Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

MINISTRY OF COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL SERVICES

CONTENTS

Wednesday 14 September 1994

Ministry of Community and Social Services

Hon Tony Silipo, minister

Rosemary Proctor, deputy minister

David Cope, manager, estimates and allocations

Brian Low, director, developmental services branch

Kevin Costante, assistant deputy minister, social assistance and employment opportunities

Lucille Roch, assistant deputy minister, children, family and community services

Sue Herbert, assistant deputy minister, program management

Ron Bakker, director, child care branch

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES

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

*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)

*Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville ND)

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

*Ramsay, David (Timiskaming L)

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

*In attendance / présents

Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:

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

MacKinnon, Ellen (Lambton ND) for Mr Fletcher

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

Rizzo, Tony (Oakwood ND) for Mr Hayes

Clerk / Greffière: Grannum, Tonia

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

The committee met at 1011 in room 151.

MINISTRY OF COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL SERVICES

The Vice-Chair (Mr Ted Arnott): We are doing the estimates of the Ministry of Community and Social Services today. We are continuing in rotation. I believe Mrs O'Neill, for the Liberal Party, has approximately 12 minutes remaining in her presentation.

Mrs Yvonne O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau): That's correct, thank you, Mr Chairman. I was promised at the end of day, but off the record -- I just want to make sure that we're going to get a more complete answer on the figures on developmental services. Are those ready this morning? Do you want to look at those to start with?

Hon Tony Silipo (Minister of Community and Social Services): If you wish, we have them.

Mrs O'Neill: Maybe we can go back to page 27 and see what you have to say about the look of those figures.

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): Mr Chairman, excuse me for interrupting my colleague, but it would have been appropriate, perhaps, to ask if the ministry brought any written responses or any written statistics from the questions yesterday that they could circulate now. That would be helpful to both Mrs O'Neill and myself. I didn't mean to interrupt but it's customary to ask.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you for raising that matter, Mr Jackson. Deputy Minister.

Ms Rosemary Proctor: We have a written response to two of the questions that were asked yesterday morning by Mrs O'Neill and we could provide those to the clerk at this point or enter them into the record whenever it's appropriate to do that. The rest of the material is being worked on and there may be some --

Mrs O'Neill: If you have them in writing maybe we could just have them passed, if you would have them copied by the clerk. Okay, let's go to the developmental services aspect on page 27 then.

Mr David Cope: I'm David Cope, manager of estimates and allocations. Just to introduce this, I think we need to be clear, you were asking questions on page 27 on developmental services.

Mrs O'Neill: Yes.

Mr Cope: If members would like to refer to page 93, that provides more detail on the program and shows, actually, an explanation of the different parts of that program and it might be more useful to reflect on that. I think Brian Low, the director of the developmental services branch --

Mrs O'Neill: I'm sorry, that's not the way I want to go.

Mr Cope: My apology then.

Mrs O'Neill: Yes, I'm very sorry. I only have one question on page 93. My question on page 27, and I just wanted to verify -- the pay equity you said is included in the $914 million, and then you said it will be included later and added on to $893 million and that's what I want to know. Those figures -- it looks like you are actually cutting from the program in the overall aspects and the minister said yesterday that program is a priority when he introduced his remarks.

It's just the look of this. I have studied page 93 quite closely and I don't have a lot of questions there, but I do want to know why this looks the way it does when we are not seeming to have this as a priority if the figures from this year look lower than the figures from last year.

Mr Cope: The only reason for referring to page 93 is that the bottom line of page 93 is in fact what you find on page 27 and it provides more explanation and detail about the program, which I think would help us provide you with the answer you're looking for.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay, as long as we're leading towards that direction, I will go for that.

Mr Cope: I think the person to answer that question would be the director of developmental services, Brian Low.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay. I don't want to spend a lot of time on detail, I want the overview, please.

Mr Brian Low: If I can respond to page 27 by looking at page 93, there are two figures that are important. The first is the direct operating costs which include the costs of operating our schedule 1 facilities. It'll be shown on page 93 that we demonstrate a reduction in costs of $41 million. Those resources include resources that are redeployed or moved to the community, but they also include some of the cost reductions that would include pay equity payout and our social contract savings in our government-operated facilities. So those are for our government employees.

If I can refer you to the transfer payment section where it says total transfer payments, this refers to the minister's statement of our increased focus on community development. You can see that in the change we have increased by $36,700,000, and that is particularly where our focus lies as we begin the transition of utilizing resources in facilities and moving them to the community.

Mrs O'Neill: Could you tell us a little bit more about the supportive services, which seems to be the area you're going to increase the most. I'm sure it would be of the most interest to the community just what you're going to do there. You seem to be increasing that by $12 million. I'm looking at page 93 now under transfer payments.

Mr Low: If I look at the supportive services, operating, that increased change from the 1993-94 estimates of $26 million, page 100 talks about the supportive services and page 102 indicates the types of services that are included in that area. They include life skills, protective services, infant stimulation, parent relief, assessment services, family support worker programs, the special needs --

Mrs O'Neill: Mr Low, I really know that, but I would like to know where you're going to put your emphasis. Yesterday in the opening remarks of the minister he talked about 3,500 supportive jobs. I want to know what that means. I know these programs are all there, but the people out in the communities are really seeing cutbacks. Constantly in the House the minister -- and I don't doubt he has some basis for it -- continues to say this is a priority and he's adding to these services, but people do not see the transfer of the residential funds to the community; they just don't see it.

Hon Mr Silipo: Let me address that. I noted in my opening remarks, Mrs O'Neill, the fact that in this fiscal year we're transferring $29 million from facility dollars to community supports. We took similar steps in the last fiscal year. Those numbers are there and they're real, and we have distribution of those dollars in terms of where they're going. As I indicated yesterday, over $3 million is being added to the special services at home, others are for actual physical movement of people from facilities to community settings and, again, we can provide a breakdown of the balance, but it's all going in that direction.

To address your issue at a broader level as well, in the work we are doing now with developing the developmental services framework which, as I indicated yesterday, is the next stage in the multi-year plan, we've done I think a fair amount, to be fair, started by the previous government, your government, with the Challenges and Opportunities in 1987, which we've continued in a very significant way in terms of moving people from facilities and moving dollars from facilities to community placements.

What we are now seeing is an even greater emphasis being placed by people to want to have their children, particularly when we're talking about young people, served at home. There is continuing demand for us to expand the special services at home initiative, which we support and I support and which we expect very much to see from within the developmental services framework that we are developing to be a very key direction for us in the future as a ministry.

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Mrs O'Neill: That will be comforting to those who are interested in that. I guess, then, if I could just be very specific, what about the 3,500 jobs that you mentioned for this group?

Hon Mr Silipo: Those were the cumulative additional jobs that have been created over the period -- I believe the figures I used were from 1990-91 to the present, or if they went back further --

Mr Low: Through the term of the multi-year plan.

Hon Mr Silipo: Through the term of the multi-year plan. So since 1987 we have added some 10,000 spaces in the community settings, and we've added funding for 3,800 jobs to support those community settings, people working in group homes and other --

Mrs O'Neill: Is that in this year's budget or is that cumulative as well?

Hon Mr Silipo: That's the cumulative amount over that period of time.

Mrs O'Neill: Have you got any figures for this year? It's helpful for myself, and certainly those who are there, to know whether that's a priority and how much this government in this year is putting into that effort.

Hon Mr Silipo: I would say, and I'd ask Brian to comment in more detail, certainly if we are putting $29 million more into community supports, that will generate some additional jobs, because that's the way in which people get the supports they need. I don't know that we have an exact number, but if we do we'd be happy to provide that.

Mr Low: Mrs O'Neill, the 3,800 positions that were reported are those positions of staff positions to support, so they were jobs that were generated in the community. Of the $29 million, we do not have a figure right now. However, we can take an estimate in that we know our services are very labour-intensive and from our past history we could give you an estimate of the number of jobs that would be created within the community to support the developmental services from the $29 million.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay. If you can get that, it would be helpful. If I may, then, Mr Chairman, with my few minutes left --

The Vice-Chair: You have about one minute.

Mrs O'Neill: I've only got one minute left on this particular round. Could I go back, then, to page 35 where we were and just place before you, and we will begin there the next time, the Jobs Ontario Training shortfall -- what that figure means on page 35 under "changes from 93/94," Jobs Ontario Training shortfall.

Ms Proctor: We can come back to that if you want, or begin to speak to that now.

Hon Mr Silipo: Very briefly, in the time that's left, what I can tell you is that is in effect -- as the Jobs Ontario Training dollars were being spent through the Ministry of Education and Training, we had obviously made some assumptions and calculations about what help that would be to us as a ministry in terms of reducing our expenditures on social assistance as people were moving into jobs. This dollar amount here reflects in effect the fact that in the beginning of Jobs Ontario, the Jobs Ontario Training program took off at a slower pace than we had anticipated originally, so those savings we had anticipated to the tune of $66 million did not materialize; but likewise, if you had in front of you the estimates of the Ministry of Education and Training in savings, there would be a similar amount of money that would have been saved -- in other words, that hadn't been spent as quickly as they had anticipated, so it balances off.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay. We'll likely begin in that area at the next round.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Mrs O'Neil. That concludes the time for the Liberal caucus in this round. I now turn to the Conservative caucus.

Mr Jackson: On that point then, just how many jobs have you created that necessitates that figure?

Hon Mr Silipo: The Minister of Education and Training was providing an update yesterday on the Jobs Ontario Training and he indicated that we've reached over 60,000 jobs that have been created through Jobs Ontario Training.

Mr Jackson: No, I'm asking, Minister, those on social assistance, which is your responsibility --

Hon Mr Silipo: That's right.

Mr Jackson: You've expressed your concern that it got off to an awfully late start. I want to know how many successes you've put in your ministry in hard numbers. Surely you don't have to go to another ministry to find out how many people under your responsibility you helped.

Hon Mr Silipo: No, I don't, Mr Jackson.

Mr Jackson: That's what I was asking.

Hon Mr Silipo: And what I was about to tell you was that of those 60,000 -- I don't have the exact number, we can get it for you before the day is over -- but the previous number I had was that over 19,000 people who were on social assistance had been placed in jobs through Jobs Ontario Training and that results in significant savings to us, again the amount of which we can provide to you.

Mr Jackson: Okay.

Hon Mr Silipo: Obviously, if we've reached 60,000, then that 19,000 figure will also be up because the track record has been roughly about --

Mr Jackson: You've given me an answer and you're going to give us an accurate statistic, not a guesstimate.

Hon Mr Silipo: We will do that.

Mr Jackson: I appreciate that. If I could ask Mr Low to come back, I'd like to inquire about some developmental services. I too was rather surprised to see the 10,000 figure of spaces over the life of your government, but I have to assume from that that if one of the 2,000 people who were taken out of Oxford centre, for example, and put into the community, put back into a home with their parents, it would be included in the 10,000 spaces in community living. Is that not correct? So someone returns, goes from an institution back under the care of the mother and the father or one living relative, and that's included in what you're saying is -- you've helped create those community spaces?

Mr Low: It would only be included if that person partook of other services within the community. If they chose with their family to live at home and receive no services, then that would not be taking advantage of one of those spaces within the community.

Mr Jackson: How many individuals with developmental disabilities do you believe have done that, left schedule 1 facilities in accordance with the multi-year plan, which is where you're getting predominantly this figure from?

Mr Low: How many people have left the facilities and lived at home with their family?

Mr Jackson: Who, by your definition, are receiving no additional supports from the government whatsoever.

Mr Low: I would suggest there are very few.

Mr Jackson: That's what I thought. How many would there be who are living at home and receiving some form of assistance? I want to be careful we don't confuse that we've created 10,000 independent living positions for developmentally disabled adults, when in fact we haven't created that many. The fact that many have just been told, "You have to take your family member home," period, end of sentence. "We're not transferring you to another facility and we have no facility for them." I have a list of families who requested independent community living, but that's not available to them.

Hon Mr Silipo: What that 10,000 figure is, Mr Jackson, as I think you well know, is a combination of -- it overall represents the number of additional people who are being served through this ministry and its agencies.

Mr Jackson: I understand that, Minister. My question to Mr Low was very specific with respect to the breakout of those numbers. I would assume that for the multi-year plan, as we move people from institutional to community-based settings, we should be monitoring what actually constitutes community living so that we can determine quality-of-life issues and provide the necessary support. What I'm looking for is, do you keep important statistics such as that on how many would find themselves in an independent living situation, into a schedule 2-type facility in a community, which is residential in nature, or who have returned home? That's really what I'm asking and I'm asking that from staff, if you keep such a statistic and if you do, I'd certainly, along with the Ontario Association for Community Living, like to have a look at those numbers.

Mr Low: We do not keep a statistic on the number of people who would return home specifically. That would be something we could arrange. What we do keep statistics on are those people who go into service. We have the numbers, so it would be a manual breakout of that question.

One thing you mentioned was that people would be told there would be no community living situation and they would have to go to their home with their family. From our schedule 1 facilities, there is no individual who would be told they must return to their family. In fact, we would work with the family as part of the placement planning process to seek the best placement for them. There is no instance that I'm aware of, and I'm quite sure I would be aware, of any person being told that they must return to their family and that is the only option.

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Mr Jackson: How many residents were involved with the closing of the Oxford facility?

Mr Low: The Oxford facility is not closed as yet. There are about 244 in the last two years since we announced closure, and I think there are about 150, give or take 20 people, who are still living at Oxford Regional Centre.

Mr Jackson: And when is the planned date for closure for that facility?

Mr Low: The last person, hopefully, would be placed into the community by the end of 1996.

Mr Jackson: If I could move then, where in the estimates can I find the amount of money that we've invested in schedule 2 facilities to expand those community settings where there is no family to take care of the individual who's being phased out of a schedule 1 facility?

Mr Low: They would not necessarily go to a schedule 2 facility.

Mr Jackson: My question was, where in the estimates would I find the moneys allocated by your ministry to schedule 2 facilities? That was my question.

Ms Proctor: I'll ask Dave Cope to refer us to the appropriate page in the estimates book.

Mr Cope: It's page 97.

Mr Jackson: And what does page 97 tell us is the percentage change to schedule 2 facilities?

Mr Low: Schedule 2 facilities are shown as a 19% reduction.

Mr Jackson: Could you please explain to us why that is happening?

Ms Proctor: I'm going to ask Mr Cope to speak to the line of the numbers on this page.

Mr Cope: I think you need to look at the bottom-line total there where you've got all three different types of settings. You've got schedule 2 facilities; community accommodation, adults; community accommodation, children. If you look at the total for the whole line, you'll find that in fact it's being increased.

Mr Jackson: That's a fair statement, but we are still seeing a substantial reduction in schedule 2. We're not seeing the speed at which we're reducing schedule 1 participation, but we are seeing a reduction in schedule 2, which is one of the options and interim steps for placement.

Mr Low: What we would see in the schedule 2 facility, and this is part of the transition, is that if we look at challenges and opportunities and the move from large, congregate care centres, our schedule 2 facilities at one time were viewed as large, congregate care centres. However, they are administered as schedule 2s by boards within the community, so they are part of the transfer payment system.

Mr Jackson: I understand the history of schedule 2s.

Mr Low: Right. The transition is to move from the large facility, and now many of the schedule 2s are operating the community group homes, much as other agencies in the community would be.

Mr Jackson: Precisely.

Mr Low: We have looked at closure of our schedule 2s that have not been making that transition.

Mr Jackson: You refer to a transition, but what you're really saying is that we're taking what were schedule 2 facilities for developmentally disabled individuals in our society and we've, by policy, said we're now going to expand the definition. We're now telling schedule 2s that every child with a disability is eligible for that finite number of resources, so you've expanded the base of application.

My concern here is, we have the ministry responsible originally for long-term care transition; it no longer has lead responsibility. The developmentally disabled community at the front end of long-term care was to be part of long-term care reform. At some point, their hand was dropped in this province and we said: "No. Bill 101, institutional redefinition of long-term care, we're no longer going to have the disabled community participate in that."

Now -- and I've been sitting in hearings on Bill 173, the community-based aspect of long-term care -- we're getting no clear definitions of persons with developmental disabilities being eligible. However, within your ministry we're now seeing the terms of reference for the disabled community expanded to include other individuals and we're staring at a 19% reduction in schedule 2 facilities. That tells me --

Interjection.

Mr Jackson: I'm sorry, Minister, I want to talk to Mr Low about this because I'm dealing with --

Hon Mr Silipo: In fairness, we determine who answers the questions as well, Mr Jackson, so we've been quite --

Mr Jackson: You could be helpful, but the Chair has recognized me at this point. I want to finish.

Hon Mr Silipo: I will gladly wait till you're finished.

Mr Jackson: Thank you. Mr Low, you understand the scenario I'm suggesting is a concern to the developmentally disabled community, that we've expanded the base of access for the disabled community to schedule 2 facilities.

Mr Low: I understand what you're saying; I don't agree with your interpretation.

Mr Jackson: So you're saying that if we're having a reduction or even no increase at all in services but we're going to expand the number of persons eligible to participate -- I think you used the nice words "cooperation and inclusion" or something -- somehow this is going to better serve this group of citizens with developmental disabilities in our province.

Mr Low: Exactly. What I've suggested to you is that you can't isolate on schedule 2 facilities but rather you have to look at all of the services within the community. While we have looked at the reduction in size of some schedule 2 facilities, on the other hand we have expanded and increased the level of service across what I'll call the transfer payment system. So while we may see this one aspect, and in many instances now the schedule 2 facilities are decreasing, we're increasing elsewhere, so we are relieving that pressure.

