CONTENTS
Wednesday 25 June 1997
Office of the Premier
Mr Tony Clement, parliamentary assistant
Mrs Lee Allison Howe, assistant deputy minister, communications and corporate services, Cabinet Office
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES
Chair / Président: Kennedy, Gerard (York South / -Sud L)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Bartolucci, Rick (Sudbury L)
Mr RickBartolucci (Sudbury L)
Mr MarcelBeaubien (Lambton PC)
Mr GillesBisson (Cochrane South / -Sud ND)
Mr Michael A. Brown (Algoma-Manitoulin L)
Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall L)
Mr EdDoyle (Wentworth East / -Est PC)
Mr BillGrimmett (Muskoka-Georgian Bay
/ Muskoka-Baie-Georgienne PC)
Mr MorleyKells (Etobicoke-Lakeshore PC)
Mr GerardKennedy (York South / -Sud L)
Ms FrancesLankin (Beaches-Woodbine ND)
Mr TrevorPettit (Hamilton Mountain PC)
Mr FrankSheehan (Lincoln PC)
Mr BillVankoughnet (Frontenac-Addington PC)
Mr WayneWettlaufer (Kitchener PC)
Substitutions present /Membres remplaçants présents:
Mr GerryPhillips (Scarborough-Agincourt L)
Clerk / Greffière: Ms Rosemarie Singh
Staff / Personnel: Ms Alison Drummond, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1638 in committee room 2.
OFFICE OF THE PREMIER
The Acting Chair (Mr John C. Cleary): I call this meeting to order. This is the estimates committee. Today we're dealing with the Office of the Premier for two hours and 30 minutes.
The parliamentary assistant to the Premier has up to 30 minutes. Then the official opposition will have up to 30 minutes, the third party up to 30 minutes, and the parliamentary assistant has the right to reply up to 30 minutes. It is suggested that the remaining 30 minutes be divided, 10 minutes for each party, starting with the official opposition.
Any comments on what I've said? If not, we'll start with the parliamentary assistant.
Mr Tony Clement (Brampton South): Mr Chairman and members of the committee, it's a pleasure to be here to be part of the estimates process this afternoon. As a former member of this committee, I recognize the work of this committee and its deliberations.
With me today is Mrs Lee Allison Howe, who is the assistant deputy minister of corporate services for the Cabinet Office. She will be able to provide some detail if it is necessary, as well.
I am pleased to come before you today on behalf of Premier Mike Harris to present the 1997-98 estimates for the Office of the Premier.
As you will note from the material previously circulated, the Premier's office continues to hold the line on expenditures. The cost of running the Premier's office has essentially been flat-lined since this government took office, as I will outline in detail in a few moments.
Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): Excuse me. Mr Chair, the parliamentary assistant seems to be reading from a prepared text. I wonder if there are copies that we could follow along with. Normally that's traditional in this case.
Mr Clement: I don't have extra copies, Mr Chair. These are just notes that I prepared to be better able to express what is very important to this committee, but certainly if there are issues that the member wishes me to further elucidate on, we'll have time for that.
Before we get into some of the details of these estimates, I wanted to offer a bit of context.
Our party came to office with a goal of balancing Ontario's budget in five years. We started the process by getting our own house in order. Premier Mike Harris began his term by appointing the smallest executive council at Queen's Park in 30 years. Since taking office, we have undertaken a thorough review of every area of government spending and we are on target to a balanced budget at the end of our term.
Our government is in the middle of implementing the most ambitious and positive agenda for change seen in this province in over 50 years. We've based this agenda on our blueprint for change, which was the Common Sense Revolution policy document, which was distributed to the people of Ontario in the last provincial election and which was subsequently endorsed through the general election.
We were given a mandate to make government work better for the people who ultimately sign the cheques, that is to say, the taxpayers of Ontario. Our government made one of the fastest transitions in Ontario's history. We hit the deck running, releasing in quick succession operating reduction targets, a throne speech and two economic statements.
Last spring, we again put our commitments in writing. These were the province's first business plans, which clearly showed the public the areas that we considered core businesses of government, the ones we were going to concentrate on, and what our plans were to forge a government that could do better for less. The business plans demonstrated our commitment to the principle of accountability to the taxpayer, and they outlined how we were going to live up to our promises to reduce the size and cost of government. A report on the progress we've made on this will be part of the next instalment of the business plans, which I expect will be released quite shortly.
Our policy and planning environment has been characterized by high volume and fast turnaround, so to accomplish our goals we increased the number of sessional days for the House, such as the special Who Does What session that started in January of this year.
[Interruption]
Mr Bisson: They are not applauding for you.
Mr Clement: Thank you for that clarification for the Hansard, Mr Bisson.
I don't have to tell anyone in this room that the numbers speak for themselves in terms of sessional days and other output in terms of the volume work. In our two years in office, the House sat for nearly 200 days. Compare this to the previous government's record in the year leading up to the 1995 election. From the end of June 1994 until election day the following June, the House was only in session for 20 days. We've made this happen with fewer people doing more work and holding the line on expenditures.
Before I get into details about how the money is spent, I'd like to comment briefly on the purpose and organization of the Premier's office. The Premier's office supports the Premier in his role as the head of the executive council and the leader of the government of Ontario. The Premier's office coordinates the government's policy development and legislative agenda and the government's communications activities. It also supports and advises the Premier on issues facing cabinet and the government.
The Office of the Premier is responsible for the following pieces of legislation: the Executive Council Act, the Lieutenant Governor Act, the Policy and Priorities Board of Cabinet Act and the Representation Act. In support of this leadership role, there is the Cabinet Office, a separate ministry with its own estimates.
This is essentially the Premier's ministry. In the same way that ministers have political and bureaucratic advisers, the Premier receives political advice from the Premier's office, and corporate policy and operational support from Cabinet Office. The two offices work closely together to ensure consistency in the political and policy direction given to ministers and ministries from the Office of the Premier and the government's central agencies. To do this, the people in the Premier's office provide the following services: policy advice and direction; issues management; media relations through the Premier's press office; public inquiries; communications; liaison with the caucus; Premier's security; and Premier's scheduling and public appointments.
In some cases these functions involve a mix of the Premier's office and public servants. For example, Cabinet Office supports the Public Appointments Secretariat, although the unit is managed by Premier's office staff. There are also functions which support the Premier or his office that are located in the Cabinet Office. These include Premier's correspondence, policy analysis and coordination, communications, contentious issues monitoring, freedom of information, finance and administration, and information technology.
As I said previously, the Office of the Premier has fewer people doing more work. Currently members should know that there are 36 people on staff, down from 43 under the previous government.
Mr Bisson: Say that again, please.
Mr Clement: There are 36, Mr Bisson, down from 43 in the previous government, and I stress for the benefit of the members that this is a true count.
One of the things we did when taking over control of government was end the practice of keeping two sets of books. In the broader context, we acknowledged the true deficit numbers we had inherited from the previous government, as opposed to the ones distributed for media consumption. When it came to running the Premier's office, we found there were also two sets of books.
The Office of the Premier in the previous government had 20 hidden staff. These were people paid by different ministries, so their numbers were never included in the Premier's office head count. In addition, more than three quarters of a million dollars in salaries and benefits was buried in these other ministries and did not show up on the previous Premier's office books.
