Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

OFFICE RESPONSIBLE FOR WOMEN'S ISSUES

CONTENTS

Tuesday 19 October 1993

Office Responsible for Women's Issues

Hon Marion Boyd, Minister Responsible for Women's Issues

Sharon McClemont, acting assistant deputy minister and director, policy and research branch

Ellen Passmore, manager, education and training equity unit

Eunadie Johnson, manager, violence against women prevention unit

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)

*Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent 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:

Haslam, Karen (Perth ND) for Mr Bisson and Ms Haeck

Poole, Dianne (Eglinton L) for Mr Elston

Witmer, Elizabeth (Waterloo North/-Nord PC) for Mr Carr

Clerk / Greffière: Grannum, Tonia

The committee met at 1539 in committee room 2.

OFFICE RESPONSIBLE FOR WOMEN'S ISSUES

The Chair (Mr Cameron Jackson): I'd like to reconvene the standing committee on estimates. We have five hours and eight minutes remaining to examine the Office Responsible for Women's Issues. We welcome again the minister. When we last adjourned, there was a series of requests from questioners and I'd like to provide the minister with an opportunity to respond to those before we commence.

Hon Marion Boyd (Minister Responsible for Women's Issues): The official questions that were asked have been passed to the clerk, and those included the list of consultation grants, the statistics on sexually assaulted teens, the update on the Kitchener-Waterloo YWCA, the proportion of crown attorneys who have received training on violence against women issues, the list of the women's groups from across the province -- it's extensive, as you can tell, so we're providing one to each of the opposition caucuses, as they requested -- the costs and results of the TV and radio ads for wife assault and sexual assault, and the information from the Ministry of Health on various women's health issues. They will be handed to the members. They're being duplicated now and I understand you'll have them very shortly.

I would caution on the mailing lists that the constant update problem is one that's there for any mailing list. I just caution that these are as up-to-date as we have at the moment.

The Chair: I believe the governing party completed the last round of questioning, so if I can recognize Ms Poole for a 20-minute segment, is that fine?

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): That'll be fine.

The Chair: Please proceed.

Ms Poole: There are a number of issues I'd like to cover in this particular segment. Perhaps we'll start off with one that has a profound impact on women, and that is breast cancer.

The statistics are now showing for the first time that it is actually one in nine women who are impacted by this disease. It has been evident for a number of years that breast cancer is the leading cancer killer among women, so it is very much a women's issue in the true sense of the word, as well as being a family issue in that it impacts the families of the women who have been affected by this terrible disease.

Minister, one of things I would like to ask you is what kind of advocacy work you have done in this regard. We have had waiting lists, in fact quite unacceptable waiting lists, for radiation treatment in this province for some time. It appears the problem is being exacerbated instead of improving. We have women who are uprooted at a very vulnerable time in their lives and forced to go some distance to receive treatment, quite often to northern Ontario, where they're away from their families and their friends at a very traumatic time for them. If they choose not to accept that, then they have to wait and wait past the optimum time for trying to give effective treatment.

I would like to ask you, what kind of advocacy measures have you and the Ontario women's directorate taken in this regard to try to get this situation remedied?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Certainly, given my position on the policy and priorities committee, where we are attempting, as well as we can, to deal with the kinds of issues that have been raised many times in the House around the difficulty of getting trained oncologists, of ensuring that these facilities are available within communities and so on, I'm a constant advocate in terms of this issue.

As you can imagine, this is an issue that has touched us in our caucus and our cabinet very closely. It is one we feel very strongly must become more and more of a priority. We often are inclined to point out that although people talk about the tragedy of diseases such as AIDS, the total number of people who have died of AIDS is much lower than the number of women who die of breast cancer in this province in any given period of time.

It is a very serious problem. Partly because of the difficulty that we seem to have talking about breast cancer, because it does involve a secondary sex characteristic, we seem not to have been able to make this the primary problem that it is. I should say that I think we're finding the same thing with male prostate cancer. The same figures have now shown that prostate cancer has outstripped lung cancer in men, partly as a result of changes in smoking habits, no doubt, but it is a similar kind of problem.

Getting people to get examined, helping people to accept self-examination, to accept regular checkups, certainly to accept breast screening after the age of 50, is an uphill battle when we have tended, as a community, to have some real reluctance about talking about our body parts if they have sexual connotations to us.

That's one of the things we're trying to overcome in terms of the work we do around helping young women to be comfortable with their bodies, helping to overcome the beauty myths and to really look at our bodies as functioning instruments that we have of control over the world. We need to understand that we need to be mindful of those bodies and very conscious of them.

There's a lot of work that goes on in that kind of area. Obviously, the Ministry of Health is the one that has the line responsibility here. The women's health bureau has done a great deal of work in terms of the awareness campaigns that they have. I know that with the issue of breast cancer, there's a major publicity campaign that will be coming forward on breast cancer in the next very little while to try to encourage more awareness, more acceptance of dealing with this in an open way as a problem.

We continue to do that, to encourage that as budget decisions are made, they are made being aware of the differential impact on women's health in those kinds of situations, and certainly this most recent crisis and concern. The Minister of Health is always well aware that we're advocating very strongly on behalf of women as a priority in this area.

Ms Poole: I certainly accept what the minister has just said as valid and she's articulated it very well. I guess I'm not disagreeing with you about some of the problems associated with bringing this forward as a priority issue, but I also believe that a number of policies of your government, Minister, have led to part of the problem.

We have a difficulty in that there aren't sufficient numbers of specialists, that there aren't sufficient numbers of machines available right now to take care of the problem. Just today, the Leader of the Opposition, Lyn McLeod, raised in the House that of the graduating class of this past June of radiation oncologists, there were 11 and only four of those 11 are actually staying in the province of Ontario to practise; the rest are leaving. I think it is this type of thing that is very worrisome.

The example I raised for you the last time we met of the government's proposal, when it was negotiating with the OMA, that there be restrictions on new paediatricians, psychiatrists and family practice doctors -- all of those practices, I might say, are very heavily dominated by women. That particular policy to curb those professions, I think, was one that signalled to many new doctors in this province that they are not welcome, that there are other jurisdictions which will appreciate their services to a greater extent. I think this is part of the reason why we are finding our new graduates are looking for greener fields. I personally can't blame them.

The other problem, of course, is that there have been significant cutbacks at hospitals. While we're all aware of the need to rationalize the health care system and the costs and put a curb on those costs, at the same time it seems to be an ad hoc crisis intervention, without thinking down the line what the impacts are going to be. We quite recently heard at the Princess Margaret Hospital some of the problems it's been having, not only with bone marrow transplants but with other specialties and what dramatic action it's going to have to take in order to try to make ends meet.

I guess my question, rather than relating to the difficulty of making breast cancer a priority in the minds and hearts and souls of a lot of people across this province, rather than that particular aspect, I would like to ask you what you have done to advocate that we should be encouraging our specialists to stay and to practise in Ontario; what encouragement and incentives you have advocated to the cabinet that it should be providing in order to ensure these specialists are available in this particular area; and what success you've had at the cabinet table, at policy and priorities committee and with treasury board to ensure that the funding and the philosophy are both there to ensure that women's needs are being met in this regard.

1550

Hon Mrs Boyd: I'm sure the member is not asking me to give a verbatim report of what I've said at cabinet. Obviously that's not appropriate. I have advocated very strongly as a member of treasury board in terms of the dollar amounts in terms of the changes that have happened. Obviously the original position of the Ministry of Health was not the position this government took. Finally, in its negotiations with the doctors, we did not agree in the long run that that was the way to ensure that scarce medical attention was available to people, either in northern areas or in specialties like radiation oncology, and that did not happen.

So when you ask what success I had, I'm certainly not going to take the credit for that because we operate our government on a team basis and we made that decision with all of us working together. But I can assure you that my advocacy at the table was certainly on behalf of those who are underserved: women, where that is the case, and children and men when that is the issue there. That is part of the work that one needs to do.

During all of the time that I've been women's issues minister, I've also had responsibilities as a line minister in other ministries, one of which was Community and Social Services, and many of those who are affected by breast cancer and other illnesses, many women, are also clients of that ministry because of their inability to work and their need for supportive services, counselling services and other community services.

So there's a double edge to the kind of advocacy you do, not just on the part of women who have single-issue problems like breast cancer but recognizing that when that occurs in a person's life it's a devastating issue and there are many supports that are required. So there's a great breadth of advocacy that needs to be done, not just in the direct area.

I'd like to remind the member that the 1985 study, when it looked at the whole situation, made recommendations. Since that time, 18 new radiation machines have been made available. There are 13 more that are in process that should be up and running by 1997-98. This is a very expensive proposition and we're prepared to put our dollars into that capital, knowing we're putting those dollars into the health of the province of Ontario and particularly the women of Ontario.

The support for the training and the expansion of training for radiation technologists and so on was a direct outcome of our recognition that we need to be much more proactive in terms of ensuring that we have the professional staff we require in order to offer the appropriate services. I advocate very strongly at every opportunity I have on this as well as the other issues but would repeat again, it is not my primary responsibility to deliver, to announce, those kinds of programs.

Ms Poole: I'll just make one final comment on this particular aspect. The minister has said that the government made the decision not to proceed with the policy, which I might call a draconian policy, towards young new doctors and that she obviously had a role in advocating in that regard, and I don't dispute that.

But the problem is, Minister, what I have seen with your government in a number of instances is that certain things are used as negotiating tools, certain proposals, draft policies, and in my opinion the government probably doesn't intend to proceed with them but they're a negotiating tool to bring the other partner to a stage where it will get an acceptable compromise.

The problem is, when you go to the OMA with a proposal like that and it becomes public, in the minds of people they have something to fear. So even though in the final analysis, after several months, the government decided not to proceed in that direction, in the meantime that fear has been raised and it's quite intimidating for people.

There's no doubt in my mind that those oncologists who were just coming on stream in the graduating class in June were influenced by the fear that young doctors would not be encouraged and given incentives to practice in Ontario. It's just a final comment in that regard, but I think it does have an impact.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I wonder if I could respond to that, because in fact even under that policy, specialists who were in fields that were underserviced were to be allowed to practise. So for radiation oncologists, where we have a shortage, that was not the case, as with HIV specialists. They were not included. Even in that original proposal there was a very clear issue around underservice being not only underservice in the north, which was our primary concern, and I must tell you that I think the proposal was sincere.