Mr Jackson: And that's the 11.2% referred to on page 97, for adults.

Mr Low: Exactly, part of it.

Mr Jackson: How much time do I have, Mr Chairman?

Hon Mr Silipo: Mr Chair, I'd like to just add --

Mr Jackson: I still have another case I have to get on the record.

The Vice-Chair: Mr Jackson, you have until 10:54, so you have about 15 minutes to go.

Hon Mr Silipo: I think there are a couple of other words that I wanted to put on the record on this issue, because I appreciate, Mr Chair, the fact that perhaps it's because today we're on camera that the discussion is taking on a slightly different tone than yesterday's discussion, which is fair. But then, let's be fair all around.

What the numbers on page 97 in an overall sense reflect, Mr Jackson, as I'm sure you well know, is in fact what we've been discussing all along in the whole issue of developmental services, which is the continuing efforts of the ministry under the multi-year plan, which I thought actually had been supported by all three parties, to continue over time, with appropriate care to make sure that the needs of individuals are being met, to move people from facilities to community settings.

What the numbers on page 97 do is reflect that movement, because schedule 2 facilities include some large group homes, but they also include some small facilities, so that's just part of the continuing effort that we've been doing. I think, as has been pointed out, when you look at the bottom-line figure, it shows that in fact there has been overall a 4% increase in the amount of money that we spend in this area, not a decrease, and that the decrease that's there simply reflects the shifting of dollars from facilities to community settings.

Mr Jackson: Thank you, Minister. That's helpful.

Mr Low, I want to talk to you then about the situation we were just in the midst of discussing about the transition and the expansion of community-based accommodation.

I have a case of a 49-year-old person in this province. Her name is Donna McIsaac. At the age of eight months, she contracted spinal meningitis and she became organically brain damaged and is classed as developmentally disabled. Her mother many, many years ago was told, "You should in fact send her to Orillia," and she said, "No, but when I'm too old to take care of my daughter, I want to make sure she's taken care of."

Donna's mother has cared for her from a wheelchair up until her 69th year, and she is in a hospital now. She's on oxygen. She's somewhat disabled herself and can no longer take care of Donna.

We found a community placement for Donna, an inappropriate placement I might suggest, but it was all that was available because we didn't have services in Burlington. We had to find a retirement home in Hamilton -- it is owned by a family -- which has 11 residents, senior citizens, and she is the only disabled individual who has residency there. Her FBA is used almost entirely to pay for her accommodation, with the exception of her small comfort allowance monthly. The mother cared for this girl up until four years ago, but now Donna's been asked to leave by the landlord and we are scrambling to try and find accommodation for her.

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Why I want to raise this issue now is because much of the focus you've given, and the minister as well, has been with respect to the deinstitutionalization, and that is a large cohort of persons with disabilities in this province that we want to move into a community setting. Then there are those families who have waited, who have young people, young adults in their care, who no longer can care for the child. But then there is the whole group of developmentally disabled adults who have a form of independent living who have no family members to take them in, such as Donna McIsaac.

When we called the ministry in the last week, we were told by the area manager in Hamilton, a Mr Jim Adams, that Donna's really caught between a rock and a hard place, that she shouldn't have left Burlington five years ago and moved to Hamilton, that that's hurt her chances of getting accommodation and that in fact she should move back to Burlington and try and find some place in Burlington and from there begin the application process.

We've called the Hamilton office, the Metro Toronto office, the Peel office, Burlington Association for Community Living -- I have a whole list of people we've called -- Christian Horizons facilities; we're on a five-year waiting list to get into that facility.

Now, Donna McIsaac's going to be put out on the street in a matter of weeks and we're scrambling to find placement. I want to ask you, given the numbers that we just went over -- and I could give you three more cases in my community; I have two more from Hamilton -- how are we meeting the needs of Donna McIsaac directly with respect to finding supportive living accommodation when I'm looking a 19% reduction in schedule 2 facilities where there are group homes with a component of supervision and support?

Mr Low: First, let me say that the 19% reduction in schedule 2 is, for the most part, redeployed into other forms of community living. Last year, we were able to add $21 million to the development of services within the community. This year, the minister has announced $29 million. Each of the years of the multi-year plan we increased the level of service provided within our communities to meet the needs of many people similar in need to Donna McIsaac.

I recognize -- and we deal with specific instances similar to the one that you mentioned on a regular basis -- and acknowledge that there is unmet need within the community. In fact, that's why we continue to look at reinvestment or investment of additional dollars in meeting needs within the community.

When it comes to the specific situation, while I would like to discuss this with you in more detail at a later date, and I will follow up with you, the planning in the community rests through our service system with the agencies and with the Association for Community Living.

Mr Jackson: I beg to differ with you. I have been a member of an association for 19 years. I am familiar with all phases of long-term planning with respect to deinstitutionalization. I am telling you that Donna McIsaac is the case that is most frightening in this province because at each of the major policy changes that any government has had in this province, she's been caught between a rock and a hard place.

I gave you specific information because I know you've been around a long time dealing with developmentally disabled adults in this province, Mr Low. Four and a half to five years ago there was a major push at deinstitutionalization. The rules of the game were that we took two individuals out of an institution when we created group homes -- and we created nine spaces in my community. We took two from an institution, we took one from a community, and from a community it was a family in crisis. Donna got caught in all of that. There was no space for her. She was inappropriately placed four and a half years ago. As a landlord throws her out on the street, now she's being told, "You're caught between a rock and a hard place and you have to move out of that community and relocate yourself so that you better position yourself."

I'm sorry. The analogy on this was that in certain parts of the world you have to go back to your place of origin in order to be eligible to even vote. They do that in South Africa. We're telling a disabled adult, "You don't have a chance if you stay in Hamilton because you've only been here for four years."

Now I'm asking you specific questions about why the policy is that the ministry would say, "You have to go to another community in order to better position yourself," when some communities are not well positioned. More important, I don't appreciate the fact that it was the ministry dictating what the ratio was.

Before the minister took office, I routinely advocated on behalf of crown wards because they were the minister's children with disabilities. It was easy to get them into a facility, but it was almost immoral that we were changing the child's legal definition in order to flip them into a facility and bumping people out of the queue, like Donna and others, who had a legitimate right to be there.

That's the pressure point on this issue. We can look at all the numbers and millions and percentages, but there are a lot of Donna McIsaacs and there are a lot of Mrs McIsaacs who are candidates for nursing homes who have nobody in society to take care of their 49-year-old daughter with developmental disabilities.

That's the nature of my question, and that's why I want you to undertake, if you will, to investigate this case and to determine why we're unable to meet her supports, because we did a very cruel thing to her, to find her an inappropriate placement in Hamilton. There are 10 people using two washrooms and she's been thrown out the door because this poor woman had diarrhoea and spent too much time in the washroom. That is why she's being thrown out, and the person who owns that home works for the provincial government. I'm angry about this because this person's going to be put out on the street and there's nothing we can do about it.

Hon Mr Silipo: Mr Jackson, I think we can undertake to follow up on the specific issue that you've raised, because I'm as troubled as you are by the description you've given of the kind of situation that has developed.

Mr Jackson: But, Minister, are you aware of the policy shifts in certain types of individual -- I don't want to call them "a type," but certain family cases that have been caught in the middle here? If you are in an institution, you are going to get into a community-based setting because we're physically going to close Oxford centre.

Hon Mr Silipo: Exactly, and I'm aware of the problems that have been caused that way. But what I'm also aware of is that the ministry and the agencies that work out there in this field have been working very hard to try to deal with these kinds of situations. What has to inevitably go on is a balancing in terms of trying to respond as well as possible to the different needs that exist out there, and the varying needs, which is not to say that every action that's being taken and every decision that has being made has been the correct one. But I think it's one that certainly, on the one hand, we can understand in terms of how things have developed. Also I think that as we are looking at developing the developmental services framework, these are exactly the kinds of things that we know we need to try to straighten out. So it's helpful --

Mr Jackson: Minister, nobody's advocating for this group. If you look at where people are placed, people in a schedule 2 facility today have organizations advocating for them. If you're in a schedule 1 facility, God knows, you had Fred Upshaw getting involved in this issue four years ago when Zanana Akande was the minister. There's a lot of people getting involved in this issue. Nobody's getting involved for Donna because she has sort of disappeared out into the community setting. But now she's in crisis. I think she's being discriminated against, but more important, when we called Mississauga office, they say, "Well, she's technically a Halton person because she lived there all her life up until four and a half years ago."

I'm sorry. We broke down those barriers of residency when we apply for housing in this province. Why is the disabled community shuffled around in sort of geographical terms? There's a lot in this case which needs attention, Minister. You may be doing some fine things for a certain cohort in the disabled community. Nobody's getting up and arguing this case. My colleague Margaret Marland had a resolution on the floor of the Legislature that tried to zero in very carefully on this. There was a lot of well-intended debate from all sides of the House, but I don't want to hear the good things we've been doing for this small group over here. I'm trying to find some support.

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We have a lot of senior citizens who are going to die soon who don't know the future of their children, and 25, 35 years ago they were promised by the government of the day that, "If you take care of your children at home and don't put them on as a burden to society financially" -- Donna's mother, Mrs McIsaac, has to have saved the taxpayers of Ontario hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not $1 million, by caring for her child. Her health has suffered and now she can't find -- imagine what this mother's going through, and I have more cases in Burlington. This is actually Dr Richard Allen's constituent at the moment, but she used to be my constituent and everybody in the system is telling her she is my constituent and we're going to try and find her some accommodation.

So I'm asking you, Minister, if you'll undertake to examine. I'll give you each and every one of the nine individuals we talked to within your ministry over a course of a week.

There's some frightening dialogue here, Minister. I don't think we should geographically define disabled persons for purposes of telling them where they must live and where their eligibility is derived from. They're citizens of our province, period, end of sentence.

Hon Mr Silipo: I couldn't agree more with that last statement and I can tell you very clearly that it's our intent, as we develop the developmental services framework -- and again I want to be clear about this -- that we're not talking about something that's going to take us another year to develop. We're talking about having something in place in the next few months, and what we are trying to do as we develop that is to pick up all of these disparities that exist and try to bring them together into a plan and a system that will work and that will address exactly, among others, those kinds of issues you've raised.

I think we know, in the meantime, agencies and ministry employees have tried to struggle to deal with the balancing they've had to in the best of ways, because again, if we had the money that we all would want to have, we'd be able of course to do more. I think again it's incumbent upon all of us, as we argue for these things to happen, for that kind of planning to be done, to have structures in place and people in place who can advocate for the whole different kind of clientele that we have, with different needs, and also to be conscious about what positions we're taking on the dollars. I'm trying very hard not to get too partisan on this, Mr Jackson, but I think we have to also keep that in mind in terms of the view that your party is taking around what we should be spending in this area, what you would cut, what we wouldn't cut and what we in fact are trying to add to. That's part of the equation, so I hope you'll be supportive there when we try to argue for more money in this area as well.

Mr Jackson: I have a minute left. Let me just put a fine point on this. In the course of the last week we've had two interventions from protective service workers; we've had a psychiatrist examine the case to reconfirm that the reason Donna spends so much time in the washroom is that it's the only safe place she can find in this facility, and yet none of these people, well-intentioned, additionally funded by your ministry, can do anything to help her.

I'm not going to argue with you that you've put a little bit more money for protective service workers, and we're going to spend $30 million on an advocacy commission that'll arrive on our doorstep to say absolutely, "This lady should not be thrown out on the street." There is money in the system, Minister. I'm simply saying that somehow we've lost a client-centred focus to those needs and what Donna needs, and she was promised four and a half years ago that this was a temporary situation, to put her into a retirement home in Hamilton. I'm simply saying, Minister, that there is money in the system if it was directed to true supportive living for these individuals and that's why I would like the matter investigated, because I think it will serve for you, Minister, as an eye opener.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Mr Jackson. Time for the Conservative caucus has elapsed. I turn to the New Democratic caucus.

Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): As we indicated yesterday off the TVs in a little bit more subtle conversation around the issue, and we weren't looking for Brownie points or whatever you want to try to call it, I think it's important that it was indicated that the chairperson from SARB would be here in order for the opposition to ask questions. So we are going to yield our half-hour, roll it over -- we're not giving up our time. We're just rolling it over to allow the opposition the time for questioning this morning so that the person can return back to her regular job and continue with the work she has on her desk.

Mrs O'Neill: I want to say to the minister that he has said twice this morning, and I'm glad he has, that the developmentally disabled are a priority and that the special services at home are a priority. I want to underline that because I think those are very crucial needs that I too support.

I want to go back, and I feel it really isn't very happy news that we had a saving in the shortfall, so to speak, on the Jobs Ontario. There was an awful lot of money spent on advertising and the program wasn't picked up, and that is certainly, in my mind, somewhat of a failure.

I want to go to pages 39 and 45, where the projections on the Jobs Ontario and how it will affect social assistance are reflected in this document. They seem on those two pages, and I'm looking at bottom lines here on page 39, a 4.6% change in 1994 over 1993 regarding improvements to what was in the 1994 budget on page 103, which was a 2.1% growth in social assistance. I'm wondering how you arrived at these figures, keeping in account what we have just talked about, which is such a shortfall in the uptake. Where did you come to the figures that are on page 39 on FBA, and on page 45 on GWA, regarding the changes that the Jobs Ontario initiatives are going to have on social assistance across this province?

Once we have the answer to that question, our critic on training would like to continue with questions on Jobs Ontario.

Mr Kevin Costante: Kevin Costante, assistant deputy minister of social assistance. We've asked for some additional information on Jobs Ontario to be brought over in terms of estimates of placements and dollar amounts. So that should be coming shortly.

Mrs O'Neill: Perhaps Mr Ramsay then could pose his questions, if we're just waiting. My questions are really much more statistical.

Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): Thank you very much, Mrs O'Neill. I'd like to talk with the minister a little bit about JobLink and his recent announcement of -- I guess you don't call them pilot sites any more, because I suppose it is a program that's in place, so this is the initial round, I understand.

I certainly brought up the concern in my riding where the town of Kirkland Lake, by federal government statistics, has been shown to have received one of the largest government supports of any municipality in Ontario, a combination of all the government programs coming in to assist the people of Kirkland Lake. I found it very ironic that the social assistance department of the town of Kirkland Lake, which had put forward a proposal, didn't get one of the initial locations, yet the Kitchener-Waterloo region did, and it has the lowest unemployment in Ontario. It just seems quite ironic to me that one of the poorest areas, where people would need the help of JobLink -- by the way, I think it's a good program; I want to say that up front -- didn't get it, yet Kitchener-Waterloo, where things are really doing well, did.

I see another one, Windsor, where Ford now has got 150 more people hired than it had before and is looking for another 800 to 900 with its recent expansion plans. It's starting to come back. I just really have to question how you made some of these decisions as to where the initial JobLink offices were placed.

Hon Mr Silipo: Mr Ramsay, I'm glad you're asking questions about JobLink, because I think it's an important area for us to talk about. Let me stress again something that you said, that the announcements we've made are just the initial sites. Our intention is to move consistently and swiftly to keep adding sites. In fact, the contribution from the federal government, the fact that it's come on board and has agreed to fund, not just for this year but also ongoing, the growth of the program over the next few years will mean that we'll be able to add to those initial sites.

Initially we wanted to get the program started in a combination of places across the province, so we chose places on a number of criteria: places that we felt overall were ready to go with the initiative very quickly, places that reflected large and small communities across the province, urban and rural. I think there could have been any number of other mixes in terms of the initial communities, but what I want to stress is that those are just the initial communities.

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We now have the guidelines out to communities. If there is already a proposal from Kirkland Lake, I can assure you that it will be considered in the next round, and we expect to be making some further decisions before Christmas in terms of the next round of communities that will be selected, and then continue to add communities into the next year. At roughly three-to-four-month intervals we hope to keep that rolling along.

I want to say, through you here today to Kirkland Lake and to indeed any other communities, what we're saying through our area offices to all communities, that we want to expand the program, we intend to expand the program, and if there are proposals out there we need to get them and look at them and proceed.

Mr Ramsay: I'm encouraged to hear that you will be making a second round of announcements before Christmas. It's certainly going to be needed. I would also make a plea that, when you look at your next list, you get sort of a more balanced list between large and small municipalities. The list here of the initial round was fairly big centres except for two. We've got Waterloo, Sudbury, Sault Ste Marie, Ottawa-Carleton, Windsor, Cornwall and Kingston, and then you do have Bruce, so that's probably going to go in some small town there, as that's all that exists in Bruce, and we're not sure in the district of Algoma. Even though Sault Ste Marie is in that district, it must refer to --

Hon Mr Silipo: No, those are two separate -- so both of them --

Mr Ramsay: Two of them, so it's another one, maybe one of the small towns. Out of that number there are only two in sort of small-town Ontario. I would say to you that in many rural areas and small towns we lack the resources that many of the cities do have already. They have community offices open under the guise of many sponsors that help our unemployed, and it's going to be the small communities that are really going to need a JobLink type of program that has those facilities there for people.

