Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

MINISTRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT

CONTENTS

Monday 18 February 1991

Ministry of the Environment

Adjournment

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES

Chair: Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South PC)

Vice-Chair: Marland, Margaret (Mississauga South PC)

Carr, Gary (Oakville South PC)

Daigeler, Hans (Nepean L)

Hansen, Ron (Lincoln NDP)

Haslam, Karen (Perth NDP)

Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville NDP)

McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South L)

McLeod, Lyn (Fort William L)

Perruzza, Anthony (Downsview NDP)

Ward, Margery (Don Mills NDP)

Wilson, Gary (Kingston and The Islands NDP)

Substitutions:

Conway, Sean G. (Renfrew North L) for Mr McGuinty

Cousens, W. Donald (Markham PC) for Mr Carr

O'Connor, Larry (Durham-York NDP) for Ms M. Ward

Clerk: Carrozza, Franco

Staff: Campbell, Elaine, Research Officer, Legislative Research Service

The committee met at 1239 in room 228.

MINISTRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT

The Chair: I would like to call to order the standing committee on estimates. We are to begin eight full hours of the estimates of the Ministry of the Environment. We are pleased to welcome the Minister of the Environment, the Honourable Ruth Grier. In accordance with custom and the standing orders, the minister will speak for up to one half-hour, followed by the official opposition, which will be given up to half an hour, then the third party for up to half an hour, and then the minister will respond to the questions and comments in the final half-hour segment available to her. I will then propose a four- or five-minute break and then we will reconvene to begin the estimates in accordance with the votes. Seeing no questions, I will hand the floor over to the Minister of the Environment. Welcome.

Hon Mrs Grier: Thank you, Mr Chair. It is nice to be here on this side of the microphone after spending long hours in estimates in another place. At this point, it is nice to be here on this side of the microphone; at the end of eight hours, I may well feel that it is more appropriate that positions be reversed.

Let me tell you, I hope to your pleasure, that I do not have a long prepared statement. As I am sure members of the committee are aware, these are estimates that were prepared by my predecessor, the Honourable Jim Bradley. I have become more conscious of the trials and tribulations he has suffered over the years during the last five months, but I am glad to bring forward these estimates to try to give you a flavour of the directions I am taking and that the government is taking with respect to the environment. I know there are a lot of issues on which members of the committee will have questions.

There are representatives of the ministry here who have all of the details at their fingertips. With me at the front is Deputy Minister Gary Posen, and Edna Lim from my staff. I hope that by responding to questions, we can perhaps bring out those issues which are of interest specifically to the members of the committee.

Let me just start by saying that my tenure at the ministry has, I think, indicated initially four major policy directions, the first being that this is a green government and the government in all its various ministries and in its own management, through the Ministry of Government Services, is looking very strongly at where it can both set an example and show leadership in taking environmental issues into account in every decision the government makes. I am very pleased to find that my colleagues, whether in Transportation or whatever, are very conscious as they bring forward their issues to the Legislature and to cabinet that in fact the environment has to be part of those decisions.

We also come to the thrust that everyone has a stake in the environment and a right to share in it and a responsibility for its protection. I will talk a little about the bill of rights, which I know many members have been familiar with in the past, but I think that is an example of that kind of philosophy.

Third, the direction has been that if we are going to have a sustainable environment, a sustainable economy, we have to look at how we can shift from being a consumer society towards a conserver society, and the initiatives I have taken with respect to waste management reflect on that approach.

Finally, we must focus on prevention strategies to head off pollution of our environment as well as on action programs to clean up existing problems. That is going to be the longer-term initiative and more difficult, I am sure, to put in place in totality, but that is the general sense and the general direction I hope we can take in the future.

I recognize that I am building on a very strong foundation that was laid by Jim Bradley and my predecessors; there have been a lot of activity and a lot of good initiatives taken in that ministry over the last five years. Some of the programs, as I said in opposition, I found have not been moving quite as quickly as I would like to see them move. We are certainly taking a close look at every aspect of the ministry, and I hope when I bring forward my own estimates next year that we can perhaps reflect on some of those.

But let me talk specifically about some of the directions I have identified. Of course, the one which has occupied most of my time since 1 October has been waste management and the crisis we face not just in the larger cities of the province but right across the province as we are running out of landfill sites and as people are looking at what they are going to do about their waste in their particular community.

The thrust of the government has been that the first priority has to be looking seriously at the 3Rs: Waste reduction, waste reuse and then waste recycling has been the direction I have been coming at this. I have had a lot of consultation with the various players, from Ontario Multi-Material Recycling Inc to the municipalities to industries, around how we can accelerate the 3Rs.

I am pleased to be able to share with the committee that, as of today, the first person in our waste reduction office has begun work at the ministry, Drew Blackwell, who is known to many people in the environmental movement for his work with the national packaging protocol and more recently with Metro Toronto's solid waste environmental assessment plan. He has come in as director of our waste reduction office, and it will be his responsibility to work with the various stakeholders and look at how we can accelerate the 3Rs program and work in partnership with the municipalities, with the environmental groups, with the communities, to expand on that, because I certainly believe that if we can get serious about waste reduction we make it a lot easier to look at the disposal of the residue. If we can begin to extract from the waste stream as much as possible of those resources that can be reused, then when we come to siting a landfill site, we are not faced with the putrescible wastes, the compostable wastes which people do not want to have in their communities. It is certainly my hope that we can make siting questions a little easier to answer.

With respect to that, the second initiative we have taken is to look very seriously at the Environmental Assessment Act. Members will recall that when I made my announcement in the House last November about waste management issues within the GTA, I said the discussion paper which had been prepared for my predecessor would be released. That has happened, and we are now getting back from the various communities comments on that paper. The thrust of that discussion paper was to take a serious look at the Environmental Assessment Act and see how it could be made more efficient and more effective.

I was becoming concerned, as I know are many people, that because of the way in which the Environmental Assessment Act was being implemented, the long time frames between a proponent making a proposal and getting to the hearing board and the length and expense of hearings, in many ways the whole process of environmental assessment was somehow coming into disrepute, and as an environmentalist I found that very disturbing. The thrust of the discussion paper looks at how we can address some of those problems, how we can look for concurrent review by ministries and agencies of proposals, how we can look at shortening the time frames and giving some certainty to the process, so that people will not spend a lot of money for consultants trying to avoid the Environmental Assessment Act but will in fact come to see it as an effective and important tool in protecting the environment; because, as I said in the first paragraph of my comments, prevention is an awful lot cheaper and an awful lot easier than cleaning up afterwards. I think true prevention of environmental problems starts when you have a rigorous environmental evaluation before you embark upon a project.

The third thrust I have been giving my time to has been preparation of my environmental bill of rights. Bonnie Wein from our legal staff is here. She has been the chair of an advisory committee that is composed of representatives from a diverse number of groups, who have been looking at the private member's bill I had placed before the Legislature in opposition and giving it some very detailed scrutiny to see how we can come up with a piece of legislation that embodies the principles which all members of the House have supported in the past and put into place legislation that will be effective and concrete and will take us a real step forward to being a leader in this country in having an environmental bill of rights. I am happy to talk in some more detail on the aspects of that.

We have also initiated discussion and preparation of a safe drinking water act. That is something that has not had as wide an advisory group and as much discussion as the environmental bill of rights, but it certainly is a priority for the government and something our policy staff has been looking at over the last five months.

The almost final section I wanted to talk about -- maybe I have touched on all of them, seeing I did not come with a written statement for you -- was the municipal-industrial strategy for abatement program. MISA had a budget of $22 million this fiscal year, and it is a program that is aimed at virtual elimination of contaminant loadings to the rivers and lakes, a program that so far has had monitoring regulations put out for the nine industrial sectors that were to be covered by the program. We have now completed all of that monitoring, all of the data has come back, so what is happening within the ministry is an evaluation of that monitoring.

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I have asked my staff to look and see what we can do to expedite the regulations that will control the discharges, because people will remember that when MISA was initially introduced in 1976 it was contemplated that the control regulations would be there by 1989. We have missed that deadline, but it is certainly my hope that we can look at how we can accelerate that program and make it an effective tool in the prevention of pollution, as opposed to the very expensive cleanups that were embarked on in various parts of the province because we did not have in place decades, years, even generations ago the kind of pollution prevention, the kind of proactive working with our partners, with the municipalities and with the proponents, to devise the best possible ways of achieving their objectives and the kind of environmental evaluation that I hope we will have in Ontario when the Environmental Assessment Act is amended and made, as I say, a more effective tool for considering projects before they are embarked upon.

That is the thrust of the initiatives I have been working on in my five months in the ministry. As I say, we have, as is customary, a large number of experts on the actual details and figures of the estimates the committee is considering, and I am more than happy to respond to questions when we have heard the statements from the opposition members.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Minister. I would like to recognize Mr Conway as the first speaker.

Mr Conway: Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. I am happy to be here filling in for my friend and colleague the member for Halton Centre, who is the party spokesman on the Environment and who is not able to be with us today.

I am going to try to follow the minister's good example in making some general comments of a preliminary nature. I understand there is a fairly well established protocol here of then moving into more general items in later rounds.

I am pleased to be here as a substitute today to hear the member give an outline of her intentions and the plans of her government in an area of public policy that probably is more important than just about any other in the community at present, and, without wishing to be unduly congratulatory, I think if there is anyone who has the ability, the experience and the mettle to see some of this through, the incumbent minister will be that person.

Reflecting upon 15 and a half years in this place, I am always struck that the Minister of the Environment would be paid the same amount of money as a minister of -- I will not name some others -- because it seems to me there are some pretty tough places to be in government, and the Environment job is certainly about as mean and tough and awful a place to be as I can imagine. It is not something I would wish on too many of my close friends. I say that quite seriously; it is a very tough job. I have seen the toll it has taken on a number of other people.

I think of being in this room about 10 or 12 years ago with a very fine fellow, the former member for Oxford, Dr Parrott. I want to return to something in connection with Dr Parrott's tenure as Minister of the Environment later in these discussions. I will serve notice of it now, however: It is the genesis and the first decade of the Ontario Waste Management Corp, not so much for what it is currently doing or not doing but as a paradigm for some of the policy issues and the processes that will, I think, be of interest certainly to this Legislature. I am sure there are aspects of it that the deputy will not want to talk about, and I intend to be very polite in asking some of these questions. I saw Harry Parrott struggle after the days of Cayuga, and I was thinking of him as I walked in here today, 10 years and I do not know how many hundreds of millions of dollars later on that one item alone.

I just want to wish the minister all the very best as she proceeds in an area which I know is of particular importance to her colleagues in government and in the New Democratic Party. I made a note of her initial observation about finding "a flavour" for some new directions, and I think it would be useful today and tomorrow -- certainly from my point of view and I profess no expertise in this area, but I am interested and I know my colleagues in the official opposition will be interested -- in pursuing as best we can at this point, five and a half months or five months into the new government's term, what some of that flavour is, and hopefully beyond just a general sense of flavour perhaps to look more specifically at some of what the new minister intends and the new government intends.

She will appreciate how we will be interested to assess flavour and policy and performance against promise, because she was very generous in her opening remarks about the rock on which she will build. I am sure my friend the member for St Catharines would be pleased to know that she made the observations she did, and I have no intentions of interfering with that particular relationship, because those of us who have been around here since at least 1985 have watched it, I think in a very positive way, develop on matters of public policy.

I think it has to be said that the minister and certainly her colleague the member for York South have been extremely clear and extremely critical of many components of previous orders. Later in these estimates I will be looking back to some of the specifics of that criticism. I think part of the charm of the current minister was always her understanding, the completeness of her canvass, whether she was talking about clean air and the inadequacies of the current regulation, or whether she was talking about the need for a much more vigorous reduction of policy than we have had over the last decade and how it could be done so much more effectively.

I was thinking this morning, as I happened to hear the radio service of the national broadcasting corporation, the minister and the Metropolitan Toronto chair talking about the garbage question -- I know she will want to talk about that a little bit later in these estimates -- but I was struck by what I thought was a tentativeness around some of her observations relative to what I recall a year or so ago when she was as clear as an Etobicoke bell on what needed to be done.

I was reading the press the other day and was struck by, apparently, the difficulties that surround the so-called Kirkland Lake proposal. I am sure we will have an opportunity again later in these estimates to talk about the specifics of those kinds of initiatives. Certainly the Metropolitan Toronto chair this morning, and I gather a number of his colleagues on that particular regional government, have been a little concerned in recent weeks to see or to not see certain actions from the provincial government.

I was very struck by something that happened, I think it was in October or November, when the new government seemed to be saying -- I think the minister said that it was her expectation that the provincial government would be taking more of a role, more of a responsibility in the whole question of garbage, and rarely have I seen such a chorus of applause from across the province, particularly at the municipal level. The applause was so spontaneous and so prolonged as to make me think that the minister had offered or the new government had offered something that it was surely very anxious to offer for the short and for the longer haul.

We are certainly going to want to talk about how some of that partnership in garbage is coming, how it is that a lot of communities that are currently facing very tight time lines are going to cope with the next few years.

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I remember being part of another event actually, just accidentally, at a federal by-election in York North, some time late in the fall. I did not even realize that some announcement around Keele Valley had in fact been made. That certainly seized the attention of a number of people who were going off to cast a ballot in, I think, a December federal by-election. The minister looks rather quizzical. I would certainly be quizzical too. These people certainly had a very clear view about some announcement around potential extensions for sites like Keele Valley should certain eventualities obtain. I was really impressed by how quick the community was to react to what I thought was a fairly innocent announcement that had been made by the Minister of the Environment a few days earlier in the Legislature.

I am also very struck by her plans around the processes, like the environmental assessment process, and her desire to make those processes more sensitive, more responsive and I presume more conclusive, and I will be interested to pursue that with her later in these estimates.

It happened the other day that I met a former very distinguished member of the Legislature who sits on one of these panels. Without in any way seeking to compromise the honourable gentlemen, well known to the minister, this particular ex-MPP, now commissioner, was describing some of the more colourful experiences that were to be had in one major environmental undertaking that affects northern Ontario. I must say that I have been part of a number of legislative filibusters and delaying tactics, but I never thought of some of the schemes that are apparently regularly pursued in some of these hearings -- apparently.

Knowing that time is money and that ultimately these processes cost a great deal of money -- I do not mean to suggest for a moment that there ought not to be a way to provide maximum participation -- this sort of takes me back to the Ontario Waste Management Corp. How I remember that a decade ago government made an unfortunate mistake, it seemed to me, in assuming that we could just simply dump a lot of that toxic industrial waste in the Grand River basin, because it seemed at the time we owned a lot of land in and around Cayuga. Poor old Dr Parrott had to come back and say that, well, there really was another way and we were about to find it. I think in fairness to the Davis government, the second run at that was quite commendable in so far as the individual chosen to head the corporation, Dr Chant, and the structures and the process put in place seemed to me, looking from something of a distance, quite reasonable.

That it is apparently endless, that it is apparently going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars -- the last check I made was about a year ago and I do not even want to cite the number that was given me -- that it is apparently a process with no end, that it is a process now approaching $250 million, that it is a process years short, perhaps a decade away from there being any concrete facility to which the taxpayers can point and to which the community can apply, is I suspect not exactly what the taxpaying public would have imagined when that train left the station over 10 years ago.

I know that the minister certainly has the will, and she can and will find a way to deal with several of the other problems that we have spoken of, whether they are the municipal-industrial strategy for abatement, whether they are packaging, whether they are a lot of the related issues. But one of my questions, particularly as I look at the politics of the environmental debate, is, is there any reasonable and democratic way to give some resolution to this?

If one accepts the argument that to govern is to decide, at some point somebody has to decide something. I understand. I have rarely seen in my 15_ years in politics an area where it seems to be becoming more difficult for a lot of very good reasons, and that is why, as I said earlier, I cannot ever imagine having the job that our friend has at the present moment. It seems to me, for example, being a university president pales by comparison, and that to me is a relatively easy job.

To be Minister of the Environment, to have to deal with several constituents that seem to set the pace if not the policy in this area, cannot be easy. In reviewing the literature over the last 24 or 48 hours, I have been struck by the extent to which the minister and her colleagues in the executive council have in fact had a platform that has been very carefully set out, much of which seems to bear a very close relationship to a number of the not so quiet and not so docile members of that environmental special interest community. So I repeat that when she tells me that she is certainly going to try to make some good decisions in all of these areas, consistent with the greenness of her party and the electoral manifesto which has been referred to, I am sure in this committee, as I have been elsewhere, that I am going to be interested to see how the flavour of these new directions, and more importantly the specifics of new initiatives, give effect to that.

I was talking to some municipal people the other day and I know one of the questions they would want me to raise is, "Where are we with the capital grants?" We are now into the latter part of February. I gather we are late in the normal cycle for the announcement of some of those grants. I am just assuming, perhaps wrongly so, that this has to do with the whole question of the transfer announcements and the Treasury cycle that is somewhat delayed this year, and understandably so.

But having said that, there are a number of municipalities, many of them in my part of eastern Ontario, which when they hear the new Premier and the new minister, impressed as they are by the sense and the determination, will simply ask me, in Brockville, in Smiths Falls, in Belleville, in a variety of other communities, many of them in my own county of Renfrew, "When are we going to know if we have made the cut for the 1991-92 capital programs?"

I was in the Sudbury basin not too long ago and there was a lot of excitement -- some of it I think more than passingly informed, quite frankly -- about one of the old grievances, which certainly is a grievance in my area, namely that the capital grant formula, particularly as it relates to the sort of pre-Cambrian part of Ontario, when you look at communities of 1,000 or 1,500, people who have to pay a 15% share of a multimillion-dollar expenditure -- that they simply cannot easily imagine.

Certainly travelling in the Sudbury basin the other day, there was a sense of high excitement that this was going to change and that we would be soon hearing of it. I thought to myself, "Well, there may be two very good reasons for that change," and I would be the first to praise those people if they had been able to do what some of the rest of us were conspicuously incapable of doing at an earlier time in something of the same place.

There is a lot of interest in and concern about those capital allocations and what the municipalities can expect. A few people were even so bold as to inquire aloud as to the fate of the former government's crown agency, which I am just assuming is history. I think it has been announced as a non-starter since the new government was, certainly in the events of August-September, rather categorical, that is, the party was rather categorical about the inappropriateness of -- I will not say what was said at the time, but it was pretty clear that from the point of the New Democratic Party, the proposed water and sewer corporation was at the very least anathema, and if ever favoured with government, you can rest assured that it will not happen.

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Then I picked up the paper the other day and I saw poor Ms Goodall in Orillia. She had been led to believe that incineration would be banned as an option should the people of Ontario do what they did on 6 September and return the New Democrats to office, and here is poor Ms Goodall in possession of not one but two letters from the first minister himself, the second of which was apparently signed by his own hand, which suggests that in fact may not be what was initially suggested.

The minister looks quizzical again. I can only report what I see and what I read, that Ms Goodall seems like quite a credible witness. She said that she had a very clear statement from the leader of the New Democratic Party in the summer that incineration was simply not an option, not on. I can favour my friend from Etobicoke with a number of references from the files which suggest that she had a very similar view about the inappropriateness of incineration as an option. So, like Ms Goodall, I am somewhat confused when I read not one but two letters, the second signed by his own hand, which states that it may be an option of last resort and that the previous government's policy of incineration is "under active review," in that second letter signed by his own hand.

It appears that there is a growing gap here between a promise, which was I think legitimately offered, and performance, which is now being worked upon. I am sounding perhaps a little more mischievous here than is my normal wont or than I want to be, because certainly as a citizen, I am fully expecting that over the course of the next four or five years we are going to see some real sparks around this issue.

I was struck, again in just the last couple of days, to hear about some of the pilots, I think one of them actually being sponsored by the Ontario government -- I think it is in Cobourg -- around pricing, charging for garbage. In Peterborough, I gather, they have proceeded on their own. Certainly Metropolitan Toronto as a regional government or some of the various constituent parts of the region have already indicated a desire to proceed. I was struck, travelling through Peterborough the other day, how the Minister of Energy was concerned about the equity aspects of such a policy, as to what kind of efforts were going to be made by the government of Ontario, of which she is a part, to build in some equities so that families with several children, for example, would not be discriminated against to the advantage of bachelor members of the Ontario Legislature who might, under certain schemes, do very well by comparison. In fact I was struck by how Ms Carter, the member for Peterborough, the Minister of Energy, certainly seemed to be saying that the whole idea seemed to be flawed.

I am interested in knowing a bit more about the new government's flavour of new directions in this area, because it seems to me that is the kind of policy which will attract a very high level of immediate public attention. I know that certainly the people I represent will be very interested to know what you will do if you have a good experience out in Cobourg or Port Hope, and what kind of time line you have for new directions in this area. Time lines, of course, are going to be extremely important in the course of the next six or seven hours. I am interested to know what your time lines are for some of the MISA regulations, the whole past debate about levels of discharge, similarly with the clean air policy.

The helpful thing is that the record is replete with detailed proposals authored by the now minister. While some of this might have to be tempered by the realities of 6 September, I am assuming that we can all expect from a green party in government that by February 1991 there exists a fairly clear timetable to move along with the MISA regulations, the clean air regulations, how, for example, you are going to improve upon the packaging protocol to accommodate the Premier's vigorous protests of last summer. I will simply leave it there, to give you some sense of the flavour of my inquiry.

The Chair: I would like to recognize Mr Cousens.

Mr Cousens: I am glad to be here as well. I think it is an important eight hours for us to spend on one of the most important subjects facing all people on earth today, and if we can maybe contribute to an improved process and find out what the government is doing in a detailed way, I think it is an extremely valuable use of time.

Again, I want to say in beginning that we have the right person as Minister of the Environment. I do not think there is anyone who does not have a great deal of respect for the person who was the critic for Environment and saw her as one that brought many skills to the table. Certainly her appointment as minister reflected, I think, an honest evaluation of her skills.

None the less, the words that come from the minister really have to be translated into action that starts to make certain things happen. The challenge before you and all of us is great, and we wish you well on it, we really do. Sometimes in our questioning and our searching for solutions it may seem as if you are alone, but the fact of the matter is that if you are not successful we all fail. I think we all have to understand that there is a shared responsibility on environmental matters.

I also compliment you on your deputy and your staff. I do not think anyone can do a job unless she has a very conscientious, keen, capable civil service behind her and backing her up. My contact is somewhat limited, but I have to say that the executive director of corporate resources division, some of your people in the operations division, your own office staff and administrative staff have been very responsive to us. One can be critical on small points, but I sense a desire to share and to work together with us on things they can, and I encourage you to continue in that spirit.

I think there is a fundamental problem, and it has to do with the process under which we are all working. If the environment is really the issue we all say it is and believe it to be, then we as legislators should be working far more closely together than we are, yet we are into the confrontational atmosphere of the Legislature. You are on one side of the House; we are on the other side. You are on one side of the table now. It is seldom that you will see the three parties sitting around the same table together dealing with issues and talking about it for the real value.

So we are forced into this business of estimates. We will spend eight hours: The Liberals will have a certain amount of time, we will have a certain amount of time and your own caucus will have a certain amount of time, but the likelihood of ourselves meeting with you and talking about issues and really sitting down and saying, "Here is a commonality to it" --

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When you talk about the NDP being a green party, I happen to believe that our former critic of the Environment, Margaret Marland, and previous renditions of critics and ministers from our party gave leadership in their time and in their way that helped bring the whole process forward. When you began your remarks, you said "in the last five years." Well, the Ministry of the Environment did not start five years ago. It started years before that, when Harry Parrott was the first minister of it. Not everything happened then, but there is an evolution towards improved environmental concerns, values, regulations and systems that will cause our province to become more of a long-term province. We are not going to survive unless we take this far more seriously.

So when you said five years, there was far more happening before the last five years, and I just wanted to pass that on. It is part of the division that certain people are happy to make: "Okay, we're in power so we're going to do certain things," or when the Liberals were in power under David Peterson and they had their own approach to things. Quite candidly, we are all green. Margaret has a lot of green on and you have some. I am afraid I am wearing blue today. Oh, is it green? It looks like aqua. It is a good colour, anyway; nothing bleached about that one.

The point is, let's begin to look at another way in which we can all be working together. We are not right now -- maybe the kind of thing where you stand back from the ministry for a minute and realize that when you were in opposition there were many criticisms you had, and I think you brought a good spirit to the Legislature in the way you went towards Mr Bradley and criticized him. I think he was maybe the only minister you were a critic of, and I liked your approach: It was good, it was honest.

But let's get out of that. Are there things we can be doing in this Legislature where we -- for instance, your round table is a good approach, but why are there not some representatives from other caucuses? You are chairman of it. Why is there not someone from the Liberal caucus or from our caucus so that we have a way of knowing what is going on and feeding into that process? Why are there not opportunities for us to go if there is a seminar or a conference on environmental matters? You know as well as I do the limited financial capability of opposition parties to fund anything. You will have opportunities to go to Sweden to see what is going on at international conferences, or the United States. You should, because things are happening worldwide and representatives from your ministry or your staff will undoubtedly be taking part in some of these and should be because of the need to. It is not just a local Ontario problem; it is a world problem.

We should somehow find ways of working together in the long term. If it means getting that information together, I will just put forward the statement that if it is worth while and has benefit for the ministry and the staff or if it is something that could be of use in the Legislature, then open up the horizons so that people other than the minister and her own staff might go as well. I say that publicly because some people say, "Oh, there they go again on another trip." Far from it. It is only through those interactions that take place at the political level and the staff level that we grow and learn in the process of doing our job.

I am saying find those opportunities where we break through the logjam that is the system we are in. The system we are in is not working. I am not thrilled with the way our Parliament in Ontario is working. We are slow to react. The system we are in almost demands that opposition members criticize, criticize, sometimes very destructively, and that is not the view our caucus has. If we can see something that is going and it is good and there is a sea of goodness to it, let's promote it; if there are other ways in which it can be improved, let's bring that forward.

But let's have the balance that allows us -- not everything is going to be perfect, but hopefully on environmental matters we start breaking through the parochial limitation that has been part and parcel of our operations ever since -- well, Sean Conway has been here longer than anyone; I would not say too long -- 15_ years, and it has not changed. You get one government coming and going, and who knows how long you will be there? So let's begin to see some leadership towards that kind of working together.

The next story I come into is the promises that were made before. The minister, as she is now, and Ruth Grier the opposition critic are two different people. The degree to which the one was making promises and the other can fulfil those promises, the degree to which her party before was able to make statements and now has to kind of rationalize the way those statements were made, becomes one of those things where people are looking for a credible response on these issues. If you have to back off from previous promises, come clean and lay it out in the open so we can understand what that is. When you look at Keele Valley, what is going to happen to that, or Britannia? You raised, in your own points, the key issues. How are you going to deal with those issues in light of the responsibility you have today and in light of what you thought you would do before you took the responsibilities you have now?

You are dealing with a situation where anyone is in a position to learn and grow, and to that extent we are prepared to forgive and understand that what you are into now might well mean an explanation of why you said certain things and now can no longer deliver them.

