Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

MINISTRY OF HOUSING

CONTENTS

Tuesday 20 July 1993

Ministry of Housing

Hon Evelyn Gigantes, Minister

Suzanne Herbert, assistant deputy minister, operations

Daniel Burns, deputy minister

Brad Singh, director, audit services

Robert Glass, executive director, rent control programs

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES

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

Vice-Chair / Vice-Présidente: Arnott, Ted (Wellington PC)

*Abel, Donald (Wentworth North/-Nord ND

Bisson, Gilles (Cochrane South/-Sud N)

Carr, Gary (Oakville South/-Sud PC)

Elston, Murray J. (Bruce L)

*Haeck, Christel (St Catharines-Brock ND)

Jamison, Norm (Norfolk ND)

*Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville ND)

Mahoney, Steven W. (Mississauga West/-Ouest L)

Ramsay, David (Timiskaming L)

*Wiseman, Jim (Durham West/-Ouest ND)

*In attendance / présents

Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:

Harrington, Margaret H. (Niagara Falls ND) for Mr Bisson

Johnson, Paul R. (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings/Prince Edward-Lennox-Hastings-Sud ND)

for Mr Jamison

Marland, Margaret (Mississauga South/-Sud PC) for Mr Arnott

Poole, Dianne (Eglinton L) for Mr Mahoney

Turnbull, David (York Mills PC) for Mr Carr

Clerk / Greffière: Grannum, Tonia

The committee met at 1536 in committee room 2.

MINISTRY OF HOUSING

The Chair (Mr Cameron Jackson): I'd like to call to order the standing committee on estimates. We are reconvening to continue. We have approximately three hours remaining for the Ministry of Housing.

At this point, before we go into a regular rotation, I would ask if there are any items which the minister or staff have any responses on that they were able to prepare and can circulate at this time to assist with further questioning.

Hon Evelyn Gigantes (Minister of Housing): Just as a point of information, we will be providing, before the afternoon is out, a bibliography on shelter allowances: shelter allowances compared to home ownership and shelter allowances compared to non-profit. Within that bibliography, members will find that various studies have been noted. They have a star in front of them. Those are studies to which the Ministry of Housing has paid particular attention.

We are also drawing out, as sources for members of the committee, studies which we think will be of interest on this issue that are Canadian based and of recent vintage. We hope those will be helpful in answering some of the questions that have been asked by members, particularly members of the opposition.

What's being circulated right now is one particular study which was done by Clayton Research, the same firm which provided the most recent study for the Fair Rental Policy Organization of Ontario. It's about home ownership as an investment, but much of the argument that is contained therein will be relevant to the question of public investment in the non-profit building program.

We will also be providing some material that I don't think we will have available today. I would like to be able to provide material to members that will allow a direct comparison between what last year's estimates projected forward over three, four years and what this year's estimates project forward over three, four years to give members of the committee an overview of how we have changed expenditure patterns within the ministry, and in fact generated a good deal of savings or constraints over this year and years to come.

The Chair: That's very helpful and that has been circulated and noted. If members have any questions that flow from that, they can be raised during the regular rotation. I'd like to recognize Mrs Poole then for, say, a half-hour rotation.

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): I'd like to continue with some questions about the non-profit housing sector. On July 14, in response to, I believe, a question from Mrs Harrington, the minister said the following two statements, and she was referring to the non-profit sector:

"The sectors are now capable of helping build guidelines for the administration and operation in an accountability framework that can mean we are not looking at every line of every budget that they're operating, that we can discuss with them ways of building in incentives to the way we provide financing for operations."

In the same response, the minister went on to say: "We also want to be able to loosen the controls that are minute-by-minute, day-by-day, line-by-line kinds of controls under which the sector has operated up to now. I think we're making some progress there. Those will be developing kind of changes."

Minister, on the one hand, it appears to me that you're saying you want to loosen the day-to-day controls. At the same time, when I look at page 117 of the estimates, which talks about the DASH grants, the development assistance for social housing, you're talking about, for instance, giving $1 million as development assistance for social housing grants to people who don't have any expertise, to people who are first-time players. That's at the same time you're talking about loosening up the controls.

To me they seem to be going in opposite directions. How can you loosen controls when you're inviting even more players into the game without the experience, the track record, the expertise to develop social housing? I wonder if you'd like to respond to that.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes. There are two elements of the system. One is the element of the design of the system in which we can build up mechanisms by which, while providing day-by-day, month-by-month decision-making flexibility for non-profit and co-op organizations, we can still maintain a fairly rigorous accounting and accountability system around that.

The DASH grants you referred to are an initial part of the program process in which groups apply, and depending on their needs as groups, will get funding for the development process. I'm sure you're familiar with this, having been part of a government which in fact initiated the DASH grants; that came with Homes Now. Those grants are intended to help groups incorporate and give them the essentials to do the initial round of planning, do the contact with the people they will be needing to work with in a professional sense, and to choose whom they will be working with in the market. In fact, Dan, you might like to say a few words about this.

When I talk about the areas in which we would like to see greater flexibility, I'm thinking of such things as the work that we will be doing around replacement reserves. I think I may have alluded to that in previous discussions in this committee. As we resume replacement reserves, which have been on a moratorium for a year and a half now and will continue on moratorium till the end of this fiscal year, we will be looking to develop a new system in which we expect that groups such as the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association and the Cooperative Housing Association of Ontario will help us design a system where they will be able to make sure that priorities are being addressed within the non-profit housing system, including the co-op system, in terms of the renovation work that needs doing to keep buildings in good shape; that they will help us draw up guidelines in which there are actually incentives built in to do cost-effective work and to make sure that the work that's undertaken is done as efficiently as possible. That's what I mean about a mature third sector.

There are now organizations and experience built up in the third sector, which means that the Ministry of Housing really can look to active partners at the provincial level to help design systems which, instead of treating everybody as if they're in grade 2, treat them as if they're at least at the stage where they can control their own allowances and make some good investments within guidelines which we will seek their help in developing.

They've pointed out to us that if we're providing X amount of funding for this line item, then people will spend to X. That is a natural human response to getting a budget line of X. You spend to it. What we're interested in doing is developing the systems that will give people a benefit for finding a good way to spend X minus Y and split the difference.

Ms Poole: Madam Minister, I have no problem with building in incentives for people to use the money properly, wisely and efficiently. That's not what's at question. What concerns me is that we already have an overall accountability framework that quite frankly isn't working. We have operating agreements that are not in place and should be in place, operating agreements that still haven't been signed, and there are cases where there are no audited financial statements available. If you look at the auditor's report, it was very clear on a number of shortcomings in the ministry. With the difficulty that we've had in the standing committee on public accounts in getting some very vital information from the ministry, I'm not convinced that you've rectified this problem.

I'd just like to spend a few moments looking at some of the items in the auditor's report and asking some questions on those. First, I'll highlight some of the auditor's concerns.

First, despite a decline in land prices and construction costs after 1989, the cost of projects approved in 1990 and 1991 continued to increase. Secondly, the practice of using highest and best appraisal values in approving land and rental property purchases was costly. Recent land transactions were not examined before approving land values. Thirdly, the maximum unit price, MUP, was not lowered to keep pace with market trends. In fact, in the absence of more competitive approaches to project selection, many project sponsors and developers viewed MUPs as the target price.

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): Excuse me, Dianne --

Ms Poole: Yes?

Mrs Marland: Mr Chairman, may I just ask a question?

The Chair: Go through the Chair, please.

Mrs Marland: I am going through the Chair, but I just wanted to warn Dianne. These questions that the member for Eglinton is asking are questions I have already asked. I'm wondering whether the minister is planning to give the response to my questions today, or in writing, as I previously requested, just so we don't waste time doing it twice.

The Chair: I'm not sure if that's very helpful to Ms Poole.

Ms Poole: No, actually --

The Chair: Ms Poole, perhaps you'd like to continue. She's been advised. Thank you, Mrs Marland.

Ms Poole: Thank you, Mrs Marland, but what I am doing first is highlighting the auditor's concerns. Then I have a list of specific questions arising from that. A number of them are quite different from the ones Mrs Marland asked.

The next point the auditor made was that inconsistent referral practices make it unlikely that those in need of affordable housing will be treated consistently, equitably and efficiently. Of 21 local housing authorities surveyed, only one had been consistently requested to provide referrals to local non-profit projects.

He next made the point that projects in all three regions, southern, eastern and central, had difficulty competing with the local private market and could not meet their approved targets for a designated number of market rent units. As a result, most projects had filled these market rent units with rent-geared-to-income tenants, which required higher levels of subsidies than originally approved.

Another point the auditor made was that the projects approved in 1991, totalling $1.16 billion, would have cost over $200 million less had approved costs dropped in line with market prices.

Now those were the basic findings of the auditor -- there were others but those were the highlights -- and I'd like to ask some questions arising from those.

First of all, Minister, how many non-profit allocations have been given to co-op groups over the last year -- the last two years?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Is it the last year or the last two years?

Ms Poole: The last two years.

Hon Ms Gigantes: I'll ask staff to look that up for you while you go ahead.

Ms Poole: Okay. I would mention to you that during estimates last year, which I believe was last August, you indicated that in the final round of allocations under P-10,000 there was a very pronounced effort made to ensure that co-ops were getting allocations --

Hon Ms Gigantes: That's correct.