Again, I think it's a good program and I encourage you to certainly get on with it and to maybe look at the next round, maybe more smaller communities --

Hon Mr Silipo: I would expect that's exactly what we will do because, again, we will want to continue that balance throughout the province. So if in the first round we've tended to have the scale slightly more in favour of the larger centres, it's also because that's where we have the larger numbers of people on welfare. As you know, the intent of JobLink is to support and encourage people to be able to move off dependency on welfare through training and other supports. So there's a logic also to why we started perhaps more so in the larger centres, but I can assure you that we intend to have the program spread out as quickly and as widely as we can throughout the province. That's something we'll keep very much in mind.

Mr Ramsay: Good. Thank you.

Mrs O'Neill: I would like to continue on with page 35, if I may.

I wanted to look at the Ontario drug plan. I see, as most of us would have expected, that the funding for this program is kind of in a holding pattern. We spent less last year than the year before, but now we're going to spend more. What's always deceptive about this book, in my mind, is that it has no relation to actuals. You look at two sets of estimates, some of which are really out of whack, and here you look like you are really going down in expenditure when you're really going to go up in expenditure on the drug plan. Then I see, down in the changes, the Ontario drug plan cash flow of $14 million.

Maybe somebody can give us some explanation of what's really going on in that program, particularly in the social assistance area.

Mr Cope: I think what you're seeing there are a number of different things that are going in different directions.

We had discussed yesterday the increase in case load of $347 million. Then, along with that, of course, there's a corresponding increase on the Ontario drug benefits payments that would go with that increase in case load, so there's an increase there. At the same time you have a decrease of $14 million that is showing there for what is called cash flow. What happened in that case was that at the end of last fiscal year it was determined, for overall financial reasons, to make a payment in the previous fiscal year so it would not have to be made this year, and the adjustment has been reflected in our estimates to take care of that one-time movement of funding.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay. Thank you very much for that.

The minister suggested yesterday in his opening remarks, or in response to mine, that he would be willing to talk a little bit about how this case file investigation is going; just a first-blush brush on the update of that initiative, if I may, and we talked about the $61 million that you allocated for that. Could you say a little bit about how things are going, particularly with the municipalities?

Hon Mr Silipo: Yes, I will start and ask Kevin Costante to provide some details because I know we have some initial details, even some examples that we can give you by municipalities, of actual savings that have accrued. The overall amount is $61 million, as you've noted, that we are anticipating saving through case file investigation this year. So far I think it's fair to say, from the indications that we have, we're very much on track with that, and Kevin can provide some details as we have them so far.

Mr Costante: We've done a preliminary survey of municipalities in terms of some of the results from the case file investigation, and this is all of the full-time administrations. We have about 180 or so deliverers of social assistance. About 60 are full-time administrators and then there are some very small communities that deliver in some of the unorganized areas, and we don't have the full survey.

Based on that, up until the beginning of August, they had reviewed -- these are the municipal numbers -- about 43,000 cases and they were reporting a total saving of about $21 million, at that point, from the review of the cases. So that would be a combination of both reductions in terms of people's allowances or perhaps complete termination if it was proven that they were ineligible, as well as one-time saving from repayments. So that's the information we have to date. On the FBA side --

Mrs O'Neill: Do you have anything about overpayments and how it's affecting overpayments?

Mr Costante: Sorry, I don't have the exact numbers. The amount of overpayments would go up. What happens is, if they find that somebody has perhaps not been reporting income for a period, we would assess an overpayment and then it would come back to us. So the trend in overpayments is definitively up. I'm sorry I don't have the exact numbers with me.

Mrs O'Neill: I feel this initiative has its ups and its downs. I'm glad that the municipalities are very much part of it. I guess what I want to say is that I find it difficult that some of the municipalities have gone in some of the directions they have and that they are finding that some of them are not as effective as others.

Are you helping them assess the initiatives or is it strictly a municipal decision how they spend the money you give? Are there guidelines, frameworks?

Mr Costante: We have provided a framework and set down some criteria as to how we'd want the money spent, so we've given them a range of activities. Some of them participate in a full range of activities; some of them only participate in some. For example, the main ones would be introducing eligibility review procedures, also the pursuit of support payments for single parents. A third one would be paying more attention and bringing in a systematic way of dealing with overpayments, so a system with those costs. Those are the three main things that the $10 million we have this year for the municipal case file is being used for.

Mrs O'Neill: So you don't actually indicate what strategy you would prefer they use.

Mr Costante: Some of them have had some elements in there before. Each municipality sends in a plan to our area office for approval, so we are only providing them with additional moneys in areas where they had gaps. If they already had a good eligibility review program in place, we weren't going to pay for something that was already there. But if they needed money for something -- an overpayments unit -- we would of course support that.

Mrs O'Neill: Could I go now to pages 53, 59 and 61, which are all related to counselling? I have some difficulty with what appear to be cutbacks in those areas on those pages, or at least a holding pattern if not cutbacks. That concerns me greatly, especially since we've had a rather major discussion this morning about community supports. I just would like to know how we can be doing what we consider constructive building of community supports when counselling services are going down by almost 10%, and how we're going to fill those gaps. So I'm looking under transfer payments on page 53, which is a 9% decrease.

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Hon Mr Silipo: The main reason for that is that was an expenditure control plan measure, which only explains the reduction; it doesn't explain the effect, which I think is what you want some information on.

Mrs O'Neill: Well, if we have any read on it, and then if I look at the same thing on page 59, sexual assault counselling, I guess if I could get some answers about Grandview and how the responsibilities of this ministry to that group of people fit into that.

Hon Mr Silipo: Why don't we ask our ADMs to talk first, then, about the $5-million reduction there, how that's taken place, what it constitutes, and then address your issue about Grandview. I think David is going to start with the numbers and then we're going to have our ADMs.

Mrs O'Neill: What page are we going to start on, then, Minister?

Hon Mr Silipo: Page 53, David?

Mr Cope: Page 53 is a summary. I think if you turn to page 61 you'll find the details on community counselling. In fact, the major explanations for that $5-million reduction are $2 million in expenditure control plan reductions that had been committed and another almost $3 million in supportive housing funding that had been originally provided in that line because it came in a block there, and as we placed the funding in the appropriate supports, we found that some of it needed to go to the violence against women line and some to developmental services. So it's a transfer out. It's not really a reduction in the service that we're providing to individuals but a relocation of the funding, and you'll see it just moved.

Mrs O'Neill: Do you want to tell me exactly where you've moved it to? Is it on this page or is it on another page?

Mr Cope: No, it's on violence against women and in the developmental services program.

Mrs O'Neill: Well, this discussion is moving very quickly and I'm having a little bit of difficulty with it. I want to go back to page 59 when I get something else out of my mind.

You're talking about expenditure control plan and it being the $2 million. Is that a cutback in services, is it a cutback in salary for those who are providing the services, or is it a combination of both?

Hon Mr Silipo: That's what we're going to have Lucille Roch, the ADM, speak to.

Ms Lucille Roch: We've managed to reduce that line by not cutting back services. What we found when we discussed this issue with our area offices is that they had some initiatives that they had not been funding or underfunding over a number of years. So basically the money was taken away but it has not, to our knowledge, affected service.

Mrs O'Neill: That's even more confusing to me, maybe not to you. Are you suggesting there were programs that they were not using or not implementing and they were putting it into a general revenue base, but it was on that line of the budget? Is that what you're saying?

Mrs Sue Herbert: Maybe I can explain this program area. This is two types of programs. One is purchase of counselling through the municipalities.

Mrs O'Neill: Yes, and that's the one that's on page 61 that seems to be going down the most.

Mrs Herbert: Yes, and in fact in a reduction of the expenditure line, that's correct, Mrs O'Neill. The program itself, though, is based on a volume agreement with a municipality. So they agree to a certain volume and rate and the municipalities actually monitor and approve the individual program. So it's almost a cost pass-through to the municipalities.

What we've experienced over the last two or three years is an actual reduction in the volume that the municipalities have claimed. So while they would have had an approved budget level, their actual claim came in far under that amount of money, and across the province that equated to almost that $2 million.

Mrs O'Neill: Because that's a shared program; that's our share.

Mrs Herbert: That's because that's a shared program, 80-20.

Mrs O'Neill: So there really is a cutback of services. It's a double decision really, at both levels of government.

Mrs Herbert: I think it's twofold. One is that some municipalities have been reducing themselves their approvals and have been holding the counselling rate line. As well, there has been less volume used than projected. So in actual fact, it's not a cutback in demand -- there was not the demand there for that service in that particular program. So we did a review, we actually did a survey, and removed what at the area office level would have been seen to have been some underexpenditure.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay, maybe it's more efficiency. I hope it's only that.

To go back to something that was just said regarding page 59, you suggest that the estimates were -- there's a transfer here of $63,000 into this area from some other area of the budget during the budget year. Is that what that indicates? And now you're going to $19,200. This is very confusing for somebody just looking at this cold, and that's me.

Mr Cope: The transfer I was talking about was in the first of those two. On that page, you have two lines showing up, violence against women and sexual assault counselling. There's been no change in the second one. In the first one we increased by $461,000, and that's the transfer I'm talking about.

Mrs O'Neill: What are the explanations for the lines on sexual assault counselling, which are even more confusing: $63,000, and the budget figure was zero?

Ms Proctor: The overexpenditure in the sexual assault counselling or the amount of money there had to do with the provision of pay equity payments in the previous fiscal year.

Mr Jackson: You're using pay equity for counselling?

Mrs O'Neill: So you're suggesting that the $19,200, then, is how much pay equity is going to cost this year? Is that still pay equity?

Interjections.

Mr Cope: Just to clarify that, I think what is confusing there is that in 1993-94, there was nothing in the estimates. That doesn't mean that in fact we weren't doing anything in that; it was just subsumed up against the violence against women line. Because of the attention that it has received, we felt it was appropriate to show that separately. If you look in older books, you won't see that line there. So that's why there was a zero; we hadn't had anything there officially in the printed estimates before, although the money was there. So now we are seeing the actuals; we're putting the amounts in place there.

The reduction was because there were some very large payments in 1992-93 for some of the abuse cases that were going on. Those cases have now wound down so that there's not as much spending required in that area. But we still felt it was important to show that category separately for you.

Mrs O'Neill: I'm having trouble with the $63,000 now, especially if you relate it to major abuse cases, if we're talking about either Grandview, St John's or St Joseph's. I mean, we're talking about $3,000 to $5,000 per person, or maybe even more.

What is that figure reflective of and then what is the change this year? Because certainly the payment to the Grandview survivors is just beginning or certainly is continuing. If we don't find Grandview here, where do we find it?

Ms Proctor: We're just checking with each other here. I can't give you a clear answer now as to which payments come from this budget and which payments come from the Attorney General's budget, because they have some responsibilities as well with respect to Grandview and those survivors. So I would like to take that with a commitment to get back to you with more detail on that.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay, I'd really appreciate it.

Ms Proctor: We can get it, but we need to consult with the Attorney General and track that down in terms of the whole thing. So I'd like to bring that back to you.

Mrs O'Neill: Because in the beginning, certainly the counselling, as far as I know, came under the Ministry of Community and Social Services. I don't know whether that's changed with the settlement, although there are some people who are still not within the settlement, so I guess that's the kind of thing we need to know.

Ms Proctor: And we'll undertake to provide information about that. We will need to check with the other ministry as well.

Mrs O'Neill: Mr Chairman, how much time do I have left?

The Vice-Chair: You have about five minutes, Mrs O'Neill.

Mrs O'Neill: I think then, if I could, I will go to the child care section, page 67. The child care page, as the minister even in his opening remarks indicated, is somewhat connected to the Jobs Ontario.

I wanted to look at that line in particular, of the "Jobs Ontario Training -- child care." That line, in this entire book of estimates, caused me the most confusion. I look at it and I say the estimates are thus for 1993-94. The actuals are thus, which is $20 million less. Notwithstanding that, we're going to go and increase it by 37% and go up beyond $100 million. That is a mystery to me, because I really don't know --

First of all, it's obviously the strongest line on this whole page. I want to have clarified why, when the program does not seem to be -- I'm certainly speaking from experience as well as from this line that the child care needs of people accessing Jobs Ontario have not been what had been predicted, that the child care criteria surrounding Jobs Ontario Training are quite restrictive for some individuals, and I'm talking about some individuals who have needs, and yet we've still put this as the highlight of this page. So maybe we can get some idea of why we're still in that line of thinking.

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Hon Mr Silipo: We probably need a couple of exchanges to clear up the concerns that you've raised, but let me start by saying, because you've raised the issue of criteria a couple of times --

Mrs O'Neill: Yes, I have.

Hon Mr Silipo: -- that I think as you recall we in fact did broaden the criteria. I think you used yesterday an example of a young mother, if I remember well, who was in school or in a training program. That person would be eligible under the expanded criteria.

Mrs O'Neill: I understand not if they're living at home, if they're still under the roof of their parent, and that's one case I'm thinking of. Although the family are very limited --

Hon Mr Silipo: But then the only reason they wouldn't be eligible is because of the needs test that's applied, I believe. In other words, living at home might mean that in effect there is the whole family's income taken into account. That's not an issue that's been affected by the Jobs Ontario provisions, and even then, I'm not sure why in fact that would be the case.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay, there might be a smaller --

Hon Mr Silipo: But on the criteria, we have expanded. On the overall --

Mrs O'Neill: Did you want to be quite specific, Minister -- I'm sure you can be -- on the actual criteria? I think it would be important to put that on the record again, both the first criteria and the expansion, for this particular line of the budget.

Hon Mr Silipo: Why don't we have Lucille just go through that, the three pieces, because we did move from the initial criteria, which were more rigid, to an expanded criteria which picked up and allowed people who were getting training or education programs on their own to also be eligible for the Jobs Ontario subsidies.

Ms Roch: The first set of criteria included people who were on social assistance and whose UI payments had expired. We then expanded the criteria to allow people who were on social assistance who had found either training or job opportunities on their own, without going through the Jobs Ontario program, and we also expanded it to include teenage mothers who were going to school.

Mrs O'Neill: So these would be the people who are, from my experience, and maybe it's not complete, the people who have access to a high school that has a child care centre connected with it, or would it include people who would even seek out their own child care beyond the school walls?

Ms Roch: It could include someone who seeks a child care centre beyond the school walls, but it would have to be a centre.

Mrs O'Neill: But it is a non-profit centre that gains the funding. Okay, did you want to say a little more about that line, Minister?

Hon Mr Silipo: I think the deputy wanted to comment more specifically on it.

Ms Proctor: I just wanted to explain briefly the over- and underexpenditure, because the underexpenditure in the previous fiscal year was primarily related to the fact that a lot of new capital was coming in that year and the operating dollars were targeted for new spaces that were being built. However, spaces didn't become available until very much closer to the end of the fiscal year and therefore there was an in-year savings with respect to that.

The additional dollars that you see going in in the 1994-95 year and that are reflected in the estimates increases include those operating dollars as well as the additional commitment up to the total of 14,000 spaces that had been provided for through the 1994-95 year with respect to adding new subsidies to the system. So the larger increase this year is to provide both the operating dollars for the spaces that were coming in close to the end of last fiscal year as well as the new subsidies that are coming along this year.

Mrs O'Neill: So you're still talking about the $44 million that's going to go into capital, and this is to support that. Is that what you're saying?

Ms Proctor: This is subsidies and operating dollars to support the new capital spaces as well as other spaces in the system.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Deputy Minister. Mrs O'Neill, your time has elapsed for this round. I now turn to the Conservative caucus.

Mr Jackson: Could I return to the violence against women initiatives? These numbers are cause for some concern and I wanted to maybe take another run at them, since Ms O'Neill may not have gotten all the answers she was seeking.

Could someone explain why we've got a figure of $326,000 as an actual expenditure in 1992-93 and then a $63,000 actual expenditure in 1993-94 on the line on page 59 on sexual assault counselling, and somehow explain why the words "pay equity payment" were used?

Ms Proctor: Pardon me. This is the question that I said we would require some additional time to provide an answer to, and we agreed and committed to provide additional information. But I don't have a clear explanation now, because some of the responsibility, as I said, was also in the Attorney's General ministry and we need to both discuss with them and get more accurate information about why some of the expenditures are here in a previous year.

Mr Jackson: I heard that part of it, but no one got at the $326,000. Surely someone in your ministry knows what was spent in the $326,000 back in 1992-93.

Ms Proctor: We will undertake to provide an answer to that, Mr Jackson.

Mr Jackson: There's nobody here whose responsibility for violence against women --

Ms Proctor: Would permit them to answer that.

Mr Jackson: Okay. Well, we'll leave those for this afternoon, then.

Deputy, could I ask you if you could advise the committee how many meetings your ministry has had with the province of Quebec in 1993 and up to now in 1994 to specifically meet with your counterparts to discuss the issue of social assistance fraud? Can you give us the dates of those meetings?

Ms Proctor: I'm sorry. I don't have that information with me and I'm not sure that we even could, because meetings occur between the province and the province of Quebec at different times and would mostly be handled through our Ottawa area office in terms of work that's been done. We can undertake to see if that information could be available, but I don't even know if they would have a record of that sort of --

Mr Jackson: Who in your ministry head office is assigned responsibility to discuss the issue with the Quebec government of welfare fraud? Who has been assigned that responsibility?

Ms Proctor: The responsibility falls within --

Interjection.

Mr Jackson: Welcome. Can you describe for me the nature of any conversations you've had with the Quebec government with respect to social assistance changes that may be necessitated because of the fraud that's existing between the two provinces?

Mr Costante: I personally have not had any discussions. Staff in my division have had discussions with the province of Quebec over a data sharing agreement so that we could see if there are people getting benefits in both provinces and then deal with that. So that is the nature of discussions that are going on within my division.