I agree with you that it wasn't the best proposal, and we reached a compromise proposal that we think accomplished the goals of both those who were concerned about underservice and those who were concerned about young doctors. But even in the original proposal this kind of area was very clearly part of what we were talking about by underservicing, and those physicians would not have been penalized. That was very clear.

Ms Poole: Yes, and I certainly never implied that it was not clear that oncologists were not included in that particular proposal. It was limited to the three specific areas. But the fact remains that when that happens, the first thing that goes through people's minds is, "Am I next?" There were young doctors in many other fields who felt the writing was on the wall that there was going to be a phasing out of the number of physicians in Ontario and that if their specialty, by the time they got through extensive medical training, no longer had -- what's the opposite of surplus?

Hon Mrs Boyd: A deficit?

Ms Poole: A deficit, thank you. No, that wasn't the word either, Minister, but thank you for your attempt. Anyway, if there was no longer a shortage -- that's what I wanted -- in that particular field, they would then face that after their extensive training.

I think I have about 10 minutes left -- five minutes. I'd like to go into the area of pay equity in a couple of different instances. This is actually an opportunity for the minister to advocate in the future. I don't know; she may be aware of this particular situation, but if not, I'm pleased to be able to bring it to her attention.

I know the minister is familiar with the Pay Equity Advocacy and Legal Services, which many of us know as PEALS. PEALS is a group that was set up in 1990 to help women, with the new Pay Equity Act, in providing both advocacy and legal services. I think it's fair to say it was targeted to the non-unionized women who didn't have advocates to act on their behalf. I think they've been quite an effective organization both in taking matters into the review and also to the tribunal stage. Originally, the legislation was basically to be in effect by 1995 and PEALS's mandate was therefore tied to that particular date. So as of March 1, 1995, PEALS's mandate expires.

The particular problem they have is twofold. One is that it takes an extensive period of time to take a case before the tribunal and it is quite common for it to take between one and three years to get a decision. Obviously, when the lawyers at PEALS are giving a commitment to their clients, it extends for an extensive period in time. They're now at the stage where they have less than a year and a half left, the legislation has now been expanded to include a new group and yet, as of next spring, they won't be able to give those commitments.

The other problem is an operational point of view, which I think from their perspective was the lesser priority. But they would like to know, in advance of their mandate expiring, that indeed they can give commitments that they will be able to pursue these very lengthy cases.

I wonder if we could have a comment from the minister, if you are aware of their particular situation and if you're willing to go to bat for the Ministry of Labour to extend their mandate as soon as possible so that they know they will be able to act on behalf of these women.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I certainly am aware of that, obviously, with both my hats on. Actually my staff member is reminding me that -- I was going to say one week, but in two weeks we actually have a meeting with PEALS from both OWD and the Ministry of Labour to talk about these very issues. Then, of course, there will be the task of looking at the extension of funding and mandate with the clinic services group with the law society.

1600

Ms Poole: I'm very pleased to hear that the minister is meeting with them and I hope you can give a commitment in the near future to talk to the Minister of Labour and see if you can in turn secure a commitment from him to give them an early response so they can do their work effectively.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I certainly hope so, too. We need to make some decisions about the best way in which to provide that assistance, whether it continues to be under the current arrangement or whether it becomes a specialty clinic as, for example, ARCH would be and that sort of thing.

The expansion of the mandate under the new legislation makes it much more complicated in many cases because it is a fairly complex process, often determining proxy and proportional. My expectation would be that the needs will certainly be there and there certainly will be an argument for continuing the assistance.

Ms Poole: Thank you. I'm very reassured to hear that. One of the other issues you may be discussing at that time is that for the last two years PEALS has had its funding cut by $55,000, which is 10% of its budget, which has --

Hon Mrs Boyd: As have all clinics.

Ms Poole: That's right. It is particularly onerous when their mandate is actually expanding to cover new legislation as well as the old legislation. It does put a particular onus on them.

With reference to the proxy, the minister talked about the complexity and I certainly agree wholeheartedly with that analysis. In fact, I asked PEALS, when I was meeting with them last week, if they had cases yet before them under the proxy or if it was too premature, and they said they've really just begun that process but they do believe it is going to require a lot of resources on their part.

Hon Mrs Boyd: They have certainly cautioned us that they thought that might be an issue as the legislation went through, so it's not something we're unaware of. Obviously, the access to legal services continues to be a real problem, given the shrinking budgets that we all have, and how to make that the most appropriate kind of representation is a real challenge to us.

One of the issues I want to look at with PEALS is, when people come forward with similar case situations, whether there is a way in which we can alternately deal with those disputes rather than having to go through the full process that we often have to do and whether we can establish a template, if you like, whereby decisions can be made by the commission on the basis of, "These folks fit this template and therefore this is where we go." It's one of the possibilities we'll be considering with them.

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): I want to continue from where we left off last week, Minister. Last week you shared with us some information regarding the role of the directorate and also the advantages of being part of the cabinet committee process. You indicated that involvement at the level of the cabinet committee process provided your office with the opportunity to voice your objectives and also to advocate on behalf of women and possibly alter ministry decisions and initiatives that were being made if you perceive reforms to be problematic towards women.

I'd like to deal with a couple of policy decisions that have been adopted by your government at this time, which our party believes will have a very negative impact on women in this province. They stem from your government's determination to eliminate the private sector involvement in the delivery of both health and child care services. Of course, the two areas I'm specifically speaking to are (1) child care and (2) home care.

I have certainly received many letters of concern from women, because this policy decision is going to force many women who are the owners of the child care and the home care services, who have been employers, who have been in a position where they are able to make a difference, to be reduced to the status of employees or even possibly unemployed individuals. I think it's disgraceful that women have been reduced from what I perceive to be, and you could call, a position of power. Suddenly, they're left with absolutely nothing, plus they've lost their life savings.

I'd like to deal with the issue of child care first. We know your government is intent on totally wiping out private child care. It's devastating. In fact, when you were Minister of Community and Social Services you implemented funding decisions and you issued policy directives that have had a very disastrous effect on women who own, and also those who work in, child care centres, because we know that most of the owners and the employees are women.

But what really concerns me is that the debate over the delivery of child care services has really not focused on what is in the best interests of the child. It's been transformed into a war, an all-out war against the private child care workers and the sector that employs those individuals.

We know your government has allocated $200 million to the purpose of driving the private operators out of business. We know that today, as compared to 1985, there are at least 250 fewer child care centres of a private nature. We know as well that in 1985 there were more than 40,000 licensed child care spaces, or 27%, located in all the private child care centres. That's been reduced in 1990 to less than 30,000.

As I said before, the reduction, the elimination of the private child care sector has translated into the loss of businesses, the loss of seniority for these women, the loss of benefits and the loss of a choice of employment. It has given women less opportunity than they had before. In fact, in some there's no opportunity left whatsoever.

You know, we talk about women and women attaining positions of responsibility through employment equity. Yet this move totally eliminates the opportunity for a woman to own a business and feel good about her accomplishment. It doesn't make any sense to me. There are thousands of families across the province waiting for fee subsidies, and I believe the money you've spent on wiping out the private sector could have been better spent on fee subsidies. I'm disappointed that hasn't happened.

In 1991, there was $105 million devoted to putting the private operators out of business. There was $30 million given to all non-profit child care workers; they got the $2,000 raise. There was $16 million for non-profit organizations to allow them to purchase toys and equipment from private child care services wishing to convert to non-profit. There was $31 million to staff of child care services that have converted to non-profit, so that they receive the benefit of full direct operating grants and the $2,000 salary enhancement once the conversion process is complete; $10 million for replacement of private services which may close as opposed to converting; and $10.8 million to assist the non-profit services that were currently in financial difficulty because of declining enrolments attributable to the recession and the distribution of the subsidized spaces. As well, in January 1992, all new fee subsidies were automatically given only to the non-profit sector unless a municipality was able to show that non-profit child care was unavailable in that particular community.

1610

It concerns me because I see something happening and I see an ideology that somehow this government believes that parents cannot adequately care for their children. They seem to be demanding that the government knows best and that our children should all be in non-profit child care. Personally, I think that's an insult. Parents want to make a decision and they should be the individuals who have the sole responsibility for deciding who cares for their children.

What is the best placement? We know there were outstanding private sector child care facilities -- there still are a few -- and now that choice for parents has been totally eliminated. It's like Big Brother knows best, or Big Sister. We don't know best. Governments make mistakes and we need to recognize that.

On the other hand, if you take a look at the children who are in desperate need of mental health treatment -- and I'm going to speak to that later today or tomorrow -- unfortunately, there's been no money devoted to helping those children. Yet we have this experiment that is ridding this province of private child care. I'm extremely concerned about the direction of valuable tax dollars to this particular initiative.

The latest in a type of attack by this government on the private child care sector -- and, as I say, it is so unfortunate that these people have been driven out of their businesses -- was the announcement of June 24, 1992, where $97 million, as part of the Jobs Ontario Capital fund, was directed to the non-profit child care sector. This money is being used over the next two years to build non-profit child care centres, to renovate them, to expand them. This, to me, is a very irresponsible use of taxpayers' money at a time when we have thousands of spaces in both the non-profit and the profit-making child care centres and when we see that these places are being closed because of underutilization. Yet we're building new spaces.

We know you're going to introduce new child care legislation in the future. If the government's past record is any indication, women who own and work in private child care centres are going to really suffer further hardship. We talk about your role, we talk about the role of the women's directorate and yet nobody seems to care about these women who have lost their businesses.

I'd like to ask you to provide me with some information. I'd like to be provided with a list of the number of subsidized spaces in non-profit child care centres, by centre and municipality, for the years 1985 to 1993 and the projected number of spaces in 1993-94.

I'd like a list of the non-profit child care centres that have requested financial bailouts because of financial difficulty since September 1990.

I'd like a list of the private child care centres that have requested a financial bailout because of financial difficulty since September 1990.

I'd like a list of the non-profit child care centres that have been awarded money from the province to contend with financial difficulties since September 1990.

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): This wouldn't be political, would it?

Mrs Witmer: Personally, I'm concerned about the children in this province, not your ideology.

Mr Bisson: Oh, Elizabeth.

Mrs Witmer: I'd like a list of the private child care centres that have been awarded money from the province to contend with financial difficulty since September 1990.