In our government, the Premier's office is paying its own way. The people we have on staff are paid through the budget of the Premier's office. We have no phantoms on staff now and so our numbers are the true costs. That's why I can say the line has been held on expenditures when you add these ghost employees back into the previous government's actual costs. We're not hiding any staff. We're not hiding these numbers from the public and we're not hiding them from this committee. So let's look at how these numbers add up.
In the 1994-95 fiscal year, the previous government had 43 employees in its Office of the Premier, although it only showed 26 within that spending envelope. The balance of these were the ones I referred to earlier, who worked full-time in the Premier's office but who were on the payroll of five different ministries. The total expenditures of the previous Premier's office, with its so-called full staff of 26, was $2,001,439, but when you add in the other 20 -- you have to include them to have a fair and accurate comparison to today so we're comparing apples with apples here -- the bill for their salaries and benefits adds a further $763,057. I'm stressing this is in the 1994-95 fiscal year. This makes a total of $2,764,496.
I want you to contrast this with the first fiscal year of our government. The 1995-96 figure for total expenditures was $2,673,491; that's a decrease of 3.3%. The trend continued for 1996-97. Actual spending was $2,610,430, down a further 2.4%. The Premier's office actual spending was $124,185 less in 1996-97 than had been projected in its estimates. In the 1997-98 estimates now, there is no increase in spending for the Office of the Premier.
Two items have an impact on the final numbers, however, and I want to be clear on this as well. A portion of the contribution to the Ontario government pension fund was temporarily removed from ministries' budgets in 1995-96 and 1996-97. Since there was a surplus in that pension fund at that time, ministries did not have to make these payments for those two years. This holiday for payments to the Ontario government pension fund is over and the ministries across government must meet these employer payments once again, so this number is reflected in all ministry budgets for the 1997-98 fiscal year. As it does in all ministries, this requirement adds to the overall budget of the Premier's office by $97,100.
Mr Bisson: Excuse me. I didn't get the number.
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Mr Clement: That's $97,100, Mr Bisson.
There was also an across-the-board salary adjustment for ministers and parliamentary assistants -- and members, but in this case ministers and parliamentary assistants -- reflecting the elimination of the tax-free allowance and changes to the pension plans for MPPs. The cost of these changes affects all ministries, of course. For the Premier's office, this adds a further $17,967, split between the Premier and his parliamentary assistant. This brings the total estimates for 1997-98, as spelled out in your documentation, to $2,831,715.
I want to tackle another issue head-on here. Recently the Premier's office relocated from offices on the fourth floor to the sixth floor of the Whitney Block. I'm not sure whether members were aware of that or not.
Mr Bisson: You have a sense of humour. This is good.
Mr Clement: You have to in this business.
Mr Bisson: Exactly.
Mr Clement: As background to the move, I should explain that property management is handled by the Ontario Realty Corp. This corporation is an entity created by the previous government to manage the province's real estate assets on a businesslike basis. The relocation of provincial government offices out of Toronto, begun by the Peterson government and continued by the previous government, resulted in underused pockets of space in government-owned and -leased buildings. In some cases these moves left only two or three occupied offices on a floor or a couple of occupied floors in a whole office building. Some of this space was leased, making for a very expensive and inefficient way to house the small operations the relocating ministries left behind in Toronto.
ORC wanted to consolidate this space in government-owned buildings and sell off the resultant empty ones that it owned or terminate the leases for the ones that it rented. That was the driving force behind the relocations at the Whitney Block. ORC wanted to move operations that were scattered throughout the immediate Queen's Park area into that building. To do so, a number of the existing occupants in the Whitney Block were required to relocate within the building to achieve the best use of the remaining office space, including the Premier's office.
Offices for the Centre for Leadership were consolidated from leased space at 790 Bay Street into the Whitney Block, with immediate savings in these costs of $700,000 a year. Total costs of the entire Whitney Block consolidation was $2.9 million, which included $700,000 in repairs that were required in any event. Based on the lease savings, this relocation project will pay for itself in about four years, and through similar co-locations and consolidations, our government has saved more than $25 million in office accommodation costs.
ORC was putting into practice one of our government's key goals: doing better for less. The Premier's office was moved on the basis of this business case, despite the fact that the move, like any move, was disruptive at a time when the workload continued unabated. I realize that the Whitney Block relocation is not, strictly speaking, related to the estimates of the Premier's office, but I wanted to take this opportunity to set the record straight on the business rationale driving that move.
For our 1997-98 estimates, the numbers are there for all to see, so let me come back to the net result: The budget for the Office of the Premier has essentially been flat-lined since this government took office in June 1995, with the exception of the pension and statutory salary adjustments that I've already mentioned.
We're a government that is getting back to basics, introducing a sound fiscal agenda, restoring confidence in the economy, creating a climate for economic growth and job creation, bringing back responsibility and accountability when it comes to investing those hard-earned tax dollars. Making government work better for the taxpayers of Ontario and setting an example for the Ontario public service has to start at the top. We've cleaned up the operation of the Premier's office from the way it ran under the previous government. We've made it transparent and accountable. We've shown the true costs of our operations so that the public can judge for itself whether they are getting value for money.
Certainly the staff in the Office of the Premier have shown their willingness to take on new challenges, adjust to increasing workloads and shortened time lines and to find ways to do better for less, and they've done all these things while reversing the traditional upward spiral of costs that characterized the way previous governments ran the Office of the Premier.
The material previously distributed outlines the estimates expenditures for 1997-98 for the Office of the Premier. I'd be happy to discuss these numbers or answer any other questions that members may have at this time. Thank you for your time and attention.
The Acting Chair (Mr Ed Doyle): Thank you, sir. Now we go to the official opposition for up to 30 minutes, sir, if you'd like to take the floor.
Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): I forget when we get to ask the questions.
The Acting Chair: As I understand it, the remaining time will be left to questioning. I was just checking with the clerk to ensure that I was getting that correct. Each individual party has up to 30 minutes and then we'll go to questions. I'm sorry; he'll have the right of reply and then we'll go to questions. He had some time left in his presentation if he wanted it, but he chose not to use up his time.
Mr Phillips: I'm new at this so I need some help.
The Acting Chair: Yes, I'm kind of new at it myself.
Mr Phillips: I had anticipated coming to be able to ask questions.
Mr Clement: You don't have to do a statement if you don't want to.
Mr Phillips: I could ask questions? If I don't do the statement, I will give up my half-hour?
The Acting Chair: It is up to you to use the time as you choose.
Mr Phillips: So I could ask questions.
The Acting Chair: Yes.
Mr Clement: The way I understand it to work, Mr Phillips, is that you've got a certain amount of allocated time that you split between a statement and time for questions.
Mr Phillips: With my half-hour.
The Acting Chair: It's up to you.
Mr Trevor Pettit (Hamilton Mountain): He can do whatever he wants.
Mr Phillips: This is good. Now I'm rolling.
The Acting Chair: You've got your choice. You can say what you want or you can ask what you want, as I understand it.
Mr Phillips: I'll learn more by asking questions, I think.
Mr Clement: Dare to dream.
Mr Phillips: The first question would be, how does the budget split between the Cabinet Office and the Premier's office? You were saying that the total budget is $2.8 million. How does that split between the Premier's office and the Cabinet Office?
Mr Clement: They're considered separate budgets, although, as I mentioned to you, there has to be some overlap.
