Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

MINISTRY OF COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL SERVICES

CONTENTS

Tuesday 13 October 1992

Ministry of Community and Social Services

Hon Marion Boyd, minister

Charles Pascal, deputy minister

Barbara Stewart, assistant deputy minister, financial planning and corporate services

Sandra Lang, assistant deputy minister, operations

Margaret Gallow, regional director, central region office

Patrick Laverty, director, long-term care policy branch

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES

*Chair / Président: Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South/-Sud PC)

*Acting Chair / Présidente suppléante: Carr, Gary (Oakville South/-Sud PC)

*Vice-Chair / Vice-Présidente: Marland, Margaret (Mississauga South/-Sud PC)

*Bisson, Giles (Cochrane South/-Sud ND)

Eddy, Ron (Brant-Haldimand L)

Ferguson, Will, (Kitchener ND)

*Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND)

Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville ND)

O'Connor, Larry (Durham-York ND)

*Perruzza, Anthony (Downsview ND)

Ramsay, David (Timiskaming L)

Sorbara, Gregory S. (York Centre L)

Substitutions / Membres remplaçants:

*Abel, Donald (Wentworth North/-Nord ND) for Mr O'Connor

*Beer, Charles (York North/-Nord L) for Mr Sorbara

*Haeck, Christel (St Catharines-Brock ND) for Mr Ferguson

*Hope, Randy R. (Chatham-Kent ND) for Mr Lessard

*O'Neill, Yvonne (Ottawa-Rideau L) for Mr Ramsay

*Rizzo, Tony (Oakwood ND) for Mr Perruzza

*In attendance / présents

Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes: Murdoch, Bill (Grey PC)

Wilson, Jim (Simcoe West/-Ouest PC)

Clerk pro tem / Greffière par intérim: Mellor, Lynn

The committee met at 1534 in committee room 2.

MINISTRY OF COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL SERVICES

The Acting Chair (Mr Gary Carr): We will call to order the standing committee on estimates. It's my understanding that when we left off it was going to be the Liberal turn for questions and that we were going to be going in half-hour rotations.

Mr Charles Beer (York North): Madam Minister, I wonder if I could ask you some questions around the whole issue of what's called the triministry recall.

I know you've had a number of meetings in recent weeks. As I talk with people in York region and Simcoe county, the concern, as I believe you're aware, is of the $9.7 million. For a whole series, I suppose, of historical reasons, approximately half of that has been expended in York region and in Simcoe county, affecting -- because this deals with the developmentally handicapped -- a number of community living organizations in Newmarket, Georgina, and in particular, the York Support Services Network, which provides case management services.

There were a couple of meetings. I forget just who it was who met with you at which time, but a number of facts were set out in terms of the number of children and adults who would be affected, as well as staffing. In effect, the way the funding works, York Support Services Network, for example, would be very badly hurt. In fact, it would be difficult for it to function if these dollars left.

I wonder if you could share with the committee what you see that can be done here. I think one of the specific concerns would be that the triministry program is supposed to end at the end of this fiscal year. Clearly, people who are working in these organizations have to start thinking about, "Where am I going to be on April 1?" I think there's a need to try to bring this to some conclusion. Could you tell me a bit about where you see that going and what steps you could take to ensure that the services that currently exist in York region and in Simcoe county could continue?

Hon Marion Boyd (Minister of Community and Social Services): I'm glad to have an opportunity to talk about this because it is, as the member suggests, causing great concern to service providers and clients and to the ministry staff as well. Certainly, it is not our intention to withdraw services to needy clients and their families. We recognize that these clients have needs and that it is important for us to meet those needs to the best of our ability.

The triministry funds, which were originally intended to offer support and supplementary services to the developmentally handicapped who were living in nursing homes, were always intended to be withdrawn as those folks moved out of nursing homes and into the community. They were always intended to be gradually returned. They were seen as an interim measure.

Unfortunately, some of those funds were used as base funding, particularly by the agency you mentioned, the York Support Services Network, and that's a situation of long standing, I believe, previous to your government's tenure as well as ours. That is creating some of the problem, fiscal dollars being used as base funding to support an agency, which has been an excellent agency in terms of the work it has done, in terms of the confidence it has built in the community and the level of service it has been able to offer.

We were intending, certainly, had we got the full funding for year 6 and year 7 in the multi-year plan, that those folks who were in nursing homes would be back into the community over those two years. However, we were not able to fund year 6 and year 7 fully, and that caused a delay in the deinstitutionalization of those particular clients. So at the same time that we were dropping the triministry funding, we were not able to do the deinstitutionalization to the same extent that we did: two budget measures that didn't jibe and frankly should have. Our problem was, as you know, that with our highly decentralized kind of a situation, by the time the fallout of those decisions is necessarily understood, the decisions have already been made.

What we are doing is going back to treasury within the next few weeks to provide an overview of the success we've had in MYP, showing what our concern is in terms of this particular situation and a number of others that have arisen around this, looking in particular at York region and Simcoe. For one reason or another -- and as you say, there are historical reasons for this -- we have ended up with a lot of people in homes for special care who in the view of the service providers who now work out of a nursing home situation, require exactly the same services as do those in nursing homes.

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As you know, we have not been able to take as many dollars out of the schedule 1 facilities as we had hoped, because in order to maintain the care of those clients in the facilities, it has been necessary to improve some of the service. Frankly, the whole plan is out of whack and we're very concerned about that, as is treasury, and so we'll be going back and looking at all of these issues over the next little while.

In the meantime, what we're doing is working with York Support Services Network to look at how its budgetary needs can be reduced to the extent that they can, and how it might be possible for us to look at reallocations of other program dollars in order to maintain the integrity of that agency. But we are very well aware of how serious it is.

Mr Beer: If I may continue, and again I know that they met with you, as did representatives of the community services council in trying to go over what some of the problems are there. It's important and I know I wasn't aware. I was looking at, I think, something like 28% of the provincial total of developmentally disabled persons are in York and Simcoe, which is a strange figure but relates to the fact that that's where accommodation was being developed.

As you say, in terms of the year 6 and year 7 of the multi-year plan, in terms of the problem of having facilities ready to go in Simcoe county, people wanting to go but not being able to move in, one of the things that York Support Services Network did, which I thought was interesting, was it had a kind of a focus group with the various people who -- this awful term, consumers, but the people who are there --

Hon Mrs Boyd: Self-advocates.

Mr Beer: Right, and homeowners and family members, and I guess it is always hard in terms of that expression "case management." We get into a sort of jargon, but when you looked at what people really felt they'd gained from the help those people offered, and again, just talking to those at Newmarket and District Association for Community Living and Georgina, the difficulty here is that if this program goes -- the focus is on the people whom it's going to help -- clearly the difficulty is, what do you do? There are not a lot of new dollars, if any, but I think this particular case is one where, clearly, if there isn't some solution found, developmentally handicapped adults are going to suffer in an inordinate way because of the numbers that are there.

I appreciate that you mention you're going to be talking with treasury officials. I think the time line here becomes important as well, as people try to determine what to do with their lives and whether they are going to have a job or just what will ensue. I don't want to put words into your mouth, but is it realistic that we could expect to see some proposal before the end of this calendar year?

Hon Mrs Boyd: I certainly think that's our goal, to ensure that there is some regularity to it. The member may recall that I have been in the position of the executive director of an agency that was being defunded, so I have every sympathy with the staff of the agency.

I want you to know that letting an agency like this go is particularly serious to us in the ministry because York Support Services Network has developed a service that is very comprehensive. It has been a good consulter of the whole community, as you suggest. It is very much the route that we see ourselves wanting to go in terms of case management. Their insights into the whole issue of case management and advocacy on the part of clients has been very valuable, and because of the nature of their particular agency and the way in which they've developed the community base that they've developed, they are very much the kind of model we might want to preserve.

One of the things we will be doing is looking at what flexibility we have in terms of encouraging diversification and modelling among our community agencies, and seeing if there is some opportunity for us to give them some additional support through that resource as well, because they have been very responsible for leading a concerted and very integrated community response to the very high needs, as you say, for the individuals in those counties.

Mr Beer: I appreciate those remarks, and I'll just end. I think we look forward with an optimistic air as we work this out. Again, in terms of this initiative, the impact not only on that particular organization but as well on the other developmental associations, the community living associations -- because what has developed is a whole -- you reach a point where you think you're starting to have an impact.

It's difficult, in terms of where those dollars would come, or how to deal with priorities, but it does seem to me that in the case of Simcoe county and York region, this function and these services provided by York Support Services Network and the community living associations, we really have been getting somewhere, and I just feel, in terms of the total budget of the ministry, that there would be some way in which we could find some funds to ensure that these services continue.

Hon Mrs Boyd: If we can get treasury to commit to the additional funds we need in order to close some of those nursing home beds, and we know that those will be available if we can get a commitment that they will be available in 1993-94, that will also resolve some of our issues. It takes about six months' planning to move people into the community, and it would mean there could be some more orderly planning in terms of those who are working directly in the nursing homes in the area, as well as York Support Services Network.

Mr Beer: Perhaps I could ask the Treasurer a question in the House to assist in this.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Perhaps you could, but you'd better wait until we've had a chance to fully brief him on our problem.

Mrs Yvonne O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau): I'd like to continue. It's somewhat related, Madame Minister. Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with the St Clair Regional Association for Community Living. They presented me with their critical policy issue paper which no doubt you have. I feel that in conjunction with the news release that we had of last April -- and perhaps you can update me on that -- where another group of community living people actually withdrew from the multi-year plan, the statement that I bring to the attention of the committee is that the more recent delay and uncertainty of the ministry's commitment to the multi-year plan has left groups struggling with their identity and their role.

I wonder if you could allay some of the fears that are out there. First of all, perhaps you could begin by updating me on whether the group that withdrew in April has come back in, and the only identification I have is that it's the Ontario association, but I understand it's not all branches of the Ontario association, so maybe you could bring us up to date on that and then respond.

Hon Mrs Boyd: If I'm correct about what I think you're referring to, if you recall, the previous minister had announced, given the concerns that were being expressed by friends of the facilities and by some of the self-advocacy groups and so on, that we were going to have a number of forums around the province to get together and discuss all the varying views on this. I think everyone is quite well aware that everyone is not convinced that deinstitutionalization is necessarily the best thing, that there are groups of parents who believe that the changes in the facilities could be such that their relatives would be happier and safer there. They have concerns about some of the freedoms and some of the responsibilities that people have when they embark on community living, and they really are concerned that their children and their loved ones may not be able to live fully within the community. They're afraid of the isolation that sometimes occurs. They're afraid of their not having a peer group. So there are a lot of concerns with that group.