I'd like a list of the private child care centres that have closed since September 1990; a list of the non-profit child care centres that have closed since 1990; a list of the non-profit child care centres that have opened since September 1990; a list of the private child care centres that are expected to open in the future; a list of the non-profit child care centres expected to open, by centre and municipality; and an accounting of how provincial transfers to the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care have been spent by the coalition for the last five fiscal years.

I would also like you to table a record of the number of telephone calls, letters and petitions, including the number of signatures, that have been received by the minister's office expressing either support for or opposition to the decision to give fee subsidies solely to non-profit child care programs, showing the breakdown in terms of the number supporting the measure and the number opposed and the names of the organizations which expressed either support for or opposition to the policy.

Mr Bisson: That should keep them going till the coffee break.

Mrs Witmer: And I'd like you to table --

The Chair: Excuse me. Please, Mr Bisson.

Mrs Witmer: -- a record of the number of telephone calls, letters and petitions, including the number of signatures, received in the minister's office expressing either support for or opposition to the decision to provide wage enhancement grants for child care workers solely in the non-profit child care sector, showing the breakdown in terms of the number supporting the measure, the number opposed and the names of the organizations which expressed either support for or opposition to the policy.

Maybe I should just mention what our party believes is important. What principles --

The Chair: Mrs Witmer, there are four minutes remaining in your time allocation and it's been the custom to at least allow some time for a minister's response. We do have several more hours, but we'd hoped we would allow the minister some time to give some partial response.

Mrs Witmer: That's fine.

Hon Mrs Boyd: First of all, I will certainly see that the Ministry of Community and Social Services is requested to provide what material it has but, quite frankly, with the kind of detail that you're asking and given the kinds of work this might involve -- if it were an FOI request, you know what the kind of response would be in terms of an estimate of cost -- I can't guarantee you that we can provide that with the detail you've asked.

Some of that material has been provided to your party already, when I went through estimates last year; it should only need updating. Some of that will be available and I will certainly encourage the ministry to provide it to you.

It is always very interesting to me that when your party discusses ideology, you discuss ideology as though only our ideology is an ideology. The ideology of privatization has been the ideology in this province under the last two parties, with the exception of the work the Liberal Party did in terms of the changes in child care that came into effect throughout 1987. So let's not throw stones about ideology. We have reasons for our ideology. Your ideology is that services are best provided through private enterprise; our ideology is that public money is best spent in a non-profit situation where there's community-based control.

I would remind you that when we talk about non-profit, we're talking about a community base that includes much more input by parents in the model of child care we're talking about. You talk only about certain groups of women who are involved and who may be affected negatively by this policy. There are many, many women, many parents who are going to be affected positively by our policy, because we will be able to ensure that more child care spaces are available to a larger number of people and that those parents will have some control over the kind of child care their families have.

I would also remind you that as services developed in the past, they very often developed privately, and then we as a community, all of us, no matter what our ideology, decided that if we were going to spend taxpayers' money, we needed to have the accountability that accords to taxpayers' money. So hospitals became deprivatized in this country. Public, elementary and secondary schools, for the most part, have become deprivatized, and the same is true of other services as we have moved to more and more community responsibility.

I would say to you that we have a clash of ideologies, absolutely, and that indeed you have expressed very well your ideology in attacking ours.

1620

The Chair: You have a minute and a half, Ms Witmer.

Mrs Witmer: I guess what I believe needs to always be uppermost is that we take a look at the quality of care and also make sure that the parents have the sole responsibility for deciding who it is who cares for their preschool child. To me, that's most important and I think we need to treat that in a very equal, non-discriminatory manner, and I believe there is a need for both profit and non-profit in this province. I would not eliminate the for-profit sector.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We have not eliminated it. We have said we will not put additional dollars into the for-profit. We have protected the existing centres. We have made it very clear that they have been grandparented out of this situation, but we will not expand the taxpayers' dollars that go into the private sector and we've made that clear all along. Those who choose, because they can't expand their businesses, to no longer offer those businesses, that is a different issue, but those that were already offering services that met the licensing requirements we in no way disentitled from what they were able to access previously.

Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): I'd like to explore an area where we haven't gone. It has to do with the impact on women of the job losses because of the North American free trade deal, the potential job losses with the North American free trade deal and the impact that has on families within society and in particular the women within those societies, within those families and the young children. What I would like to do is perhaps ask you if you've done any work on what that impact has been so far on the fact that the province of Ontario has lost, what, some 363,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector because of the high dollar and the high interest rates and the free trade deal.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Absolutely. I think women, of course, being the relative newcomers to the full labour force, have suffered disproportionately. The directorate had originally put out a paper on the free trade deal -- what it meant in terms of women's jobs, what the impact would be -- and we have only recently updated that. That paper is available in its final draft form, its pre-publishing form. I'd be happy to provide it for members of the committee, and as soon as it's published of course it will be released -- we're in the midst of translation right now -- to talk about what NAFTA does and what the disproportionate effect on women is.

It is very clear that the traditional kinds of occupations that women have had, particularly in our manufacturing industries, have been in areas where they've been most affected. Areas like textiles, shoes, games, small electrical appliances, those kinds of manufacturing enterprises have tended to be the kinds of enterprises that have suffered most under free trade and we expect will under NAFTA and of course where there are a disproportionate number of the women who work in the manufacturing sector actually working.

So we share your concern. Whenever there is a complete restructuring such as we're having to go through because of changed trade practices, our job in the directorate is to look at how that may affect the group of people on whose behalf we advocate.

Our real concern is in the new area that has never been really looked at before in terms of trade, and that's trade in services, because by far the largest number of women are involved in services: services like computing services, the kind of data entry, the kind of telecommunications tasks that we see as a growing part, as well as services like home care or child care, where again there is some concern about the provision of services. That is obviously an important aspect of the work that we do in terms of providing the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs and the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade with as much advice and information as we can and to advocate as strenuously as we can that our industrial strategy and our trade strategy keep very clearly in focus the disproportionate effect of this kind of change on women.

Mr Wiseman: Do you also have within that study an analysis of how large the needlework underground economy and the piecework economy have grown since the free trade deal in terms of trying to keep some of the garment industry competitive in the market?

I understand that as recently as just a few years ago, what was happening in this area was that it almost became clandestine. Whole outfits would have to be put together and it would be on a piecework basis. Hours and hours of labour to do this would wind up having somebody paid maybe 50 cents an hour and it would be a very small amount of money coming to the person who was doing all the work. If they didn't do it, then they would suffer huge consequences in terms of losing future work and contracts, and the consequences of that of course would be that you would have women working hours and hours and receiving little benefit, with no rights and no protection and labour laws don't apply.

Hon Mrs Boyd: In working with the home workers associations and groups like Intercede and so on, they are very concerned about this. There's actually a study that's ongoing right now of the growth in home work and the numbers of women who would have done textile work in particular, and shoes I believe as well, where they would be in a group situation and they would have the strength of numbers and there would be the possibility of labour inspections -- that sort of thing moving into the home and working on exactly the basis that you talk about.

We've always had piecework in our economy. That's not a new thing. It's the growth of that piecework and our apparent inability, with our current Employment Standards Act, to control the kinds of things that are happening. It's kind of like some of the subcontracting in the construction industry. Most of the work will be subcontracted down and down, so it's hard to get a trace on who the original employer is. When someone doesn't get paid at the bottom of that pyramid, one of the pieceworkers, it's very hard to know who the responsible person is to go after.

We have been advocating very strongly with the Ministry of Labour around improvement employment standards. One of the things that we are advocating very strongly on behalf of women is that there be a requirement for the main manufacturer to guarantee that payment. We're working on a number of different mechanisms to try and ensure that that happens. I think we should all be concerned about that.

We tend to think, though, of home work only in that field of those small manufacturing things, and again I would say to you quite directly that I think, in services, particularly mailing services, typing services, computer and data entry services, we are seeing more and more women isolated at home and doing that work at home without the protection and the benefits of having a workplace that is easily organized and where there is the possibility of collective action to protect their rights. The more isolated people become, the less able they are to access their own rights in a complaints-driven system such as we have.

Mr Wiseman: To move in another direction, and I hope to come back to those because I have more questions, but another issue, and I think it's emerging and I don't know if you've done any work on this, is pollution and the impact of pollution on women and on foetuses. What is becoming more and more apparent is that while we thought the pollution levels of the Great Lakes was reducing, what we're finding is that some of it is being reduced in terms of phosphates and so on, but what we're getting is a much more dangerous kind of pollution with dioxins and fluorines that are actually not just carcinogenic but also will deform foetuses. We've had, for example, reports just this year of women who have delivered babies that clearly have been affected by pollution. Has the women's directorate started any work, or how far in are you in terms of being able to assess what the unique impacts are of pollution on women and their role in terms of the nurturing of our children?

1630

Hon Mrs Boyd: We work very, very closely with the groups that are working on both the environmental issues and how those environmental issues impact on health. In the area that you were talking about, one of the things that we know is that the increase in breast cancer is thought by many to be very clearly an indication of how the increased carcinogens within the air and the water in fact are affecting women. There's real evidence, in terms of the research that's been done on breast cancer, that that's one of the forms of cancer that shows up that kind of effect of a polluted environment very quickly.

The other issue of course is that we have a growing tendency, I think, not to honour the role of motherhood and the role of mothers in feeding their children. There is no question that when we know we have polluted water systems, to be feeding our babies artificial formula using that water to weaken that formula is a very dangerous thing. Many of us in North America very self-righteously talked about that as a problem in developing countries and participated in the real issue around when you don't have a clean water supply, how do you deal with the issue of feeding infants; the same problem we have here. So those are areas in which we work very closely. We don't take a prime role because our main function obviously is not environmental, but I think I would say very clearly that women are very, very conscious of a particular trust for us in terms of protecting the environment for our children and our grandchildren and our descendants for ever. I think the environmental movement has been fuelled very much by that commitment and that necessity to maintain health and safety.

Mr Wiseman: I had more, but I will come back to those things.

Mrs Karen Haslam (Perth): I've got a lot of things to talk about too, but the one I'd like to start on first of all is something that I was talking about last time and that was young women. I notice in the information that you gave us, first of all, the TV and radio ads for wife assault-sexual assault prevention, on the second page it says, "See attached evaluations." We did not receive that.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Okay. We will see that you do.

Mrs Haslam: Thank you. We didn't get the results; we only got the costs.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Okay. We should get you the -- because the evaluation results are certainly available and everybody's looking puzzled that you didn't get them.