Mr Jackson: Who in your division is assigned the responsibility for this issue?

Mr Costante: In terms of the position chart, it would show up as the director of the social assistance reform project as responsible for that.

Mr Jackson: And who is that?

Mr Costante: The person's name is Don Young.

Mr Jackson: Okay. You said "if" there's any fraud. Are you aware if there is any at this point?

Mr Costante: There had been a comparison of data between the region of Ottawa and Quebec, and they found a number of cases -- I'm sorry; I don't know the exact number -- where there was suspicion of both, ie, same names or SIN numbers were showing up in both jurisdictions.

Mr Jackson: Have you not received the numbers of Quebec residents who have been removed from social assistance in the province of Quebec because they are drawing income from the province of Ontario?

Mr Costante: My staff may have that. I don't have it.

Mr Jackson: Well, I've certainly been privy to some of that information and I was a year ago when I raised it in the Legislature. I'm just wondering the degree to which the levels of cooperation are occurring between the Ontario and Quebec governments.

Hon Mr Silipo: Mr Jackson, can I answer that? Let me just tell you that we've had a lot of discussions both at the officials' level and, I can tell you, at the ministerial level.

The last conversation I had with my counterpart in Quebec was at the June meeting of the ministers of social services. We had been -- and are still, from our perspective -- very close to the actual signing of an agreement with the province of Quebec. The Quebec minister and I discussed that at the last meeting. We had discussed that at the previous meeting as well.

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There has been a fair amount of work done on this. I think that our officials are being a bit cautious in their response to you because of the nature of the discussions that have taken place. If what you want is proof that in fact these discussions have been taking place, we can get you that. If what you want is some information to confirm whether the information that's been leaked to you is correct or not, we can see how much of that we can give you. But you appreciate that --

Mr Jackson: Minister, just for the record, this information wasn't leaked to me. I just had to simply pick up the telephone. I was able to call the Quebec government, who are very proud of the fact that they had brought in a series of measures to ensure a certain level of accountability with their system. Some see this as controversial, but the Liberal government in Quebec in their wisdom have proceeded with this plan.

What it did was it immediately netted them out savings, and one of the areas that they determined was that, without saying it's welfare from Ontario, it's just income from another source. This was occurring at the New Brunswick border, but that was caught and stopped. It was occurring with a high degree of regularity. I was able to phone your ministry offices in that part of eastern Ontario and municipal offices, and the information was freely given of a statistical nature.

I raised it with you in the Legislature back on June 9, 1993, and you indicated that you would be undertaking discussions. You indicated as well, Minister, that you would look at the materials that I had and I presented you with the materials that the Quebec government gave to me in both official languages, which I appreciated, and I handed that over to you. That was a year and several months ago.

What I'm concerned about is the article that appeared -- because I was working with your undertaking. You did undertake to report back to the House in my question in the House that day -- but this re-emerged on June 29 where we now have more information coming out confirming the levels of fraud, and substantive levels, and again, Quebec is cutting off high numbers of people who continue to collect in Ontario.

The trigger for this, according to these reports, was that the discussions were primarily around health care fraud and the health card abuse, which is where those ministries were discussing. My reason for asking is because I want to establish the degree to which your ministry is dealing with this matter directly.

I understand the delicate nature of exchanging information in a world that's preoccupied with freedom of information. But Quebec has overcome this hurdle with a legislative tool and, I must submit, a rather appropriate one. They, according to Quebec officials, have saved multimillions of dollars by implementing these strategies. I personally believe we're late off the mark. I have in Hansard your undertaking to do something about it, and I still haven't got anything substantive in terms of even an admission of the level of the problem from your own staff. We're not disclosing any names here, but I certainly can freely pick up the telephone and get numbers of suspected cases.

I can ask the question in a proper manner, and that is, for your eastern Ontario regional offices, what are the initiatives for new strategies implemented with respect to fraud that are being implemented successfully, what are their rates, and how many Quebec residents -- because we're not naming them; there are classifications in these sheets and I've seen them -- are still collecting welfare in Ontario? They need to. They have to. I mean, they've been cut off in their own province. They've got a source of income. I just wish we could do it the other way around so we could stop people from collecting dual payments on our side.

Hon Mr Silipo: I think you shouldn't assume, Mr Jackson, that (a) we haven't taken any of those steps to deal with those issues of double payment --

Mr Jackson: If you were forthcoming then I could believe that.

Hon Mr Silipo: We can provide you whatever statistical information we have on that and we will undertake to do that, because part of the process was to get at where the residency of a number of individuals was. If it turns out that at the end of the day they were residents of Ontario who were legitimately therefore eligible to receive social assistance in Ontario, then that eligibility presumably would continue and they might not be eligible or would not be eligible to receive payments from the province of Quebec. But that's an issue that again -- we'll put together the statistical information we do have.

Mr Jackson: Surely, Minister, you're not suggesting that Ontario has an obligation to Quebec residents who'd be cut off social assistance --

Hon Mr Silipo: Absolutely not, no.

Mr Jackson: -- from the province of Ontario and the province of Quebec because they felt they could cheat both systems.

Hon Mr Silipo: No, that's not what I'm saying. That's not at all what I'm saying.

Mr Jackson: I'm trying to understand. If you move swiftly you're harming, if I can use that phrase, a Quebec resident; you're helping an Ontario taxpayer. That would throw them back into the mercy of the Quebec government for their social assistance, but these are people who are collecting in Ontario and collecting in Quebec.

Hon Mr Silipo: And the issue at the end of the day is twofold. The first is people who are collecting inappropriately in both provinces, and that's an issue that is being addressed through the work that's being done; the second is, once all that is determined, are these individuals entitled to continue to receive social assistance from either the province of Ontario or the province of Quebec? That issue, at the end of the day, would be determined on the question of residency.

All I'm saying is that if they were residents of Quebec they would continue to be eligible subject to the rules in Quebec to receive benefits there; if they're residents of Ontario they would be eligible to receive benefits here. We can provide you with the statistical information that we have in terms of the work that is being done --

Mr Jackson: Minister, what I want from you is not the statistics and not the undertaking, and I don't mean that literally; I still want the answers to these questions. What I want is legislation and a framework of legislation that will empower the government of this day to bring some accountability into this system.

Quebec did not need to sit down at length with all of the other provinces on its border. It made a decision, maybe an unpopular decision, but it made a tough decision. Premier McKenna in New Brunswick made the exact same tough decision. We didn't make that decision in Ontario and it's costing us major amounts of dollars. This is the taxpayer's dollar.

I want to raise another example, because you can make this sound more complex, but at the root of it is a system that empowers the civil service of this province to do its job. That's really what's at the root of this. I raised in June 1993, again with you in the House, a disturbing report from the federal government about 11,000 warrants out for illegal refugees in the province, mostly in the greater Toronto area, who are collecting social assistance. These people were required, as immigrants who were in the province illegally, to come forward and make proper application to be citizens of this country. The federal government was lamenting the fact that we had the police records, we had the immigration records, we had all of that in the system but we couldn't get any level of cooperation from the provincial government to share information, because these people were in the province collecting social assistance and were not cooperating with the federal government with respect to their status.

For the life of me I can't understand -- here we are, 14 and a half, 15 months later and we're no further ahead in terms of an agreement with the federal government. In Quebec they resolved it. In New Brunswick they resolved it. It remains unresolved in this province.

I'm sorry, Minister, but we've taken many things off your plate, and social assistance reform is not fully on the plate any longer for this government. Why can't we spend a little more time on these elements of accountability? Tell me how many people are on social assistance and how much we are spending in this province, to give you an idea of how important an issue this really should be for the government.

Hon Mr Silipo: Let me answer that in two ways. First, the references that you made to the package that you provided to me back in 1993, it went, as you recall, beyond this particular issue to a number of issues that the province of Quebec had undertaken that you felt we needed to take. A number of those things already exist in our system at this point in time. The case file investigation process is one very clear example of that.

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Mr Jackson: You still can't phone the PUC and find out if this welfare recipient has paid their hydro bill in this province --

Hon Mr Silipo: No.

Mr Jackson: Let's get basic and specific here. You can't do it. You can't even pick up the phone and determine this.

Hon Mr Silipo: No, because we place a higher value on protecting the confidentiality --

Mr Jackson: Yes, you do.

Hon Mr Silipo: -- of individual clients than --

Mr Jackson: Yes, you do, and that comes at a huge cost.

Hon Mr Silipo: -- other jurisdictions do. I think if you want to feed into that perception, Mr Jackson, you're quite free to do that.

Mr Jackson: I think in Quebec they've succeeded --

Hon Mr Silipo: Our sense is that we can run an efficient system. I'll be the first to say that we've had to take steps to make the system more efficient, because it hasn't been run as well as it could be done. A lot of that has to do, quite frankly, with the way in which the system has had to grow over the last three years to deal with the number of people who have had to turn to social assistance. But be that as it may, we have put, and are putting, into the system additional steps to better manage the system.

The case file investigation process and the enhanced verification are two very real processes by which we are setting out some very clear guidelines about the kind of information that has to be on the files in order for eligibility to continue and the systematic review of each and every file in the system to ensure that that information is there and that people are getting benefits only if they are eligible.

I think that we can do that and at the same time continue to protect both the privacy and the dignity of the individual, which for us is very important. It may not be as important to you but it is important for us. We think that's something that needs to continue to be very much a part of the system.

The other comment that I wanted to make was that with respect to the issue of agreements we have, as I've indicated to you, done a fair amount of work with respect to the province of Quebec and are close and, as far as we're concerned, we're still prepared to proceed to sign the agreement with the new government as soon as they're ready to do so.

You mentioned also the issue of agreements with the federal government. We have with the immigration authorities federally -- at the last information I had, we were practically ready to sign an agreement there that would provide at least initially some of the information.

There are some additional concerns. The reason that some of this work has been slowed down has been not so much because of the work within the ministry, but it's been because of the concerns that have been flagged through the privacy commissioners, both our own and others and the federal one in that case. Those are concerns that have to be addressed, because if they're not, we can sign all the agreements that we want and then the next thing we'll know we'll find ourselves in court dealing with these issues.

Mr Jackson: It's an oversimplification to suggest that these are all privacy issues. I raised in the House two years ago a pilot project in the city of Hamilton, to the credit of the social services administration in the regional municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth. They had undertaken to resolve the concept of overpayment and non-collection. Again, this was in the shadow of the auditor indicating that we really didn't have a proper system for collections in this province of overpayment or fraud.

But in Hamilton they resolved the issue of when people take the step from unemployment insurance to social assistance or from job loss to when UIC kicks in and they apply for social assistance in the intervening period. The city of Hamilton saved $10 million. By extension we worked out that in the first year alone the city of Toronto could've saved $50 million, which was enough to wipe out the deficit of the Metro Toronto children's aid society, with additional moneys for children at risk. We appealed to your government and yet we're now getting around to the issue of signing that agreement.

You were not the minister at the time, in fairness, but you were the minister on these other two issues I raised, and yet we're looking, in the case of Metro Toronto alone, at a potential saving of $100 million in a two-year period. We're just now getting around to doing that, and there's not one element of confidentiality in that.

Hamilton did it without one piece of provincial legislation. In fact, when they notified Zanana Akande, the minister of the day, of this potential to save money, she didn't even give them the courtesy of a reply. These are all matters of record.

Hon Mr Silipo: There are agreements, as you may be aware, between municipalities and federal authorities because they also have the ability to do that. Again, we can provide you with a list of those that exist, but there's certainly more than one municipality that has entered into those similar agreements. They don't even need our blessing to do that, in most instances, depending on the nature of the agreement.

I think, as Mr Costante indicated earlier, despite your efforts to try to paint it to the contrary, the steps that we've taken are having an effect. The figures that we heard earlier, that in the reviews of the 43,000 cases that have taken place up until August of this year there has been already identified a saving of $21 million, I think means the processes we put into the system are working.

Mr Jackson: Minister, you've talked about municipalities. Are you familiar with the AMO resolutions that were recently passed at the AMO convention? You'd be familiar with the one which suggests a series of problems associated with interim assistance. They are very concerned about the costs associated with that, and in an AMO resolution they have indicated that "the Social Assistance Review Board is currently issuing interim assistance on cases regardless of the merits and without any investigation of the case" and that the assistance is granted at the date of decision. They go on to suggest that "the granting of interim assistance, regardless of the merits of the case, is contrary to the spirit and intent of the General Welfare Assistance Act."

They have concerns about the high costs of this interpretation, and they've resolved that AMO petition your ministry "to immediately eliminate the current practice of granting interim assistance regardless of the merits of the case." Could you give this committee a short response as to how you're going to approach that recommendation?

Hon Mr Silipo: Interim assistance remains something that the Social Assistance Review Board has the right to determine whether it should be granted or not, and I think the legislation, as we understand it and as I understand it, is quite clear that whether or not interim assistance is given is to be determined on the financial situation of the individual and not on the merits of the case. That's the whole point of it. I think that whenever you wish to address some questions to the chair of SARB, who's here, she can give you some statistical information about the number of instances in which people apply for interim assistance and where it's granted, because it certainly is not in all cases.

But in terms of what further steps we are going to take with respect to the issue of interim assistance, we've been discussing with the board ways in which we can deal with this, again in both a policy way and if need be through regulation, because the legislation is quite clear and we have at this point no plans to change the legislation.

I think that, read in one way, the AMO resolution would be to eliminate interim assistance as a tradition or --

Mr Jackson: No, it doesn't say that, Minister.

Hon Mr Silipo: No, I said, "read in one way."

Mr Jackson: That would be unfair to AMO, and you don't want to get into a letter-writing campaign with AMO right now.

Hon Mr Silipo: No, I don't. I said, "read in --

Mr Jackson: Maybe you'd want to rechoose your words.

Hon Mr Silipo: Mr Jackson, if you'll allow me to finish my sentence, read in one way, that could be one interpretation. The other is to look at how one could tie interim assistance more closely to eligibility for social assistance, which again would require a change in legislation, which, as I said, we're not at this point anticipating doing.

But there are some things that can be done. One of the concerns, I think, that AMO has brought to our attention which I have a lot of empathy for is the issue of the time it takes between the decision to award interim assistance and the time for the board to deal with the merits of the case, which then obviously determines the issue of eligibility. That goes back to some of the discussions we were having yesterday about the workload of the board and some steps that we've taken. I'm sure we'll get more into those later on, so I'm not going to delve into those areas at this point.

Mr Jackson: Thank you, Minister.

Hon Mr Silipo: But the one specific thing we are doing in the area of interim assistance is to look with the board at the ways in which there can be a process of determining interim assistance for a period of time, a shorter period of time, and then redetermining whether that financial situation still exists and warrants the continuation of interim assistance. So that might happen after.

Mr Jackson: Well, that surprises me, Minister, because with my background and experience here, if you're in the one breath saying you need legislation changes, yet you can make as substantive an adjustment through regulation as you've just suggested, you can make a similar kind of adjustment as indicated by the AMO request now.

Hon Mr Silipo: No, because the bottom lie would still have to be under the present legislation, that eligibility for interim assistance would remain to be determined on the financial situation of the individual, not on the merits of eligibility for social assistance.

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Mr Jackson: I understand that. The key word here is that it's automatically being granted. There is some discretion on it.

Hon Mr Silipo: It's not automatically being granted.

Mr Jackson: Well, that's the case.

Hon Mr Silipo: The board in fact looks at the case and makes a decision, and again, when the chair of SARB is up to speak, you can probe that issue with her.

Mr Jackson: Let me ask you a second question then. The other amendment was that the mayors and the elected individuals from municipalities, through AMO, have indicated that "in recognition of the unwarranted issuance of a minimum shelter cost," it has been announced that "effective June 1, 1994, the minimum shelter cost will be eliminated," but "the current legislation continues to provide a minimum amount to be issued for a recipient's board and lodging, and hydro" and so on. You're familiar with this resolution? As such, they have asked that "AMO petition the Ministry of Community and Social Services to eliminate the minimum board and lodging, and hydro amount." Could you advise the committee of your approach to that?

Hon Mr Silipo: We've looked at this issue, even before the AMO resolution, in terms of whether we should make some changes to the board and lodging portion of the allowances, of the benefits that we provide. As I'm sure you know, we've looked at whether we should establish a regional benefit, and at the end of the day we felt there were just as many reasons, if not more, for continuing the present system as making some of the changes that AMO and others have suggested. So for the time being I don't anticipate that we'll be making any changes to that.

Mr Jackson: Well, Minister, herein lies the great irony I've been trying to get through to you, that your own ministry can't call up Ontario Hydro and ask if a social assistance recipient has paid their hydro bill, but you do have a minimum amount to give them, no questions asked. I really do think, Minister, there is some room for some clear thinking here. I don't wish to oversimplify it, but the municipalities understand this problem, because they can't even go down this hall and ask their own department this information in the process of determining whether or not this is an appropriate payment on behalf of taxpayers and/or, to reverse it, if this person is truly needy.

My final question on social assistance, Minister, is the comparators with respect to the other provinces in Canada. My understanding is that our level of social assistance is among the highest in the country. Perhaps you could furnish this committee with what those current rates are today, with what set of assumptions we're working with in our estimates for the province of Ontario and if there are comparative data. I understand that it's fairly easy to get it for 1992 and 1991, but we're having some difficulty determining the 1993 and 1994 rates, and although that is not necessarily in your mandate, it is clear that we do pay the highest social assistance rates in Canada. That may be good news, but by the same token, we also need to know where we sit vis-à-vis the other provinces in this country. If I could request that information, I'd appreciate it.