I am concerned about how the minister and the ministry respond to emergencies. The Hagersville tire fire -- we just celebrated one year and they are only going to have green grass growing on those lands this spring. I think there has been a tremendous effort by many people to face up to what that emergency was all about, but we could still have another Hagersville, we still have not dealt with the tire issue, we are still not too much further ahead on the recycling and use of tires. There are 19 million tires a year in Ontario that we continue to accumulate. Is it more or less? I do not know.

Hon Mrs Grier: About half that.

Mr Cousens: Is it half that? Does that include trucks and everything else as well?

Hon Mrs Grier: Yes, 1.2 million trucks, 6.8 million private automobiles a year.

Mr Cousens: Times four, or is that the number of tires?

Hon Mrs Grier: That is the number of tires.

Mr Cousens: Just a horrendous number, and the percentage of those ending up in landfill sites -- what are we doing with them or what can we do with them? And the use of the tax that is being collected now, $5 per tire, I am going to touch on that one.

But dealing with problems and emergencies becomes what I see as a worry. When Elk Lake became a real situation last fall, I have no doubt that if it had been the Don River rather than a river in northern Ontario you would have seen the people of the province rise up and have a resolution to that problem -- or at least try; there would not be much they could do. But it was in Elk Lake, and how did you deal with it? I am not going to worry about the details. Now it is an emergency. It was not an emergency until Mike Harris, the leader of our party, was up there and said your ministry was very, very slow to respond to the Elk Lake situation. I am interested in a long-term resolution to and approach to emergency measures in the province of Ontario.

The minister mentioned a number of activities but did not mention clean air in her opening remarks. I was a bit surprised at that, especially with the importance that should be attached to it with a number of the matters that are there. I will certainly be raising questions on that. I see a number of things to come up in our estimates today: There is the air, there is water, there is waste, there are tires and PCBs and there is the research of your ministry. We are looking at the round table. I think there are numerous things we are going to want to discuss with you and your staff. I hope that if you do not have the information with you today you can circulate it to us so we can be apprised of that information.

I think the spirit is right. We have to accept the fact that there is not the sense of urgency in the world that there should be for environmental matters, so Ontario might well be in a position to begin to give leadership outside of its own jurisdiction. The degree to which we are doing that is an important thing. For instance, the federal round table is not working all that well. What are we doing when we look at the Brundtland commission? How are we really fitting into the world scene? I think we have a challenge, where Canada can be a leader and Ontario at the forefront of giving that kind of leadership.

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I do not want to make too many other remarks. I think the time will probably be split among ourselves, Mr Chairman. The one thing the minister could do, if there are a few moments left of my time, is indicate to me who she has on staff and what her staff consists of. You introduced the one person you have with us today. Could you tell us who is on your staff and what their functions are? Then I will have a better feel of who is really there.

The Chair: You have 15 more minutes. You can do Q and A if you want.

Mr Cousens: If I can do a few, on the minister's staff and a few other little questions in that 15 minutes, I would appreciate it.

The Chair: You have up to half an hour. If you wish to engage the minister in some direct questioning as part of your half-hour, feel free.

Mr Cousens: Unless Mrs Marland would like to add a few remarks at the beginning, I had a few questions I did want to ask.

The Chair: You still have 13 minutes to do with as you wish.

Mr Cousens: Do you want to make some comments, Margaret?

Mrs Marland: Thank you very much. I would also, at the outset, like to congratulate the minister on her position. It is particularly interesting for the minister and myself, since we both served the same role in the past government for three years. I too, like everyone else, am still optimistic that the kinds of steps you had asked the previous government to make you will still be committed to making yourself.

I would like to give the minister an opportunity to answer a question to which we never received an answer from the previous minister although we asked that question a number of times. It is such a critical area, one which I know you shared with me when we were both critics for Environment. We shared this concern a number of times; we shared it on the select committee on the environment. It is a matter you really are going to have to take a position on and be front and centre with. It is not like saying to you that now you are minister you are not going to say the same thing, because I do not really believe that in any of the areas you stood for before you became minister. I would like to give you the opportunity and ask you very simply: Are you in favour of incineration?

Hon Mrs Grier: I was going to pick up on some of the questions in the general statements and make a response collectively, if you would rather do that, or do you want to get into specifics? I am happy to answer that one. I am not in favour of incineration of municipal solid waste.

Mrs Marland: So that will mean that that will be the position of the ministry as long as you are minister.

Hon Mrs Grier: Certainly that is my position. I think you will find that, for example, the Ministry of Energy has stopped funding energy-from-waste projects as of 21 November. We are looking at the whole ramifications of incineration when it comes to biomedical waste and other aspects, and we will be preparing a comprehensive response to those questions on that issue, but when it comes to municipal solid waste I made it very plain that I see that as not an option, and I have made that plain to environmental groups and to representatives of municipalities who have posed that to me as a solution.

Mrs Marland: I really commend you for your directness and fairness in answering that question, because for five years we have been trying to get that answer, you and I both, from the previous minister. I am very encouraged to hear your response.

I will just ask one more question; I do not want to take up too much of our critic's time. Incidentally, I would like to also say that you are working with a person who is very competent on behalf of our caucus as the source person for the Environment, and I feel that area for our caucus is well protected now.

In light of your position on incineration, do you feel that it would be fair for a proponent of an EFW plant -- and I am thinking of St Lawrence Cement -- would it be fair for them to proceed into an environmental assessment hearing with their proposal to burn municipal waste in light of your position of opposition?

Hon Mrs Grier: Certainly if it were municipal waste I think I would want to meet with them and make my position to them very clear. If they chose to proceed, knowing what my position was, I assume under the law they have the right to do that. But I am quite prepared to tell anybody who asks me that I do not favour incineration of municipal solid waste.

Mrs Marland: Thank you.

Mr Cousens: Could you just tell me some of the people who are on your personal staff so that I have a sense of who they really are and what their responsibilities are?

Hon Mrs Grier: Yes. I wanted, before I got into specific questions, Mr Chairman, if could, just to thank the critics of both parties for the comments that they have made, and in responding to Mr Cousens certainly to answer that question and also say to him how grateful I was for his kind comments about the response of ministry staff to his questions and to working with him. It is certainly my intention that that kind of co-operation continue. In fact, I think when we were discussing with your office a briefing on ministry affairs we indicated we would be more than happy to have the critic for the Liberal Party sit in as part of that, so that kind of interparty discussion that you feel is important I also consider appropriate.

I appreciate his suggestions if we were to travel. Given budgetary constraints, it had not been high on my agenda, but who knows? Perhaps the time will come. I have been to Belleville, I have been to Hagersville, I have been to --

Mr Cousens: Elk Lake.

Hon Mrs Grier: -- Elk Lake, of course, and to Victoria for the federal-provincial conference, but that has been the extent of it so far.

With respect to Elk Lake, I did want to comment on your criticism that the ministry had not responded promptly, because -- I am sorry to disagree -- I think the ministry was on the spot almost immediately. When I visited Elk Lake a couple of days later, I was very pleased to hear from the reeve and from the people on the spot their appreciation of the fact that the co-operation between the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of the Environment had been exemplary and people had worked through the night laying water lines to provide alternative drinking water to the community. The spill was discovered in the middle of the night by an MNR officer who happened to live in the vicinity of where the tailings dam had broken, and by daylight, staff were on site trying to see what could be done. We have taken a very aggressive stance in issuing a director's order and requiring cleanup.

Again, we ought not to have to respond to those kinds of emergencies. I wish it could have been prevented. It would have been much easier, much cheaper and much better, but we were there and we responded, I think, very adequately.

With respect to my own staff, I have an executive assistant and two policy assistants with respect to environmental issues, and a legislative assistant as well as press and support staff.

Mr Cousens: So that is four people altogether then?

Hon Mrs Grier: Well, we have more than four in the minister's office, but with respect to policy, which I think was what you were referring to, we have two environmental policy assistants and a legislative assistant, and I have a policy assistant on GTA matters.

Mr Cousens: Just put the names on the record.

Hon Mrs Grier: Linda Pim, who was with me in the research here, and Joyce McLean are the two environmental policy assistants.

The Chair: If I might be helpful, the minister could perhaps bring a staff plan for her immediate office staff to tomorrow morning's meeting.

Mr Cousens: I think that would be helpful.

Mrs Marland: A flowchart.

Mr Cousens: Just a flowchart. And how many communications people would you have in your office?

Hon Mrs Grier: I have one communications person.

Mr Cousens: And then just general secretarial --

Hon Mrs Grier: Scheduler. I did not realize ministers need a full-time scheduler. Quite incredible, all of these support functions that one never dreamt one would ever need. But yes, it has taken us some time.

One of the surprises of becoming minister is that you walk into the office on the day one is sworn in. It is all very grandiose and one's name is at the top of the bulletin board, and then one finds that on the top floor of the ministry there is not anything, because that is one's political staff and it is gone with the former minister, so that acquiring staff, acquiring systems, setting up filing systems -- it would be fun to try to do an organizational chart of my office at this point. I will attempt to do so by tomorrow and then I can share it with you.

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Mr Cousens: How would you break your time down between your responsibilities of the greater Toronto area and the Ministry of the Environment?

Mr Daigeler: Mr Chairman, at what stage are we now in the proceedings?

Hon Mrs Grier: We are still in Mr Cousens's time, are we?

The Chair: Yes.

Mr Cousens: We are still in my time.

The Chair: Mr Cousens began at 1:17 and therefore he has about a couple of minutes.

Mr Cousens: I was using my time --

The Chair: I just indicated he had about two minutes left.

Mr Cousens: I was interested in how you break the time down.

Hon Mrs Grier: I cannot give you a time breakdown. I mean, to some degree it depends on the issues. One of the issues that has taken the majority of my time since October has been management of solid waste, and particularly within the GTA. That has frequently been something where the blending has been extremely helpful, so briefing sessions, for example, would involve both Ministry of the Environment people and OGTA people. It is hard to make a precise division.

Mr Cousens: Do you have a different staff for that, as well as your office staff?

Hon Mrs Grier: I have a policy assistant for GTA, but essentially administrative and media is all done through my --

Mr Cousens: Everything is all done through the environmental office.

Hon Mrs Grier: Yes.

Mr Cousens: Okay. I will wait --

Hon Mrs Grier: Oh, yes. There is of course ministry staff and bureaucratic staff, as opposed to my --

Mr Cousens: So Gardner Church and that group would report through to --

Hon Mrs Grier: Which is a very small group. That is very much a co-ordinating function, and under the past administration they had not had a very large allocation of staff or line functions, and I certainly think that is the most appropriate role for that group to play, to be a group that crosses ministerial boundaries and can in fact co-ordinate around issues or concerns that affect all of the regions within the GTA.

Mr Cousens: That is good. I know that we will be having a chance, but thank you very much.

The Chair: At this point I would like to offer the floor to the minister, who has up to half an hour to respond in any fashion she sees fit to the points raised from the two critics.

Hon Mrs Grier: Well, I did not certainly want to take half an hour. There are times when I wish I had the attributes of my predecessor, and I guess this is one of them. So I will not take half an hour, but I did want to respond to Mr Conway and thank him for what I think were compliments in some of his opening remarks. I was distressed that he would think that transition from critic to minister had somehow diminished my sense of clarity.

Let me tell him what joy I take in recognizing that the transition from minister to critic has certainly clarified some of his thoughts, and abbreviated them. It is interesting to see how we all cope with these changing roles. He also, I think, was anticipating some answers to some hypothetical questions which I am sure he himself, in a former life, would not have wanted to respond to. But I do want to respond to his comments on the crown corporation because he is quite right.

As critic, I was very critical of the idea of such a crown corporation, and particularly in the manifestation which had been proposed by the previous government, which was essentially a body that I saw as being to facilitate new development as opposed to rebuilding and revitalizing the existing infrastructure of our sewer and water systems.

What the government has done is appoint a deputy minister, Len Pitura, who was with the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology, to examine the rationale behind the idea of a sewer and water corporation, to discuss with both the municipalities -- which have a very real concern about the lack of funding that has been available in the past for these services -- and with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and with my own ministry the basis on which the suggestion had been supported by the previous government, the pros and cons of proceeding in that manner and, should the government decide to proceed with a corporation, the best way in which such a corporation would be structured.

So while no definitive decision has been made as to whether or not there will be such a corporation, this government is very open-minded and prepared to adopt any ideas that appear to have merit.

Mr Conway: Can I just pursue that for a moment?

The Chair: With the permission of the minister.

Hon Mrs Grier: Absolutely.

Mr Conway: Because there are two things, and I want to be as clear as possible. You have said two things here that really interest me, and let's take the last one, the question of the corporation.

It was absolutely clear what the position was, particularly of the member for York South, and I respect that entirely, and I was really impressed by the vigour and the clarity of his denunciation of the previous government's initiation in this respect. Boy, was there some colourful language used to describe some of the motivation of said corporation.

Now, you have told me something that is dramatically different from what I would expect. What I would have expected, and entirely respected, is the right of a new government to say, "Listen, that was them; this is us. They wanted to do this. We said absolutely not," for, as I say, some very clear reasons stated. You have now simply told me that you are quite prepared to consider pursuing with the corporation.

Hon Mrs Grier: The motivation is entirely different, Mr Conway, and that is the supreme difference.

Mr Conway: Well, you know, you are doing Jim Bradley proud here, because I thought what I would expect you to tell me, and I would have fully understood, is, "We told the people of Ontario a year ago that that corporation, in principle, is absolutely unacceptable." Now you are telling me -- and I respect your right to do this, but I just want to be clear about what you are telling me -- is, "We are now prepared as a government to look at the motivation that gave rise to the previous government's establishment of and creation of the water and sewer crown agency."

I just submit to you that is significant news to me. That is, from my point of view, a significant departure from what you said a year ago and certainly would be viewed by the ordinary person in the street as a very significant variation from what was stated and expected. We will probably continue to differ on that, but you really surprise me.

Hon Mrs Grier: Well, I am sorry. The Hansard was pointed out to me very recently in which certainly my position had always been that perhaps this kind of corporation had some merit. I was very concerned at the motivation of the previous initiatives, which appeared to be entirely directed towards facilitating new development, and I had grave doubts as to whether the Ministry of Municipal Affairs was in fact the appropriate ministry to which such a corporation could respond.

That view has not changed one iota. What is being examined is whether in fact such an entity, seeing that Mr MacLaren had been appointed by the previous government, has been out there consulting on whether or not such an idea is a good one and whether it is in fact a good one. And if it is a good one, from the motivations and the point of view of this government, how should it be structured and to whom should it report?

Mr Conway: I appreciate the clarification. It is at, in my view, very considerable variance with what the leader of the government stated very clearly and repeatedly over a year ago. I do not quarrel with your decision; I just observe what I consider to be a dramatic departure from what was stated and clearly intended a year ago.

Hon Mrs Grier: Let me just respond. I think the dramatic departure is that in this government the Minister of the Environment is playing a significant role in the determination as to whether or not the corporation makes sense, because Mr Pitura is reporting to both myself and the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

Mr Conway: That observation is based on an assumption that I just do not think you can reasonably make. I do not dispute how you feel about your participation, but it assumes a knowledge of a prior situation which you cannot have. But that is not my primary concern. What you have told me this afternoon is quite significant, because I expected you to tell me, and would respect entirely: "Hey, we are new, and we don't think now what we said then. We do not think this is a very good idea. To hell with it. We are going to do it differently."

Hon Mrs Grier: We are.

Mr Conway: What you are telling me is not a qualitative difference at all. There may in fact be a nuance of difference; there may be a difference of a non-qualitative kind. But I do not want to waste too much --

Hon Mrs Grier: With all due respect, Mr Conway, you are putting words in my mouth. What I said to you was, this government was re-examining the basis and the motivation for such a corporation, was determining whether or not that kind of corporation, essentially from a financial point of view, made sense, and if it in fact made sense, to whom it should report.

Mr Conway: I respect what you are saying. I just said the words issuing from your mouth now are substantially different from the words which issued in clarion fashion from the mouth of the member for York South a year ago. But you do not need to comment on that. That is a matter of public record.

Hon Mrs Grier: Well, the member for York South is not here; I am.

Mr Conway: Well, he is here in another respect, and --

The Chair: Mr Conway, excuse me. Before this becomes a complete debate, this is the minister's time, and I think it would be helpful to remind the minister that this is her period to respond to all the questions raised and not to devote an inordinate amount of time to the points that you are now engaged in a discussion on. I think it would be helpful to the whole committee if I just state that, but we are in the hands of the minister if she wishes to continue the debate with Mr Conway. It is her half-hour.

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Hon Mrs Grier: I am sure there will be other opportunities. I merely wanted to respond perhaps in a procedural way to some of the points that Mr Conway had mentioned. I think his interest in OWMC is one to be expected and that we perhaps might want to go into -- and 1 wondered, Mr Chair, if the committee would like to have Dr Chant here to perhaps discuss directly with the committee the authority and the work that is being done there. If that will be helpful to Mr Conway, we would be glad to ask him.

Mr Conway: No. I am a big fan of Dr Chant, but I do not need or want Dr Chant. What I want to talk about at some point is just the story that is OWMC.

The Chair: All right. Thank you, Mr Conway. But the minister does raise a point in the fact that these are new estimates, albeit late and beyond their normal time. I have not received any specific request from any committee member that certain individuals specifically be asked to attend. I just want to share that, and should any persons wish to have someone or certain persons in attendance to respond to questions, please let us know that. The minister may have some additional names of individuals whom she would like to recommend.

Mr Conway: The conversation that I imagine, Chair and Minister, is simply at a very general level. You might want to gather some of the data, but I certainly do not need Dr Chant for that.

The Chair: Thanks, Mr Conway. I do wish to ensure that this is the minister's time and let her continue with her response, and she will let me know when she is --

Hon Mrs Grier: I am happy to go into questions, Mr Chairman.

The Chair: Oh, you are prepared to proceed? Fine.

Mr Conway: Can I just go into --

The Chair: Well, let me just lay down some basic understandings here. It has been the custom in this first round of estimates with the new government to proceed on a caucus allocation, relying on the clerk and myself to ensure equitable distribution, beginning with the Liberals and then through to the Conservatives and then to the governing party. If there is agreement to proceed on that basis, I will proceed. If there are any questions, I will answer those now. Seeing none, then we will proceed on that basis. Mr Cousens.

Mr Cousens: On a general basis, when the caucus has questions then they can go across the different votes, and at the end of this time, we would vote on all the votes at one time.

Ms Haslam: Stack the votes.

The Chair: That is helpful. Thank you, Mr Cousens. We have been stacking the votes for the conclusion of the estimates, which will be tomorrow, and there has been agreement in the past to deal with any of the four vote items simultaneously.

Mr Daigeler: Just to be on the safe side after last week's experience, is the minister going to be here tomorrow?

The Chair: Yes. The minister has indicated she intends to --

Mr Daigeler: Thank you.

Hon Mrs Grier: That was certainly my intention.

Mr Conway: I expect to pick up then where we were.

Ms Haslam: Excuse me then. Mr Chair, I would like clarification. Are we now into the Liberals' 15 minutes of questions?

The Chair: I was about to suggest that. Mr Conway is most anxious, but we are getting to him.

Mr Cousens: Let's just take it further. I am new to this committee. Is it 15 minutes, 15 minutes, 15 minutes and then you keep going that way?

The Chair: If somebody by accident goes almost to 20 because the minister is in an in-depth response involving staff, then I have been known to extend so that everybody gets the equal time. But we are starting with 15-minute time frames.

Mr Cousens: So it is 15 minutes solid there, 15 minutes solid, and then it rotates around.

The Chair: That is correct. Very good. Mr Conway, you are on.

Mr Conway: Minister, again, I want to just pick up on that last point and then move into an item that arose out of your conversation with the member for Mississauga South. Again, I do not mean to be as adversarial as I am sure I sound. But you have told me something that is surprising. I, as a person looking on, would have expected -- and believe me, I would have respected entirely the announcement that I anticipated -- which was: "No. Remember what we said when they announced that crown agency for water and sewer?" It was a difference of a fundamental kind, as I remember the Premier, and I have got the material here so I can -- and I do not diminish what you are saying, but I do respect the fact that in our system the leader of government does set a tone and a direction. So I fully expected that I would be told that corporation was history. Anything less than that is news to me. I do not want to beat a dead horse. You have told me what you believe and I respect that. I just put that in the category of hard news.

Similarly, in responding to the member from Mississauga South, you said something that at one level did not surprise me at all because I have heard you before. You have been very eloquent and very passionate on the subject of incineration: "Nyet." However, I then am sitting back and thinking, "I am up in Orillia and I am Ms Goodall and I have been talking to and corresponding with the leader of the government. I respect entirely what the Minister of the Environment is saying, but I have by his own hand a letter which says something different than you have said, a letter couriered just days ago."

If I were Ms Goodall and I were in this room I would be extremely pleased, because: "I have heard from you what I always heard from you and quite frankly what I wanted to hear. My only problem is I go through my file and I have two letters from the leader of the government which do not give me that level of comfort. You have been clear and categorical in a way that the member from Mississauga rightly observed and complimented you for. However, the leader of the government has certainly been something less than that. He sent me two letters. The first said it was an option."

Hon Mrs Grier: But reduction and reuse was highly preferable.

Mr Conway: All of that, but I am remembering what you just said, and he has now said: "In contradiction to what he told me," she says in Orillia, three, four or six months ago, "and he was as good as Ruth Grier. He told me clearly it was not on. I get a first letter that says, _Under certain conditions, it might be on._" That is the letter no reasonable person would read any other way. Then a second letter which says, "the policy is" -- my favourite euphemism -- "under active review." So again I put that in the category of hard news. You have been I think very definite and you are to be commended for that. There seems to be a real gap between what you have said and always said and what the leader of the government has said on second round, and I just make that observation.

Hon Mrs Grier: Let me respond to that if I may, Mr Chair, because I think, with all due respect to the member, he is reading more into a situation than is there to be read. Party policy, my policy, the Premier's policy, has been not to support incineration of municipal solid waste. The lead ministry traditionally in this area has been the Ministry of Energy. They have stopped funding energy-from-waste proposals. There are a whole lot of other aspects of incineration that are under consideration: The PCB burning in Smithville, wood waste that is sometimes burned in the north and biomedical waste for which in fact incineration may in many instances be the only solution. It has been the position of the government that we needed to have a comprehensive evaluation of policies with respect to incineration. That has not yet been brought forward. That is not yet ready to be revealed. But I want to disabuse anybody who ever thinks that I support incineration of municipal solid waste.

Mr Conway: Two things: My colleagues are mining the transcripts from the appearance of your colleague the member from Peterborough, the Minister of Energy, who they tell me was much, much less clear than you seem to think she was when she was before this committee. They will speak to that because I was not here. Second, I think perhaps most helpfully I would just simply ask you then to do me this little favour. Would you ask the leader of the government to write a third and final letter to Ms Goodall in Orillia saying all of the things that you have just said?

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Hon Mrs Grier: No, much better than that, Mr Conway, I have asked my staff and my ministry to expedite bringing before cabinet a comprehensive policy with respect to incineration so that I can clarify everybody's misconceptions as early as I possibly can.

Mr Conway: But you see, I know you want to. I know you want to disabuse the general sense of cynicism about politicians. I am very sympathetic to Ms Goodall. She touched the hem in Orillia, in July or August, and he said very clearly: X. He writes a couple of letters after his time in government that say much less, and she, not me, has observed the gap. All I am saying is that you have been consistent and I admire you for that, but it is --

Hon Mrs Grier: The Premier has also been.

Mr Conway: Well, Ms Goodall is there and I was not, and she has protested loudly that there is a real want of consistency. I guess all I am saying is if you will not do it, I understand why you will not do it, but I just really think this is an important point and I would like to see this matter dealt with so that the government speaks as one on the question of incineration. If that is not possible, then let's move on to the question of Metro waste.

Mrs McLeod: It was, perhaps just to add another couple of questions to attempt to get some further clarification on your government's position on energy from waste, which is a term that you sometimes use in a very broad way and a term which you sometimes seem to be using as it references specifically energy from burning municipal solid waste.

There is, I think, some reason for our confusion about your government's policy and I was attempting rather quickly to reference the responses of the Minister of Energy at an earlier estimates session. If I might just indicate to you, since you were not there either, the comments that were made by Mrs Carter in response to questions from the Conservative opposition, Mrs Marland asked, "When you get down to the last bit of garbage, would you burn it?" And the Honourable Mrs Carter responded: "Then we might find that energy from waste does make sense for some categories, but then, of course, even then we have to consider the environmental aspect of it and make sure that we are not burning anything so that we end up with pollution. It may be that with tires, for example, that some process -- somebody wants to microwave them; I do not know whether you would call that burning or not."

Later in response to a supplementary question from Mr Jordan, again emphasizing the fact that they were asking about a process that would follow the ultimate achievement in recycling and reuse and reduction, Mrs Carter said: "When you get to that point the question is the environmental one as to whether we can do this with complete environmental safety." So it did not seem to rule out energy from waste as an option in that series of responses.

When you indicate that the Ministry of Energy, who was the lead on the program, has ceased funding energy-from-waste projects, does that include all energy-from-waste projects at this point? Is that your understanding?

Hon Mrs Grier: That certainly is my understanding, but I was not present during the testimony of the Minister of Energy before this committee and I have not seen her answers. I would much prefer to let her answer for her ministry than for me to do that.

Mrs McLeod: May I ask you then, as Minister of the Environment, specifically in relation to wood waste -- because there have been a number of energy-from-waste projects involving wood waste, and diversion of wood waste from landfill sites I think is an important priority in the production of landfill site use in your mind -- do you feel that ban of even considering energy-from-waste proposals should extend to energy from wood waste?

Hon Mrs Grier: Well, as I say, that is precisely why I think there has to be a collective decision of the government on all aspects of incineration. I was confining my categorical statement to municipal solid waste and I have no hesitation in saying that as far as I am concerned, that is not an option for waste disposal in Ontario.

Mrs McLeod: I hope that there will soon be some clarity on that issue across the ministries of your government, because certainly --

Hon Mrs Grier: No question. I hope so too.

Mrs McLeod: -- and again coming back to the wood waste issue specifically, there are a number of impacts of an integrated planning process that I think can involve environmentally sound use of wood waste for energy recovery.

Just finally then, if I may, does your ministry have any impact analysis from a purely environmental impact perspective of municipal solid waste that could be used, that could be incinerated, the carbon that would be produced from an environmentally sound incineration process. I know you may argue that there is not an environmentally sound incineration process, but there is at least one project that has recently passed Ontario's environmental regulations. So if we can assume that under an environmentally sound process, under regulation, the amount of carbon that would be produced by burning that municipal solid waste -- how that would relate to the amount of methane that might be released from a landfill site with a corresponding amount of municipal solid waste?

Hon Mrs Grier: As I am sure you will appreciate, I was not the minister during the time of the approval of the facility to which you refer, so I think I would have to ask somebody in the ministry to respond to that, Mrs McLeod. I do not know whether those kinds of studies were done or not.