Ms Poole: -- so I'd just like that background.

Have all relevant staff been trained to examine recent land transactions prior to approving land values for projects?

Hon Ms Gigantes: No, that's not complete yet. Perhaps what I'll do is ask Sue Herbert from our operations division to come up, our assistant deputy minister, operations, and respond directly to your questions. She will have the figures more quickly at hand and be more up to date on the kinds of questions that you're asking at the moment.

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The Chair: Welcome, Mrs Herbert, you've been introduced. Please proceed.

Mrs Suzanne Herbert: Do we want to go back to the question of numbers? Do we have them? Patty tells me that we don't have the numbers but we will get the numbers for you on the co-op.

Hon Ms Gigantes: You're talking about the tail-end of the P-10,000 program?

Ms Poole: That's right.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Or is it Homes Now?

Ms Poole: We want to know over the last two years what the allocations have been.

Mrs Herbert: We can give you that for all of the programs and sector numbers.

Hon Ms Gigantes: We can get that figure quite easily.

Mrs Herbert: There was a second question?

Hon Ms Gigantes: The second question was the training of staff on the land comparison, price comparison for land.

Mrs Herbert: There are a number of training initiatives under way right now. One of those includes a look at land transactions in terms of both the pricing of land transactions and the examination of land transactions. Full training of all staff hasn't been completed yet, though it's under way.

Mr Daniel Burns: If I could just add to that, that is the training of our project coordinating staff. We do have in our technical staff appraisers who work with each regional office and have had appraisers as part of our professional technical staff for many years.

Hon Ms Gigantes: But this is a special effort --

Mr Burns: This is an additional effort.

Hon Ms Gigantes: -- that is associated with the Jobs Ontario Homes program in the new design, and we are training staff at the regional office level to do a comparison of land prices and land transactions.

Ms Poole: Has there been an actual re-evaluation of your training program and how your appraisers are evaluating the land since the auditor's report?

Hon Ms Gigantes: This is not a question of appraisal that we're dealing with right here. There are two issues involved. One is appraisal, which we've always had, as the deputy said, within the program and your government had, and appraisal as it happens with every property involved in the program. The auditor found some reason to question some of the appraisals that had been done during the time period 1987 to 1991, the period he looked at, and he felt that in the tail-end of that period, if there had been a quicker and more thorough comparison of land costs, we would've achieved better prices.

It has been noted both in this committee in previous estimates and in the committee dealing with the auditor's report that what the auditor was talking about was land at the tail-end of the period he surveyed which had been acquired one year to two years before he was looking at the prices. Those prices within the program had been negotiated and the appraisals done at a period one year to two years, sometimes longer, before the figures he was looking at in that year.

In other words, if a project was being looked at by the auditor in terms of its final costs in 1991, the land associated with that project would've been acquired probably before 1990. In other words, it would've been at 1989 prices.

Ms Poole: Madam Minister, I'd have to take issue with you on that particular point because what the auditor said very clearly was that in the latter boom 1980s he could understand the pressures to acquire housing and why the ministry may have had to approve deals which were extremely expensive.

What the auditor found most distressing was that when we went into a recession, when the price of land started to fall in early 1990, in fact in late 1989, at that stage he would have assumed the ministry would have re-evaluated what it was willing to pay for land and, in the auditor's opinion, in 1991 that did not occur.

Hon Ms Gigantes: If I could just say for one moment, we are taking what the auditor had to say very much as guidance. In other words, we intend to do what he thought should have been done. It is for that purpose we are preparing staff at regional offices with the programs that will help them to determine whether the land prices which are being proposed for non-profit projects are land prices which jibe with the current market. That does not guarantee that if land prices go down 25% in the next two years those land prices won't look strange two years from now in the final accounts on the project. You understand what I'm saying.

Ms Poole: I understand exactly.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Very good.

Ms Poole: Madam Minister, I'm not stupid. A non-profit project will take around two years to put up.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Very good.

Ms Poole: Madam Minister, I do not like your condescending tone. I understand exactly what's happening.

Hon Ms Gigantes: I'm not being condescending at all. I just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing.

Ms Poole: The auditor was very clear that the problem he had was that the ministry was not changing with the times. I think what we're all concerned with is that land is evaluated at the proper amount at the proper time.

Hon Ms Gigantes: That is precisely the process we are going through now in terms of training and providing staff with the kind of information systems that will allow them to do that as a regular course. Dan is dying to say something.

The Chair: Deputy, jump in.

Mr Burns: The subject that has just been raised was discussed at some length at public accounts, and I just want to touch on two important features of that discussion.

When you take apart the land component of a development and the construction component and track each of them separately against market conditions, what happened in the period of time we're now discussing is that the construction part tracked the Canadian construction index pretty well.

The land component didn't drop as fast as it did in the private market because the land component we allowed and approved in our projects didn't rise as fast as the private market. The private market in the GTA reached between $60,000 and $80,000 a unit for ownership land at the peak. We never approved anything over $40,000.

It's not surprising that if you combine the two back again, which is what happens in the maximum unit price system we now have, our rate of decline was not equal to the rate of decline in the condominium sector, and it should not have been. The reason is that our rate of increase was not the same as that experienced in the condominium sector. However, having said that, the discussion about professional practice is an important one and the training program is under way.

You also asked about professional advice. Yes, we have sought professional advice outside our own technically professional staff to look at appropriate practices in today's market conditions, which is what both the minister and Mrs Herbert alluded to.

Hon Ms Gigantes: But, again, that will not assure that if land is acquired this year for a project and land prices drop two years from now -- it will also mean those land prices will look high on the final capital costs of the project. That's a fact of life.

Ms Poole: Yes, and I don't think we have any quarrel with that. It's whether the price being paid for that land at that time is in sync with what is being paid in private deals.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes.

Ms Poole: I think that's what people want to be assured of.

Hon Ms Gigantes: We are fully in accord with the auditor on that. It is what we want to see. We are providing as quickly and as capably as we can -- and I think it's going to be quite capably and relatively quickly -- the strength within the regional offices to deal with transactions that way.

I should also point out that we will be dividing the land part of projects from the construction costs, which will allow us to target land prices in a way that has not been done in the program previously.

Ms Poole: I'd like to switch to a slightly different subject again under non-profit housing in the auditor's report, and that relates to the operating agreements and operating budgets. The auditor was quite critical because of the number of instances in which operating agreements and budgets were not in place.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Right.

Ms Poole: Could you tell me, do all non-profit housing projects that have been completed and are in operation have operating agreements in place at this time?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Do you want to speak to this, Sue?

Mrs Herbert: The auditor addressed operating agreements in a number of sectors, so if I can just break them into sectors for you, in the cooperative sector we've negotiated an operating agreement. It's been recommended by the provincial association and we're in the process of signing those across the province. So there's a variable. In some locations they're signed, in others we're just in the process of signing them now. From our perspective, it's just the processing of those agreements now. There is an agreement that has been implemented, of course, out in the field.

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Hon Ms Gigantes: It's a sectoral agreement.

Ms Poole: Yes, but to date it is still not signed?

Mrs Herbert: No. We sign them with individual operators. So once we have a province-wide agreement that the provincial association --

Hon Ms Gigantes: The umbrella.

Mrs Herbert: -- an umbrella agreement, then we have to go out and individually sign it with each operator in the province.

Ms Poole: So you've reached an agreement with CHAO.

Hon Ms Gigantes: That's right.

Mrs Herbert: Yes.

Ms Poole: And now you are in the process of having every individual co-op sign it.

Mrs Herbert: It's out in our regional offices.

Ms Poole: It's a standard agreement?

Mrs Herbert: That's right.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes.

Mrs Herbert: We have had for some time an operating agreement with the federal-provincial nonprofit programs. Most of those are signed. There may be some few exceptions out there.

Ms Poole: Just before you continue, could I ask you to give me, obviously at a later date, some sense of how many of those federal-provincial agreements are not in place?

Mrs Herbert: Yes, we can do that for you. And on our provincial unilateral programs in the non-profit area -- that's the programs that we fund 100% ourselves -- we are just in the process of negotiating an umbrella agreement, again that we would take out and sign with individual operators. So in that area we do not have an umbrella agreement yet.

Ms Poole: If you take all three sectors together, the co-ops, the municipal non-profits, the provincial non- profits, the federal-provincial non-profits, how many would you estimate are right now without operating agreements?

Mrs Herbert: We have the numbers, we're just looking at them for recent -- rather than read into the record numbers that I'm a little unsure of, because we've broken them out by program rather than by sector, we'll give you those numbers. We'll just revamp them and give them back to you.

Ms Poole: Would that be during today's hearing?

Mrs Herbert: We could probably see what we could do without a calculator.

Ms Poole: Even if we could have a rough estimate of what percentage are still not completed.

Hon Ms Gigantes: We have made real progress here, though. The co-op non-profit umbrella agreement has been a task that the ministry has been working at off and on long before this government was elected to office, and it has been a matter of great relief not only to this minister but also to the staff in the ministry who've worked on this project to get it done. Patty can speak directly to that.

Mrs Herbert: We also anticipate that the work necessary to do the provincial unilaterals will be a lot shorter since we have been through the cooperative agreements. We expect to move fairly quickly.

Ms Poole: Do you have a target date by which operating agreements for all co-ops and non-profits, regardless of jurisdiction, will be in place?