Mr Phillips: So the $2.8 million doesn't include Cabinet Office?
Mr Clement: No, it's a completely separate budget item. What I mentioned in my remarks was that there's some staff that obviously are working on joint projects and enterprises where we have to allocate those among either Cabinet Office or the Premier's office, but they are two separate functions.
Mr Phillips: Just looking back over from 1995-96, which would have been partially a previous government, are the functions handled by the Premier's office and the functions handled by Cabinet Office the same? I see the correspondence unit and what not; that was always in cabinet office?
Mrs Lee Allison Howe: That's correct.
Mr Phillips: So we're comparing, as I say, apples to apples. That was helpful in how cabinet works with the Premier's office. The analogy you used was that that's the Premier's ministry. I think that's the language you used.
Mr Clement: That is correct.
Mr Phillips: Do the Premier's office and Cabinet Office have a policies and procedures manual? Is there a procedure that's followed by the senior staff in both offices?
Mrs Howe: Yes, we have policies and procedures for what's covered under which budget codes and that sort of thing.
Mr Phillips: I'm thinking more of operating procedures.
Mrs Howe: Yes, we do. Ours hasn't been updated for some time, but we do have policies and procedures manuals for Cabinet Office.
Mr Clement: One good example of that would be, just to take a simple example, the correspondence unit, which I understand is a Cabinet Office function, but it obviously deals with issues and issues management and the Premier's correspondence, so they would have to have certain rules in place about how certain questions are answered or how they're forwarded on to other ministries, that sort of thing.
Mr Phillips: Is that a public document or a private document?
Mrs Howe: I don't think there would be any difficulty with making that public for you, Mr Phillips.
Mr Phillips: I wouldn't mind. Maybe the parliamentary assistant could just look into that.
If you don't mind, I'll sort of jump back and forth. You're the assistant deputy minister, I gather. Are there procedures for how you deal with reporting on issues and things like that? I'm just wondering who prepares the issues material.
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Mrs Howe: If you're referring to the Premier's briefing materials --
Mr Phillips: Let's say there was an issue that cabinet office was dealing with. Is there a procedure for how you report those things?
Mrs Howe: If you're referring to daily issues, yes, there is a process. Ministries provide briefing notes through to our contentious issues unit and those issues notes are passed on to the Premier's issues manager.
Mr Phillips: Right. Does the Cabinet Office ever prepare briefing notes?
Mrs Howe: No, we don't prepare briefing notes for the Premier. The Premier's office prepares political briefing notes. We coordinate the assembly of the information from the ministries and then we pass the notes through to the Premier's office.
Mr Clement: The Premier theoretically could have two sets of briefing notes; one is on a public policy side of things, which is handled by Cabinet Office, and the other is from a more political advisory standpoint, which is from the Premier's office.
Mr Phillips: So the Premier has, I guess, some policy staff.
Mrs Howe: That is correct.
Mr Phillips: And the Cabinet Office has no policy staff?
Mrs Howe: Yes, we have policy analysts who provide the civil service analysis of public policy documents coming through from the ministries.
Mr Phillips: Right. Does the cabinet attend, as the civil servants on behalf of the Premier, on issues? You are the Premier's ministry so would you be the equivalent -- if there were a committee set up with representation of various ministries, including the Premier's office, would it be the Cabinet Office that would be the bureaucratic equivalent of the Premier's office?
Mrs Howe: Depending on the issue, I would say yes.
Mr Phillips: If you were attending the meetings, I guess you'd report to the cabinet secretary.
Mrs Howe: That's correct.
Mr Phillips: That is whom you would report to, not to the Premier?
Mrs Howe: That's correct.
Mr Phillips: Okay. Are there procedures for how the cabinet staff report on issues to the secretary of cabinet?
Mrs Howe: Is there a procedure for how we report?
Mr Phillips: Yes. I mean, is it accepted procedure that you report orally, you report in writing, if you attend an interministerial meeting? I gather there are lots of those things around.
Mrs Howe: In terms of daily briefings, we don't attend the Premier's daily briefings as staff. His staff brief the Premier. In terms of issues notes coming through from ministries, those are provided to the secretary of cabinet.
Mr Phillips: Obviously, one issue of immense interest to me is Ipperwash and trying to figure out in my own mind how events unfolded there. I know, for example, there was what I think they called an Ipperwash crisis communications procedure and contact list, which coincidentally you're on, which caught me a bit by surprise. But I see in this particular case that the members -- were you a member of that core group?
Mrs Howe: No, I was not.
Mr Phillips: Was Cabinet Office represented there?
Mrs Howe: I thought we were here to talk about the estimates, but --
Mr Phillips: I'll tell you what I'm interested in is the procedures that are followed in the Premier's office, because it struck me as odd -- if the Premier had the procedures in place, I would have thought there would have been summary notes kept. If they weren't kept, then I wonder if the Premier's office has procedures in place for dealing with these things.
Again, it may put you in a tough spot. Tell me if it does and I'll deal with Mr Clement. But just because you're the senior person here on behalf of the Cabinet Office, which is the bureaucracy of the Premier, I was just trying to figure out how it would be that there were never any notes kept by either the Premier's office or Cabinet Office over a one-month period. Would that be normal?
Mrs Howe: It wouldn't be abnormal, because we generally don't generate our own notes on issues from Cabinet Office because we generally don't have issues. The issues generally belong to the ministries and the ministries research the responses and send the information through to Cabinet Office. We pull information together to pass it along to the Premier's office. That's our job.
Mr Phillips: As I say, in here it indicates minister's office, Cabinet Office, the core working group. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but it does indicate that the Cabinet Office was represented on this group.
Mrs Howe: I'm sorry, sir. I don't --
Mr Clement: I'm not sure what document you're referring to, Mr Phillips.
Mr Phillips: This is the Ipperwash incident crisis communications procedure.
Mr Clement: I've actually never read that document, so I'm unable to comment on it.
Mr Phillips: But the question is really, if Cabinet Office were represented -- and it says here that all members would keep a daily log and the support group will maintain a daily log of events, citing the specific incident, individuals involved. I guess what I'm trying to find out is, for you, Mr Clement, would it be normal for the Premier's senior staff to attend a series of meetings dealing with something like this and never write down what they were supposed to be writing down, according to this document, which is a daily log of events?
I'm trying to figure out, is it normal procedure that this would happen, or is this abnormal procedure?
Mr Clement: The only knowledge I have of the events that you refer to are from daily question period. I can't answer that directly. What I can tell you from my experience as the parliamentary assistant is what happens in different scenarios that I've been involved with. For instance, if there are meetings that are preparation for meetings where there will be minutes, cabinet minutes or committee of cabinet minutes, then typically Cabinet Office will provide their public policy analyses of the issues that have been brought forward by the various ministries for review by members of those committees which are cabinet committees.
For instance, if there is a matter that is going before P&P, typically members of P&P, the policies and priorities board of cabinet, would have the advantage of a policy analysis done by Cabinet Office on the issues that are coming forward.
As I am sure you are aware, that's a fairly formalized process, but there are a number of meetings that occur every day of every week in Premier's office and in Cabinet Office which are not preparatory meetings for minuted meetings. They are merely the management of issues that arise or proactive management of issues they feel should arise or are about to arise where typically there would not necessarily be minutes taken nor paper documents because you're dealing informally as part of a team, Cabinet Office and Premier's office working together.