Mrs McLeod: Actually, if I may, I am less asking now about a retroactive analysis of the regulations that project passed through, but more the impact analysis of the incineration of municipal solid waste versus the methane released from a landfill site with a corresponding amount of municipal solid waste. In other words, I am looking for a differential environmental impact analysis.

Hon Mrs Grier: I cannot tell you whether in fact those studies have been done, but that is the kind of assessment that presumably would have to be part of a submission to cabinet in the determination on the issue.

Mr Conway: Just again on that subject, I have been involved with one of your colleagues the Minister of Natural Resources. It will be no secret, for example, that in much of the forested part of Ontario there is a real interest in improving the stand of timber and cleaning out a lot of the low quality material.

One of the options that seems to be of real interest to Natural Resources and Energy is in fact my colleague the member for Fort William's very point about generating some electricity by burning in some fashion the poplars and birches and what have you. Quite frankly every discussion we ever have about the subject, and it may be impossible, but there are a lot of people working very hard who see it as a very major part of rehabilitating our forest industry, that we do not get two paragraphs into any discussion without the MOE flag going up. So I am just assuming that there is a very active dialogue at some level in the ministry with Natural Resources and Energy on those questions.

I want to talk about Metro garbage because I was struck this morning by the discussion, and I want to get back to the point. I am a resident of Metropolitan Toronto for the sake of this argument. I have been following the press and it appeared to me in recent times that the intermediate step that might resolve this problem of the Metro landfill difficulty was Kirkland Lake.

A lot of people have been spending a lot of time and a lot of money, big announcements, and all of a sudden I hear there is trouble. Something about a letter not coming from the Ministry of the Environment to Metro council to pay for a study. I am just going from what I would hear and read in the popular press. My question to you is, where does the Kirkland Lake proposal sit at the present moment from your point of view?

Hon Mrs Grier: The Kirkland Lake proposal was one of the options explored by Metropolitan Toronto under the aegis of the Solid Waste Interim Steering Committee established by your government. When I took office I was confronted with the fact that a hearing on an interim site under that SWISC process was about to occur with respect to the site in Whitevale for an interim site that would be the precursor of a long-term site for which at that point Kirkland Lake was one of -- I cannot think -- a number of candidate sites.

I, in opposition, had been very concerned that the process by which the interim sites in Whitevale and in Mississauga were going to be approved was not in accordance with the environmental evaluation, the Environmental Assessment Act, that it was going under the Environmental Protection Act. So I indicated that this government was not prepared to allow those interim sites to proceed to approval under the existing process and that we would work with the regions within the greater Toronto area to seek a long-term site for the disposal of the residue, and that our first priority had to be to reduce the waste being generated as much as we possibly could.

That has been our first priority, and as I indicated, we have made some concrete steps towards doing that. It is certainly my hope that as a result of those activities we will have, if you will, bought ourselves enough time within the existing landfills that we can then go towards the selection of a long-term site as opposed to the interim sites.

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When it comes to choosing the long-term site, my first priority has to be what is most environmentally acceptable, and so it is our intention as we work to establish a public provincial-municipal authority that will be the proponent in the search for a long-term site, that we give that authority when it is established, which will have to be by legislation in the next session of the Legislature, a set of criteria in order to facilitate its search for a site.

Those criteria have to be first and foremost environmental criteria, which is why I referred to the examination of agricultural land, areas of natural scientific interest, and areas with specific geological or special formations. Those would be exclusionary criteria -- wetlands, obviously. One of the criteria that had been used by the SWISC process was that the whole province could be the area of search. I am looking at that. I am looking at that from the point of view of, is that the best environmental criterion to use?

I met last week with a number of the groups whose neighbourhoods have been candidate sites under the previous process, and I also met with the heads of the councils within the GTA to hear their very differing views on what the criteria for that search ought to be. It was as a result of that meeting and a very open and frank discussion about the merits of various solutions to the problem that the representatives from Metropolitan Toronto council who were there decided that they did not want to proceed with exploring the rail haul option at this time.

As part of our work we had asked Metro Toronto to continue to keep its options open, and as a result it had renegotiated or re-signed its agreement with the council of Kirkland Lake, I think some time before Christmas. They have now decided, as I was able to tell them that I hope to have those site criteria available before too long, that they did not want to proceed down that road until I was able to be clearer with them as to what the site selection criteria ought to be.

Mr Cousens: It is a subject that I am interested in. Do you have the criteria as defined in your own mind as to some of the guidelines? You speak of the environmental superstructure and the umbrella. What are some of the specific criteria that you are looking at for a selection?

Hon Mrs Grier: The environmental criteria? Well, as I say, the exclusion of class 1 to 3 agriculture, areas of natural scientific interest, areas of wetlands, a number of -- I would be happy to provide you with those specific environmental criteria.

Mr Cousens: Oh, that would be good.

Hon Mrs Grier: Really, many of those were developed by the SWISC process. That discussion has not been completed and transmitted to the new authority.

Mr Cousens: Do you share that with the committee --

Hon Mrs Grier: We can certainly share the basis of what other work has been done by other agencies on developing those. I have not got my own criteria finished as yet, but I can give you the discussion paper that has been the basis for developing those.

Mr Cousens: That would be very helpful. So Kirkland Lake is not excluded, then, from the plan and you see it as a temporary withdrawal from the city of Toronto, Metro Toronto, so that you have not excluded that at all by any of the action that you --

Hon Mrs Grier: No, the agreement that exists between Metropolitan Toronto and Kirkland Lake is still valid. What was discussed last week was a further study to look at how the rail haul of waste would work in cold weather, and Metro decided not to proceed with merely that aspect of the discussion.

Mr Cousens: So at this point you are not supporting it, you are not resisting it, and it could well come forward again when the ministry has developed some other --

Hon Mrs Grier: I have neither confirmed nor rejected that as one of the possible sites, but it will not be I who selects the sites. It will be the authority that is going to be put in place. What I am developing are a set of criteria that will be given to that authority in order to guide them in their search and in their site selection.

Mr Cousens: Okay. And you see that as legislation that you would hope to bring in this spring and approve before we rise in the summer?

Mrs Grier: Absolutely.

Mr Cousens: Is there anyone you have delegated to be responsible for this authority already who --

Hon Mrs Grier: The staff of the office of the GTA have been working with staff in my ministry to examine the criteria that have been used in the past and any refinements on them that we would wish to use.

Mr Cousens: Is there a lead person responsible for it right now from within your ministry?

Hon Mrs Grier: Erv McIntyre of the Ministry of the Environment who is here today has been named as interim general manager of the interim authority.

Mr Cousens: And he reports to Gardner Church?

Hon Mrs Grier: He reports to me.

Mr Cousens: I want to go back to waste management. Do you have an advisory committee that reports to you on waste management?

Hon Mrs Grier: I have a waste reduction advisory committee that was established by Mr Bradley. It is a multi-stakeholder group with a number of environmental groups, industry representatives, representatives from OMMRI, and staff from the ministry have been working very closely with that group in the development of a package of proposals to accelerate reduction, reuse and recycling.

Mr Cousens: The people who are on it are the same ones who were appointed by the Peterson government? Have you changed the guidelines?

Hon Mrs Grier: No. It had been revised by Mr Bradley I think very shortly before I took over, over the summer, to expand the membership. It had not really begun its work prior to my taking over on 1 October, so I met with them, was satisfied that there was a lot of talent, a lot of expertise and a lot of experience within that group, and asked them to put how we could accelerate the 3Rs at the top of their agenda. That is their mandate anyway, but I gave them a fairly brief time frame and said I would like to have some recommendations back from them on an action plan on facilitating the 3Rs. They have been putting a lot of work into that over this fall.

Mr Cousens: Is this information public or is it coming to you --

Hon Mrs Grier: No, this is an advisory committee to the minister, one of a number of advisory committees that were in place when I got there which I felt it would be very useful to continue. Their work is advice to me, which will be part of the consideration that goes into my determination of how we can move more quickly to reduce and reuse.

Mr Cousens: Maybe it would be appropriate, if you could, that you elaborate on your waste reduction strategy now as it is coming out of that advisory committee, so we can get a sense of what your reduction strategy really is.

Hon Mrs Grier: It falls under a number of categories. They have been looking at what kinds of regulations should be put in place by the ministry. I am very conscious that most waste reduction is done best if it is closest to the people who generate the waste. The municipalities have been those who have been in the forefront of the blue box program; they are the ones who have the responsibility for picking it up. Some municipalities have moved far more aggressively than others. In Halton, for example, almost 23% of the waste is being diverted from landfills over its 1988 figures. The targets that were set by the previous government of 25% reduction by 1992, 50% by the year 2000, may well be met by a municipality like Halton. Metro Toronto recently has begun to make some significant moves towards the 3Rs. But I met just this week with the regional municipality of Sudbury -- the critic for the Liberals was saying there was some anticipation in Sudbury. I meant to respond to that comment. I am not quite sure if there was anticipation of enhanced grants. It may have been anticipation of coming to meet with the minister.

Mr Conway: Better formula for capital grants.

Hon Mrs Grier: Well, we met with them this week and I was, frankly, a little shocked to find they are only just about to embark on a blue box pickup program. There are municipalities all across the province at different levels when it comes to reduction and reuse and even recycling, and I think we have to build on those partnerships and we have to put in place, from the ministry's point of view, a kind of program that will assist municipalities and those players already in the field.

Mr Cousens: Where is that program going to be?

Hon Mrs Grier: So the waste reduction advisory committee has been debating how best the ministry can facilitate those people in the municipalities, in the communities, who are doing waste reduction, whether it can be by way of regulation, by way of enhanced grants in order to continue and facilitate existing programs, by way of banning certain items for which we know there are markets from landfill sites. Part of that consideration has to be: How do we develop markets? It does not do any good to just say you can no longer dispose of X at a landfill if you have not assisted in the creation of a secondary source for that product.

What I do not want to see happen is that people who find it is too expensive or too difficult to dump their waste at a landfill site then drive up the first country concession road and dump the waste on the margin. When I meet with the councils and the reeves, in rural municipalities especially, they have expressed to me, as I well know, their difficulties with that particular situation, and their sense that I ought not to move too quickly to ban things from landfills, because they do not want it to show up in unauthorized locations.

All that kind of consideration is part of what has been on the agenda of the waste reduction advisory committee, and its recommendations and its advice to me will, I know, prove very helpful as I draft a program on the 3Rs which I hope to --

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Mr Cousens: Are you looking at a packaging tax, for instance?

Hon Mrs Grier: That is one of the options that has been suggested. The national packaging protocol, which is a federal-provincial initiative, talks to some degree about packaging taxes but in the very long term and again based on a voluntary compliance with reducing packaging, which is the federal approach. That is one of the difficulties we are having, that while we recognize that packaging is a nationwide issue the approach of the federal government has been very much to rely on the goodwill and the voluntary compliance of all of the players. My concern, given the urgency and time frames with which I am working, is whether I can rely solely on voluntary efforts or whether we are not going to have to move more aggressively to get serious about this.

Mr Cousens: Could you table for us a copy of what your waste reduction strategy really is at this point in time, so that we could see in point form -- what I hear you saying is that you have committees, you are looking at different municipalities that are successful. The chairman smiled when you mentioned Halton. He happens to represent --

Hon Mrs Grier: I am sure he was part of it.

Mr Cousens: He had to have been. I would like to see a listing or just some hard copy of your waste reduction strategy, if that is possible, because it is such an important part of your plan.

Hon Mrs Grier: Well, I certainly can file -- I thought I had mentioned in my initial remarks the approach I was taking, but I would not want to mislead the member. I think it is probably premature for me to be able to table with him the kind of detail I know he would want, but I certainly would be prepared to give him the outlines of the kinds of initiatives we are thinking of, and I would really welcome your ideas, as anybody else's ideas, on how we can flesh those out and make them into concrete proposals.

Mr Cousens: Have you any sense of the expenditures on the 3Rs programs right now?

Hon Mrs Grier: No, I am sure somebody in the ministry can point me to the page on the estimates for what is in our budget for 1991.

Mr Cousens: Yes, but just on the 3Rs itself, could you indicate --

Hon Mrs Grier: André Castel is the assistant deputy minister.

The Chair: Excuse me. Please take a seat and introduce yourself and respond to the question.

Mr Cousens: He is looking better tanned than the deputy and you combined.

Mr Castel: I am André Castel, executive director of corporate resources division. The amount being spent by the ministry on the 3Rs is $54 million.

Mr Cousens: Where did you find that? What section is that in?

Mr Castel: It is in the vote under waste management activity. I think it is in the second vote, environmental services.

Mr Cousens: Could you give a breakdown of that $54 million?

Mr Castel: I can break it down for you: Municipal recycling is $25.9 million; municipal waste reduction is $1.43 million; the industrial 3Rs is $14.155 million; the financial assistance program is $9 million; the waste management improvement program is $3.25 million; the household hazardous waste collection is $200,000; and there are various miscellaneous grants for a total of $246,000; which gives us a total of $54.181 million.

The Chair: Could someone direct us to that page in the estimates book?

Mr Castel: I do not think it is given in this kind of detail. Page 39 of the book that was handed to members.

Mr Cousens: The pages are not numbered that well.

Mr Castel: It is in the estimates book, the green book, page 39.

Mr Cousens: Wrong book. I will look at that when I have more time, then. I will come back to that because I want to look at page 39 once I have done it.

How many waste management master plans are there in progress right now, and the number of municipalities involved with them?

Hon Mrs Grier: Deputy, I wonder if you could perhaps give some details on that.

The Chair: We are waiting for a member of staff to approach the table and introduce himself.

Mr Wong: My name is Hardy Wong. I am a director of the waste management branch. Currently there are 44 waste management master plans -- there are two coming on board very soon -- covering about 180 municipalities and 70% of the province's population.

The Chair: Can you provide the committee with the names of those communities?

Mr Wong: Definitely.

Mr Cousens: I would like to have an updated list that shows the number of master plans in progress, the stage they are at, the municipalities involved and the level of funding that has come from the Ministry of the Environment.

The Chair: All these requests would come through the Chair, and we will distribute them to all members of the committee as soon as it is possible to have them in our possession.

Mr Cousens, you have about four and a half more minutes.

Mr Cousens: If you could just expand on what is happening with the waste management plan. You mentioned two, was it, that are --

Mr Wong: There is two at the planning stage. You see, before a group or municipality comes on board and it formally starts the master planning process, the participating municipality must pass the bylaw from their own council agreeing to participate and to financially contribute to their process because the ministry only provides 50% of funding. At the same time, they have to by agreement identify the lead agency, lead municipality, and the individual coming from that municipality will serve as chairman for the steering committee. It is the role of the steering committee, with assistance from the ministry, to hire consultants and launch the proper master planning process.

Mr Cousens: What are the two at this --

Mr Wong: I cannot recall the specific names, but they are doing that process.

Mr Cousens: I guess it is important to receive a copy of those updated lists and then we can have a sense of what is going on.

Hon Mrs Grier: Mr Chairman, perhaps the deputy could expand on that, because the question of waste management master plans and how they are going to proceed is one that we are concerned about. There has been a lot of frustrations about how long some of them have taken.

Mr Posen: Once the office of waste reduction is in place, we see the waste management branch concentrating on looking at the criteria in place for waste management master plans for seeing if we can provide greater clarity to municipalities as part of their planning process. I would ask you to keep in mind the minister's comments about the changes to the environmental assessment process, which should also contribute to a more focused and therefore more timely approval of waste management master plans in these municipalities.

Mr Cousens: What are the longest ones in process? I do not want to say in progress -- in process? What is the longest --

Mr Posen: Hardy? The waste management master planning process began --

Mr Wong: It began as the outgrowth of what we call the area waste management planning process. The first municipality that started was Niagara region, and I believe they have finished. The terms of reference of eight years ago were very much different from today's terms of reference. The conclusion of the master plan calls for a generic identification of a waste management system rather than the current terms of reference, which requires the study to finish by identifying a preferred site and so on and so forth -- much more specific. The reason that Niagara, the first one to start, takes that much longer is because the Niagara region act does not specifically provide the regional government with the authority for waste management. The result is in what they call the club system. The study identified and recommended that four clubs within the region shall be formed, and therefore a club, each individually, should develop very specific waste management preferred facilities and sites.

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Mr Cousens: How many have been approved all together? Am I out of time?

The Chair: No, you are not. Mr Wong, can you answer that? How many?

Mr Wong: Two.

Mr Cousens: Two. The total across the province of Ontario?

Mr Wong: That is right.

Mr Cousens: Does the minister have any expectation of what the number should be within the foreseeable future? It would seem to take a long time to complete one of these. Do you have any goals as to how quickly we will see a number of these approved? During your tenure or during the next year?

Hon Mrs Grier: No, and I am not sure that that is the appropriate way to quantify it. I certainly am aware and have felt in opposition the frustration that many municipalities have with the waste management master planning process. That is why, as Mr Wong has said, we are looking at it, we are looking at how we can clarify it, and we are looking at how we can, as one goes through the process, give some certainty to the proponents that, yes, as far as they have gone is acceptable, rather than having to continually open up the items for consideration and make it an open-ended and never-ending process. But I think it would be inappropriate at this stage to say how many and how many not.

Mr Cousens: Has your administration changed any of the guidelines that would have to be followed in the process of --

Hon Mrs Grier: Not at this point, other than by indicating through the release of the environmental assessment improvement paper that we are certainly open to looking at how we can simplify, create certainty and create clarity in the process.

Mr Chair, I have to go for 10 minutes. I am very sorry, but I am sure ministry officials can answer all of the questions, and I will be back.

Mr Cousens: Will I receive a copy of that soon, or what would be the time frame on --

The Chair: Hardy, how long will it take you to --

Mr Wong: If you want it directly sent to Mr Cousens, we can --

The Chair: No, through the Chair. How soon do you think you might be able to have that information?

Mr Wong: A couple of days. No problem. If it is that urgent, I can shorten --

The Chair: Thank you very much. The minister will be with us again very shortly.

Mr G. Wilson: I have a question that arises from the green estimates briefing book that I think the deputy might be able to help with it. It is on page 32, and has to do with the control of vehicle-related emissions. It says, "One focus for this year is the development of programs for the control of vehicle-related emissions." I would like some idea about just how serious this problem is and what are some of the initiatives that are going to be taken?

Mr Posen: I would ask Gerry Ronan, who is the acting assistant deputy for environmental services, to talk about the seriousness of the problem. I can certainly talk about the kinds of initiatives we are looking at.

The Chair: Mr Ronan, you have been introduced. Please proceed.

Mr Ronan: The ministry is looking at the vehicle emission strategy in the context of a whole air management strategy for the province. In that respect, the ministry has entered into some federal-provincial agreements, the environmental ministers and the federal government, with respect to what is called the NO_x-VOC strategy, the nitrogen oxide and the volatile organic compounds that are discharged into the atmosphere. One of the key areas where these substances are discharged is through vehicle emissions and also the distribution systems associated with the sale of gasoline. So our ministry has been looking at a very focused approach in concert with other ministries, the Ministry of Transportation, Consumer and Commercial Relations, ourselves, the Solicitor General, to see what specific, focused things we could do in the short term that would have very discrete environmental benefits with, perhaps, minimal cost.

One of the things we have been looking at is what we call the stage one, the distribution of the gasoline products. We are looking at all of the terminals, all the transport mechanisms that are used to distribute petroleum products and we have been consulting with the industry, the stakeholders, the truckers, all the partners in this enterprise, to see what technology could be introduced that would capture the volatile substances that evaporate during the day-to-day operation of these terminals and these transport trucks etc.

There is general agreement that there is technology available, bivalve systems, coupling systems -- you can capture lots of these fugitive emissions which would normally, in ordinary operational practice, escape to the atmosphere. Some of these modifications, through valves and couplings and engineering changes, capture a substantive amount of these volatile compounds and reuse them, so there is a net benefit to the distributor in terms of that it is a material that can be captured and sold.

We are also looking at the vehicle inspection process when there is a sale of a vehicle and we want to use this as another opportunity of looking at the emission equipment on the vehicles. Can we do a quick visual inspection during that opportunity to again see that the vehicle is in compliance with the regulated requirements? With very minimal additional cost we can have superimposed an inspection activity and point out to the owners where certain corrections have to be made and thereby again, through this initiative, bring these used cars up to speed in terms of what the specs require with emission technology equipment.

We are also dealing with the OPP and discussing with it, in terms of some of its surveillance work on the highways, whether it could look at the heavy-duty vehicles, the diesel trucks -- this is always a cause of great concern in terms of the black emissions that many motorists or many people in urban centres are concerned about -- and whether, through its patrolling of the highways and some of the policing activities it has, it could act and add this on to its duties so that without too much additional resources, we could again get some kind of control mechanism to enable us to reduce the diesel emissions.

These are the thrusts of the activity. We are trying to piggyback on existing infrastructure control systems within the government so that there are minimal extra human resources or dollar costs in terms of bringing these extra controls in place and so that it is very focused in terms of the industry and also there is some benefit in terms of capturing the volatile compounds which would otherwise evaporate to the atmosphere.

These are all the, I guess, components of the vehicle emission strategy we are looking at, and we are doing it in the context of the larger NO_x-VOC strategy, the nitrogen oxide and the volatile organic carbon compounds that we are working at reducing in the context of a federal-provincial agreement.

It is all linked to urban smog and the effect of ozone in urban areas and the generation of these gases. When they interact with sunlight, they do create problems in several centres in the province that have been documented through our environmental studies. So it will, when it is implemented, have a very positive effect in terms of reducing the number of exceedences of high ozone levels in the urban atmosphere. So it will have a very beneficial health effect. Again, it is very focused in terms of trying to make the costs minimal, making the environmental benefit very focused and understandable and, in terms of environmental health, having a real net benefit to the populace of Ontario and at the same time contributing to the national strategy. So that adequately covers the elements.

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Mr G. Wilson: Except to ask you whether other jurisdictions -- of course I think of Los Angeles. Are those some of the measures that it is taking and do they work?

Mr Ronan: Yes. Other centres -- Los Angeles, California, we use those always as the -- they are the cutting edge because they have the worst smog problems and the highest use of vehicles, etc. So they have been I guess at the cutting edge of the technology, the requirements, and have done many of these things.

One of the things the Californian jurisdiction is doing is pushing the regulations on actually the vehicles themselves that are manufactured and the requirement that there is better fuel consumption, and it is reducing what is permitted to be emitted out of the tailpipe. That is the other approach they are using.

We also in the context of this strategy are looking at the formulation of the fuels that are used. By changing and modifying the fuel, the different compounds in the gas mixture, you can reduce some of these volatile gases. There is a whole range of technology associated with the design of the vehicle, reformulation of the gasoline, alternative fuels and also some of the initiatives that I have mentioned. There is kind of a three-pronged thrust, and eventually we may end up with a vehicle that does not discharge any of these harmful gases in the long term. But that is being projected into the next 15 to 20 years as a possibility.

Mr G. Wilson: Thanks very much.

Ms Haslam: I had questions for the minister, but this gentleman has touched on a couple of things and maybe I would like to just follow that along.

The Chair: Would you like to have him return?

Ms Haslam: Certainly.

The Chair: I also have Mr Hansen and the clock tells me you have about seven minutes. Is that helpful?

Ms Haslam: Oh, always.

The Chair: Then please proceed.

Ms Haslam: You mentioned alterative fuels. I know that there has been some discussion, especially in the Energy ministry, when it came on about ethanol. A theme of mine is interministerial workings, the fact that programs work between ministries. It is not just a particular ministry that deals with a particular problem, and I always see solutions as dealing with more than one ministry on all problems.

Are you dealing with -- I maybe missed this. I got the Ministry of Transportation, Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations and the Solicitor General. Did I miss Energy in there?

Mr Ronan: No, I omitted to mention it and I apologize for so doing.

Ms Haslam: In particular then, it was with the ethanol aspect of an alternative fuel.

Mr Ronan: Yes. Now, the lead ministry in that respect and the one that would be doing most of the research would be the Ministry of Energy. All we would do would work in consort with them, and if there were required studies in terms of looking at emissions, setting up environmental studies to see the impact of the emissions from alternative fuels, we would co-operate with them. So we ourselves are not the lead agency. We are focusing on ways of trying to minimize environmental impacts, but we do work in conjunction with them, and also with the federal government, I might add. So we are very supportive, and in fact sometimes we act as the gadfly with our federal colleagues to try and ensure that they come on line with some of the Californian initiatives, including the investigations of these substitutes and alterative fuels.

Ms Haslam: Okay. I would like to stay on air resources, because another area that you cover under that service is investigation of air pollution damage to vegetation and livestock. I just wondered if you would elaborate a bit on how you do that and how that effects your ministry here.

Mr Ronan: Well, we have a capability of doing this phylotoxicology survey, looking at the impact of emissions on the soil and all the different vegetation in areas close to where the emissions have occurred. So we each year carry out a number of surveys in areas of the province and we generate reports which document what are the normal baseline levels of a whole range of compounds and we are able, through looking at the historic data, to see whether there are any kinds of blips or events or new occurrences that would indicate there had been a discharge.

By the nature of the substances that we detect -- it may be a range of organics, it could be a range of trace metals -- we are able, through cause and effect, to link it to local emitters. By having information on the pattern of wind direction, etc, we can be fairly categorical where the likely generate has been. That information then may be used for other purposes in terms of remedying what has happened and advising local farmers, etc, about these events.

Ms Haslam: Does that go into page 41, which is environmental services, laboratory services?

Mr Ronan: Well, the analytical support work would be done by the laboratory services branch. The laboratory services branch acts as the service organization for all the ministry field studies, all the investigations, all the surveys of the Great Lakes, all the surveys of air-water regimes. All the analytical data required for those studies then is sent back to our engineers, who analyse it and interpret it in the context of the sampling study that they carried out so that they can arrive at correct, scientific assessments of what phenomena occurred at this particular incident.

Ms Haslam: Thank you. Mr Chairman, in all honesty, the rest of my questions are for the minister.

Mr Hansen: Well, if you do not --

Ms Haslam: I am sorry, unless Mr Hansen would like to go on.

The Chair: If you will allow me, I would like to proceed and extend your time and I will adjust accordingly. Mr Hansen, I will recognize you now, please.

Mr Hansen: The Niagara Escarpment runs through my riding there. The Niagara Escarpment Commission was under the Minister of Municipal Affairs in the former Liberal government. Now, there has been a lot of concern with the commission, and they have also talked to me on this. How is this going to change under the Minister of the Environment? It is on the funding.

Mr Posen: Well, a number of issues that I would just note: The responsibility for the Niagara Escarpment Commission was transferred to the ministry during this past year. We have established within the ministry a Niagara Escarpment unit that provides the support to the minister and is the liaison between the commission and its ongoing operations and the ministry. Just a reminder that at this point the commission is in the midst of its five-year planning review. It has put before the public its proposals for change to the plan and to the legislation and is in the process of widely consulting with people up and down the escarpment area.