Mrs Haslam: They're not attached to any of the --

Interjection.

The Chair: We're not picking that up.

Ms Poole: The opposition parties I think were both given a copy of this, so perhaps we can give the government --

Mrs Haslam: And the government party wasn't.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We thought it was in your package. We're sorry.

Ms Poole: You've been discriminated against.

Mrs Haslam: That's okay. I'll come over there and read it.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We will get it for you; you need not cross the floor.

Mrs Haslam: Thank you. I'd appreciate a copy of that.

The Chair: One at a time.

Mrs Haslam: I'll go back to what my original question was, and that was around young women. I've got an article here and I'm going to read a little bit about it. This is from the Standard, which is from St Catharines. Ms Haeck was kind enough to share it because she knew my interest in young people. But I'm talking not about college age, which I see covered in some of the information I have been given, but I'm more interested in younger women and I'm talking -- I call them young women because I don't want to call them children; they're not children any more.

Hon Mrs Boyd: "Youth" I believe is the term.

Mrs Haslam: "Youth" it is, then. This one is called "More Teens Having Babies" and "Recession May Be to Blame." I've got some parts that were highlighted and I'd like to just read some of them.

"Teen pregnancies in Niagara have increased and health officials say the region's poor economy could be a factor....

"She said some sexuality experts say the recession has led teenage women to view getting pregnant as a career option.

"Bill Fisher, for instance, a psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario, says a poor economy and the dim prospect of a stable job might make teenage girls think the only way to personal fulfilment is to have a baby," and that relates directly to one thing I had questioned, and that was self-esteem in our young women.

"The report says that only about 10% of teens who become pregnant give the babies up for adoption. `Those who keep their babies may see motherhood as an escape from an abusive situation, a way of receiving financial aid or a way of giving meaning to their lives....'

"In 1980, 15.6 of 1,000 Niagara teens had an abortion; that jumped to 18.2 per 1,000 in 1991....

"For other age groups from 20 to 44, most showed jumps of about 50% in the five-year span."

I'm seeing these types of articles -- Christel shared this one with me -- and they raise a concern with me. That brings me back to your violence against women prevention strategy, which you're putting in place by 1994. The question I have is, are we applying that strategy to the young people? The reason I'm asking is that it seems to me that under some of the other answers you gave statistics on sexually assaulted teens, and I'll maybe come back to that too. I want to know what is geared to the high school level versus when you talk about young women; you talk about 20-year-olds and this obviously is talking about 15- to 19-year-olds.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We have the same difficulty, obviously, that social agencies and school boards and so on have. In terms of dealing with an issue, we had a very strong plea that parents ought to be responsible for their children. There is a strong feeling within a certain part of the community that is very leery of the government, whether it's in the guise of social services, educational services or any other form of services, becoming involved in dealing with the whole very sensitive issue around reproduction.

When school boards take very strong views about ensuring that there are educational programs available to young people around their sexuality, there are inevitably very strong objections to that from some parts of the community, and that has tended to make many people leery. At the same time, for a number of reasons in a changing community, that feeling has provided a gap where there doesn't seem to be that kind of support to young people.

I said here last year, when we were in estimates for the Ministry of Community and Social Services, that focus on youth has not tended to be there for any of our governments in recent years, except in the corrections and justice area as opposed to the prevention area, and it is my belief that we have to look at how to change our resources and give our youth more support, help them to understand how to make the choices that are now available to them because of technology, because of medical services that are available, and help them to feel supported.

Of the reasons you read out for why young women might actually seek to become pregnant or might choose to maintain a pregnancy, even if it was not anticipated, the one you mentioned last, giving meaning to life, is the one most cited by the young women I've worked with. They are afraid that the world doesn't hold very much for them, they want something to hold on to and they feel they have something to contribute but no one is listening to them. "Here is something I can contribute to by looking after." I think we have to take that very seriously.

When I talk about advocating on behalf of women, I think we should be advocating for all women to understand the breadth of choices they can make, what the consequences of those choices are and then provide the kind of support to make those choices real. We don't do that at the present time in many of our service sectors, and that's certainly an area we try to work on.

Mrs Haslam: That brings me back to -- there are a couple of things -- what I said: Again, it's the self-esteem at a very vulnerable age, 15 to 19, and I'm concerned that we're advocating for women but we're reaching some of these young women too late to help them in how they see themselves, how they picture themselves and that self-esteem these youths have.

You mentioned the feeling of strong family morals and families objecting. My riding is a rural riding and we have very strong moral values, yet I know the increase is there, even in my riding. You're right about them saying "too much government interference," but I'm not talking about an interference program; I'm talking more along the educational program lines, going back to the amount of money spent on your ads when the ads were very clearly geared to a higher age.

1640

Hon Mrs Boyd: No, as I said to you before, there was a whole group of ads that were done directly for teenagers that were broadcast. I have to confess that except on the tapes I didn't hear them --

Mrs Haslam: Me neither, and that's why I'm asking.

Hon Mrs Boyd: -- because I don't happen to listen to their stations. But we have the times that were bought in terms of those high-volume, teen-listening ads, and when you get the response on the advertising, you'll find that they are very effective.

We get requests all the time from teachers to use these as discussion starters within the classroom. When we talk to our shelters, our sexual assault centres, they are swamped with requests -- and increasingly from public schools, not just high schools -- to go in and talk about these issues, to use some of the things we've done.

We did a series of films on healthy sexuality for teens. It's a series of five videos, for example, talking about healthy sexuality that are available to anyone who wants to use them. They're accompanied by teaching guides and pamphlets and so on. We should get you a list of the materials so that you will be able to know how to access them within your community.

The Chair: Briefly, Ms Haslam.

Mrs Haslam: I wanted to just briefly say I understand what you're saying. I want to read something here that shows you what we have to combat when we're talking about videos in schools and talking openly about their sexuality. When he saw these types of facts and figures in St Catharines, a councillor said: "There's something about making this private thing public...that's bound to cause problems. If you make it public, you make it trite. You reduce it to its almost animal state." There in a nutshell is what we're combatting. We have to be very clear that, by talking about choices and talking about their sexuality, it's important that we are educating. This is the type of comment we have to take into consideration when we're talking about that.

The Chair: I have on the list Mr Bisson and Mr Hayes, whom I did not get to. I'll be recognizing you first when we come back to you in the cycle. Ms Poole, please.

Ms Poole: What are we going to do, 20-minute rotations again, or a bit longer?

The Chair: Yes, 20 minutes.

Ms Poole: Minister, I'd like to continue on pay equity. Just last month, in September, a regulation was passed concerning pay equity which has caused great dismay among the advocacy groups on pay equity. As members are aware, when the Pay Equity Act was originally passed the mechanism was to compare male jobs to female jobs and there were four different categories in which they compared those jobs. The pay was then determined on the value of the skill, responsibility, all the different variables.

The regulation that was passed in September was to prevent women from automatically receiving the pay raises men get through grievances over job classifications. It was estimated that this particular change would save the provincial government $109 million. This was money that otherwise might have been awarded to female workers to make sure their wages match those of men performing work of similar value.

From two vantage points, this has really upset the advocates in the pay equity community: first of all, with both the content and impact of this particular regulation, but second, with the process and the manner in which this change took place.

First of all, there was no consultation. The pay equity coalition, which was such a key player when both Bill 168 and Bill 102 came forward, was not consulted. Pay Equity Advocacy and Legal Services was not consulted. From what we have been able to determine, none of the pay equity advocacy groups was consulted about this particular regulation and its impact.

Second, this regulation goes against not only the intent of the act; I say it goes against the very principle of the act. It was done behind closed doors, through regulation. I don't know if the minister knows how I feel about things being done by regulation, but in case you don't, I'll reiterate it. I feel very strongly -- I did under the previous government and I do under this government and I will feel this way under whatever government succeeds this one -- that things should be done up front, before the public, through legislation, not through regulation. I find it very disconcerting that to address one particular case, which was between the government and OPSEU, this regulation was brought in behind closed doors without consultation and without public scrutiny.

I would like to ask the minister, first, if you were aware of this regulation and its impact prior to its passage by cabinet, and second, if you were aware, what steps you did to advocate on behalf of women in this instance.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Since I reject your analysis of what the impact of the regulation is and how it was developed, it's very difficult for me to answer that. Yes, of course I knew about it ahead of time, but I simply disagree with the analysis you have.

I also disagree with your comments about the use of regulations. Regulations are used primarily because there may be shifting needs as time goes on, and governments that put things into legislation and then have to go back and change every detail of an implementation plan and the guidelines that follow an implementation plan through legislation are very foolish.

We agree with you, however, that things should be more open, and you will know that we've taken a very different tack with our employment equity regulations, where we have clearly put forward draft regulations, have clearly been prepared to discuss those and have clearly prepared to make that part of the act. You chose not to do that when you passed the Pay Equity Act initially, and I think we have learned from that experience that it is better, when you have things that affect a large number of people like this, to try and be more up front in terms of the kind of work we do in regulations. We need to have more discussion of those.

But in the case of the particular issue, given the difficulties that we were encountering with our own employees, it was certainly our decision that this was an appropriate and accountable decision to make in terms of that regulation, and we did so.

Ms Poole: First of all, Minister, with respect to regulations, I have no problem with regulations that operate as regulations were originally intended to operate, as basically a how-to manual. It fleshes out legislation; it gives details about how that legislation is to operate. I have very serious concerns with regulations that go against the spirit of the legislation, and I submit to you, and there are going to be many women's groups who feel the same way about this particular regulation, that it does go against the spirit.

This is not a case of shifting needs. The Pay Equity Amendment Act, Bill 102, was passed in, I believe it was, June of this year. This regulation was passed as of September 1 of this year. Needs did not shift in those two months. The government was aware of that particular case at the time the pay equity legislation was introduced and passed, and it did nothing to put it in the legislation. It is the same, I submit to you, as bringing in Bill 169 in a different context.

Bill 169, to refresh members' memories if you haven't been active with that particular bill, was brought in to counter a decision by the pay equity tribunal that, for instance, children's aid society workers were employees of the province. What Bill 169 did was give the provincial government a right that no other employer in the province had, which is to say, "I am the employer and I will determine who are my employees." So after the fact, to counter pay equity tribunal decisions, Bill 169 was passed. I think this is the same type of thing. To me --

Hon Mrs Boyd: It is simply nonsense that this is what Bill 169 did. No private employer is ever in danger of having another private employer's employees over here suddenly decide that they should be the employees of this particular employer. It simply gave the right of an employer to a crown employer that every other employer has. So I simply reject your statement about Bill 169 and I do reject your statement about the regulation being anything but an implementation regulation.