Hon Mr Silipo: In think we have -- I don't know; I think it's relatively up to date in terms of a comparison chart that shows the rates, the benefits that we pay with other provinces. We'll provide that to you.

Mr Jackson: And would that include family benefits with the disability pensions aspect, or the family benefits separate from social assistance, because I think really the two belong in different categories.

Hon Mr Silipo: We have some of that broken down. Maybe Mr Costante could give us that.

Mr Costante: Yes, we'll have a chart available for this afternoon's session. We have it done by category, so it's single disabled, single employable, sole-support parent with two children, sole-support parent with one child. It's in those types of categories, and then it's by province.

Mr Jackson: Thank you very much.

Mr Costante: Obviously, the comparators are difficult because of the different tax regimes, which we weren't able to measure underneath.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Mr Jackson. The time for the Conservative caucus has expired. We're very close to noon.

Mr Hope: Yes, I was just going to raise that. Being there's only a few minutes left before the noonhour and the adjournment aspect until we resume at 2 o'clock, I'd ask that come 2 o'clock, we'd start our side of the questioning. I see that we're not going to ask the SARB rep, who took the morning off to be here, some questions. I guess it's more appropriate that I just continue on with our line of questioning --

The Vice-Chair: Do I have the consensus of the committee to break now?

Mrs O'Neill: How many minutes are there left?

Interjection: Three.

The Vice-Chair: About five minutes, actually.

Interjection: Can't we argue about something?

Mrs O'Neill: If it would be appropriate, could we get unanimous agreement to have the chair of SARB give an overview, if she wanted to, whatever she thinks would be most helpful -- it's interim payments -- for the three to five minutes that are left?

Mr Hope: My understanding was --

Hon Mr Silipo: She was here to answer questions, at the request of Mr Jackson.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay. You indicated that maybe her comments would be very helpful regarding interim payments, and that would be helpful to many people, but if we can't get unanimous agreement, we can't.

The Vice-Chair: Do we have unanimous consent?

Mr Hope: Mr Chair, one sec. During my passing, waiving our side of the time, I allowed that time to be rolled over so that this morning we could deal with those questions specifically, and unfortunately that time was not utilized for that part of it.

The Vice-Chair: Nevertheless, Mr Hope, you did waive your turn.

Mr Hope: I'm just saying that the hour that is now left to us and the 25 minutes that will be divided among the three of us after that hour we've utilized. If there are questions, they might have to answer over a phone. I don't know if the person from SARB has the ability to be here this afternoon, but that is at their discretion, not mine. We have a number of questions we would like on the record, and answers from the minister, and I thought we would try to accommodate the opposition this morning. Unfortunately, they didn't take the appropriate time to accommodate themselves.

The Vice-Chair: Is there any further discussion on this matter? The committee is in recess until 2 o'clock.

The committee recessed from 1156 to 1408.

The Vice-Chair: The standing committee on estimates is now going to resume its session and we are studying the detailed spending of the Ministry of Community and Social Services. It is now the turn of the NDP caucus to raise questions and concerns with the Minister. Mrs MacKinnon.

Mrs Ellen MacKinnon (Lambton): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you, Mr Silipo, for being with us.

I want to deal with a few questions around first nations, and how the Ministry of Community and Social Services works for them. The first question I have is, what services are being offered to the first nations communities with our Community and Social Services, particularly in the JobLink area?

Hon Mr Silipo: We have, first of all, under existing programs related to employment opportunities for first nations, funds that are specifically set aside to assist with initiatives on reserves for first nations. There are a number of projects on which we spend annually about $500,000 that we worked out jointly with the first nations communities. We are going to be through -- in fact, I was visiting a couple of those earlier this year to see some of the good things that are happening there. There are such things as using resources to create job opportunities on reserves. One example I can recall from one of the initiatives was in fact to develop a wilderness trail that would be used both during the summer and the winter; developing other employment opportunities for people on first nations so they would then be less dependent on welfare.

Through JobLink we've set aside specific funds in the amount of $2 million that will add to those initiatives. Again, those will assist with both further activities on-reserve, but particularly for off-reserve initiatives as well, because we know there are large numbers of native people who live off-reserve, who live in urban settings throughout the province, and there have to be, we believe, particular opportunities provided to them, given the high level of reliance they have on welfare. So again, part of the initiatives under JobLink will be to work with first nations organizations to develop some particular programs aimed at assisting aboriginal peoples to be able to break out of their dependency on social assistance.

Mrs MacKinnon: I want to be very clear on this. You say the JobLink programs are also going to be geared to work with and for the natives who live off-reserve, is that correct?

Hon Mr Silipo: Absolutely.

Mrs MacKinnon: I'm pleased to hear that, because I didn't understand that before and I'm really pleased about that.

My next question is also regarding aboriginal services. I would like you to explain please what the aboriginal services transfer initiative is.

Hon Mr Silipo: The aboriginal services transfer initiatives, or ASTI as we've come to know and love it in the ministry, is first of all the way in which we have tried to reorganize within the ministry all of our efforts relating to first nations. It's really the vehicle we will use to make sure that all of the first nations initiatives have some level of consistency to them, that we follow particular processes such as working together with first nations on a government-to-government basis. As you know, our government signed the protocol of an agreement of political relationship with the first nations leadership. We believe it's important in all areas for us to be dealing with first nations on a government-to-government initiative.

ASTI is really the mechanism through the ministry by which we make sure that we are moving on those initiatives, whether they're in the area of social assistance or children's services. We have a number of issues for example dealing with how we work with first nations so they can take greater control of providing services to children. We've talked a lot in these estimates about services to children. As you can imagine, there are particular concerns that first nations would have about how children's aid societies have been dealing with native children, from the whole issue of intervention when there are problems to the whole issue of adoption.

In all of those areas, from children's services to services for adults, we are looking at and implementing, we think, better ways of dealing with these issues, taking very much the partnership approach in a very, very significant and serious way with first nations.

Mrs MacKinnon: I have one more question here and it deals mostly with your ministry. I would like to know how the ministry's new strategic direction on aboriginal services will impact currently on the ministry practices.

Hon Mr Silipo: Again, to build on some of the comments I've just made, what we are trying to do is to ensure that within all the areas of the ministry, the approach that I've described is very much integrated into the working relationships that each department within the ministry, each branch within the ministry, undertakes. While there is through ASTI the overall effort and overseeing of the initiatives, there is then a very clear responsibility that's given and expected of each of the sectors within the ministry, again to use the examples that we've been using, whether it's social assistance or whether it's children's services, for them to apply that same philosophy and approach in their day-to-day practices and in the way in which they, and we as a ministry, go about making decisions that affect first nations.

Mrs MacKinnon: Could you give me what the current status is in regard to this whole aboriginal services transfer initiative?

Hon Mr Silipo: I don't know how much detail you wish in terms of where we are. We have people here who could go through that in as much detail as you wish but, certainly, in terms of the overall approach, we have been discussing with the first nations, through the Chiefs of Ontario in particular, to ensure that the approach that we are taking is again acceptable to them as a working relationship. I think so far the sense that we've had is, yes, there will be some fine-tuning to that as we go along, and then in each of the areas, as I say, we can get into those in detail, if you wish. There are some additional comments that we could provide around what progress particularly has been made in each area.

Again, for example, in the social assistance area, I mentioned that we already have five projects that we in fact have coapproved with the Chiefs of Ontario -- the aboriginal employment initiatives and first nations employment initiatives.

Within the children's services area, there are some significant discussions that we've been having with a number of first nations around the whole issue of transferring responsibility or having the first nations accept responsibilities that would now be handled by children's aid societies. We have just signed an agreement with Wabaseemong First Nation in the Kenora area that will provide them with greater ability to take care of those issues and children themselves. We are continuing to have some significant discussions with OTFS around similar issues, and that is a combination of 14 different first nations that are coming together.

We're having significant discussions with the Six Nations in the Brantford area. We have, as I'm sure you recall, just recently, together with the Ministry of Health and ONAS, signed and announced the aboriginal healing and wellness strategy, which is a major initiative of this government and of the first nations in trying to bring together a much more cohesive approach; again, having ministries on our side work together much more effectively but picking up very much on an approach that's been strongly suggested to us by first nations in terms of how you deal with all of these problems in a more holistic fashion and taking into account some of the traditional ways that first nations have used and which they have, I think legitimately, said to us have been forgotten by us and not applied as well.

With the additional dollars we're providing for that initiative, we think that will get us very much back on track in terms of assisting, giving again first nations the opportunities they need and want to be able to take care of themselves in their own way, which I think is, again going back to some of the statements I made yesterday at the opening of these estimates, really at the heart of what we're trying to do as a ministry.

Mrs MacKinnon: Thank you, Mr Minister. I'll pass to my colleagues.

Mr Hope: This morning I listened intently, and yesterday, about some of the questioning that was going around and around estimates. I've been a little puzzled because I think Mr Elston started yesterday on an approach that I think was right. But I'm going to try something and hopefully it'll help me to understand some of the normal language that's being used out there in perspective to understanding about Jobs Ontario and understanding about welfare and stuff like that. You've got to bear with me with these questions because just out of the conversations and hearing this morning we need more money for more programs but yet policies of political parties don't coincide with what the individual was talking about today in this estimates process.

First of all, I would like to know -- because we tout Jobs Ontario as being a key mechanism of helping people to get off social services. There is a document that floats around and I think it's still on somebody's horseback that's riding across this province, I think it's called a revolutionary document. That document clearly indicates that it would scrap Jobs Ontario. Knowing how the Tax Fighter is out there talking about reduction in provincial taxes and everything, I'm wondering about the effect -- that if this government was to cancel the Jobs Ontario program, what impact would be to your estimates on the social assistance claims that we would be paying out, and I'm wondering if you have a basic analysis.

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I know I'm asking a question for which you may not have the information before you, but I think it's important for us to get an understanding. If we were to cut the Jobs Ontario program, slash it, burn it, do whatever we want in a revolutionary document, what impact would that have to your estimates process dealing with your calculation of welfare costs to this province?

Hon Mr Silipo: We talked earlier about the effects that Jobs Ontario training has already had. The figures I quoted earlier, I think this morning, were of some 60,000 people across the province that have been placed in permanent jobs -- as permanent as any jobs are these days -- but clearly jobs where part of the requirement is that they be not temporary jobs but ongoing jobs. Of that number, we know that over 19,000, probably closer to 20,000 at this point, would be people who are on welfare; and even those who aren't presently on welfare from among that 60,000 would be people who've exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits. Again, they would be people who would otherwise be eligible fairly soon for welfare.

When we look at all of that we know we are obviously providing some very useful training and, in most cases, a job to individuals so they can take care of themselves and their families, but it's also resulting in some significant savings for us.

We can give you the specific numbers in terms of the estimates that we have. I don't have them here at my fingertips, but they're well into the hundreds of millions of dollars over the time frame of the initiative. If we were to stop, that would be the effect, that we would be having to look at hundreds of millions of dollars more in welfare costs that we would have to be paying. We believe very strongly that providing people with opportunities to get jobs and providing people with jobs is exactly what we should be doing.

Jobs Ontario Training is an employer-based program that is working. It's a relatively cost-efficient way, because what we are doing is for about, on average, less than $7,000 per job, we are, first of all, creating a job, employing someone who has been on welfare or would likely otherwise be on welfare fairly soon. We are therefore providing that and we are creating jobs that are, on average, with an earning capacity of about $21,000, $22,000. One might say that doesn't sound like a lot of money, but compared to what one gets on social assistance it is. By doing that, we're giving people again the dignity that they want and need and we are saving hundreds of millions of dollars -- Kevin, to the tune of what?

Mr Costante: This year we have assumed savings in social assistance for 1994-95 of $69.1 million on the assumption that slightly over 10,000 social assistance recipients will get jobs through Jobs Ontario. That's just for this fiscal year.

Mr Hope: With that, following a question -- and Mr Cope might be able to help me with this -- what would be a 20% reduction in your budget? Your ministry's overall budget is X billions of dollars. What would be a 20% reduction of that, if you could help me with this?

Mr Cope: It would be just under $2 billion.

Mr Hope: So a $2-billion hit would be under a policy that's floating around out there saying they would reduce all ministries by 20%. The same person who was again this morning talking about a particular case -- and I'm very sympathetic to the particular case the individual is bringing about making community living a priority; I support all those initiatives. But when we sit here and it's talked about by a person whose political party believes in reducing the budget of this ministry by 20%, which means the $2 billion you're talking about, which is a big cut in my estimate, that would totally eliminate the community living program in the province of Ontario and even go further beyond that. Then putting $69.1 million on top of that because you've got a cost -- we're talking about reducing a lot of money here by a policy that's floating around out there.

I just needed to know that part, because you have to deal with very important issues lately. We hear from the taxpayers, who are saying, "Don't raise taxes, no high deficit, and maintain services." I know when economic recession hits, your ministry is one of the key ministries which is focused on supporting people, and you have indicated that in your speech.

I'm just curious: With the $2-billion reduction, hypothetically -- I'm only speaking hypothetically, okay? With a hypothetical $2-billion cut in your budget, an added $69.1-million levy on to your budget, just out of curiosity, what type of decisions would you be faced with in a scenario of that nature?

Hon Mr Silipo: Probably resigning. Seriously, I'm not sure how you could fathom those kinds of reductions. I mean that very sincerely, and trying as hard as possible not to get into partisan bickering. But that's a significant point.

If the Conservative Party feels that one could take $2 billion out of a budget like that of the Ministry of Community and Social Services, you would be looking at thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people in this province who are dependent, for very good reasons and none of them of their own making, on social assistance, people who are dependent on the child care that we provide, people who are dependent on the development of the services that we provide, quite frankly not getting those services. I'm not sure how one could even begin to fathom those kinds of reductions.

We've obviously had to look as a ministry, as all other ministries have had, at ways in which we could contain our costs, and I think, in light of the pressures and the demands, we've done a reasonably good job in trying to do that. We've cut from what would have otherwise been growth in the ministry significant amounts of money.

But to go from what we've done to a cut of that nature would just mean that you would either be having, as I say, thousands of people who now are receiving social assistance benefits not getting them, or getting them at a significantly reduced level, or there not being the level of child care that we have in the system now or there not being, clearly, the level of developmental services, the shelters for women who are victims of abuse and so on and so forth. Those are the kinds of things you would do, because when you get into that range of cuts, you can't do them in a small way.

Mr Hope: I was basically trying to understand. Mr Elston clearly indicated yesterday in the other committee room about a particular case in his riding in which somebody is trying to obtain services. While we're trying to make sure that services are in a community, we also have to deal with the other pressure of the general public saying, "No more taxes, spend wisely, do all these good things."

This morning we heard about a particular case in a certain area which is dealing with an individual and providing services. I just wanted to get a better idea, because I'm hearing comments that are being made out there about major reductions, and when I sit in these committees I hear, "We have to do more." But the other side of the story says something totally different.

I'm also curious -- I mean, we look at your budget dealing with welfare, social assistance. The general public is saying, "Why don't we make people work for that money?" I hear it probably as well as most people hear it in their own communities: "What about workfare? Why not make these people go out there and start shovelling the sidewalks, clean the sidewalks, shovel the snow off the sidewalks, do all this good stuff?"

Has there been any analysis from the ministry? I'm getting tired of hearing people saying, "Workfare," and nobody knowing what an end result is. They're touting it as a way of helping our social assistance costs, and I don't see that. I see it as a way of keeping and maintaining people there because we're not providing training and skills development opportunities for them to improve their marketing ability. I'm just wondering, from your perspective in the ministry, have there been studies across the province, to the best of your ability, about workfare?

Hon Mr Silipo: Yes, we've looked at experiences in other jurisdictions on that. First of all, let me just say that I think when one talks or hears talk about workfare, we have to understand, at least as I see it, where that comes from and why we have those views.

We have been living through probably the worst recession -- not "probably," certainly the worst recession since the Great Depression. That has meant that many people have lost their jobs and many people have had to rely on social assistance. Again, we could get into a lot of discussion about why that's happened in terms of the effect of such things as the free trade agreement etc. As I mentioned yesterday, we've also had to deal as a ministry and as a government within that with the offloading by the federal government, both the previous Conservative government and the existing Liberal government, on to us of a great chunk of the welfare costs, to the tune of $1.7 billion a year. So that's meant we've had to increase our expenditures or make the decision to not provide that basic support to people.

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That's created, I think, a sense among the general population, who I think if polled would say, as I think we're seeing as we talk to people, "Yes, we understand that support has to be provided," but there also is created, I guess, a little bit of resentment if people are losing their jobs, saying: "What is happening to those people who are being able to receive social assistance? Should we be doing something to ensure that they are in fact doing something in order to get the money they have?"

So I understand that kind of human feeling, which I think comes much more to the fore during these difficult times. But what I think we have to be able to say to people is that that isn't going to be the solution, that isn't going to be the way in which we're going to get both the human suffering that comes with people having to sometimes turn unwillingly to social assistance but also the weight that it puts on all of us as taxpayers.

The way in which we can do that is by doing that which many people who have looked at the whole issue of social assistance and how one can creatively and sensibly run a system like that, which is after all the system of last resort, how one can improve that system. What study after study has consistently said to us is that what we need to do is to give people the opportunities to exit the system, and if those opportunities are given to people, if those supports are provided to people, they will take advantage of them.