I'm not sure I can answer your comment directly, but my observation, based on my experience thus far, since January 1997, as parliamentary assistant, is that you have both types of meetings happening every day.
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Mr Phillips: The Premier's office was on the core working group. Shelley Spiegel, is that someone from Cabinet Office?
Mrs Howe: That's correct.
Mr Phillips: When someone from Cabinet Office is asked to attend a meeting like this and then it says each ministry is to be responsible for briefing its ministry, keeping any log, would it be unusual that the person from Cabinet Office wouldn't keep any notes, would not have any summary of a meeting like this?
Mrs Howe: It wouldn't be unusual. We go to a lot of meetings where people aren't keeping notes on every issue. I really couldn't speak for somebody else. I wasn't at the meeting, so I don't know.
Mr Phillips: You were not on the crisis committee that was the crisis communications group?
Mrs Howe: No, I wasn't at the meeting.
Mr Phillips: Who from Cabinet Office would have been on that?
Mr Clement: I'm trying to keep to the numbers here. That's what I was briefed on in terms of what I thought people would want to know. We're here at estimates. I'm not quite sure where we're going on this.
Mr Phillips: Where I'm going is, how the Premier's office works.
Mr Clement: I'd be happy to answer. Definitely you are well within your means to ask questions, and we'll give an answer which outlines how the Premier's office works.
Mr Phillips: How would it be that the Premier's executive assistant would be at daily meetings running, I gather, often three hours, the Cabinet Office there as well, involving what has to have been -- this wasn't just an incidental meeting; this was a crisis of the first order. As a matter of fact, they were meeting seven days a week and they had to be available for the possibility of hourly. Would it be normal procedure in the Premier's office that there wasn't a note, a file, a memo, a summary, nothing, not one piece of paper ever kept by the Premier's office on something of that significance? Is that, in your mind, realistic?
Mr Clement: Again I apologize that I have to rely on my general observation since January 1997 of how the Premier's office works and how it interrelates to the Cabinet Office, but my general observation has been that there are explicit notes, summaries, analyses that are generally required of Cabinet Office and as a matter of course emanate from Cabinet Office in preparation for meetings that are going to be minuted meetings, that is to say, meetings of the planning and priorities board of cabinet, meetings for subcommittees of that board, which I have had the occasion to serve on. I've certainly seen Cabinet Office documentation which are basically analyses of the ministry public policy areas going into those meetings. In those circumstances, I think you're quite right, Mr Phillips, you're absolutely bang on that there would be documentation in preparation for minuted meetings.
But of course there are many other meetings that occur, some more casual, some that are not in preparation for minuted meetings, where you are seeking the expertise of persons without the requirement or the expectation that analysis would be in a written form. All I can tell you, based on my general observation, is that both types of meetings occur and that Cabinet Office, in its flexibility and in its varying requirements, which are determined at the time based on what meeting occurs, renders its judgement either in verbal form or in written form.
Mr Phillips: In terms of briefing the Premier on something like this, because the crisis group was looking to make decisions as well, ensure that all decisions are made from a common -- how would the Premier's staff get a decision from the Premier? Would it all be done orally or would there normally be a note saying, "Here's the decision we need from you"?
Mr Clement: Again based on my general observations, either occurs, depending upon the circumstances. For instance, the Premier sitting at the cabinet table or the table of the planning and priorities board, typically as a member of both of those boards, if what he articulates is the consensus around the table, then certainly his views or views of other ministers or other participants in those meetings, if that is the agreed-upon consensus, then those views are minuted. But the Premier not only is the first among equals, shall I say, as the Premier and the head of the executive council, he is also the party leader, he is also the leader of a parliamentary caucus, he is also the political leader of the government of Ontario, so in other meetings it is just not typical or appropriate that you would have a minuted structure. It just would not be what you would do at those meetings.
At some meetings I'm sure he verbalizes as part of getting to a consensus on a particular point, which might be more of a political point rather than a public policy determination. At other meetings, when you're dealing with public policy determinations, as you know, you've got to minute them, because there has to be no question after the fact as to what the direction of cabinet or of the planning and priorities board would be.
Mr Phillips: I'm interested in the procedures in the Premier's office. It strikes me as beyond my own personal belief that the executive assistant would attend daily meetings like this and never, ever write down one single thing and that the senior communications person would attend meetings and never, ever write down a single thing, in spite of the fact that it's the first shooting of a first nations person in 100 years. Is that common procedure in the Premier's office, that people attend meetings representing him and never write down a thing about the meeting, that they've never kept a note for themselves of what took place? I've never, ever seen or heard of an operation like that.
Mr Clement: Again, I would rely upon the structure I have observed, Mr Phillips, with relation to whether the issues meeting culminates in a public policy direction, which typically is then discussed at P&P or at cabinet or at both. That's my understanding and my observation, that in those cases certainly things are written down. In other cases what typically happens, as Mrs Howe has reminded me, is that if there's something of an interministerial nature or something where you're relying upon the delegated responsibility of various line ministries, you also have notes from those ministries and you rely in terms of written notes on their notes, not necessarily your own notes.
Mr Phillips: That would be true of Cabinet Office too, that a senior person in Cabinet Office would attend meetings like this and never keep a file for themselves, a summary of the meeting, that you'd require nothing in writing even for file memos from people in Cabinet Office attending a meeting?
Mrs Howe: Not necessarily. We don't require people to keep notes of meetings if it's not a minuted meeting. We count on the ministries to provide the briefing materials and to provide us minutes and to provide us issues notes.
Mr Phillips: I guess you probably answered the freedom of information request, then, because I see you're responsible for that. I gather you informed the freedom of information office that Cabinet Office did not at any time write a memo, a note, a file on Ipperwash.
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Mrs Howe: That's correct. According to our records, we don't have any originating records at Cabinet Office.
Mr Phillips: In terms of what you just said, Mr Clement, I think you said it would be a little unusual -- Hansard may prove me wrong. Does the Premier or the Premier's senior staff have any procedure they follow when people attend meetings on behalf of the Premier, in terms of how the Premier or the Premier's senior staff want records kept of those meetings?
Mr Clement: Based on my observations, Mr Phillips, again depending upon the meeting, if it is culminating in a public policy judgement, then certainly notes are kept, a public policy judgement meaning something that is going to cabinet or something that is there prior to legislation being contemplated by the cabinet.
As Mrs Howe, the assistant deputy minister, mentioned, there are daily briefings of the Premier that occur by the Premier's office staff on issues they choose to brief the Premier on based on their judgement of what he needs to know in preparation for the day or in preparation for the week. Certainly, that is a common practice that those briefings would occur.
Mr Phillips: This would be, I gather, the kind of issue where he would be briefed, obviously.
Mr Clement: I am just not familiar enough with that issue, sir. I'm sorry.
Mr Phillips: What group is responsible for the preparation of those briefing notes in the Premier's office? Is that the issues management group?
Mr Clement: Which briefing notes, Mr Phillips?
Mr Phillips: The ones you mentioned, the daily briefing of the Premier.