To do this, we have had to ensure that the commission was more generously funded than it had experienced in the past, that there were a number of ongoing problems which have been resolved over the past year. There were decisions taken by the previous government in this regard and confirmed by the current government to ensure that the improvement continued to take place.

You know, Erv McIntyre is here. Erv, do you want to add anything to that?

The Vice-Chair: Mr McIntyre, if you would identify yourself for Hansard please.

Mr McIntyre: I am Erv McIntyre. I am the executive director of the approvals and engineering division of the ministry. The deputy has covered the things that we have done. The group is located within one of the branches that I look after, the approvals branch. We are trying to help the NEC in its activities that are under way now in terms of the plan review, and the hearings will be forthcoming shortly.

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Mr Hansen: What do we have left, four minutes?

The Vice-Chair: If you have another question, Mr Hansen, go ahead.

Mr Hansen: Okay. Oh, you are just extending the time there.

The Vice-Chair: Because as soon as the minister returns we will revert to Mr Conway.

Mr Hansen: On 13 December -- this is not the first time that the introduction of the environmental bill of rights -- I will just read this out. "Mrs Grier also named an advisory committee to review the basic principles such a bill should contain and suggested options for inclusion in the new bill. Members of the committee, chaired by Bonnie J. Wein, director of legal services for the Ministry of the Environment, were drawn from the environmental group, the municipality, industrial, business and labour sectors, first nations, the legal profession and key provincial ministries."

My question is -- and I come from an agricultural area -- there has been quite a concern with the farmers in the Niagara area and I have received letters from other places in Ontario also about their concern on this new bill that is going to be introduced by our government. That was sort of a response from the minister, but I think the staff can reply.

I am wondering, if we only have the Minister of Agriculture and Food who is actually on this advisory committee, has the minister approached, let's say, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture on its input into this bill?

Mr Posen: We have Bonnie Wein with us, who is the director of the legal services branch in the ministry and has been chairing the committee. Just as an introduction to it, I would say, always the challenge in these situations is trying to decide how wide the consultation group should be, and in this case I think we tried to cast the net very widely and ensure that diverse groups interested in this matter were represented on the advisory committee. We are also aware that as the minister brings the bill forward into the House we expect that there will be another round of discussions through House committees as people will want to talk to the detail of the bill at that point in time. So we see the consultation as being a two-step.

Bonnie, do you want to talk to a specific point?

Ms Wein: I am Bonnie Wein and as well as being director of legal services, I am the chair of the advisory committee. When the committee was established -- and I think I have seen you have a list of about 25 groups -- it was intended that a number of those groups be umbrella groups so that additional groups or individuals who felt they wanted to have input into the advisory committee could consult through one of those groups as an umbrella group. Additionally, there has been set up a process for written consultation and we have been receiving briefs and letters and detailed or less detailed submissions from individuals and groups that are concerned with the bill of rights. The closing date for those submissions is 1 March.

We have had an indication from a number of groups, I believe including the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, indicating that they would want to have input into the process in that way. Specifically in relation to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, they have been added to the initial list on the advisory committee. I think they were added at the second or third week of the sittings of the committee, so they are now represented by David Armitage and have active representation on the committee.

As well as the advisory committee and the opportunity for written submissions, we have set up an interministerial committee to assess the potential impacts of various aspects of the bill, and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food has representatives from both its legal branch and the staff branches on various aspects of the bill. I know they do consult with various groups in relation to that.

So in relation to that specific concern, there are all of those avenues which are being actively pursued by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and other agricultural groups as well.

Mr Lessard: I have a question with respect to environmental controls, and this is in the estimates book dealing with vote 1503, item 4 on page 52. It describes various service components that are included and one of them are the St Clair, Detroit and St Marys rivers improvement projects. Being from Windsor-Walkerville, I am concerned with respect to the Detroit River which abuts my riding and I am wondering what the Detroit River improvement project entails. I wonder if somebody from the ministry can answer that question.

Mr Posen: Ken Richards, who heads up the river improvement projects, is with us today.

Mr Richards: I am Ken Richards, co-ordinator of intergovernmental relations in the Ministry of the Environment. The three rivers' team, as we call it, which encompass the Detroit, St Clair and St Marys rivers, was established in the mid-1980s to co-ordinate several international studies that were taking place along the river to determine pollution problems, specifically in the Detroit and also in the other two rivers. Essentially that program was called the Upper great Lakes Connecting Channels Study and was published, I think, about two years ago, if I remember correctly, as a major initiative of not only Canada and the US, but also the province and the state of Michigan.

The team itself comprises four people and their task, basically, is to ensure that studies are co-ordinated with the other governments such as the state of Michigan, and more specifically to work on the remedial action plans for the three rivers. In the case of the Detroit River, for example, the state of Michigan has the lead for the preparation of the remedial action plan. In the case of the St Marys and the St Clair rivers, this ministry has the responsibility for the lead.

What happens in those situations is that the team, which is based in Sarnia, chairs and looks after the remedial action plan steering committees and liaises very closely with the other governments, particularly with the state of Michigan, because of the writing responsibilities that are entailed in the preparation of the remedial action plans and also in terms of ensuring that the appropriate, or the necessary, technical studies are undertaken, either as part of the remedial action plan, or perhaps as separate from it.

For example, a couple of years ago, the team was involved in co-ordinating a study of wastes in deep deposits that were injected several years ago in the Sarnia area. As a result of that work, they determined that what they had to do was to assess whether or not the materials which had been injected under pressure to those deep deposits were in fact contaminating the St Clair River. They found that this was not the case. They undertook that kind of study.

Another study they have undertaken as an adjunct, if you will, to the remedial action plan on the St Marys River is the study of the Algoma slag site in Sault Ste Marie to determine the impact of any potential leaching from the site into the river. Another assessment, as part of that study, was also to determine whether any leaching was taking place into water supplies in the city of Sault Ste Marie.

So in essence what you have is a group of four people who are undertaking liaison with other governments, particularly the state of Michigan, and also are co-ordinating studies that may be required as part of the remedial action plan or be identified by the public advisory groups, for example, as being essential for the next stage of the remedial action plan.

Mr Conway: Back to Metro garbage: I am really interested to explore further and in some detail what I think is a fascinating challenge. As I say, if anyone can do it, I think the current minister can because --

Hon Mrs Grier: I hope I can.

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Mr Conway: Listen, I mean that. Someone was talking here about the master plans. Well, there is one under way in my area. It is really interesting to watch. A lot of good policy people put a lot of thought and good work into it and you can see it unfolding and foundering on high politics. It is absolutely clear to me that what this is going to take centrally and locally is some very tough, hard-nosed political decisions and directions. That is why in a way I am glad it is you and not me, because it is one very tough job and I do not envy the person who has to make some of these decisions. I watch people run for cover. My friends in the academic community and in the various constituencies, everybody is empowered. Everybody wants a say, and rightly so. I do not have any difficulty with that.

I think back to the days of the incredible things governments did and got away with. It is extraordinary to me that happened. I mentioned earlier the Cayuga decision. That is only 12 years ago that we ever thought we could do that and the farmers and others in Haldimand said, "Absolutely no way," and forced us, as a Legislature, and as a government, to a different course of action.

But ultimately somebody has to decide something and I was interested in the discussions about process. I am going to come back to this in a few moments. The deputy -- I do not know; in your absence perhaps -- had some wonderfully felicitous phrases for the kind of renovation of the Environmental Assessment Act, and I think I know exactly what he means and I wish him well. I wish you all well, but it is not for lack of policy inputs that we are going to have difficulty. If my experience on a local and regional basis with this is any guide, it is going to be the politics of it.

I have been struck, for example, when I think back over the last year. I thought it took guts for the member for York South and the member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore to say, admittedly in places like Marmora, that Metropolitan Toronto had a responsibility to deal with its own waste to a far greater extent than it has ever thought about doing before. Three cheers for the minister and Elmer Buchanan in Marmora, and I would have cheered as well, had I been there.

Now we are back to the Metro situation and what have we got? We have a situation where it appears that the Kirkland Lake option is probably not an option because, quite frankly, it perpetuates the old notion that you just truck it away and it fails one of the tests that the minister, I think, has set. You have to deal with this close to the source and I admire her for that.

But we know this. We know that there are three sites available in the GTA, I gather, and that those sites are going to reach their capacity within 24 months' time, maybe 30, but my information suggests within the calendar year 1993. The minister has said she really intends to pursue more vigorously a better reduction policy than the previous government, but even if she achieves the reduction targets that she has set, within a couple of years Metropolitan Toronto is going to be annually generating about three million tonnes of garbage with which something will have to be done. Maybe that is too liberal an estimate; maybe it will only be about 1.5 million tonnes, but it is a lot.

I am Harry Brown, Metropolitan Toronto resident, and I am trying to understand this. What is going to happen? We are going to have to deal with this. There is going to be no incinerating, as a stated policy. There may very well be, because I was in Peterborough and Cobourg: "A tax on these garbage bags. So this is going to start to back up on my doorstep in a way that I might not like. By the way, that might make me think about some personal incineration, if I am going to be stuck with $10 a bag." I am just hypothesizing.

I want to know what the ministry is going to do, because I do not think I am fantasizing here. Within two years, two and half years, the three sites will be at the limit of their capacities. I expect that by then there will be some new policy initiatives in place or on the way in terms of the final solution. That is one of the reasons I come back to my favourite example, the Waste Management Corp. Eleven, 12 years later, I know where we are with that.

To the credit of all your people, you have gone through an excellent process. You have looked at all the technologies and you are down now in Bismarck, in Lincoln county, and the real fight is about to begin. My guess is that five years from now, if we are lucky, five years from now, about 17 years into the fight, we will be getting close to maybe doing something. I am sitting here thinking: "All right. We have the Metro garbage. I do not think we have got 17 years to get to a fundamentally different kind of world."

What I want to know is, what are your plans specifically over the period 1991 to 1995 to deal with a very real problem that I think all analysts would see as being there?

Hon Mrs Grier: The problem is, as you describe it, a very real one and I do not think for a moment it is going to be possible not to have a new disposal facility for the greater Toronto area.

I have said, as I said earlier, that I feel that 1994, rather than 1993, is the time frame which we have, and my very specific plans are in accordance with those I outlined in the Legislature on 21 November which is, first and foremost, to get serious about reduction.

Reduction and reuse are not just reduction and reuse. In some cases doing that means separation into entities, into types of waste, which of itself facilitates reduction, because then what you do not have is a great big bin of mixed goods; you have a bin of corrugated cardboard or a bin of plastic or a bin of waste wood which can, itself, be used by somebody who uses that as raw material for his product. You do not get to the kind of reuse unless you achieve the kind of separation that facilitates it.

Part of the policies that the waste reduction office is looking at, the waste reduction advisory committee that I described in my comments earlier for the member from Markham, is how we can best do that. I think we can begin to make some real progress in that direction within the next three or four months, and I think the initiatives you have seen Metro announcing over the last couple of months are all part of that.

What that will begin to do is cut down on the amount that is going to the landfills and also begin to create garbage that is not the smelly, messy mess that we have always associated with garbage. If we can work towards the separation, for example, of the wet materials and the dry materials, then you have a very real prospect of separating out of the waste stream those things that can be composted, and establishing composting facilities not just in the backyards of every single family home owner -- because that is only about 50% of the population in Metropolitan Toronto, for example, more across the GTA -- but centralized neighbourhood area municipality composting facilities that will go a long way to pulling out of the waste stream a lot of the stuff that is now going to those three landfills that you mentioned.

My very first priority has to be to do that and I am confident that we have moved aggressively in that direction.

My second priority, as I said, is to look at the approvals process, which is the Environmental Assessment Act, and to provide some surety that it is not going to take 17 years. I do not, you may be relieved to know, anticipate being minister 17 years from now and I do not want to preside over 17 years of an environmental assessment process to get me to a waste disposal site in the GTA. That is not responsible.

What is responsible is to put in place a process that is true to the principles of the Environmental Assessment Act, which provides for an evaluation of alternatives to the project and alternative ways of achieving the project, and putting in place the kinds of time lines and surety that will enable us to reach that goal of whatever that date is.

Part of the difficulty with the date is that there is not a great deal of data out there. We know precisely how much is being dumped. It is hard to get a handle on how much is being generated from what sources and how much is being diverted. In my own riding, I have a privately owned facility just starting up that is doing a fair amount of separation and reduction. We do not have a handle on what the potential is out there for those kinds of facilities to grow, for other ones to be set up. We do have an ability to say, as we go through the process, that it cannot take for ever, and, "Ministry of whatever, you have this many days to respond with your comments on this particular approach, not an open-ended time line."

I am confident that we can get to the approvals process in time before we need the site and then finally to establish the criteria for a site search that are as consistent with the environmental needs of the greater Toronto area as any other actions this ministry takes.

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Mr Conway: Well, listen, this conversation has a wonderful irrelevance to it almost --

Hon Mrs Grier: It does not have irrelevance.

Mr Conway: -- because people who know what there is to know about available sites, even if you achieve reduction of fantastic proportions -- I come back to the first point. You know, by the way, where those sites are. I do not expect you ever to admit any of this in this room, but there is another room where they will be discussed and --

Hon Mrs Grier: If you are asking me for a list, I have not got one.

Mr Conway: Oh, no, listen, you have a list and I do not expect you to share it; I do not expect you to admit to its existence. My point is, however, in the short term, if I take the most wildly optimistic assumptions about your reduction strategy, I submit to you that by 1993-94 you will have at least two million tonnes a year for which there will be no repository and my question, as a taxpayer in Metro, would be, I wonder what she plans to do with that?

By the way, I think to get to that between now and 1993, you are going to have to as a government initiate some enormously unpopular taxes or tax-like policies to move that reduction along, whether it is in the packaging protocol, whether it is in the fees for curbside garbage bag, whatever. I do not think it is any secret that there are some instruments there. They are not that many and they are certainly not very popular.

With all of that application, I submit that by 1993-94 there are a couple of million tonnes a year that you are going to have to deal with. I worry, because I hear these people in Metro say their solution is going to be just to dump it all on Queen's Park. We cannot credit that; they do not really mean it; I know they are frustrated. But people who are close to this will know that it is a real problem.

My first point would be that she is going to use her emergency powers and she is going to stack Brock West, Keele Valley and Britannia to a much greater extent than was anticipated a few years ago. That is an option, surely.

Hon Mrs Grier: If I have not succeeded in finding a site for the disposal of the residue after reduction, that is in fact an option. It is not an option I plan to use and it is not an option that I think I am going to have to use.

Mr Conway: I can appreciate how you would wish that, but there is no one with a shred of credibility -- you have more than a shred, a lot of it -- who would not privately admit that no matter how successful you are in the next two to three years. you are going to have to make better and greater use, not better but greater use of one or all of those sites. It is just not reasonable to imagine.

Hon Mrs Grier: I hate to disabuse the member but I can assure you there are people out there who feel that if I got serious about reduction I would never need another site again and that I can reduce 100%. I do not happen to subscribe to that because I think the risk of not finding a site is greater than a risk I am prepared to take.

Mr Conway: If "serious" means draconian in a way that none in this Legislature has ever contemplated, I think you are right. I suppose that turns on your assessment of the pain tolerance of your colleagues and of the government.

Hon Mrs Grier: Or of the support I will have from the opposition.

Mr Conway: Well, absolutely.

Hon Mrs Grier: I know you recognize the extent of the problem and I am sure you will support my unpopular methods.

Mr Conway: But that is why cabinet ministers get paid more, and I think you should be paid everything you are paid because it is fun to make these decisions.

Hon Mrs Grier: You said earlier it was not enough.

Mr Conway: Pardon?

Hon Mrs Grier: You said in your opening remarks it was not enough.

Mr Conway: I believe that too. My point is that if you have to, as I believe you will have to, make greater reliance on one or all three of those sites, how would you propose to do that? What comfort will you be able to give the people of Keele Valley or of Brock West that there will be some kind of process, scoped and controlled as it will be presumably, to fit the new criteria for the assessment process that you described earlier? If I live out in Brock West, will I have some comfort that I am just not going to read some day that there is a ministerial edict that the life of this facility is going to be extended by 18 months or 36 months or five years without my participation in that decision?

Hon Mrs Grier: I am not prepared to cross that hypothetical bridge until I get to it. I am very confident that the process I have undertaken, the procedures I have set in place, the programs we are going to be working on over the next few months, will achieve our objective of reducing waste sufficiently and devising an effective and environmentally sound process that will lead us to a long-term site.

Mr Conway: Well, it sounds a lot better than I think it is going to feel, but I wish you well and I really mean that.

My next question is in a related area. I just want some data. Can the minister indicate -- not today, but I would like the information for the committee at the earliest opportunity -- how many communities there are in Ontario which are going to run out of their landfill capacity within the next year, the next three years and the next five years? That is just an information request. I am sure you have that data.

Hon Mrs Grier: It is all at somebody's fingertips but not at mine.

Mr Conway: No, I do not need it now.

Hon Mrs Grier: Okay, no. Mr McIntyre, I am sure, can give you that right now.

Mr Conway: I would like it in written form. I want to know how many communities are going to, in the next year, the next three years and the next five years, each of those benchmarks, run out of their landfill capacity. I would like to know the names of those communities.

Mrs McLeod: I just wanted to pursue that line of questioning, and I see that Mr Daigeler does as well, as we take it outside the Metro area and the obvious crisis situation that Metro faces and look at some of the communities outside the Metro area and the fact that even where there would appear to be somewhat less pressure in terms of identification of a landfill site, the process of planning and approval for a landfill site still takes an extraordinarily long time.

I think, for example, of the town of Marathon, and without wanting to get into all the details of why that particular approval may take a long period of time, I believe they have been at the planning process for some five years now and are really not sure what the next step will be or when they can expect to resolve the issue. Theoretically in Marathon, which is surrounded by a fairly large land mass, unpopulated area, it should not have been that difficult or have taken that long. I wonder if you could comment, first, statistically on how long it takes, on average, even in those situations where, as Mr Conway has indicated, it has not become a political issue.

Second, one of your assurances that the Metro situation can be dealt with is in making the process of environmental assessment more efficient, more expeditious, if I can use that term, although that might be putting a word in your mouth that you prefer not to use. What do you think is the cause of the problem in the slowness of the process to date? If you have identified that, I presume you then have a solution.

Hon Mrs Grier: Let me respond to your first question, because I think it is really important that we realize that waste disposal is not just a GTA or a Metro issue; it is a problem all across the province. I think the difficulty is that the magnitude of the amounts being generated in the GTA is about half the waste that is generated in the entire province, and so if we do not have anywhere to put that, it is such an enormous problem that it has taken more of our attention than it ought to have. But in all of my meetings with municipalities, I hear the same cry: "We don't know where we are going to go when our landfills close, and the process has been too slow and too open-ended and we don't know where we are going." I think the figures that Mr Cousens has asked for will provide you some sense of how many waste management master plans there are out there and how long they are taking, and I do not think that is good enough.

So I think that when I am talking about clarifying -- and I do not mind the word making the Environmental Assessment Act more "expeditious" -- what I am looking at is providing a greater sense of certainty to people as they go through the process.

I think the discussion paper describes the existing process as an inverted pyramid. The longer you go through the process, the more options there are out there that have to be considered.

The suggestions that were made by the group set up by Mr Bradley and in the paper that I have released and upon which we are now getting comment are, in fact, "Change the direction so that as you go through the process, a proponent, be it a proponent of any other facility or a municipality, can be assured that at a certain point, _Yes, the procedures you have been following, the criteria that you have used in developing your plan, the principles that you have embodied into your plan, are acceptable._ We sign off on that. Go forward from here on in."

That is a fairly new approach to the Environment Assessment Act and I do commend Mr Bradley for having established the discussion that led to that. As I say, it is an approach that I think has some merit. We put it out for comment and I think the comments are to be due back end of March, end of April. That will be the basis upon which we bring forward legislation designed to do just as you have suggested and expedite the process, without diminishing the important environmental values of consideration of alternatives, both to the project and to the means of locating them.

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Mr Daigeler: I would like to move on a little bit to a different kind of question, although it is related.

Mr Cousens: Just on the timing, Mr Chairman, what is the time? It is 21 minutes since the Liberals --

The Chair: Twenty-six minutes were used by the governing party. I am now conveying the six extra minutes to the official opposition. So it will take 26 minutes and then you will get 26 minutes. But we move to 20-minute segments after first round.

Mr Cousens: That is fine. That is good.

The Chair: You still have five minutes.

Mr Daigeler: Okay. Minister, you have many projects, many priorities, many goals, and I, for one, and my colleagues, share in that desire. We wish you well because environmental concerns are very, very high on the priority of Ontarians, certainly in my area, and inasmuch as we can be supportive, I think we will.

I am wondering, though, how you plan to pay for all of these initiatives that you would like to implement. Mr Bradley, I think, was quite successful in the last cabinet to raise the budgetary allocation for his ministry from, I think, about $440 million in 1988-89 to $650 million in 1991. Are you aiming to equally increase the budgetary allocation to your ministry, given the importance that you and your party are assigning to green issues? Or are you saying, "Well, we have only so many resources and we have to do things differently and we reallocate priorities within our own ministry"? And if that is your approach, how are you planning to reallocate those priorities within your own ministry?

Hon Mrs Grier: I think, Mr Daigeler, it is a very important question, and as you well know, the government in these difficult times finds itself without the resources to do many of the things that we would like to have done. But I think in just the process that I described to your colleague, what I am indicating is, there are a lot of ways in which the existing resources can be used more efficiently and you can get a lot more bang for the bucks that are currently allocated to many programs.

I do not know what it has cost to have 10 years before the environmental assessment of the Ontario Waste Management Corp, but I am sure those who were in cabinet before can tell you it is a great deal of money. There has got to be a better way, and by making the process clearer, fairer, more effective, it is certainly my intent to free up some resources that can be put to some of the priorities to which this government attaches a great deal of importance, such as the environmental bill of rights, for example. But if you are looking for me to assure you that there is a blank cheque out there and I can go on increasing the allocation, there are a lot of things that I want to do and that are on my agenda that will in fact need new resources.

But we talked a lot today about waste management. Waste management is something that has been subsidized by the provincial government because a lot of municipalities have not in fact been charging the generators of waste the cost of disposing of that waste, and I am not sure that is a particularly good use of provincial resources.

Again, a regional municipality, with which I met this week, four years ago had no tipping fees for its waste. That is just an invitation to everybody in that municipality to generate as much waste as they possibly can. They have increased the tipping fees in that municipality to $27.50 a tonne now, but it costs them $65 a tonne to dispose of the waste. Then of course they come to see the province and say, "We don't have enough money to do this, to do that and the other thing." We are subsidizing the disposal of waste.

I think the economic incentives of the true cost of disposing of waste achieves two things. First, it helps in reducing waste because people come to think, "Can I afford to waste that cardboard or that wood or that plastic," or whatever it is, "or is there a better way of using that resource?" Second, if we make true cost pricing part of our waste reduction programs, then it will free up some resources within the ministry to do many of the programs that you and I agree are important. So that is the kind of rethinking and reallocation that I have embarked upon.

Mr Cousens: I would like to talk about PCBs, if we could, for a moment. I would like to know what methods of destruction have been approved by the province to get rid of PCBs.

Hon Mrs Grier: Hardy, you can answer that. Is Mr Wong still here?

The Chair: Mr Wong has been introduced. Welcome back.

Mr Posen: There are two, I guess, types of PCBs, as Mr Wong will note. One is the low-level PCBs, for which there are chemical destruction methods, and then the high-level PCBs, which are more complex.

Mr Wong: Hardy Wong, director of waste management branch. The deputy is right. There are two types, the low-level and the high-level, and for the purpose of operation we further divide the low-level into two types of levels. One is the type of low-level PCBs we removed from active service. Another type is the low-level PCB still in active service, ie, hooked on the transmission lines systems and so on.

The low-level waste can be both in service and in storage; on an ongoing basis for the last number of years, has been destroyed through chemical processes under the licence issued by the Ministry of the Environment, under a regulation which has been approved through public hearings, I believe it is, about seven or eight years ago. That regulation provides very specific performance standards in order to decontaminate the low-level PCB wastes. At the same time, the regulation provides performance standards requirements for destruction of PCB at a high level. Destruction of PCB at a high level, the current state of art of technology is for incineration for destruction.

At the same time, however, the approval requirement is much more stringent and requires a site-specific hearing when one wants to establish a destruction facility in Ontario. The prime example that you know in Ontario is the Ensco corporation, under contract by the government. It is in the process of destroying PCBs in Smithville, Ontario, which is the largest PCB storage site, primarily at a highlevel PCB, oils and equipment and so on.

The federal government of course also initiated a destruction facility in Goose Bay and it was completed about a year ago. A report by the federal government is due to be released as to the performance and the acceptable level in destroying primarily PCB-contaminated soil in that case.

The federal government, along with the province of Ontario and Quebec Environment, as well as two major hydros, Quebec Hydro and Ontario Hydro, has also gone into joint venture, along with Alberta Environment, and set up a testing facility in the Swan hills in Alberta, which is Alberta's hazardous waste management facility. That facility has been testing various different types of feed material, whether it is pure, high-level PCB wastes or equipment or contaminated soils or other mixed -- like oil with PCBs. The test has been completed, and currently, under the federal government's guidance, the consultants, along with two hydros and two governments, are producing a report to evaluate that testing methodology.

Those three testing methodologies, one in Ensco strictly by the Ontario government, one in Goose Bay and one in Alberta, they are all different high-level temperature incineration technologies, so at this time we still hold quite high hopes that either one or all of the three technologies will turn out to be proven acceptable for destroying different types of high-level PCBs in the province of Ontario.

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Mr Cousens: Do you have any plans for incineration of PCBs? When you talk "high-temperature," is that a form of incineration?

Mr Wong: That is right. Like I say, high-level PCBs, there is currently no means. But "high-level," that means incineration.

Mr Cousens: Is there a portable method? I have read about these different devices that can go to sites and then deal with the PCBs on site.

Mr Wong: All three technologies are "portable." Some people define them as mobile, some people define them as transportable. It depends how easily one can move the equipment from one place to another and how quickly one can set up that equipment. You may have 27 trailer trucks and it takes a couple of weeks to set up. We define them as transportable, not necessarily mobile, equipment. All three technologies are mobile in a sense.

Mr Cousens: I think that what you have just said is that in a sense it is really --

Mr Wong: It depends on the quantity of material at that location.

Mr Cousens: Oh, very much so. Are there licensed facilities that can contain PCBs right now in the province, or do we have plans for having licensed facilities for PCBs?

Hon Mrs Grier: You mean storage?

Mr Cousens: Storage thereof, yes.

Mr Wong: PCB sites are licensed under Ontario regulation 1182, which is a specific regulation under EPA which is designed to provide those licences for PCB waste removed from service. The province has right now about 1,300 sites across the province. It could be major industrial plants; it could be school boards. Schools boards have facilities to consolidate wastes removed from the transformers and equipment which came out of the schools.

Mr Cousens: So they are not necessarily licensed; they are just storage places.

Mr Wong: They are all licensed storage facilities.

