and I just wanted to recognize her for it.
The Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order. The Chair recognizes the member for Fort William.
Mrs McLeod: I certainly appreciate the member's segue into my next issue of concern which, again, there hasn't been an opportunity to raise in this short session. That's the most recent advertising brochure, part of the $50-million advertising blitz that this government has undertaken.
Of course, as education critic, the one that I wanted to raise, and I don't mind drawing attention to it, I tell the member opposite, I'd be happy to bring it in, I say to the member for Northumberland, because there's a 1-800 number at the bottom of this very glossy advertising brochure. The 1-800 number says, "Call now for more information," and I had several constituents who called in an earnest attempt to get more information from this very glossy advertising brochure.
When they actually asked questions, they were told that they couldn't be given any answers because the people who were answering the telephones were hired on contract by the government to answer the phones. All they could do was write down what the individuals wanted to ask in the expectation that maybe someday there would be a response from the government. People were feeling very disgruntled, not only about the glossy advertising brochure but about the lack of response from the 1-800 number which promised information. I'm mindful of the Premier saying, "We only want to use our dollars for truth in advertising." That's one of those areas of something less than truth in advertising that I would have liked to raise.
I'm also women's issues critic, and there are a number of issues there I was hoping I'd have an opportunity to raise before the session ends, one of them being the fact that this government is completely and absolutely derelict in making its payments under the pay equity plan, which is forcing a great many community agencies into deficit situations. I'm hoping there will be an opportunity to raise that issue.
I also have a number of local issues that I would like to raise. Unfortunately, there has been so much chaos in education and so many concerns affecting issues of concern to women that I haven't been able to get to many of my local issues. I'd like to have more opportunity to raise the concerns of the business improvement group that I met with last Thursday morning who are very concerned about the taxation issue which has been mentioned a number of times tonight.
I'd like to raise the concerns that came from the children's -
Mr O'Toole: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I believe the House is discussing the House calendar motion. I was wondering, if I reflect back, listening to the endless debate here tonight, if I heard the member for Kingston and The Islands say correctly, was it $6 billion that the federal Liberals removed from health care, or was it $19 billion?
The Deputy Speaker: That is a point of order but I've already ruled because of the type of motion it is that the member is well within the bounds of the motion.
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Mr Gerretsen: On a further point of order, Mr Speaker: The member from Durham just made a statement alleging that I made a statement in the House tonight, a statement which was never made. If there's anything we should be -
Interjections.
Mr O'Toole: Point of order, Mr Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker: I'm not going there at this time of night. The Chair recognizes the member for Fort William.
Mrs McLeod: I think I've been here too long. I actually have this propensity to take the debates in this place somewhat seriously and feel as though this is time that should be spent on issues of public concern, so I find the dilatory approach of the members opposite somewhat distressing. Blame that on age, I guess. I do speak to the motion, as the member for Durham East might have known if he had been here at the outset of my speech, because I'm identifying the reasons for my support of the government's motion that we sit next week.
I was also outlining my hope that we will be able to sit longer, and I will very shortly conclude with that because I'm hoping we'll come back in the winter so that we will have many more opportunities to raise the issues. I might be able to raise issues not only of concern to the education community, of concern to women's groups but of concern to my local riding, things like the lack of mental health services, the lack of planning, the fact that the Minister of Health has not told us whether there is going to be a mental health agency as the commissioner has recommended or what the alternative would be.
I'd like to raise the issue of the children's mental health centres which have put in proposals for additional funding because of an increased waiting list and the fact that they can't meet the urgent needs of children and families who need support and help.
I certainly want to come back and raise the issue of the northern health travel grant, which is an issue we raised earlier. I have a constituent who has used up almost all of his retirement pension getting medically necessary care because the northern health travel grant does not adequately compensate for his need to travel outside of our area to get medically necessary care. Those are just some of the issues I hope to have an opportunity to raise in question period.
Mr Speaker, you will know, and I indicated at the beginning, that while I support the motion to extend our sitting I have some caution, some conditions about the midnight sittings. I'm not reluctant to sit until midnight. Obviously, I'm prepared to be here and to be the wrap-up speaker, I suspect, this evening. But I do fault the government for the actions that they took in allowing our evening sittings to be considered to be full days of this Legislature.
What that does, and this is unprecedented, normally when the House sits in evening sessions it's a continuation of the session of that day. This government decided that the evening sessions would constitute a new day, the only place in the world where we have two days in one 24-hour period. There's no evening in this Legislature, which means, of course, that we don't have a question period. The government can ram this legislation through in half the time with half the question period. We have been in evening sessions since September, which has allowed the government to claim that they're having much more debate on issues, but they're having very few question periods for the amount of debate time that this House has had.
I think we need to come back next week because of our major pieces of legislation. I wish that those major pieces of legislation, the non-act for the disabled, which needs to have serious and extensive debate in this House, had been on our agenda tonight when we've had some five hours of debate, but I suspect the government will bring it in when we have a two-and-a-half-hour afternoon session, and then they'll bring in a time allocation motion and cut off debate.
I think they'll do the same thing with the Child and Family Services Act, an act which in many ways we support but we want an opportunity in debate to raise concerns about the fact that this government has promised financial resources to our children's aid societies, which don't have enough resources to meet the legal mandate that they currently hold, but has not flowed any of those monies.
We want to debate the act that has been brought forward. We want to raise some concerns with the act although, in general, we support its direction, but we also want to make sure that there is not a great hypocrisy being perpetuated on the part of a government that promises money to provide for the children's aid societies to meet their legal mandate, extends the legal mandate but never actually flows the additional dollars that it needs to carry out that mandate.
That certainly is a debate we want to have. I guess my question, if the government House leader were here, would be, are we going to get some of these five-hour sessions as we sit until midnight next week to debate the non-act for the disabled and the Children and Family Services Act amendments, both of which require extensive debate, or are you going to slot those into the shortened afternoon sessions, when we only have two and a half hours at best, and are you then going to bring in a time allocation motion before the end of the session? What are we going to be looking at in terms of the kind of debate that's needed?
I regret the fact that we've now spent five hours on a debate on a motion to extend our sittings when we have important pieces of legislation that deserve five hours' debate, that the government could have brought forward and we could have been debating these issues tonight. This motion could have been on the afternoon agenda today, we could have had the debate, we could have had the passage of the motion, we could have set up for the extended hours and we could have moved on indeed to serious issues of legislative urgency tonight.
I believe we need to come back next week, which is why I will be supporting the motion. I regret the fact that we can't have question periods in our evening sessions, since they constitute full-day sessions. I suggest very seriously that if this House is prepared to do justice to the public concerns and the public business and to have full consideration of the kinds of important legislative issues that are before this House, then we must come back not only next week but in January and in February and in March so that, day by day, we can debate the issues and raise questions and hold this government accountable.
What this government wants more than anything else is to finish its agenda by the end of next week with its midnight sittings and not come back again until perhaps the end of March. This government does not like to be in this place being held accountable. That's why they've curtailed question period, that's why we will adjourn at the end of next week and perhaps not come back till March.
The Deputy Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Turnbull has moved government notice of motion number 44. Is it the pleasure of the House the motion carry? It is carried.
Hon Mrs Cunningham: I move adjournment of the House.
The Deputy Speaker: Is it the pleasure of the House the motion carry? It is carried.
It being almost 12 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 tomorrow.
The House adjourned at 2359.