Mrs Herbert: In the cooperative area our target was this summer to have all individual agreements signed. In the non-profit sector we've been targeting for the end of this year.

Ms Poole: And will you achieve your target for the co-op sector of having it completed this summer?

Mrs Herbert: Substantially, yes. The cooperative sector has been wonderful in terms of going out and training their own operators, so we've resolved many of the initial implementation issues. There may be one or two exceptions that for whatever reasons may feel they can't sign the agreement, and then we'll do individual negotiations.

Ms Poole: Going on to a bit of a different angle again -- and, Minister, you might want to answer this or you may wish assistance from staff -- one of the critical areas the auditor had was the audited financial statements, which were missing in a number of projects. Do all existing projects now have those audited financial statements and have they provided copies to the ministry?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Again, I would ask Sue to comment on that, or Dan, though I guess Sue has worked on it most immediately.

I could also point out -- it might be of interest to you -- that we have begun a process of reconciling all the accounts with the final cost figures so that we are ensuring that the subsidy flows are as they should be, given the terms under which the non-profit projects were developed. That has meant a lot of money flowing back and forth from the non-profits to the ministry and vice versa. However, the ministry has come out ahead on that, I think to the tune of $9 million, was it, Dan?

Mr Burns: I think it was about $5 million or $6 million last year and our expectation this year is another $7 million.

Hon Ms Gigantes: So in the $12-million range. That's net to the ministry, so that all those elements which go with the final cost accounts are getting worked on as we develop the total system of accounting.

Mr Burns: We had three backlogs raised in the subject you were discussing, fully approved annual operating budgets, reviewed and agreed-to year-end financial statements, and final capital costs for construction projects. Each backlog had its own characteristics and reasons and, as I said at public accounts, we were in the middle of a cleanup program and we focused some staff on that and we've made tremendous progress on all three backlogs. One of them is almost completely extinguished; the other two have some remaining. Our goal is to comprehensively extinguish all three by Labour Day, and I think with some confidence that the backlog as it existed at public accounts will be in essence extinguished by Labour Day.

That's important, not just for the reconciliation objectives the minister alluded to and for a full current accounting of what's going on, but also for future discussions about a different kind of budget relationship. You've got to have a current, accepted level --

Hon Ms Gigantes: Status quo, yes.

Mr Burns: -- agreed status quo on which to erect some reforms. So it's important for program reform reasons as well as good financial practices.

Do you want to add anything more about the specifics?

Mrs Herbert: No, I think we're on target. We're really pleased with the results.

Ms Poole: I'd like to go back to the minister's comments where she mentioned she wanted to loosen the controls, the day-to-day, minute-by-minute kind of controls for the sector. The question I have is: If you are planning to bring in a new way of looking at the day-to-day system and what controls are there --

Hon Ms Gigantes: Or not looking at it.

Ms Poole: You're not looking at it?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Or not looking at it. We have been looking at it.

Ms Poole: Yes, looking at it as something you want to implement, lightening up on the day-to-day controls.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes, something we'd like to lighten up, right.

Ms Poole: Okay. Then I think spot audits are going to be very important to ensure that they're all carrying out what it says on the piece of paper. How often are spot audits of non-profit projects conducted right now, and for instance, could you give me a number of how many are conducted per year?

Mr Burns: A couple of things by way of backdrop before I give the specific answer to that. The budget relationship we're talking about -- let's look at Peel Non-Profit Housing Corp as an example. They have between 50 and 60 operating projects under four or five different program formats. At the moment, we review line-by-line, item-by-item all 50 or 60 budgets, and if they want to move money from one line to another they have to loop through our office. At the city of Toronto I know we used to spend time trying to convince the people to let us do a fence on one project and not on another. The established operators believe that there's a tremendous waste of time in preparing and administering a budget relationship at that level of detail.

What they prefer is to group the budgets at least by program if not by portfolio, still submit budgets, and operate on a bottom line at the end of the year. The financial statements we were talking about before are audited. So the first thing is that we require every operator to have an auditor prepare an assessment that goes with their financial statements when they submit it, so that we have audits at that level.

Secondly, from head office we initiate audits and we audit from a number of different points of view: one, if there's a problem identified; two, we audit through a grand cycle -- local housing authorities, cooperatives and non-profits -- and each year we audit a sample of organizations in addition to the audit that we require, programmatically, each organization to provide to us.

Now, how many audits per year we do: Our director of audit is here, Mr Singh. Perhaps you could advise us, beyond the audits we already get, how many audits we initiate and carry out in the cooperative and non-profit housing sector each year.

The Chair: Please, you've been introduced, and speak directly into the microphone.

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Mr Brad Singh: I don't have the exact facts, but I think it's about 20 we did last year. We did a joint audit with the federal CMHC people and we went on and visited a whole bunch of non-profits. In addition to that, there were the audits we do ourselves, and that's anywhere from 15 to 20. So you're looking at quite a huge number. And we do have, as the deputy said, a cycle that we go through. In fact, my people are actually out in the regions right now soliciting requests from the regional people as to what non-profits they want us to audit.

The Chair: A brief final question in this round, Ms Poole.

Ms Poole: How are those audits chosen? Do your regional people look for trouble spots? Do they do it randomly?

Mr Singh: From what I understand, they are chosen mainly from trouble spots. We don't actually choose them; it's the regions that tell us to audit them.

Ms Poole: But they are Ministry of Housing regional people who are doing it.

Mr Singh: Right. The random ones are the ones in which, when we go out with CMHC, let's say, the one I said just now, the audit we did last year, it's also done at random. We chose them ourselves.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms Poole. Mrs Marland?

Mrs Marland: I need to know what's happened to the questions that I asked last week so that I know where you want me to start, where the minister wants me to start today.

The Chair: Well, the minister is prepared to respond to questions.

Hon Ms Gigantes: If I have a summary of the questions in the right order, Mrs Marland, you had asked for figures for a three-year growth.

Mrs Marland: That's one of the questions that I had asked.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Maybe what I'll do is go through my own notes here, and then go through some notes that were prepared by the ministry.

Mrs Marland: I did give your staff a complete copy of my opening questions and my supplementary questions, so your staff have had full cooperation from me.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Indeed they have, and that's much appreciated.

The Chair: And we're about to get the minister's full cooperation. So if she's prepared to respond --

Hon Ms Gigantes: We did have some discussion, and the figures for a three-year growth, we can provide. I think I indicated, in fact, that figures had been provided to the members of this committee. You think I can lay my hands on them now myself? No. I'd like to show you the sheet. No, that's not it. That was the Liberal questions. Here we are.

The sheet that says "Multiyear Expenditure Reductions" gives you an overview year by year, and I think there is a double sheet, in fact. Right: "Ministry of Housing Multiyear Expenditures." Did you receive this sheet, Mrs Marland? No, that's the rent one.

Mrs Marland: I'm sure I did.

Hon Ms Gigantes: That will give you the projections up to --

Mrs Marland: Excuse me. Could I have another copy of that from your staff? I left mine in the office. Please.

Hon Ms Gigantes: I'm sure we have an extra copy around here somewhere.

The Chair: The staff is preparing that for you, so please proceed.

Hon Ms Gigantes: It will give you expenditure projections up to the year 1996-97, which, as you will see when you consult the figures, will end out the current planned program expansion under the Jobs Ontario Homes project. So I think that will be helpful to you in response to that question.

You had raised some of the auditor's comments. As was indicated earlier by the deputy, our approach in the ministry has been to take every item that the auditor has raised as a serious item and to try and provide as well as we can a direct response to the comments he has made and to the suggestions for improvement in our program design and our program operation. So when you suggested that we had disputed the auditor's comments, that was never the case. What we did do in some cases was point out some difficulties there had been in some of the methods that were used by the auditor to try and compare what had happened in the non-profit program with what had happened in the private sector. In some cases, we acknowledged and said to the auditor that those difficulties that were experienced in the auditor's report were as a result of the fact that we did not have a complete accounting of the final cost elements of projects. This stretches back over many years, this difficulty. It is exactly that point to which we were just addressing our remarks to Ms Poole in explaining how it was that we were providing a direct response to the auditor's comments and a change in our accounting so that we will have accounts by Labour Day for all the projects in Ontario.

You had talked about expanding shelter allowances and the shelter allowance alternative as a description of what was proposed in the Clayton report. I just wanted to comment very briefly that I don't think the Clayton report, if you read it, is proposing an alternative to shelter allowance; it is proposing an addition to the existing shelter allowance. If you look at the component of shelter allowances, which we -- I don't know if we've handed this out, this rent supplement program.

Interjection: I can, though.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes, please. We have information on the five rent supplement programs run by the ministry. If you look at them, it will also explain to you why some programs are much more expensive than others. Some are cost-shared with the federal government and the accounts only show the provincial payments into those programs. Some are dealing with older buildings and that also explains a difference in the cost.

But if we look at the whole field, rent supplement and shelter allowances, we can see that the cost certainly does not come anywhere near the $114 per unit which is being proposed in the Clayton report. The shelter allowance alternative, in other words, is not really an alternative; it is an add-on. What it does is say that if we bring another several hundred thousand households into assistance for housing, this is how we could do it, at $114 a unit. It doesn't guarantee, for example, that there will be a bachelor unit available for $450 in York. So it's not an alternative.