1650

Ms Poole: The minister may reject my comments on Bill 169, but I can tell you there were certainly many other interest groups, including OPSEU and a number of the unions, that had a lot of problems with that bill and what it did and how it was to do it. I can't see how you can say that this regulation does not have a dramatic impact on women who are trying to achieve pay equity.

What it says is if you have the comparison group, the female comparator to the male comparator, and they have been compared as having equal responsibility and working conditions and all the other variables that go into the mix, and it is decided that they are comparable and that their wages should match, if there is subsequently an arbitration which says, "No, this male comparator's wages should go up," then the female wages stay where they were. That, to me, is going to create new inequities. It is going to run contrary to what pay equity was to have done, and I have a lot of problem with that.

Hon Mrs Boyd: But what you're talking about is a reclassification. The arbitration finding is a reclassification of those jobs. The comparator was determined on the basis of there being comparators by classification. If the classification changes, then the comparator no longer applies. It's an issue of sheer logic. If the arbitration is that a classification has changed -- and many of the classifications in government appointments, as you know, have not been updated for 20 or 25 years in many cases; the entire nature of the job has changed completely -- then the comparison is no longer valid and another comparator needs to be found.

Ms Poole: But, Minister, what OPSEU has said is that OPSEU filed a classification grievance claiming that the construction technicians, whose pays start at $34,000 annually, were underpaid before the province adopted its pay equity legislation. They aren't talking about creating new classifications; they are talking about the pay scale in that classification, and the women were compared to that. It is going to be a serious problem. I am disappointed that the minister would not have advocated, because I think it is going to have an impact on women, particularly non-unionized women, who will not have a negotiator in future negotiations who will take up their cause in this regard. I think it's going to be quite serious.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Since this is limited to, as you pointed out yourself, the classification area, it is not going to be non-organized members. I mean, you're stretching a point.

Ms Poole: The minister just acknowledged that we're talking about the one classification. What I am saying to the minister is that with this --

Hon Mrs Boyd: No, no. I'm saying classification grievances.

Ms Poole: How much time, Mr Chair?

The Chair: You've got another seven or eight minutes.

Hon Mrs Boyd: You only have classification grievances where you have a unionized workforce that has classifications.

Ms Poole: Yes, but it is the opinion of PEALS, another advocacy group, that this is going to have a very negative impact on other cases -- in fact, they have just written a letter to the Premier in this regard -- and that it is not simply the one case with OPSEU and the government that is going to be impacted; it has a much wider impact.

I'd like to go on. I have two other areas I was hoping to cover in this particular round. One relates to home workers, which was mentioned briefly a bit earlier. What I would like to ask you about is the status of legislation to remedy the problems that home workers have. The Coalition for Fair Wages and Working Conditions for Home Workers has been advocating changes, as you know, for a number of years. They have made it very clear that home workers should have a right to overtime pay, to statutory holidays, to employment insurance, that they should not have to work for subminimum wages, that their conditions should be improved and that they should be covered by provincial legislation the same as any other occupation.

It was mentioned earlier that the home worker area is growing significantly, and I think it's an area where we do need action. I don't know; I might be presumptuous to say you have all-party support on it, but certainly you would have my strong support and the support of our caucus in finding relief for these home workers.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I'm delighted to hear that because in fact we may be seeking that. Our only hope, given the crowded legislative agenda, of anything in the very near future would be if we could come to an agreement about how to protect these workers. Certainly it would be my hope and the hope of the Minister of Labour that we in fact could fashion a piece of legislation that would strengthen the Employment Standards Act in this area. I think you are too sanguine.

Ms Poole: Sanguine?

Mr Wiseman: It would be nice if we could get the same commitment from the Tory party at this time, wouldn't it?

Hon Mrs Boyd: It certainly would.

The Chair: It would be nice if I could get an interpretation of "sanguine." I thought it was one of Mr Bisson's words for a moment.

Hon Mrs Boyd: "Hopeful," not "bloody."

Ms Poole: I've never been called sanguine before. Earlier this week somebody called me statesmanlike. I'd never been called that before either, so it's been a red-banner week for me.

Mr Wiseman: I was sort of hoping the Tory party would comment on my interjection at this time.

Ms Poole: They might on their particular time, Mr Wiseman.

The Chair: I did recognize you once before, Mr Wiseman. If you'd like to be on the speakers' list, please let me know. But I still have Ms Poole, who has a good five and a half minutes left.

Ms Poole: Thank you; hopefully a very good one. Minister, what I would like to know: The Minister of Labour, over a year ago, committed to remedying these changes. It was quite public. He did it at a press conference and it was reported quite widely that he would act very quickly. There was a consultation document produced but we're still, a year later, without it having even been introduced for public discussion. As you alluded to yourself, it takes extensive time to get a piece of legislation through. Could you give me a timetable for when this legislation will be introduced and your commitment to push for an early --

Hon Mrs Boyd: I can certainly give you my commitment to push for an early legislative slot. That certainly is the position that the directorate has taken and that I personally have taken from the beginning.

I should say to you that it is not true that we simply issued a consultation document. The consultation has been ongoing and the consultation, as I understand it, was completed in late August. It does take some time, once you get the results of a consultation, to fashion the kind of legislation, particularly if we were hoping to get all-party agreement, that might meet the needs of the group that we're trying to help and not entirely alienate the industry that we're trying to regulate.

I'll be very frank with you: I would hope that we would be able to do at least first reading in this session. I am not at all sure that we will be ready to do so, particularly if there are protracted negotiations to see whether all-party consent can be reached. But I would hope certainly in the next session, if not this session, we would have that on the table very clearly and that all parties would be able to make known their positions.

Ms Poole: Thank you. I'd like at least to begin the last area I'd hoped to go through today, and that is the grants by the Ontario women's directorate.

Through the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act we were given a copy of the various grants from October 1990 to present, and certainly many of them appear to be very worthwhile endeavours. But there were some surprises for me when I was going through the grants. For instance, there seemed to be a number of grants that didn't have much, if anything, to do with women. I was wondering if you would like to comment on this. I would give you some examples. We can provide a more extensive list afterwards, but I'll just bring a few to your attention at this time.

1700

For instance, Edwards, a division of General Signal: The Ontario women's directorate gave them $20,000 to develop a role-modelling case study of methods developed for reducing repetitive strain injuries among employees, and then another $5,300 in addition to the $20,000 for printing and distribution of resources to other workplaces about information in this regard. It just seemed to me that over $25,000 came out of the Ontario women's directorate budget when I would have thought it should have been Ministry of Labour, because I've never seen statistics that show that back injuries are restricted to women. In fact, I think they're probably gender-neutral.

Hon Mrs Boyd: The repetitive strain that was most emphasized was carpal tunnel syndrome. The workers in the area were primarily women, textile and keyboarding things and so on. So the grant was specifically directed to a women's health problem, and that is exactly why it was done. In fact, it has been very helpful in terms of the work throughout many industries. So we do focus on women's health problems. I would agree with you: I would hope that other ministries would look at this too. When they don't, we fill the gap.

Ms Poole: I must say it's refreshing to have a minister who knows her ministry and her responsibilities so well that she can, at the tip of her fingers, have that kind of information.

Another one that I'd ask you about at this time is the Kingston Area School to Employment Council, a workshop titled Kids Exploring Technology Camp. Now, I know the work of the Kingston Area School to Employment Council; I'm very supportive of it. I'm not denigrating the proposal, but I'm just wondering why that would come under the Ontario women's directorate, even presupposing that we do want more women to go into the high-tech fields.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Well, we certainly do. One of our primary objectives in terms of education and training equity is in fact in that area of math, science and technology. A lot of our resources have been directed in that area. We need to find ways to help young women to be comfortable in technology, not only when there are only women there.

What we have found in programs like women in trades and technology is that the women do very well when they're by themselves and are learning their trade. When they get out into the practical workforce and have to work with men in the trade, their confidence seems to slip away.

So in looking at a project like that, first of all it would be encouraging women. I can't tell you what the balance of young women to young men was in the project, and in fact it may have been that the vast majority were young women; I would have to get that information for you. But in any case, one of the issues that we have is that while segregated programs for women are important in the early stages of learning to build up confidence, we need gradually to ensure that women are getting practical experience in a non-segregated kind of place so that they can maintain that.

When we look at the studies of what happens to young women in math and science and we see them competing in the classroom or in other areas, we often find that they don't get as much airtime; they don't know how to be assertive about putting their needs forward and ensuring that they have an equal opportunity at the kinds of tasks that are available. So as a learning experience, knowing that particular area -- which I also support; I think they do wonderful work -- I suspect that was the focus, but we'll get a little bit of information for you on the balance of how many were served.

Ms Poole: Thank you. I guess we'll follow this up a bit later.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms Poole. I know you have further questions in this area, but I must move to Ms Witmer.

Mrs Witmer: I'd just like to comment on the home care workers. This is an issue that was brought to the attention of I guess all parties when we were first elected in 1990. Certainly these workers have met with myself and with my colleagues; in fact, Mr Arnott met with them not too long ago. We've been quite disappointed: The minister made a public statement at least a year ago indicating that legislation would be forthcoming, and we were surprised that he decided to give priority to Bill 80, which really is a union bill impacting more on the male population, as opposed to dealing with this particular piece of legislation. There's certainly been ample opportunity for the Labour minister to deal with this issue.

As I say, these women are most concerned, and I think it's high time the needs of these women are recognized and some legislation produced on their behalf. I think that's necessary, just to set the record straight.

I'd like to take a look at home care because again this is a sector that's going to be hit as a result of the government's desire to drive the private sector out of business. Unfortunately -- I guess the government has not done studies, or maybe it is aware of the fact -- there is an indication that women are going to be the big losers when the private home care sector is eliminated or reduced in terms of the delivery of service, because private home care agencies, on the whole, are owned and staffed at present primarily by women. There seems to be no recognition of the fact that women have done this extremely well.

You probably know that many women in this province who are going to be impacted by the attempt to greatly reduce the role of the private sector in the delivery of in-home care services are concerned. One of the questions I have for the minister is, what studies have been done to assess the impact on either these women who are going to lose the business they have or the women who are employed in the private sector?