Mr Cousens: They are all licensed, all 1,300.

Mr Wong: They are all licensed, all 1,300 of them.

Mr Cousens: Could I have a listing? Could that be released? Is that public information?

Mr Wong: That is public.

Hon Mrs Grier: Yes.

Mr Cousens: Could we get a copy of that, please?

Hon Mrs Grier: I think it is important just to note that those are not sites to which additional PCBs are being brought in.

Mr Cousens: They have accumulated them.

Hon Mrs Grier: They have accumulated them.

Mr Cousens: It is the school boards that have them and therefore they have them on their hands.

Hon Mrs Grier: Right, and they cannot transport them offsite. There are no disposal facilities, so they are secured there.

Mr Cousens: I understand that, but you only have three that would really be stations to receive the delivery of PCBs right now in the province of Ontario.

Mr Wong: No, three technologies.

Mr Cousens: Three technologies. Do you have any sites where people can ship their PCBs to in Ontario right now?

Mr Wong: On a commercial basis?

Mr Cousens: On a commercial basis.

Mr Wong: No. The purpose of 1182 is specifically designed to make sure the generator takes care of its own PCB material.

Mr Cousens: Yet once they have generated it, there is no methodology, no way in which they can get them off their property.

Mr Wong: High-level ones, that is right.

Mr Cousens: And how would they deal with low-level ones?

Mr Wong: The chemical processes.

Mr Cousens: So they could bring that on site then?

Mr Wong: That is right.

Mr Cousens: Would it be supervised by the Ministry of the Environment?

Mr Wong: Those low-level chemical process are very much more mobile than the three types of technology that I have described.

Mr Cousens: Do you have a set of guidelines for a licensed facility to have PCBs on site; for instance, one of those school boards?

Mr Wong: That is right.

Mr Cousens: I would like to have a copy of that as well, please. It may be somewhere within our area, but l would like to have that. To me, what we are looking at is a situation that is not going away, and you have places like that situation in Whitby, right where we have a PCB-laden ferry in the harbour. You know, whose responsibility is it to deal with it? When it is on the water, it is federal, and when it is on land, it is provincial. Meanwhile, the people of Whitby are alarmed and concerned about it. What are your plans, as a ministry, to deal with that Whitby situation?

Mr Wong: I am not familiar with this case. Maybe Jim Merritt can help me out.

Mr Cousens: If I can just elaborate, one of the places that is looking to receive a licence is Art's Auto Wreckers, and has requested a licence for that. Maybe you could elaborate upon approval for a licence, plans for a licence, and just how in fact you are dealing with this.

Hon Mrs Grier: Perhaps, Jim, you could clarify, because there certainly was a report this morning that we had turned down an application and the status of that application I think is important for the committee to know.

Mr Merritt: I am Jim Merritt, director of central region, Ministry of the Environment. The situation with the barge in Whitby harbour: It is in fact a commercial barge, not a ferry, and the unit on that barge is an electrical generator with a transformer. The past purpose of that was to generate portable electricity for marine works.

The owner of that barge still claims that it is a usable piece of equipment, although marine engineers have disputed that, so it becomes very difficult for one to claim to take it out of service. The jurisdictional problems you have alluded to, because it is tied up under a federal facility; the federal government has been very involved; we have been very involved; and the municipality has been very involved.

The latest effort was with the federal government to proceed to order the removal of that equipment from that barge after the barge had sprung a leak and settled to the bottom of the dock it had been tied to. They had approached us in conjunction with the owner of that barge for the establishment of a PCB site, as described by Mr Wong.

We would be prepared to accept that application provided there is a suitable site and the property owned by that person is in fact the same piece of property that is owned by Art's Auto Wreckers. That is the same individual. When you are in that situation with PCBs to store, you cannot store them on other people's pieces of property. One has to find his own piece of property, and that is the dilemma they are in.

At the same time, for local good reasons, the local politicians have chosen not to accept that. Our process in reviewing those applications is to go to the local municipalities and ask them if they have serious concerns and objections to that, and if they do we do not pursue establishing a site at that location. That is where we stand currently in that we have been led to believe that they do not want to have a site established there. The owner then is left in a situation of not having another location or owning another piece of property at this time.

Mr Cousens: What advice or counsel is your ministry prepared to give the community as a whole on how to deal with this issue at the present time?

Mr Merritt: We still consider that the owner of this material is responsible for it and still has an obligation to find a site for that and if it means going out, whatever action he would have to take to find a location.

Mr Cousens: What is your next line of action should a certain period of time pass? Is there a period of time that passes before your ministry gets involved? How long is that period of time and what action are you prepared to do if that person does not find a satisfactory location for the PCBs? Two questions: How long do you give him? Then what action do you take following?

Mr Merritt: We would wait for another request from that person, because in fact it is the federal government that would have to force the material off the barge, and we understand it is prepared to move fairly quickly to continue to pressure the removal of that material.

Mr Cousens: Should this person who has it on his property now not be able to find it, what action then does the Ministry of Environment take to resolve this problem?

Mr Merritt: We will continue to work with the federal government to get this person to manage his waste properly. This is a viable company. There is no reason why they should not manage their problem.

Mr Cousens: Is there a precedent for the ministry being involved with someone who has PCBs that he is not placing in the proper area? Is there any way in which you can handle that?

Hon Mrs Grier: I am not sure if there is a precedent for them being in one jurisdiction. Once they are on the boat, there is a federal agreement signed by the federal government, or a federal order gazetted with the agreement of the previous government in May 1989 which said how federal PCB storage sites would be looked after and what the division of jurisdiction was within Ontario.

The jurisdiction here is very clear that as long as it is on the boat, it is federal jurisdiction. Once it comes off the boat, it is our jurisdiction to make sure it is stored in a safe and proper manner, but I am not sure that it is the jurisdiction, in fact I do not think it is the responsibility of the ministry, to find a place and buy a site and take them somewhere. They are owned by the owner of the barge and it is our responsibility to the people of Ontario to make sure that once they land in Ontario, they are safely stored.

Mr Cousens: I am concerned with the number of elements to this problem.

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Hon Mrs Grier: Oh it is a very, very complicated one.

Mr Cousens: I for one see it as one of those areas where the fuzzy jurisdiction of federal and provincial governments is truly a matter that is unacceptable, and has to be one of those things that you table at a first ministers' conference or a second or third ministers', whatever level it is of the federal government. But this is unsatisfactory from my view in total.

Hon Mrs Grier: Mr Cousens, whatever pressure you can bring to bear on my federal colleague will be more than welcomed by this minister because --

Mr Cousens: You are the one who is the angel on this one.

Hon Mrs Grier: The fuzzy jurisdictions are very frustrating. But in fact this is less fuzzy than many others, because it is quite clear that it is a federal jurisdiction.

Mr Cousens: I cannot stand this kind of fuzz anyway.

Hon Mrs Grier: May I just finish, though, by saying that I think and I really regret that the municipality is not prepared to work more proactively to approve a site. We can guarantee them that we will not agree or licence a site that is not as safe as any other PCB site in the province. But we cannot do that if the municipality says, "No, we do not want them in our jurisdiction." The owner has to find a piece of property and a municipality that will allow them to be stored there. We have to make sure then that they are both transported and stored as safely as they can possibly be.

Mr Cousens: I see you as more of a traffic cop than a person who is trying to solve the problem. You blame the federal government and now you are blaming the municipal government. When I ask what your government is going to do, I do not get too much of a sense of your really buying into the fact that there is a problem. You know there is a problem there, but I do not see any answers forthcoming from your ministry as to how you can help solve the problem. You are saying the federal government is involved. They are fuzzy and they are bad and now you are saying the municipal government is at fault. What I would like to know in specific answer form if you can, what will your government do?

Hon Mrs Grier: I thought I tried to explain that, Mr Cousens. What I am explaining is that it has to be a co-operative effort. No one level of government can solve this particular problem. All three are involved and all three are very clear what their jurisdiction is. Our jurisdiction is to work as co-operatively as we can with both the others. But they are now in a federal jurisdiction. They have to be moved to a municipal jurisdiction. It is our job to make sure that is done safely. We have told both the other jurisdictions that we are ready, willing and able to assist in doing that. But one of them has to decide the precise location at which this safe, secure site is going to be.

Mr Cousens: I will come back to it. If I can, I would like to have a listing of all those licensed facilities that have PCBs in the province. Is that something you will be getting for us? I would like to have a copy of the criteria and guidelines to become a licensed PCB holder, tank or whatever you call it. I have one more question that comes out of it. Do you have inspection procedures that are now in the ministry to check out those PCB storage areas and how frequently do you check them?

Mr Merritt: We have a regular inspection program of all those PCB sites. We see them at least once a year, and many more frequently, particularly the sites that are considered to be sensitive sites, those close to schools or public services. That program has been in place for several years now.

Mr Cousens: Do you have any sense of knowing whether or not you have all of the storage sites for PCBs in the province of Ontario or what percentage do you think you have? Have you a sense that this is a complete list that you are going to be giving us or is a partial list?

Hon Mrs Grier: I did an extensive amount of work on this in my capacity as critic, Mr Cousens. I was relatively satisfied that in fact most sites had been identified. You may be interested to know that you are occupying a licensed PCB storage site at this very moment. They are in the basement of the Legislature and quite securely stored and checked annually.

The Chair: Next to the food service area.

Mr Cousens: But my question stays --

Hon Mrs Grier: We could give you a comprehensive list.

Mr Cousens: I want the comprehensive list, but I also want some satisfaction that you feel it is a truly comprehensive list.

Hon Mrs Grier: I think it is comprehensive for most of the bulk. What you still find are places that have fluorescent lights, the ballasts of which contain PCBs --

Mr Cousens: I saw the article last week.

Hon Mrs Grier: -- where both the owners, let alone the ministry, do not know when these ballasts were changed and whether it was post-1970 or not. So there may well be many locations where there are PCBs in current use that we are not aware of, but we are certainly aware of those where there is licensed storage.

Mr Cousens: Mrs Marland had a question on PCBs, I think.

Mrs Marland: In dealing with the subject -- oh, have we changed people on the PCBs?

Hon Mrs Grier: Who did you want to talk to?

Mr Cousens: Mr Wong is still at the back.

Mrs Marland: Yes, I think it is probably Mr Wong's question, but knowing of the two or three licensed mobile facilities that were licensed in Ontario as a result of the extensive environmental assessment hearings and developing the criteria for those mobile facilities, I know that Ontario Hydro is now destroying PCBs onsite at a number of its different facilities. We just had it at the Lakeview generating plant last year.

Hon Mrs Grier: Low-level PCBs.

Mrs Marland: Yes, low-level. There has always been the suggestion that St Lawrence Cement was also burning low level PCBs as part of its used oil disposal. I am wondering if you would like to tell us whether that is so, and has St Lawrence Cement burned low level PCBs in its used oil disposal? They are licensed to burn used oil.

Mr Wong: Hardy Wong, director of waste management branch: St Lawrence Cement is licensed to receive high BTU-valued industrial wastes. Now, there is a difference between PCBs and chlorinated compounds and solvents. They are not licensed to burn specifically PCBs at any levels. However, they are licensed to receive industrial solvents, which may be chlorinated type of solvents. PCBs are also grouped in the same category of chemicals, being chlorinated compounds, but are different chlorinated compounds.

Mrs Marland: So you are saying that the PCBs, the polychlorinated biphenyls, are in that group that --

Mr Wong: But they are different.

Mrs Marland: But different?

Mr Wong: Yes, sure.

Mrs Marland: Polychlorinated biphenyls are in that group but different?

Mr Merritt: Jim Merritt again: Specifically with St Lawrence Cement, its certificate of approval allows it to burn the chlorinated solvents and other oils but not PCBs. They are restricted to less than one part per million PCBs at a test level. Recently it had been determined and they had submitted to us, because they have to test regularly, that they had in fact a batch of solvents that had come in with something in the order of 30 parts per million PCBs. We determined that had happened. We have asked them to stop using those oils and solvents in their process until they can improve their test protocols and ensure that if in fact they get another batch with elevated levels of PCBs, it can be rejected and sent back to the supplier before it goes through their furnaces. That incident is also being investigated by our investigations branch as well.

Mrs Marland: So there was an incident where they did in fact burn 30 points per million at St Lawrence Cement recently.

Mr Merritt: That is correct, yes.

Mrs Marland: So the screen --

The Chair: A final question, Mrs Marland.

Mrs Marland: Is this the end of the time for now?

The Chair: Yes. Final question.

Mrs Marland: So then are we saying that the onsite screening by the receiver of that shipment of oil then is not accurate enough or it just does not protect St Lawrence Cement or any other incinerator from burning that oil? If it is to be tested, should it not be tested before it is burned?

Mr Merritt: That is right. That is why we have in fact suspended their operation and are requiring them to revise and review how they are controlling that, and that will have to be approved by us before they can start up again.

Mrs Marland: Mr Chairman, could I ask that I have the information of when that burn took place in terms of the date and what is the ongoing investigation, because it is very critical information.

Mr Merritt: I am sorry; I do not think it is appropriate to reveal the parts of the investigations that are going on right now.

Hon Mrs Grier: It is with the investigations and enforcement branch, is it?

Mr Merritt: Yes.

Hon Mrs Grier: I see. Which means that it is being investigated to see if there is a potential for laying charges, so we would not be able to release the details of that investigation until a decision had been made as to whether or not charges should be laid.

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Mrs Marland: You mean you cannot even mention the date that it took place? Was it within the last --

Hon Mrs Grier: Oh, I think we can.

Mr Merritt: We could provide some of the basic information, yes.

Hon Mrs Grier: Oh, yes, we can certainly give you the facts.

Mrs Marland: I can have that tomorrow?

Mr Cousens: Could I ask one final question?

The Chair: Really, our time is up in rotation. Thank you. The staff has offered some assistance with the response.

Mr O'Connor: As your parliamentary assistant, Minister, it puts me kind of in an odd situation to ask you a question, but as parliamentary assistant for the greater Toronto area, there are quite a number of areas that concern me, particularly in my riding, Durham York. I have a large portion of it in the Oak Ridges moraine, and the development that has taken place in the past few years on the Oak Ridges moraine is a concern that was brought to my attention several times during the summertime, during the course of the election. Actually, there are still quite a number of very interested groups wondering what is going to happen as far as the Planning Act is concerned, and some sort of legislation around planning and keeping that area green and the Oak Ridges moraine.

Hon Mrs Grier: Yes, it is certainly an issue that is of great interest to me, because in my capacity as minister responsible for the GTA, I also have responsibility for the waterfront and the Crombie report. I am sure, as members of the committee will know, flowing from the work that David Crombie had been doing as a federal commissioner, the previous government in an act of great enlightenment also appointed him a provincial commissioner. As a result of that appointment flowed the report that Ron Kanter headed up when he was with us here on the Oak Ridges moraine and green space.

The recommendation in the interim Crombie report that was released last summer was that the Oak Ridges moraine be protected and that we look at establishing what he very graphically described as a net of green over the greater Toronto area. I find that a very attractive concept and am delighted that the provincial government has supported that recommendation and is looking what we can do to preserve and to set out some guidelines for protection of the moraine.

I have been struck, as I have had an opportunity to look at some parts of it, how late we are in protecting that resource, because it is the place where so many of the headwaters of the rivers that flow through the GTA are recharged. A great deal of development has already occurred there, but there are still opportunities to protect some very important parts of it. The Ministry of Natural Resources, my own ministry and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs have been meeting to review the Kanter report? which was released last summer, and to come up with some guidelines to control overdevelopment in that area.

We also, of course, are looking very critically at the Planning Act and seeing what can be done in order to make the Planning Act a more effective instrument of environmental controls as well as merely controls on development, but an instrument of proactive planning and of planning that takes the environment into account.

I hope that we can look at the moraine and at all the river valleys and at the waterfront in a way of establishing green space, looking at the planning of the greater Toronto area. As you know, some work has been done by the office of the GTA into an urban structure study, looking at the future of the area and also looking at how we can plan most effectively.

I was talking just last week with the chairman of the Metropolitan Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, who of course shares our concerns about the Oak Ridges moraine. They appear to be approaching it from the point of view of, "We cannot afford to buy enough land to protect the Oak Ridges moraine." I reminded him of the existence of the only environmental land use plan in this province, the Niagara Escarpment plan, a plan that has the support of all three parties in this House, both in and out of government. It is now the responsibility of my ministry and a challenge that I relish. I think that is a very appropriate way of looking at how we protect special environmental features of the land and can we look at that as a model of land use planning that will perhaps provide some guidance as we come to grips with the issues of the Oak Ridges moraine.

In a short answer, the government recognizes that it has responsibility to act on all the various reports that have been done and to protect the Oak Ridges moraine. The actual means and mechanisms by which we will do that are currently under discussion and I hope to have some definitive answers as soon as possible.

Mr Hansen: When Mr Cousens was talking there, it took me back home. I am from Lincoln. We have all of these things. We have the storage of PCBs, we have the destruction of PCBs by Ensco in Smithville, and also the OWMC, with the hearings going on now, wanting to locate in West Lincoln. And it was just decided that the Lincoln quarry will not be accepting the fly ash from Toronto. So I have a lot of concerns, and our riding has a lot also.

There is one question I think Mr Wong would be the one to answer, in regard to the different technologies that you were talking about. There was one that was brought on a while ago by E S Fox and the military college in Kingston, and it was a 40-foot trailer called a Pyroplasma, which actually was destruction, not incineration. I just wondered if there was any comment that there has been any more looking into that particular area.

The Vice-Chair: Mr Wong is not here at the moment and the deputy has had to step out for a moment also, but your question is on the record. If the staff who are here could get an answer back for you and the committee tomorrow, I suggest that might be one way of dealing with your question, unless there is someone else, Minister, who wants to answer Mr Hansen.

Hon Mrs Grier: I have this incredible crutch of notes. If I can find it through the thousands of pages that have been presented to me, I may even by able to answer the question myself. What is the name of the trailer?

Mr Hansen: It was Westinghouse Pyroplasma.

Hon Mrs Grier: It was a destruction method that they were able to move themselves?

Mr Hansen: Yes. It just could not get approval because it was not incineration, but actually destruction. It had a low flow of materials but it did not take solids, it only took a slurry, and it could go from site to site. It had been tested in Kingston for the state of New York in EPA hearings. It was approved to operate in Love Canal and is being used in Japan, Australia and countries in the Far East, but it was something that was never approved here. I just thought when I saw Mr Wong here, he might have a little bit of background. I do not know whether you --

Hon Mrs Grier: I certainly would like to know the answer to the question too, so we will get Mr Wong back and get an answer to that on the record as soon as we can.

The Vice-Chair: That is fine.

Mr Hansen: The other thing was actually on vote 1504, item 3, which has to do with the OWMC. The activity description was that the Ontario Waste Management Corp provides for the design, construction and operation of a provincial facility for the management of liquid waste and hazardous waste, and there are no initiatives, I believe, and I know the hearings are going on. I am not getting into that, but the one thing was that part of that crown corporation was actually the waste exchange, and I do not see any figures at all involved in these estimates or initiatives. I think there should be an initiative marked in there that it is not just the destruction. This is something we inherited as a government, but I still do not see anything as initiatives in there.

Hon Mrs Grier: No, I agree with you and it was certainly something, when I was doing estimates, of which I was very conscious because the mandate of OWMC is not merely the destruction; it is the reduction and reuse and the facilitation of a waste exchange. My sense has been that that has in fact proved to be quite successful and has been growing in volume and materials exchanged. But I do not know whether Mr Boyko can answer some of the details of that or whether the actual portion of the budget that is being used for the waste exchange is something we would have to find out. That was one of the reasons that I had thought that perhaps having somebody from OWMC here specifically to answer questions might have been helpful.

Mr Posen: Without having an answer to the exact proportion, I think I can say with some certainty that the great majority of their budget is devoted to preparing for their environmental assessment and for the hearing, and I guess we have tried to direct them to get through that part of it before they came to us for additional moneys for other purposes.

Mr Hansen: But I understand there are moneys there already --

Mr Posen: There are for the waste exchange.

Mr Hansen: -- for that waste exchange, yes. But it just did not show up, and I was looking in other areas and I could not find it.

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Hon Mrs Grier: I think that is a very valid question, one that I am interested in, and I will see if we can get an answer for that before tomorrow, Madam Chair.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you. I think, Minister, as we have in previous estimates had the chairman Dr Donald Chant before estimates to answer the questions specifically dealing with OWMC, that the committee might entertain that. The clerk is advising me that I am correct, that that has been the case in the past.

Since OWMC is now rolling down the road to I think 11 years and $13 billion -- I know when the minister and I asked the question last time it was seven years and $8 billion. Anyway, if the committee would entertain that invitation to Dr Chant, it might be of relevance for any number of the members. Perhaps we could find out through our clerk whether Dr Chant or someone else would be available tomorrow.

Hon Mrs Grier: I know the previous minister always found it most helpful to bring Mr Chant here to explain OWMC to the members of the committee. I would be glad to facilitate that, though time is a little short to ask him at short notice.

Mr Conway: It seems to me that in our situation these are differently styled estimates than we have had before. I think the Environment estimates are to be dealt with over two days, a total of eight hours. I think Donald Chant is a wonderful fellow and he has been here before, but we are really limited in time. I do not mean to be difficult, but there are lots of issues that I think we should --

Ms Haslam: It is our time, though, is it not?

The Vice-Chair: It is up to the committee if the committee wishes to have him.

Ms Haslam: Mr Hansen certainly has raised those issues and if that will facilitate the answers, then let's invite him.

Hon Mrs Grier: Okay, but I do not know, given that the hearing is I think in process this week, whether in fact we can get Dr Chant at short notice. I will certainly try to get some specific answers about the budget and the amount that is going to waste reduction and have those for Mr Hansen in the morning.

The Chair: Mrs Marland, did you wish to speak to that issue? First, we have to deal with the issue of availability and then, if the consensus is to invite him, we should, in fairness to Mr Conway's comments, determine the limited amount of time we wish to deal with this matter.

Mrs Marland: If we could defer this until the critic returns from our caucus, then we can discuss it together, Mr Chairman.

Mr Conway: I have no difficulty, Mr Chairman. If some of the members wish to use their time in a cross-examination of Dr Chant, that is entirely their business. I will not be participating. I want to get on to some other things.

The Chair: Very good. Ms Haslam?

Ms Haslam: In your discussion at the beginning -- I know you did not bring notes, but I made notes about some of the things that you had been discussing and I hear a lot about Mr Bradley as the former minister. We all know Mr Bradley is a dedicated person and I, for one, went to school with him and I know that he is singleminded and focused and an extremely hard worker. But I have also heard that sometimes, since he was previously the Minister of the Environment, he stood alone in the cabinet and did not always have the support of his colleagues. Your comments said it is taken into consideration for every decision, even in cabinet. Perhaps you could elaborate on how supportive your cabinet colleagues have been and give some examples of how you have been able to green the government.

Hon Mrs Grier: Well, I cannot comment on the past, but I certainly have --

The Chair: You cannot comment on cabinet either.

Hon Mrs Grier: On cabinet or on this current cabinet, but I certainly -- I think the indication from the Minister of Transportation about moving quickly to deal with public transportation issues within Metropolitan Toronto and reinforcing our commitment to public transit over expressways is an example of what I meant by greening the government. I am just delighted in the initiatives of the Minister of Energy in favouring energy efficiency and conservation as opposed to the development of new generating facilities. While that is primarily directed towards the avoidance of new, very capital intensive, major generating facilities, it also has the effect of making contribution to our battle against global warming and emissions.

The discussions I was having with Mr O'Connor around the Planning Act and the Oak Ridges moraine, that is again a cross-ministry initiative and certainly what this government has been attempting to foster. What I find very helpful is that initiatives are happening on behalf of a number of ministries, as opposed to just coming from the Ministry of the Environment, and that is what I meant prior to my taking over and subsequently when I said that we are not going to get anywhere if there is only one Ministry of the Environment and everyone else is pursuing business as usual.

What this government is trying to do is to make sure, as I said, that the environment is a factor in every discussion, even in the small things that we do, whether it be by greening our offices, using reusable glasses and cups as opposed to disposables and looking at how this government operates. I know the Minister of Government Services is considering a very forthright program of greening just our daily practices within government. That not only helps reduce our waste; it also helps us to speak with credibility when we are dealing with other segments of society that have not perhaps come to grips with the need to reduce and reuse.

I always found as an individual and as a critic that when you could say, "I use my blue box" or "I have a composting heap," it was very persuasive in dealing with other, even if they were very much larger, generators of wastes, and that is the kind of example that I think the government is moving towards. Even the requests from the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario that it look at how it can move towards recycling and even perhaps returning some of its containers is an indication that the environment is not just a rhetorical commitment but something that all the members of the cabinet are concerned about.

Mrs McLeod: Mr Chairman, on a point of privilege, stopping the clock for 60 seconds: There have been from time to time during the course of the estimates process, and just in the last question again, references that imply an attribution about personal motivations, personal stances of individuals from the former government, either former members or present members. I am not anxious to rush to the defence of myself or my colleagues and take valuable time away from the estimates process, but if they continue it will be necessary in fact to make some personal rebuttals.

I particularly, as a former Minister of Natural Resources, do not want it to go unsaid that I am a very strong believer in environmental protection and conservation and brought those values to my role as minister. I believe that is also true of my other colleagues, and it would be impossible for anybody who is not part of those cabinet discussions to make any judgements otherwise.

The Chair: Thank you. I would agree that comments have been borderline in terms of imputing motive and I thought that, with only one exception, there were not similar questions raised about the government of the day. I would hope that all members would respect the process and be sensitive to the legitimate concern being raised by Mrs McLeod. Having said that, I would like to begin the clock again and, Mrs McLeod, you have the floor for questioning.

Mrs McLeod: Thank you very much. I should add I was also an environmentalist as a former Minister of Energy, just in case there should be any question about the two. Minister, I wanted to return again to the area of waste management, but specifically looking at recycling programs and future directions. You have stated in the past as a critic, and I believe it has been the policy of the NDP, to require municipalities to become involved in blue box recycling programs and also to require households to become involved in separation of their waste. Can I ask whether you are intending to institute mandatory recycling and when we can expect to see that kind of legislation?

Hon Mrs Grier: Certainly that is something I am considering. What I am finding as I talk to municipalities across the province is, as I indicated earlier, a very uneven degree of participation in recycling and also a very real sort of reinventing the wheel in all the municipalities going around as to whether it is good for them and how much of a cost and what the alternatives are, which I find a little frustrating. I think if it has been proved somewhere, then it can be done somewhere else.

However, part of the unevenness is the very real recognition of the difficulties of recycling. I spoke to one rural municipality and it was very sparsely populated. They had blue boxes, but they were driving a quarter of a mile between blue boxes to pick up the waste and wondering whether that was in fact the most environmentally sound way of doing it in that particular area.