You also commented that there was subsidization of land and construction in the non-profit program. I just want to go back over this for a moment, because the non-profit program, from the government's point of view, is a financing program and a design program. It's also an accountability program. It's not a building program and it's not a management program. Government neither builds nor operates non-profit housing. It provides financing and it provides a program framework under which non-profit housing is developed and managed.

There is no subsidization involved. What we do subsidize is the difference between the cost to a tenant household in a rent-geared-to-income unit of non-profit housing -- the difference between what that tenant household can pay at 25% -- it will be 26% -- of household income and the real cost of the unit over 35 years. We continue to pay rent-geared-to-income assistance to those households. We pay them at a higher level than $114 a month, as we pay at a higher level than $114 a month in the shelter allowance component of social assistance and in the rent subsidy programs the ministry directly administers.

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There is no subsidization in the non-profit program of land or construction because the program is financed over a 35-year period and it pays for itself over a 35-year period. It does not pay the rent-geared-to-income portion, but that portion will have to be paid in any case.

We have to provide assistance to people around housing. We do it through shelter allowances in the social assistance system, we do it through rent subsidies in the Ministry of Housing program and we do it through rent-geared-to-income assistance in non-profit housing and in public housing.

You had asked for direct information on the number of people who were on social assistance and accommodated in non-profit and public housing. We have those figures for you. When I looked at them, it seemed to me that we were dealing with about 10% of the total number of public housing and non-profit housing units. Do we have copies of that for --

Interjection: No, we don't. We can get them.

Hon Ms Gigantes: We'll be glad to provide you with that. We have the materials available.

Another question you had raised related to whether people who were refugee claimants, because of the point rating system in the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority -- in fact, the same point rating system is used in all the local housing authorities in the province -- had a better opportunity to enter local housing authority housing than other applicants.

The indications we have are that this is not the case. At one point where there was a survey in June-July 1991, the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority showed that 21% of all its applicants were refugee claimants. However, among those refugee claimants, they did not have much difference in the points at which they were rated than other applicants. They were 21% of all applicants, and of applicants with more than 130 points, those refugee claimants constituted 28%. That would more or less indicate their status as a group within the overall applicant group.

The Chair: What was that number again, Minister? I'm sorry, I missed the first number.

Hon Ms Gigantes: In June-July 1991, refugee claimants constituted 21% of all applicants. They constituted 28% of applicants with more than 130 points on the rating system.

In many other parts of the province the percentage of refugee claimants among housing applicants is small. I think Ottawa, Toronto and Hamilton would be the areas in which we would see the highest number of refugee claimants making application, with Toronto definitely in the lead. That gives you some indication of their status here in Toronto.

I have some detailed notes on the Coxwell Avenue development which Mrs Marland had given information about.

Mrs Marland: Is that the bachelor one, Coxwell Avenue?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes, it is. It's for single people. It is a small development. It is a development with very high costs mainly because of the people it serves, who are among the most difficult to serve. It is also a 100% rent-geared-to-income project. I believe there are 12 units in the project. I don't have a copy of that information right before me, but I'd be glad to provide extra information to you on that.

You had questioned the pressure that market units in assisted housing constitute as competition to private market landlords who may have vacant units. I should point out, first of all, that most of the vacant units that we see in the private market are at the high end of the rental scale, so that while there are vacant units in non-profit developments, many of them would be in the medium range of price and not constitute direct competition because of that. We did have some extended discussion around this point last week too.

The other point I would like to make is that if we took all the market units that exist within non-profit housing developments and compared that number to the number of private rental units that are available in the market, it is about 2% of the total rental units available in the market, so it's not what you'd consider an overwhelming kind of pressure as a competitive element in the rental market.

We had some discussion which somehow led me to write down notes about Saskatchewan and BC. I can't recollect why I did that. There was some discussion of on-reserve housing --

Mrs Marland: Decontrol; it wasn't on-reserve, it was decontrol.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Okay, so we have provided some response to that.

Mr Burns: We have provided a bibliography of material related to the issue of decontrol.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Very good.

Mrs Marland: Madam Minister, I appreciate the bibliography, which possibly I could have got from the library. If I need any of these, Mr Burns, do you have copies of these and I could request them through your office?

Mr Burns: We have copies of most of them. A great many of them are in our library.

The Chair: If I might suggest as the Chair, we have a researcher who is assigned to this committee. They are available at any time. If you wish to have all of those items corralled and you'd like to make that request --

Mrs Marland: From the ministry?

The Chair: No, we have a researcher who will go and obtain information for you. But as you indicated, if it is in the library, either your staff can get it or we have research staff. I'm sure we're not asking the Ministry of Housing to assemble all of these.

Mrs Marland: No, Mr Chair, my question was, if there is one of these reports that we would like that isn't available other than through the ministry, may we get a copy from the ministry?.

Mr Burns: Anything you can't get from the legislative services operations that we may have, you can certainly have access to it one way or another and read it, borrow it, copy it, whatever makes sense at the end of the day.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Mr Chair, I don't know if Ms Marland was here when I said earlier that we had some materials that would be available this afternoon which we think are particularly pertinent to the kinds of issues which members have been raising, and that the items, the reports or studies which are starred on the bibliography, are ones which have undergone review at the ministry so that ministry comments would be available on them if that were of interest to you.

Mrs Marland: I appreciate that, and receiving these copies. That is very helpful to know that if we need it, we can come back to you for anything else.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): Could I just ask, Mr Burns, is this an absolutely complete bibliography? Is there any research material which has been done for your ministry which is not listed here?

The Chair: On that subject?

Mr Turnbull: On this subject.

Mr Burns: I will say at this moment that I don't believe we've commissioned any work, at any point in the last number of years, that is not included there.

Hon Ms Gigantes: On this subject.

Mr Turnbull: Are you including the time that the Liberals were in power?

Mr Burns: By "last number of years," yes. You'll see that material on those bibliographies runs back about 10 years and includes material commissioned by the federal government as well as the government of Ontario. But I'm going to have one small proviso; that is, I'm going to ask our policy and research staff to confirm that my answer is accurate.

Mr Turnbull: I would appreciate that, yes.

Mr Burns: If there's anything more to add, I will be in communication.

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Hon Ms Gigantes: Mr Chair, I believe that may be the highlights of the questions that were raised by Ms Marland. There was another question that had to do with the advertising campaign for rent control. The original budget for that, and I think we discussed this in last year's estimates, was $1,796,310. I believe she had asked also what the television costs involved with that were. From the last year's estimate of costs, the production costs for television would have been $115,500 and the on-air costs would have been $540,615. The actuals were somewhat different. The production costs for television were $117,460 and the on-air costs -- am I going too fast? -- $537,275. I should point out that the actual cost of the total campaign amounted to $1,493,637, so it was $300,000 less than originally budgeted.

Mrs Marland: Thank you for that answer, Madam Minister. There are a number of questions that haven't been answered. We have this confusion about numbers between the households that receive the shelter allowance, relating to a letter I had from Mr Burns, and also this ongoing question about whether some social assistance recipients receive both Comsoc shelter allowance and the housing subsidy.

Hon Ms Gigantes: In fact, as I indicated, Ms Marland, we do have a sheet that will give you that information.

Mrs Marland: Is that what's coming? It's hard for me to know what's coming when I haven't seen --

Hon Ms Gigantes: That is precisely addressed in the sheet we're providing.

The Chair: That has been circulated.

Mrs Marland: Okay. Another question I asked was how many units are under management versus the number still under development. I also asked for a breakdown by mortgage since April 1992.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes. Those figures we are working on. As I indicated in the last day of discussion, we've been told by our staff that that is compilable in a relatively easy fashion, and we'll get them to Ms Marland and other committee members as quickly as possible.

Mrs Marland: Great. Thank you. I also asked about why the Ontario Housing Corp was given its 5% across-the-board payroll increases.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Ah, yes. I'd be pleased to address that. I think the confusion arose, and it arose all around the House, as far as I was concerned, at about the time at which this decision was made. The time at which the decision was made in terms of salary increases for Ontario Housing Corp staff was before the government had announced it was going to do government-wide expenditure controls, to which your leader had referred, and because of the confusion in the House, I think that probably wasn't understood at the time.

What the pattern has been -- in fact, there is an agreement. The memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Housing and the Ontario Housing Corp says that OHC staff will be provided the same employment standards, classification, salary ranges and employee benefits as those established by the Civil Service Commission. So the cost-of-living increase for 1993 which was being mentioned in those minutes and in that decision by the OHC board was the cost-of-living increase that was at that time planned for the Ontario public service.

I've made it clear publicly since then that the OHC is involved in the same expenditure programs, and in fact in the social contract, as the Ontario public service in general, because the memorandum of understanding makes it quite clear that whatever applies to the Ontario public service and is administered by the Civil Service Commission applies to the Ontario Housing Corp. That included the merit pay opportunity which was provided in what was understood to be the forecast for the 1993-94 year at that point, at the point the directors of the Ontario Housing Corp --

Mrs Marland: I did say it was merit pay as well.

The other question I asked you was about this question of whether landlords should be able to get the information about the income of prospective tenants. What I asked you was that, given the essential role of income testing in social housing programs, do you think it's reasonable for any property owner not to be able to use income testing to determine affordability of housing?