I'm most concerned about the impact on these individuals. These people were shocked to hear from a senior adviser to the Premier in November 1992 that their market share of the home care services was going to be reduced from the current 45% to 10% in about two years. When later questioned, the senior policy advisers to both the Premier and then Health minister Lankin were not able to confirm or deny that indeed this was the fact. However, we know that Health minister Lankin did come before the standing committee on social development and indicate her preference for the non-profit delivery of services, and of course in June of this year the Minister of Health announced the fact that this was indeed going to happen.

It's going to impact at least 6,000 home support and agency administrative staff. These people -- and again it's going to be primarily women -- are going to lose their jobs.

It's important to recognize that the private sector often has assumed responsibility for the jobs that the non-profit sector has rejected; for instance, the jobs at night and the jobs on the weekend. They have played a very significant and very important role in the delivery of the home care service in this province, particularly at a time when we need to be doing everything possible in order to provide care for the elderly in particular and the infirm.

It's important to recognize as well, if this is based on the fact that profit is bad and we need to get rid of profit and we need to have full bureaucratic control, that at present the profits from the home care companies range from 1% to 5%. It's not a profitable operation.

I would certainly appreciate hearing from the minister what discussions have gone on with the individuals who are going to be impacted and why these women are being driven out of their business. They're going to be put in a position where they will either become an employee or be totally unemployed. It doesn't do much to enhance the position of women in our society if we're driving them out of the businesses they've constructed; in fact, it's quite devastating to these women, I would suggest.

1710

Hon Mrs Boyd: First of all, it's not the question of driving people out at all. We are saying that, given that we're putting an additional $647 million into long-term care, a proportion of which is in the home care area, we will not expand in the private sector area but will expand only in the public area, and that we hope to see a balance that indeed will be primarily, over time, the public sector. But expansion of that is different from driving people currently in business out of business. If their business is, as with child care, dependent on being able to constantly expand, if that's what their business plan is based on, then indeed there may be difficulties for them.

I'd be interested in knowing how many of the 6,000 employees you're talking about own the businesses and may be affected, because the vast number of home care support workers will still be required, still be necessary within the sector and could expect very much to be hired within the sector and so on. They are unlikely to be affected. There'd be a small number of owners and possibly managers, although with an expanding sector, to the extent that home care is planned to expand, there should be plenty of availability of work. That is an issue that continues to come up when we talk about this. It's as though the individuals are somehow tied to a particular workplace, and we know that's not the case in service work, in any case.

I am not aware that there's been a specific kind of impact study done in this particular sector that would meet the requirements you're asking for. We certainly have a clear idea of what the balance is in different parts of the province. In most of the province, the balance that is sought by the Ministry of Health is well below the level of private enterprise that you're talking about. There are a few pockets and a few significant areas of the province where in fact there is a higher proportion of care offered by private care, and obviously there the same kind of effort would be made to try to convert and see the ways in which the needs of everyone can be accommodated within the system.

The notion is not to put people out of business but indeed to achieve the community accountability, the community openness of operation, the availability of every dollar that we as taxpayers spend going into the delivery of service to individuals, rather than, whether it's 1%, 5% or 25%, to a private individual. Again, it is that we are up against this different perspective of how taxpayers' dollars should be spent. We believe taxpayers' dollars should all go to service delivery to the primary clients of the service, not into private profit. We feel very firmly that this is a very defensible position we're taking, particularly where we're expanding service delivery in an area where services have not been available to large numbers of the Ontario population in the past.

Mrs Witmer: I would suggest to you that the private care givers have given excellent, friendly and very supportive care in their communities, and they operate oftentimes in a substantially less expensive way. Unfortunately, the taxpayers in this province can brace themselves for yet another level of very costly bureaucracy. I think that's a very significant point, because by ensuring that all child care and health care and what have you are going to be provided by the non-profit sector, it is going to increase the cost to people in this province. It's simply going to mean higher taxes. I believe very strongly that if the private sector can provide equal care or better care, that option needs to be available, that you can have a dual system operating as long as the individual is getting quality care.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I certainly would not accept your statement that it means increased bureaucracy. It does mean increased community control. We're talking about non-profit corporations which have voluntary boards; we're not talking about a government-run service in the sense you're talking about. We're talking about a community-based system that is closely tied into the community for which it cares and for which it is accountable.

When you say it costs more, it may well be that in order to treat employees responsibly in terms of their needs and to ensure that you have a stability of care for the clients who are being served by the service, the service may be somewhat more expensive. On the other hand, that's not necessarily the case, and there are many studies which have shown it's not necessarily the case in the child care sector and not necessarily the case in the home care sector.

Mrs Witmer: I know that many community volunteer services, including such things as Meals on Wheels, are unfortunately going to become centralized and are going to go under the umbrella of the new level of bureaucracy, so I do envision this costing the taxpayer more money.

I'd like to turn to children's mental health. This is an issue I've personally been concerned about for a long time, probably because I was a teacher and because I am a parent. This is a major problem in this province. Unfortunately, we still today have very long waiting lists for the services and children and their families have been deprived of timely access to appropriate care. As a result, many of these young people have placed an additional burden on our school system, and I think we're seeing the result of some of that right now.

I indicated at one time, quoting from a study, that if a son had witnessed his father's violence, that same boy was 10 times more likely to abuse his wife than the boys of non-violent parents. The example I gave at that time was the mass murderer Marc Lépine, who witnessed his father's violence, and we all know what crime he's committed.

We know there are many young males in this province, unfortunately, and females as well, who have witnessed violence against their mothers. Those children are among the thousands of children in this province who are desperately waiting for treatment, for access to the mental health centres. In fact, a couple of months ago I had a mother come to me desperate for help for her teenage son. I called around, but I could not find anybody in my community who would even put that boy on a waiting list. The services are simply not available, and she was at her wits' end. I finally was able to find accommodation for him outside my community in another community.

It is a desperate issue. There is simply a lack of children's mental health services at this time. Obviously, this is one of the root causes of the violence we're seeing on our streets and in our schools, and I believe it's absolutely essential that we take some action. When the Premier was the opposition leader, he indicated his concern for the lack of access to mental health services, and I'm sure today he still is very concerned.

We did a study on mental health services; in fact, I made a recommendation that that area be looked at. The committee on social development did take a look at it in 1991. The committee came up with a number of recommendations with respect to improvements that could be made in the area of children's mental health services. However, I'm extremely disappointed, because it is my understanding that very little action, if indeed any, has ever been taken by the government as a result of that study that was done by the committee on social development.

We know that today the provision of mental health services for children remains totally inadequate. As I say, it is one of the root causes of violence, and if we don't treat the root causes -- you know, we can do all we want as far as treating those who commit the crimes and have the problems in school is concerned, but we've got to deal with the root causes.

I would ask you, Minister, what have you and the women's directorate done to ensure that children in this province have access to mental health services? What is happening that I don't know about?

1720

Hon Mrs Boyd: I certainly can't accept the full responsibility for policymaking in this area, although as a member, certainly when I was with Education and with Community and Social Services I was very active in terms of the interministerial efforts to meet these needs and continue in that advocacy role with the social policy committee whenever these issues arise.

Our mandate in the past has always been primarily focused on adult women. That was the way the directorate was set up by your government and continued by the Liberal government. Our government has said that we want the priority not just to be violence against women, but knowing that there's a continuum of violence and that the intergenerational phasing of violence is very important, we are trying to refocus in the area of violence against women, children and the vulnerable. You talk about the lack of mental health services as being the cause of violence, and I would dispute that. I would say to you that it's the effect of the intergenerational violence that these children have often observed and that we have some choices to make within our resources as to how we are going to deal with that issue.

I believe that children's mental health services, as they have been conceived in this province, are not going to deal with the issue, because children's mental health services have always been focused on those who act out, either act out of depression, through suicidal tendencies, or act out in anger and aggression. They are many children who are affected by violence who don't act out in either of those ways. In fact, some of the most perfect children are the ones who have been most cowed by the violence in their lives.

Unless we approach the whole issue of children's mental health in an integrated and holistic way so that we are looking at our children, from a very early age, in terms of the holistic responses that they're having and the factors that give strong mental health through the school system, through all of our community services, our supports to families, nutrition, all of those sorts of things, I don't think we're going to be doing anything except bandaging a haemorrhage at the crisis end of the situation.

Somehow, if we pour our money into the kinds of mental health services we've given children, which have primarily rested on residential services for the very worst children rather than preventive services and supportive services as they go along, we're simply going to use all our resources in dealing with crises instead of resolving some of the problems. We believe our policy about emphasizing child care for those children who may be at risk because of poverty or who may be at risk not because of poverty but because parents are overburdened or because parents themselves have never been parented is a very important preventive issue.

Our emphasis on child care in this government and our desire eventually to have child care available to every child in this province is a desire to begin that preventive step. That's a very important aspect of what we're saying. We believe that if you offer supports, if you offer non-violent ways of dealing with conflict and anger from a very early age, provide a supportive and stimulating atmosphere for children from a very early age, in which they can interact with others and with other adults and their parents, then the chances of their having greater strength are very much there.

I am working. I'm on the children's subcommittee of the Premier's Council on Health, Wellbeing and Social Justice, which is doing a very major look at how we need to refocus in terms of meeting those needs. Instead of focusing on those children who are always called children at risk, how do we look at the whole cohort of children and develop a healthy way of raising them so that we're not constantly dealing with crisis?

In the meantime, obviously, we have to continue to deal with the ones who have not been helped in that holistic way. We can't suddenly stop dealing with the crises while we transfer everything to prevention. Our problem, as it is for any government, is how you continue to provide the services to those whom the system has failed in the past and yet turn around the whole way in which you serve children.

It's always interesting to me that when we come to the issue of resources, your party is constantly saying, "Stop raising taxes," and yet, "Do this, do this, do this, do this." We're saying that we as a community need to really talk about how we are going to put our money into the kinds of priorities that you're suggesting you support. We simply must do more of that work, and I'm hoping that the work that's coming out of the Premier's council will assist us all as a community to really refocus and set some priorities so that in fact we accept a community responsibility for children.

There's a certain problem when we say, on the one hand, that parents should have total control over their children and the state should not get involved and then, at the other end of the stick, say that when the kid's in trouble the state should provide everything that child needs. We have to begin to balance that and to look at the conflicting values we often state when we say something like that. Those are some of the issues we're dealing with.