So we don't have to resort to the notion of workfare, in theory or in practice, as the way to help us out of the dilemma that we're in. What we have to do is exactly what we've been discussing that we're doing under Jobs Ontario Training. What we have to do is to do exactly what we're doing under JobLink, which is to provide people with the training opportunities and the connections back into the workforce.

We know that can be done both through initiatives like Jobs Ontario Training that connect the training directly to a job at the end of the day in a more immediate fashion, right through to a whole bunch of other supports that we need to provide to people that take into account the fact that of the 1.3 million people across the province who are now relying on social assistance, you have a significant number of people who, with some short-term training, can reconnect back to the workforce as the new jobs are being created and we have significant numbers of other people who require such basic things as a high school education.

We've got that whole array of people. We've got people with two-parent families; we've got a lot of single-parent families, particularly single women with children, who need much longer support than simply a two-week or two-month training program.

Again, one of the significant pieces of JobLink is to provide that whole array of services and supports right across the spectrum so that when we look at the people who are on welfare, and we know generally in terms of the categories that they fit in what their general needs are, what we have to do is to then translate that down locally to the system so that a worker sitting down with an individual recipient can map out a course of action that will get that individual recipient not just back technically into the workforce but back out in a way in which that person can take care of themselves and their families. That, after all, is what all of us want for ourselves, that's what we take for granted as something that we would like to have, and the vast majority of people on welfare want nothing more than that.

There will be, obviously, also people who, because of a number of reasons, from severity of disability to age, may not likely be able to re-enter the workforce or re-enter it in a full-time capacity, and again we have to be, I think, tolerant and understanding of that. I think the people of Ontario understand that as well.

But what I think we need to do as a province is to be talking more about that, doing more in that area, and showing people how in effect the initiatives under Jobs Ontario, the initiatives under JobLink, will actually assist people to break out of that dependency on welfare. That's good for those individuals and it's obviously good for all of us as taxpayers.

Mr Hope: In your presentation you talk, and then you talked again, about the issue of the federal government's lack of support. We could talk about the $1 billion, but my understanding is that it's still not stopping your ministry from making progressive moves. You indicate social assistance and improving standards and helping people exit the system; you talk about child care. I'm just curious: What is your government doing, and even in this budget, to deal with individuals -- you talked about individuals who need longer supports who are single parents --

Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): Divorced.

Mr Hope: Yes, separations. I'm hearing about the family of the 1990s now, I guess is the terminology that everybody uses, because there's so much separation that's occurring. But I'm wondering what type of support programs there are -- and let's deal with child care specifically -- for those individuals who don't want to be on social assistance. Not everybody wants to be there, but what are you doing to help those individuals to return back to the workforce or stay in the workforce but yet provide adequate child care for their needs?

Hon Mr Silipo: Child care is one very significant support. We've added to the system some 16,000 subsidies. If you look at our budget on child care, it was $350 million back in 1990; it's going to be $565 million this year. That's about a 62% or 63% increase, a significant amount of additional money that's translating into additional spaces, additional centres in the system. A lot of that has gone into assisting people in exactly the kind of situation you describe: single parents who need that kind of support as they take advantage of other opportunities that have been provided to them to be able to again take care of themselves and their families.

Add to that what we are doing and what we want to do even more in the area of a program that we call STEP, the supports to employment program. Under that initiative, people who are on social assistance are able to work and keep a certain portion of the money they make, so they're able to in effect add to what they're getting on welfare. There's a reduction at some point of the benefits that they get, but they don't lose all of their benefits if they get a job. So that's another way, again, of encouraging people. We have almost 94,000 people who are taking advantage of that. What that means is that we are saving money we would otherwise be paying to people on welfare if they were simply receiving the full amount of benefits they're entitled to.

So those are just a couple of things that we're doing, and again under the initiatives we've been talking about under JobLink, we're going to be able to do a lot more of that.

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): Mr Chairman, just on a point of order: I missed those figures, or at least I think I misheard the figures that were initially made by the minister. Could I have him repeat those?

Hon Mr Silipo: Yes. I outlined them yesterday in my statement, so if I've misstated them it's probably because I'm not remembering them correctly. But the child care number I gave was that $350 million was what we were spending in 1990, and $565 million is what we will be spending this year.

Mr Elston: Thanks.

Mr Hope: I just want to say, because I know my time's running short here, it's nice that I was able to ask these questions about the impact of cutting Jobs Ontario and knowing the $69.1 million that will be levied to your estimates, and also knowing that a 20% reduction to your budget would levy a $2-billion cut in your budget, and knowing and understanding the concerns that have been expressed here today and yesterday about providing services for disabilities. To go that route down the road would not enable us to perform services that are vitally needed outside the social assistance round but also dealing with the disabled. So I want to thank you for your analysis on the impacts that a Conservative policy would have on the budget in the process that you're in.

The Vice-Chair: The time now for the New Democrats has concluded. We have approximately two hours remaining in our estimates with the Ministry of Community and Social Services, and I'm in the hands of the committee as to how we would divide that up. My suggestion would be that we turn to the Liberals for 40 minutes, to the Conservatives for 40 minutes and then to the government.

Hon Mr Silipo: There's a round that the government members missed this morning, I believe.

The Vice-Chair: No, they used it just now. Is that acceptable to committee members?

Interjections.

Hon Mr Silipo: I believe there was another round.

The Vice-Chair: I don't think so, Minister. I believe they gave up half an hour this morning and we just used it now.

Hon Mr Silipo: But we left off this morning with Mr Jackson.

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Mr Hope: We have two hours and 28 minutes left in this process, which means we regain our half hour. Our total allotment of time would be the 40 minutes which he's talking about, plus the additional half hour.

Mr Jackson: Which you just took.

Mr Hope: No, no, it's an additional half hour.

Hon Mr Silipo: I'm in the hands of the committee, Mr Chair. But I know that in the sequence this morning there was --

Mr Hope: There are two hours and 28 minutes left in this process, which means the half-hour still owing to this side from this morning -- we'll say it's 28 minutes; I'll give a concession of two minutes. There are two hours left to divide between the three political parties, which means there's 40 minutes per caucus left in this process. That means I get 40 minutes plus 30 minutes, which is equivalent to 70 minutes total for this side of the House, and they still only have 40 minutes left.

Mr Jackson: It's new math.

The Vice-Chair: Is it acceptable now to go to the Liberals for 40 minutes, to the Conservatives for 40 minutes?

Hon Mr Silipo: My understanding this morning was that in fact what was left was about half an hour or so for the two opposition parties basically, and the balance of the time was government time. But again, I'm in the committee's hands on that.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay, we're willing to begin, if everyone's agreed.

The Vice-Chair: We now turn to the Liberal caucus for 40 minutes for questions.

Mrs O'Neill: I would really like to say that I agree with many of the things the minister has just said, but I do still feel that the STEP program changes have certainly not made it as easy for people to access that program. I think the minister himself agreed yesterday that the STEP program is still not well known, that the administrative structures of that program are still complex, and I would certainly feel that work in that area would continue.

I also would like to remind the minister that the opportunity planning projects are still out there as pilot projects and I have been waiting very patiently throughout your entire mandate to see what the decisions are going to be. There are some very, very good stories on that program, but the problem is that they're limited to, I think, under 10 centres in the province, and that concerns me. I think it would improve the goals you have just stated that you have for yourself.

Hon Mr Silipo: Can I just very quickly make a comment on that, Mrs O'Neill?

Mrs O'Neill: Okay.

Hon Mr Silipo: Because I agree with you that a lot of those employment programs in fact have shown some very good ways of how things can happen. I can tell you that as we structured JobLink, we looked very much at the experiences in a number of those particular initiatives, certainly the one in your own area of the province which has been working very well.

So again, we see that while on the one hand we have a job to do to continue those particular initiatives in those communities where they exist, part of the discussion that's going to have to take place is how we weave those initiatives into the broader JobLink initiatives and how we develop JobLink in a way that picks up very much on many of the good things we've learned from those employment opportunities projects.

Mrs O'Neill: I hope that will happen.

Mr Minister, we were on page 67 in child care. The child care conversion initiative is on this page and I just want to state that I've had a letter outstanding to you since April 25 regarding the conversion project. Last year, in August, I got what I considered quite a thorough explanation of where we were with this project and how many centres were in various parts of the process. I don't know what the problem is with answering the letter this year, but I just leave that for you to investigate. Maybe you can answer some of my questions now, or someone who is present could.

The child care conversion in this particular document is at $2 million. As I understand it, and this letter is my background for understanding it, the one I received last year, last year we were spending much more than that, in fact about 10 times, plus $2 million. So where are we with the child care conversion? I'm talking to the changes from 1993-94, down at the bottom, and if there are other sections of this estimates book that talk about the conversions, I'd certainly like to be brought up to date on that.

Hon Mr Silipo: I was looking, Mrs O'Neill, because I thought we had pulled together in fact a chart that showed what we had done so far in terms of conversions and how we were planning to get to the target that I outlined yesterday in my opening statement by 1996.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay, because we have nothing to back up your opening statement at the moment, and as I say, I don't have the answer to my letter. There are a lot of people out there wondering where this program is, because some people think it's frozen. Your statement yesterday indicated it wasn't frozen.

Hon Mr Silipo: No, it continues.

Mrs O'Neill: But it's certainly underbudgeted. You cannot do much conversion for $2 million. It's just not very possible when we're talking about capital and buying out of private investors in child care. That money just doesn't go very far.

Hon Mr Silipo: The amount as I recall should be larger than that, so perhaps we can get some explanation from officials about that.

Mrs O'Neill: Have you got anything in writing on the update of the project as you mentioned it?

Hon Mr Silipo: We have that.

Mrs O'Neill: If we could have that tabled with the clerk, it would be helpful.

Ms Roch: I think that $2-million number is the additional dollars we have this year.

Mrs O'Neill: I'm sorry. I have difficulty at this end of the room hearing.

Ms Roch: The $2 million you are referring to I believe are the new dollars that we got into our base for this year.

Mrs O'Neill: The new which?

Ms Roch: The new dollars that were transferred to our base. We already had some dollars last year.

Mrs O'Neill: Could you tell us what the dollars are that are remaining from last year regarding the conversion project?

Ms Roch: What I can tell you is what we have budgeted in total this year for child care conversion.

Mrs O'Neill: That would be helpful. That's a start.

Ms Roch: That's $6.6 million.

Mrs O'Neill: That's still a very low figure compared to last year's, if this letter I got from your ministry last year is accurate. So you're talking about $6 million for this year. I don't think that will achieve the conversions the minister outlined yesterday.

Ms Roch: The way the initiative was set up was we had a certain amount of money over five years. In 1992-93, we spent $3.7 million on conversion; last year we spent $4.6 million on conversion, and this year we have $6.6 million budgeted for conversion.

Mrs O'Neill: Then I'll have to review the figures I have here, because they certainly weren't as low as those. Would you be able to give us a written report on this project as it's progressing, then, and the projection the minister has in his opening remarks?

Ms Proctor: I'm going to ask the director of child care to speak to the numbers that have been circulated in terms of explaining how that is.

Mr Ron Bakker: I'm Ron Bakker, director of the branch. Do you have the handout in front of you? It's coming around.

Mrs O'Neill: Thank you. I have it now, yes.

Mr Bakker: This handout summarizes where we're at with the project to date. You can see down the left-hand column the number of letters of inquiry from commercial operators, and the totals are on the far right-hand side. I won't read all the numbers, but the number of inquiries, and this is to the end of June 1994, is 217.

Mrs O'Neill: Are these from the very beginning, sir?

Mr Bakker: Yes, they are.

Mrs O'Neill: All right. I think this will be a beginning at least of the answers to my question. So where are the other $4 million shown that you have just stated, Ms Roch, on the child care conversion? Where can we find it in this budget? Would that be in the capital projects or where is that?

Mr Bakker: I'm not sure. What figure are you referring to?

Mr Cope: Can I try to answer that question? It's in the base part. What you're looking at on the bottom of that page 67 is the increase for this year.

Mrs O'Neill: From four to six.

Mr Cope: Yes. But up in the child care area, up in the child care line above, at the top of the page, is where you'd find the rest of the $4 million, down in the child care figure.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay. I think that's sufficient on that for the moment.

Could I go now to the young offenders, which is on the same page. Young offenders is a 10% increase. Is that volume or is that increased services or is it an increase in opening of secure detention facilities? What is that increase, which is a relatively large increase? Mind you, it's not much different than the actual. Again, as I say, I find these figures not always telling it exactly the way we need to be told.

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Hon Mr Silipo: This was an infusion of additional money to allow us to deal with the real pressures that were there in terms of the request for -- real needs for additional spaces, additional beds. Again, I think Sue Herbert can speak in more detail on that, but it was an influx of additional dollars to help us deal with that.

Mr Jackson: These were federal dollars, too; they appeared in the budget, because I raised that question.

Hon Mr Silipo: No, these were our own dollars.

Mr Jackson: There are some additional federal moneys put into the YOA for that reason.

Hon Mr Silipo: There may very well be, but they're not reflected here in these numbers.

Mrs O'Neill: Is there anything further from the staff on this one?

Mrs Herbert: If you would like the increase statistics, I can give you those, or I can provide them after.

Mrs O'Neill: I'm sorry. I missed what you said.

Mrs Herbert: Sorry, Mrs O'Neill. I can give you the increased service statistics now, or I can provide them later, if you would like them later.

Mrs O'Neill: If you could do that according to area, that would be very helpful.

Mrs Herbert: Yes, I can do that.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay. The child welfare services: I presume that includes the CASs, which is just a couple of lines above here, still on page 67. It indicates that we are going to be -- it looks like a decrease. Again, it's an increase to the actuals, so is that just a misreading? I always find that column, percentage change in estimates, very confusing. You said yesterday you were going to increase indeed the exceptional circumstances review money, for instance, so is that figure inclusive of that, child welfare services?

Hon Mr Silipo: Yes.

Mrs O'Neill: Are they actually going to be maintained as they are this year? I guess that's my question.

Mr Cope: Yes, that increase of $5 million in the ECR funding is in there. The reason it doesn't show in that total is because there are also decreases for --

Mrs O'Neill: Expenditure control.

Mr Cope: -- the social contract and the children's expenditure control plan which offset that. The major decrease there that you see is actually the other side of that YOA question that you just asked. It's all part of the same block. It's part of the expanded exceptional circumstances program to include the YOA program, so that what you're seeing is just a realigning of the money that was in the ECR area in child welfare and is now down in YOA.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay, that's quite interesting. On that page, the dual diagnosis-OHIP transfer to MOH, could you just say a little bit about that, and is that including schools such as in my area would be the McHugh school? Is that what we're talking about here in the dual diagnosis or is it something else?

Mr Cope: I don't know the specifics on the program but it is a program that used to be in the Ministry of Health that was determined was more appropriately in this ministry's responsibility, and so the funding was transferred from Health to our estimates.

Mrs O'Neill: So it's not the programs that are cofunded by those two ministries, then?

Mr Cope: No.

Ms Roch: If I can speak to this: Lucille Roch, children and family services. Treasury Board approved $1.4 million last year to the ministry. They reallocated that money from OHIP, which then allowed us to fund some day treatment centres in southern Ontario as well as provide some residential treatment and case management services for children with dual diagnosis in northern Ontario. So these were new moneys transferred to us from OHIP.

Mrs O'Neill: Okay. Is eastern Ontario going to get any of that eventually? I don't know. I heard a couple of other areas mentioned. Because, as you know, we have a program that's very important up there that's in jeopardy or is under very close scrutiny at this moment, and I would think that would fall somewhere in there. I might be wrong.

Ms Roch: We will be getting additional dollars for 1994-95 to the tune of about $2.1 million. We are currently in the process of doing a proposal call in terms of providing these additional services.

Mrs O'Neill: I hope you'll send extra copies of that proposal call up to eastern Ontario.

If I may now go to the section on employment services on page 77, which is really tied in with the section we've just done on child care, could you tell me what that's all about, what that funding is actually going towards?

Ms Roch: This is a program that allows us to provide some additional dollars to municipalities that are providing services to people who are seeking employment. So basically they're eligible for additional dollars and they're both child care subsidy dollars as well as some informal child care dollars.

Mrs O'Neill: So this is totally divorced from the child care, Jobs Ontario; this is the old subsidy program. I'm glad you're still putting some moneys into that, because some of the municipalities are certainly using it effectively.

Mr Jackson: Mrs O'Neill, could I just ask a supplementary? I understand there was a policy change --

Mrs O'Neill: Mr Jackson, we have not been operating this way. I'm sorry. I think you can use your time when your time comes.

Mr Jackson: I was simply seeking a courtesy. I apologize.

Mrs O'Neill: Page 61, if I may go back to that page, please.

Interjection.

Mrs O'Neill: Well, I think we are operating in this manner and have been for the last two days.

I'm concerned, on page 61, with the halfway houses, which is the second line from the bottom there. Maybe there is an explanation and maybe it will be acceptable, but a 10% decrease at this time, when again we're doing so much deinstitutionalization and many of us are being told quite horrific stories in our constituency offices, what is that all about? Again, we have it under budget quite a bit, by $2 million almost, or certainly $1.5 million, in 1993-94, and now we're kind of riding another little wave. We're going to put a little more money into it but we're not going to go where we were in 1993-94. Halfway houses do serve quite a need in many, many communities, so what is our policy thrust there?