Hon Ms Gigantes: This is a very difficult question, or it wouldn't be before the Human Rights Commission. The commission has determined that it's an issue and sent it to an inquiry. I will certainly be interested to see the results of that inquiry. It does pose a dilemma for non-profit housing.

Mrs Marland: They've ruled on it, though, didn't they?

Hon Ms Gigantes: There is a board of inquiry which has been established to determine whether this will become an operative regulation within Ontario. It does pose a dilemma for landlords; I don't think there's any doubt about that. It poses a particular dilemma for non-profit housing landlords, because we have set out a program in which we expect non-profit housing landlords to provide for a community which has mixed income; hence the dilemma. Do you have any suggestions?

Mrs Marland: If I were the Minister of Housing, I would have.

Hon Ms Gigantes: I'll listen to your suggestions anyhow.

Mrs Marland: Madam Minister, do you think it's reasonable not to establish the incomes? How could the program work without establishing them?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Let me pose you a dilemma. You're a social housing provider, you're a co-op in Peel, a household comes to you and indicates by way of references that, in spite of the fact that that household has been spending 50% of its income on rent in the private market, up to this point in time it has been on time with its rent payments and it has paid all its rent payments. As Minister of Housing, you might say: "I'm not going to have a mixed-income community here if I allow people who have to spend 50% of their income on a market rent unit in this development into a market rent unit. It won't be mixed income. It will be mixed rent, but it won't be mixed income." How do we solve that? That's a very good question. I don't have an easy answer for it. I would be interested in your opinion.

Mrs Marland: Minister, I think the bottom line is that if people who are working in this province are subsidizing people who need help, and there's no question that all of us agree that people who need help have to prove their eligibility for that help, I don't mind any government having a policy where we help the people who need it, but they can't hide behind false figures or information as to their eligibility. If I'm going to ask for somebody who's working to subsidize my situation at any given time, I've got to be willing to meet the requirements of whatever word you want to use, a means test to prove --

Hon Ms Gigantes: Mr Chair --

Mrs Marland: Well, you asked me. I'm telling you what I think.

Hon Ms Gigantes: No, because I don't think I asked the question clearly. Please forgive me.

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Mrs Marland: Well, let me just answer in terms of the basic question of income testing. I think two things. If a private landlord owns property and he or she has made an investment in that property, they're entitled to know who they're leasing their property to. Secondly, if the property is owned and operated by the government, although --

Hon Ms Gigantes: It's not operated by the government. It's operated within a government policy framework.

Mrs Marland: I know. In fact, I found it amazing that you said -- I wrote it down -- "The government doesn't build or subsidize housing programs." I thought, boy, I wish we had an hour to get into that, but we don't.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Well, we subsidize rent-geared-to-income.

The Chair: Both of you have 30 seconds left.

Mrs Marland: I would finish by saying that you can't expect the people in this room who are working and paying income tax which goes to government, which provides government with an ability to provide programs, to do that for other people who may be earning the same as they are, but without income testing or establishing what it is they're earning in an accurate format --

Hon Ms Gigantes: This is not a question of eligibility that we're dealing with. I raised the question in the wrong way if you've understood it that way. What I'm saying to you is, if working people who earn a very low income come to you as the administrator of a non-profit housing program in Peel and say, "I would like to rent a market unit, no subsidy involved here, at the market rent, but it's going to take 50% of my household income," and you say, "No, I want you to have a high enough income to meet the mixed-income target of this development so that you don't have to pay 50% of your income; you can get by paying on the market rent that will only take 30% of your household income" --

Mrs Marland: But Madam Minister, for you to know those figures --

The Chair: Mrs Marland, I really appreciate --

Mrs Marland: Just 10 seconds.

The Chair: No. I am told we may be called to the House for a vote by 5 o'clock, and I am going to recognize Mr Lessard. There will be a further rotation for both you and the minister.

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Walkerville): Madam Minister, I received a letter from the Ontario Plumbing Inspectors Association last week with respect to Bill 112, the Building Code Act. They say in their letter -- and this was a letter that had been sent to the Premier -- that they were desirous that only persons who are adequately knowledgeable in the field of plumbing should perform the duties of a plumbing inspector.

At one of their meetings, they had passed a resolution, and the resolution states that they feel that councils of each municipality with a population of 50,000 and greater should appoint a chief senior plumbing inspector who possesses the qualifications of a plumber as defined in regulation 52, made under the Apprenticeship and Tradesmen's Qualification Act, and such inspectors as are necessary for the purposes of enforcement of this act in which the municipality has jurisdiction.

They really want only plumbers to be able to do plumbing inspections. I know that Bill 112 was passed last year. I just wondered whether the concerns of the plumbing inspectors association were taken into consideration at the time and whether there's a response to the letter I received from the plumbing inspectors association about this issue.

Hon Ms Gigantes: If the plumbing inspectors association has written the ministry, it will receive a response. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what it will be. I do know that as we've developed changes to the building code and as we've attempted to make sure that the building code is properly implemented around Ontario, we certainly have had contact on a regular basis with the professional organizations involved. Perhaps Dan would be better placed to -- let's put it frankly: He knows more about this stuff than I do.

Mr Burns: Mr Chair, the Building Code Act puts the onus on the chief building official of a municipality to ensure that permits are issued in accordance with the code and that inspections take place during the construction period up to the issuance of an occupancy permit. There exists within the professional associations in this field, within the community colleges and within the ministry, an ongoing program of training for all of the issues that arise in the construction process, not just plumbing.

The largest municipalities, in my experience, do maintain on their staff a variety of particular technical skills, including fully trained professional engineers and, in the normal course of events, people with qualifications in a number of the construction trades, including plumbing. As you get to smaller and smaller jurisdictions, they have fewer and fewer staff and it's more common to find people who have some exposure across a spectrum of the issues, some level of training.

We have not required, to my knowledge, municipalities to maintain on their staff, by size of municipality or by any other indicator -- volume of building permits, for example -- a particular set of professional skills. So some small municipalities, for example, which have only a general inspector and where the chief building official may also be the head of the planning operation or the chief engineer, if they get a large, complex project, tend to hire someone else to help them assess the application to ensure it's professionally done. The reason for that is, by and large, their liability insurance. They have to protect the council and the chief building official against suits.

Having said that, if any professional association, whether that's engineers or anyone from the construction trades, believes it has a valid argument to put forward that some part of the construction process should only be assessed by people with particular professional training, we will take that proposition seriously and look at it seriously and have a discussion with the organization.

Mr Lessard: I have another question in another area. A couple of weeks ago, I was approached by two groups in the city of Windsor, both of which I know very well and know and respect the work they do in the community. One of them is the Accessible Housing Service and the other one is Community Labour Support Services, which are both interested in making application to a government program that provides funding for providing affordable housing services in the community. They were both interested in my support.

I suppose it would be great if they could put together a joint proposal to access this government funding, but it doesn't seem as though they're able to do that. However, it does seem that the government's current initiatives are such that both of these groups aren't going to be able to continue to provide services separate and apart from one another.

I wonder whether the minister could give me some idea of what it is we're trying to achieve in this area, because I know I've lobbied in the past for extended funding for the Accessible Housing Service and it's been one year. It seems as though the time is up. I mean, there has to be a time when the extensions are going to end and we have to decide what it is we're doing and what services we want provided in the community and who's going to provide them.

Hon Ms Gigantes: I'll try to be very brief. The issue you raise is a very important one. There are groups around this province which are providing a very important service to the people who live in their communities when it comes to housing problems, to put it most generally. That includes active tenant groups. It includes groups, for example, which specialize in legal services around housing issues, such as CERA. It concludes groups such as the access to permanent housing projects.

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In the Ministry of Housing we had suggested that we take over the responsibility for the access to permanent housing committees and projects from Community and Social Services in the last fiscal year. We did that. We picked up one half of the costs in 1992-93. There are 11 projects, which are known in our ministry vernacular as small programs, which added up to something over $11 million in fiscal 1992-93, for which we have had to look for reductions in programs and reductions in funding.

Some of them we've just eliminated. They were small programs, they were not vital programs and we've got away from them. Some of them will go next year including, for example, assistance to municipalities to help them comply with the requirements under the housing policy statement. There, the funding has been multi-year funding, and those agreements will run out at the end of this fiscal year. So some of them don't pose a long-term drain on the moneys that are available but, overall, we have about $7 million to spend on these programs which provide assistance to people who are having difficulty around housing within their communities.

What we have done is amalgamated the access to permanent housing efforts with the home-sharing efforts, with the partners-in-housing efforts that are going on around the province and asked that within each community those projects try and get together and decide their priorities, see if there are ways that they can within what is in most cases a reduced allocation.

We've tried to distribute the amounts in a fair way around the province compared to, for example, the number of tenants in the province who will be in need of assistance from tenants' groups. We've tried to make a regional allocation which is fair and we've asked the groups to try and work together to come up with proposals for how they will proceed. We're proposing that this not be a year-to-year kind of funding arrangement as the access to permanent housing projects had been, but that it be longer-range core funding.

We know that in some communities groups have been able to come together and make joint proposals and in other communities that hasn't been possible. Some communities have received a higher level of funding on a per tenant and on a social assistance basis than other communities. We've tried to even out what we thought would be reasonable allocations on that basis.