Mr Clement: I didn't mention briefing notes; I mentioned briefings, which are meetings. In terms of briefing notes, I can tell you on public policy issues, which has been my experience, that Mr Giorno, who is in charge of policy planning, and his staff typically do create Premier's notes for the Premier, rendering political advice which he is free to accept or reject, and frequently does either or both. They would be the people who would generate public policy, political advice kinds of notes, which are an overlay on what Cabinet Office and what the line ministries provide.
Mr Phillips: Right. I gather that's done daily, is it, when the Premier is here?
Mrs Howe: The issues process happens every day, but the notes come in from the ministries. We don't create our own issues notes at Cabinet Office. We request notes from ministries, and we bring them in and pass them along to the Premier's office.
Mr Phillips: Right. Cabinet Office would never prepare them?
Mrs Howe: We don't prepare issues notes.
Mr Phillips: Okay. Even on those areas where you have responsibility?
Mr Clement: I must say, Mr Phillips, I have never seen an issues note from Cabinet Office. I have seen notes which analyse legislation or proposed legislation, things like that, and I have also seen notes that are provided to the Premier by his policy staff, which are political-type notes, but I haven't seen issues notes from Cabinet Office.
Mr Phillips: They would tend to be, as you say, prepared by line ministries and then there's an overlay by the policy planning unit, Mr Guy Giorno.
Mr Clement: I apologize that my experience is not broader, but my experience has been in public policy determination leading eventually, hopefully, to legislation. In those types of cases, in preparation for P&P meetings, that is to say the planning and priorities board of cabinet, or for cabinet meetings, frequently -- I don't want to box myself in and say invariably -- Mr Giorno and his staff do provide policy political advice to the Premier. That is part of their job.
Mr Phillips: Sure. So it's that group, the policy planning unit, that would prepare the briefing notes, as opposed to some other group in the Premier's office. Have I got that right?
Mr Clement: In terms of public policy determination leading to legislation, which I must say is almost the full extent of my experience on these issues, that is what I have observed.
Mr Phillips: Okay. Just so I'm clear, that's who does the briefing of the Premier, then? I'm just trying to get an idea of how the process works around the Premier's office.
The Acting Chair: About 60 seconds to go, Mr Phillips.
Mr Clement: Typically, all of his senior staff would be involved in the daily briefing, Mr Phillips.
Mr Phillips: Okay. That's useful.
Mr Clement: You'd have communications, you'd have the principal secretary, of course, and the assistant principal secretary scheduling. They would go through everything, I'm sure.
Mr Phillips: In terms of the briefing notes, are briefing notes a matter of public record or are they privileged documents?
Mrs Howe: They're advice to government. It depends on each individual one, how much of the information could be released under freedom of information.
The Acting Chair: Okay, that's 30 minutes, Mr Phillips. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.
We move on to the third party now. Mr Bisson, how would you like to handle your 30 minutes?
Mr Bisson: As best I can.
The Acting Chair: Okay, away you go.
Mr Bisson: I was most intrigued with the line of questioning from the member for Scarborough-Agincourt; that's for another day. I am going to, rather, try to deal with some of the other issues with regard to the Premier's office, not that the issues Mr Phillips raised were not important and something we need to get to. But I want to follow a little bit of a different line.
There are three things I want to do. I want to, first of all, respond to some of the comments made by the parliamentary assistant. I want the parliamentary assistant to know up front I think he's a heck of a nice guy and tries to do his job well and all that. But all that being equal, my job here is also to try to ascertain how the estimates of the Premier are working, if it's to the benefit of the people of Ontario and if it's working the way it should. With that in mind, let's go on.
The first thing I would say is that one of the comments I found really intriguing from the parliamentary assistant at the very beginning was when he said how, ever since his government came to power, it had a principle of accountability in everything it did. I have just come out of the question period process today and watched the Premier respond, I think miserably, to a very serious situation that happened to three cabinet ministers with regard to the Integrity Commissioner's act.
For the parliamentary assistant to come here and say that this government and this Premier have always had principles of accountability, if that were the case, the Premier would have done the right thing. Clearly, the three ministers have contravened the conflict-of-interest guidelines with regard to the Members' Integrity Act. The traditions of the Legislature and the traditions of the British parliamentary system over the years have always been that when those guidelines are broken or when inappropriate action on the part of any minister is taken, the minister himself offers his resignation; if not, it's the responsibility of the Premier to make sure the resignation is taken because, after all, the Premier appoints cabinet ministers the same way the Premier can unappoint them fairly quickly.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but I need to make the point. What troubles me about this whole situation we find ourselves in with regard to what has happened this afternoon is that the Premier has demonstrated over and over again this lack of understanding of what his responsibility is as Premier of this province. Once of those responsibilities is that he has to make sure that his cabinet is kept on the straight and narrow, that in fact they're following the laws and the government is following the laws and the principles. The point is, for somebody to say that this government believes in principles and accountability, I really find it passing strange that this is said on the same day the Premier didn't accept responsibility or accountability for the actions of three of his ministers.
His response was that the Integrity Commissioner, Mr Gregory Evans, didn't set any penalties within his decision. Well, excuse me. If anybody read the Members' Integrity Act, you would understand that the commissioner cannot, by law, direct the Premier to take any actions when it comes to the conduct of the minister; that is left to the Premier himself. The role of the Integrity Commissioner, Mr Evans -- who I might say is an ancient constituent of mine; he comes from Timmins, good gentleman that he is and about to retire, should have retired some time ago, and has done the job admirably for years -- is to point out whether or not there was a breach of the conflict-of-interest guidelines. That's his job, and that's all he can do when it comes to members of the cabinet. Then the Legislative Assembly Act basically says that the Premier now has to make a decision based on the report of the Integrity Commissioner.
What I find really distressing is that in this particular case the Premier says, "Well, I'm going to apply the standard a little bit differently when it comes to my ministers and my government than was the case when other governments were in place." The danger here is that yes, the Tory Mike Harris government was elected, it got a majority of the seats in this Legislature by virtue of our British parliamentary system; first past the post, you got 42% of the vote, whatever the numbers were, and you got about 65 --
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Mr Bill Vankoughnet (Frontenac-Addington): Better than 38.
Mr Bisson: To make the point, by virtue of the British parliamentary system, our system, it's first past the post. Your government, with 45% of the vote in Ontario, won over 60% of the seats in this House, and you can do what you want. But incumbent upon being government is also ruling within the law and governing within the intent of the law and not taking yourselves above or beside the law and always trying to make sure that we're there recognizing the democratic principles our society is built on. If there's one thing that really bothers me about this government, and I think it's bothering a lot more people out there, it's how this government is flagrant when it comes to their democratic responsibilities towards the citizens. That comment I couldn't let go.
Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): You must have learned all this since you were in power.
Mr Bisson: You learn a lot of things being on both sides of the House. One of the things you learn from going from government to opposition is that the road out is pretty quick, and you never think it's going to happen to you. When you get on the other side, you start to recognize that it ain't what we think it is sometimes when we're in government. It's a humbling experience being on both sides of the House and something hopefully, when we go back in government, that I have learned. I'm not going to repeat some of the actions I think all governments have been guilty of, not just yours. But that's the arrogance of power. We need to find a way in our system of government so that, yes, the government has the right to govern and make decisions on behalf of the people, that's what responsible government is all about, but must do so in a method that recognizes the democratic principles. That's what bothers me about this government.