Mrs Herbert: Sue Herbert, ADM of program management. There are a number of reasons for this reduction. The most obvious one obviously is they too were impacted by the broader public sector and the ECP reductions. As well, this is a volume-driven program that operates on a per diem, and if you'll note the actual expenditure -- we go back to your comment about comparing actuals and estimated amounts. In this case, they traditionally have run under their volume indicators in their per diem payments, so I think this is partially a reflection in our estimates of that reality. David, have I captured that correctly?

Mr Cope: Yes. If you look at the past history, it's been about $6 million a year, and we've had estimates of $8 million, so it's reflecting some of that now.

Hon Mr Silipo: The actual to actual from 1992-93 to 1993-94 sees an increase, but as I think has been said, below the estimates. The $7.3 million that's there we think is a more realistic estimate of what we'll actually need this year.

Mrs O'Neill: If I could ask also on that page, there seems to be quite an increase in the interpreter intervenor services. I'd like a little explanation on that. There are a very small number of people in the province who are involved in this service. Why is there such an increase here? I doubt the need has increased, because we're talking about a very small portion of the population, so what is the reason for putting so many funds into that area at this moment? Is there a call from various parts of the province?

Mrs Herbert: We have had, as you know, some very specialized service. We have had an increase in the service in the north, so some of this would be actual service increase. How much exactly, I would have to go back and get the service stats for you. I can do that.

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Mrs O'Neill: Has it to do with ASL being brought forward into different settings now and it's a different form of sign language, or is there a transition there?

Mrs Herbert: I believe -- and Brian has a more specialty -- much of this is deaf-blind intervention.

Mrs O'Neill: You say it's prevention?

Mrs Herbert: No, intervenor work with the deaf-blind.

Mrs O'Neill: Yes, I know. Are you suggesting -- okay. I realize that. I guess what I'm wondering is why there's such an increase. I'm wondering if it has to do with changing the language of the sign language.

Mrs Herbert: I don't believe so. I actually believe it's part of, as we try to integrate individuals with severe handicaps into the community, there's been an increased demand on intervenor services to work with them.

Ms Proctor: I would add that we got a particular increase as well for new graduates of the W. Ross MacDonald School because some people were graduating from that program into community, and so there was required to be some new money there. That would be showing up as well.

Mrs O'Neill: I guess my follow-up question would be, then, are you telling me that the graduates of these programs are getting better supports both onsite in their education and/or when they graduate? Are you suggesting that, for instance, they're getting supports as they are going to their jobs, interviews and this kind of thing?

Mrs Herbert: For the specific graduates of Ross MacDonald we have had for about the last three years, and continue to have, a planned process for the graduates, so that we know every year how many individuals will graduate from Ross MacDonald. We have built in a system for additional money and services preplanned for them as they graduate. While they're in Ross MacDonald they work with the Ministry of Education, but in their final year we have a case management transition plan and we provide additional dollars for them as they graduate.

Mrs O'Neill: That's relatively new.

Mrs Herbert: About three years now, I think, the planned process.

Mrs O'Neill: I'm going to go back to page 29. I skipped something there that I feel I'd like to, if I may, talk to. That is the policy and program development projects being so far under budget in 1993-94. You had budgeted $350,000 and you spent $26,000. You're going back now to $350,000. What's that all about?

Ms Proctor: I'll speak to that briefly. The line in the budget is for money that the ministry has to spend on research projects. As part of our overall efforts to control costs, one of the areas that we've really tried to constrain is our own spending, and one of the areas that we underspent in the last year there was the whole area of research. We were prioritizing, I think, trying to restrain on non-service-related costs, and that's a research type of budget for research grants and so forth. We've underspent in that area in order to control costs.

Mrs O'Neill: But it doesn't seem, at least, you want to do that again, or you're planning differently.

Ms Proctor: We've continue to have the money in our budget. I think there are certainly a number of things ongoing in the area, but we will also be watching that line in our budget very closely this year as we try to balance.

Mrs O'Neill: It may not be the best place to find economy. But anyway, those are the decisions you're making. Did you want to say something, Minister?

Hon Mr Silipo: No. Sorry. I was chuckling because what came to mind when you said that was that we don't -- given the choices we have, it unfortunately has to be one of those. It's not a large amount of money relative to what we spend elsewhere but it helps all along.

Mrs O'Neill: If I can go to 101, this is something I was bringing forward this morning which I'm still having some difficulty with and I think several people in the province are having difficulty with. That is to do with the developmental services and the supportive services that go with them, particularly supported employment. You look like you're going to put quite a bit of effort into that, yet if I look at the budget, it's half of what you put in last year in the actuals.

Like I say, comparing estimates to estimates doesn't make that same message, but actuals to estimates, you're cutting the budget in half. What are we talking about with the supported employment? That seems to be quite a difference.

Mr Jackson: We sure lost a lot of people with that question.

Ms Proctor: Yes, exactly. We're just looking for the explanation --

Interjection: Shows it's a good budget.

Ms Proctor: -- between the difference. From estimates to actuals was increased costs in terms of actual expenditure in the current fiscal year related to a down payment on proxy and pay equity payments that went out.

Mrs O'Neill: You're talking about $7 million? Surely not.

Ms Proctor: Not only in that area but in some other areas as well. There's a transfer in terms of residential services requirements from MYP to bring money into this particular budget, which is why the whole overall line goes up 7%. So both of those things affect the overall line.

Mrs O'Neill: I'm sorry. This answer is too confusing for me. I'm sorry, it just doesn't fit the bill. I would like to look at the one line, "supported employment." I've looked at the other lines quite closely, but surely the pay equity, no matter what that costs, could never deal with a $7-million change within-year. That's within-year.

Ms Proctor: I'm looking to see whether we have an immediate explanation for that difference, and we don't on that particular line. So may I undertake to get back to you with an explanation of that as part of our overall response?

Mrs O'Neill: And how it relates to the present budget figure, which I think is also quite relevant.

Ms Proctor: Yes.

Mrs O'Neill: This is an area that's of real interest as we talk about the sheltered workshops. Now, I look at the sheltered workshops line above and I don't need a question on that. It looks like you are still kind of on hold on those, and I think maybe that is the best approach, from the readings I get from the people whom I deal with. You're going to get back to me on that one.

Ms Proctor: We will.

Mrs O'Neill: I'd like to go then to the capital part and I'd like to begin with 113, which is the child care. This is a figure that I'm sure would be of great mystery to many communities and certainly to many individuals and even child care operators in the province. The figure that people throw around is that there are over 10,000, some people go up as high as 17,000, empty spaces in this province. Some of them are, no doubt, not where they are needed, but I would suggest the largest capital outlay in this ministry is for child care: $44 million. If we want to look at that, that could be four secondary schools.

In other places, you have mentioned, Minister, that there would be $10 million each year, starting in 1996, to build 30 new child care centres each year, but this particular year we've put $44 million into the budget. I presume it's tied to Jobs Ontario -- partly, at least -- but it just seems to be an awful lot of money, in a year of restraint, for an initiative that has quite a few questions attached to it. So maybe you'd like to try to explain to us why you felt that that had to be a top priority for the capital budget of your ministry.

Hon Mr Silipo: Simply because we think that when we look at all of the needs that exist in the capital area that the child care needs stand apart in a way, and that for us to be able to expand the child care system, we can't do it without also expanding the number of centres that we have. It's as simple and as crucial as that. So we have been adding over the last number of years money specifically so that we can open up new centres or rebuild old centres, and that's what the $44 million here reflects.

Mrs O'Neill: Mr Minister, that troubles me some, because you know and I know that 90% of the children in this province who are in child care are not in centres. They're not in non-profit centres. They're not even in commercial centres. They are in various arrangements. This figure I don't think is going to change many of their lives, simply because their parents cannot afford and are not going to be able to afford, unless there's major child care reform or unless the subsidy situation changes -- and that, as we know, is the reason that the empty child care spaces are there.

I've got a beautiful child care centre very close to my office. Every time the operator gets a chance to bring me in, she brings me in and tells me -- it happened to be built under our government but it's being continued to be funded under yours -- that spaces are still empty. It's in the middle of a situation that's subsidized housing. The needs are there, but the people whom they're supposed to be serving can't be served.

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This is why this initiative is a great question to me. I know they sound very political, my questions, and they are, because this is a very political question. If you look at all the other capital projects, including violence against women, Jobs Ontario Capital, young offenders, this is the largest by far of the capital projects. I think your answer begs further explanation.

Hon Mr Silipo: I can appreciate your position on it. Maybe we just simply disagree. We believe it's important to continue to expand the number of centres that we have across the province, and we therefore need to do that.

I don't disagree at all with your position on the issue of the need for funding reform. That is something we are continuing to work at. As I said yesterday when we talked about this issue a little bit, I'm optimistic that with our discussions with the federal government, if they're willing to translate what they said to us into real financial commitments, something will also happen on the funding reform. If that happens -- or when that happens, because that's an issue that's going to have to get resolved some day soon -- then one of the things we will find ourselves in if we don't have the structures there is that we're going to have the dollars to do the funding reform but not the physical spaces in the system.

What we've been doing is trying to move both pieces along. Obviously we've managed to do a little bit better on a comparative basis on the capital side in terms of getting those structures in place. I think we would all agree that there are a number of spaces vacant in each of the centres, but I'm not sure you would find too many people who are served by each of those new centres we've opened who would say they would prefer that the centre wasn't there. I think that's something we need to keep in mind too, that these capital dollars are responding, through additional centres, to some needs that clearly exist out there.

Does it resolve everything we're trying to do in the area of child care? Absolutely not. But when we do get the funding changes that we want and you want, then I think we will be glad that in fact we've put the money into expanding the centres, because then it will give us an opportunity to get those spaces filled where they are not full now, and perhaps even to expand.

Mrs O'Neill: I guess we do disagree, because children are all about the future and there are many children right within the circle of this building who are not being served with child care. You know the list in Metro is very long.

The way you've chosen to spend child care money is certainly a decision that is very much of this government, whether it's capital or whether it's conversion. I think some people would find it a little easier to take if there was a little bit more balance in the way in which things are done.

Many communities are trying to prepare for when the time is going to come that the Jobs Ontario 100% funding for child care is going to dry up. My municipality in particular is taking long-range planning on that, but that's a very big onus on the municipalities to plan for that. I think I'm very happy that mine has got the foresight to do that.

I guess these are political decisions. You've given your explanation, I've given my concerns, and I think that's where that part of the argument has to end.

The only other area I would like to ask a little bit more about -- how many minutes?

The Vice-Chair: You have about five minutes, Mrs O'Neill.

Mrs O'Neill: The attendant care section of your ministry and where it fits and where you still fit into long-term care I think are still questions. We've had a lot more questions than maybe you would have expected. People are missing you in long-term care. They're missing your presence in the announcements. They wonder if there are still any partnerships between yourself and the Ministry of Citizenship and the Ministry of Health on this issue. Some people feel quite fragile because they don't see that. I would say the disabled and the attendant care people, and all of the uncertainties that surround direct funding, those are the people I'm talking about at the moment. So you may want to say something.

Hon Mr Silipo: Just very briefly, because again, I understand very much the concerns that you're expressing; I've heard many of them expressed directly to me. What we've tried to do as a government under the long-term care provisions is to work very closely and systematically towards bridging some of those responsibilities that we've had, particularly with the Ministry of Health's responsibilities. We've talked a lot here in these estimates on the issue of children's services, in particular about the overlapping responsibilities of different ministries. This is one where I think we've done the work that needs to be done as a government, which is to bring together those different responsibilities -- the health-related responsibilities and the community services-related responsibilities -- all of which fit together, under one group of people, one group of officials and one system.

We've taken the step, at the political level, of saying we don't need to have three different ministers or even two different ministers responsible for this. It's sufficient if those concerns are addressed in that way, keeping in mind that there are health issues here and there are community services issues, both of which have to be entwined, that it's appropriate for one ministry to be having the overall responsibility and for one minister to have that responsibility, and that's what we've done.

Our Premier has chosen to give that responsibility to the Ministry of Health and to the Minister of Health. The people who used to work in the two ministries are in fact now working as a branch under the one ministry. They bring all of the same history and perspectives and useful background that they need. So I can say, as the Minister of Community and Social Services, that the concerns that people have expressed to us throughout the whole discussion around long-term care we have not only heard but I'm quite confident in saying we're translating into changed and better practices through the long-term care division of the Ministry of Health. It makes more sense that it be done and run as a division rather than two divisions or a division reporting to two different places.

Mrs O'Neill: Mr Minister, I hope you are listening to the people and hopefully you are answering their concerns. They are very concerned about the assimilation of social services. The district health councils right across this province have brought that to us. Certainly, the front-line workers have brought that to us. They see a very medical model being developed. They see the MSA being a medical model, so to speak, and the people who will be represented there will be much more from a medical background, and that's not the way the services have developed in many communities. In particular, the front-line workers feel that the Community and Social Services aspect of their work that's been funded from that source is every bit as much of importance as the health model. In some cases, for many people, particularly, may I call them, the young elderly, it's more important.

There are monster fears out there. I'm sure that the people in Kingston are bringing them forward to the committee I usually serve on right at this moment. So I hope that you will see, because if you say some of the people who used to work with you are involved in this, that they continue to have a profile, that they continue to bring those needs forward. There's a whole lot of new terminology coming. We don't know what it means, we don't know what the definitions are, and I'm talking for the general public when I'm speaking at the moment. So hopefully, these things will be clarified, people's minds will be at ease, because there's an awful lot of uncertainty and confusion out there regarding long-term care and your role in it.

Hon Mr Silipo: We're aware of those concerns, which is why I know that my colleague Minister Grier is paying a fair amount of attention, as I am still, even though I don't have that responsibility in terms of particularly some of the work that's going on through the planning process and the long-term care committees. I know that the fear and the concerns are there about a medical model being the approach that's taken, but we've been quite clear, not only in our guidelines but in the work that's being done locally in the planning process, to ensure that in effect it doesn't turn out to be a medical model.

I think we could talk for some time about whether that's even the most appropriate way just within the health-related issues, and we'd probably have some meeting of the minds even on that aspect, but certainly we believe very strongly that the community services aspect has to be kept very much in mind. I know that in the planning that's going on, that's something that people are being constantly not just reminded about but being pushed to ensure that it's there at the forefront as well.

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Mrs O'Neill: Thank you, Mr Minister, for helping me with those issues that I brought forward. I trust that the questions that have been promised to be answered in writing will be followed up for our caucus.

Hon Mr Silipo: We will ensure that that's done. Thank you.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Mrs O'Neill, for your participation in this round. Mr Jackson.

Mr Jackson: Are any of the questions that I've raised to date in a print form that is ready to be circulated at all to the members of the committee?

Hon Mr Silipo: Mr Jackson, no, other than the ones we provided to you this morning. I believe that the rest we're going to have to do some more work on, although there were some numbers -- let me just check. Do we have any information on the --

Mr Jackson: The provincial comparisons I have.

Hon Mr Silipo: You have that, okay. So other than what you have, no.

Mr Jackson: All right. I apologize to Mrs O'Neill. She was on a very good point on page 77 with day care, and rather than an interjection, I was seeking a supplementary. But if we could return to that, my understanding is that the ministry had made a policy shift with a memorandum. I guess I could leave the committee at the moment and go get that copy.

But I understand we changed the calculations for subsidy eligibility in this province, and that we ran into a lot of difficulty. I know I had at least 20 cases I was advocating on that all of a sudden on one day were eligible and then the next day were ineligible.

I wonder if this is sort of a fiscal venturi that you've got that you've been able to assist those municipalities who were having to turn down existing subsidy cases because of that recalculation memo. If that's all fuzzy, I'll go get the memo, but I had about a 25-page briefing from Halton region social services because they were concerned that it would disenfranchise several hundred children in the Halton region. I suspect that maybe some of that moneys were used to hold the line on the subsidies.

Ms Proctor: Just checking. I think it would be very useful to us -- we'd be more than happy to respond to the issue -- if we could see the memo. If you would get it for us afterwards, we would undertake to get back with a response in relation to that, but without having the details, I think it's hard to respond at this point to what --

Mr Jackson: The deputy has no memory peg with respect to changing the criterion that would have changed eligibilities for --

Hon Mr Silipo: No, I --

Ms Proctor: Only the change in the criteria for Jobs Ontario.

Hon Mr Silipo: Yes, the only change is that change in the criteria through the Jobs Ontario, which was an expansion rather than a restriction.

Mr Jackson: All right, then I'll secure the memo.

Hon Mr Silipo: What you're describing, Mr Jackson, I presume, is a restriction of the criteria.

Mr Jackson: Yes, we're talking about, these are people, employable, working poor; existing subsidy arrangements. We're not talking about the new plan. We're talking about existing cases where under the reapplications and reassessments, ineligibilities were occurring, and that's where the concern was, because now all of a sudden, having to come up with $6,000 or $7,000 for day care is not easy on a couple of days' notice.

Could the minister advise or the deputy advise who has been assigned to pursue either the private member's bill from Mr White in your caucus on the social worker act, or who has been assigned to do the work with respect to Mr Martin in your caucus's private member's bill on adoption reform?

Hon Mr Silipo: On the latter, there are people from the adoption units in the ministry who have been providing support as requested. If you want specific names, we'll provide them to you. On the first, there is no activity that we're taking at this time.

Mr Jackson: Okay. Could Mr Cope please advise me where the entries are for children's mental health services operation, if I could seek a further breakdown? I wanted to raise a couple of questions about children's mental health services.