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Obviously, our employee groups have real concerns around the depopulation of the facilities, because it does involve a shifting of jobs. Some of the self-advocates are very concerned because they feel they're not having enough say in terms of how the whole planning process is going on. They feel that people are making plans for them instead of with them, and they have concerns that they have more say.

So there's quite a diversity of views about how the whole multi-year plan is working, and what we wanted to do was have a number of community forums where we could, all together, express those views and really get them on the table and talk. The Ontario association was not happy about being part of that kind of a public forum because it was concerned about the conflict possibilities in that forum and was afraid that it might take away from the commitment of the government to the multi-year plan. Some groups did participate, as you say, and certainly some community-based groups as well as self-advocates, and certainly both OPSEU and CUPE were involved, as well as a lot of ministry staff from both the central office and the various regional offices. There were two of them; one was held in Peterborough and one was held in Kitchener-Waterloo.

We have the responses from those. Although they were useful in terms of getting the different views out on the table, I think the general consensus was that the model was not focused enough to learn anything more than we learned from the two forums. So what we did in the last month was bring together all those groups around a table -- two representatives, at least, of all those groups -- here at Queen's Park to talk about where we go from here in terms of really looking at how it has gone so far, what has gone right, what has gone wrong, what we can do to ensure that the moving of people into the community is more positive and that some of the fears of the parents who are most concerned are allayed, and yet not hold up the process. We don't want to keep on doing something if in fact we can't ensure that there is safety for the individuals, and that seems to be a major concern of both our staff in the facilities and the friends of the facilities.

So we had a very successful meeting in which we certainly had some frank talks and very frank disagreements about different points of view, agreed to carry on the discussion in the light of how we could deal with some of the problems that had arisen, but in fact came to a lot of agreement about what our concerns were, and that was the thing that was impressive. Whether it was the APSW workers, whether it was OPSEU or CUPE, whether it was the OACL, whether it was People First, all the groups around the table were expressing the same sort of concerns, and we agreed that since we were all concerned about those issues, we need to sit down and problem-solve around how to deal with them, given the dollars that we have.

One of the issues is that there are far more people in the community who have not been in facilities than were anticipated at the time that the multi-year funding was planned, and so we have aging parents whose concerns for their children are really grave. We end up having to place people on an emergency basis because of something happening to those care givers, as opposed to an orderly kind of planning for people to assume a different kind of supported lifestyle, and at the same time, the dollars that we were to put into it were supposed to come out of the facilities.

So we're in that kind of crunch, and that's why we need to go back to the treasury board and explain exactly how necessary it is for us to really relook at the amount of funds that are needed, explain that those emergencies are going to keep happening and that as we gradually move to close the facilities that have already been announced as closures we need to be finding ways to get those dollars into the system as quickly as we can.

So that's where we're at right now, but it is of deep concern to people from a lot of different points of view. You may know that we have given notice to a large number of people at Muskoka Centre, at Northwestern Regional Centre and at D'Arcy Place, although we've got a little hold on D'Arcy Place while we're looking at diversification and devolution, and that's happening right now.

So we are moving ahead with our planned deinstitutionalization, but it certainly isn't going as smoothly as either people working in the facilities or the relatives of our clients would like.

Mrs O'Neill: Thank you. I have one question also on page 57. It's on the same subject area, the same people in need. I just wondered if you could say a little bit about -- it looks like a major increase in allocation to the assessment training and support for disabled on page 57, under "employment services and supports."

Hon Mrs Boyd: Yes, this is the change in the sheltered workshops funding.

Mrs O'Neill: The sheltered workshops is just above the line I'm referring to. It's a 26% increase in assessment, training and supports for disabled. I just wondered what that stood for, what we're talking about there.

Hon Mrs Boyd: The 26% increase?

Mrs O'Neill: Yes, in that area.

Hon Mrs Boyd: A lot of it is a realignment of some of the work that has been done, as I read it. Perhaps I can just defer to the deputy for a moment around the particular issues. I think it is moving some of the dollars from the sheltered workshops into the supported employment line, the assessment of how to do that and how to move into those lines. That's my understanding.

Mrs O'Neill: Madam Minister, I would really like to clarify this. I did bring them up to date on what you said last Tuesday about sheltered workshops, but there are still an awful lot of questions about where the money has been moved. If that is this area, it would be very helpful to the people who write me to be able to say to them, "This is what has happened." It looks like a big increase. The disabled, as I say, have very serious needs. But I do think we need to try to pinpoint it.

Mr Charles Pascal: Part of the answer has to do with the realignment of the $36-million expansion fund, as the minister has already reinforced. I'll defer to the acting assistant deputy minister of corporate services for the details, but I believe a large portion of that had to do with the vocational rehabilitation services component. But if I can, I'd like to ask Barbara Stewart to answer the details.

Ms Barbara Stewart: That's the case, indeed. The final year of the three-year initiative to expand our employment initiatives came into effect. We put over $2 million into that assessment training area in order to deal with some of the waiting lists involved with participants in that program area.

Mrs O'Neill: Did you mention that vocational rehabilitation has also been given extra stimulus there?

Ms Stewart: That actually is the area where a lot of the vocational rehabilitation funding is found, so that's the program line where you'll see those implications on the vocational rehab.

Mrs O'Neill: Is this connected with the thrust of not sending people to the United States for vocational rehabilitation, or is it something entirely separate?

Ms Stewart: Not directly, no. It would be separate. Those would be plans in place prior to it.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay. Have I got more time now, Mr Chairman?

The Acting Chair: Yes, you have about six minutes.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay, if I may go to another area, then, I would like to -- and I'm sorry I wasn't here last Wednesday. I haven't had time to go over every word that was spoken, so I'm not sure some of this hasn't been asked. If it has, please let me know.

I'd like to go to the income maintenance -- I guess it's page 35 -- and questions arising from that. As I mentioned in my response to the minister's opening remarks, have we have had an update on how many social assistance recipients have taken jobs from Jobs Ontario? I have very scattered reports from some communities in this province. In connection with that, because it was announced almost simultaneously, how many children have accessed child care spaces as a component of the Jobs Ontario? Have we got an update as of September 30 at this point on either of those two statistics?

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Hon Mrs Boyd: We can get that for you, and I think it would probably be better for you to have it in printed form.

Mrs O'Neill: Right.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We can certainly get that for you.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We get a weekly update, just so you know, so we may actually be able to give you something more up to date than September 30. We'll just have to check with the jobs strategy people and ensure that we can.

Mrs O'Neill: Thank you. If I can go to page 63, then, this is a little broader title, but I'll start on it now, and that is the community counselling and support services. We seem to have an increase there of the adult group homes, interpreter, ministry act payment counselling services; almost every area of this budget seems to be up. I'm wondering what thrust, what programs, this is affecting. Then I have some more specific questions. I guess the 27% increase and the 40% increase to the adult group homes would be where I'd like to start.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I think there are two major issues. This is an area where there are increasing pressures, as I'm sure all members of the Legislature know, because we all hear in our offices all the time about the difficulties people have in terms of getting the supports they need within their community, non-residential supports they require.

If we go down, as you know, one of the areas that was funded under this area was the access to permanent housing committees, and we were in the process of allocating that back to Housing, where it more properly belongs, but we needed to share the year for a transition fund, and that has occurred.

We had special pressures this year because of the training schools and the disclosure of sexual abuse. Our ministry took responsibility for the special counselling needs of the survivors at St John's and St Joseph's, and also some of the job of coordinating the funding and the efforts for the survivors of Grandview. So those are another element of pressure.

Mrs O'Neill: If I may just stop at that, Madam Minister, you say "took." That's the past tense, and that's one of my concerns. Is this ongoing?

Hon Mrs Boyd: As you know, with the St John's and St Joseph's group an agreement has been reached, which was ratified by them. Under that particular program there is a commitment by the government to levels of service to those survivors, up to a certain personal amount for counselling within communities, and that certainly is a commitment.

Mrs O'Neill: And that's what's in this budget?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Yes.

Mrs O'Neill: Now what about Grandview?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Grandview? Because things are still early days, the implication of the agreement is certainly that in the short run the kinds of supports that were given to the survivors of St John's and St Joseph's in terms of organizing themselves into support groups, the kind of thing Helpline did for a lot of those survivors, we are funding in the meantime. We hope that we will be able to reach an agreement as time goes on, but as you know, that whole situation is still in the investigatory stage and is not nearly as far along.

It's a much more complicated situation, because the former residents at Grandview seem to be much more scattered and may in fact have a much more difficult time of disclosure. We're well aware that we're going to need to be patient and to be allocating resources as time goes on to assist them.

Mrs O'Neill: I'm really quite sorry, Madam Minister, that you're making some of those statements, because I don't think they're any more scattered, but we may discover more about that as we continue to talk.

I understand that the counselling for Grandview survivors at least changed, if not ceased, at the end of August. That is pretty updated information I've received from people who are pretty involved with them. If that's the case, it's certainly quite serious.

Hon Mrs Boyd: It certainly is, and it is not my understanding. Perhaps you would like to --

Mr Pascal: Mr Chair, if, in fact, the member has some information that we're unaware of, I'd be very grateful to get more specifics about it. To the best of my knowledge, there has been no gap or cessation of counselling.

Mrs O'Neill: Well, I will definitely provide the information once I check it again.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We would be very grateful, because it certainly isn't our agreement with them.

The Acting Chair: Continuing the rotation now with the Conservatives, I believe Mr Wilson is going to start off.

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): Minister, I want to begin my questioning by going back to the area that Mr Beer was discussing with you earlier. I too have had representations from and meetings with York Support Services Network, Georgina Community Living and community living associations in my riding representing both Collingwood and South Simcoe county.

Your recent announcements of both the triministry and workshop cuts to the developmentally handicapped sector are being implemented as we speak. Both decisions were made with virtually no consultation with the developmentally handicapped service sector. Consultation after the decisions are made is not acceptable.

How can you proceed with these massive changes without knowing what viable service models will replace these programs? Do you have any idea what the alternative costs will be for new service models and, more importantly, does your ministry intend to fund alternative service models, and, if so, why has this not been announced?

Hon Mrs Boyd: In fact, the member should be aware that the deputy and I and the ministry staff have been consulting widely in all of our communities around the province at such things as our Tables of Diversity, where we talk about the varying needs we have within our ministry and, indeed, in government to look very seriously at the expenditures in every line.

It would be nice if we were able to exempt, first of all the whole ministry, but secondly, some of these areas of particularly high vulnerability, particularly where there has been an unevenness in terms of the distribution of our client population and some unevenness in terms of the numbers being served in particular areas.