The deadline for the applications that we've asked for is the end of the month, and we'll see when those applications come in how successful groups have been at the local level in bringing together their proposals.

I'm hopeful that it's going to work out without cutbacks in important services at the community level, and personally I regard this as one of the more important program areas that the ministry's involved in. It is, however, an operating expense in a time when we have had to try and reduce our operating expenses.

Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): I think I'd like to give my time to my colleague Mr Wiseman.

Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): I'd like to put a motion on the floor at this time that would require all estimates hearings for the Ministry of Health to be done in committee room 2.

The Chair: Your motion's out of order. Please proceed with a question.

Mr Wiseman: Could I have an explanation as to why it is out of order, Mr Chair?

The Chair: Because it's a procedural matter, and we're not interrupting the business of the Ministry of Housing estimates, which is my responsibility as the Chair. When we finish our votes today, at day's end, you can raise it as a point of new business, and it would be very helpful at that time, but I'm not going to interrupt the Ministry of Housing estimates. That's my ruling.

Ms Harrington: I had three questions that I wanted to put on the record. Certainly these are matters that have been raised to me from Niagara region and publicly as well that are of concern.

The first one is what Mr Lessard was concerned about, whether or not there would be permanent funding for access to permanent housing and home sharing. You did indicate that you were going to a permanent type of funding.

Hon Ms Gigantes: We won't be looking for a submission year after year. That's right.

Ms Harrington: Okay.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Nothing is ever permanent.

Ms Harrington: Okay. I'll turn to the other questions which I also think are important to the future and the direction of non-profit housing. I think it's important that all of us here try to get the message across the province as to the direction.

The first question is the proportion of subsidy units in non-profit housing. I understand that over the past few years that proportion has changed --

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes.

Ms Harrington: -- that it has increased the subsidy levels. What I wanted to know is your vision of an acceptable range over the next few years ahead and what we're heading into.

The second question I'd like to put on the record is the distribution of non-profit housing across the province. There have been different studies carried out as to what parts of the province should get a greater or lesser share of the allocation at a provincial level.

My suggestion, and I made this at the public accounts committee, was that there should be a closer working relationship with the municipalities or the regions as to how these allocations would be made. But I need to have from you the process that is used now as to where non-profit housing goes and what your vision for the future would be as to how we would locate these units.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Ms Harrington is quite correct in saying that the programs of non-profit housing have changed over the years inasmuch as originally federally/provincially financed non-profit housing had targeted 25% rent-geared-to-income levels within non-profit housing developments. We've come over the years to change that ratio in various programs. Overall, the level is now probably between 70% and 75%. Close to 75% of all non-profit units are rent-geared-to-income.

We haven't set a defined level. It is up to the groups that are proposing developments to make us an offer, as it were, and because there's lot of competition in that offering process. For example, in the December proposal call we saw about six times as many proposals come in as there was financing within that proposal call. We expect the same to continue with the rest of Jobs Ontario Homes.

There are some developments which are done on 100% rent geared to income. One I had mentioned earlier was on Coxwell Avenue and had been specifically raised by Ms Marland. It's one which has experienced high costs and some difficulties, because it was designed to serve people who are hard to house, as the phrase goes, people with specific difficulties in maintaining permanent accommodation.

There is a kind of consensus that has developed in Ontario that it is wise to have mixed income within non-profit developments. I know there are projects which run at close to 100% or 100% RGI and work very well. I think it depends on the time, the place, the sponsor, the people who are going to be housed. It depends on a lot of variables, but I think that, overall, we'd expect that developments would continue at about the 75%, maybe 80% rent-geared-to-income level in terms of the proposals that are coming in.

Distribution is an interesting question too. Dan is the world's expert on distribution of housing, so I should let him speak to it.

The Chair: Please proceed, Deputy.

Mr Burns: Since 1986, when by agreement the provinces took over the delivery of non-profit cooperative housing from the federal government, we have as a group of provinces worked with the federal government on a model that was intended to give a measure of housing need within a province, and when a province was large enough, within regions within a province. I think in our case, we've got 14 or 17, a number in that order of magnitude.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Too many.

Mr Burns: Yes, too many. The specific measure has the unfortunate acronym of CNITS.

The Chair: Excuse me, I apologize for interrupting. We are being called to a vote in the House. I would ask members to return as quickly as possible, because it is our hope to finish our estimates today. This committee stands recessed until the vote is completed, at which time we'll return.

The committee recessed from 1701 to 1716.

The Chair: I'd like to call to order and resume our estimates of the Ministry of Housing. I am advised that we may be called to the House at around a quarter to or 10 to, and I require at least four minutes to complete our votes since we've agreed to stack our votes. If that is agreeable, I'll move immediately to Mrs Poole for about 15 minutes of her estimates.

Hon Ms Gigantes: I have an answer for Ms Poole that I could give quickly. She had asked, in the last two years how many of the units which had been allocated were allocated to co-ops. I'll do it by program: the federal-provincial in 1992, 546 units out of 3,062 or 18%; in P-10,000, 4,056 units of 9,918 or 41%; in the jobs ready component of Homes Now -- what's the jobs ready?

That's the December call for Jobs Ontario Homes which is not called -- yes, it's called jobs ready -- strike me dead -- 385 units --

Mr Turnbull: Tempting.

Hon Ms Gigantes: No, God only does that -- out of 2,196 or 17.5%; and in the federal-provincial 1993 allocation, the initial selection -- it's not finished yet -- 664 units out of 2,188 or 30%. The target for Jobs Ontario Homes overall for the co-op sector is 35% to 40%.

Ms Poole: But the jobs ready is not part of -- it is?

Hon Ms Gigantes: It is part of Jobs Ontario Homes.

Ms Poole: It's not Homes Now?

Hon Ms Gigantes: It was the initial call that we did in December. That's correct.

Ms Poole: I'm sorry. I thought you said jobs ready from Homes Now.

Hon Ms Gigantes: I did. I screwed it up. Forgive me.

Ms Poole: On that I think I can forgive you.

I'd like to ask a number of fairly brief questions and I'm hoping the minister could just give a brief answer in view of the fact that we're now running out of time.

On the eligibility process, people are really asking a lot of questions on who determines this. Let's say there's a family in need of an affordable housing unit and they're interested in non-profit housing. I'm not talking about an MTHA or an OHC or co-op; I'm talking about something probably run by a charity, a church, whatever. Who reviews their application to the building and determines the type of subsidy they're entitled to? This is their initial application. Who deems that they are eligible for subsidy?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Sue Herbert may want to come up and correct me when I fall wrong. I'll try and do it very briefly. They make application either to the local housing authority or to the specific non-profit. The non-profit will have a target which it has agreed to achieve in its initial allocation plan with the ministry. That will include a certain number of RGI units. The household will be eligible for rent-geared-to-income assistance to pay the rent in the unit at a level, currently, of 25%; it will become 26% in the next few months for the 1993-94 period, and it will rise further each year by 1%, up to the level of 30% of household income over the next five years.

Who determines which people are selected? When rent-up is going on, non-profits have an agreement that they take names from the local housing authority, and in almost all cases there's been no problem with that. However, as time goes by, non-profits have not held to the original understanding in many cases. This was noted by the Provincial Auditor. They take names from the local housing authority list, which has led to some of the points that he raised in his report, which are that there's not a really accurate way of determining who's on whose list and, second, to make sure that people are being addressed in some sense of priority. There is always the question of whether some non-profits are screening so that they are choosing people who are easiest to serve, rather than hardest to serve, as clients.

To address this question, which was widely discussed publicly in the housing policy framework consultation around the province, we came up with a proposed policy in Consultation Counts, our policy response to that consultation, in which we said we would try to develop a one-window approach. That process, the development of a one-window approach, is going on right now. There is consultation going on with housing providers across the province on how best to achieve that.

Ms Poole: That leads into a whole series of questions I had. I'm specifically interested in situations where the non-profit decides that somebody is eligible to come into their building without taking them from a municipal or a housing authority list, the ones that the auditor had targeted in his report.

Hon Ms Gigantes: He said there was no assurance in this system.

Ms Poole: That's right.

Hon Ms Gigantes: He's quite correct. That had been noted in the housing policy framework discussion which we initiated around this province before he wrote his report.

Ms Poole: I think I would say to you that the auditor was out there compiling his report at the same time you were doing your housing framework.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Well, we didn't wait for him. Let's put it that way.

Ms Poole: The concern I have is the ministry involvement in this process and whether in fact the ministry is doing either a look at every single application or, at the very minimum, if it is doing any type of spot check to ensure that these are meeting the requirements of the eligibility, whether it be a shallow or a deep subsidy or --

Hon Ms Gigantes: There's no question about that. The question is, who gets priority --

Ms Poole: And who's being placed.

Hon Ms Gigantes: -- among the many people who are eligible?

Ms Poole: That's right.

Hon Ms Gigantes: That's the problem he was addressing. He raised no question about whether there were people who were getting rent-geared-to-income assistance and who were ineligible for that. He did not question that. He found no evidence of that.

Ms Poole: What I'm saying to you, Madam Minister, is if we don't have a process in place where it's assured, then it does lead to concern by people, whether in fact --

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes, that's right. Sue, I think, could help.

The Chair: Do you seek further clarification on this, Ms Poole?