I am very conscious of the need to devise programs that are applicable to the actual situations in the actual areas. One of the things I am looking at and have not come to a conclusion on is whether there is perhaps a size cutoff -- municipalities of a certain size or a certain density, mandatory source separation, mandatory blue boxes -- whereas a depot system might well do in parts of the north that you are more familiar with than I am. That is one of the considerations we are looking at as part of an overall and integrated waste reduction approach.

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Mrs McLeod: Is the absence of facilities to use recycling material, in your mind, a legitimate reason at this point for municipalities not to institute recycling programs?

Hon Mrs Grier: I am constantly faced with this kind of chicken and egg. The industries that would like to use secondary materials say, "If you can assure us of a steady supply, then we will make the investment that would provide the secondary industry." On the other hand, the industries and the commercial outlets say, "There's no point in separating because we're not assured that there is in fact a market out there for the products that we're separating."

I think you have to go in lockstep and by mandatory source separation then and a time frame. If you say that there will be mandatory source separation by a certain date, then I think it gives the infrastructure and the market the time to catch up. As I say, in the facility in my own riding, which is a private-sector recycling facility, they go out and aggressively seek a market for the materials before they sign a contract with the generator that requires the separation and the transfer of the waste. You cannot do that on a province-wide basis. You have to put in place the mechanisms and let the market respond to a certain degree. But yes, I think mandatory source separation is one of the tools that I am going to be prepared to use.

Mrs McLeod: Can I just ask then, as you look at instituting mandatory programs and extending that mandatory requirement to households, what kind of monitoring, what kind of enforcement provisions do you anticipate having to use? Perhaps I should just let that stand as a question, but to add to it, are you looking at fines as a result of monitoring people who are not carrying out separation in accordance with your legislation?

Hon Mrs Grier: Yes, I think there is an awful lot of goodwill out there and an awful lot of people who want to take advantage of facilities and programs that will help them reduce waste. The response to the blue box -- I remember in my municipal capacity suggesting something like that and being laughed at by the waste management people who said people are not going to separate their cans and their bottles and their papers and put them in the blue box, but in fact people have shown enough concern that they want to do that and are doing it in spades.

I would hope that we could avoid getting into a kind of a punitive mode and setting up a whole secondary set of people to go and inspect -- you know, garbage police, as it has been described in some rather extreme portrayals of this. That is why I think it is critical that I work in concert with the municipalities, because the municipalities are the people who now pick it up. They are the ones who will be responsible and who are asking for some rules and for some guidelines.

I have looked at municipalities like southwest Oxford, which has had mandatory recycling for quite some time. One of their more effective tools and prohibitions is that they do not pick it up if the wrong things are put out or if it is not separated, so the householder is then left with another week of the garbage, which is not very pleasant often. I am not sure whether that is a sufficient impediment to doing it, but I am also aware that you do not want to just make it so difficult and so punitive that people give up and do not participate or that they begin to use dumping on side roads and, as I mentioned earlier, improper locations for disposal of their wastes. So it is a kind of negotiation and consultation in order to bring all the players and all the various levels on board and co-operating.

I do not think managing the environment in any way is something that can be done by any one level of government, by any one entity, and I have said for many years that the province or the federal government cannot legislate a clean environment. We are all players in the environment. We all have a responsibility and we all share a responsibility for our actions. The role of government is to make it simple and easy for people to do the right thing, and so the kinds of programs this government is looking at and the kinds of programs I am trying to devise are designed to achieve that end.

Mr Conway: I want to pursue that in my own sort of context, and I do not disagree with a lot of what you said. I am sitting here, thinking about my county of Renfrew; 36 municipalities. It runs 140 miles along the Ottawa River to an average depth of maybe 35 miles; in some places it is 60 miles. Some of those municipalities have as few as 200 permanent residents, and there is no subject which is gathering their attention these past few years quite like this subject and the attendant one, not at all unconnected, of taxes.

Added to all of this of course is a fairly substantial recreational population. I myself watched, for example, out in cottage country where some of the smallest municipalities can be found, where the community is the weakest in terms of its financial ability to do anything. Take a house in the largest community in the county, the city of Pembroke, and a cottage in one of the smallest municipalities: When the rules get tightened at the township dump, as thankfully they have been tightened, some really interesting things start to happen.

I know I am starting to change my own behaviour, and my inclination is not always as positive as it should be. I think I see some people from urban centres where the rules are much tighter starting to modify their behaviour as well. Then I start to imagine, I wonder what it is going to be like when the $10-garbage-bag fee -- I was living in Peterborough and Peterborough is the size -- they have already made a decision of some kind. I do not know what it is, but I think they are moving to a fee. If there is a fee of, say, $5 or $10 where I have my house and I am going to the cottage every weekend -- I was a reeve of the local -- well, I tell you, some of it is happening.

Hon Mrs Grier: You are not going to bring your garbage to the cottage?

The Chair: He is certainly not going to bring it to his apartment in Toronto.

Mr Conway: I will tell you, Minister, that I am watching what is happening around some of those dumps. I am not disagreeing with your objective, but one of the concerns I have is going to be some of the enforcement. You do start to change your behaviour. I am now on occasion taking garbage from the cottage back to my house simply because it is more convenient etc. If I am doing it, I can imagine that other people are doing it in reverse. At the present moment there are a number of incentives, unintended and unfortunate, but they are there, and people who monitor these rural garbage dumps are telling me some fascinating stories about what is actually going on, and I do not think they are manufacturing this out of whole cloth.

I guess one of the questions I have is, what do you see as a practical alternative for an area like mine, where you have the tyranny of distance? It is so difficult to imagine organizing anything outside of the larger centres.

If things become mandated, then I am not necessarily saying it is unwise to do that, but for example we talked earlier about incineration. My sense is, just on the anecdotal evidence I see around me, that people who are anxious to reduce are doing some incineration now that they were not doing three, four or five years ago. My sense is as the screws tighten, particularly in an area like mine where disposable incomes and salary levels are not what they are in Burlington or north Toronto, boy, the temptation to resort to backyard incineration or what have you will be very considerable indeed.

I guess my question is, what do you see for an area like ours? What kind of options? We have no blue box program that I am aware of in any part of my electoral district. It would be hard to organize one in much of it.

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Hon Mrs Grier: That is exactly, I think, what I was saying in response to Mrs McLeod's question. I am not sure that I can say what is best for that community, but I know that there are a lot of people in your own community who are very concerned about recycling and want to see that happen, who have been struggling for a way to make it happen. I see a need, perhaps, for grant programs that make it easier for them to do it because of the distances, and I see, perhaps, the potential of a depot system as opposed to a blue box system.

I am disturbed at the thought that people would bring their waste from the city to the country. I certainly have been known to bring my newspapers back from the country because it is easier to put them in the blue box in the city than drive to whatever the depot is in the country, and I do not see anything wrong with that as long as it happens. I think the potential for cottage compost heaps is enormous and is one that has not been tapped. Say you get a composter at your home if you live in a single-family house; you should be having a composter wherever. so there are ways in which you can in fact reduce.

The difficulty then becomes with cardboard and waste wood and those kinds of things, but again if there are markets developed -- scavenging was not that bad in the days that it happened; therein I think you will find that it is worth somebody's while to go out with a pickup truck and pick up the waste cardboard or the wood that somebody else wants to dispose of, because it costs too much to dispose of it.

Mr Conway: My colleague from Nepean wants to get in on this and I just want to make one final observation: The group that has probably been the most creative in looking at some of the alternatives in my area -- very good people -- actually have been complaining to me for some number of years about the master planning process. It seems to me the government's point of view rightly turns on the notion of regional planning. These people feel that in fact it is big town versus small rural area. They feel that there is something inherent in the whole master planning process that militates against the very kinds of enthusiasms and alternatives that they see on the very local basis as being a very attractive alternative.

Hon Mrs Grier: I am interested to hear you say that, because as I say, in opposition I always had qualms about the mismanagement of the master planning process, and that is something that, as we have indicated, we will be looking at.

Mr Daigeler: I actually had a questionnaire in one of my householders last year on the issue of paying fees for garbage. I shared it with the previous minister, but I will share it again with you. The results: It was very clear that two thirds of the people were against the fee concept, mostly because of points that Mr Conway just made, but also they thought it was just another form of taxation and that they were paying heavy taxation already. They were very much in support of the blue box program and recycling and reduction of waste and so on; so, very supportive but very critical of charging fees or fines or anything of that nature.

The Liberals in the last campaign were thinking not just of a blue box program, but also of a yellow box program. I am sure you are familiar with that. They have it as household wastes. Paint I guess would be one of the things that comes to my mind; thinners, used motor oil and that kind of thing. Are you looking at instituting that kind of program for hazardous household wastes or what are you planning there?

Hon Mrs Grier: Certainly the establishment of household hazardous waste days in municipalities or the toxic taxi that some municipalities have going out and picking up toxic waste is proving in large centres to be very successful and the response has just been enormous. As to the yellow box that was announced during the last election campaign, I have been unable to find a great deal of program development or policy preparation for that initiative, so I do not know whether anyone from the ministry wants to respond to it. I see Hardy raising his hand. It is not under active consideration at this point. I think there are some very real constraints in doing it. Do you want to talk a bit about how you had seen it working?

Mr Daigeler: You are not concerned about the household hazardous wastes?

Hon Mrs Grier: Oh, extremely concerned, but I am wondering whether in fact a separate pickup at the curb is a good way to do it. Is that not the primary concern?

Mr Daigeler: If that is not the direction you want to go in, which way do you want to go and what resources are you prepared to allocate? That brings me back, also a little bit earlier, to the response that you made to an earlier question. You said reallocating funds within the ministry in order to meet your priorities, but still in order to get programs started you usually have to give an incentive to the municipalities, an incentive to the individuals. What kind of incentive are you prepared to give to the program that will reduce hazardous household waste?

Hon Mrs Grier: Perhaps you could talk a little bit about the hazardous waste program, Hardy.

Mr Wong: Hardy Wong, the waste management branch. The yellow box is one idea to try to control the household hazardous waste. We did some very quick studies on it and it is very cost-intensive. The major problem with respect to the yellow box is the health and safety aspect if the households put the yellow box at the curb full of paints and aerosol cans and oils and pesticides, and so on. Children might play with the boxes. The boxes must have lids rather than a blue box concept. It must have a sealable type of material so that kids will not play around with the yellow box.

However, what we are doing is detailing and examining various options about the methods to control household hazardous waste. The minister mentioned about the household hazardous waste days, as well as the other toxic taxi idea that some municipalities have instituted and borrowed from the European experience as well. It is cost-intensive to have a taxi driving around the municipalities to individual households and having to line up with the schedule of the householder. They have to be at home when the toxic taxi arrives to avoid having that box at the curbside.

What the ministry is promoting is the permanent household hazardous waste depot idea, instead of having one or two days the whole year. That requires two things. One is a tremendous amount of publicity to inform the citizens that this particular Saturday morning or Sunday morning is the local household hazardous waste day, and two, it is extremely inconvenient when the householders are maybe away from home and cannot make that particular time slot that the household waste day is open. The important thing is to make the system as convenient to the householders as possible.

We have now 12 municipalities in Ontario that have established permanent household hazardous waste days, which means every Saturday morning, for example. For a half-day that location will be open for business to receive household hazardous waste from the public. So you do not need extensive public communication programs and it is very convenient for households because any other Saturday you can go there. It is also staffed with very little cost, because you only need one competent staff to be at the site for half a day sorting the material, dealing with the manufacturers, recycling the oil, recycling the paint -- which is happening -- recycling the aerosol cans, and so on and so forth.

We believe at this early stage that initial assessment is that a permanent household depot may be most effective and efficient and cost-effective for the province to move toward.

Mr Daigeler: Could we get some figures, or perhaps you have them already, on what is presently being spent by the ministry on this kind of program?

Mr Wong: The annual budget is about $250,000 for the last four years.

Mr Daigeler: It is $250,000.

Mr Wong: It is $250,000. We provide 50% funding, up to $15,000, for each municipality for one event.

Mrs McLeod: Returning to the requirement for recycling, can we expect to see that requirement for recycling in Toronto apartment buildings and at the communities as well?

Hon Mrs Grier: Yes, that certainly is something that Metropolitan Toronto has now moved on. It is looking how it can extend the blue box into apartment buildings. One of the things I want to see happen is new apartment buildings designed in such a way that they facilitate recycling and have space for dumpsters, if that is what it takes, rather than continuing to build on the old model that has one chute and everything went down it. So yes, we hope to have some initiatives on that before I am back before you again.

Mr Cousens: I want to just quickly, if I can, and the time is slight -- I find this system not the greatest. I would rather see a larger block of time and then we could go through it, because it interrupts the flow of thought, but you run the committee and the committee does agree with what we are into.

The Chair: I am an instrument of the committee, Mr Cousens.

Mr Cousens: I know you are and the last thing I want to do is criticize the Chair.

The Chair: Welcome to the committee.

Mr Cousens: When will the PCBs stored in this building and in other places be destroyed? Have you a time frame in which there will be destruction of PCBs in these thousands of locations we have got?

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Hon Mrs Grier: No, I do not. I think we have to get greater assurance that the methods for destruction of highlevel PCBs, such as the method we are using in Smithville, in fact work and work safely, and perhaps hope that there can be some other methods devised, as have managed for low-level PCBs, but I do not have a timetable and I anticipate that perhaps some of the more experienced people in the ministry can tell you that.

Mr Posen: To note a couple of things, one, there is one permanent approved facility for the destruction of high-level PCBs in Canada and that is Swan Hills in Alberta. The federal and provincial governments have been investigating whether there are other non-fixed incineration techniques, and as Hardy noted a number of different technologies have been looked at.

We are now going through our first experience with the transportable incinerator that is being set up by Ensco Corp. The city of London has a committee of interested citizens who are working with the council and exploring mobile or transportable incineration to see if they can come to an agreement to incinerate high-level PCBs in their municipal area. The cost of setup in these circumstances, at least for the Ensco incinerator, is very high indeed, and I think beyond the financial ability of individual municipalities, other than the very large ones, to use.

Ontario Hydro has been talking to us about various incineration approaches that it wants to explore. I expect that they are the organization in Ontario that has the largest number of licensed PCB sites.

Third, we have raised the issue of the Ontario Waste Management Corp in an ideal world as we begin to regulate PCBs coming out of active use. It was roughly the same time that governments began to think of the need for a publicly financed incineration facility. I can only assume that if that facility had proceeded on a different time frame, there would be a facility available in Ontario, but just to note, there is not one in any of the provinces to the east of us or to the west of us, other than the Alberta facility.

Mr Cousens: When you send me, Minister, the inventory of PCB storage locations, I would also like to have the volumes that are there as well, if possible. I already find that we have the 1989 listing, so we are not looking for that old one. If there is a new up-to-date listing of the PCB sites, that is what we are looking for, or if there has been an update to it that you can give us. I just do not want that old piece of paper.

Hon Mrs Grier: I do not know whether the 1991 would be prepared at this point in February, but we will certainly try.

Mr Cousens: All right. I want to just ask quickly. There just is not enough time to get into it, so I would like to be more crisp, if we can, in both questions and answers. Biomedical wastes: I am concerned with what is happening there. The province did a study about five years ago assessing hospital incinerators. I wondered what has been done since. Is there a report on that so you can give what progress has been made in upgrading and improving hospital incinerators in Ontario to ensure that they are not polluting beyond air pollution guidelines?

Hon Mrs Grier: I will ask Hardy Wong to respond to that one too, if I may, please.

Mr Wong: Biomedical waste: We have an approval process which at this time by policy says that if it is over 10 tonnes per day per unit, this type of facility will be subject to the approvals under the Environmental Assessment Act, and if it is under 10 tonnes per day, these facilities will be subject to the Environmental Protection Act approval requirements.

Currently we are looking at, with the Ministry of Health, a multi-year biomedical waste infrastructure development strategy which calls for facilities around the province on a principle of regional biomedical waste destruction. One of the first two areas is in the Thunder Bay area, the other in the Sault Ste Marie area. These are being picked jointly by the two ministries as the priority area because they are not accessible to the limited current infrastructure existing in the province. We had to rely on the Quebec facilities for destruction of commercial biomedical wastes. The costs for these types of facilities probably range from $2.5 million to $3.5 million per unit.

Mr Cousens: Has there been any upgrading of existing incinerators over the last few years?

Mr Wong: I believe so. I cannot give you the figures right off the bat right here.

Mr Cousens: Do you have a listing of the ones that are approved to operate right now?

Mr Wong: We do, yes.

Mr Cousens: Could I get a copy of that? And maybe you could answer this question. Why has the London Victoria Hospital system been shut down and what is the problem on that?

Mr Wong: The London Victoria Hospital has nothing to do with biomedical waste at all. It is an incinerator for municipal solid waste.

Mr Cousens: Oh, I see.

Mr Wong: If you want me to expand on that, it is fine, but --

Hon Mrs Grier: It was built as a revenue generator for the hospital, and what they found was that it was in fact not generating any revenue.

Mr Wong: As the minister is saying, the tipping fee that the London Victoria Hospital receives from the city is about $5.14 a tonne, and that is not enough to sustain the operational costs for the London Victoria Hospital.

Mr Cousens: If I can then have a listing of those incinerators that are licensed and operating in hospitals right now -- have you approved any in the last year?

Mr Wong: No, it is only one municipal solid waste incinerator that is associated with hospitals. They are not biomedical waste incinerators.

Mr Cousens: I am talking about biomedical. My question originally was based on that and I thought that the London Victoria Hospital was a biomedical one.

Mr Wong: No, they do not handle biomedical.

Mr Cousens: But York Central Hospital in Richmond Hill is a biomedical.

Mr Wong: That is right.

Mr Cousens: Are there others like this that have been approved in the last year?

Mr Wong: I can get those data for you.

Hon Mrs Grier: The study that was done, I think, was looking at incinerators that had been in operation prior to 1986, and the study that I recall having been released indicated that a lot of those were not in compliance when it came to emissions. So the work of the ministry has been concentrating on phasing out and replacing some of those older ones, but we will try to get a list of them.

Mr Cousens: That was my question that had to do with the emissions that are coming from them and just what is being done to upgrade them in order to bring them to the standards that we have today. That was the original question.

Hon Mrs Grier: I gather the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Health have agreed in principle on a new strategy of shared facilities that is designed to eliminate the ones that are pre-1986 and that have in fact been problems. But I am not clear how far that has proceeded or whether in fact any new ones are under construction. We will find that out and provide it as part of the answer.

Mr Cousens: Thank you. What are funeral homes doing with their wastes right now?

Mr Wong: It depends what is biomedical waste and what is not biomedical waste.

Mr Cousens: Yes, mostly biomedical. They know how to get rid of their garbage and recycle it, but what do we do with the biomedical? You are dealing with blood and other ingredients.

Mr Wong: That is right. If it is infectious, then it is defined as biomedical waste. The hospital informs the funeral homes whether that particular case is infected or not. If this is the case, then these particular wastes in the embalming process are being taken to licensed biomedical waste facilities, ie, the hospitals. If they are not informed by the hospitals, then they treat it as normal body fluid into the sewer system.

Mrs Marland: Oh, wow, that is pretty serious.

Mr Cousens: So AIDS patients were --

Mr Wong: That would be dealt with by the hospital informing the --

Mr Cousens: The funeral director does not know that this person had AIDS.

Mr Wong: They are notified by the hospital.

Hon Mrs Grier: They are advised by the hospital, as Mr Wong says, if the case had an infectious disease and then it is dealt with as biomedical hazardous waste.

Mr Cousens: But, Minister, if some of the refuse from funeral directors may be dealt with in another way than going to a biomedical incineration process, how is it dealt with then?

Mr Wong: If the body parts, I understand, have been --

Mr Posen: Hardy, I think that one is of sufficiently technical detail that it is probably worth checking on that before answering on that.

The Chair: The deputy has indicated he may need additional technical information, but if you have it, you are before the committee and we would appreciate your being forthcoming with it.

Mr Wong: Okay, I will provide follow-up details if you want because biomedical waste is a complicated issue.

Mr Cousens: It is a very, very important subject and it comes out of this whole business. The minister has said earlier today her views on the incineration of municipal waste, and we see a situation now developing around biomedical waste. In particular, I happen to have a certain sense of wanting to know what funeral directors are doing with all their wastes. So the answers --

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Hon Mrs Grier: I think it is a very important question and I do not have the answer. We will find it by tomorrow.

The Chair: Supplementary, Mrs Marland.

Mrs Marland: Why it is such a significant question is that, if a general physician in medical practice is referring an AIDS patient to a surgeon, under the Charter of Rights, that general practising physician is not able to warn the surgeon that that patient may have AIDS in fact. So I doubt very much that the hospital can tell a funeral home that that patient died of AIDS.

Mr Wong: I did not say it passed AIDS. I said just to define biomedical waste. That is all he has to say.

Mrs Marland: Well, the point of Mr Cousens's question is, if in fact that patient has died from AIDS, it is very significant what the restrictions are and what they do with that waste at the funeral home. That is the point of the question. We will look forward to hearing the exact answer, if not what your ministry --

Mr Wong: The Ministry of Health should --

Mrs Marland: Yes, but if it is incineration, it comes under your ministry.

Mr Cousens: Minister, I would be grateful to have it by tomorrow.

Hon Mrs Grier: We will try. To clarify, the hospital will not, as I understand it, identify the nature of the infectious disease. It will merely identify that that particular cadaver or any body fluids from it have to be disposed of in a way consistent with being biomedical waste, so that the confidentiality of the cause of death is preserved. The flagging that this is dangerous and therefore has to be disposed of properly is there. But we will find out what the guidelines are.

Mr Cousens: I want to go on record to certainly make it very clear that I am concerned about the possibility of how the remains of a person who has AIDS are being handled. It has to be done in such a way as to protect everybody. This is not something that should take a lot of time. I would be very disappointed if we did not have a clear statement on this by tomorrow when we meet again, because who knows how long it is before we see you in estimates again?

Hon Mrs Grier: We will do our best.

Mr Wong: It is exempt from EPA, the crematoria that you are talking about, incineration.

Mr Cousens: But I would like to have some answers. I wanted to ask about the tire problem in the province of Ontario and I would like to ask the minister if she would give me a breakdown of the spending of the $16-million program announced after the Hagersville fire last year, and I guess, while you are searching out the answer --

Hon Mrs Grier: Can I ask André Castel, who has gone over this with me several dozen times, to provide you with the same figures?

Mr Cousens: I guess the kind of thing that falls into it too, Minister, is whether there is any intention of increasing the funding on tires to equal the taxes that are being collected. In fact our estimate is that some $45 million is being collected in taxes, so this will all tie in to the progress that has taken place in your ministry on recycling and use of tires.

Hon Mrs Grier: While Mr Castel provides the exact figures, let me assure you that there is money in the fund to cover the initiatives that have been taken with respect to tire recycling. What I found was that the revenue generated by the tire tax goes into the consolidated revenue fund, not into the budget of my ministry.

Mr Cousens: Well, we knew that when it came through and we criticized it, and I think you joined in the criticism.

Hon Mrs Grier: That is right. Absolutely.

Mrs Marland: I tried to get it --

Mr Cousens: What happened with Margaret Marland? I mean --

The Chair: The minister has the floor and let her finish.

Mr Cousens: But we are not getting good answers.

The Chair: You will save your great rebuttal for when you have the floor, Mr Cousens.

Hon Mrs Grier: The $16 million that appears in the estimates before you was that allocated to my predecessor by the provincial Treasurer of the time. It does not appear to have been related in any way to the actual dollar amount of applications for use or for granting from the tire fund, so not all of the $16 million has been spent because it is certainly the feeling of the ministry, and one with which I concur, that we only spend that money on projects that appear to have some hope of being a fruitful way of generating a solution to the problem.

Mr Cousens: You do not disagree that it is $45 million left in the state's pocket?

Hon Mrs Grier: Oh, no question. But I also do not think that I want to spend that money unless I am sure that in fact I have some solutions. Mr Castel will tell you what we have spent it on so far.

Mr Cousens: I would be most pleased. I do not want to see you misspend money.

Hon Mrs Grier: Good.

Mr Cousens: But I would like to see some action coming and that is what this question is leading to.

Mr Castel: If my memory is correct, I think the 1989-90 budget of the Treasurer that was presented to the House specified -- I think this is on page 5 of the Treasurer's budget -- that the funds that would be generated from the tire tax will go to the consolidated revenue fund to fund environmental initiatives. It did not tie it in to tires per se, but it was for all new environmental initiatives. What was allocated to the ministry was $16 million, and I can give you the breakdown of the $16 million.

Mr Cousens: Please do.

Mr Castel: Well, $4 million was allocated for the used tire processing and recycling technology, to look at technologies that are available, and we expect to spend approximately $3 million by the end of the fiscal year. We have also been allocated another $3 million for research into tire-derived products, technologies and market development, and here again we expect to spend about $70,000.

Mr Cousens: You allocated how much and you are spending?

Mr Castel: Three million dollars were allocated.

Mr Cousens: And you are spending $70,000?

Mr Castel: Seventy thousand is the best estimate I have as of today.

Mr Cousens: The minister would like that.

Mr Castel: Another $2 million was allocated to enhance security at large tire stockpiles in Ontario, and here we expect to spend $2.5 million.

Mr Cousens: What does that do? Do you bury tires so that you do not have to guard them?

Mr Castel: This is the provision of security for tire sites to make sure that we do not have another Hagersville.

Then $5 million was allocated for the utilization of recycled tires and we expect to spend about $2 million. That is the best estimate I have. There is also another $16,000 that ought to be spent on a tire study workshop and --

Mr Cousens: What is the tire study workshop?

Mr Castel: I do not know how you want me to elaborate on that.

Mr Cousens: How much was it that is being spent on that?

Mr Castel: Just $16,000.

Mr Cousens: Sixteen thousand dollars on a tire study workshop.

Mr Castel: Yes.

Mr Wong: It is a workshop that is upcoming.

The Chair: If I could recognize Mr Wong again, please. Thank you.

Mr Wong: The tire workshop is upcoming next month. It is a forum where we invited multistake holders to come to that workshop, and we are estimating about 100 to 150 people, to look at worldwide technologies, look at the policy issues and look at the market issues as well.

The Chair: Okay. Thank you, sir.

Mr Cousens: That is $16,000?

Mr Castel: Then there is an asphalt demonstration project at Haldimand-Norfolk, another $1.7 million to be spent. In total, by the end of the fiscal year, we expect to spend $9.6 million, and that is the best estimate we have today.

Mr Cousens: I am interested -- the minister seems to have disappeared.

The Chair: She will be right back.

Mr Cousens: I guess what I am interested in is the status of the tire recycling committee that has been established. Is that still in operation and are there any reports forthcoming from that?

Mr Wong: Yes. The tire recycling committee is again a committee that consists of multistake holders. It is a link between the ministry and the other stakeholders in developing various information bases that will be required. One notable example is the commissioned background study which really pulls all of the information together: Who is doing what, what is the waste and the network and the infrastructure in Ontario, who is paying who in the transportation and the storage and the processing of wastes. Once you understand the marketplace dynamics, then you can institute the policies and programs to facilitate that infrastructure and to enhance the continuous development of the infrastructure that we need in Ontario.

