Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

MINISTRY OF THE SOLICITOR GENERAL AND CORRECTIONAL SERVICES

CONTENTS

Wednesday 1 June 1994

Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services

Hon David Christopherson, minister

Dr James Young, chief coroner of Ontario and acting assistant deputy minister, public safety

Michele Noble, deputy minister

Dr Terry Angle, acting chief education officer

Dan McIntyre, executive director, strategic policy and planning division

Dr Paul Humphries, senior medical consultant and manager, clinical services, correctional services division

Bernard Moyle, Ontario fire marshal

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES

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

*Acting Chair / Président suppléant: Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville ND)

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

*Abel, Donald (Wentworth North/-Nord ND)

Carr, Gary (Oakville South/-Sud PC)

*Duignan, Noel (Halton North/-Nord ND)

Elston, Murray J. (Bruce L)

*Fletcher, Derek (Guelph ND)

*Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent 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:

Mills, Gordon (Durham East/-Est ND) for Mr Wiseman

Murphy, Tim (St George-St David L) for Mr Mahoney

Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC) for Mr Arnott

Clerk / Greffière: Grannum, Tonia

Staff / Personnel: McLellan, Ray, research officer, Legislative Research Service

The committee met at 1547 in committee room 2.

MINISTRY OF THE SOLICITOR GENERAL AND CORRECTIONAL SERVICES

The Chair (Mr Cameron Jackson): We're assembled today to continue with the estimates of the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services. We have approximately three hours and 40 minutes remaining.

We have agreed to stack the votes, so we probably won't be voting on anything today. However, there were several questions on which the minister agreed to undertake further investigation, and to the extent that he has some of those responses, I'd devote a bit of time now for him to share that information. Some of it is in print form and some of it is verbal. Then we'll proceed with our regular rotation.

Hon David Christopherson (Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services): Thank you, Mr Chairman. When I talked to you before the meeting and said there are things in writing or in print, what I was being advised was that they will be ready for the next meeting but they aren't ready today. In seeking your guidance, you didn't particularly want me to go on at great length in giving verbal responses. I have a couple of issues I would like to comment on verbally.

We do have some material around the issues of the education questions, which will be here shortly, I'm told.

Also, I have quite a number of senior staff from areas where there were questions where the members of the committee may want to ask details beyond what I'm expected to have. I would mention for the information of members to consider that we have Dr Jim Young, who is the chief coroner of Ontario and is also the acting assistant deputy minister of our public safety division. Ontario Fire Marshal Bernie Moyle is also with us today. We have Dr Terry Angle for special education.

We did try to reach Dr Schabas, as requested by the committee, but unfortunately he's not available today. Again, not being a part of my ministry, I can't give a commitment, but we have Dr Paul Humphries, the senior medical officer for the ministry, who would certainly be prepared to come forward and assist in dialoguing with any issues members might have.

Jim Ellard from Emergency Measures Ontario is also here, in addition to, obviously, financial folks and others. I would point out that Dr Young is also prepared to answer questions regarding the forensic centre, as well as forensic science questions, as he works very closely with those individuals and can provide a lot of assistance.

I want to formally acknowledge my appreciation to Tim Murphy for his generous offer to ensure that what he was hearing was something that I'd be as comfortable with today and tomorrow as I was the first time I said it. I do appreciate that very much. I think that's a very honourable gesture and I won't forget it.

To clarify the matter very clearly, there is no consideration at this point on the part of the government to change that. What is under way is a look at whether or not any changes to aspects of arbitrations would be helpful in making the process more efficient, but the answer to your question is no.

Just a couple of other matters, Mr Chairman, and I'll turn it over to you to start the questions.

There was a question, and I'm not sure who asked it, regarding what assistance the ministry has provided with regard to the transition to new standard issue handguns -- that was Tim also -- moving from the .38 calibre to the 9 millimetre or .40 calibre, as in the new regulation.

As much as I would have liked to be able through our ministry to provide financial assistance, we were not able to do that. What we did was to ensure that the transition time was as long as we could reasonably make it in terms of our desire to see the change happen quickly; also as long as we could, recognizing the need to meet Ministry of Labour concerns about the safety issues.

The reason for the length of time would be to make it easier for police services to plan the costings over a number of budget years and to phase in the changes. The regulation provides for a five-year transition period. The vast majority of the police services will be done within two or three years at the maximum. Only the very large services will be longer than that, and even with those, I'm making it a priority to do the training and the transition.

The OPP, as they always do, are offering whatever assistance they can in terms of training to smaller police services across the province. I know that, as much as possible, different police services are working together to share the load of the training costs. That's where we stand with that.

I would also point out, of course, that all the new recruits at the Ontario Police College will be trained on the new semi-automatic pistol and they will be assured of being trained at the standard in terms of number of rounds and number of hours. That full cost is picked up by the ministry, as we run the Ontario Police College.

The issue of disposal and storage of the .38 calibre: There has been a letter go out from my policing services division advising police services that it is the desire of the ministry that there not be any resales, that there not be any trade-ins, that there not be any selling even offshore into other jurisdictions, that it is our desire that the weapons be destroyed and eliminated.

I want to say to committee members, though, that at this point that letter in and of itself cannot constitute, to use simple language, a direct order. I offer up that it may be difficult with existing regulations to enforce that if there were a police service that decided it didn't want to follow this. But in monitoring this issue, in most of the areas where anybody has any other ideas, there has been a lot of public reaction: editorials, letters, community activists who have stepped forward and said this is unacceptable.

At this point I think the leadership we've provided is going to give us what we need. I continue to monitor it closely and I'm going to say here, for the first time, that I don't rule out, if we have a serious problem seeing that followed, looking at other action necessary to be able to enforce it.

The Chair: Minister, I suggest that we're getting into a more narrative response to some of these questions. The norm is to treat the matters more or less in a fashion of an order paper question, which is generally helpful to the members, and somewhat easier for staff actually. If those are tabled, we find that system works best.

But since we only have three hours and a bit remaining and the members have all served notice of a series of additional questions they want to raise and we have deputants here, I wonder if we could perhaps either circulate any of that information or rely on your suggestion earlier that you'll have some of that in writing.

Hon Mr Christopherson: Fair enough.

The Chair: I'd appreciate that.

I suggest 20-minute segments, if that's agreeable to everyone. Mr Runciman is up first.

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I have a couple of things. I raised an issue in the House the other day which the minister became quite agitated about, but I think it's worth resurrecting. I gather that one of the major Toronto newspapers will be doing a significant story on this issue in the next couple of days.

Mr Derek Fletcher (Guelph): The Toronto Sun?

Mr Runciman: It's not the Toronto Sun. It's in respect to the operation of the Elizabeth Fry facility in Hamilton. I understand as well that a report has been handed over to the major crime unit of Hamilton-Wentworth and they are going to be deciding at some point this week whether to get involved in a full investigation in respect to the allegations surrounding that. I don't pretend to be privy to all of the information; we simply had some materials made available to us. I would ask the minister in respect to this issue if he has any concerns about the allegations of the operations.

I know he indicated in the House that he felt the report had to be circulated to the funding organizations. We were advised after question period that the report had been sent to the other funders and had been sent back because they felt there was inadequate information in the report. It had been so severely edited that it was of little or no value to the funders in terms of reaching some sorts of conclusions.

I felt that I made a valid point in question period in respect to the fact that if there were concerns coming from that report that merited police involvement, the minister had a responsibility to immediately involve the police and to conduct an investigation; as well as administrative matters, that he should be acting on them quickly without having to seek the endorsation of other funders, especially in his role, as I described him, as the top cop in the province.

Again, I simply would like to ask him about that issue. He has had some time to talk to his staff about the matter. Is he still comfortable with the position he took in the House, or is anything further happening in respect to that matter?

Hon Mr Christopherson: I'm very, very pleased, quite frankly, to have the opportunity to have a better dialogue with you on this, rather than just the atmosphere of question period. In terms of your valid points, they probably, if there were any, would have had a better chance of being addressed by me had they not been wrapped up in some of the other, let's just say, material that I characterized in the House, which I had to withdraw.

Mr Runciman: That's not what you're doing now, I gather.

Hon Mr Christopherson: No, of course not.

First of all, let's understand the process, because I think -- I know -- there are some inaccuracies in your understanding of what is happening. The process for the review was initiated by all of the funders in response to concerns that had surfaced in the community.

The funders agreed to terms of reference that had a representative from our investigations unit -- although I don't think that's the right word; but anyway an investigative unit within our ministry -- and someone from Corrections Canada. Both those individuals undertook to prepare a report based on the terms of reference that were approved by the funding groups, and we were one of them. We are one of the funders; we're not the only funder. Another part of the ministry, unrelated, was responsible for doing the investigative part that we were doing, then someone from Corrections Canada was playing the same role and they were working together. They were doing a joint review, joint investigation, if you will.

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When they completed their initial draft report, they sent it to freedom of information people to look at it for the obvious purpose of ensuring that there weren't things in there, in the course of an investigation, that shouldn't be said because they might violate people's rights under freedom of information.

That document was then returned to the authors, the authors signed the report and submitted it to the funding group. The funding group felt that they didn't have all of the answers they were hoping to get, so the authors of the report agreed to meet with the funding group. That took place.

Yesterday there was a meeting of the funders again, having met with the authors, and it's my understanding that they agreed at that meeting they were going to present the report to the board and that, in doing so, they asked the board to receive the report, prepare their response and meet with the funders again. The board, of course, is a community board; it's a community organization. Each of us as funders, most of them anyway, it's through service contracts, but the board runs the facilities, not the ministry and not any of the other major funders.

So where do things stand right now? The board, the proper authority constituted to run the facility, has received the report that the funding group mandated and requested. They've been asked by the funders to review the report and to meet again with the funders with their response, if you will, and I guess their plan of action, and that's where we stand today.

Mr Runciman: I guess the question I asked you in respect to your role as Solicitor General was if there were allegations or evidence that were part of this report. In terms of allegations respecting criminality where the police should have been called in, you didn't acknowledge whether or not there were those sorts of allegations incorporated in the report that you received.

If indeed there were, and apparently, from the information I've received, a police officer in the Hamilton-Wentworth area felt strongly enough in that respect and submitted a report to the major crime unit -- they have to make the final decision in that respect, but I thought those kinds of allegations were there. I'm sort of curious about how you see your own responsibility in those kinds of matters, and if those allegations were there, and I suspect they were, why you didn't feel it was appropriate to act upon them.