You are quite right when you say that we certainly need to be open to looking, as we reduce, at special needs that arise that may not have been taken into consideration, and we will do that. But quite frankly, in terms of pre-consultation, we have had a number of different sessions dealing with these programs with the various participants. No one, of course, has agreed to the reduction of budgets. When you're affected you don't agree to that, and that's not very helpful from our point of view.

What we have had to say is, given that we have had to reduce our budgets, we have been consulting with them about how to make that as acceptable as possible to the various organizations that are presenting. We find that the associations for community living have been very responsive in terms of, first of all, outlining the specific problems they face and then looking at some of the solutions we might have.

Your concern about whether we may find ourselves incurring more expense rather than less as we change these programs is one of those issues that always keep government from changing anything. We all know that's a concern, and sometimes needs are different than are first anticipated when we begin services.

The issue around the sheltered workshops is, from our point of view, a very clear one. Many of the ACLs have already declared themselves very clearly and have taken action to move away from the sheltered workshop model. They make very strong representation that that is the route they ought to be pursuing and they argue very strenuously for that view among their colleagues. Some have even withdrawn from the Ontario association because they feel there is not enough attention being paid to that concern.

We took $5 million over two years out of that particular line and reallocated $2 million into the supported employment line because we believe it is in better concert with the whole thrust toward employment equity that this government feels very strongly is the best route to go.

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We announced too the pilot projects that have been trying out the wage policy proposed by the previous government, but we did not intend to go ahead with an enshrined lower wage for the developmentally disabled; we felt that was entirely contrary to employment equity. Instead of that, we felt we needed to be putting our resources towards supported employment within the community rather than the segregated workshop concept, which certainly has been useful and in some communities continues to be useful as part of the vocational training, but increasingly is under attack by self-advocates who see it as being potentially exploitive of them, potentially preventing them from moving on, once they gain the skills, into other forms of employment. That is the reason behind the reallocation.

Yes, there is a net loss of $3 million to the workshop line, and that is serious. Our associations are having a hard time coping with that. We're very empathetic, but in the light of the budget cuts we're forced to make, given the fiscal circumstances, to maintain as low a deficit as possible, those are the kinds of tough choices we did have to make.

Mr Jim Wilson: Minister, I guess we have a fundamental and very important difference of opinion, to say the least, when it comes to sheltered workshops. I'll get back to that again in my next question.

Following on the same line, I want to know how you can proceed with massive cuts to community living service within the developmentally handicapped sector on the one hand, while staff-client ratios in institutions like the Huronia Regional Centre are approximately 980 staff to 640 clients. You know you cannot sustain the community living concept without downsizing the institutions. Why is this not happening more rapidly so that moneys can flow from institutional budgets to community budgets? Is pressure from the unions undermining your government's ability to support the new community service system?

Hon Mrs Boyd: I can understand why you would be concerned about that. As I mentioned before, we have given notices to, I believe, 352 staff at schedule 1 facilities. We do understand that of course, until we look at that downsizing, it is going to be hard for us to get the dollars into the community line, and it has been harder than was anticipated when the multi-year plan was put into place. We make no bones about that; we know that's the case.

One of the issues that has arisen is that there is a great deal of pressure from the parents and relatives of those people who continue to live in facilities, who feel that the ratios are not adequate for care for those clients, who feel that the quality of living is not appropriate. We have undertaken a quality-of-life study to really look at the comparative levels of quality of life for people within the institutions and for people outside so we have a better idea, in terms of quality of life, what our per-unit costs are in order to achieve the same results. We are looking at that.

I understand your concern. I certainly have a concern, but the intensive kind of work that needs to be done with an increasingly serious level of disability for those who are left within the facilities means that we have to safeguard them and ensure that we're offering appropriate services. Instead of closing large parts of these facilities in order to achieve a better quality of life, the facilities are being largely used in a less intensive way in order to improve that quality of life. That is something that is highly supported by the relatives and friends of the facilities, and that certainly creates real difficulties for us. It means we don't get the economies of scale out of the deinstitutionalization that were anticipated at the time the funding was planned.

Mr Jim Wilson: In view of your ministry's efforts to virtually decimate all day programs by virtue of workshop cuts and triministry cuts for community living associations, particularly in Simcoe and York counties -- I believe you've abandoned them all to your plan -- how do you answer the parents and developmentally handicapped clients who believed this government when it said that the community living service system would provide adequate support for people depopulating from nursing homes and institutions?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We certainly intend to do that. We are not sure that the way it was originally planned is in fact achieving that, and that's exactly why we are looking at what we have achieved in terms of the depopulation, what has actually happened to those clients in the community, whether their quality of life is better.

It is a good point, when you're nearing the end of a first implementation plan, to really evaluate the success you've had. I simply reject your notion that we have desecrated the day program area, because $5 million out of approximately $35.7 million over a two-year period, with $2 million of those funds going back into supported employment, is hardly desecrating a whole program.

It is certainly making it difficult for some of those services, and we recognize that. We are trying to work with them in the best way we possibly can to help them understand, first of all, what our needs are, and they're facing the same problems we are with their costs and their lack of revenue. We're all in this together. We don't see it as our doing something to them, but as our working with them to try and solve what is really a mutual problem.

Mr Jim Wilson: Mr Chairman, my last question is rather lengthy, but I think it's important for the record and particularly important to hear the minister's response.

Minister, as you know, your recent arbitrary directive -- which, incidentally, was made without consultation with the transfer payment partners -- to recover $9 million in triministry moneys from the system will result in an average of a 12% across-the-board cut for many agencies, the hardest hit of which is in Simcoe county. This is an unprecedented and grossly unfair treatment of agencies that responded to the ministry's request some 10 years ago to provide day service to severely developmentally handicapped people. Over 870 multiply handicapped people in Simcoe county alone, with one stroke of the pen, have theoretically -- and it'll be effective April 1, 1993 -- had day service removed. For these agencies to maintain any semblance of service, they will need to literally cripple their ability to function. Staff-to-client ratios in community living associations are already too high in many cases, especially compared with those in institutions, and many of these organizations were forced to restructure at great cost due to the ministry's pressure for them to grow without due consideration for administrative infrastructure.

These agencies have asked you through the area office to consider a global cut across the province as a much more viable solution to your search for recovered funds. I want to ask you, have you looked upon this option favourably? If not, how can you justify the tremendous inequities in the service system that this decision will create? Can you realistically expect that through some miracle these people can still be served while their entire budget is being removed?

Hon Mrs Boyd: I think the answer I gave to the member for York North answers some of your concerns. I certainly agree with you about the seriousness of the impact of this particular cut in those particular regions, and that was not anticipated at the time the cuts were made. As I say, there were two things that happened at the same time.

We are looking at all of the options you mentioned with the groups involved. They are looking as a community at the various options they have within their community. They have certainly brought us the suggestion that this should be looked at in terms of the global budget, and we are certainly looking with them at the various options.

It is certainly not our intention to cut the services that are required in the area, particularly given, as the member for York North pointed out, the very high needs that there are in those areas. As I said to you, there are a number of different actions we're taking and we do take it very seriously. We will certainly keep the members who are involved informed, because you need to have the most up-to-date information.

Some of the stuff that has come out in terms of the newspapers and so on has added further to the sense of uncertainty of families. As you may be aware, the executive director of the York Support Services Network has written a letter -- I suppose a news report -- that said, "Funding Threatens to Close Agency," talking about what we are trying to do and talking about the good cooperation they are finding between our office and between their colleagues within the area.

There is a real effort to find solutions that are not going to take a real toll on either the clients themselves or their families or those who are working in the field. You're right that the ministry did encourage the expansion of those agencies. We see our responsibility in trying to maintain them at this point.

Mr Jim Wilson: Minister, I appreciate your response, but I'll be watching very carefully and certainly taking you up on your commitment to keep the members of Simcoe county and York region better informed, because to date you've not done that. But I thank you for your response. I have no further questions.

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The Acting Chair: I believe Mr Murdoch wanted a question before Mrs Marland.

Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey): My community living people have also been in to see me about the same questions that Jim just had, Madam Minister. You have a copy of a letter I received recently, but I doubt if you've had a chance to look at it yet, because I just received it. They have some questions, and I'd like to ask you one of them and see how you'd answer, because they're asking me to answer it.

"We have just recently been informed that $31,500 will be taken out of the three vocational budgets in Grey and Bruce, retroactive to April 1, 1992, with a similar cut expected next year. Affected are Owen Sound, Meaford and Walkerton associations.

"For Owen Sound, this means a reduction of $6,500 this year. The announcement of this reduction six months into our year and the knowledge that we will face a similar reduction next year leaves us with little choice but to terminate the employment of at least one of our staff. This reducing of our workshop staff will reduce the quality of the support that we can provide."

How are we going to answer these associations when this is happening? I just wanted to ask, you did mention that you took $2 million of the $5 million, but where did the other $3 million go?

Hon Mrs Boyd: The other $3 million was a constraint exercise; I was very clear about that. Indeed, if you look through our estimates, you will see that none of our areas have been considered to be sacrosanct. We have had to take cuts in all of our areas in order to meet our targets for constraint. So there's no question that there's a constraint exercise going on and that there will be an effect this year and next year on programs. We are well aware that in some programs that may have an impact on the staffing that's available, but under the circumstances in which we find ourselves, it is almost impossible for us to do anything else but offer as much support as we can to our agencies as they look at how to constrain. They need to constrain, as we do. Our incomes are down; their incomes are down.

So part of what we're doing is trying to plan in a more orderly fashion and look at how some of the slack can be taken up in other ways, but it's a very tough transition. Our increases in this area have been extraordinarily high over a number of years. People are used to increases in their budgets of between 10% and 20% every year. It is impossible, in a year where we have the kind of fiscal situation that we have, to achieve that, and it is important for our agencies to understand that we know there is going to be real difficulty for them in meeting some of these targets, just as there is for us in our own facilities. We're well aware of that, so what we are trying to do is help them to constrain in the context of community planning.

The Acting Chair: Mrs Marland, I believe, is next.

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): Madam Minister, I would like to take you back to January of this year. At that time, we had a meeting in your boardroom with the Fair Share for Peel Task Force, which consists of the United Way of Peel region, the Social Planning Council of Peel, Peel children's aid society, Family Services of Peel and the Peel Children's Centre.

The task force was formed, as you know, in 1990 to address the province's chronic underfunding of community and social services in Peel. For instance, in 1989 Peel received $46.18 per capita from the provincial government for children's services, compared with $150.58 for Metro Toronto and a provincial average of $105.30. The Fair Share for Peel Task Force is endorsed by many related social service agencies and by all the MPPs in the region of Peel, of which there are seven.