I work a lot in this area, even though it's not my primary responsibility, because I see the effect in the justice system of children who have been exposed to violence and haven't been dealt with appropriately. If we look at the cost of just one child who learns about violence at the knee of his parents and what that one child can cost us socially, economically and certainly in terms of personal pain, it's an enormous cost. If we put that investment into stopping the violence early on, which is our primary function at the directorate, trying to put an end to that violence right at the start, we think we're doing a big piece of the puzzle.

Mr Bisson: I'd like to follow up a little bit on something my colleague Mrs Haslam had raised a little while ago. As you know, the effective campaign in regard to "without consent" ran starting last fall; I do believe that is when it started. The question I have for you is, is there any kind of indication in regard to the effectiveness of that particular campaign that you can share with us?

Hon Mrs Boyd: On the ads themselves, yes: We have a very good consumer study. This is the one I was talking about that we'll provide for you. I can give you some anecdotal evidence as well, and that is as a person who's gone into classrooms for many years to talk about this issue with young people. We are finding the response very different now from what it was when I first started this work a long time ago. We are finding the responsiveness of kids. They want to talk about this issue. They're still nervous about coming out, as it were, as someone who's either been victimized or someone who may be abusive, but they're beginning, in a much franker way than my generation ever did, to talk about the realities of trying to be in a relationship and trying to learn how to relate non-violently with the opposite sex.

Mr Bisson: I wonder about that. The reason I raised the question is that I took part in a committee about a year ago, a year and a half ago, of two local high schools in a community that were looking at the question of sexual assault, but also the whole question of teen pregnancy, all of the issues related around that. The sense I got talking to some of the young women is that there was a real reluctance to talk about it, and one of the things they pointed to was that one of the boards -- I'm not going to get into the debate here -- decided that it was not going to provide sex education in the classroom any more, that sexuality was something that was best left at home.

It brings me back to, has the women's directorate ever looked at trying to develop a policy that could be tied in with the Ministry of Education and Training and other ministries, as necessary, in order to try to deal with the entire issue? Because it's not just one thing. Is there any kind of a policy that's coming forward, or any kind of discussions, to look at the whole question of not only education of young women, but the education of young men?

I'm somewhat surprised sometimes when I walk into schools and speak to grades 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 by some of the attitudes I see in some of our schools around the province, and even in some of the younger grades. It makes me wonder. I know part of it is what they see on television and what they hear on radio. The other part is maybe that we as parents are not taking as much responsibility as we can. But there seems to be a missing block, which is the education system.

Every time I've raised this with educators at board levels or with teachers directly, you get into the debate that it's not the job of the education system to get into this, that this is really something parents should be doing. I beg to differ with that. I'd like to know what the ministry is looking at.

1730

Hon Mrs Boyd: The ministry has recently undergone a fairly massive reorganization, as you know, and in part of that reorganization the very small office that used to administer the anti-violence programs was put into an education -- I've forgotten what they're actually calling it. Sharon, can you remember?

Ms Sharon McClemont: The violence secretariat.

Hon Mrs Boyd: The violence secretariat, just really getting under way now. Basically, that's exactly what that unit is attempting to do. I'm not sure; they may actually have something written down that will explain exactly how they plan to go about that. We'll try to get you something.

Mr Bisson: Is there anybody here from your staff who would be able to share that with us?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Ellen Passmore, do you know more about that? Can you come forward?

The Chair: If you'd come forward to the microphone, it would be appreciated.

Hon Mrs Boyd: It is fairly new.

The Chair: Please introduce yourself and your position within the ministry.

Ms Ellen Passmore: I'm Ellen Passmore. I'm the manager of the education and training equity unit at the women's directorate.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I wonder if Eunadie Johnson, who is also here, who is the director of our anti-violence unit, could come forward as well, because it's a joint kind of thing.

Ms Eunadie Johnson: I'm Eunadie Johnson. I'm the manager of the violence against women prevention unit at OWD.

Mr Bisson: What I'd like to know, if you just can fill us in a bit, is what work is being done right now by the secretariat in regard to trying to coordinate some kind of policy across ministries into the Ministry of Education that deals with some of this.

Ms Passmore: By the OWD, you mean. Eunadie can speak to the particular violence programs and I can speak more generally.

The new body that the minister was referring to is called the equity and access unit, which was developed as a result of the recent reorganization, which includes the violence secretariat but is looking at many issues related to equity and access, including violence, education equity and education of boys and girls, around ensuring equal access to all sorts of education in the system.

It's not clear at this point what exactly this reorganization will result in, but the thing that's important is that the directorate is working really closely and we advocate very strongly. We have started and chair an interministerial committee which has representation from the Ministry of Education to look at how we can promote areas of equity and access and anti-violence to girls and young women in the education system.

Ms Johnson: I would like to clarify that the unit we're talking about, the violence secretariat, is at the Ministry of Education and Training. The Ministry of Education is involved on the interministerial committee with the violence against women prevention initiatives. It has the responsibility in terms of the programs that are in the schools around any curriculum that's developed so that the school boards can deliver those programs prevention education for kids in schools. This piece of work that you're talking about is housed in the Ministry of Education, not at the OWD itself, but there is the connection. We have always made the links between violence against women and how children are part of that violence.

Mr Bisson: I would just ask the minister, because I know my colleague has a question, if I'd be able to get any kind of information that the ministry could provide as to where the ministry is going and what work's been done.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Absolutely. We will get you that. They would be delighted, because they are very proud of the work they've done in the past and very pleased with their new direction.

The Chair: Anecdotally, we will be able to get into, but may not complete, the estimates of the Ministry of Education and Training. We may have an opportunity for that within the next few weeks.

Next on my list is Mr Hayes.

Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): The TV ads, the ones on wife abuse and assault and sexual assault: I find them, myself, quite effective. I know others have touched on this. I know you're not going to have the stats to show how effective it is in the real, real near future, but I'm just saying, what kind of feedback are you receiving from groups and individuals on those particular commercials?

Hon Mrs Boyd: In fact we do have the stats in terms of how effective they are and what the impressions are that people have had, and we've done them over a couple of years so that we're beginning to get that flow. I know when we first ran the ads, for example, there was a real difference between the response of men and women to whether or not men were responsible for their own violence. We saw quite a change in that last year. In fact more men than women believed that men had to take some very clear responsibility for their own actions. That's the kind of change that we can see.

We still find some disturbing things, and one of those is that of course there still is a very strong belief on the part of -- it is a minority of people but a number of people -- that something women do or what women wear makes them vulnerable to attack or open to attack.

We have the kinds of stats that 97% agreed that physical acts such as kicking, hitting, slapping, punching and rape were wife assault. That wasn't true when I started in this work in the early 1980s. I can remember many Optimist clubs and Rotary clubs and so on, and I'm sure my colleagues can as well, where people would say, "That's just part of the relationship; that's none of your business." So it has really changed in that sense.

But there still is a distressing number who will say that, but then will say that somehow the victim has to change her behaviour in order to stop the violence, and that's what really concerns us. That still is the nub there. The person who is violent is the person who is responsible for his or her violence. We can always do otherwise. That's what we have to get across.

Mr Hayes: My next question is -- and I'm sure this has bothered many members here and probably all women especially -- it seems that if it's just -- I say "just"; I don't mean it's just -- but if a man assaults a woman, the police, for example, have no problem in saying, "We'll take that and we're going to go to court with this." The problem is, I have a person in my constituency, for example, who has had both things happen to her, physical assault and sexual assault, and yet there were people who advised that woman, "Don't bring up the sexual assault and don't lay those charges because they will make you feel like you are the guilty one here." I know that has happened to many women, and they have been discouraged because they don't want to go through that turmoil and stress.

How do we reach these people? I'm sure there are some people in the police force, for example, who are frustrated also when they go to court and they feel they have someone that they can be successful in convicting and sometimes these things are thrown out. To me, there's an area where there should be better education right through to the police forces and the whole judicial system to support women so they won't feel like they're the ones who are being charged when in fact they were the victims.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Obviously, that's what we're trying to do. It's really interesting for us to reflect that it was only in 1985 that the law changed and a woman could charge her own partner with sexual assault. Before that her body was considered to belong to her legal partner whether or not they were living together, so we have changed to the extent that we've changed our Criminal Code and we are seeing charges come forward. We're seeing successful charges come forward.

The problem in all of these instances is that in order to establish beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of an accused, there very often is no witness who can corroborate the testimony of the victim. There may or may not be any forensic evidence. Our biggest problem I think with police investigations is that they have not tended to investigate these cases sometimes as vigorously as they would if it were a stranger assault, assuming that the evidence is not necessarily conclusive of sexual assault and that sort of thing.

We have got victim/witness programs now in 12 locations in Ontario. Our objective is to have those available in every court location, because we find that that support for women as they go through the process is very important, and it acts as a support not only for the women but for the prosecution of the case, because obviously it is there to try to ensure that there is a balance between the rights of the accused and the rights of the victim in the case.

1740

So we're beginning to make those changes, but I think we would be very foolish not to be very clear that there is still a real stigma attached to laying a charge of sexual assault, that in spite of all the efforts around a rape shield in the Criminal Code, the behaviour of the victim often becomes the focus of a trial. There is real concern that her psychological wellbeing will in fact suffer as a result of going through that. With the best will in the world, friends, family, even police officers may say to somebody: "You're not likely to get any more of a sentence with the physical assault than you would with the two charges together. Why don't you just go with the physical assault and you may not have to go through that humiliation?"

We would hope that wouldn't be the case, because part of the issue is that we have to get across to a perpetrator population that this is a crime and it's against the law and that we, all of us here as a community, do not approve of that and we are prepared to bring the full weight of the law to bear against people who sexually assault. So it's in our best interests to try and encourage people to go through that and for us to try to humanize the system and give strength to the complainant.

The Chair: Ms Poole, if you wouldn't mind finishing the last 20 minutes -- I'm advised we may not have a vote in the House today. Hopefully we will not be interrupted and can take the committee till 6 o'clock.

Ms Poole: Okay. I am certainly prepared to do that, Mr Chair.

Just to continue on the Ontario women's directorate grants, there were a couple of others that I was puzzled about that I'd like to bring up at this time.