The other thing the parliamentary assistant went on to talk about was how the Premier's office is responsible for coordinating all government policies. No kidding. If there has ever been a Premier in Ontario who has centralized the power of cabinet and the power of a government, it's Mike Harris. Again, I, as a member of a previous government under Bob Rae, and Mr Phillips, who was a member of a previous government under Mr Peterson, understand that premiers, by nature of the job, have a lot of power. Some of them like to keep that power close to them a lot more than others.
The comment I would make is that if there's a Premier in the history of Ontario in my short memory of being conscious of what happens within the politics of Ontario, this particular Premier really is running what I think is akin to a one-man show. You've got the whiz kids in the Premier's office, who make most of the decisions along with the Premier, and everybody else has to fall in line and follow. I don't mean that to be combative. I'm saying this because I think one of the things we need to learn in modernizing our parliamentary system is a way to give all members, not just members in the opposition but all members in government and opposition, individual members, the ability to affect public policy. If there's something that really bothers me about what's happening in our Legislature today and has been coming for some years -- it's not, you know, the Mike Harris government that made this happen alone -- it is that this parliamentary system we have today, our Legislature, works more and more for the Premier and the cabinet and less and less for the individual members and for the people of the province we're here to represent.
I don't think it's particularly a lot of fun, especially for backbench government members or opposition members, to watch some of the decisions being made, really feeling as if you have no power to influence, because in the end the Premier, because of the nature of this place, decides everything. This Premier has demonstrated that he likes power, he wants to keep it close to him and is going to exercise that power in the way he sees fit.
He's going to get some things right. No Premier is elected and does everything wrong. I'm the first to admit that Premier Harris has made some good decisions in being Premier of the province. But I think not only myself and Mr Wettlaufer, but a lot of other members in this assembly, and I would include government members, are really worried and really, truly concerned about some of the decisions being made around here. I'm not saying that in partisanship; I'm saying that for what it is.
One of the things we desperately need to do in our parliamentary system is find a way to modernize it so that the people can find a voice in this place and that when people look in the Legislature they don't see party organs and they don't see the Premier's office running everything, rather what they see are members who, yes, are part of parties and, yes, have an idealistic belief that they bring to the Legislature but respond to the needs of the citizenry.
What we've seen in this Parliament -- and it didn't start with this government; it started a long time ago, just by the natural evolution process of the parliamentary system -- what we've seen in this government, is a real acceleration towards the whole issue of how individual members of the government and individual members of the assembly really don't have a lot of say about what happens and the decisions are made centrally by the Premier's office. That disturbs me.
Mr Wettlaufer: You're making those assumptions because you were a member of the previous government.
Mr Bisson: I was a member of a previous government, as was Mr Phillips a member of that government's previous government, as was Mr Harris a member of the previous Davis government. We all saw premiers make decisions and we all saw premiers like to exercise power. The point I make is that this particular Premier is really drunk on power in the sense that he really likes to keep everything close to him and he likes to make those decisions and likes to be able to basically hold all the cards. In the end, individual members and the public suffer for that.
The other thing the parliamentary assistant said, which again was of interest -- it's interesting he made this reference, and I hope I'm not getting this wrong -- was that the Premier's office staff, and ultimately the Premier, oversee the running of the public appointments secretariat, as I call it, and are responsible for it. I guess that's true with any government, that we all make political appointments to boards and commissions; it doesn't matter if it's a Tory, NDP or Liberal government. But what we're seeing with this particular government is really a return to the basics, as Mr Clement has put it, where we're putting in the good old boys, the good friends of the Tory Party, and some of them I guess of the caucus, to be responsible for commissions.
I note that just recently the Niagara Escarpment Commission has seen the appointment of a couple of individuals who have, as stated fact, publicly said they want to see the Niagara Escarpment Commission disbanded. They want to see it gone, they want to see it out of the way, so developers can have a free hand on the Niagara Escarpment.
When you see a government making those kinds of appointments, it reflects back on the Premier in the sense that you don't have a real public process of vetting whom we appoint and making sure the people appointed to the various commissions are appointed in such a way that we have the best possible people, with the interests of that commission's mandate, to follow through on those issues.
I would expect that a person appointed to the Niagara Escarpment Commission would be somebody who was either in the development business or in the real estate business or an environmentalist or a municipal politician who has an interest in the Niagara Escarpment and wants to see it preserved; that's the key word. What we've got is that this government on a number of occasions has appointed -- and I've got to think, because of the comments made by the parliamentary assistant, with the knowledge and probably the assent of the Premier -- people to commissions who have some pretty different ideas about what these commissions should be doing. Again, that scares me greatly.
Mr Wettlaufer: Dave Cooke.
Mr Bisson: Yes, David Cooke was appointed to the Education Improvement Commission; not the guy I would want to see there, to be quite blunt. I would have been happier seeing Dave in other capacities. I think he's a very competent guy. He was Minister of Education and a valued member of our caucus. It's not the appointment I'd like to see him in, but he's there. Better him than the devil we don't know. That's my view, I guess.
Anyway, the point I make is that when I hear the parliamentary assistant talk about the Premier's office overseeing all public appointments, yes, we know about that, and I think that's too bad. We need to try to find a way; our government had gone a long way in trying to find a way to make the public appointments process as independent of political interference as possible. It wasn't clean -- there's no such thing as a public appointment that's totally clean -- but I can tell you, as a member of the former NDP government, you had to go through a fairly stringent process to be appointed to commissions.
I look at my riding, which was only one of 130 ridings at the time from which people were appointed to various commissions and boards that were responsible to the province and to the people in my riding, and about 65% to 70% of those people appointed were not New Democrats. I'm actually proud of that, because we appointed the best possible people for the job. When that was a New Democrat, we did so; and when it wasn't a New Democrat, we didn't appoint the New Domocrat. We actually went out of our way to make sure -- I know where you're going to start making your comment, but the point I'm making is that in the end we made darned sure we didn't put ourselves in the position where the majority of the people on the boards and commissions were card-carrying New Democrats.
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I look at the Ontario heritage board. The appointment from our area was Jim Kiezer, who was not to my knowledge a New Democrat, probably a Tory -- I would say a red Tory, certainly not one of this group -- who served well on the board. Jaimie Lym on the Timmins police commission; I don't know her politics, but I can tell you I don't think she has mine. She certainly doesn't have a card as a New Democrat. I can go over and over all the appointments of justices of the peace and others. They were basically people appointed by an independent process that was fairly stringent. I think that was better for the province and better for us overall. In fact, I used to bemoan sometimes the ability to appoint some of our NDP people who I thought should have been appointed and really had to go the extra mile to prove they deserved the appointment. Anyway, the point I make is that this government has a record that's a bit sad when it comes to appointments.
This I can't resist -- boy, oh, boy. This government ran on getting the budget balanced, so we must clean our own house first. That could be partly true. I guess that statement is based on some fact, but when we talk about our own house, we should be very careful where we throw stones and we should be very careful about what we're saying here. The media haven't picked this up, and I am amazed. It's either that you guys are Teflon when it comes to this issue with the media or the media don't care. When it comes to the salary of the Premier as compared to what premiers used to get paid before, the Premier makes a hell of a lot more money than any other Premier has made in the past. The Premier of the province prior to Mike Harris taking office used to be paid in the neighbourhood of around $90,000 per year, a $44,000 basic wage that all members got and about a $35,000 stipend above that and a tax-free allowance, which brought you to about $90,000.