Minister, recently I wrote to you asking whether any further efforts had been made to reallocate provincial resources in order to ensure an equitable distribution across the province. In your response you said:

"This year's funding allocations do not address the current inequity of funding in children's services. The ministry will be developing an equitable funding approach in children's services within the context of the policy framework for children's services funded under the Child and Family Services Act. Developmental work on this issue involving this ministry, service providers and other stakeholders will commence some time this fall."

Minister, could you please provide an update on this developmental work? As well, could you indicate whether region-to-region funding inequities in the areas of child care, child welfare, services to developmentally disabled persons and family services will be addressed during this review?

Hon Mrs Boyd: I'm very pleased to have an opportunity to speak to that, because the issues that were raised by the Fair Share task force in Peel are similar to the issues raised in other fast-growing areas of the GTA. York region has made a similar representation to me, and I'm very empathetic with their concerns.

My understanding of where we are right now is that the consultation means that we are wanting to have with all our partners out there in the communities have gone to the interministerial committee to ensure that all the ministries are well aware of their commitments under a strategic plan to look at funding in children's services. That is what we're wanting to do, to formulate a strategic approach to this, looking at the whole envelope of funding that goes to children's services for each area and looking at how within that funding we can use our dollars most effectively. As you know, there is a lack of coordination between various agencies, and that has frustrated a great many of our colleagues.

In that strategic plan we are also looking at how we can do a more equitable funding formula that takes into account all the factors. One of the issues, of course, is that the current level is not as sensitive as we would like to such issues as those who are living under the poverty line, those who are living in single-parent families and those who are of different cultural and language backgrounds. All of those are problems that your group talked about as being very prevalent in many areas of Peel.

It is quite clear that our funding needs to be done in a way that takes account of those things but takes account of them in a way that looks at all children's services. Right now we have different formulae for different kinds of services. The encouragement is for people to dump clients from one service to another if they can't serve them fully in their own service, and that creates real difficulties for us.

So that is going ahead. Once we have interministerial sign-on we are certainly looking at distributing the draft strategic framework to all of our partners out in communities and to getting their feedback on some of the very serious questions of how to accomplish this.

The deputy and I, in going around the province, have been discussing this with various communities. We know that our communities have a lot of creative suggestions about how it can work and how it can be flexible enough to meet the diversity and yet be fair in terms of the allocation of resources.

Mrs Marland: I think the thing is, Madam Minister, that children are children. The circumstances that children face in the region of Peel today are certainly no different than the children in Metro, yet we've got this gross inequity in terms of the support from the provincial government, a difference of $46.18 compared to $150.58 in Metro. Even taking it away from the provincial average, if you just look at the difference between the region of Peel and the city of Mississauga alone, which is a city of 500,000 people, half a million people, our needs are definitely the same as the needs for children in Metro. I think it's fine to go ahead with the review and to try to come to grips with the problem, but I think what the Fair Share for Peel Task Force needs is some commitment very soon that the inequity is going to be remedied.

Hon Mrs Boyd: One of the things that I would like to remind the member of is our discussion about the lack of social planning and the lack of service planning that has gone on in our fast-growing areas and how that has skewed some of that funding. That is certainly a subject of real concern in terms of the Sewell commission report and the look that we're having at the need to do social planning at the same time that we do land use planning and to ensure that social planning becomes part of the expansion of our various areas.

Mrs Marland: Madam Minister, unfortunately, because of time, I'm feeling very frustrated, because I have a number of questions that I wanted to ask you today. I don't know whether the best thing is for me to read these questions into the record, and if you don't have time to answer them all --

The Acting Chair: You have six minutes left.

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Mrs Marland: I think maybe what I'll do is read my questions into the record and then I could get an answer from you. If not, if there isn't time today, I could at least look forward to having an answer from you in the very near future.

Recently, I wrote to you about the funding of new spaces in existing non-profit centres in terms of child care. I have not yet received a response, so I want to raise this issue again today.

We already have a two-tiered child care system in Ontario. The non-profit centres receive capital and wage enhancement grants that are not available to private centres. New spaces in private centres are not eligible for direct operating grants and all new subsidized spaces are being allocated to the non-profit sector only.

Now it appears that we have a three-tiered system in the making. I have been approached by an existing non-profit centre, I want to emphasize, that wishes to expand its capacity. However, this centre has been advised by your ministry that no grants will be available, neither direct operating grants, wage enhancement grants nor capital grants. The lack of capital grants seems particularly strange given your government's promise in the 1992 budget to fund 20,000 more subsidized child care spaces.

Minister, could you please explain your ministry's policy regarding the funding of non-profit day care spaces? Why are existing non-profit centres being told that they will not receive any grants from the ministry for new spaces? Are all the 20,000 new subsidized spaces going to be located in newly constructed centres? Would it not be more cost-effective to add them to existing centres?

Second, on September 1, 1992, your ministry issued a news release announcing the creation of 42 in-school child care spaces in the new St Thomas More Catholic secondary school in Hamilton. The Hamilton-Wentworth Roman Catholic Separate School Board is receiving grants totalling $105,038 from your ministry: $61,756 in capital to be used for toys and equipment and a $43,282 startup grant to cover initial staff and operating costs. These grants are on top of the $470,000 the school board received from the Ministry of Education to construct the child care centre.

Minister, in 1991, 12 day care centres, six private and six non-profit, closed down in Hamilton-Wentworth, yet your ministry is funding a new centre. In communities across Ontario, we have similar situations where new non-profit centres are opening despite there being vacancies in existing centres. Given the extreme shortages of funding in other areas under your jurisdiction, for instance, child services that I've just referred to under the Fair Share for Peel Task Force, child welfare programs for developmentally disabled persons, which is another area I want to ask you about, why is your ministry funding new child care centres where there already is an excess capacity in the system?

Finally, a question I have raised before and want to raise again. In July of this year you responded to a letter from Emil Kolb, who is the chairman of the region of Peel, which requested funding to renovate Sheridan Villa home for the aged located in my riding. In your letter you noted the constraints on your ministry's capital funds and said that since the ministry was funding 50% of the total cost to downsize Peel Manor, which is another home for the aged in Peel, you said, "I do not anticipate that additional funds could be provided to the region."

Chairman Kolb wrote back on July 30 that Sheridan Villa has legitimate renovation needs, which I personally can substantiate, having attended several functions there in recent months. It was deplorable in the heat this summer. They couldn't even leave food out because it was so hot in that building. It's not only terribly uncomfortable for the seniors who are there all day long, but can you imagine what a hell on earth it is to work in a non-air-conditioned building -- this building was opened in 1974 -- in the kind of summer we've just had, combined with the fact that this summer they had problems with their elevators? So Sheridan Villa really had a terrible time this summer.

Chairman Kolb stated in his July 30 letter that while he understood the ministry might not be in a position to commit the funding for 1993, he would appreciate "if you could provide us with a reasonable time frame within which we might consider this joint project."

Minister, would you be able to provide that answer today? I don't really expect you to provide the answer about Sheridan Villa, but it's a very urgent, serious question in terms of much-needed renovation, so I hope that perhaps you will provide some of those answers soon.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Mr Chair, I'm not sure what our time is.

The Acting Chair: Unfortunately, we're out of time. Maybe the minister could just explain.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I will certainly ensure that you get the answers to your specific questions, and we will do that. It may be possible that some of our own members have similar questions and that you will get the answers verbally as well. In terms of the homes for the aged, as you know, many of them are of the same vintage; the problems are the same all over the province. Our issue is trying to deal with those as they come along and as the share of dollars to a particular region becomes available.

The Acting Chair: The government wanted a question.

Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): As all of us have experienced in our ridings, there is a concern relating to the funding level the homes for the aged get in relation to nursing homes. I know there has been some work done in this area, but I have received a recent question again from one of the homes in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which is part of my riding. I was wondering where we are in the whole process, because obviously it is a concern not only for me but other members as well.

Hon Mrs Boyd: The first step in terms of the long-term care planning this government has undertaken is to move to a level-of-care funding that will take account of the level of care clients need rather than the facility in which they reside. We anticipate introducing and we hope to pass that legislation by the end of this sitting so that the funding levels at level-of-care funding -- a modified Alberta plan, as we call it -- can begin on January 1, 1993. We're well aware of the concerns that have been expressed by both municipal and charitable homes for the aged.

Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): Following up on that, I was visited the other day by people from a facility in my riding which had been visited by classifiers. They were asking about what they could expect and the status of classification.

Hon Mrs Boyd: There's been a great deal of discussion with the field around the kinds of classification there would be; there's been a lot of consultation with the various providers. It will be difficult while we are doing the classification. It'll be hard for people to adjust their thinking, to actually tying the kind of care dollars to the needs of the client as opposed to the kind of facility he or she is in, but we have every confidence that it'll be a much clearer and much more transparent way for both clients themselves and their families to understand what the entitlement of care is within those facilities. We are certainly hoping that we will be able to begin that funding early.

I should tell you that in our estimates, and it's clear from this, for all of our programs that come under the long-term care area, we gave the full 1% rather than the 0.5% that was accorded to other areas, because this was an area of priority for the government; in fact, we provided interim increases to our facilities in order to try and bridge the gap that is there now in terms of the level-of-care funding that we anticipate will occur. We are trying to give them what assistance we can in the interim, but it is very difficult. This is a long-standing problem and a long-standing inequity.

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Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): I'd like to bring in another topic, the whole question of service for the child. You'd be aware, because I talked to you about it at one point -- but I just want a bit of clarification -- that there is presently a process going on in our community in Timmins where we're trying to bring under one roof all the various agencies out there that are providing services for the child. Actually, it wasn't with you; it was with a former minister, excuse me. We had gone through the process of trying to find some capital dollars in order to integrate them under one roof; at the time, because of the budgetary constraints and stuff, we weren't able to do it.

There's a proposal we're working on now with the group, which is basically to utilize their rental budgets, pooling all that money together and using the money that would normally be paid towards rent for the payment of the mortgage on a building.

I'd like to get some sort of commitment from you, because one of the things I find, probably like most other members, is that when parents approach the system, it is really fragmented. You have to go through the experience to find out just how frustrating it is. I'm sure you're aware of it. Do you have a comment on that and what direction the ministry expects to take?

Hon Mrs Boyd: One of the things we're finding is that the creativity of our colleagues out in our communities is much greater than the flexibility within our various funding formulae.

Mr Bisson: Tell me about it.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Part of the whole issue we have in terms of integrated children's service and the movement we're trying to make with that in terms of interministerial planning, but also in terms of the planning around our own acts and our own programs, is to ensure that we allow that kind of creativity to happen.

There have been many models that suggest that if you have either a one-stop shop, that kind of thing, or a hub model where people get the integration immediately, you deliver better services to the client. It's a better client base of delivery, so we certainly want to foster that as much as we can.