Hon Mr Christopherson: First of all -- and I know you know processes within my ministry and policing circles probably better than most people, certainly in the Legislature -- you well know that I don't call in the police myself. I don't initiate investigations myself. That is done by officials, and so it wouldn't be appropriate for me in any case to be phoning the police and say, "I want you to start investigating such-and-such." For obvious reasons, that's not the way it works.

However, I am advised that the investigators, during their course of reviewing this whole matter, had what is being termed the appropriate contact with policing services as they went through their investigations. If you need to know what that was, you'll need to ask them.

I should tell you that the head of the unit within the ministry from which our co-author was drawn is an inspector-ranked OPP officer. So the first thing: If there is something there that immediately should be brought to the attention of the police by virtue of information uncovered as a result of this investigation, then appropriate contact was being made with the police at that time, as it should be.

Second, the product itself, the report, is not my report. The report doesn't come to me. It wasn't initiated by me alone. Many reports are, and many of them I answer to the House for. This one belongs to the funding group.

Mr Runciman: I know you're sensitive to this line of questioning and I respect your concerns, but the allegation was made and I think it merits follow-up in respect to the involvement, if indeed there was any -- the allegation was made -- of your chief of staff in respect to her past employment history with Elizabeth Fry and her friendship, I gather, with people who are at the centre of this investigation.

Question period is a difficult time to get a full explanation as well as an appropriate question, but I gather what you have indicated is contrary to what people are telling me, that when they tried to contact your office with respect to their concerns over this report, they experienced difficulty and in fact those calls were funnelled to your chief of staff's office.

Whether she was involved in any of these calls directly or not I have no knowledge, but I guess I'd just like to give you the opportunity to elaborate on that a little bit more, your assurances that she in no way, shape or form has had any involvement in this matter from day one.

Hon Mr Christopherson: I appreciate the tenor and I'll respond in kind. No. I went to great lengths to be very sure that there was no direct involvement and that as a result of taking strong action not to be involved there wouldn't be the perception. The only step I could have gone further would be to relieve her of duties and fire her or transfer her out of the office, which I don't think is a practical expectation. But certainly a reasonable move on my part would be to ask her to have no involvement at all in this case and in this file. That's what I've done, and that is the way she has conducted herself.

Mr Runciman: Has that been from the outset?

Hon Mr Christopherson: That's from the outset, and let me say that I checked on the issue of the phone calls. I didn't address it in the House because I didn't have a specific response and, rather than just throw up the wall, I followed up. Apparently any calls that came in -- I don't know what phone number they were given and whether that ended up being her office, but all the calls were taken by other staff. There was no direct engagement by my chief of staff with anyone certainly that I'm aware of. Again, I express my confidence that I'd be very surprised to learn anything to the contrary.

Mr Runciman: Okay. I'll move on to another subject now. The chief coroner may want to come forward for this. It's a question related to a Lindsay area coroner, a fellow by the name of Al Lackey. I don't know if you're familiar with the gentleman. This has to do with an individual by the name of Roch Theriault -- there have been a number of articles written about him and there's a book, The Savage Messiah -- who had a cult, a commune, in the Lindsay area.

The book The Savage Messiah, which was written by two reporters from Maclean's magazine, documents that Mr Lackey, while he was this area coroner, was also acting effectively as the family doctor to the commune and was a close friend of Mr Theriault's. They make some strong allegations in respect to why that relationship was there. I'm not going to get into why that relationship existed. It's in the book. It's there for anyone to read.

In 1985, Lackey declared that a two-month-old baby on the commune, who'd been left in a wheelbarrow in 10-degree temperature, had died of SIDS. I'm not sure what that stands for.

The Chair: Sudden infant death syndrome.

Mr Runciman: Sudden infant death syndrome, right. Last year, according to the authors, the chief coroner's office was re-examining the file, but the results were never announced and when the authors tried to contact Dr Lackey he was extremely hostile. I'm posing the question as to what happened to that file and whether Dr Lackey is continuing to serve as the coroner in the Lindsay area.

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Dr James Young: I'm Dr James Young. I'm the chief coroner for the province of Ontario and I'm also the acting assistant deputy minister for public safety.

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): That's two business cards.

Mr Runciman: How long have you been chief coroner?

Dr Young: Four years, since 1990. I'm certainly more than aware of the case and I'm aware that Dr Lackey had some involvement in the case and that there was a book written. I have not read the book and I was unaware till this moment of that allegation within the book, so I'm unable to comment in any way on whether or not he was a friend or a family doctor or what his involvement with Mr Theriault was. I can comment that he is a coroner in that area of the province and remains so, and I can confirm that the investigation was reopened and reconsidered as to whether or not there is evidence of foul play.

The classification for sudden infant death syndrome has changed in the province over the period of time since that was done and this death would, under today's classification, not be considered sudden infant death. It would more likely be called SUDS, or sudden unexplained death, because all features of the case are not in order and cannot be easily explained. The last I heard was that we had reclassified the death but we didn't have any information that would allow the case to proceed any further than that.

Mr Runciman: Reclassified it to what?

Dr Young: To SUDS from SIDS.

Mr Runciman: There was no concern in respect to the investigation related to Dr Lackey's performance, or perhaps a conflict or a suggested conflict by the authors of this book in respect to his relationship with Mr Theriault?

Dr Young: I was unaware of this allegation until you raised it here, so there hasn't been an investigation because I didn't know there was anything to investigate. I certainly can look into the matter, but I had never heard that allegation till this moment.

Mr Runciman: When you redefine the cause of death from SIDS to SUDS, are the police called in those kinds of circumstances, if you're saying it's a sudden unexplained death? If the coroner makes a finding initially that this was sudden infant death syndrome, the police, I assume, are not called in to conduct an investigation.

Dr Young: Yes, they are. In any baby's death, one can only arrive at sudden infant death syndrome after an extensive investigation. The investigation would include an autopsy, a scene investigation, interviews with those involved. At the point in time when the death is of a child under one year of age and all factors in the investigation, including the autopsy in the investigation, are negative, then it can be classified as SIDS, but only after that.

Under the current definition, if there are any factors that would lead to suspicion or concern that it would be considered either a sudden unexplained or, in some instances, a homicide if in fact there was a proven shaken baby or injuries that would result in death -- but the police are always involved as part of that process as the coroner's investigators.

Mr Runciman: So when you reached a different conclusion than the coroner had originally, are the police notified of that change? It's up to the police in the area, I assume, whether they initiate another investigation of the circumstances.

Dr Young: That's right. They would be aware of the change in classification and that the death should be relooked at. It's still very difficult, though, from a sudden unexplained death, to draw conclusions of a criminal nature that are easily supported in court.

The Chair: I'd like to suggest at this point that in the interests of the scheduling of our deputants, if there are questions for the chief coroner, we try and deal with them today and then we don't have to call Dr Young to come back next week. If you can keep that in mind, we won't be bound by it, but at the end of the day I will ask which of the deputants you don't wish to have back, in the interests of letting them continue.

Having said that, I recognize Mr Fletcher.

Mr Fletcher: No, mine has to deal with corrections, so I don't need the chief coroner.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr Young.

Mr Fletcher: It's okay. Mr Hayes can go first, as long as he leaves me the time, or Mr Mills, whoever it is who wants to.

The Chair: No, Dr Young can come back. He's not leaving the room. Please proceed with your questions.

Mr Fletcher: Thank you for being here, Minister. As you know, I have the Guelph Correctional Centre in my riding, and the Wellington Detention Centre. I've been in contact with many of the people who work in corrections at Guelph and I'm hearing some disturbing facts from the people who are working there. They're union people, they're non-union people. Some of them are management people, some of them are not.

What they're saying to me is that understaffing is creating a morale problem that is starting to be manifested in the way that inmates are being treated, and the morale problem is created because of -- it could be tied to the social contract -- the issue of overtime, where guards or people who work there have time in lieu of overtime, whereas management personnel are being paid for overtime.

Their concern is that they're not being offered the opportunity to say no; they're being told they have to work the overtime. They're in excess of 60 hours per week and with the accumulation of the amount of time, there's no way the time in lieu is ever going to be returned to them.

They also say that they see themselves as an essential service, and I tend to agree with them in that aspect, and that they should in that sense either be exempt from or have changes to the social contract which would allow them to maintain that essential service.

I understand also from talking with the employees that they have withdrawn services as far as committees are concerned, employee-management committees, and that as far as recreational activities for the inmates, as far as some of the social things are concerned, they just don't have enough staff. The inmates are not getting out of their dorms or wherever as much as possible, especially in this weather, out of doors as much, and that creates a problem also.

Have you heard these things? Can you comment on these issues?

Hon Mr Christopherson: Certainly I'm aware of some of the concerns that exist at Guelph. I'd like to comment on one or two things and ask the deputy to provide a little bit of detailed backdrop, then I'll come back to answering details with you.

I want to address the issue of the essential service, as it's commonly known. Decisions around whether or not there would be essential services were discussed at the central bargaining table, which of course has representatives of the union and management corporately to talk about the common elements of the social contract.

The determination there was that there was no need to move to a "critical function" designation, which is what it's formally called; that there was no need to move to that in any area of the government at this point because it was felt that through the different tables and discussions and sectoral agreements there would be a way to manage it.

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I must say that so far, although we've had certainly some issues arise in some locations, by and large, as difficult as it's been for management and staff, we have been able to work our way through in a way that allows us to not go to the "critical function" designation. But I would again say that were that to happen, it would be a decision that would be discussed at the corporate level and not just at my ministry level for a decision by me or an official of my ministry.

Michele, perhaps some more specifics on Guelph.

Ms Michele Noble: I think a couple of the other points you were raising had to do with overtime and the withdrawal of overtime by some of the correctional officers at Guelph and what impact that was having. We are obviously aware that some of the correctional officers have indicated an unwillingness to take on overtime; however, there are some who are continuing to be available for overtime. We are monitoring the situation, obviously, and at the moment we're not seeing that we haven't been able to accommodate the staffing requirements down there. We're very much aware of the concerns of the correctional officers at that institution and are continuing to try and work on the issue as a local issue.

To our knowledge, at the moment the withdrawal of being available for overtime is limited to some of the staff at Guelph.

Mr Fletcher: From what I understand, many of the people who are working overtime are either the part-time people or the casuals, and they are being told they have to work overtime. It's not, "Will you work?" It's, "You have to work."

Ms Noble: The ministry does have, as part of its agreements with the bargaining agent, agreements around minimum staffing levels for health and safety reasons, and I am aware that there has been a limited number of circumstances in which staff have been required to extend shifts in order that we could make sure that level was maintained. However, in the vast majority of cases, overtime has been provided by volunteers.