Ms Poole: Yes. It could be brief because I do have --

Mr Burns: One sentence, Mr Chairman: When we audit, we audit for compliance in this respect: that the housing provider is properly taking a submission on household income and verifying it, and if verification is required annually, as part of the subsidy arrangement, that that's being done.

Mrs Herbert: The only thing I would add is that as part of our regular administrative review, we also look at the compliance with the existing agreement with the local housing authority. It is part of a cycle of administrative reviews that our administrators do once a program is printed up. But as the minister has already said, we have known for some time that we have some problems with compliance.

Mr Burns: That has to do with the referral process.

Mrs Herbert: Yes, with the referral process.

Mr Burns: But whether other than referrals they are adhering to the practices we require, that's obviously part of our contractual arrangement, but it's also part of an annual audit we do. People know they may be audited on that.

Ms Poole: What progress, if any, has been made towards providing a central waiting list, where individuals needing affordable housing are listed as such only once?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Here again, I'll ask Sue to comment specifically on the measures we're undertaking, because we're not essentially aiming for a central waiting list.

Mrs Herbert: In the consultation process, what we've asked communities to look at is what steps will make sense for their community to ensure adequate access from a consumer's point of view that will be easy and simple and will work in their community. So we're not prescribing one model across the province. Some communities have already established processes to ensure one-window access. I think Hamilton might be one example of that. Other communities are going to look at some shared resources.

We have prescribed certain minimums around ensuring that people who require housing know where to get it and how to get on lists, everything from what I might describe as simple, similar formats for applications so that applications are clearly understood, publishing directories and registries so that people who are applying know where to go, what the different types of housing are, right through to a central registry. But we're asking communities how that would work, and how that would work in their particular community.

Hon Ms Gigantes: And no application fee.

Mrs Herbert: And no application fee. There's a whole number of processes we're looking at right now. We can share with you the document that actually is out formally for consultation. We could have that for you.

Ms Poole: Yes, I'd appreciate that. The bottom line is, are you going to have a central registry? Notwithstanding that each community may access those names in different ways, are you going to have one central registry for the entire province so you know exactly how many people?

Mrs Herbert: No.

Hon Ms Gigantes: No, but we will be able to determine how many people are on waiting lists within a region in an accurate way, as opposed to what exists right now. This is a very tricky and difficult area, as you can well imagine. I think there's suspicion on the side of local housing authorities that non-profits are housing people who are easier to house than local housing authorities are providing housing for, and on the other hand, non-profits feel that the names that are suggested by local housing authorities are the most difficult to house. We have to overcome some of that mutual unease at the community level and work towards some more cooperative and stable kind of way of addressing applications.

Ms Poole: Because I don't have time to go into numerous other questions that I haven't had a chance to address, we will be providing to the minister this week a list of written questions covering the areas of rent control, rental housing, rehabilitation, public housing, co-ops, basement apartments, home ownership, the Condominium Act, further questions about the status of Seaton, housing priority versus sale of assets, the Sewell commission, building code amendments and on the role of the private sector in rental housing in Ontario.

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I just have one request that I would formally make: Last year in Housing estimates, in August, we had tabled a list of written questions with the ministry and we did not get our response until March. I am formally requesting that our Housing critic, Joe Cordiano, be provided with an answer the first day after Labour Day, and if there are questions that the ministry is not able to answer in that time, if it would give our Housing critic a new estimated time when those data will be available.

The Chair: I should like to clarify very quickly that it has been the custom to treat these kinds of requests in a form similar to an order paper question, and that staff be given sufficient time to prepare responses -- that undertaking is usually always forthcoming -- and secondly, that they be circulated to the clerk of the committee, because they are requests through the committee and therefore are available to all members of the committee who so choose them, so that without interrupting your request, the Chair would direct it through the clerk, and it'll be the clerk's responsibility. In that way, it avoids all the unnecessary telephoning and dialogue, because it was an official request through the estimates committee.

Do you have a final statement in your remaining 30 seconds?

Ms Poole: Yes. Just that the reason I specifically mentioned our Housing critic is that I have been substituting for him the past week in his absence.

The Chair: The clerk has so noted that, and it will be done accordingly.

Ms Poole: Thank you.

Mr Turnbull: Minister, earlier this year, actually in January, I brought to your attention a difficult situation at 1002 Lawrence Avenue East.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Yes.

Mr Turnbull: Just to refresh your memory, this is the difficult situation where a rather unscrupulous landlord had bought a building and was attempting, through the back door, to convert it into some form of share ownership in the building, and was trying to squeeze tenants out of the building and tried all kinds of tactics. The lighting was off periodically. Heating was off.

My question to you is, in light of the fact that we had just a little while ago the City of London Act (Vital Services), 1993, a Pr bill, would you consider bringing such legislation forward so that municipalities don't have to ask for this on a piecemeal basis?

I'm particularly concerned in this case. I did an inspection of the building again the other day and there was a notice in the building that Consumers' Gas is actually going to turn off the service tomorrow, which would lead to no hot water for the tenants.

Also, I am concerned at the fact that we have, obviously, the Planning Act and the municipal property standards act which tenants can rely on, but the length of time in order to get any action on this is sometimes untenable. The furnace was essentially inoperative towards the end of last winter, and now we have the opportunity to replace the furnace and nothing has been done. That's a long-winded question but it is just to give the background.

Hon Ms Gigantes: To answer very simply, Mr Turnbull, this issue has arisen before, and not just with respect to this building. Some municipalities, as you're aware -- London most recently -- have sought private bills in order to have the authority to have accounts made up for private utilities into which tenants could pay in situations like this. I have formally addressed to my colleague Ed Philip a letter in which I draw to his attention the possibility of our considering a change which would permit it in all municipalities across Ontario. There have been difficulties around this in the past, so we'll go through a new round of discussion on it. But it's certainly a matter in which I'm very interested.

I should also say that both rent control officials and officials from the rental housing protection office of the ministry have been actively engaged with assisting tenants in that building to become familiar with the assistance they can have through the Rent Control Act and through the Rental Housing Protection Act in the situation they find themselves in.

Mr Turnbull: My constituents have told me that they have woken up at 4 o'clock in the morning and work has been proceeding in other units that they've managed to get vacancies in. This is absolutely intolerable.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Under the Rent Control Act, this might be construed as a question of harassment. Certainly, they are entitled to quiet enjoyment under the Landlord and Tenant Act, and rent control officials are doing their utmost to try and make sure that tenants are aware of all aspects of the existing legislation which can be of assistance to them in this situation.

Mr Turnbull: As to your construing that as a question of quiet enjoyment, I'm not a lawyer, but I think that isn't the correct interpretation of what "quiet enjoyment" means, having those sorts of disturbances in the night.

Hon Ms Gigantes: In fact, we don't administer the Landlord and Tenant Act. That comes under the Ministry of the Attorney General. We do answer a lot of calls at our rent control offices about the Landlord and Tenant Act because many issues that tenants want to raise concern the Landlord and Tenant Act. I can see a volunteer in the group.

The Chair: Mr Glass has returned to the table, Mr Turnbull, and he's been listening intently.

Mr Robert Glass: The difficulty around this type of property, and we have had a number of incidents reported to us, is that essentially what the owners are doing is that there's a change of ownership and they're selling shares; the number of shareholders happens to match the exact number of apartments. Our difficulty in this is that we have not been able at this point to prove that someone has been promised an apartment for buying a share in this new operation. There is an investigation.

Mr Turnbull: I appreciate your difficulty in being able to prove that and I understand how the legislation works, but it's the tactics that are being used to force people out of their units, which is absolutely reprehensible. The poor tenants have paid money into a trust fund and have engaged a lawyer, but in the meantime they're being harassed constantly by little things. Well, it isn't a little thing having the gas turned off or having the heat off for the day, but by the time inspectors get there the situation has usually been remedied. We need to be able to fix these sort of situations on a much more timely basis.

Mr Glass: The tenants could proceed in two directions: under the Landlord and Tenant Act, of course, and they're working with Flemingdon Legal Services around the "quiet enjoyment" provisions or around harassment provisions by the landlord if that's what's being determined; the other way they can proceed, if there are maintenance problems or a reduction in services, is under the Rent Control Act. We've been working with the city of North York to see if we have situations we can deal with under those provisions.

Hon Ms Gigantes: If I could just add to that, the Rent Control Act makes it illegal for a landlord to harass tenants who are in the process of trying to form or operate an association.

Mr Turnbull: I don't think that was the situation.

If we could turn to another question, in my colleague Mrs Marland's opening statements, she discussed a non-profit group which paid $2.85 million for less than two acres of land. I believe this was the Woodgreen Community Centre. Within a matter of a couple of weeks, the sponsoring group made a profit of $2.3 million by selling this to themselves, in essence. The highest price per acre that had ever been recorded in the neighbourhood was $300,000 and they were paying close to $1.4 million per acre for land. Can I ask you whether you have moved to prosecute these people for this action?

Hon Ms Gigantes: The answer is no. We can certainly provide you with information about the project in question.

Mr Turnbull: This is clearly a flip, minister; you remember that famous term, a "flip." This is a flip, and this was perpetrated by the people who were the sponsors of this so-called non-profit housing.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Would you like to comment, Dan?