Mr Bisson: Just so you know, we're getting the proper signals from the ministry as far as being willing to go ahead, but it's something that's different and there's a certain amount of resistance we're finding internally within your ministry. I'm just looking for a little bit of assurance.

Hon Mrs Boyd: It's very unusual. Obviously, we haven't funded in that way in the past and it is difficult for people to imagine how it would work, given that we're been used to funding in these silos. But we are very open to that kind of diversification and very anxious to entertain those kinds of models.

Mr Bisson: Just so you know, in this particular case, if you were to pool together the rental budgets of those five agencies, you would have more than enough money to pay for the mortgage on the building and be able to return those dollars into the programs.

I would be remiss if I didn't ask this question: What's happening with the francophone day care centre in Timmins?

Hon Mrs Boyd: I knew you would ask me that question. I don't know the latest in the blow-by-blow description, but I will try to let you know tomorrow exactly what is going on. There have been some clear indications that agreement is closer.

Mr Bisson: I will communicate that to the group. I think Mrs Haeck had another question.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs Margaret Marland): Well, Mr Perruzza indicated that he had a question.

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): Mine is actually very brief. It relates to a comment you made, Madam Minister, about how social planning has to be consistent with land use planning. Something that really bothered me in my former life -- I think former governments missed the boat on this one -- was that some of the developers or municipalities who plan and develop areas and bring into communities large numbers of people aren't responsible for some of the social impacts that large populations will essentially require at some point down the road.

In the city of North York, when we dealt with the Jane-Finch issue, there was a development coming on stream, a big plaza. We had essentially manoeuvred the developer, without any real authority or jurisdiction, into agreeing to provide to the community at almost no cost a considerable amount of square footage in order for us to locate a lot of these social service agencies in that particular community. Lord knows, it was very much needed. But because of political intervention -- I guess the prevailing sentiment that carried the day was that somehow developers and municipalities really shouldn't be in that business and that it's really not their responsibility to engage in that kind of activity.

I'd like to have some more of your thoughts on this particular issue because it is an area that has traditionally concerned me very much. I hope to see the two linked, because I think the two are consistent and compatible and should go together.

Hon Mrs Boyd: The concerns you've raised have certainly been raised with John Sewell and the Sewell commission around the way in which we plan development and how our official plans and the kinds of arrangements we reach with those who want to develop land really fit with our services. I certainly agree with you.

I'm not aware of the particular issue you raise. It is quite true that it would be a departure from past practice for that kind of cooperative venture to be done, although we do see it in some places. North York is a good example of some of the more creative ways of working with developers to renew school resources, for example, and that kind of thing.

I think we need to be open to the kind of land use. We need to be sure that it is the kind of service that the municipality and the province agree needs to be offered in an area, not something that is offered because of a developer's interest in any particular thing but as part of a management plan around the delivery of services and how that fits. That may be some of the problem that arises, that the notion of what kind of services would go together may not have involved the intensive community planning that is necessary; a good idea but not fully developed.

I'd be very interested in hearing your experiences in that particular instance, because we certainly are seeing communities come forward. In my own community, for example, in the development of the official plan, which is now almost defunct because of the need for a new official plan, we worked very hard to try to get that community to accept a provision of land for child care whenever there was a certain number of houses to be built in a particular area, particularly in low-cost and medium-cost housing, which we might expect young families to have.

We were not successful with that particular municipality, but many community activist groups are trying to work with their communities to have that built into official plans. I think the ministry is very supportive of trying to encourage that kind of planning.

Mr Perruzza: So what you're suggesting is that something be entered into the Planning Act which will require official plans to essentially be consistent with that kind of philosophy, that social planning has to follow and be consistent with land use?

Hon Mrs Boyd: That's right. If you look at the rejection, I think it was in the last year of the York region plan, because it didn't include that kind of sensitivity, and the requirement in the new London act that requires the new official plan to include plans around social and environmental as well as land use planning, that is the direction that certainly is being suggested as a result of the Sewell commission.

The Vice-Chair: Is that it for your caucus?

Ms Haeck: Yes.

Mrs O'Neill: Madam Minister, through my staff I contacted the president of the Survivors of Grandview to reinforce my knowledge I've had up to today, and it was reinforced within this hour. It was a six-month contract for counselling, and it did expire on August 31 and has not been reinstated. That was with the family counselling services across the province. I can only speak for the person who has taken an awful lot of responsibility upon her own shoulders and whose word I trust, so I brought you the knowledge you requested.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I thank you very much. I'm very deeply concerned, and I can tell that my assistant deputy minister of operations is deeply concerned, because we certainly felt that this was one that we had managed to ensure. It is certainly not in keeping with the commitment of this government in the recent agreement that was reached with the Attorney General's facilitation.

I will certainly look into it and I hope to be able to give you some information tomorrow about how this occurred and how we intend to resolve it. Interruptions in counselling are not appropriate for people who are survivors and who are in the midst of dealing with very serious issues, so I am deeply concerned about that.

I'm deeply concerned for the agencies involved, because our family services agencies, in terms of their work with survivors of St John's, St Joseph's and Grandview, have been most cooperative with the government. They have been compassionate and very fine partners in trying to deal with these very serious issues. I will try to find out tomorrow and let you know as part of the record exactly what we intend to do to resolve this issue.

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Mrs O'Neill: Madam Minister, you're likely as aware as I that the number of survivors who have come forward from Grandview in the last two and a half months, I would say, has almost tripled and I think they would certainly be eligible for the services. I think they have presented themselves and have identified themselves, that the services to be extended to these new people as well.

Hon Mrs Boyd: That certainly was the intention of the agreement. We knew that a surprisingly low number had disclosed and had sought services compared to the kind of supported work that was done with St Joseph's and St John's. Our concern is to ensure that indeed they are given the same level of service.

Mrs O'Neill: If I may go back then to page 63, because I really do have a lot of questions about the counselling area. I think I will ask now in writing, if I may, to have some breakdown of what kinds of new services there are. There have to be new services or else different services if there is a 40% increase in the adult group homes. I'd like to have also in written form the 27% increase in the ministry act counselling. I think it would certainly help to be more specific and accurate in what I'm giving out as information from this set of estimates.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I would certainly agree that it would be better for us to do that in writing, although I would say to you that the major area is in the supportive housing area.

Mrs O'Neill: And that's in the adult group home area?

Hon Mrs Boyd: That's right.

Mrs O'Neill: If I may to go another area, which is on page 85, and that is the young offenders. There seems to be a real concern here -- I certainly have some of this in my own community and I can't speak much more broadly than that at the moment -- about the real lack of service for the young offenders, particularly in the time awaiting trial, particularly I think in the secure custody, secure detention area. There seems to be in some areas the necessity to put the young offenders in with the offenders who are considered mature adults.

Would you like to say a little bit about your direction there? It looks like a 3% increase in funding. I don't know whether that's just inflation. The needs are greater here. Unfortunately, we all recognize that violence, both on the streets and in the schools and in the homes, is being carried on by young people; some not too far from my home are eight- and nine-year-olds. It's certainly a new phenomenon I think in our time. What is your ministry's policy decision regarding those young offenders and the needs that arise from them, first of all, finally getting into this crisis?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We share your concern. The 3.1% is indeed an increase that is considerably higher than we were able to do in most program lines, as you're aware. One of the major portions of that increase from year to year is the implementation of secure beds. As you expressed, there has been a rather slow phasing in of that, partly because of the kind of objection that many communities have had to community-based secure beds and our concern to ensure that safety and security standards are enforced.

The other major part of that increase is in fact the safety and security standards themselves: upgrading the safety for both the young offenders and for the staff who deal with them, because, as we all know, there have been tragic circumstances that we really needed to devote some attention to.

Also, a large portion of that increase went into some wage compensation issues, because of course we have had quite an increase in terms of the compensation costs for those who are dealing with young offenders. Those are the major elements of the increase from one year to the next.

The concerns that you express about younger children getting into real difficulty with the law are very real. It's something that concerns every community, and one of the reasons that we want to move towards integrated services for children is to try to be sure that we're having an earlier identification of the kinds of problems that traditionally lead children into a life of crime. What are the supports that they require? What are the programs that they require? How can we tell, early on, that a child is in need of support, and then move in a concerted way to do it?

Right now, because of the lack of integration in the system, we find that many young people are identified as behaviour problems by the schools, but that by the time they actually get into either a mental health program or any kind of other supportive program that's offered by our ministry, the time for preventive action has passed. We need to be working much more closely with our colleagues in education to ensure that we are starting much earlier with young people and trying to prevent these problems much earlier.

Many of the problems come out of poverty, come out of lack of supports at home. Families that are in disarray and children who are left to their own devices require attention, and get attention very effectively through some of their antisocial behaviour. This is something we all need to look at as a community, that we almost reward antisocial behaviour with attention very early on, and need to recognize that unless we find some way of getting attention for those young people that is positive attention, rather than negative attention, we're going to continue to have the kinds of problems that we have.

That's why we can't just look at the young offender problem; we have to look at the continuum of services to children from the time they are very young, probably even prenatal services, actually, in order to give supports to the parents so that they can be appropriate parents, looking at all the parenting issues that we have, looking at how we do those early identifications, either in the child care system or in the school system, and then once we've identified those problems, how we act in a concerted way to begin to work with them, not in a way that segregates the child out and treats the child differently, gives that attention because of negative behaviour, but in a way that is supportive and integrative. That's the kind of direction that we're wanting to go with our integrated children's service plan.

Mrs O'Neill: I have a couple of specifics. I guess I'll go to the integrated children's service plan first of all. You did state in your opening remarks that you have a draft policy framework and an action plan. Are those at all public at this time?

Hon Mrs Boyd: I believe the discussion was held at the interministerial committee last week on the draft plan, and I'm not aware of the outcome of that. Perhaps someone who is at the committee can let me know.

We are waiting for a real commitment by all the ministries involved, and there are a lot of them, before we send that out for general consultation to our colleagues in the field. But we are hoping by the end of this month or early next month -- our action plan actually had us doing it, I think, on the 29th of October, if I'm correct -- to send that out to our various stakeholder groups for comment and for some advice about where we proceed in terms of moving ahead.

We also have indicated to them that we want to facilitate some of the actions that they've already taken as communities, and we will be announcing ways in which we can do that, to reward people for having the courage to take the risk to deliver in a new way. That's part of the problem right now; it's not a reward system for taking risks. You may lose funding if you decide to share funding. We have to help people to think in a different way, and we'll be announcing very shortly how to do that.

Mrs O'Neill: We certainly have had quite a bit of interest in this, and certainly the communities, particularly in southwestern Ontario that you're likely as familiar with as I, are really awaiting that.