Mr Fletcher: Are we looking at an amount of overtime that is what I would call obscene if it's all the time? Does that mean the Guelph Correctional Centre is understaffed, because they require so much overtime?

Ms Noble: We go through patterns, obviously, in terms of the exact staffing available, in the sense that we have people who leave and unclassified people who are available and then they're not available. We have recently been making sure that we have additional staff available to impact on the numbers of hours that would be needed by individual correctional officers down there. We have a fluctuating staffing pattern, not as approved, but just in terms of who's there, and there have been periods where we've needed to bring on new staff, and that has contributed to substantial hours during those periods. But I think that's something that evens out, and we're making sure we have the staffing available.

Mr Fletcher: So there is no shortage of personnel at the Guelph Correctional Centre which would make overtime such a necessary evil?

Ms Noble: From the ministry's point of view, there is always discussion under way in terms of what minimum staffing levels are. We have agreements with the bargaining agent in terms of what requirements are at any point in time in terms of shifts, and we were managing the institution in a way to ensure that we have the staffing we think we'll need there.

Mr Fletcher: Thank you. I could go on, but in view of the time, I'll pass.

Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): Mr Chair, I'm ever mindful of your direction, so I would like to ask a question of the chief coroner, Dr Young. Doctor, if you're asked to come back two or three times, it's a get-fit program -- no, it isn't; not really.

I haven't got the figures with me here today -- I've hunted for them, but like everything else, I've got so many papers it's a job to find it -- but I distinctly remember reading that the number of inquests you are doing now is smaller than in the previous report I saw, but it didn't seem to me that the dollar value was less. Could you give me some sort of explanation of what seemingly looks to be less work for the same money? I don't mean that personally.

Dr Young: In fact, there is no figure broken out for the actual cost of inquests, but by design, the number of inquests has dropped considerably in the province over the last number of years. At one time, approximately 10 years ago, we were doing 500 inquests a year. The average length of those inquests was probably about two or three days. We decided that in many instances we were covering the same ground over and over again and that to be effective we should find cases that were representative and go into those cases in more depth.

So we designed a mechanism where we would do just that, and we undertook issues of much greater complexity, such as we did in Yeo and Stephenson and, most recently, in the Kerr inquests. These take a great deal of preparation and time and last for a long time. As well, just the average inquest has increased in complexity because of the number of lawyers attending, and the complexity of running that hearing has increased dramatically. The average inquest now lasts approximately a week in total length, but we believe we get better value for money by doing a topic in some considerable depth.

The number last year was abnormally low, for a number of reasons. We had a number of cases that had to be put over because of their mandatory nature and because there were other considerations, such as criminal charges and labour charges. In some instances, those are waiting and will come on stream this year. We had one courtroom tied up in Toronto with the Donaldson inquest most of the year, so that's created somewhat of a backlog as well.

We've developed a mechanism called a regional coroner's review where, without an inquest, we can hold meetings and then result in recommendations. Many of the changes we used to make through an inquest we in fact do with the consent of all parties and the cooperation of the family.

So it's really a different process than it used to be. It's much more involved, but we think it produces the same result with fewer inquests.

Mr Mills: In my past life, I've dealt with the Centre of Forensic Sciences. The Canada letter, for instance, is a famous document where we determined -- well, I don't have to tell you; you know. But we would send that down and it would be delayed, delayed, delayed. I just wonder if you could enlighten me as to how you prioritize material that comes forward to your forensic sciences department. Obviously, if there's a serious murder or something like that, it would go to the top of the list, but I'm just wondering about the more mundane things. How do you determine who gets quick service?

Dr Young: As the material enters the centre, there is a priority system set up. It really is based on the experience of the centre in regard to how the information will be used. Everything that's submitted is considered to be serious. The problem is that if you make everything of equal seriousness, in fact nothing becomes a priority.

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The system is set up so that the needs for a criminal court, for example, would take priority and those cases would rise to the top. If, for example, an investigator or a coroner's investigation requires some information, because we may make major investigative decisions based on that particular information, with simply a phone call and an explanation to the scientist at the centre we can reorder the priority and get the result we need.

We try to be mindful of other needs, such as families and insurance needs, civil needs, but these have to be ordered into the mix. As well as that, what can upset the mix considerably is if we have a particularly long and involved case. That may take the majority of the resources in a particular area for a period of time.

Similarly, what we find when we test changes things. If one does a drug screen and the drug screen is negative, we'll get the result back in a matter of a few days. If we do the drug screen and it turns out to be positive and then we have to isolate each of the drugs out and their levels, we're talking about many, many days of work and a report that's probably a month later. All of these factor in and are considered.

Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): Dr Young, I'm interested in the education programs within the ministry's facilities. In the correspondence we have here you're talking about encouraging offenders to continue with their education upon release. That's of prime importance. After some of these people are rehabilitated and sent back into the community, especially the young offenders, are they enrolled in regular classes? Is there a follow-up, and what would the success rate be?

The Chair: Mr Hayes, I believe there is another member of that ministry who would be anxious to pursue that. Would you like to pursue that question or did you have another question?

Mr Hayes: I would like to pursue this.

The Chair: Come on down. Please introduce yourself. You were present to hear the question.

Dr Terry Angle: My name is Dr Terry Angle and I'm the acting chief education officer for the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services. I've been in the role since March 1 of this year. You will have to repeat the question; I just got part of it.

Mr Hayes: The question deals with the education programs where you have the agreements between the school boards and Correctional Services. I'm talking about young offenders being encouraged to go back into the school system and continue their education. I just want to know if there is a follow-up on that and how successful it is.

Dr Angle: Maybe I could provide some general background information about our educational activities with the young offender clients. We have educational activities in all of our closed-custody sites in and around the province, and all of those programs are provided by local school boards through section 27 agreements. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

Mr Hayes: I am now. I have it in front of me.

Dr Angle: Yes, it would be in some of the material we presented earlier. The extent of programming, the range of services, will vary from site to site, but certainly all the young offenders will have an educational opportunity wherever they happen to be in our closed-custody facilities and in most of our open-custody ones as well. They would be provided by local boards. If they were a resident pupil of the local board and would be returning to that community where the board is providing service, they'd be able to be linked to a local school board program in the area. If they're a non-resident pupil, it becomes a little more difficult for the boards to do the linkages, but they attempt to do that.

Mr Murphy: Minister, to follow up on some of your opening comments, just so I'm clear, you indicated there was no consideration on the part of government to change the current right-to-strike rules as part of the social contract. You're nodding yes.

Hon Mr Christopherson: As I understand it, yes, that's where we are. You need to appreciate, of course, that the discussions of the social contract and its implications are done, as I said earlier, at the corporate level, so I don't profess for a moment to be an expert in every nuance of the social contract. However, I'm prepared to give you detailed responses in writing, should you request them, if I don't give you enough through verbal responses.

Mr Murphy: You indicated that in fact that provision in the municipal sector agreement was related to arbitration provisions. That same issue is being discussed by the Fire Services Review Committee as part of that process. To what extent, then, is this municipal sector agreement and the follow-up through the productivity gang independent of the fire services review, or is it the same thing? What's the input of your ministry?

Hon Mr Christopherson: Do you want to give a process answer, Michele?

Ms Noble: It's that issue that I had attempted to address yesterday in indicating that there's actually no discussion taking place currently that has flowed from the social contract document. There's no table where people are sitting and having that discussion. Because the sector agreement indicates that there shall be a review of the items by August, there has been preliminary discussion at the officials' level, in terms of what needs to be discussed, of what special circumstances need to be created to deal with it, as opposed to those things which are already under discussion, and that has not been concluded. So at the moment, our position is that these issues are part of the discussion of the fire services review and that has not been sorted out or finalized.

There's nothing taking place at the moment which is separate. I think the intention is not to duplicate and confuse.

Mr Murphy: Some of the fire chiefs came in and saw me on this issue, and their concern was that there not be two trains running along two separate tracks.

Ms Noble: And that's exactly our concern.

Mr Murphy: All right. I also want to follow up on a couple of other things, and I'll bounce around a bit again.

Ages ago, Minister, you had a couple of polls done by Westmount Research and I don't think those have been tabled. I'm wondering if I could get them, and if not, why not? I'm referring to two; one I don't have a date for, but I think it's 1992 for both of them.

Hon Mr Christopherson: Sorry, what are they, Tim?

Mr Murphy: In 1992, there's Police Issues, by Westmount Research. That's all I have, and I have amounts of $3,500 for one and $31,000 for the other -- polling.

Ms Noble: We'll have to check.

Hon Mr Christopherson: I'm not sure I was the minister at the time, but I'll get you answers.

Mr Murphy: But you have a corporate uniformity.

Hon Mr Christopherson: Yes. I'm not saying you're not entitled to an answer from me; I'm just saying that since I may not have been there when the decision and action were taken, and Michele came to the ministry at the same time as I did, I need to find out.

Mr Murphy: My information is that they're not tabled.

Ms Noble: Could you just give us the titles again?

Mr Murphy: All I have is "Police Issues" for both of them. I assume that was around your testing the public's reaction to use-of-force regulations.

Ms Noble: They were undertaken by the ministry?

Mr Murphy: Yes.

I wanted to follow up on an issue that I think has been raised in the House, some concern raised by people at the Lindsay Jail, and I believe it's some guards there, the correctional officers. They have made the allegation that because of overcrowding there is a tendency to release inmates earlier than should be the case into the community. I would like to get a sense of what the numbers are of releases, whether the length of stay in that jail is disproportionately lower than in other equivalent institutions and whether there has been some kind of change -- because I know there is some discretionary power in the individual jail authorities -- in terms of the pattern of releasing people within recent years in order to resolve the overcrowding issue.

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Hon Mr Christopherson: In terms of statistical information, I'll ask Michele what she can give you in terms of what she may or may not have in front of her. But let me say this much about probably the more critical point in all of this, that is, the standard by which superintendents or their designates exercise the discretionary authority that is given to them.

No one, without exception, is to be considered for any kind of community release unless they qualify based on the criteria that are now set out in the ministry. There is not the ability to have checklist A in most circumstances but that if you're tight in terms of beds you can slip over to checklist B and it's not quite as onerous. That's not the way the system works. There's one set of requirements, and certainly one of the largest factors is the element of safety for the community, and none of that is lessened in any way as a result of any circumstances when a superintendent is to be exercising that authority. Having said that, if Michele has any info --

Ms Noble: Unfortunately, I don't have the detailed stats.