Mr Cousens: Could I have a list of the names of the people that are on the tire advisory committee? Is that public information that I could have? And these are still active members of the committee, I assume? Is there any report that has come out of that committee? For instance, they have been meeting since Hagersville, so almost maybe 10 months they have been meeting. Is there any progress report at all that can be shared?

Mr Wong: I believe so. There are minutes. If you want to, you can --

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Mr Cousens: Could I have a copy of that?

Mr Wong: It is a very open meeting.

Mr Cousens: Okay. It would be much appreciated as well if we could get a copy of the minutes of that committee.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Cousens, gentlemen. Mr Wilson.

Mr G. Wilson: In listening to the response to the minister's opening statement from the two opposition parties, I was struck by the thought that in some ways they sec the Ministry of the Environment as being isolated in the sense that --

The Chair: It is on St Clair Avenue, which is quite some distance away.

Mr G. Wilson: That too, but also in its mandate which appeared, according to their remarks, to be, I guess, almost like a superminister and/or a superministry, in other words, in charge of rescuing us from impending environmental doom. I think the minister, in answering a later question about her consulting with her cabinet colleagues, showed that it is very much a collaborative, co-operative approach to the environment, which I think we all realize, that it is a huge issue that probably one ministry cannot handle completely. It can give direction but it has got to rely on other ministries, because they of course impact on each other in the interaction.

What I was wondering about is the consultation. Certainly it exists in the cabinet, but also among the citizens of the province. This raises the question of the environmental bill of rights, which I think has had a checkered history in the Ontario Legislature. It was, I think, introduced in the early 1980s by Liberals in opposition, and then when they formed the government, I think parts of it were brought into legislation, but nothing very substantial. Then you yourself, Minister, introduced an environmental bill of rights on several occasions when you were in the opposition.

Now that you are minister, I would like to know what role you see the environmental bill of rights can play. I know you have established an advisory committee to look at all aspects of it. First of all, why did you establish the committee? What are you hoping to gain from it? Then, I would like you to precede your answer with perhaps just a few comments about why you think the environmental bill of rights is an important endeavour.

Hon Mrs Grier: It is a very important initiative and one that has received support on all sides of the House. I think what it is going to do is establish the right of citizens to act to protect the environment. They have often in the past attempted to seek legal redress of contamination or pollution that affected them and had to have a real struggle in the courts about their standing and whether they have a right in fact to launch a suit because of pollution. The intent of an environmental bill of rights has been to give them that right and also to establish their right to information and to consultation, just as you identify is appropriate in this day and age of environmental concern.

The principles of the bill that I always introduced in opposition had been devised by my predecessor as Environment critic, Murray Elston, the member for Bruce, and I am very pleased that my current critic in the Liberal Party has introduced that selfsame bill again.

What I am finding as a result of the incredible resources made available to me by virtue of my elevation to the role of minister is that there are better ways of doing it. The advisory committee that has been established is telling me just that and is looking at the principles underlying the bill and saying -- I do not want to cast any aspersions on the legislative counsel or those that work up private members' bills in opposition, but they are not as good as the legal advice one gets when one is minister.

So what I am hoping will come out of the consultation processes we have had and which is being driven very hard by our legal department is a bill that will be clearer, be easier for the public to take advantage of. I do not want something that is so full of legal gobbledegook, with all respect to the lawyers on the committee, that your average citizen, whom it is designed to help, cannot understand what his redress is under this bill. So the work that is going into producing the bill is designed to do just that, and I will ask Bonnie Wein to comment on that in a minute.

Let me say with respect to timing, as was said in the throne speech last fall, that it is the government's intention to have such a bill before the Legislature in the coming session and then there will be an opportunity for comment. A lot of groups that have very real concern about it, and the advisory committee I have established was not designed to seek real consensus on how the bill should operate but to give me the best possible advice on how the principles underlying the bill could be drafted into law.

If Bonnie wants to comment in a bit more detail, I think members of the committee, who I know are really interested in this initiative, would find it useful.

Ms Wein: Bonnie Wein -- I am the director of legal services, and in this capacity I am the chair of the advisory committee. Perhaps I can assist by outlining to some extent the process of consultation that is being undergone at the present time. The overlying process has an open public request for information, so anyone can make written submission to the committee and we are garnering a large number of submissions. The closure date for that is 1 March. We are receiving about 15 to 20 submissions a day now. It is on an escalating track, and we expect to be very busy towards the end of this month so we are assimilating all nf that advice.

The advisory committee itself consists of about 25 groups. Environmental groups, labour groups, health groups, legal groups, the Advocates' Society and the Canadian Bar Association are all involved and giving up a great deal of their time. We have been meeting once a week for three to three and a half hours and have been receiving advice from legal and environmental experts across Canada with respect to various principles of an environmental bill of rights in this jurisdiction and as it has been developed in other jurisdictions.

That sort of educative process, in which there has been very open discussion amongst the different interests represented at the committee, was completed last week, that educational component of the process. We are now dividing, starting tomorrow, into working groups where we will consider, not really draft but principles options, which present a range of options that might be utilized or accepted by the government, which will have varying degrees of strength and varying problems with them. And we will present at the end of the process to the government a list of options, with some of the pros and cons and resource implications with respect to those.

In terms strictly of the resource implications, and I think a process that has not previously been undergone in this amount of detail, there is an interministerial committee consisting of what we expect to be the key ministries involved: the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Northern Development and Mines, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food and Ministry of the Attorney General. They are providing input with respect to how some of the options being assessed by the advisory committee would have an impact in their individual ministries: the number of regulations that would be affected; whether they have existing processes that would be affected; whether there can or should be an overlap in those existing processes; whether the principles in the bills could be implemented through changes in their individual legislation or an umbrella change in the environmental bill of rights.

So all of those enormously complex issues are being considered in conjunction with both committees, and our time frame for consultation at the present time requires us to have all of this done by the middle of March. So we are working very hard and very quickly to assess some of these difficult and challenging issues.

It is certainly an interesting process. As the minister has indicated, it is not the mandate of the committee to reach consensus, fortunately for the chair, because there is a very broad range of interests represented. But those interests, I think, are actively involved in giving us their best advice with respect to the implications of the various options being presented, and it is a process that I think the minister will find very useful as she considers some of the issues that will be before her.

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Mr G. Wilson: I am surprised, though, that with such a thorough-going approach and such wide consultation it still yields what the minister has called the most advanced legislation in Canada. It seems a bit modest, does it not -- not even North America?

Hon Mrs Grier: The only word I have not used is "world-class." An awful lot of hard work has been done by the ministry in a fairly short time frame. I did not realize there were 15 submissions a day coming in now that talked on the bill of rights. I think that is an indication of what a popular initiative it is.

There are also some segments of society -- and I have met with them -- that have some very real concerns, and they have not yet seen a draft, they do not quite know what the implications are, they worry about how this may be interpreted. So what Bonnie and her committee are doing is wrestling with the very varying degrees of enthusiasm for the bill, to come up with something that maintains the principles I certainly feel are very important, is workable and is understandable and will achieve the objectives. I have every confidence we can do that. Then members of the Legislature, of course, will have an opportunity to have their input when first reading has occurred and the bill is before committee, which I hope to be next summer.

Our time frame, as I say, is tight yet achievable, and I am enormously grateful to the people who have put a lot of time into working on it. The day I walked into the first meeting of that advisory group and saw all that range of talent addressing an environmental bill of rights was, I guess, the day I really realized I was minister and in a position to have some influence, so it is very exciting.

Mr Hansen: It is actually for the deputy minister. It was a comment you made about Swan Hills. I have visited Swan Hills. I have been out there twice looking at the site. The thing is that what the people in Alberta were promised -- maybe it has changed now -- was that they would not be accepting waste from other provinces. The other thing is that the distance from Ontario to Swan Hills is quite a distance, and the chance of an accident hauling high-level PCBs that far -- I would just like to hear the comment, because you made a statement and I had heard differently. If you can clarify that.

Mr Posen: The intent of my comment was simply to note that there is only one licensed permanent facility for the destruction of PCBs in Canada; it happens to be in Alberta. I was not, in saying that, suggesting that we would send our PCBs there. I think I was trying to note how difficult it is no matter where you are in Canada to get an approval for this kind of facility; second, to confirm that the understanding when that site was built was that it would be available for hazardous wastes from Alberta and -- what I think was said at the time -- that if that policy should change the government would ensure that it consulted with the people of Swan Hills in considering any change. I guess the first occasion in which there was some consideration was the St Basile PCB fire, and there was some suggestion that the residues there be sent to Swan Hills. If I remember, it even started once or twice but due to transportation problems never left Quebec.

Mr Hansen: I am trying to remember whether it was talking to the minister or talking to environmentalists. For a paper written, new chemicals that are introduced into the province, that there be a safe way of disposal; the problem is that with the makeup of some of the chemicals, it is hard to actually dispose of them in the end. In other words, if you come in with a new product there should be a safe disposal way. Can you comment on that?

Hon Mrs Grier: I think you are referring to an initiative under the federal Environmental Protection Agency, where they are looking at an approach that every new chemical coming on the market has to be screened as safe. Whether the disposal is part of that, I do not know. Perhaps I could ask Gerry Ronan -- is he the person? -- or Ken. Just the question of persistent toxics is really what you are talking about and how we can prevent them from remaining in the environment. I think that is very relevant and something we have been trying to address. You need to introduce yourself, Gerry.

Mr Ronan: Gerry Ronan -- I spoke earlier. The minister is referring to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act regulations. With any new product now that is imported into the country, there is a requirement that it must be demonstrated that it is safe and that all its environmental impacts are known and that there are all kinds of studies with respect to its mutagenicity, whether it can change genes, whether it is a carcinogen, all the factors that go into evaluating the degree of toxicity associated with that particular compound. That is what is happening on the federal jurisdiction with respect to the import of any new chemicals on the marketplace.

Hon Mrs Grier: Does that relate to its disposal, Gerry, or is it merely to its introduction to the marketplace?

Mr Ronan: It is my understanding that it only relates to its introduction to the marketplace, and then it behooves all the regulatory agencies, when they are faced with the challenge of its disposal, just like PCBs, they will have done all the checks in terms of the technology to make sure that it meets all their requirements in terms of the regulations and all the safety and environmental health provisions. That is devolved to the provinces that would have it on the marketplace, so its subsequent disposal would be followed in that domain.

The Chair: Mr Hansen, you have four minutes left. I have Mr Lessard, Ms Haslam, and Mr Perruzza. There also is going to be another rotation before we adjourn today.

Hon Mrs Grier: I think Ken wants to comment on that first question.

Mr Hansen: Is Mr Wong at the last session? Is he going to be here tomorrow?

The Chair: Yes, Mr Wong is going to be here.

Hon Mrs Grier: I wondered if Ken wanted to add to the --

The Chair: Could you identify yourself, please?

Mr Richards: Kenneth Richards, co-ordinator, intergovernmental relations. We look at the problem as two: those products which are new which are incoming to the country, which, as Gerry Ronan explained, are subject to rigorous testing; what you have to consider as well are those which are in existence for which additional studies are required, and in that case, CEPA provides for the adoption of regulations for the control of those substances. Those substances are listed in the federal government's priority substances list initially, in other words, the top 43; those top 43 are subject to discussion with the provinces in terms of their disposal.

Mr Lessard: Minister, it has taken a while for the questioning to get back around to me, but my question is related to a comment that you made in an answer earlier about development of marketing for products that may come from recycling. In the estimates, on page 38, I see there is a significant increase allocated for blue box funding. I understand that these are estimates that were prepared by the previous government, and I do recognize that there have been quite a number of advances in recycling as a result of the blue box program, but there are some restrictions with the blue box program and one them has to do with the fact that there is a limited number of items that can be recycled with this. Some of those items, for example, glass and pop containers that are made of aluminum or steel or different colours of glass, if they are mixed may not be of much value, and also there is only one particular type of plastic that can go into the blue box. So if this indicates a commitment towards the blue box program, perhaps there is another way of making sure that the blue boxes continue to be viable by having some sort of regulations with respect to uniform plastics in packaging; also, as far as development of marketing for recycled products goes, perhaps a requirement that recycled plastics or recycled materials get used in new manufacturing processes. I would like you to address those issues.

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Hon Mrs Grier: I think your point is very well taken, because one of the problems is the lack of consistency between communities as to what can go in the blue box. People in my own riding ask, "What kinds of plastics can we put in our blue box?" and I have to stop and think whether that is what my municipality picks up or some other municipality. That is the kind of consistency I think we are going to have to have before we can expect industries to come in and begin to develop new uses for the products.

Part of the increased funding you have seen in last year's estimates prepared by Mr Bradley was, I think, to expand the number of municipalities that had the blue box. What I hope you are going to see in my estimates next year is funding devoted to the waste reduction office and an educational development program that will get some consistency from community to community and that will work with the manufacturing sector to develop industries that can reuse these products. There is no point in collecting the stuff if it has to be disposed of because it has not been collected in a proper manner, such as the mixing of the glass, or if with the material that is picked up nobody is available to purchase it and to use it.

I realize that there are two steps in the reusing stream. You have to first take the products you pick up in the blue box and then create them into a raw material that then somebody can use to make a product. We find that particularly with tires. There is a whole industry on the shredding and the crumbing of the tires -- that is relatively easy to do -- and then you have to persuade people to use these crumbed tires to make sport track, asphalt, interlocking bricks, underlay for carpet, all the things that the tire tax we were talking about earlier is now funding.

The same with the plastics. One kind of plastic can be turned into pellets to make some things but cannot be mixed with another kind. So finding that consistency, developing a system whereby it can be separated in relation to the markets that are available, is very important and will be part of the mandate of the waste reduction office.

Mr Conway: There are just two or three things I would like to touch on before coming to clean air and clean water and MISA.

I was listening to the exchange between the member from Kingston and the minister about the environmental bill of rights. I was trying to imagine what Stephen Lewis would say if he were here, and I think he would say one word, and he would say it with a delicious ring in his voice. That word would be "chutzpah" -- I can just hear him do it -- that a Jeffersonian possibility of a politician writing a bill of rights somehow becomes a wonderful kind of Congress of Vienna headed by the head of the legal services branch -- a very fine person by all accounts. I understand entirely why it is happening, but I have to pinch myself and say, "This is the NDP in power." I would be excused that partisan observation, perhaps but I am going to be very interested to see what issues come from that consultation, and I would request --

Hon Mrs Grier: I guess I missed your point.

Mr Conway: I think you understand.

Hon Mrs Grier: No, seriously. It is too convoluted even for me. Can you try again?

Mr Cousens: Two convoluted people not understanding each other.

Mr Conway: Could we have the minutes of the interministerial committee working on the bill of rights?

Hon Mrs Grier: I do not know whether you could or not, but let me ask --

Ms Wein: Bonnie Wein, director of legal services. The interministerial committee does not keep precise minutes because we have an ongoing process of requesting and getting back information. We have not really gotten to the stage of synthesizing; we are about a step or a step and a half behind the advisory committee. The advisory committee keeps very detailed minutes for its own purposes and although we are not mandated to have a report to the minister, we will have some form of report. As the minister has indicated, we are not required to reach consensus. In fact, within this time frame I think having a draft bill will be -- it is a challenge from a legal point of view.

Mr Conway: I ask the minister, because it is really a policy question: I presume there will be minutes or notes of some kind that will go to file indicating the work that has been done to prepare for this very important new landmark legislation. I would just make a request here for such notes or minutes as might be helpful to an ordinary member of the Legislature to understand the context in which this policy evolved.

Hon Mrs Grier: I am sure the briefing paper is available to members of the Legislature when the bill is tabled and will provide some of the preparatory work that has been done.

Mr Conway: So you are not prepared then to make available such notes or records of the committee as would be normally available?

Hon Mrs Grier: I do not know whether in fact those kinds of things are normally available. I think this committee is not taking --

Mr Cousens: They were not under the Liberals.

The Chair: Mr Cousens.

Mr Cousens: I am sorry.

Mr Conway: My question simply is notice. You can think about it. If the answer is no, I will understand.

Hon Mrs Grier: I am still trying to untangle your original question, Mr Conway, and if the implication was that the bill that was being drafted by me -- let me set you absolutely straight. I know my limitations, nay only too well, and drafting legislation is not one of them.

Mr Conway: It was not a question; it was an observation and I think you understood that.

Hon Mrs Grier: Let me just say that the bill of rights on which I based my original Bill 12 had been drafted by a many-headed monster --

Mr Conway: That is my point exactly.

Hon Mrs Grier: -- and it is for that precise reason that Mr Elston's bill is not the one I am going to be setting before the Legislature in this session.

Mr Conway: It was, I think, Dr Smith's bill, if the truth were told.

Hon Mrs Grier: Oh, even more heads. Okay.

Mr Conway: Exactly, my point entirely. Anyway, just to move on, to buy medical and pathological waste, one of the things that I gained by way of observation -- I thought the member for Markham was on a very interesting point, and here again I am struck by what I hear, and what I hear out there is really interesting. I understand why actually a previous government did some of what it did in closing down certain avenues and tightening up the regulations, but the stories I have heard about where one can find some of these pathological and biomedical wastes really are interesting.

Mr Cousens: There are lots in the Liberal caucus.

Mr Conway: At parking lots in hospitals. People would be interested to know that there are vehicles in parking lots at hospitals for more than a few days --

Hon Mrs Grier: Mr Conway, I think you are referring to a situation a year or a year and a half ago and I would not want anybody to feel that was certainly a common occurrence or an occurrence that I have been aware of since 1 October.

Mr Conway: My main question, however --

The Chair: Minister, please let Mr Conway place his question.

Ms Haslam: Does he have a question?

Mr Conway: -- is that it seems to me I think something like about 60% of these wastes ultimately end up in Gatineau, Quebec. The practical policy under which we are operating is transfer the stuff out of Ontario to another province, and I hope and pray that option is not lost to us. Reading the Ottawa press on occasion, one gets the feeling that the Quebec government is about to move and do some things in that connection. I think it would surprise a lot of Ontarians. I know it surprised me to find out to what extent Gatineau is now being relied on as one of the very few depositories for that kind of highly --

The Chair: Sensitive material.

Mr Conway: -- sensitive material.

I was just wondering what kind of progress we were making since the policy, as I understand it, is to assist hospitals with new technologies. My question in this area is almost as it is in the tire fund: Can you indicate what kind of moneys are being allocated to, say, hospitals to install as quickly as possible acceptable replacement technology and what moneys, if any, are we making available through the tire fund to municipalities which, of course, have a fair responsibility, particularly the rural countryside, for maintaining a lot of the tire depots?

Hon Mrs Grier: Certainly there has been some transfer of funds for the security and the maintenance of the tire depots, but the tire depots, primarily the large ones, are in private ownership. So our responsibility has been to try to persuade, by whatever means possible, the owners of those facilities to in fact adhere to the local fire code regulations.

I share your concern about the biomedical waste. It is certainly a concern I had when I was in opposition. I know hat there have been a number of projects and studies. In fact, I was privileged last spring to present a cheque on behalf of Mrs McLeod to a consultant in my own riding who was looking at a scheme for combining steam generation with a biomedical waste incinerator on the north shore of Lake Superior with a series of small hospitals in a cogeneration project, so that hospitals are looking at those kinds of solutions. The Ministry of Energy has funded in the past and I am sure now will be funding them.

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Mr Conway: What would we do if tomorrow Gatineau were lost to us?

Hon Mrs Grier: I think we would have a very serious problem. We have not moved in any kind of a proactive or preventive way to prepare ourselves for that contingency, and it is one I am concerned about.

Mr Conway: One of the areas that fascinates me because of the politics of the environment -- it is interesting what people seize upon as outward and visible signs of the problem and their desire then to move and do something about it, and that is pop cans and booze bottles. I think there has been some discussion of this earlier this afternoon, but I wanted to just for my own edification be clear. I think it was enormously popular, what your government proposed last fall, cracking down on certain laxities of a previous administration, and I think a deadline of 1 April 1991 was set as the new day. I take it you have got some indication now, six weeks away from that point as to the capacity for compliance. Can you give me any indication of what I will find when I go out on 2 April to see how effective is the new order.

Hon Mrs Grier: I think you will find that there has been a lot more effort put into advertising the desirability of returnable bottles. A major advertising campaign was undertaken by the industry after my announcement that we were going to enforce the existing regulation. I do not know where we stand. I do not know whether somebody in the ministry can answer that question, but my sense is that the advertising campaign occurred and there may have been a flurry of greater compliance. I do not know whether we will reach that 30%, but certainly my intentions are clear.

Mr Conway: You will enforce the new --

Hon Mrs Grier: I will enforce the new regulation.

Mr Conway: I encourage you in that, by the way. My related question is that it has always struck me and I have had other people explain the problems to me, but the question of liquor bottles really does come up surprisingly at --

The Chair: With your colleagues?

Mr Conway: -- prayer meetings that I attend on a regular basis. People look at the absolutely marvellous piece of glass and wonder why governments cannot do something about this? Now I gather the current Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, with your blessing, is doing some things in this connection, so what specifically will I notice over the next few months?

Hon Mrs Grier: As I have said earlier, we all have a responsibility to assist and to cut down, and of course the first word in the hierarchy is "reduce," so may I suggest that the first move ought to be not to purchase liquor and then we would not have bottles. That would affect the Treasurer, so do not quote me.

Mr Conway: I do not represent Walkerville, but if I did I might think about what was just said. At any rate --

Hon Mrs Grier: At any rate, when I addressed this issue with the Liquor Control Board of Ontario I learned yet another new word, "Gattable," which I find an incredible piece of jargon, but apparently the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade comes into play when you look at what you can do with liquor bottles, because not all liquor is generated in Ontario.

That is one of the issues that the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations is wrestling with as he comes to grips with the possibility of returnable bottles. I think it points to the whole question of standardization and whether we in fact need the marketing techniques of fancy bottles for every brand.

The other issue the LCBO is looking at is the facilities within their particular stores for both returning and recycling the bottles, and it has a preference for recycling. There are those who feel that returnable is the way to go and trying to do an evaluation of the environmental impacts of one over another is like how many angels on the head of a pin.

Mr Conway: But my constituents -- it is surprising, as they say, the number of people who will raise that particular issue --

Hon Mrs Grier: It is very visible and symbolic.

Mr Conway: -- and because it is purchased in a government store the expectation is that is an area you should be able to do something about, and quite frankly, it seems to me, knowing not a great deal about it, they seem to have a point.

Hon Mrs Grier: Absolutely.

Mr Conway: What I hope we can say to those people is that within a very few years we would be able to surely organize a system where we return at least what we buy to that store. We talked earlier about depots, but I think a lot of people find it really offensive to take a lot of this really jazzy glass and in most cases it has gone to some kind of a landfill, probably, in the past although in some places I am sure there is glass-recycling; certainly not in my area. l guess I want to be clear again. Recognizing some of the problems you have encountered in this, what two or three things should I be able to tell my constituents to look for in this area?

Hon Mrs Grier: You certainly can tell your constituents that this government is addressing the issue. Like so many other issues which we have found ourselves faced with we are coming from a standing start on trying to make some progress. I think you can tell your constituents that there will be a policy direction from this government within this year and some decisions as to whether in the short term recycling is the way to go and how we can lead towards returnables.

Mrs McLeod: Are you finished on that area? I was going to take us into another area and that was clean water, and more specifically to begin with the municipal-industrial strategy for abatement program perhaps by focusing, first of all, on what I understand to be your commitment to a target of zero discharge. I am wondering if you could comment on the compatibility of a target of zero discharge with the entire MISA program.

Hon Mrs Grier: It is certainly an issue that I have been wrestling with. Zero discharge, virtual elimination are targets from the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement signed by both our governments and the Canada-Ontario agreement negotiated by your government. Achieving that under the present MISA program as enunciated and developed is going to be difficult, but Jim Ashman, who is our director of water resources, is here and I would like him perhaps to talk a bit about where we are at with MISA and the timing and the stages that are presently contemplated.

The Chair: Please introduce yourself. You have three and a half or four minutes.

Dr Ashman: My name is Jim Ashman. I am director of the water resources branch. I will try to sum up MISA in three and a half or four minutes.

Mrs McLeod: May I just intervene for a moment? I do not want to restrict the committee's access to information I have been following the MISA program myself fairly carefully since it is a local issue as well as a provincial concern and I think we have some sense of the regulatory stage and --

Hon Mrs Grier: Yes. I think the issue of resolution process was what I was going to ask Jim to talk about, which has homed in on just the issues that are contentious and that are in a way incompatible with the program as currently designed.

Mrs McLeod: Perhaps I could give one very specific question then that he could address, focus it a little more tightly, and that is, recognizing that the MISA program was based upon best available technology at the end of the pipe discharge, my understanding was that is what the monitoring regulations and then the compliance regulations would be geared to. The zero discharge target seems somewhat incompatible with that, other than the definition of "zero discharge" which the minister was just referring to. The industry tends to become very frustrated with what it calls the disappearing zero -- that is, the ability to measure increases more accurately -- what we define as "zero discharge" gets farther and farther away from the existing standard.

My specific question would be, if that is a correct concern on the part of industry, and I am not sure whether it can be directed towards your staff or towards you, Minister, at what point will standards be put in place and industry reasonably expect, believe that it can have met the existing standards and not have to make significant changes for a reasonable period of time?

Dr Ashman: Minister, if I could try to respond to that, with respect to the effluence limits, the basic premise of the BATEA -- or the best available technology economically achievable -- program was that at this point in time regulations would be developed based on the best available technology and that as new technologies became available, to continue to reduce the discharge of persistent toxics, that the new technologies would be used by the industries and that the regulations would be reviewed on a five-year rotating cycle through the nine sectors. So the movement towards virtual elimination or zero discharge would be based on and driven by the availability of technologies.

The question of zero discharge -- I call it the moving decimal point syndrome -- is a difficult question to deal with because as we do get more and more precise in our analytical techniques, the availability of finding various things in this glass of water increases. It has been said in jest that perhaps we should stop giving money to laboratory researchers to develop new techniques, but of course that is not a solution to the problem.

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Mrs McLeod: But nevertheless, if we talk about five-year cycles of best available technology to be re-evaluated on a five-year cycle, that underscores the concerns industry will express. I do believe that industry generally wants to meet the environmental regulations, because they are concerned to be good corporate citizens as well as the fact of the law, but the financial expenditures for the environmental technology are significant. The Canadian pulp and paper producers, to take just one of the groups regulated under MISA, has increased its expenditure on the environment by something like 133% in a one-year period alone.

I think we have to come to grips with that point of time that is reasonable for industry in terms of having met the regulations and being able to feel that the technology on which it has spent large amounts of money will be considered to be sufficient for a reasonable period of time. Is that an unrealistic expectation of MISA as it is currently operating?

Dr Ashman: As I was indicating before, the current status of MISA is to look at a five-year review. If new technologies were available in a way that they were economically achievable, because the best available technology has attached economic achievability to it, then the process would involve industries moving to new technologies. You will appreciate that the review of technologies is being undertaken through the joint technical committee process which involves extensive input by the particular industries in question.