I'd like to ask you, because you did -- and I'm sorry if I use a word that I really don't like using -- but there seem to be an awful lot of platitudes in what you said about the young offenders, talking as far back as prenatal. We have a problem where there's a real need for beds and I don't think you answered that question. I'm sorry; I'd like a more specific answer. Are we directing money into -- because this is really part of the rehabilitation; it's much more than a bed when you're talking about a young offender. It's different than talking about a hospital bed. Could you say anything to the communities which seem to be having their resources absolutely stretched, and professionals who, I think, are being led to place people where they know they are going to be getting less than the very best?

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Hon Mrs Boyd: It's certainly an issue that we need to address in terms of beds. You know that there has been overcrowding. Some of the situations that we have observed and that people have been concerned about at Syl Apps, at York Detention, have come because of some overcrowding, and that is certainly concerning us.

What we are doing is working to see what facilities are available within the overall resources of the government now, without the building of new facilities, and seeing if we can't find ways to reallocate some of those resources to meet the needs better.

You've mentioned something about young offenders being in with older offenders, and of course in the part of the young offender group that is led by Correctional Services, that has always been a very deep concern. But it's also a concern for us that we don't have the flexibility within the young offender group, between the ones who are under 16 and the ones who are over 16, to use beds in a way that is most appropriate to them and closest to their own area. It's not very effective to take kids far away from their families, and what we're trying to do is help them to become rehabilitated back into the community.

So we're looking at how we can work more closely with Correctional Services, how we can safeguard children. The age differences were there in the concern that the same problem might happen between various groups of young offenders as happens between adult offenders. We are working very hard with our colleagues in Correctional Services to come up with some of the answers around the more efficient use of the spaces that we have. We are, as I say, phasing in better bed implementation and trying to do that in communities, but it is a real problem in times of scarce resources. There's no question about that.

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): Why are you using private sector -- from schedule 2 -- housing then? Why commend the minister for that?

Hon Mrs Boyd: It's not our choice.

Mr Jackson: Oh, it isn't? Is there something wrong with it?

Hon Mrs Boyd: No.

Mr Jackson: Oh, good.

Mrs O'Neill: Madam Minister, perhaps I can go back to the income maintenance, which is on page 35 -- I don't think you need to turn to that because this is an initiative that you announced in May, I think it was -- and the addition of the 450 new staff. That seemed to be tied in with the budget and the realization of a $300-million savings, a -- what should I say? -- closer watch at what was going on with the distribution of social assistance across the province. Can you tell us a little bit about how successful those extra people have been and whether there really has been a more efficient use of the social assistance funds?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We certainly believe that there has. Two hundred of the new staff had been hired by the first of August, and instead of doing what had usually been the custom and trying to allocate those out equally to areas, we decided to target those areas where our highest case loads per population existed. So we did target those folks.

The new staff have a number of particular functions. One is to assist with transition to employment through what we call front-door screening. That means, when someone comes in, assessing not just their income but exactly what are their abilities, what are their desires, what would they like to see themselves doing, right off the bat, and trying to do some facilitation of referral for them so that they are able to pursue what they want to do right from the beginning. That certainly was a major recommendation of the Transitions report, and we take it very seriously. That seems to be working rather well in some areas, and we're monitoring it fairly closely.

We also assigned some of those folks to work as parental support workers so that they would be working with the new agency that the Attorney General has to ensure that support payments that were due were coming in. That coordination seems to be working well in some places and less well in others, and that's something we're working together with the Attorney General's office on.

We did indeed feel that it was necessary, particularly given the questions about the integrity of the system that had been raised particularly by municipalities, but also in the House, that we needed to look at eligibility review, and 30 of the new staff were eligibility review officers who looked to investigate cases where there have been complaints or where it's suspected that clients may have other sources of income they have not been declaring.

While we acknowledge and we would repeat again, as was found in the Transitions area and in every study that's been done, this is a small percentage of cases, even if it is as small as 1%, given the size of our welfare budget, that's a considerable saving. So we are looking very seriously at that.

There are several local strategies on that. There are particular local concerns that have been raised on that. So we're looking at that.

We are increasing our efforts to recover overpayments from clients. That is a very sensitive area, as I'm sure the member is aware, because many of those former recipients may be earning just over the amounts that allow them to be off assistance, so while we are doing that, we are trying to ensure that we are being appropriate in terms of those recoveries.

The direct deposit of social assistance cheques that we also talked about has saved a good deal of money, because one of our major costs, in replacement cheques, really goes down quite substantially with direct deposit. It means that our clients are also able to be sure that the dollars will be there at the time they need them and that they won't have the kind of problem with the banks they often have had in the past when they've had to bring in a cheque. At the present time, about 30%, almost a third, of our clients on FBA are on direct deposit.

You may have noticed that a number of banks have started to really talk about direct deposit of cheques, not just for social assistance recipients but for old-age security recipients as well, and that's part of the initiative we're taking with them.

We also have projects ongoing with a number of municipalities around direct deposit of GWA cheques, and so far the results are very promising. I think Ottawa-Carleton is one of those municipalities. That's very promising from the municipalities' point of view as well, because again that replacement cheque problem is not the bugbear it is for them and also for all of us as members in our own constituency offices, because that's a problem. So that part of it is going quite well.

The marketing of STEP is a really important part of this, because for those people who are currently on the system, who are currently recipients of social assistance, we knew that when they were having their yearly reviews, there wasn't enough updating of STEP. There wasn't enough marketing with them of the possibilities of moving into the STEP program, and that's a very important aspect of trying to encourage them to look at other possibilities and in fact meet their needs, which have been identified quite clearly.

All that is going on well. We anticipate that we will have hired all the 450 new staff. We anticipate that all these measures, including looking at other sources of income, such as CPP and UIC, will in fact achieve the savings we anticipate in our estimates.

Mrs O'Neill: The direct deposit: Is that on a voluntary basis at this time?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Yes, it is.

Mrs O'Neill: So they apply for it the same as they do for the old-age security?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Yes. I should say, just in talking about the staff, in the 200 staff who were already hired, a fairly high proportion were redeployed from other parts of the ministry where we were downsizing. This is part of what we are trying to do, to ensure that we're following the practices set down by Management Board in terms of redeployment where there's been downsizing.

Mrs O'Neill: So you really do think there will be a $300-million saving through this program?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We are certainly hoping there will be. We'll be in some difficulty with our colleagues and with the Treasurer if we don't achieve it. It is a very ambitious goal, and we have some concerns about the amount we set aside. There was approximately $60 million that was not assigned to a particular area that was going to be floating between the number of areas. That's the part we're most concerned about, whether in fact we can achieve the savings in that unassigned portion. At the present time, things are going rather well in spite of the worsening situation.

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Mrs O'Neill: I wish you well on that.

Do I have a little bit of time, Madam Chair? It's a summary on page 107, but there are certainly lots of references to the capital throughout the whole estimates document. The areas that concern me are where there are major capital deferrals, I guess you want to call them. I had the Minister of Education, I think, use the term "capital deferrals" the other day, or maybe it was the Treasurer. Is that what's happening?

For instance, on page 107 we talk about adults' and children's services, minus 30%; young offenders, which we talk about briefly, minus 65%; developmental services, minus 57%, child and family intervention services, minus 74%, and child welfare services, minus 44%. That's an awful bump in a capital program. Many of these facilities were needed before they were even on these pages.

All those areas that I mentioned are very high-risk areas, very high-need areas, and I just know that your budget is down by $40 million in capital. There have to be some effects. If you want to make some comments about what I consider a lack of -- certainly, a Jobs Ontario initiative is begging to be filled.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Well, unfortunately you missed quite an extensive discussion that we had the other day in terms of capital. Let me just review it for you.

There was $51 million. Our original estimates for 1991-92 included the anti-recession funding, the one-time funding that was there last year for short-term projects. That $51 million of anti-recession funding, of course, was taken out of our budget. Our budget was increased by $13,779,100, which brought it up to the total of $85,038,000. That does not include the Jobs Ontario strategy fund, the capital fund with Jobs Ontario. That fund is close to $30 million; it's $29,616,000. That's on top of the $85 million.

Mrs O'Neill: Do you have a breakdown of where that $29 million went? Did it go to any of the programs I outlined?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Yes. Long-term care got $3,510,000; family violence, $2,160,000; child care, $22,450,000; child and family intervention, $830,000, and young offenders, $666,000. The list of the particular projects, I understand, is in the package of information that the clerk released to you today. It talks about the specific projects that have been announced and talks about the global dollars that have not yet been announced under each category.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay. Thank you. What kind of time are we talking to now, Madam?

The Vice-Chair: You started at 4:48 and you have 29 minutes, so I guess you've got about seven minutes left.

Mrs O'Neill: Could I leave those until the next round, please?

The Vice-Chair: Until the next round?

Mrs O'Neill: Yes. We have another round, I thought; maybe not today. Tomorrow. I understand that was the arrangement that was requested.

The Vice-Chair: Today we're going in half-hour rotations and you haven't used half an hour yet.

Mrs O'Neill: I know. I'm just asking if I could save mine. I think the government members have stacked their time from last Wednesday.

Mr Jackson: Yes, the member has a right to do that. She may have to use it today but she has the right to stack it.

The Vice-Chair: All right. That's fine. It's 5:15 now and you started at 4:48, so we'll make a note of that, Ms O'Neill. Thank you.

Mr Jackson: I'd like to thank Ms Lang for the information that was submitted to the clerks, but I had a couple of quick questions, if she might be able to come back and join the committee.

On children's aid societies, am I to understand that we don't have information on the deficits or projected deficits and that they haven't filed these with the government, or is my package incomplete? Do we have breakdowns of deficits by CASs? I have the sheet on the 1991 exceptional circumstance review.

Ms Sandy Lang: Right.

Mr Jackson: I was looking for the 1992 deficits.

Ms Lang: As I understood the question, Mr Jackson, you were asking us what we knew about the exceptional circumstances for 1992 and what our understanding would be of the costs that we would incur relative to the $17 million. Is that a different question?

Mr Jackson: I asked a series of questions. In fact, I did repeat them, and Hansard will show that. You didn't get me the 1992 current-year deficits projected. You gave me the staff who were being laid off, to your knowledge, as a result of deficits this year.

Ms Lang: Yes.

Mr Jackson: You got part of the question, but I was asking as well for the deficits that they had apprised you of. You said that you had some of them, maybe all of them, that you were not sure if you had all of them, but that you'd get back to me. That was the 1992 deficits; I have all the 1991 deficits. I was looking for the current-year deficits. If I might, under item number 7 you are showing me the occurrences of staff layoffs in CASs that you're aware of in this calendar year?