Mr Murphy: If you can have someone follow up, that would be wonderful. Related to that, I know you actually have an inmate suing you out of that jail.

Hon Mr Christopherson: You know how many people sue the government on any given day?

Mr Murphy: You get tons, I know. It probably has increased in the last little while too.

Hon Mr Christopherson: No, no, no. They're resolved quicker now.

Mr Murphy: What is the status of that lawsuit?

Ms Noble: Actually, it's interesting. There is a letter which I have received from a lawyer giving an indication of the concerns of the inmate. The letter itself does not constitute legal notice, and at the moment we're not aware that there is in fact a formal suit launched.

Mr Murphy: Do you know how many inmates sue you in a given year?

Hon Mr Christopherson: I don't, but then I'm not hands-on involved.

Mr Murphy: I'll just go through the questions. The second related question is, what percentage of those inmates who sue you, who actually take that step of engaging a lawyer, do so on legal aid?

The Chair: Is there someone from legal services in your ministry with us today?

Ms Noble: No, there's no one here.

The Chair: Is there a lawyer in the crowd?

Hon Mr Christopherson: Other than the person asking the question?

Mr Murphy: Who's willing to identify themselves as such, you mean?

Ms Noble: What we can do is note the questions and come back.

Mr Murphy: You may not be able to know what percentage of your inmates receive legal aid.

Ms Noble: We would not have that information. All we would know from our records -- I presume we would be able to glean the number of suits which were from inmates -- assuming the suits were identified, that there was something that would identify them in that.

Hon Mr Christopherson: Even if someone self-identified at some point in the process that they were receiving legal aid assistance, we still wouldn't keep track of it because it's not relevant to our responding.

Ms Noble: It's not relevant to us.

Hon Mr Christopherson: No, we wouldn't have that. I wouldn't want to leave the impression that we can come back with that.

Mr Murphy: I asked you yesterday about your response, and I don't think you got around to it because of time, on the systemic racism report and the correctional managers' response to it. I'm concerned about methodology. On a related issue, I think a little over a year ago now the ministry internally conducted a series of anti-racism focus groups at the same time, essentially, as the Commission on Systemic Racism was happening. If outside consultants were engaged to do it, I would like to know what they were paid. If it was internal, to the degree you can have that, how much did it cost, and what was the logic of doing that internally at the same time you were having a significant external study being done?

Hon Mr Christopherson: We have all of that and it should be here in the room, either with Michele or Kirk or somebody.

Ms Noble: I'm not sure whether we have the actual dollar cost of the focus group. There were external consultants and we can obtain that information.

The Chair: Can somebody help out the minister or the deputy?

Mr Murphy: This could be a chance for career advancement.

Ms Noble: No, no. Someone's just gone to make a phone call, I think, in terms of that information.

From the point of view of why it was done, the Commission on Systemic Racism was focusing in with respect to the offenders in the ministry. One of the concerns we had at the time was that there were issues and concerns among our staff about some of the issues and we wanted to have some ability to get their perceptions but also to start to engage them in the issues and the identification of things that would need to be changed if we were going to deal with the issue of systemic racism.

I think part of the logic was knowing that the commission was doing its work. It hadn't been preceded by the concerns expressed by Mr Lewis. There was a feeling that we couldn't simply sit and wait: "Well there may or may not be a problem." It was recognition that there were some staff concerns and we needed to start to engage it. Actually, I've just been handed a note. The consultant cost was $35,000.

Mr Murphy: Minister, I want to ask you a question arising out of a recommendation under the systemic racism review and then the response from the correctional managers. The divergence in views couldn't be clearer, and I'm wondering what your response is.

The systemic racism report recommends the abolition of the racial segregation of prisoners. Its recommendation is that prisoners be randomly distributed to facilities in ranges within institutions. The correctional managers say no, that the decision should be based, first and foremost, on the safety and security needs of inmates, staff and stability of the institution. There should be no systemwide random distribution directive.

In the specific case, have you taken a position on that dispute yet? If you are still in the course of responding to these, what is it? And when can we expect to see an official response?

Hon Mr Christopherson: Again I would seek staff to respond in terms of the specifics, but let me say that on the policy question, which is my jurisdiction alone, if you will, I have accepted the recommendation that we need to find ways of ensuring that we do not have any kind of systemic segregation and that we do need to find a system that will allow us to achieve that goal, recognizing that there always needs to be the ability to deal with certain circumstances, in terms of safety and special circumstances that do arise. But we're looking at a system that suggests -- and now I'm just giving you the thinking as opposed to the detailed policy -- that where those kinds of decisions may be made or allowed, they would be reported in through the system and reviewed, so they're constantly monitored to ensure that we aren't slipping into just a new form of segregation.

So that's the policy decision. The policy decision is, yes, we accept the recommendation; yes, we're going to put in place methods that will allow us to achieve those goals. Now, in terms of where we are in that process and how we might be doing that, I would ask staff to maybe respond in a little more detail.

Ms Noble: In terms of the point that seems to be juxtaposed, which is security versus segregation, and that you achieve a lack of segregation through random assignment, obviously, as a corrections group we have to be concerned about safety and security issues.

I think what the report and the commission was identifying is that there may be practices which are inadvertently leading to unnecessary segregation. From the ministry's point of view, we would certainly say that one needs to deal with safety and security as a primary concern. If there are instances where it's just practice or happenstance -- in other words, it is not a security issue -- then we need to look at the question of segregation.

One of the recommendations in the report specifically spoke to the training of the staff involved in the classification of the inmates when they come into the system, their training in terms of identification as one way of dealing with this issue, because they are the people who are supposed to be identifying where within the facility, taking these issues into account.

So we are taking action in terms of the development of specific training in those areas, but I would not say we're about to adopt a totally random placement system that does not take into account a security concern.

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Mr Murphy: I'm going to follow up on another review which has implications probably more for Correctional Services than Solicitor General. I think the fellow's name is Dick Barnhorst, who is in the AG's department, who was doing a justice policy review project. I gather it was finished last fall, and I'm wondering whether those aspects of it that had Correctional Services impacts have come to you for response. Have you seen it, have you responded to it, or do you know about it?

Hon Mr Christopherson: Well, I know about it, but I'm not sure exactly what the current status is. Michele?

Ms Noble: The justice review policy paper had been worked on, actually, on a multiministry basis, so both ministries had been involved in the development of the document and the policy draft. At the moment it has not yet received cabinet endorsement as a document, so we're not in the position of implementing in that sense. But certainly the ministry has been involved, was involved, in the development of the document.

Mr Murphy: Is it available, Minister?

Hon Mr Christopherson: I don't imagine it is, since it's still a working document at the staff level. I don't believe it's an actual position paper or policy paper until cabinet has had a chance to discuss it, so I doubt very much at this point, but I'll certainly be glad to check.

Mr Murphy: Thank you.

I'm going to ask the chief coroner one question while he's still here. That relates to the statistics on page 19 of the estimates briefing book, which showed about an 800 investigation drop in terms of the number of cases completed at the Centre of Forensic Sciences from 1992-93 to 1993-94, while at the same time there is a reported drop in the turnaround per case. The ministry yesterday said part of the explanation for the drop of that was a replacement of more experienced staff by junior staff, which would result in training and longer investigations. I'm confused by the fact that this reports a drop in the turnaround time, and yet you have 800 fewer cases. I'm wondering if you could help me understand.

Dr Young: It is a complicated area. I think one of the keys is to look at the actual backlogs, Mr Murphy. The backlogs at the Centre of Forensic Sciences have dropped slightly over time, which would suggest to me that in fact it's a decreased number of submissions to the centre that's resulting in fewer reports out the other end.

Mr Murphy: Is it because of the backlog that you're getting fewer submissions?

Dr Young: No. The reason for the drop in the submissions is that there's been a concerted effort on the part of the centre and the office of the chief coroner, along with police and crown attorneys, to have discussions about what submissions are necessary, what submissions aren't necessary, how to maintain evidence and not make a submission but ensure that the material has been preserved in case there needs to be a submission later. So we've managed at the lower end, in the marginal cases, to eliminate a great number of those, and therefore the number of reports coming back out is decreased.

The other thing to bear in mind is that, while this is happening, this is a raw number that doesn't actually reflect the complexity of the cases. You can have fewer cases and greater complexity, and that in fact is what's happening the more we use DNA and other things.

Mr Murphy: We're not given a very long historical summary, so it's tough to tell how much of an aberration it is. What is the backlog now?

Dr Young: I saw a figure earlier today. I believe it's around 2,000 cases.

Interjection: Thirteen hundred.

Dr Young: Thirteen hundred cases, Mr Murphy.

Mr Murphy: I forget the mathematical term, but do you know what percentage of those are 60 days old, 90 days old, aging -- accounts receivable aging in another environment, but that's not what you call them in this.

Dr Young: I don't have those actual figures today. I would say, though, that that type of issue is very complicated because it deals with the complexities of the cases in many instances. A 60-day-old file may be totally appropriate because of the amount of science that has to be done to it, but I don't have the actual run-out on how long each of them is. The average turnaround is approximately 60 days. That figure I do have.

Mr Murphy: I don't want to create a significant amount of new work for the centre, but if I could get that backlog aging figure, and it's okay if that's just on a piece of paper, I don't need you to come back to tell me. Thank you.

Mr Runciman: I have a couple of question for Dr Young. I'd like to wait a minute or two on that, but he doesn't have to leave that seat.

I know the minister won't have a response to this now, but I'm asking for information again about this fellow Roch Theriault, the so-called Savage Messiah. Apparently the crown had catalogued something like 80 separate criminal charges against this individual and the OPP were preparing a dangerous offender application, but then the crown struck a plea bargain which will see this guy eligible for parole in five years, unescorted day pass in three years. I'd like to know what happened to the dangerous offender application and why it was withdrawn. I'm not sure about the process.

Hon Mr Christopherson: That's with the AG's office.

Mr Runciman: Well, the OPP were preparing it. This is the information I was provided with.

Hon Mr Christopherson: They may be assisting the crown. I'll check, and if we have any ownership I'll get it for you, but at this point I strongly, strongly suspect it's going to be AG and I'd be the wrong person.

Mr Runciman: I suspect you're right, but I wanted to pose that question and find out where it went, as best you can. If you can't answer it, I'll understand that.

Domestic assault statistics: I know you've mentioned the high priority the government is giving, proudly so, to domestic assaults. I was talking to a fellow today, a reporter, who called me and said he was looking into trying to get a handle on some domestic assault statistics. He was told by your ministry officials that the police file all of those stats with your ministry apparently, and that all of those stats have been warehoused in North Bay, that you're currently working on statistics from 1986 to 1991.