Mrs McLeod: We have a moment, I think.

The Chair: Two minutes, actually, according to my clock.

Mrs McLeod: I just have one other question in this area. There was a plan to establish last spring an Advisory Committee on Environmental Standards. Is that committee --

Hon Mrs Grier: Mr Bradley established that committee.

Mrs McLeod: And that committee is to continue?

Hon Mrs Grier: Oh, yes.

Mrs McLeod: And will it have any direct involvement in the MISA program?

Hon Mrs Grier: Maybe Jim can answer. My sense was that the joint technical committees and the Municipal-Industrial Strategy for Abatement Advisory Committee, all of which were put in place by Mr Bradley, were in a sense the bodies that were developing the regulations under MISA.

Dr Ashman: Yes.

Hon Mrs Grier: Maybe Jim can correct me if I am wrong.

Dr Ashman: There has not been at this point any intention to take the regulations and put them through the ACES process. There are a number of other environmental standards, clearly, that ACES may be dealing with.

Hon Mrs Grier: I would be interested in the concern around that, because certainly looking at MISA is something that is on my agenda, and if the members feel that the approach is inappropriate, I think it would be very helpful to have some sense of that.

Mr Conway: I think one of the things you might do at some point a little later in the spring is sit down and talk to your colleagues the Minister of Mines and the Minister of Natural Resources, because they will be dealing with people, as I say, and as my colleague the member for Fort William I think rightly observes, most of whom most of the time would want to be good corporate citizens. I have heard them. I have heard some very good people complain bitterly to me in a previous life about the moving target and the requirement of substantial investments of money, which they are quite keen to do. They want to do so in compliance with -- some of this technology I did not understand, but I certainly felt that it was a pattern of criticism. I think you might want to chat with your two colleagues particularly, because I think they will tell you that particularly in some of those northern resource communities, best available technology is zero discharge. It will keep a lot of consultants occupied for a long time.

Hon Mrs Grier: I certainly appreciate those comments because they, as I say, are an issue that we are going to be talking about. Once we can resolve some of our waste management priorities, we will move to MISA.

Mrs Marland: Can I just go back to the subject of incineration briefly? You have inherited what was St Marys Cement -- I do not know the new name of it -- in southeast Brampton and it went through a full environmental assessment. I think the ministry has given $2.8 million to that incinerator; it is presently under construction. What will the ministry do now to deal with the subject of incineration in light of that project being under construction and coming on stream? Do you see yourself limiting the kinds of waste that may in fact be burned at that facility?

The other question that is parallel with that, because that is a ministry-funded project, is how much money did the Ministry of the Environment give to St Marys Cement Co for the incineration of tires, of tests to incinerate tires at St Marys Cement?

Hon Mrs Grier: Let me answer the last one first. Absolutely no money has been given to St Marys Cement for the incineration of tires. With respect to the facility in Brampton, I was a little stunned to be told by the chair of the region of Peel that I now owned an incinerator. That is not my understanding of the situation. It is an incinerator that is owned privately and was built with the support of the regional municipality of Peel. It has had all environmental approvals, including a full Environmental Assessment Act. I assume that their certificate of approval -- and I see Mr McIntyre nodding agreement -- contains some very strict rules, guidelines and emission limits. Certainly when and if that incinerator starts operating, it will be my intention to make sure it lives up to every single one of those commitments.

Mrs Marland: So what you are saying, Minister, is that you are cut off at the knees because that incinerator was approved before your mandate, and the $2.8 million that the Ministry of the Environment gave -- pardon me, the Ministry of Energy gave them the money I think -- is something that is now beyond your control, even though you are opposed to incineration of garbage.

Hon Mrs Grier: At this point, that is my understanding of the legal situation, but if anybody wants to correct that, I am sure they will come to the table.

Mrs Marland: And St Marys Cement Co has never received any money or encouragement from the Ministry of the Environment?

Hon Mrs Grier: Absolutely not.

Mrs Marland: But perhaps the Ministry of Energy, and we will pursue that.

Hon Mrs Grier: No, I do not think any funding has been given to St Marys Cement. They certainly have been seeking approval for a tire burn. I have asked them to hold off on doing that until we come out with a comprehensive policy on the disposal of waste tires. I am sure in the questions that were discussed earlier -- I had to leave the room for a few minutes -- you heard that we have had a consultant's report looking at various options for the disposal of waste tires and we are sponsoring in early March a symposium in which all elements of the industry, the scientific community, the residential community that is concerned about this issue and the people who have great entrepreneurial ideas of what we can do with tires are coming together to share their ideas and I hope give me their best advice as to what I do with this other little aspect of my inheritance that I have discovered.

The Chair: I just want to indicate to the minister that the matter was raised during the Ministry of Energy estimates, and the context of St Marys was as a fuel enhancer and not as a disposable environmental issue. It was that the tires being burned at St Marys were a fuel enhancer and its interest was from Energy's point of view. That was only a matter that was discussed in that base.

Hon Mrs Grier: It was a substitute of one fuel for another.

The Chair: That is correct. Mr Cousens.

Mr Cousens: I want to get into MISA in a moment. I just want to finish off on tires, where I was when we ran out of time. I am interested in the number of different ventures that are being financed by the ministry who have businesses that are in the process of recycling tires and what they are trying to do. It is funny, but coincidentally with that is that today in my office I had a company come and visit me that has applied to the ministry for assistance and support in a project that would recycle tires. What I would like to do is just table this with the deputy for possible follow-through, that is, Triple T Industries, and it is a sound-barrier manufacturing process.

There is the fact that it is all so complicated. I think that we really are dealing in an age in which it is next to impossible for small companies to try to deal with the issues, the cost in the first place. You are dealing with the Ministry of Transportation which has guidelines that may not be totally relevant to the situation, and you are dealing with business people who are really trying to make progress, have an idea.

All I can do is say to the ministry, in the form of a question, is there a time frame in which you try to deal with different companies that are coming forward with ideas and methods through which your ministry is able to help and assist entrepreneurs? I know we have a funding and there are ways in which that $45 million is going into the pot somewhere. But have you a set of criteria from within the ministry to work with business? Because I have to say that you cannot do it alone; you have got to involve industry and business.

Yet the feeling out there -- not with this example, but others generally -- is that there is not the push and the sense of urgency to really come forward with some of those solutions. I guess to me it is just a matter of perception at this point, and anything you can do to show and attempt to expedite relationships that can lead to solutions I think would be very, very --

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Hon Mrs Grier: The deputy would like to make some comments in response to that.

Mr Posen: I think there are a number of ways of responding. One of course is the multiple demands on the ministry which make it difficult to deal with all of these things. Two is that the proposals do come to us in various stages or states of development. People come in the door with an idea on a piece of paper. They have no business plan, they have no marketing plan, they have no real sense of what they want to do. But they do have an idea and they basically want the ministry to act as the business consultant for them and sit down with them and work out the idea. It does take time to deal with all those people and it steals the time from other people who come in with proposals.

Mr Cousens: Well, it does not really matter. I mean --

Mr Posen: I do not know this particular one, one way or another, but there are a whole series of questions that arise in dealing with the Ministry of Transportation as to what the standards are. There are a number of others which have required other ministries to be involved. We have gone back to people for information which they find difficult to get to us. So there is a problem at the ministry and in terms of number of staff available to deal with them and at the other end in being able to I think help us. We have tried to meet both sets of demands as best we can.

Mr Cousens: Having said it and having heard your answer, and I think you know that I am coming from a responsible bid, a responsible attempt to get into it, there has really got to be a sense of urgency within the government as a whole to work with business where it is possible.

Can I go back to the MISA questions? Could I just find out from the minister -- there were some very strong feelings of anger coming through when I was recently at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association. An awful lot of municipalities were concerned with the way MISA guidelines were being implemented and the problems it is causing them. I am sure you are hearing certain feedback, that people are talking about the aggressive way in which MISA guidelines are being pushed without necessarily the educational component up front and some kind of working through. I just table that as a concern and I do not know whether you have that as a concern at this time.

Hon Mrs Grier: I have certainly not heard that precise concern, but I certainly have heard from a lot of municipalities their concern about the way MISA was designed as it relates to the municipal sector. Frankly the municipal sector part of MISA has not proceeded very far, largely because of those concerns and because it was a bit of an afterthought to the nine industrial sectors where the monitoring has proceeded. So if people are complaining about aggressive pushing of MISA guidelines, I do not know what or who is pushing --

Mr Cousens: You are not hearing that.

Hon Mrs Grier: -- because I wish we could accelerate MISA. We have not been able to do that as yet and we felt it was prudent to wait until we had in fact received the monitoring for all of the nine sectors and then see what kind of a regulation that might be generic could be developed.

On the municipal side --

Mr Cousens: Just stay on that one. When do you see the first abatement regulations being implemented then?

Hon Mrs Grier: For MISA?

Mr Cousens: Yes.

Hon Mrs Grier: Under the current timetable set in place by my predecessor it was well into 1992. I do not think that is good enough and I have asked our ministry staff to see how we can expedite that. But I am not in a position to give you a date at this point.

On the municipal sector, the design of the program is such that again it is an end-of-the-pipe monitoring, and what are we going to do, which raises in the minds of the municipalities the spectre of having to rebuild entirely all of their sewage treatment plants and anticipate a whole cocktail of chemicals coming down the pipe that they have to prepare for and are not quite sure what is there. I shale their concern about the way in which the municipal sector part of MISA has been designed, and that is part of the review that I have asked the ministry to undertake.

Mr Cousens: Could you point to me in the estimates briefing what the total expenditures that are being invested into the MISA program? It is hard to just read that right now.

Hon Mrs Grier: I think Mr Castel can. I seem to remember when I asked that question last year, it was hard to get an answer, but maybe I can get a better one from --

Mr Cousens: I am sure it is an improvement from last year.

Hon Mrs Grier: Oh, no. Look, I take no responsibility for the preparation of these estimates, so I am --

The Chair: Mr Castel, please proceed.

Mr Castel: The budget for the municipal-industrial strategy for abatement for this year is $22 million.

Mr Cousens: Can you give me a breakdown on that?

Mr Castel: I could, yes.

Mr Cousens: Just while you are digging that out, maybe I can ask the minister -- ground water supply and quality assessment. Is there any work being done on that, any progress or any intentions that you have on that whole subject of ground water quality? I think there is a major set of questions.

Hon Mrs Grier: Yes, there is a very extensive ground water monitoring program that is under way, and I think that has to be completed so that we can have some kind of an assessment of what the situation is, because large segments of the province, as you well know, take their water from ground water.

Mr Cousens: Is this being done by your ministry or outside consultants? Can you give us any progress on what is happening?

Hon Mrs Grier: I asked Mr Ashman to talk about the details. Some of it is being done in consultation with municipalities. Regional municipalities are working on it, but we are trying to get a handle on who is doing what where.

Mr Cousens: And you have an interim report on it as well to give us a sense of what is happening?

Hon Mrs Grier: I think we are a long way from that, but perhaps Mr Ashman can comment.

Dr Ashman: There are two comments that I make, Minister. The first one deals with the drinking water surveillance program, which is a program in the ministry which takes the water from both surface water facilities, facilities which are supplied from surface water, and from ground water, and does a fairly extensive monitoring for some 160 to 180 parameters. That water is taken on a monthly basis, and at the current time, I think somewhere around 80 municipalities representing approximately 60% of the population are involved with the DWSP program.

Mr Cousens: What do you call that program again?

Dr Ashman: DWSP, drinking water surveillance program. The other comment that I make is that the ministry is involved in preparing a ground water management strategy, which is an attempt to take a look at our existing programs and to look at any potential gaps to try to see where it is that we might go. We are receiving requests from regional municipalities like Kitchener-Waterloo to continue and enhance our efforts in that area.

Hon Mrs Grier: Perhaps I could just expand. The goals of the program are --

Mr Cousens: No, I am aware of the goals. I just want to know what progress there is to report. I do not need to hear the goals. When do you expect that we can hear anything more specific?

Dr Ashman: Well, I am not sure at this point whether I will be able to go forward to senior management in the ministry with any sort of formal proposals. It is difficult for me to say at this point.

Hon Mrs Grier: This is, again, a fairly new initiative, which only started last year.

Mr Cousens: I think it is a very important initiative --

Hon Mrs Grier: I do too.

Mr Cousens: -- and I strongly support it. I think that it has an awful lot of -- you are not only talking quality, you are talking the supply of fresh water, and we have really got to know what our resources are in this area, so I support it. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Dr Ashman: Any time.

Mr Cousens: Maybe we have got the MISA finally. Still looking?

The Chair: Staff seems to still be looking for it, so proceed with another question.

Mr Cousens: Is your ministry involved in any way with the zebra mussel problem in the province of Ontario, and if so, to what extent?

Hon Mrs Grier: No, I --

Interjection.

Hon Mrs Grier: Well, we are. The Ministry of Natural Resources is the lead ministry, but we have certainly been involved, and there is some information that I can share with you. I do not know who our lead person is on zebra mussels. Oh, it is Jim again.

Mr Cousens: Do I understand you are not taking a lead role in any way at this point?

Hon Mrs Grier: We have been very much involved, but as spokesman, it has essentially been my colleague the Minister of Natural Resources. Jim, I am sure, can tell you what role he has played.

Dr Ashman: The only thing that I can add is that while Natural Resources is taking the lead, we are obviously concerned about the impact that zebra mussels have with respect to water intake in the Great Lakes and so on. Staff in the Great Lakes section have been working carefully with the Ministry of Natural Resources to ensure that the water supplies are still available to the population. I cannot give you any more detail than that, although I could certainly have it for tomorrow if you so desire.

Mr Cousens: I would appreciate further background, what activities you are doing and anything like that.

Hon Mrs Grier: I think there was an extensive review of the zebra mussel situation before the resources development committee. All that is to be known about zebra mussels is in Hansard from last month.

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Mr Conway: I read in the newspaper the other day somewhere that apparently it is suggested we bomb them.

The Chair: Thank you for that contribution, Mr Conway. I think the staff member is ready with the MISA numbers.

Mr Castel: The breakdown of the MISA budget: We have $12.2 million in the water resources activity, $600,000 in the hazardous contaminants branch, $6.5 million in divisional operations --

Mr Cousens: Is that mostly regulatory and review?

Mr Castel: The regions review the monitoring data. In the administrative area, we have $2.6 million for the development of systems as well as for economic studies, and this comes to exactly $21.9 million.

Mr Cousens: Because I do not have the numbers, what was spent on it for last fiscal year and this fiscal year?

Mr Castel: I will have to go back to check on it. Yes, there has been a small increase this year over last year.

Mr Cousens: Not a significant increase.

Mr Castel: No.

Mr Cousens: And what do you see it coming in the next year? Is it going to increase?

Mr Castel: We are examining the requirements for next year, particularly regarding the municipal sector.

Mr Cousens: And that is the part that is going to increase significantly, I would think.

Mr Castel: It should increase, yes.

Hon Mrs Grier: It is a very resource-intensive program.

Mr Cousens: Why?

Hon Mrs Grier: Because it involves an awful lot of staff and an awful lot of money to do it in the technological way in which it has been designed.

Mr Cousens: The last speaker back talked about the rolling decimal point, and that really is the issue that touches so many business people and others with the changing standards that they want. How do you go about -- the standards are in place now for MISA --

Hon Mrs Grier: No, no. Not yet.

Mr Cousens: -- so we were asking the question about the regulations that are coming in effect.

Hon Mrs Grier: What is in place are the monitoring regulations. The control regulations are not in place.

Mr Cousens: Well, how much notice will you be giving business people out there of those regulations and control factors? What kind of advance notice are you going to give? What kind of window?

Hon Mrs Grier: Let me make it very clear that they were advised in 1986 by the previous government that a program was going to be put in place to meet the international agreements under the Great Lakes water quality agreement and the agreement to get to virtual elimination and zero discharge. So every industry in this province has had at this point five years of taking into account in their planning decisions the investments required to receive zero discharge. I think they all were put well on notice by the previous government that this was what is happening. It is very heartening to find that many of them, in their planning and in their looking at their production processes, are in fact cognizant of that.

I think that some progress has been made, and anybody who wants to get to zero -- whatever zero is -- discharge of a chemical finds a way of not putting that chemical into the production process in the first place. That is the safest and easiest way of eliminating it, and many of them in the preceding years, I think, are planning in that way.

The Chair: Thank you, Minister. It is six minutes before the hour of 6, and I would, with the committee's indulgence, like to make up the 10 minutes we lost for our late start, which would give the governing party about 16 minutes for questioning, if that is in agreement with everyone.

Second, the minister has an extremely tight schedule, and with the indulgence of the committee, if she feels she must leave, we would understand that. With that understanding, Ms Haslam and then I have Mr Perruzza.

Hon Mrs Grier: Thank you, Mr Chair.

Ms Haslam: I want to go back to something that was brought up earlier, and that is about the permanent household hazardous waste depot. I have some specific questions about that. Number one, I am interested in the funding. You said that you have 12 municipalities --

Hon Mrs Grier: Could I ask Mr Wong to come forward, because I am sure he is the one who is going to have to answer and he can hear better from there.

The Chair: Hardy, good to see you again.

Ms Haslam: There were 12 municipalities, and you said funding was possible to set it up at 50% for up to $15,000 for one event. I would like a clarification on that. I would also like to know the criteria for someone setting up a permanent hazardous waste depot. I would like to know the funding possible to the municipalities for setting up a hazardous waste depot. I would like to know the cost of one-day operation versus the cost of operation over a long term.

Mr Wong: I think I did not make it very clear when I said 50% up to $15,000. These are for the current operating program which is setting up a one-shot deal, once or twice a year household hazardous waste days.

Ms Haslam: Yes.

Mr Wong: The event lasts for one day.

Ms Haslam: That was my understanding.

Mr Wong: Right.

Ms Haslam: And that is a different type of funding versus a permanent --

Mr Wong: That is right. The permanent --

Ms Haslam: That is what I need information on.

Mr Wong: It is different. Up to 50% and $15,000 does not apply to the permanent depot. The permanent depot establishment is funded under the ministry's financial assistance program. Under that program, according to the municipal size, there is a sliding-scale funding program and I believe it is up to 60% for the capital cost of that facility.

Now the operating cost, based on limited example results, normally it is a range about $30,000 to $35,000 for a one-day event for a medium-sized municipality. To set up a depot, the permanent capital cost for that kind of facility again is very much wide-ranging, based on the size of the municipalities and the facilities they already have, because normally those permanent depots are set up at the public works yard. Security is there. The fence is there. The services or utilities are all there. I cannot give you an average cost. They range widely among the 12 municipalities.

Ms Haslam: When you say they are set up at the public works yard, if the services of waste pickup and garbage pickup are contracted out, then it would then not go into the municipal yard but into a private company facility.

Mr Wong: The permanent depot, do you mean?

Ms Haslam: Yes.

Mr Wong: The permanent depot is owned by the municipalities.

Ms Haslam: Yes, but it depends on whether it is already in the municipal yard?

Mr Wong: That is right. Primarily there are two types of likely locations. One is the existing landfill site.

Ms Haslam: Yes.

Mr Wong: The closed-up portion of the landfill site. Okay? The beauty is away from individuals and very safe and things like that. The difficulties of service may not be there, because once you are permanent you need ongoing services for that location: heat, electricity and so on and so forth. The other likely candidate, as I say, is a public service yard. Now while they are owned by municipalities, they are often operated by contract to the private sector.

Ms Haslam: Okay. So you are saying $30,000 to $35,000 in the cost of operation over a long term. You do not have any figures because it depends on where the location is.

Mr Wong: That is right.

Ms Haslam: Not even a ballpark figure?

Mr Wong: The reason I cannot give you an average is it ranges as low as $400 every Saturday morning to very high costs when they just started, when they do not know what to do and things like that. There is one municipality that has been operating permanent household for the last three and a half years and it finds overall it is cheaper than running one event in a whole year.

Ms Haslam: I would like to ask a particular question. When you talked about tires and tire incineration and we go back to the St Marys tire incineration, you are asking -- you mentioned, Minister, about a symposium in March, and that is the spring, and it is my understanding that the St Marys Cement Co burning certificate has been put off until the spring. Is that going to be after the symposium?

Hon Mrs Grier: Yes. I think we have a consultant's report that was done by my predecessor which looks at a number of options for making greater inroads into the backlog of tires than some of the schemes that have come forward as initiatives, and that is one of the issues for discussion at this symposium. We hope to have a policy position prepared after we have had the benefit of that consultation.

Ms Haslam: We talk about research. When I looked into this it seemed to me that the research was basically American research. Is that correct?

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Hon Mrs Grier: I do not know who is familiar with the tire study, but it was looking at the Ontario situation and the possibility of markets in some of the industries that were springing up to do crumbing and shredding, but Hardy can perhaps expand on that.

Mr Wong: It is knowledge with respect to St Marys Cement?

Hon Mrs Grier: St Marys.

Mr Wong: No, it is not a matter of technology. The technology is very similar. Of course every rotary kiln for cement operation is different, but on the examples of typical measurements, it is primarily from Europe and the United States. The air emissions as a result of burning tires in cement kilns are primarily from the United States and Europe, not the technology itself.

Ms Haslam: No, I am not talking about technology. I am saying that the research we use is not Canadian because there has not been anything done in Canada. Is that correct?

Mr Wong: What do you mean, research?

Ms Haslam: I mean that they would like to do a test burn.

Mr Wong: That is right, to find out what the emission

Ms Haslam: That is correct, and you are holding off that certificate, but most of the research data that they use in order to talk about a test burn is American?

Hon Mrs Grier: That was their argument for the test burn. As you know, I am not very much in favour of incineration. We are hoping that we can find ways of dealing with the tire problem that will involve -- I do not think we can reuse tires as tires, but certainly we are hoping to find other ways of reusing them and that is the kind of policy direction I hope we can come up with.

Ms Haslam: And that policy direction will be in the spring some time?

Hon Mrs Grier: April, May, mid-May.

Ms Haslam: Thank you.

Mr Perruzza: First of all, I would like to preamble my question by congratulating the minister in having taken on a monumental task. She has quite literally taken the bull by the horns and has a series of accomplishments below her belt to date in dealing with the environment and with some very sensitive environmental issues. I think that where former ministers of the environment have simply blown carbon dioxide in the air, this minister has taken on this task.

The Chair: Mr. Perruzza, you are blowing a lot of unnecessary smoke at the moment, so if you would please get to the point.

Mr Perruzza: I do believe I have six minutes left to go in my question, do I not, Mr Chair?

The Chair: You have seven minutes, and please stay within the standing order.

Mr Perruzza: So you will allow me the courtesy to continue?

The Chair: For the third time, Mr Perruzza, you have the floor.

Mr Perruzza: I would like to ask the minister a question, and it is really a general question and I am going to veer off the environmental aspect of some of the discussion that has gone on today. I would like to ask her a question, as part of her portfolio deals with the GTA. l would like to have some insights into what her feelings are on that. To date really what we have is a number of towns and cities and regional municipalities which are essentially all developing and planning in isolation from each other.

Mrs Marland: I have a point of order, Mr Chair.

The Chair: Ms Marland has a point of order.

Mrs Marland: I was expecting that you would intervene and help Mr Perruzza, because although this minister does in fact have the GTA as part of her responsibility, the only ministry that is before this committee is the Ministry of the Environment.

The Chair: That point of order is not in order. In the opinion of the Chair, both the linkages to environment and the GTA were referenced by both critics of the opposition in their preamble, so I consider Mr Perruzza in order, unless he frames the question solely on the GTA, but I was waiting until I heard from him the nature of his question. If it has anything at all to do with garbage, it is perfectly in order. Please proceed, Mr Perruzza.

Mr Perruzza: Well, Mr Chairman, it does. I respect Mrs Marland's interjection, but if she had heard the entire question she would clearly have seen that it relates to the environment and some otherwise very sensitive environmental issues. Again, I will ask the question on what the minister's views are in relation to the GTA and to having a number of towns and municipalities all planning and developing in isolation, and the second part of the question, which relates directly to the environment is that I read somewhere, and I am pleased to hear it, that the minister is looking at the greening of the Planning Act. I believe those were the words she used in a quote. I would like to hear from her on what that means exactly, and I would like to develop that discussion after I hear the answer.

Hon Mrs Grier: This is something that is being looked at in conjunction with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. As I said earlier I think that it is particularly appropriate within the greater Toronto area to look at the reports that exist and that were done for the previous government by Commissioner David Crombie or the Kanter report on the green lands and Oak Ridges moraine as to how we can move from the kind of reactive development control nature of planning that has occurred in the past, to a more proactive, preventive planning that anticipates problems that can occur because of cumulative approvals for development and looks at areas that are worthy of particular protection. So in that way I find it difficult to distinguish between my role as minister of the GTA and Minister of the Environment because the two are very intertwined.

With respect to how we actually accomplish the greening of the Planning Act, I think there is a fair amount of power within the existing Planning Act for the provincial government to exercise some control on the kind of development that occurs to make sure that development occurs in a green manner, ie, taking into account the preservation of natural and particular areas and also looking at some of the cumulative effects of development decisions. So we will certainly be moving to do that as well as examining the specific provisions of the Planning Act to see if there are ways in which the requirement that we protect the environment and proceed in a manner that leaves resources and open space for future generations can proceed both in the private and the public sector.

Mr Perruzza: You mentioned the greening of the Planning Act and again I would like to tie that back into a series of towns and cities, all developing in isolation from each other. I guess my question relates directly to carbon emissions and to vehicle use and to car use.

Hon Mrs Grier: I see what you are getting at.

Mr Perruzza: Do you foresee some organizing body where we are going to develop the infrastructure that is going to cause a substantial reduction in automobile use and vehicular traffic?

Hon Mrs Grier: I think that is a question that is being approached from a number of different aspects, from my own ministry with respect to automobile emissions, from the Minister of Energy in looking at global warming and in my role as Minister responsible for the GTA from a planning perspective. As we look at the urban structure of the GTA and the reports that have been prepared and are still being looked at, how we develop not just a whole series of isolated communities, but communities that are linked by transit where growth is directed to existing built-up areas as opposed to continuing to eat up farm land, and where we build not just expressways but transit lines that will take people, not just to downtown Toronto but from centre to centre so that people and jobs can be linked and so that people perhaps can both live and work in the same community, which is my ideal of a good community -- I see the gavel being raised.

Mr Perruzza: I would like to thank the minister. I think she has cleared up some very substantial points, certainly in my mind in terms of where she plans to take the ministry in terms of infrastructure and how she plans to tie the Ministry of the Environment's obligations and work, essentially, and tie them with other ministries, and I am glad to hear that.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Perruzza. We have exactly two and one half hours remaining to complete the estimates. Therefore I would like to remind committee members that we will likely start promptly tomorrow, so this meeting of the standing committee on estimates stands adjourned until 10 am tomorrow morning in room 228.

The committee adjourned at 1810.