There was a grant to the United Tenants of Ontario for UTOO's 1993 annual meeting and training conference. As Housing critic for the Liberal caucus for two and a half years, I never found that tenants' conferences were gender-specific, although certainly there are specific housing needs that women have, particularly those who are poor and vulnerable. I was just quite puzzled why $5,000 would have been given, not by the Ministry of Housing, which I could understand, but by the Ontario women's directorate to the United Tenants of Ontario.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I'm trying to find the sheet and can't find it, but my recollection of that would be that since the vast majority of women who live in social housing are women who may be single parents or may be on their own and these are highly overrepresented among the kind of landlord-tenant advocacy case load the United Tenants would get, that would not be a strange kind of thing.

I'm glad somebody can give me the exact issue here. Yes. It was a subsidy specifically for women to attend that meeting. It was to ensure that women who didn't have the wherewithal to travel to that meeting, to deal with child care and so on, could go and be trained as tenant advocates by the group. All of the grants would have gone to women to enable them to take that training and to attend that conference.

Ms Poole: I find that a bit more tenuous than the other ones where to be there was a logical conclusion as to why the Ontario women's directorate would give the grant as opposed to another ministry.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Well, we didn't, because what we found was that in the normal course of things, as is true in many of the advocacy groups, those who have the confidence and the wherewithal tend to take advantage of these opportunities and those who don't, don't. We also in that grant funded a workshop that was for women only regarding safety, harassment and violence issues within a housing situation to ensure that the women were particularly aware of the kinds of particular advocacy women require.

I would disagree with you in the sense that it's a grant that would address all the target groups: It would be all ages, all races of women in our society and particularly women with disabilities, who very often are most vulnerable in those situations and would be meeting both our objectives in terms of countering violence and our objectives in terms of building women's self-esteem and enabling them to advocate on their own behalf.

Ms Poole: Those are certainly worthy objectives, but I would submit to you that many of the other grants, in fact the vast majority of the other grants that have been given out by the Ontario women's directorate, are specifically for programs that relate to women or to remove systemic barriers. I would just be somewhat surprised at that particular one.

Hon Mrs Boyd: At $5,000, if we enable women to learn how to advocate on their own behalf in a housing situation and to work with other women to help them be safer, then that's a perfectly appropriate use of grants.

Ms Poole: Just one final comment, because I'm like my dog at home: I always like the last word. I'll get that last woof in.

Mrs Haslam: But you're much better-looking.

Ms Poole: Woof, woof. But you haven't seen my dog.

As Housing critic I dealt with many tenants' groups and I found that women were very representative in the tenants' movement, that they were articulate, that the tenants' movement itself has advanced to such a state that women were trained to do it within the movement. I guess I just see so many needs in other areas where women have not had that momentum to self-esteem and to represent groups at large that that's one I would have thought the tenants' movement itself had taken care of.

Hon Mrs Boyd: But we wouldn't want only those tenants who have the money to travel to go.

Ms Poole: No, you can't have the last woof. Minister, this will go on for years if you don't let me have the last woof.

Okay, one more woof. This was a different one, and again, it's not that I disagree with the intent of the project; I just wasn't sure why it would fit under the OWD. There is a project by the 2-Spirited People of The 1st Nations called Youth Drug Prevention Project II. I don't have the details of this particular project but I would suspect from what I have read in the past that the drug problem is particularly rampant among the youth in the first nations, not solely among the young males but predominantly young males. So I was wondering why this would have been covered by the Ontario women's directorate as opposed to being something that Comsoc or even Health might have funded.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Well, people are looking for the actual details on it. I can tell you what I imagine. I imagine that, like most other drug and addiction programs, the needs of women may not have been met in the same degree. It would probably be a situation where a particular program was designed by women for women within the spiritual context of a maternal society to try and build a better way of dealing with things. They're getting me the sheet and I'll let you know. Here it comes, so we might as well just do it and get it. It was actually 2-Spirited People of the 1st Nations. This project was directed toward gay and lesbian aboriginal youth to address issues of sexual and physical substance abuse.

Ms Poole: Okay. Thank you for that clarification.

I would like to bring up one, more generic, problem. I really don't know how widespread this is, but I've had in the last couple of years complaints from a couple of sources about Ontario women's directorate grants, about the process: that people would spend a great deal of time and energy putting together a grant program, with a lot of encouragement from the directorate. These are cases where they have met the criteria and then, at the end of the day, they have had their grant application rejected.

1750

I don't know how widespread this is, but it would seem to me that there should be some process where there's elimination at the very beginning, not after these community groups have gone through an exhaustive process using very scarce resources and then had to cancel a seminar they were planning to hold at the 11th hour because the money didn't come through. I wonder if you could comment on that.

Hon Mrs Boyd: Without knowing the particulars, my sense would be the same, that it would be desirable to avoid that. Whether that would happen because there was a sudden need to reduce our budget, because of a sudden budget issue, I can't answer. What I can tell you is that there have been complaints about our process from various parts of the community, and we are engaged right now in terms of looking at how the criteria are set, how our outreach into communities does operate.

We have an ongoing problem with some of our communities, particularly some of our cultural and immigrant and racial minority communities, particularly aboriginal communities, that because they do not tend to view gender issues outside of the holistic concept of their own communities, very often they have been ineligible in the past because of our focus just on "by women, for women." We're obviously trying to broaden that in terms of realizing that where communities are more comfortable in dealing with these issues in a more holistic way, we need to be finding ways to encourage them, without defocusing from the very real gender base of most of the problems we have.

Our problem as a directorate is that we were specifically set up to advocate on behalf of women. We are very well aware that the issues that women have often involve issues that affect their children, that affect their partners, that affect their seniors and so on. Our issue at this point in time is, how do we meet those needs and still maintain a focus on gender issues, which no one else does and no one else is mandated to do specifically within government; in fact, are often mandated to ensure they're not providing things in a focused way to one gender or another.

Mr Hayes: Now the last word: Say thank you.

Ms Poole: No, I've got another issue. Just to have the last woof on that one, the specific case --

Hon Mrs Boyd: Could I just say that in that grant process we'll be doing some consultations and we would be very happy to hear from you some of the community responses you've heard and other members of the community have heard. We're very anxious to try to have a broad spectrum, as part of that program review, of where the concerns lie and how we can meet some of those concerns.

Ms Poole: I will tell you that one of the instances was one of the women's centres. They had actually shown me the proposal after it was rejected, and it did seem to me to meet the criteria. It was quite embarrassing for them, because they had to call off the seminar they were hosting. I didn't know how widespread this was, but it's certainly something we would like to see.

Hon Mrs Boyd: The other issue, though, that you need to know is that the demand is much higher than we can fill. For example, the base allocation last year was $749,200; we actually ended up with many fewer dollars and have only been able to commit, so far, $229,000, so people do get turned down.

Ms Poole: And I can certainly understand that. What I would like to see happen is to have some sort of mechanism at the beginning of the proposal to evaluate the chances rather than having them go all the way through and then finding indeed that there's no money at the end of the rainbow.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We don't always know, of course.

Ms Poole: I assume I have time to continue.

The Chair: Absolutely.

Ms Poole: I had asked last Wednesday what proportion of crown attorneys have received training on violence against women.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I believe that's in the answers we provided for you.

Ms Poole: That's right. This was in response to my concern about the expenditure control plan and cost reductions in the violence against women initiatives. I had asked you specifically about a reduction that actually crosses both of your ministerial portfolios as the Attorney General and also as minister for women's issues: reduced funding for the training of crown attorneys on issues relating to sexual assault and wife assault.

I wish I had Hansard available with me at this moment to give me your exact response, but to paraphrase, I believe it was that you didn't need as much money in the program because many of the crown attorneys had in fact been trained. I had hoped for numbers of crown attorneys as well as numbers of crown attorneys who had been trained, because the answer given to me doesn't really lead me to believe that, because most of the crown attorneys have actually been trained and because there's very little turnover, we can rest assured that they've all been trained.

This says at least one crown attorney in each of the 54 crown attorney offices in Ontario is designated the coordinator. These crown attorneys receive very specialized and extensive training, I understand, on the relevant legal, psychological and social issues relating to these offences; they serve as the resource person. It goes on to say that all the other crown attorneys get little courses, mini-courses, and are required to at least attend a three-day intensive training session. But I get the impression from this that very few crown attorneys would actually have the full course. They say at least one in each of the 54 offices but --

Hon Mrs Boyd: All get the three-day intensive course, and that includes specialized training in the area of abuse against women. What we used to do was to provide separately for sexual assault training and wife assault training. As part of the integration move this year, and I was one of the participants in the conference, we put together those two issues to show the continuum of violence against women. That's one of the things we're doing: Instead of offering two separate courses, we're doing it together to say that the skills, the sensitivity to the victims' needs, the legal considerations in terms of proof and in terms of how you handle an adverse witness and so on, all of those things, apply to both of the situations.

The designated crowns are on a rotating basis, because we find people get burned out in this field. In an office, say, of 12 crowns, since we've been doing this training since 1984-85 in this province, you would probably have over the number of years most of those people having shared in a designation as either a wife assault or a sexual assault designee and having got specialized training.

There is turnover, obviously, and in the past the turnover's been much higher than it is now. I didn't say "most of" the approximately 500 crown attorneys -- there are 489 or something -- but that the majority of them at this point have been trained. I can't give you exact numbers, but we can certainly see if we can come up with something that's a bit more exact in terms of some of the training.

The specialist designee is expected to be there as a resource person; the cases are talked about if there are real difficulties and so on. Where there's a victim/ witness coordinator or where there's a decision by the designee that we need to send in someone who's experienced in terms of victim/witness services, then that kind of resource is also available.

Ms Poole: Hand in hand with training our crown attorneys in dealing with these very sensitive cases is also the matter of how we're dealing with the rest of the judicial system, particularly judges. The Chair is giving me the high sign -- the Speaker is leaving his throne in the Legislature -- but I wonder if you could very briefly begin the discussion of what you as Attorney General are doing to ensure our judges have training.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I'm afraid there's no way I could possibly be brief about that, so I wonder if we could put that off until tomorrow.

The Chair: That would certainly get concurrence from the Chair, as he recognizes that it is 6 of the clock and I'm on my way to the Board of Internal Economy to get our budget approved.

This meeting stands adjourned until tomorrow immediately following routine proceedings. We have about two hours and 47 minutes remaining to complete the estimates for the Office Responsible for Women's Issues. This meeting stands adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 1800.