This individual was posing the question about how much of a priority this is. The police are required to compile these reports and file them with your ministry. When you're talking about development of policies, budgets and so on, how meaningful can the policy development or budget development process be when you are not apparently aware of what's really happening out there?

Ms Noble: We've had the information. I think one of the things we've not been able to do was to get the information pulled together in a way that it could be published, and it's the publishing that has been delayed. I think there's work being done in terms of trying to get a volume of those statistics out and then being much quicker in terms of getting the next round of statistics out and published. So it's the publication of the information in a way that makes it generally available that has had a delay problem.

Mr Runciman: So it's only the publication, you're saying. If you're in the policy or budget development process, you can go from, say, 1992, 1993, 1994, and you have all of those figures in front of you so that you can make wise choices and decisions in respect to that?

Ms Noble: I wouldn't think that at this point, the fiscal year having just been closed, that we would have the 1993-94 figures compiled, but we do have figures that would be more recent than those that have been published.

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Mr Runciman: Why, when the media phoned about this, were they told they weren't available, they're all being warehoused in North Bay?

Ms Noble: We have Mr Dan McIntyre, who is the executive director in the strategic policy and planning area. That's the area responsible for this. Maybe he could come forward and just comment.

The Chair: Mr McIntyre, welcome. I believe you've been properly introduced.

Mr Dan McIntyre: Yes, thank you very much. The statistics have been transferred to North Bay and what we're trying to do right now is to in fact input the statistics into our computer system in North Bay so that we'll be able to provide those statistics on a more regular basis than they were before when they were more manually inputted and then put together. We'll be able to, as the deputy said, publish those on a regular basis.

But what we're faced with right now is making the transition from one system, in terms of handling the statistics, into another system and integrating that into the new system. There is a bit of a backlog there, but we do have a plan in place to get that inputted over the next few months.

Mr Runciman: So do you have a deadline date?

Mr McIntyre: Not a firm date, but the plan is that we will be hiring part-time staff to input that information over the next six months.

Mr Runciman: Contract staff?

Mr McIntyre: Yes.

Mr Runciman: Okay, thank you.

Dr Young, I just wanted to ask you about the Yeo inquest. The recommendations that came out of that inquest that relate to the SG or the corrections ministry, how many of those remain outstanding and have not been acted upon that you're aware of?

Dr Young: I can't give you a specific number that haven't been acted upon. I can give you a more general answer in the sense that the recommendations in relation to corrections and the Solicitor General related to a number of areas.

There are a number of projects under way within the ministry, in policing services, interministerial, because many of the issues also relate to the mental health system and corrections and the Solicitor General. Those projects are all actively under way and the recommendations are partially implemented. The simpler of the corrections ones have been implemented, but I actually haven't made a specific tally.

I'm following the recommendations very closely because I was the coroner who conducted the inquest and I'm vitally interested and I'm aware of the work. There are two people dedicated to the project of implementing the policing side of them and they're doing that with a timetable. So the actual, final completion is not that high at this point but it's work in progress.

Mr Runciman: Operating from memory, general recommendation number 7 I think was to create some sort of a commission. Maybe it's difficult for me just tossing this at you, but it was to review parole processes and those kinds of things with a goal of providing additional protection for the public. Has anything been on that that you're aware of?

Dr Young: I'll defer to the minister in regard to that aspect. Certainly my job is to create the recommendation and to follow up. It's work in his hands right now.

Mr Runciman: Maybe we can delay that response until you've left the chair.

The Donaldson inquest you mentioned, what was the cost of that? Do you have a figure on that?

Dr Young: It's not completed yet. It's very difficult to estimate a cost. Much of the time the Donaldson inquest hasn't been sitting because there have been several trips to Divisional Court and one trip to the Court of Appeal in regard to legal issues concerning it. The appearance would be that it's been running in actual hearing days a long time and it probably appears to be more expensive than it in fact is. I would also mention that the Donaldson inquest is a mandatory inquest for us. We have no choice but to do that inquest under the Coroners Act.

Mr Runciman: This is because of a policeman being involved in the shooting?

Dr Young: He was considered legally to have been detained because he was warned that he was under arrest and prevented from leaving that room.

Mr Runciman: I see.

Dr Young: Under the Coroners Act, then, it's required. There had been considerations early on finding a way of streamlining that particular inquest. Unfortunately, we ran into some legal difficulties in regard to getting all the parties to agree to it, regretfully, but it certainly was attempted early on to see if we could do a faster inquest in that particular incident, because I recognized the emotion of that case would create problems in conducting the inquest.

Mr Runciman: The Centre of Forensic Sciences: Are you happy with the resources that you have available for the operation of the centre?

Dr Young: That's an interesting question, as Mr Christopherson looks at me.

The Chair: Isn't that a question for the Treasurer?

Dr Young: Ask me about the coroner system. The centre produces world-class work and is recognized as a world-class institution.

Mr Runciman: By whom? By police officials, the courts?

Dr Young: By the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, by policing people, by people from the FBI lab, by the RCMP. When I either lecture internationally or meet people in the forensic world, the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Ontario is an acknowledged leader in the field. It's a highly technical and a very expensive area. It could always use more money because there are always evolving areas, but in terms of getting the job done and doing a first-class job, that's being done currently.

Mr Runciman: The pathologists whom you utilize for autopsies, how does that process work? You have a pool that you draw upon on a fee-for-service basis?

Dr Young: Yes, there are approximately 350 pathologists in the province who respond to coroners' warrants and do autopsies.

Mr Runciman: When you talk about forensic science, though, are all of these people trained in forensic science?

Dr Young: That's different. The Centre of Forensic Sciences has nothing to do with autopsies, despite everything in the paper each day. No bodies go to the Centre of Forensic Sciences. The forensic pathology is done at the coroner's office in Toronto or in the various hospitals across the province.

We've embarked on a program in the last two years where we are creating a series of centres of excellence in pathology and we're funding, in collaboration with several of the teaching universities, centres where we're moving our high-profile cases to be done by specialized forensic pathologists.

Those centres then can produce high-quality forensic pathology. They can train future forensic pathologists, because the residents in pathology go through the programs. They also act as a centre of research in regard to forensics. We are upgrading. There's still much to be done.

Mr Runciman: We talked about the backlog that the centre has. I know there was some criticism in respect to a prominent murder case a year or so ago, about a sample sitting on the shelf -- that was the accusation, anyway -- for a significant period of time. What's your reaction to that? I can't recall your reaction.

Dr Young: I have to be very careful about a reaction to a specific case. The general principle is that in situations such as that, and particularly at that point in time, the DNA unit was just beginning. There were submissions in a number of cases and sometimes large numbers of submissions were made.

It then becomes a matter of the investigators indicating to the centre which of the many samples should be prioritized in terms of testing, once that system and that agreement have been made and the particular prioritized samples are tested and the results turned over to the investigators.

Mr Runciman: Thanks. I have a couple of questions that I guess should be directed to Dr Humphries.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr Young. Dr Humphries, please introduce yourself, and welcome.

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Dr Paul Humphries: I'm Dr Paul Humphries. I'm a senior medical consultant and the manager of clinical services with the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services. I've been in this position since December 6, 1976.

Mr Runciman: I just wanted to talk to you about the problem of illicit drug use in the correctional facilities. How significant a problem is it and how are you addressing it?

Dr Humphries: Illicit drug use will probably always be present within correctional centres around the world. It's an ongoing problem, day in and day out. Inmates try to bring in additional contraband and staff do everything possible to try to control it. We have to worry about any intramuscular or intravenous use as it relates to the contraband drugs which are brought into the institution. I think our staff do a good job of controlling it, but I don't think it would ever be possible to stamp it out.

Mr Runciman: What about HIV testing? Do you have a view on mandatory testing? I think the suggestion of Dr Schabas at one point was that the Ministry of Health reclassify the virus under section 35 of the health protection act.

Dr Humphries: I don't really think that mandatory testing per se would be of that much value. Number one, we have the windows that we have to worry about. That means an individual may not show up positive for six weeks to six months, so if we did mandatory testing, we could definitely miss people who are coming in who are in fact positive.

We think it's much, much safer for our staff to be trained in Universal Precautions and to treat everyone as if they are infected with a communicable disease. As such, we've tried to provide them with the most up-to-date equipment and materials that are presently available and we've provided training to our staff twice since 1989 in regard to this new equipment and materials.

Perhaps I should add, even if we did move it from 22 to 35, I think there's a false understanding that this would mean all the correctional officers would know who was positive, but it really wouldn't mean that, because it would still be a medical confidentiality like, for instance, tuberculosis, which is part of the contagious and virulent disease groupings. We do tests on that for everyone admitted but, again, when we find a positive case, the staff are not notified, they're just told what precautions to take when dealing with the individual.

Mr Runciman: What about the use of methadone? Do you have a view on that?

Dr Humphries: Yes. I personally favour the use of methadone maintenance programs. In fact, I used it myself on patients quite a few years ago. There's always a major question, when a person comes in on a methadone maintenance program, whether to carry them on for some time. If the individual is going to be in for, say, 18 months, the general feeling is perhaps it's a good time to try to terminate the addiction and take them off.

If, for instance, they were on a maintenance program and were only going to be in for three months, two months, something like that, we probably would encourage our staff to carry the program through so they could return to the clinic and therapist upon release. It's really a matter of transferring an addiction, for instance, to heroin to, shall I say, a maintenance dose of methadone and it allows you to do the necessary testing, urinalysis etc. The methadone maintenance program is very tightly controlled by the federal government. You can't just put a person on methadone and start treating them, even though you're a licensed physician within the province; you have to get a special licence from the federal government for every individual patient. So if we admit a person on a methadone maintenance program, rather than have two licences for the same patient, we would work with the agency or the physician involved and would use his prescriptions.

Mr Runciman: In terms of illicit drug use, you're not painting a very optimistic picture. What you're really saying is -- I'm not being critical -- that this is a problem that you don't think you can really do much about in terms of controlling the availability of illicit drugs and what you're saying is better training of staff and resources available to staff to deal with these sorts of situations.

I'm not sure where your responsibility lies in respect to what happened in Camp Dufferin. We can see those kinds of situations occurring again and again. Do you have any other advice that you might offer that the government should perhaps be looking at to deal with this problem?