This government has changed the way we pay members. Some of what they did was right. They took away the tax-free allowance, what we used to call our stipend, and they rolled it into our wages; not a bad idea. I think constituents deserve to know that whatever dollars I get, I pay tax on. I don't have an objection to that. But I look at the Premier's salary. I look at what Bob Rae used to get paid and I look at what Mike Harris gets paid, and there's about a $40,000 difference; a guy who says, "I'm going to get my own house in order"? I'm sorry. I look at what cabinet gets, and I look at what I get as a member. All I know is that at the end of the day when I look at the overall salary the Premier gets, he gets substantially more than other premiers got before.
If we're going to get into the issue of pensions, my God, a book could be written about what the Premier did. I think he was directly involved in how the members' pension plan was restructured to where I don't think Mike Harris and a whole bunch of other people are hurting by getting rid of what were called gold-plated pensions; I think in the end they turned them into platinum.
That is an interesting comment to make, that we need to get our own house in order. Getting our own house in order doesn't mean we should all cut our salaries and work for nothing, but it means that you don't treat yourself any differently than you would treat anybody else. All I know is that when I look at people who work for the government, either political staff or the civil service, they didn't get a whole bunch of salary increases. When I look at what the salary of the Premier of the province used to be, unless I'm terribly mistaken, it was $44,000 plus $35,000 plus around $12,000 on the tax-free, and now it's a base of $78,000 plus $61,000, for $139,000. It's interesting that we would make that comment.
The other point that the member raised, and again I need to touch on this only to set the record straight: The parliamentary assistant talked about how this government has sat in the House for the last 200 days and in the last year of the Rae government we only sat for 20 days. Don't give people the illusion that the Rae government never sat in the Legislature. The reality is that we had a fall sitting in 1994 and, prior to the session being called, the Premier, Bob Rae, decided to call an election.
That is probably what's going to happen with you at the end of your term: You will call an election based on the Premier's thinking of when it should be done. If you happen to call the election in the spring of whatever year, you will have sat less than any other government in that one particular year because you will only have your fall session to count or maybe no days at all, depending on when you call.
I was a member of the last Legislature, the 35th Parliament, where we sat in excess of what the previous government had sat before that, and not because the previous government under Mr Peterson didn't want to do any work, quite to the contrary; they did a lot of work when they were government. But I remember sitting here well into August and some pretty extended sittings dealing with what were the government's priorities at the time.
To leave the illusion that the Rae government didn't sit at all, we only sat for 20 days in the last year, implying that somehow or other the government didn't want the Legislature to sit or that we weren't interested in doing the business of Ontario, is very misleading and wrong, and I think that needs to be clarified.
Every government has an agenda that it wants to carry forward and pass into legislation. This government has sat a lot this year. I accept that. One of the reasons this government has sat a lot this year is that you want to pass your entire agenda within the first two years of your mandate, so that in the last three years or the last one or two years of your mandate you can hopefully get all the bad news behind you, throw a few crumbs at the end and hope the voter forgets and you can win another majority.
That's basically the strategy of this government. Who knows? It might work. The voters voted back in the Liberal government in Ottawa, so who knows? Maybe the memory of the voters is short, and maybe they're going to say, "I don't remember everything the Harris government did." I doubt that. I think the stuff you guys are doing as a government -- on balance, 20% of it is okay, the rest of it is either questionable or pretty darned wrong -- will be remembered by the people of this province.
I just look at the travels I've had through the province -- and I travel probably more than most members in this House. In fact, I'm listed as the member with the seventh-highest expenses when it came to travelling last year, and that's because I'm travelling the province and travelling between my constituency and here doing my job, as all other members do.
In going around the province, I can tell you, from Thunder Bay to Fort Frances to North Bay, Timmins, Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor, everywhere I go, increasingly there are people who are very, very concerned about where this government is going. Still they're prepared to say: "Maybe this will work. I hope it does. They tell me it will. All I know is, I want the balanced budget at the end of it. That's sort of the gift. They tell me it's going to work, so I kind of believe, but Jeez, I really worry about where this is all going. Will my health care system still respond to the needs of the people? Will our education system still work for our kids? Will our roads be maintained? Will our municipalities still have infrastructure that will serve the needs of our communities? I'm really worried about what will happen in the longer run."
The problem this government has is that it's going to try to coast for the last two years, but it's pretty hard to coast when you've got an agenda such as yours hung around your neck. This government is going to have some problems when it comes to the electorate when they go back to vote, for the very simple reason that there's hardly anybody you haven't touched.
That's really one of the things I learned when we were in government: The success of a good government is a government that is able to manage change effectively so that people come to terms with the change you want to make and buy into it. This government wants the change to happen, they're not managing it very well and they don't give a darn if people like it or not, they're doing it. In the end, I think you're going to pay a political price for that.
The other comment the parliamentary assistant made was about dealing with the estimates themselves, when he talked about the staff of the Premier and the staff of the parliamentary assistant. Some of the numbers are kind of interesting. There's an old saying, "Figures lie and liars figure." There are all kinds of sayings. We look at numbers and we make what we want of them. But I want to clarify a couple of points.
First of all, the parliamentary assistant, as the Premier and as many members of this cabinet, if not all, has great pride in standing there and saying: "The former NDP government had two sets of books. They aren't telling the people all the truth here; they're hiding things from them." Hogwash. At the end of the day, we had basically off book the stuff on capital, and everything else, when it came to the operational expenses of the government, was accounted for in the budget books. Yes, we had a different account methodology based on what some of the other provinces were doing and we were saying, as a lot of businesses do and as a lot of individuals do --
Mr Wettlaufer: Not as businesses do.
Mr Bisson: Listen, businesses operate --
Mr Wettlaufer: Not as businesses do.
Mr Bisson: It's my time, and I'll use it the way I --
The Acting Chair: That's right, it's his time.
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Mr Bisson: When you get your time, you'll be able to do what you want and I'll have to endure it as well.
The point I make is that the government had made a decision that capital expenses were going to be accounted for separately, so that people can see the investment the government of Ontario is making in investing capital dollars into everything from our roads to the reconstruction of our schools to the reconstruction of hospitals, and that was shown separately. The operational side of the books was shown separately from that as well, but at the end in the budget book when you read it, it said, "In total, this is how much money the government brought in, and this is how much money the government spent."
No attempt was ever made by Treasurer Floyd Laughren, Premier Bob Rae or any members of the government under the NDP to try to hide from the people what the actual expenses of the province of Ontario were. This government decides to do it differently. I accept that. That's your choice as a government. You account for it the way you think is right.
I'll just leave it at that and say that basically our government had decided to do it differently. We decided that yes, we were going to invest money on the capital side. We were going to invest in everything from hospitals to roads to schools in regard to building that infrastructure as an investment for the future. I think it was a good policy, given the economic times we were in. We were in the midst of the deepest recession this province had seen since the Dirty Thirties, and we made a decision to reinvest in Ontario by way of capital. That's one of the mechanisms governments have.
I would say that if Mike Harris had been in government in 1990, he would have had to face the same dilemmas that we did. You know what? At the end, they would have had a deficit too, because the reality is that if we had done nothing as a government, just carried on the fiscal plan the Liberals had left for us, the economy had changed and we would have been faced with an $8.5-billion deficit no matter what we did.