Mr Burns: I think the land transaction that was discussed in the auditor's report, and which we discussed in public accounts for a period of time, was not a transaction that involved Woodgreen Community Housing. The land transactions of Woodgreen Community Housing were raised at public accounts, but in the context of the Woodgreen Community Centre Foundation providing in effect a write-down of some of the land costs it had incurred towards its project, and had we assessed that and what was our perspective on that?

Mr Turnbull: But do I understand correctly that they had bought it a matter of two weeks before they conveyed it to this non-profit housing association?

Mr Burns: I have not recently examined the files of Woodgreen. It's certainly possible that the community centre bought the land and transferred it to the housing company, which is associated with the community centre. What we did say at the public accounts committee, and which we have said in response to a number of inquiries about this, is that the development proposal they put forward to the ministry was assessed in the same way any other one would be and conformed with our guidelines and was subjected to the same sorts of tests and appraisals and the rest of it that anybody else would be.

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Mr Turnbull: Since you don't seem to be totally familiar with it, let us say hypothetically that this is correct.

Hon Ms Gigantes: No, we can't be hypothetical about this.

Mr Turnbull: Well, then, let me ask you, since you don't seem to have the information, can you undertake to let me know what actions you're going to take if in fact this land was flipped for this kind of profit? This is a flip; this is exactly what people talk about.

Hon Ms Gigantes: You're categorizing it as a flip. I think it's a bit more complex than that. Is it possible that we have some information here that is available immediately?

The Chair: Any volunteers from the staff?

Mr Burns: Just to be clear that the discussion in the auditor's report of a transaction that had some of the characteristics you just identified is not a transaction that involves Woodgreen Community Housing. It's a different transaction.

Mr Turnbull: Does it involve the people who are players in the development?

Mr Burns: No, it's completely in a different place. If you have an apprehension or evidence or material or something about the Woodgreen Community Housing development proposal that we may not have had that you wish us to look at and write you about, we would be happy to do that.

Mr Turnbull: You're telling me it's a different development that has these characteristics.

Mr Burns: Yes. That's what I advised the public accounts committee, and I also explained at some length, at that point, the history of that particular transaction and how it had been assessed.

Mr Turnbull: And had there been profit made by the people who were participants, the sponsors of this?

Mr Burns: I'm certain there was, because the land development industry is a private sector operation in this province, and people seek to make a profit. This particular transaction was, in my memory, a closing now of a transaction begun quite some time earlier and before the planning approvals had been both sought and granted for the land, so that the land itself had changed in value quite considerably over the period of time between the origins of the land transaction and its closing.

Mr Turnbull: But the sponsors of this development were participants in the profit? Is that what I understand from what you're saying?

Mr Burns: As to that particular question, that is, who had arranged for the land transaction and who closed it with the non-profit sponsor, and whether there were individuals who, in your question, were on both sides of the transaction, I don't know the answer to that right now. I'm not quite sure that question was asked of public accounts, but again, you've put it to me and we'll go back and give you an answer for that.

Mr Turnbull: Yes, and if that is the case, if they have made a profit in this way, particularly of the magnitude we're talking about, I would ask you what actions have been taken by the ministry to in some way get back that money. I mean, the whole concept of non-profit housing is totally violated by this sort of transaction.

Mr Burns: The value in that land transaction was supported by appraisals independent of the ministry as well as the ministry's professional appraisal staff.

Mr Turnbull: With due respect, all of the Greymac sales and flips were supported by appraisals.

The Chair: Mr Turnbull, I wish to recognize your colleague, and the deputy has undertaken to get a fuller explanation for you. With your permission, I'd like to recognize Mrs Marland, who has about two minutes left.

Mrs Marland: Thank you, Mr Chair. I'm experiencing the same level of frustration because the time runs out.

I did want to touch, however, on the infamous Bill 90, Madam Minister, because we are receiving calls and letters from all over the province in opposition to basement apartments being as of right. As you know, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, AMO, is also very much concerned about what this is going to do to their municipal planning. I notice that somewhere in your comments you have said, in response to my question about Bill 90, that it's a great way to provide additional affordable housing with no cost to the taxpayer.

What I would like to know is: Are you still going to call it for second reading, and when do you anticipate calling Bill 90 for second reading? Would you be agreeable for it to go out to public hearings? How are you dealing with the concerns of the municipalities and residents that I know you've heard from, because they're writing to you as well?

Hon Ms Gigantes: I'm responding to all the communications we're receiving, including many, many, many people who are indicating their support for Bill 90. I know that, as a member of a party which has expressed its concerns about as-of-right zoning for apartments in houses, you will hear from opponents of the legislation, but there are supporters of the legislation also, and there are many of those.

It is our hope to call the bill for second reading this fall and have it go to committee. The exact nature of the committee work I can't predict at the moment, but I would fully expect that municipal concerns will be raised at the committee, as will be the concerns of people who would like to see this legislation in place.

Mrs Marland: What are you doing to address the concerns of the municipalities in terms of it upsetting their municipal planning?

Hon Ms Gigantes: We're considering every point they raise and will be reviewing all those points before we go to committee. Proposals that come forward that seem to us to make for a reasonable amendment we'll certainly embody in an amendment.

Mrs Marland: Do I have another minute?

The Chair: About a half a minute. Maybe not: I think the House is about to call for a vote, so if I have agreement that this committee has deemed that it has completed the time allocated for its Housing estimates, if I may proceed directly with the vote.

Shall vote 1701 be approved?

All those in favour? Opposed, if any?

Mrs Marland: Opposed. Recorded vote.

The Chair: Opposed is recorded by the clerk: Mrs Marland, Mr Turnbull, Mrs Poole. Motion carried.

Shall vote 1702 be approved?

All those in favour? Opposed? I recognize Marland, Turnbull, Poole. The motion is carried.

Shall vote 1703 be approved?

All those in favour? Opposed? We'll record Marland, Turnbull and Poole opposed. Carried.

Shall vote 1704 be approved?

All those in favour? Opposed, if any? Record Marland, Turnbull and Poole opposed. The motion is carried.

Shall vote 1705 be approved?

All those in favour? Opposed? Record Marland, Turnbull and Poole as opposed. The motion is carried.

Shall the 1993-94 estimates of the Ministry of Housing be approved?

All those in favour? Opposed? We shall record Marland, Turnbull and Poole opposed. The motion is carried.

Shall the 1993-94 estimates of the Ministry of Housing be reported to the House? All those in favour?

Mr Lessard: We just voted on that.

The Chair: No, I just approved them. Now we're reporting them to the House, Mr Lessard.

Shall the 1993-94 estimates of the Ministry of Housing be reported to the House as approved?

All those in favour? Opposed? We shall record Marland, Turnbull and Poole as opposed. That motion is carried.

This meeting stands --

Mr Wiseman: Mr Chairman, I would like to move that the estimates for the Ministry of Health be held in committee room 2, the same room in which the other ministry estimates have been held.

The Chair: That motion is out of order, Mr Wiseman.

Mr Wiseman: You were going to explain to me why it was out of order?

The Chair: Because I don't have a quorum at the moment. The previous time, it was out of order because it wasn't --

Mr Wiseman: We have six members here.

Mr Donald Abel (Wentworth North): Six members plus the Chair; that's a quorum.

The Chair: You were out of order in terms of your time placement. You're also out of order with respect to the fact that I don't have a quorum.

Mr Wiseman: I would like to challenge the Chair.

The Chair: This meeting stands adjourned, to meet again --

Mr Wiseman: I'm challenging the Chair.

The Chair: We don't have a quorum of all caucus members. Estimates does not proceed without members --

Mr Wiseman: They were here and they just took off, Mr Chair. This is unacceptable.

The Chair: Well, if you'd like a full explanation, I am ruling --

Mr Wiseman: I am challenging your ruling.

The Chair: Mr Wiseman, your motion is, on the face of it, highly discriminatory because it hampers the activities of this committee. By prior agreement, this committee has chosen the minister responsible for francophone affairs. We had an incident, and I believe you were present, when matters were raised about that, and in order for this committee to fulfil its mandate and provide every courtesy to every minister of this government, we require the flexibility to order up our business in the manner in which the Chair chooses.

The location is available. Quite frankly, your previous motion, which would situ the committee to one location, was highly discriminatory to the activities of this committee and to several ministers who, from time to time, request the services. The consequences also would be rather expensive to this committee, and until such time as I can report back to the committee about the costs associated with us bringing in bilingual translation services -- these costs have be estimated and put into our budget, but I, as a Chair, would caution the committee about restricting --

Mr Wiseman: My motion --

The Chair: I'm sorry, Mr Wiseman. You have asked me for a ruling. I'm giving you a very full ruling, and you will sit there until I'm finished with this ruling.

Interjection.

The Chair: No, he understands the rules. He has asked, and he's interrupted three times.

Mr Wiseman: But on a point of order, Mr Chair: You are making an indication --

The Chair: You can't raise a point of order on a motion which you have placed on the floor. Those are the rules. Now I am finished.

Mr Wiseman: You have misinterpreted what I have said. I have said the estimates of the Ministry of Health, not the ministry of francophone affairs, and that's my motion.

The Chair: You asked me for a ruling on my previous motion, Mr Wiseman. This meeting stands adjourned to reconvene --

Mr Wiseman: I'm still challenging the Chair.

The Chair: You don't have a quorum, sir. This meeting stands adjourned to reconvene the Ministry of Health estimates tomorrow in room 151. The meeting stands adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 1753.