Ms Lang: Yes.

Mr Jackson: Okay. Is it possible, then, to get that information?

Ms Lang: I think we can go back and take a look. I had assumed that all of the questions were answered in this package. Obviously if it doesn't reflect the question that you asked, then I will go back and undertake to determine if we have the specific data you're asking for.

Mr Jackson: You did answer four or five out of the six I asked; it's just that one.

The Vice-Chair: For the sake of Hansard we need to reintroduce yourself and identify your office, please.

Ms Lang: My name is Sandy Lang. I'm the assistant deputy minister of operations for the ministry.

Mr Jackson: It's my understanding with regard to the ECR funding that, for example, there's a matter that is outstanding and is under review because there is a disagreement between the Metro Toronto CAS and the ministry over the amount of about $1.1 million in the ECR funding. Is that an accurate statement?

Ms Lang: I am not specifically familiar with that outstanding issue.

Mr Jackson: Is there someone in your ministry who accompanied you today who could assist us with that question?

Ms Lang: I have my regional director from central region here. I don't know if she's familiar with this specific issue.

Mr Jackson: Could we invite her to the microphone and put it on the record?

The Vice-Chair: Could you introduce yourself and your office, please.

Ms Margaret Gallow: Yes. I'm Margaret Gallow and I'm the regional director in central region for Comsoc.

Mr Jackson: It is my understanding that in the process of negotiating the ECR funding actual deficits are considered but the ministry reserves the right to determine that amount of money which should be covered. Is that correct?

Ms Gallow: Yes.

Mr Jackson: And there is a difference; in other words, Metro is carrying a deficit over, to your knowledge, this year?

Ms Gallow: Yes, they are. Now, are we talking about 1991 or are we talking about 1992?

Mr Jackson: It's 1991. My point is that there is approximately $1 million that is under appeal and the government has said, "We don't feel that those are exceptional circumstances that fit," whatever.

Ms Gallow: Yes.

Mr Jackson: That is the first part of a deficit they're carrying over. I'm advised by Metro that it is going to be carrying a further $600,000, approximately, in this year's application for ECR. Accumulated, they've got $1.6 million or $1.7 million in deficit.

Ms Gallow: That's our understanding.

Mr Jackson: That's what I thought. Okay. According to the information we've received, the process has not really changed that much and the earliest Metro could deal with its 1992 deficit is some time in January or, February, but certainly before March 31. Is that correct? Am I reading your response?

Ms Gallow: That's correct, yes.

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Mr Jackson: If I might ask the minister, when will you resolve the 1991 ECR appeal of $1.1 million, because the sooner you give them an answer, the sooner they can start cutting services and cutting employees and denying children services, which will be the outcome, as I understand it.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Obviously, it's in our interest as well to resolve that as soon as possible. I can't tell where we're at in the process right now and I would invite either of my colleagues to respond to exactly where we are in the process around that appeal.

Ms Lang: If I may, it's my understanding, and obviously this is subject to confirmation, that our area office has already communicated with the society that the deficit will not be recognized in its ECR, and that the agency, like other agencies in the province, needs to be planning accordingly. If that hasn't been communicated formally, then I will certainly clarify that, but I certainly had that understanding.

Mr Jackson: Okay, so the appeal's over and there's no further appeal to the minister personally or whatever. If that is the case, then, could you provide us with the additional information of how many ECR allocations were less than the application and by how much? Since Metro's is $1.1 million, and as you know -- and thank you for completing the information so clearly -- the government intends to reduce its commitment in spite of growing numbers. Currently, it's $17 million; in 1993-94, it will drop to $12 million and to $5 million in 1994-95. We have a serious crisis here if CASs have to carry these deficits, and with so much of their budgets on personnel, we're going to have to be laying off a lot of personnel in this province, front-line workers who are meeting the needs of children.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I wonder if I could just make a brief response to that. There are other options that children's aid societies need to be looking at together with us, and some of those involve the intensity of the intrusive procedures they engage in in terms of the care of children, ways in which they can integrate their services better with other parts of the community and so on. This is all part of what we're talking about when we talk about integrated children's services, the necessity to look at how to meet the needs of children and their families in these times.

The boards of those CASs have very difficult decisions to make, just as the ministries and the various departments of ministries have very difficult decisions to make, and it would be inappropriate for us to leave the impression that every board of the CAS that doesn't get its full ECR entitlement would decide to lay off staff. There are other decisions the boards have taken and will continue to take.

Mr Jackson: Minister, that's why I asked for the staff layoffs and for the deficits, because when you're in a reduction mode and you share with the at-risk community -- in this case children's services -- when you tell them that you're going to have to rationalize and look elsewhere for shared ventures, the resulting outcome in that environment, given that CASs have been paring down -- and if you've had any experience with them, you'll know they have been over the last three years -- in spite of increased demand, there is only one option and that's to lay off staff. That's where most of their money is and their costs.

I've seen the statistics of the drug-dependent children, the substance-abuse dependent children, the sexual and physical assault, which is on the rise in traumatic numbers. If we're going to be asking the Minister of Education to meet these needs or municipalities to meet these needs, I'd be certainly interested at some future date in your sharing with us your vision, but in the practical sense, what happens in the community?

We are not acknowledging intervention services at interval homes, which you're very familiar with. I lobbied long and hard with you when you were in that capacity because of the very point that if those services were integrated, then we could take a woman out of an abusive situation, and in the context and in the environment of an interval house provide the intervention and the services to those children, and maybe do it less expensively, but that's not something your government's funding. It's not something that we're committed to at this time, unfortunately, and therefore, where else do we find those services?

Before we suggest that we'll just keep downsizing and rationalize and find other services -- everybody else we talk to is in a similar contracting mode, and so all I see is increased numbers of demand for children, who the law says we must deal with. If adults get shortchanged in society, they're old enough in many respects to adapt, but a child doesn't, and that's my area of concern.

I have a series of questions I'd like to put on the record in the limited time I have left. I'd like to thank Ms Lang. If she would give me those statistics on the deficits, that would be helpful. Could I ask Mr Laverty from the long-term care reform to come forward?

Mr Patrick Laverty: I'm Patrick Laverty, the director of the long-term care policy branch.

Mr Jackson: Mr Laverty, very good to see you again.

Mr Laverty: Good to see you again.

Mr Jackson: I wonder if you could explain to the committee briefly where we're at in terms of funding for long-term care reform. This is the first time it's surfaced in our briefing books and our estimates books in detail, but the lead agency is still health. However, you're responsible for implementing its aspects as it relates to Comsoc, is that correct?

Mr Laverty: The programs that are within the long-term envelope are still both within the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services. We haven't realigned it to one ministry or the other, so all the programs we inherited from the Ministry of Community and Social Services side are in fact continuing on in the estimates on that side, and of course, the same is true with the Ministry of Health.

Mr Jackson: In that regard, the municipal homes for the aged are a matter of concern. In the estimates book, page 53, we show a 1.8% or a $6.33-million cut to homes for the aged, and we see a reduced number of beds serviced. The treasury board document I referenced earlier -- and you were present at the time, I believe -- the March 31, 1992, treasury board minutes, references a cut to homes for the aged -- I should have made a note of it -- and I believe it is $26.8 million for homes for the aged not approved at that meeting.

Can you explain to me the difference between the treasury board document -- and all the questions I've asked about this treasury board document have been consistent with what's appearing here, yet for municipal homes for the aged, we don't see the transfer. Is that part capital, part operating or is it all operating? I see a difference in numbers being quoted here. I see a $6-million cut to homes for the aged on page 53, and I see a $26-million, not approved, expenditure.

Mr Laverty: I'm afraid that's not an explanation I can provide you with.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I believe I can provide it for you, Mr Jackson.

Mr Jackson: Please.

Hon Mrs Boyd: My understanding of the situation is that it was a request to cover some of the deficits that had been entered into in terms of municipal homes, and treasury board declined to meet that deficit. The change in the other reduction has been because of the increase in revenue from per diem copayments. There was an increase in revenue of $12.6 million projected for 1992-93, and therefore the netted figure in our estimates is netted out as $11,103,400.

Mr Jackson: Is it not true, Madam Minister, that also there's been a reduction in the number of beds that are funded through a series of renovation projects where the downsizing in my own community -- Mr Duignan from Halton, it's in his riding, but he's familiar with about an 88-bed loss. You don't get your redevelopment moneys unless you cut 88 beds; that was sort of the norm for several homes for the aged. It's borne out in your detailed estimates that you're actually reducing the number of beds in this area as well. Is that not correct?

Hon Mrs Boyd: In terms of the long-term care plan, our rationalization of the availability of beds is clearly a part of that plan, and where there have been renovations and changes, it has been done in terms of that long-term care plan.

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Mr Jackson: Where's the resultant increase in services to counteract the reduction in bed access?

Hon Mrs Boyd: You may note that there have been a large number of renovations that we have done and in many of those cases beds have been temporarily reduced while those renovations have been going on. But it's part of a planned kind of sharing of space and beds between long-term care beds in hospitals, nursing homes, municipal homes for the aged, charitable homes for the aged. You'll notice that there's quite an increase in the charitable homes for the aged and I think you had considerable discussion with the Minister of Health around the reallocations that are happening in nursing home beds.

Mr Jackson: Madam Minister, there isn't a single category of long-term care bed in this province that is on the increase. In fact, every single category is in decline. So when you talk about sharing, it is a process of sharing the bad news or sharing reduced access or sharing greater waiting lists. That's what sharing means in our province today.

Alzheimer's patients, for example: The law says you can only lock them in restrained environments in homes for the aged. So when you have an increased number of Alzheimer's patients in that cohort, we can't overdose them with medication and put them in restraints in hospitals at $1,000 a day when society can treat them more humanely and at much less cost than the current procedure for Alzheimer's patients in this province. I think that's a relevant question about where is your government's priority for these people and where's your plan, other than everybody has to share the contraction of these services in this province.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We do not equate the care with the number of beds. As you know, we're moving towards community-based care --

Mr Jackson: Fair ball.

Hon Mrs Boyd: -- with community-residential alternatives for people, with supports to families who are prepared and able to look after their loved ones at home. So we do not equate the care of these clients at all with the number of beds. As you know through the long-term care consultation, neither did consumers. They were saying that they want the supports within the community and that's part of the planning with long-term care, to provide that, rather than continue building more and more beds, to try and put our resources into those community-based services that are going to make it possible for us to look after folks in their homes with their families, in their communities, at what we all know will eventually be a lower cost than in hospitals.

Mr Jackson: That's a con job, Madam Minister, and all three political parties have been conning the public with that for years. It is more expensive in the home if it's done properly, with interventions, and you know it and I know it. I'm not saying the alternative is warehousing these people; on the contrary.