Dr Humphries: I think that our people do a good job in their attempts at controlling illicit drugs within the institutions. There are so many examples of finding hollow heels and all kinds of things that prevent the inflow of the illicit drugs --

Mr Runciman: Are these mostly people who are leaving and sort of interim, go out for the weekend or come in for the weekend and leave to work during the week and that sort of thing, primarily?

Dr Humphries: Yes, that's possible or it's possible to throw drugs over exercise yards. There are so many ways. But one of the big ways of bringing drugs in is to bring them in in condoms and swallow them and then recover them at a later date.

So yes, it's a problem area, but our security people are always working on it, just as the inmates are always trying to think up new ways of doing it. It's been around over the ages and I think it'll be around for a while in the future.

Mr Runciman: That's all for now, Mr Chairman.

Mr Donald Abel (Wentworth North): I understand that the Ontario fire marshal is present today. Is that correct? I wonder if he could come forward and tell the committee a bit about the various fire prevention and educational programs that his office coordinates, a bit about the programs, a bit about how much is being spent. I think the committee would be very interested in getting that information from you, if you don't mind.

Mr Bernard Moyle: Bernard Moyle, Ontario fire marshal, and I've been the fire marshal four years today.

The Chair: Thank you and happy anniversary.

Mr Moyle: About our training and education programs, one of our major programs is Learn Not to Burn in the schools, where we have 40% of the schools in Ontario participating in fire safety education for children, compared to about 3% in the United States. We also have a preschool program where there are approximately 1,500 day care centres teaching fire safety to children.

We also have a youthful fire setter program called TAPP-C, which is an intervention program for youthful fire setters that we're working on in cooperation with the Clarke Institute. That is a very sophisticated program and highly preventive and deals with the very big issue, which is youthful fire setters.

Earlier this year we created the Fire Marshal's Public Fire Safety Council. We brought all the stakeholders together -- members of the public, members of industry, the fire services -- to create this council. We have a focus on public education and prevention.

As the council, we wrote to the media and we asked them to put on free public safety messages for us and we had a terrific response. We had six television stations, about 40 newspapers and about 50 radio stations all giving us free public safety messages at no cost to government. We also have a magazine called the Messenger in which we emphasize public education and prevention for the fire service and give them programs which they can use.

We also are involved in a program with the municipal fire prevention officers during Fire Prevention Week in which we hope to put 50,000 smoke alarms in homes across the province. That's in partnership with Canadian Tire and we hope to raise somewhere between $40,000 and $80,000 through the council to help us promote Learn Not to Burn and further enhance those programs in the schools.

We have a lot of partnership programs. We recently had a partnership program with the chimney industry and we produced some pamphlets, and they shared in the cost of that. We're looking more and more to partnerships and raising money with our partners to promote public education and prevention.

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We also have a heavy emphasis in our training programs for volunteer firefighters. For example, of the 100-hour program that we deliver, 40% is dedicated to prevention and public education training for our volunteer firefighters.

We have a whole host of other programs, like the smoke alarm program, which the OFM administers in partnership with Dicon, and we've distributed about 26,000 smoke alarms through service clubs, many of them to needy families in communities at no cost to those families. The service clubs pick up the cost.

We're really getting a lot of mileage out of our programs at a very low cost with the office, so more and more we're getting a lot of benefit from the people in industry and our partners in the fire service.

Mr Abel: I just wonder if you had any figures that you could give us, approximately what you spend.

Mr Moyle: I believe our estimate's around $175,000, which includes the publication of our Messenger magazine.

Mr Abel: That's annually?

Mr Moyle: Yes.

Mr Abel: That's it for me.

The Acting Chair (Mr Wayne Lessard): Mr Mills.

Mr Mills: Thank you very much, Mr Chair, and I promise this is the last time that I'll ask the coroner to come forward. I know the previous Chair has made a decision that at the end of the day the coroner could go, and I'm just wondering if we could reach some agreement and, after my brief question to the coroner, bearing in mind the lateness of the hour, we could make some decision to allow him to go without waiting till the bitter end. I ask you to take that into consideration.

The Acting Chair: I'm really at the hands of the committee in that regard. It depends on whether there are any further questions anticipated.

Mr Mills: Anyway, we'll think about that after my question, I hope. It's going to be short.

Doctor, I understand that the RCMP lab is closing down. My question is, can you see what impact that's going to have on you and your staff and your centre and your budget and things like that?

Dr Young: A very direct impact. The RCMP have indicated that their intention is to phase out the lab in Ottawa. The lab in Ottawa hasn't been the primary lab, obviously, in the province. The Centre of Forensic Sciences and the northern lab have been the two primary labs, but they have been doing a fair degree of work in eastern Ontario.

The problems are twofold then. Those particular tests that are done in Ottawa will need to be done, presumably, between northern Ontario and Toronto, and there's the further problem of developing the expertise within the lab, because that will require that additional people be hired.

But there's a steep learning curve within the centre, so we're looking at two years before someone is ready to go to court, and even then the level of what they can do in a case is still somewhat limited. It's a problem that's going to have to be overcome, and unfortunately, in terms of provincial dollars, it will cost money. The federal government will save; the province will somehow undoubtedly end up paying.

Mr Mills: Thank you, Dr Young. I don't want to get political, but we know this offloading is going on all the time. Thank you for that answer.

Now, Mr Chair, I don't believe our caucus has any more questions of the coroner. I don't think Mr Murphy has. Have you?

Mr Murphy: Oh, you've decided that.

Mr Mills: I'm interested in expediency and letting the good Dr Young proceed home.

Mr Murphy: Can I ask how much time we have left in our estimates time?

Mr Mills: I beg your pardon, Tim. If you've got a question, I'm quite willing --

Mr Murphy: No, the reason I ask is because there is some material that is coming forward from a variety of directions, and I assume if we have under two hours the next time we do this, we'll use up all the time. Am I correct in that assumption?

The Acting Chair: It's possible that we could, but I don't know, depending on the material. In any event, we have one member of the committee who's absent right now. He may have some questions.

Mr Murphy: Do you know how much time we have left in total on our estimates? An hour, an hour and a half?

Mr Mills: I'm just trying to be helpful.

Mr Murphy: As am I. I'm trying to get to the result we all want, which is to excuse any witnesses --

Mr Mills: Notwithstanding that, I guess we can wait.

Mr Murphy: That's fine.

The Acting Chair: Do you have any more questions, Mr Mills?

Mr Mills: No. How much time have we got?

Mr Noel Duignan (Halton North): Till 6 o'clock.

Mr Mills: No, our caucus, our round. Oh, here's Mr Runciman back, so it's no problem.

The Acting Chair: About 10 minutes.

Mr Mills: Oh, that's no problem. We can rephrase the question now. We had suggested that Dr Young was going to wait until the end of the evening. If you hadn't got any questions, I was just wondering -- no?

Mr Runciman: No.

Mr Murphy: We can excuse Dr Young.

Interjection: Maybe he wants to stay.

Mr Mills: Maybe he wants to stay, but I don't think so. I don't want to, but I have to.

The Acting Chair: Mr Mills, do you have any further questions?

Mr Mills: How much time have we got, Mr Chair?

The Acting Chair: You have about 10 minutes.

Mr Mills: Okay, let my colleague from Halton ask a question and then I'll come back. I've got lots of questions for ever.

Mr Duignan: I understand there's a person who will be able to enlighten us in regard to the education and prevention programs here this evening?

Hon Mr Christopherson: Yes. Doctor, do you want to come forward?

Mr Duignan: I wonder if you could state your name.

Dr Angle: I did that earlier. It's Dr Terry Angle and I'm the acting chief education officer for the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services. I've been in the role since March 1 of this year.

Mr Duignan: The minister stated yesterday that in combination with appropriate levels of supervision it has been shown to reduce the likelihood of future anti-social behaviour. That's the whole question of education, rehabilitation, literacy training etc.

Before we get into that, I was looking at the estimates review of the education programs in the ministry facilities. Most of them have a cost figure to those programs, except a couple, and one of those is the young offender open custody sites. There are some 27 of those sites around the province. You stated that most school boards negotiate these agreements directly with the residence and it's not known exactly what the cost is and how many teachers are involved. In this day of accountability, why is that the case?

Dr Angle: First of all, there's no cost to our ministry because these section 27 agreements are three-party agreements between our ministry, the local boards of education that provide the service -- and we have partnerships with about 34 of them, I think it is -- and the Ministry of Education and Training, which provides the funding through section 27 of its general legislative grants. The funding flows directly to the school boards and not to us, so we wouldn't know the exact dollar amount. The Ministry of Education and Training would likely have that information.

The numbers of teachers: The section 27 agreements are renewed and reviewed annually around this time of year. Approvals are given by the Ministry of Education and Training regional offices around the middle of May for the next school year, so that would be the 1994-95 school year. The numbers of teachers employed by the local boards to provide service in our facilities will vary from year to year. Sometimes the numbers of teachers go up in number, sometimes they go down. The average teacher's salary will change from year to year depending on who's being employed by the boards.

Mr Duignan: I guess it was in the public accounts committee that indeed we looked at the whole question of special education, over $1 billion a year spent in this province on special education. Out of that, section 27 funds come. But even in public accounts we couldn't get the amount of money that's spent in relation to this. How do we know, for example, the amount of money allocated under section 27 to the correctional institutions and in fact spent by the correctional institutions and not elsewhere?

Dr Angle: I think I can answer that question. The Ministry of Education and Training spends, on an annual basis, approximately $66 million for section 27 agreements in care, treatment and correctional facilities. We only get a portion of that money. In fact, we don't even get the money because the money gets sent to the school boards to employ --

Mr Duignan: It's allocated.

Dr Angle: That's right, it's allocated to the school boards that provide the service. It's $66 million a year approximately and it's frozen, to my understanding, at 1992-93 school year levels. The money spent this year was the same as what was spent in 1992-93, and it will be the same amount of money next year.

The numbers of teachers will go up and down, depending on the agreements, because they're monitored and reviewed and renewed annually. As I mentioned earlier, it's a three-party agreement.

It's hard to have precise information. At the moment, I wouldn't be able to find out without contacting six Ministry of Education and Training regional offices the number of agreements that we'll actually have in place for the 1994-95 school year. As I say, the approvals happen around this time and we'll know shortly, but we don't have that information yet.

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Mr Duignan: Because the continuing education is funded the same way, you have no idea of the figures.

Dr Angle: That's right; same reason.

Mr Duignan: Just a point. In the federal institutions, do they apply to the same program? Does the provincial Ministry of Education and training pick up the cost of the continuing education to the federal system?