We chose to spend a little bit better than $2 billion both between capital and the wage protection fund to protect workers who were losing their jobs by the hundreds of thousands because of the restructuring that was happening in our economy, both the restructuring in terms of the mechanization of our economy and the technologies that are taking away jobs by using more technology within our workplaces, and also because of the restructuring of a multinational economy, which is the reality of where we find ourselves.
For this government to always stand and say, "The 10 lost years, and the Rae government ran up the debt to $10 billion, $11 billion at its highest, and it was all their fault," come on, guys, give it a break and give your head a shake a bit. The reality is, yes, we spent an additional $2 billion in capital and a wage protection plan. That's a decision we made in the 1991 budget. It's a decision I would make again, given that particular time, that basically we invest in our communities in a time of recession. But to try to pin the entire deficit on the back of the NDP is wrong.
The other thing is -- and I think I've got about four or five minutes left if I'm watching the clock --
The Acting Chair: As a matter of fact, you've got three minutes left.
Mr Bisson: Three minutes. In the last three minutes -- I'm watching my time very closely -- the comments made by the parliamentary assistant in regard to the positions within the Premier's office: He took great pride in saying that when Bob Rae was the Premier, there were 43 people working in the Premier's office, of which only 26 were permanent staff and the rest were seconded staff and we were having all these phantom employees running around the Premier's office.
Two things I say: Yes, our Premier's office, as other cabinet offices have within this government, seconded staff from ministries to work on various projects. That's what happens when you've got an idealistic government, such as ours or yours that's in place, that's trying to make a lot of change: You bring in people in order to manage or to deal with some of your policy initiatives. We had those people.
But the point I make is, when you use the inflated number the parliamentary assistant used from 1994-95, which says $2.7 million was spent on the Premier's office with 43 staff total, and now you say, "We've got that down to some 32 or 34" or whatever it is, the reality is that you're still spending the same amount of money. If you shed all these positions, what the hell have you done with the money? The reality is that you have an office to run, there are expenses associated with that and you have to pay the bills.
To somehow say that the previous Premier's office was overspending or the former Premier's office was overstaffed is very misleading. The reality is, if you look at your numbers that you're trying to use, which is the inflated number of $2.7 million in 1994-95, you are now using, according to your own estimates, $2.8 million as expenses in the Premier's office and you supposedly have less staff. What have you done? Why are you where you are?
The other point I would make in closing, the last one, is about the expenses of the Premier's office in regard to the move. I don't buy for a second that the Premier's office moved up to the sixth floor of the Whitney building based strictly on what the OIC wanted it to do in regard to -- the ORC I should say; that's the problem, we always talk in jargon in this place -- that the Ontario Realty Corp forced the Premier to move out of his office.
The reality is that the Premier wanted out of where he was, and he wanted to have his own office complex on the sixth floor of the Whitney Block for some fairly direct reasons. It's a heck of a lot harder to do a protest up there than it is on the second floor of the main Legislative Building. That's what prompted the Premier to move. So let's not start playing games here. The reality is that the Premier made a conscious decision, there's a cost associated with that and the Premier has moved. It's not because the ORC forced him out of his offices. The Premier decided to move. It was his own decision. We know this Premier is not one who takes suggestions well or takes direction from others. I don't believe for a second that the ORC is the one that forced him out. Thank you very much, Chair.
The Acting Chair: Right on the numbers.
Mr Bisson: Right on the numbers, as always.
The Acting Chair: We'll move on to the third party and see what happens.
Mr Bisson: Thank you very much. I'd like to make comments again on behalf of the third party.
The Acting Chair: My apologies. We'll move on to the governing party. Excuse me.
Mr Bisson: Are you trying to say that's where you guys are going to be next time? What is it, from government to third, third to government every time?
The Acting Chair: Don't read between the lines on that one. We'll go to the third party. Are there any comments, rather, from from the government party?
Mr Wettlaufer: We're still the government party, no matter how you look at it.
The Acting Chair: You do have the right of reply before I go on to the government party.
Mr Clement: If the government side has no objection, I do have a couple of replies to Mr Bisson.
Mr Bisson: No. I was trying to be nice, Tony.
Mr Clement: You were very nice.
Mr Bisson: I could have been indignant and all that kind of stuff.
Mr Clement: I've seen that side of you. Let me thank Mr Bisson for his comments, which were held by him; he obviously believes in them, and he obviously wants to put forward his point of view, and I thank him for doing so. He raised some very cogent points which I'd like to have the opportunity to add my overlay on as well.
Firstly, Mr Bisson dealt with the issue of accountability and mentioned some issues that are before the House or were mentioned in the House today. I couldn't agree with him more. I think government members, and indeed all members who purport to represent their constituents properly, continually have to struggle to be accountable to them. It is a struggle that never ends. The politician who says, "We are completely accountable and no more accountability is needed," I wouldn't trust that politician. I think more needs to be done, absolutely.
I do take pride in the way we have rearranged the accounts of this province and how we've rearranged the accounts in the Premier's office, because I believe it does achieve more accountability by politicians in terms of their decisions and how it affects the taxpayers. But I think your point is well taken, that we continually have to strive to meet the goal of perfect accountability.
One of the things I work on on behalf of the Premier as his parliamentary assistant is in the area of direct democracy. The honourable member mentioned ways in which our current structure, because of the vicissitudes of our electoral system, first past the post versus proportional representation and so on, does not lead to results that he or others deem to be accurate; in fact, there have been experts in this field as well.
One of the tacks we have taken is to try to increase direct accountability of public policy positions, put that accountability in the hands of the people directly through referendums. I would note for the record Mr Bisson's colleague, Mr Silipo, has been working with me on the Legislative Assembly committee on behalf of his caucus and has produced some excellent ideas on this very subject. I hope I can speak, having dealt with this matter for several months with my caucus --
Mr Bisson: That's what being a New Democrat means: democratic.
Mr Clement: That's very good. I never really noticed that before. I've been working with my caucus colleagues both on the Legislative Assembly committee and more broadly in the caucus to come up with something that will add to the accountability of the political system as a system for the people of Ontario. So I don't think there's much we can disagree on there.
Mr Phillips: Mr Chair, I'm not trying to be rude, but we go till 6 o'clock. I'd like to hear the rest of it, but I wonder if we couldn't --
The Acting Chair: I understand that we cannot go beyond 6 o'clock, and if a member has brought this to my attention, I have no choice but to adjourn the meeting. That is my understanding.
Mr Phillips: I'd be happy to hear the rest of the response when we get back.
Mr Bisson: I'll be back. I want to hear the rest of this.
The Acting Chair: It's my understanding some members would have liked to have continued, but I don't have any choice in the matter.
Mr Bill Grimmett (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): Mr Bisson is going to be here next week, but I don't think the committee will be. I think we decided at the last meeting that we would reconvene when the House reconvenes in August. I'm sure Mr Bisson is anxious to be in Toronto.
Mr Bisson: That's why my expenses were the seventh- highest.
Mr Grimmett: Perhaps at the next meeting we can explore Mr Bisson's estimates.
Mr Bisson: No problem.
Mr Grimmett: He seems anxious to talk about them.
Mr Bisson: Hey, listen, it's called public accountability.
Mr Phillips: See you later.
The Acting Chair: Have a good day.
The committee adjourned at 1802.