The fact of the matter is that if you met with Alzheimer's support groups and families, they are in complete emotional distress as a result of having to care for a family member. You've got the average situation in Alzheimer's, a 65-year-old woman trying to care for a 75-year-old man and she is going under badly. That is the typical case in this province and when you get into the disabled community, which is not included in long-term care, it's even more disastrous because you're now talking about assisting a disabled individual to a toilet or a bath, and for a 65-year-old woman this is killing her.

Let's not debate it, Madam Minister. I'm telling you my party conned the public, the Liberals conned the public and you're conning the public.

Hon Mrs Boyd: That's precisely why we have redirected long-term care, because we agree that indeed you did try to give the public a position.

Mr Jackson: You've cut it, Madam Minister. You're two years behind.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We simply disagree with you. In fact, in the discussion that we've just had about the multi-year plan, when we look at the per unit costs that we're having in terms of community care and in terms of facilities, yes, it is not the great saving that was looked upon as being there, and yes, there is a cost to the individuals involved.

Mr Jackson: Precisely. I have a couple of questions I'd like to put on the record. How much time do I have left?

The Vice-Chair: About nine minutes.

Mr Jackson: Minister, in response to Mrs O'Neill you indicated that there were some savings with respect to welfare fraud. Are you documenting this and are you quantifying this? You've said you want to save $300 million. How much of that will be welfare fraud that you've caught?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We are closely monitoring all the changes that we've made to social assistance. We are required to report back to treasury board on that.

Mr Jackson: How much of the $300 million is for welfare fraud, Madam Minister: 1%, $1 million, $100 million? How much of it?

Hon Mrs Boyd: I believe between 1% and 2%, a very small portion.

Mr Jackson: That is it?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Yes.

Mr Jackson: For 400 new employees? Okay.

Hon Mrs Boyd: That is not all those employees are doing, Mr Jackson, and you know that very well.

Mr Jackson: That's why I asked. It's obviously 1% or 2% of their enterprise. You've confirmed that.

I would ask then to what extent you have statistics on non-profit day care agencies running deficits or in financial difficulty. You indicated to me in a late show we had some months ago that you would undertake now to start getting statistics. Do you now have those statistics?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We are monitoring very closely as part of our management plan that was announced at the end of July.

Mr Jackson: So have you got stats you can share with this committee?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We will share with you what we have so far. As I say, our management plan was only instituted at the end of July.

Mr Jackson: Then let me give you the list of the items I'd like you to consider sending to the committee. We'd like to know the number of day care centres by private, non-profit and municipal, and I would ask you to give us those centres which have closed during this fiscal year.

Hon Mrs Boyd: May I ask whether you want the numbers and the names?

Mr Jackson: Both, please. I know that'll take a little bit longer, but I'd appreciate that: those that have closed, the number of spaces involved and their status, the deficits for the non-profit sector, since with the for-profit sector the bank usually tells them how to deal with their deficits.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Yes, there is non-disclosure in private centres.

Mr Jackson: It'll surface with the closures. The number of displaced staff you're monitoring, the number of displaced children, if you're in fact monitoring whether children get access to service when their centre closes.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We certainly are. That's one of our major concerns as part of the management plan.

Mr Jackson: So you do have the stats?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We began, as I say, with the management plan --

Mr Jackson: I have seven minutes left. Your yes or no would be helpful.

Hon Mrs Boyd: -- at the end of July. You need to understand that, yes, we are monitoring that, but we're not going to be able to give you complete figures on all of those details prior to the institution of the management plan.

Mr Jackson: I understand that. I had a series of questions on day care. Time won't allow me to get those on, so I will leave those and maybe it can be the subject of a further discussion we might be able to undertake. However, as one centre recently said to me, why is it that your government will give a private sector Jobs Ontario funding, but when the recipient comes forward that woman can't have her child attend that centre?

Hon Mrs Boyd: I did not understand your question. I'm sorry.

Mr Jackson: Okay. A woman would like the training in a day care centre. You can get the funding for Jobs Ontario in a private centre. You're eligible because the government said, "We support the free enterprise model in that regard in terms of hiring somebody." But that same recipient, that individual who is getting trained, who's moving off welfare or adjusting her welfare, can't bring her own child to that centre. Why?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Because of our decision that we were going to be putting these spaces into the non-profit sector.

Mr Jackson: Do you think that's fair to the woman or to her child?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We could ask a question as to whether it is appropriate for someone to be trying to maintain a position of parent and child care worker at the same time. That is a fair question and it is one that is dealt with in many centres as to whether in fact they feel that is an appropriate combination. I understand your concern and I certainly am not aware of any incidents where this has happened.

Mr Jackson: Could the minister please tell us if she will be supporting the request for a social worker act within the next year? Does the government have any plans at all to resolve the fact that we're the only province that doesn't have a social worker act governing the activities and conduct of this group?

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Hon Mrs Boyd: No. We were very clear that we would not be introducing an action to regulate this profession as social workers but that we were looking, with our colleagues at Consumer and Commercial Relations, at other ways to protect the public from some of the concerns that have been raised by the social work professional association.

Mr Jackson: Has the ministry an update on the number of children on waiting lists for mental health services in this province?

Hon Mrs Boyd: I believe that is updated on a fairly regular basis. I believe it remains static at about 10,000.

Mr Jackson: Could you share with the committee how those numbers are arrived at and when you took your last reading?

Hon Mrs Boyd: There is some real concern about the duplication of names on those lists. What happens for most referral agencies is that they put children on the lists of whatever agencies are within reach of the family, so it is very difficult for us in working with the mental health groups to have any sense of whether a lot of those names are duplicates or not.

In any case, I think it is fair to say that if the number were cut by a third or even a half, the waiting lists are very frightening to those of us who know how urgent the need is.

Mr Jackson: Your predecessor provided us a list of the Back on Track recommendations, the date of implementation, the cost in the fiscal year of whether it was an actual or an estimate. Could you please provide us with that list and any of those recommendations in the Time for Action which you have proceeded with?

Again I reference the treasury board document of March 31, and it contained a substantive number of areas of deferred decisions or rejected decisions around SARC recommendations and implementing certain reviews that were helpful. Some of our mutual friends in the social assistance field would like an update, which we got regularly from the previous government. The last one we got was from Ms Akande some time ago. Could we get updates on those.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Certainly. We have an update that we can provide for you tomorrow.

Mr Jackson: Okay. You've discussed the issue of your projection. Madam Chair, how much time have I got, or am I probably out?

The Vice-Chair: You have 30 seconds.

Mr Jackson: Let me say it's been a real joy here on this committee.

The Vice-Chair: No, I'm sorry. I correct it. This is the clock. You have two minutes. I'm sorry.

Mr Jackson: If that's the case, in the interest of time I will table the balance of my questions, which is the custom, and I will leave those with the clerk to get to the deputy and staff. If they could respond to those, it would be appreciated.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Mr Jackson. You had one minute left actually when you finished.

Government members, do you have any questions?

Mr Bisson: Just a point of clarity: There is seven minutes left with the Liberal caucus at this point?

The Vice-Chair: The Liberal caucus has two minutes left at this point.

Mrs O'Neill: I thought I stacked seven.

The Vice-Chair: The clerk advises me that when --

Clerk pro tem (Ms Lynn Mellor): We started off with 29 minutes at 4:48.

The Vice-Chair: You had 29 minutes at 4:48 and you stopped at 5:15, which meant you had used 27 minutes.

Mr Bisson: In the interest of time, if Mrs O'Neill wants to go ahead enough and after we get the votes done, we would table all our questions later instead of coming back here tomorrow.

The Vice-Chair: So you have no further questions?

Mr Bisson: We'll table our questions to the minister directly and we'll allow Mrs O'Neill to finish her questioning.

Mrs O'Neill: I find this all very confusing. The seven hours includes the voting time, does it? And you're telling me then that this is all over, that I have two minutes of questioning, period, finished, over, and it's being used right now?

The Vice-Chair: Yes.

Mrs O'Neill: Boy, it's certainly very difficult to be working under misunderstandings. Could I go to the conversion policy then, please? You stated in your opening remarks, Madam Minister, that there were 50 requests. Can you give us an update on that?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Yes. I understand that the latest count we have is 87 requests that have come forward.

Mrs O'Neill: What are the time frames on the answering of those requests, or what do you think is going to work out for those people? Are some of these things going to happen before the end of this year?

Hon Mrs Boyd: They certainly need to, because we have set aside the dollars for it and it's very urgent from our point of view that we reassure those centres that have acted in good faith and have put forward plans, as long as they meet within the management plan that's for a particular area.

When Mrs Marland was questioning she was talking about the opening of centres where there are other centres going under for lack of enrolment. That is true. That is happening because there has not been a consistent, planned approach to how we deliver child care services. So where we have a conversion proposal coming forward we will be looking at the number of spaces available in that area and whether in fact what we are supporting would create ongoing difficulty in terms of the viability of the centres.

The application for conversion will depend on the valuation process described in the materials we tabled, and also how that fits with the management plan in terms of the necessary spaces for the area.

Mrs O'Neill: All right, thank you. In conjunction with the others then, I will table a couple of other questions, hopeful of written answers. The attendant care program seems to be in jeopardy. At least, when it's placed in the communities, there seem to be concerns about its viability, particularly for the working disabled. That's a grave concern. I don't know how firm the commitment of this government is because it wasn't mentioned in the opening remarks.

The second question is what the changes are, as you see them, for the supports to employment program, STEP, on 1 August, 1992, and how those changes are going to contribute to the effectiveness of the program.

My third question is -- you talked about perpetrators of violence needing assistance. There were absolutely no specifics; I think we need some specifics.

The final question is on credit counselling, which I feel must be reinstated because of the integration of new policy such as the development of casinos and the programs I've suggested, which are self-help, self-worth programs. Credit counselling being wiped totally, I'm wondering if there's any consideration to encourage municipalities by some sort of incentive plan to pick that program up again.

Hon Mrs Boyd: In fact on that last item I might tell you that, as I understand it, all but two of the programs have either been taken up by other agencies or are continuing under different circumstances, through some portion of the fee being paid by the consumer, by the creditor and that sort of thing. I'd be happy to table a full account for you of all those agencies.

Mrs O'Neill: Thanks.

The Vice-Chair: Okay. I think we will now proceed to the votes. Shall vote 801 in its entirety carry? Carried. Shall vote 802 in its entirety carry? Carried.

Shall I report the Ministry of Community and Social Services estimates? Agreed. Thank you.

I'd like to thank the minister and her staff for their attendance and support of this estimates committee hearing and I declare the committee adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 1749.