Dr Angle: I believe they do. I'm not very familiar with the federal system. It's not my area of expertise, but I believe they have access to the section 27 dollars as well, yes.

Mr Duignan: Who monitors the progress of the various programs offered in the open custody sites of the young offenders?

Dr Angle: School board officials, along with the Ministry of Education and Training regional office personnel. They have people designated to approve the section 27 agreements and it's their responsibility to monitor and review them on an annual basis.

Mr Duignan: One of the concerns we had, again in public accounts, was whether we were getting actually value for our money on these particular programs. If you don't know the amount of money being spent and the teachers involved in it, how do you know you're getting value for your money in these institutions?

Dr Angle: It's an interesting question. In fact, I'll be at a meeting of the Ministry of Ed and Training tomorrow -- it's an all-day meeting, I believe -- to review section 27 programs. Each regional office of MET, the Ministry of Ed and Training, has administrative guidelines, and they're not all the same. The administrative guidelines give some guidance to the boards on what to provide, how to provide the programs, the number of teachers to employ based on class size, ratios and that sort of thing. We're going to be looking at those guidelines tomorrow, and we're also going to be looking at the funding mechanism. They're beginning to open up dialogue because they're concerned about the freezing of dollars, for one. The boards can only operate with a cap that's been placed at 1992-93 school year levels, so there's the same money to go around and of course inflationary costs.

Mr Duignan: And also whether those programs are effective or not; whether they're actually achieving the goals they set out to achieve. Would you ever find out that information? Would the school boards pass that information on to you?

Dr Angle: No, not unless we ask them. Once the boards are in place and they're providing the service through their personnel, we can't compel them to give us information. We can ask, encourage and that sort of thing, but we don't collect that information currently.

Mr Duignan: So if you don't know that, then how does that fit in with the minister's statement? It says that "intervention, including psychological treatment, education, literacy training...have been shown to reduce the likelihood of future antisocial behaviour."

Dr Angle: Maybe I'll defer to the minister since he made the statement.

Hon Mr Christopherson: It looked like something was happening in the House. I'm sorry. What was the question?

Mr Duignan: The question was the educational programs and I guess the intervention programs or literacy training, whatever is offered in the open custody sites under the young offender program. Obviously, your ministry has no control of what happens in those programs. There's no monitoring system in place. You don't know whether they're effective or anything else. So how does that fit into your statement that says that these particular programs are shown to reduce the likelihood of future anti-social behaviour when you don't know the results coming from those programs?

Ms Noble: I think in terms of the references there, it wouldn't be just in the open custody. We're talking about literacy programs in general, and I think we're dealing with general literature to deal with the better provision of offenders with life skills issues, skills they need in terms of going back into the public.

Mr Duignan: But surely the people who are in the young offender programs are in need of these life skill programs. If you've no way of monitoring whether these programs are effective or not in these institutions, how do you know that these programs will be effective and help to reduce the likelihood of these people ending up in adult institutions?

Ms Noble: I think you're asking the question from the point of view specifically of young offenders in open custody. The statement being made is a much more general statement in terms of the overall correctional institutions. You're asking specifically, do we have evaluation on the section 27 agreements and how they're operating with young offenders? We've had the answers here. That doesn't negate the fact that we have general programs for the general population.

Mr Duignan: Again, we don't know whether we're getting value for our money. We don't know whether these programs are effective and we don't know that these programs are the right types of programs that should be offered in these institutions or not. Are you going to look at it to make sure in fact that will be the case in the future?

Dr Angle: If I could interject, that's one of the questions we're going to be looking at tomorrow in the section 27 review meeting. It's a committee that was active for a number of years, to my understanding, and it's been reactivated. We're going to be looking at the funding mechanism that's currently in place and whether or not that should be changed. We're going to be looking at the administrative guidelines that the boards have to use when the Ministry of Ed is approving the agreements. It's kind of out of our hands.

What our ministry does is provide the space for the program and some resources but, by and large, it's the responsibility of the board to provide the service and for the Ministry of Ed and Training, which authorizes the funding, to monitor those agreements and review them.

Mr Duignan: I agree. I guess you could work with the Ministry of Education and make sure that indeed was the case, that the programs being offered were the appropriate programs.

Dr Angle: We try to do that. I mentioned earlier that we have partnerships with 34 school boards around the province. Our biggest partnership is with the Ministry of Education and Training because they fund a great number of our educational programs, through section 27 agreements, through the continuing education agreements, which are also reviewed and monitored by them, again on an annual basis, and through OTAB, OTAB being formally part of the Ministry of Education and Training. Some of the literacy programs are funded by OTAB and they come into our facilities as well. They're our biggest partner.

Mr Duignan: Yes. The concern I have is that there are young people -- there is a problem that needs to be corrected and the follow-up that needs to take place after that once they leave the institution as well. I was concerned in the public accounts committee that there doesn't seem to be any control -- know what's happening. I'm glad to see that you're moving in that direction, trying to put some measure of control and responsibility back on there again.

Another question: Do you have any figures --

The Chair: You're just about out of time.

Mr Duignan: Okay. I'll come back to further questions later.

The Chair: Next Tuesday.

Mr Murphy: How much time do I have?

The Chair: We'll let you run the clock until 6. That gives you 25 minutes, and we'll do 25-minute rotations.

Mr Murphy: Okay. I would like to ask some questions related to the fire marshal and the minister. One of them I asked in the course of the opening comments section and that was related to the budget of the fire marshal's office. I think I said, and it could very well be because I missed it, that the line item allocation for the fire marshal's office is, in terms of actual, what the estimate amount is this year and in previous years. Could someone just point me to the right section or give me that information, if it's not in here in a line item form?

Ms Noble: Page 25.

Interjection: Page 20 of the estimates briefing book.

The Chair: Page 20, we're advised, is what you're looking for.

Mr Murphy: I have that page in front of me. Are fire safety services the same as the fire marshal's office? Are there other things besides the fire marshal's office in that line item?

The Chair: Who's your question to, Mr Murphy?

Mr Murphy: Whoever can answer it.

The Chair: Whoever. Could whoever identify themselves? The deputy.

Ms Noble: The fire services activity is the budget of the fire marshal's office. There's nothing else in that.

Mr Murphy: Okay. So I'm right that there's a slight decrease, a little under a 1% decrease, in the amount allocated to the fire marshal's office then. So, depending on inflation and all that, there's maybe a couple of per cent drop, although it depends on which month you measure it from these days.

The reason I wanted to ask you is I had, among others, some fire chiefs in fairly recently to talk to me who were keen on the maintenance of the fire marshal's office and thought it was a good body and were concerned about rumours they had heard about change in function, scope, activity. What I want to do is give you, as fire marshal, and you, as minister, an opportunity to set those fears at rest and to help me understand what the direction of the government is regarding the fire marshal's office. Whoever, the minister or fire marshal.

Hon Mr Christopherson: The marshal wants to explain in detail where the areas are of the constraints and then I'll talk to the broader policy question.

Mr Moyle: We've been undergoing a number of changes in the office of the fire marshal to streamline and re-engineer our services. The budget allocation that we have right now -- we'd all like more, but as far as I'm concerned, it is very manageable and we can provide the level of service to the fire service, particularly the volunteer community, that we have in the past. We're going to do that in a very different way, in the sense that we're promoting programs that make the fire service more self-sufficient in areas and give them greater accessibility to things like training and education.

I don't have a great deal of concern although, as I said earlier, you would always like to have a little bit more, but I'm very confident that we can meet the needs of the fire service. In fact, I think we're doing a better job now than we were four or five years ago in the delivery of services. We're having a much higher impact with our fire services and providing much more support to them in a different way.

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Mr Murphy: Let me just follow up on that briefly before I go to the minister. When you say "re-engineering," looking at it from the outside, does mean that the services I used to get from the fire marshal's office I'm not going to get, or are you telling me you're going to do the same service and provide the same service level, but you're just doing it that much better and therefore cheaper?

Mr Moyle: I think we're doing it better. For example, training used to be a problem. We've developed a learner-focused approach to training, in cooperation with the fire chiefs association and in consultation with the associations. At one time, where we used to use a traditional approach to training, which was a classroom approach, we now use an approach where volunteers or any firefighter can learn in their own communities, and we train the facilitators and qualify the facilitators to train. We provide all the resource material, we provide student learning guides, and so essentially our role would be to be the standard-setter, the creator of the systems, and then we would qualify the key fire service people to deliver.

Right now, when this program comes on stream this year, all 30,000 firefighters in Ontario will have equal access to training, which is a vast improvement over what it was a couple of years ago. That's done with the strong support of the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs and the professional standard-setting body of the Ontario fire services.

Mr Murphy: Let me just go at a specific as a way to illustrate the point. We've seen in the estimates tabled, and we only have a couple of years, that there was a significant drop between 1992-93 and 1993-94 in terms of investigations conducted: from 1,700 to 1,200.

Mr Moyle: Yes.

Mr Murphy: That could easily be interpreted on the face of it as what you've done to meet the constraints is to cut down on the number of investigations conducted. I'm wondering if you could help me understand.

Mr Moyle: Yes, of course, and it's a good question. We were short three investigators last year. We investigated all major arson fires, all fire deaths and all gaseous explosions. There was also a reduction in the number of calls for our office, thankfully, last year. As far as I'm concerned, there's no attempt to reduce that service. We haven't had any complaints from the fire service about that and we've been able to deal with the problem. The three new investigators will be on stream some time within the next month or so and that will add additional support and bring us up to strength.

Mr Murphy: Your estimate for 1994-95 is, though, a number that is quite similar to your 1993-94 actual.

Mr Moyle: Yes.

Mr Murphy: What is that based on? If you're saying that it was a drop in demand, are you foreseeing that drop in demand to continue as opposed to the historic trend?

Mr Moyle: It's unpredictable. Fires go in cycles. One of the things that is happening with fire investigations is that we're spending a longer time on investigations. Insurance companies and private investigators are also involved now to a much greater degree than they were in the past, so our investigations are taking more time. We're getting more questions from those people, so there's a lot more support involved in providing information in regard to those investigations.

We've also looked at some of the investigations we were doing. For example, this year's stats show that we did a large number of large-loss fires, but we no longer do large-loss fires just because they're large-loss fires; they have to be incendiary or somehow connected to our role in the fire marshal's office.

As far as the numbers go, they probably increased slightly. We always have turndowns in the sense that the manager in the field can say, "This isn't an essential investigation." But all essential investigations are being covered and are being covered well, and we haven't had a problem in that area.

Hon Mr Christopherson: I had an occasion not long ago to address the provincial association of fire chiefs' convention and I knew that the rumours were floating through the chiefs' community that not only was there a possibility we were going to eliminate the fire marshal's office, but that we were going to shut down and eliminate the Ontario Fire College. I made it very clear at that convention that while constraints and other fiscal matters make it difficult to sometimes do all that we would like, there's absolutely no consideration whatsoever taking place with regard to the elimination or removal of either of those two important fire service entities.

Mr Murphy: I wanted to talk a bit about the social contract and the impact on fire services. The minister advised yesterday, I believe, that you had expressed some opinion to date on the impact of the social contract. I just can't remember, but I wonder, now that you're here, if you could tell me yourself.

Mr Moyle: Yes. We've been monitoring that situation very closely with the 33 full-time fire departments, because that's where the greatest impact is. In the compressed period between August and December, our statistics showed that there was actually a slight improvement as far as firefighter injuries and fire losses were concerned.

I think there's a slight increase in the cost of each fire, but the per capita loss was down, which would indicate that there had been a number of large-loss fires in that time frame, which can happen at any time. As of the end of the year, as far as I was concerned, there was nothing to show me that there was anything going on out there that was a concern, notwithstanding that there's always the potential for problems.

During this particular year, the average social contract time allotment to the full-time fire departments is 1.55%, which is fairly low. As a matter of fact, 12 have no days off. A couple have the maximum, which was a bit of an area of concern. The fire losses: This was a very severe winter and the fire losses were up. You would expect that, so we can continue to monitor that, but fire deaths are down about 20% this year, and that's really the key indicator for me. There has been a substantial drop in fire deaths this year over last, and last year was our second-best year that we've had as far back as I can remember.

We continue to monitor the situation. If anything of any concern arises, I immediately notify the minister of those concerns.

Mr Murphy: My concern about the social contract impact on firefighters is not so much -- I don't think we'll see anything. Well, we may, but I don't think we'll see a result that we can point directly to in a short-term analysis. In fact, you're going to have to see three- and four-year statistics before you start seeing the impact. While we can take whatever comfort, diverse as that may be, from what you say about the last eight or nine months' worth of operation, I'm not sure that's going to be an indicator, frankly, one way or the other, in the long term. I think that's on either side of the issue.

I want to follow up on the issue of occupational health and safety. I'm just trying to get a sense of where this is at. I know some representations have been made by firefighters -- quite a lengthy one by Peter Ferguson, I think his name is, from Kitchener -- he's their labour relations fellow -- who drafted quite a lengthy document to the Ministry of Labour about a regulation.

I'm wondering if you, as the fire marshal, have a view on the kinds of things that are being requested in terms of setting a standard that should be applied in the workplace for firefighters and whether the minister has made representation to the Ministry of Labour in that regard. If so, where are we at?

Mr Moyle: This is essentially, as you're aware, a Ministry of Labour issue. My understanding is that the Minister of Labour has announced that he would be looking at a regulation specific to the fire services.

There's a section 21 committee, which is made up of the firefighters' associations and management and Ministry of Labour. We are not a member of the section 21 committee, my office. We provide advice and act as an adviser to that committee, so we would have input into that. We don't have any difficulty with a regulation, at least my office or me personally, for the fire service, as long as it's carefully crafted. I think there are certain things that may or may not be in there.

Mr Murphy: It does concern me that you don't have a direct input, frankly. There are public safety concerns involved in that that would be part of it; I mean, everything from the site versus truck staffing issues to the -- what's it called -- pass alarm kind of issues that are being asked for in terms of the regulation.

Mr Moyle: Yes.

Mr Murphy: Mr Minister, I think that some representations should be made to have the fire marshal play a role in that, more than just: "Here's a copy of the document. What are your thoughts?"

Mr Moyle: I guess the regulation has been announced. The Minister of Labour has not decided how he wants to proceed with that. My assumption is that a great deal of the work will go through the section 21 committee. We are always asked for our advice and our assistance. We have put out a staffing study paper for the fire service and that has gone through the section 21 committee. So we do have positions on some of these issues, and sometimes fairly strong positions on some of these issues.

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Hon Mr Christopherson: I would also say that the development and approval of regulations is a cabinet matter where everybody who's involved in any way has an opportunity to have input. So if you want the assurance that the perspective of fire services will be there as this regulation is developed, you have that.

Obviously I draw greatly on the expertise of the fire marshal and others. I'm not a fire service expert, but having received the advice and opinions of my senior officials, then indeed I do, in all cases where there are regulations affecting my areas of responsibility, ensure that I'm having input at the right level in addition to ensuring the deputy is engaged at her level to reflect our views. I can say to you, Tim, that because it's a public safety ministry, there's not usually a lot of wrangling around the positions that we take among my colleagues.

Mr Murphy: I want to talk briefly about basement apartments. The legislation is now passed and got royal assent, I think, in the last few days. There were lots of concerns raised about safety of basement apartments and whether or not the bill gives firefighters, in essence, the tools to make those places safe. I'm wondering if you could give me a view grounded in public safety and fire safety from the fire marshal's office perspective on whether or not you've been given the tools to adequately ensure that existing basement apartments are safe.

Mr Moyle: The legislation for existing basement apartments will be under the fire code, which is separate and distinct from Bill 120. That regulation was drafted in the normal process that we use with all of our stakeholders, including the fire chiefs and fire prevention officers. I think it's a good regulation, a fair and balanced regulation, and I'm very confident that that regulation in itself will provide an adequate level of life and fire safety for the people in this province. I'm very confident of that.

Mr Murphy: Do you believe there is a virtue in having a registry and inspection system for basement apartments?

Mr Moyle: I think there's some merit in that. That's not part of our regulation.

Mr Murphy: I understand that.

Mr Moyle: That regulation comes under the act. I think that's an issue for a municipality to decide, whether they want that registered or not.

The concern I have is that everybody's been focusing on a regulation. If you look at the deaths that have occurred in Mississauga, in Brampton, the unfortunate instance of those children, in every case there was a municipal bylaw which required a smoke alarm, and in every case there wasn't a smoke alarm.

Part of our process and part of our strategy will be to have a public education and awareness program around that, and I think that's an essential part. In some ways, I think it's more important than a regulation in itself. One can't be separated from the other. If people just continue to look at the regulatory requirements rather than making people more aware of why they should do it and how they should do it and what it means to their safety, that's a mistake in itself. So our strategy will be around trying to educate the public to bring those apartments into compliance.

Mr Murphy: There is some concern, and it may or may not be appropriate, related to where we have -- I forget the technical term -- essentially a three-level response to alarms: the ambulance, police and fire all responding to calls.

Mr Moyle: Tiered response.

Mr Murphy: Tiered response. That's the one. One of the concerns expressed to me was about the notion of moving to having firefighters provide essentially the emergency care as mandated service. I think generally firefighters tend to be there first, so they would provide the paramedical-type care and they would be mandated to do that.

Mr Moyle: Yes.

Mr Murphy: My question to you is, do you think that is a sensible way to go? Does it raise any public safety concerns from the perspective of firefighters being called to do that and therefore not having time for other things? Is it appropriate from a public safety concern?

Mr Moyle: Those models exist in the United States. It does raise some concerns, particularly when you talk about paramedics. At the present time, firefighters are viewed as a first responder and they can intervene in a situation, precisely as you said, because they can get there usually within four minutes, at which time they can give oxygen or CPR or so on. That's their role at this time, followed by, I guess, in some cases a more qualified ambulance service and then in some cases backed up by paramedic support.

But if you're looking at a paramedic system for the fire service, that's a dramatic change. It's a major policy decision around those kinds of things by government. The training involved to become a paramedic and the payoffs in lives saved is something that I think is constantly being evaluated now in Metropolitan Toronto. Certainly a model could be created if government wanted to do that, but a paramedic could be on the scene of an emergency for an hour, an hour and a half, two hours, and all the time that paramedic is on the scene, if it's a firefighter, that's a firefighter removed from an emergency response.

There are some issues around there. They've solvable, they're workable in some cases, but again it's a major change and a major policy decision.

Mr Murphy: The defibrillation machines: Would that be part of a paramedical-type response?

Mr Moyle: Many fire departments are now carrying defibs and using them effectively. We have worked with the Ministry of Health to put out a discussion paper and a position paper for the fire service on how to implement those programs with their health councils in their own communities. Fire departments are very active. In fact, in the city of Hamilton they are the first to start and they're using those.

Mr Murphy: I want to put one question just on the record for the minister so that I can get the answer when we're back. I thank the fire marshal. I do not have any more questions of the fire marshal for the future, so the question I have for the minister, quickly, is on statistics around firearms offences in the Criminal Code. What I want to gather, to the extent that the ministry has them, are charges laid around all firearms, not just section 85 but firearms offences under the code, and disposition. That would be by way of withdrawal, acquittal or conviction.

Ms Noble: I think the ministry does have some information on offences and charges. The data we have available are compiled at the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. I'm not sure whether that also includes the disposition questions. If it does, as public information we'd have it available. Our ministry would not have available itself the disposition information.

Mr Murphy: Would it be easy to get? Does it get it from the Attorney General? Do you ever use that information to assess the effectiveness of the charges laid, the appropriateness of the charges laid?

Ms Noble: I don't know how accessible that information is.

Mr Murphy: I think I've probably used up the time.

The Chair: We're certainly going to find out next Tuesday how hard it was to get.

Hon Mr Christopherson: I'm not going to touch it, because the last time I touched your last question of the day, I damned near fell into it.

The Chair: I believe there was a request, Minister, for the Attorney General's letter to your office regarding the Clinton Suzack matter, and you can get back to Mr Runciman about that --

Hon Mr Christopherson: Yes.

The Chair: -- and that someone from the Ontario Board of Parole, a chair, vice-chair or the senior civil servant involved be available. The materials that can come forward, if they are ready and given to the clerk, can be circulated to the critics, and that'll be helpful to the process if they're ready before next Tuesday when we reconvene.

I have to indicate on committee business, if I may, that we're stacking not only our votes but our ministries. If we can start exactly at 3:30, we will commence, after the one hour and 30 minutes approximately left for the Sol Gen and corrections ministry, we then proceed to begin immediately with Health. So it's important that we attempt to start on time. It will be the decision of the Chair to start on time at 3:30, out of fairness to the Minister of Health, who is coming at 5 o'clock.

With that understanding, I'd like to adjourn this meeting to reconvene on Tuesday, June 7, at 3:30 or immediately following routine proceedings, in committee room 2.

The committee adjourned at 1800.