Ms Proctor: Excuse me, if I can refer to that, the child treatment services are on page 81 of the estimates. Child and family intervention is on page 75 or 76, somewhere in there.

Mr Jackson: On which other page?

Ms Proctor: Page 75 is child and family intervention, and the other page, wherever I was, child treatment is on page 81.

Mr Jackson: Okay. My understanding is that the atypical situation -- well, let me back up. We've been attempting to determine why children's mental health services as provided in a hospital setting is on a decline in this province, and a substantive decline. These programs are being phased out, and this has created, in professional opinions in the field, further pressures to the services that fall under your mandate, Minister. We have a coterminous increasing suicide rate, and we have all-too-tragic information coming out of northern Ontario with certain native bands with solvent abuse and so on, a whole series of problems associated that aren't being specifically intervened with medical models but in fact with social service models.

I notice that we spent less in 1993-1994 than you were budgeted for and came in under budget there, which would be my first area of concern, and what that would mean for spending for this year, given the figure we're looking at there, as well on page 81, and as well showing a reduction in commitment on page 75. Is there a reason why we're seeing this with the increased numbers of children in this group?

Ms Proctor: I think I could speak to this, and maybe, Sue, I don't know whether you'd want to speak to this a bit as well. In any case, I think there's two issues. In terms of the slight decrease on page 75 and the increase on page 81, and you'll notice in fact from estimates to actuals we also had a bit of overexpenditure in that area, those small changes in the total numbers reflect a number of internal changes but in fact in the most basic way reflect the impact in this particular area of our expenditure control plan constraints.

Beyond that, though, I think more substantively the question you asked about moving out of hospital services and into community services has been a trend for some period of time. As you're very well aware, the Ministry of Health has continued responsibility for funding some hospital mental health services for children but the bulk of the responsibility for the community services lies in this ministry. In at least some of the instances around the province, there's fairly active local planning going on that involves the health professionals, the social services providers and so forth, looking for the way they can use those mental health, as it were, dollars as best they possibly can to meet those local needs. The general direction and trend in that is to move from the provision of services in one specific location, a residential location, and try to move those services and dollars into a range of community resources and so forth. I'm not sure of the specific instance, but the general case is to try to do that.

Mr Jackson: Well, I can give you a specific case in Halton region. We have nine beds in Halton. They're all associated with Community Living, and they're now told they have to share them with mental health etc and all the other areas. My teen suicide victims --

Ms Proctor: Is this hospital beds?

Mr Jackson: No, these are non-institutional beds. We lost the hospital beds ages ago. For a hospital bed, I've got to go out of my region for a teen suicide. For facility treatment, we have to go as far away as Oshawa. We had a case that should have gone to a coroner's inquest of a girl getting out of a facility in Oshawa and killing herself before she could get back to Burlington.

But the mental health beds are now, instead of us acquiring and securing additional beds -- I'm sorry, first-time-ever beds in -- and we're a large regional municipality, and again with the developmental beds that we have, the nine of those that are in our community, we're now being told we have to share them with mental health services.

So we can sit down and rationally discuss how to come up with innovative solutions, but we don't have any beds. We're just actually having to say to other needy kids, for other reasons, you have to be on a longer waiting list now.

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That's why it's of concern to me, since you asked if I had a local example. We have one right in Halton and it's a rather severe one, and we don't have the opportunity of any chronic care beds, because the young people are inappropriately placed, but adults can be placed in a long-term care facility. I see this as a serious gap in the service and we're not really meeting their needs, and I just wanted to see where those moneys may be earmarked. I mean, this is a business of setting priorities, and we'll basically leave it at that.

Perhaps if I could then inquire further to Mr Cope, if he's the appropriate person, based on the statistics that we did get on the employee benefits expenditures that Ms O'Neill was pursuing, I take it we still don't have the number of contract positions and consultant positions that I was seeking to sort of tie down this 800 employees less.

Ms Proctor: That's part of what we were following up on and will provide later.

Mr Jackson: Okay. If I could perhaps look at this schedule that you did table with us, I see that in 1992-93 we spent $270,000 on attendance gratuities and that in 1993-94 attendance gratuities went to $1.163 million as an employee benefit. Could someone tell me what an attendance gratuity is that we're spending almost $1.2 million on?

Mr Cope: Yes, I think I can explain that. An attendance gratuity is actually a benefit that was available to employees who -- before I joined the civil service, back in the 1950s and 1960s, it was what was replaced by the current short-term and long-term sickness plans. In fact what you did was build up sick day credits, and if you didn't use them for sickness, they went into a bank and you could be reimbursed when you retired for a maximum of up to six months.

So what is happening is we're paying out a lot of those, because with the enhanced retirement programs under factor 80 we are in fact having a lot of those people who have those credits built up and they're being paid out. In fact, you see that early retirement incentive, the line just above that, has also gone up quite a bit because of the same kind of thing. We're providing incentives to people to retire, and these are the very people who have those kinds of credit banks.

Mr Jackson: Well, you spent less than $1,000 on retirement incentives.

Mr Cope: But the program was a new one in 1993-94.

Mr Jackson: It's which?

Mr Cope: It was a new program introduced in 1993-94. That was the first year of payouts. There weren't any payouts under that program before, for the retirement incentives. For the attendance gratuities, yes, people who had those banks retired on a regular basis, but because of the new enhanced program to encourage people to retire early, you have more people who have those credits leaving, so we have to pay out more.

Mr Jackson: I'm familiar with the retirement gratuities in the school sector, where both the Chairman and I have worked with them over the years -- I'm sorry, not the Chairman, the minister and I. I had never seen it appear as attendance gratuity then.

What is the unfunded liability in the tune of almost $12 million?

Mr Cope: That's the unfunded liability in the pension fund.

Mr Jackson: In the pension fund.

Mr Cope: Yes, and that's our ministry's share. We're levied a certain amount every year that would help pay for that unfunded liability.

Mr Jackson: Okay. And what are the projections for the 1994-95 attendance gratuities payouts?

Mr Cope: Approximately the same.

Mr Jackson: So another $1.2 million or $1.3 million.

Mr Cope: Something on that order. It may not be as high. It depends a little bit on what the takeup is in the current year.

Mr Jackson: Does the civil service get to split that over two years, like the teachers' federation has? That's just for interest. Do they have the same option, or must they take it all in the same lump sum the same year? Does someone know?

Mr Cope: One sum, one payment, the year you take it.

Ms Proctor: The same year, when you retire.

Mr Jackson: The teachers appreciate that. Do they ever appreciate it.

Hon Mr Silipo: I think you and I both better stay away from that one, Mr Jackson.

Mr Jackson: I've been to the labour board twice on retirement gratuities. I have no problem dealing with it. Unfortunately --

Hon Mr Silipo: I was talking about the teachers.

Mr Jackson: Oh, the teachers. That's who I was before the Education Relations Commission with.

Anyway, we don't have the contract consultants. Maybe I can come back to that when I get some additional information.

Could we go to page 115, with respect to the violence-against-women initiatives. I have to say, Deputy, I'm surprised, and maybe it's rather unusual, that on such an important initiative, none of our substantive staff here were able to clarify the operating costs associated with it and the year-over-year changes with respect to that, but this is a lot simpler. This is just capital.

I'm wondering why we're seeing such a reduction here, given the fact that I'm sure we still have requests out there for the expansion of shelters, because the demand has been increasing at an alarming rate still, with respect to waiting lists, not with respect to the incidence. The incidence levels are pretty well at the same level, or very little variance, it's just that there are large waiting lists and there's deferred assistance here in large numbers and in certain areas of the province. Is there a reason why? I understand this is Jobs Ontario Capital. This isn't your regular ministry capital.

Ms Proctor: Mr Cope will speak to the flow of capital dollars.

Mr Cope: What we find here is actually the largest chunk of our capital spending is tied up in carryovers on projects that had previously been approved. So there's not a lot of flexibility for new projects. So what you see as a reduction is simply that there's less carryover than for projects in the previous year. It's not a reflection of less intent to do anything in the program, it's simply that for the projects within the total capital budget, the amount that was needed for the projects in violence against women was less because we were further along on completing those projects.

Mr Jackson: I have a working knowledge of construction and budgeting. Your budget will always decline if you're not starting new projects at some point in your fiscal year. I understand the carryover concept, but I'm asking why -- let me ask it another way. Why are we not initiating any new projects that would be funded in this capital year?

Mr Cope: I think the response to that is back to what I said earlier, that we have a total capital budget that has been allocated to us, and within that, that's almost all tied up in carryovers. There were comments yesterday focusing on why is the child care amount going up while the child care spending is using more of that, because those were slower starting up and there's more carryover in child care, so we've had to increase the child care portion of our current capital budget. Since there's less carryover, as I just explained, with the violence-against-women projects, that's why it goes down.

Mr Jackson: Maybe I could switch back to the child care question Ms O'Neill began with. I think in my questions earlier, and there's generally always an annual order paper question from my office, what are the current ministry statistics on available spaces in the province? Just so we understand the question, we're not talking the number of subsidized spaces, we're not talking about the number of spaces that have a child in them, we're talking the number of available spaces. So that any given facility would have registered its capacity and then they'd have their enrolment. The last figures I saw indicated there was a substantive amount of space available in various parts of this province. You do have those statistics. I just wonder if you'd share them with us.

Mr Bakker: We have about 124,000 licensed capacity. That includes all spaces. That includes home child care as well.

Mr Jackson: And how many spaces are municipalities and the province subsidizing and how many are just the -- actually, you need all three, don't you? Surely you can share with me the statistic in printed form, which is what I requested yesterday.

Ms Proctor: Sorry?

Mr Jackson: Surely you have this in printed form you can share with --

Hon Mr Silipo: Mr Jackson, there is some information on page 79 of the estimates book. I don't know if that gives you the --

Mr Jackson: Page 79 doesn't give me the unused capacity, and that really strikes at the heart of the building plan. I'm not against building day care centres, I'm just against building them when there's vacant spaces within a quarter of a mile.

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I don't wish to flog the Richmond Hill example, but we've got basically four centres in Richmond Hill, and that's not a big community, that are boarded up. They're closed down, they're not being used, and three of them were built with taxpayers' money. We just can't get kids for them. And if you pay the subsidy, you'll always find kids, we know that, but if we don't pay the subsidy, we still have an obligation to operate the facility, or at least someone in the ministry should be asking the question, "Should we not look at getting back control of that facility or transferring responsibility instead of building another one?" I like creating construction jobs, but unless we really need it in that area -- so the vacant capacity is a very important issue.

Mr Bakker: We don't normally track vacancies right across the system, because, as you know, we don't manage the whole system.

Could I just pick up on maybe the earlier question from Ms O'Neill, because I think it's related to this, about spending on capital.

Just to back up what the minister said, he's quite right, we are adding new spaces, but of the amount that was spent on capital -- if I understand the gist of your question, on the one hand you're saying that there are a number of vacancies but we're also adding new spaces. I gather that's what you're getting at.

Of the amount that we've spent on capital -- now, these are just rough numbers, but if you'll just bear with me for a minute. It's true that we have added 16,000 spaces in about the last three years. But of the amount that we spent on capital on new construction, only around 6,000 of those are brand-new buildings, in a sense. A lot of the money we've been spending on capital is related to renovations and improving centres that have aged and so on.

If I just give you some rough numbers, under Jobs Ontario, for example, we have had to add 10,000 new spaces to facilitate that program. Of the 10,000 spaces that have been added, only 2,500 of those are really in brand-new buildings. The other 7,500 are either renovating existing centres to bring them up to their licence capacity or renovating them to add just a few additional spaces to meet their needs.

Mr Jackson: I'm sorry to interrupt. You're reading from a sheet of paper that I asked yesterday that you just simply photocopy and give it to me. In fairness, that request is still outstanding, and it's the simplest way to do this. I know the statistic exists, because two years ago the minister was able to produce it for us and we looked at the issue of total capacity and how much is currently being used at a given moment. I would hope that we could secure that. That's all I was asking.

Hon Mr Silipo: We'll get that information for you, Mr Jackson. We may not have it centrally but we can do it later.

Mr Jackson: That's fair. Even if you just give me Metro Toronto, then both Ms O'Neill and I can look at the issue of how we're spending the capital dollars, because I fall on the other side of the line. I want the money to go into operation and not into capital, and I think we're doing enough construction jobs for able-bodied males in this province in these social programs. I'm more interested in trying to get those subsidized spaces out there and more available, and that's really why I'm trying to track that.

Mrs O'Neill: I also want eastern Ontario, not just Metro.

Mr Jackson: No problem. I didn't say I just want it, I said it would be a help if we could get it even in that form right off the bat.

Minister, I asked yesterday how many centres were in a shortfall situation and what fund were you utilizing in order to bring those experiencing difficulty, or are we allowing them to fold their doors? This is again a question I asked two years ago in estimates and was able to secure some statistical information on that.

Hon Mr Silipo: My overall sense is that the number of centres that have gone through those difficulties has decreased, in part because of some of the steps we've taken to work individually with them and in part because of the additional subsidies we've put into the system, but I don't think we have -- in fact I know we don't have the breakdown now of which particular centres may still be in trouble. That was one of the things we undertook to provide --

Mr Jackson: There were 93 of them last time, and I'd be encouraged that there are less, but I also would like to know at what cost and where we're coming up with those operations.

Hon Mr Silipo: Unless we've got some additional information we can share with you now, we'll --

Mr Bakker: The latest report that you were provided with, Mr Jackson, was 1992-93, I believe. We're still putting together the 1993-94. We can have it available this week.

Mr Jackson: I know you are, because that order paper question was tabled seven months ago. If you don't have the stats --

Interjection.

Mr Jackson: Some are answered quickly and some are more difficult to get, but if you're still tabulating that, I have requested it before.

Given that this information has not been forthcoming, I wonder if I could yield my rotation while I secure some additional information and then finalize my questions in that area. I sort of relied on some material coming forward from the ministry staff.

The Vice-Chair: I'm sorry.

Mr Jackson: I'll just yield my rotation until I can get this additional information. I thought it was forthcoming from staff.

The Vice-Chair: Government members.

Mr Hope: No, you said it was a 30-minute -- that's exactly what the process is that we incorporate, or a 40-minute process, and that's what I've been following.

The Vice-Chair: He's volunteering to yield his time to the government.

Mr Jackson: It's my right to yield my time.

Mrs O'Neill: How many minutes has Mr Jackson got just so we know where we're at with this?

The Vice-Chair: Mr Jackson has about 14 minutes.

Mr Jackson: The other alternative is a 20-minute recess, but I think that's unfair to staff. It's your call, Mr Chairman.

The Vice-Chair: I'd turn now to the government caucus for questions.

Mr Wiseman: Reading in today's newspaper, it clearly indicates that the federal Liberal government is going to miss its budgetary projections by somewhere between $5 billion and $10 billion. If you read further into the article, clearly the Minister of Finance, Paul Martin, will be looking to Lloyd Axworthy to find a very large portion of that shortfall in cuts to spending.

I'm quite concerned about that from the perspective that we know a lot of this has been downloaded on to the provinces now. If they're going to find these $5 billion to $10 billion just to bring their budget into line, and this nowhere near comes close to what they have to find in order to balance their budget, what kind of discussions are you having with Lloyd Axworthy about reform? What indication can you give us in the direction they would like to head? I guess, basically, do they have a philosophical approach that you could share with us as to how they're going to be making these changes to the welfare system?

Mrs O'Neill: I think the Liberal caucus members in Ottawa would ask the same thing, but anyway.

Hon Mr Silipo: If you'd like to put that on the record, Mrs O'Neill, I'd be happy to yield to you.

It's a good question, Mr Wiseman. I think it's fair to say that from my observations and involvement in the process of the social security reform discussions, the issue of funding and what implications that has, has been, for obvious reasons, one of the key pieces -- not the only one, but one of the key pieces -- that's concerned us, because we know that as we start the process, under the recent federal budget, Mr Axworthy's marching orders are to be able to find, among other things, I think, $1.5 billion to $2 billion in savings.

I think the indications we've had are that most of that is to come from the unemployment insurance area although it's up to them, obviously, as to what decisions they end up making. Our big worry is and continues to be, on the one hand, that we not see a continuing shift of offloading of the federal government's responsibilities on to provinces, because that would mean another significant burden placed on the taxpayers in Ontario adding to the already $1.7 billion a year that Ontario taxpayers are paying for as a result of the shortfall in funding of the Canada assistance plan which funds social assistance and child care and child welfare services.

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Our approach has been to continue to put the issue of fair share of funding for Ontario very much on the table, as we continue to say at the same time that we believe strongly that the reform of the whole social security system in the country is something that needs to be undertaken and we are quite prepared to continue our involvement in those discussions. If we are now seeing that the federal government is further short in the area of $5 billion to $10 billion, then I think that just adds to our worries in terms of what might happen and how those decisions might be made.

We are continuing to pursue our discussions on the broader issues of reform, where we've put forward proposals and ideas around enhancement of benefits that are provided to children. As you know, we wanted to embark upon an Ontario child benefit program, which we were not able to do because of the fiscal situation that we're in. We think it's a good idea to be done not just in Ontario but indeed across the country, and that's something that's there.

We think there has to be more emphasis placed on employment opportunities for people on welfare. We think that some of those same ideas are equally as applicable for people on unemployment insurance and we've put forward through JobLink ways in which that can happen and are proceeding to implement some of those changes.

There at least we've managed to get the level of cooperation and funding on the part of the federal government that we would like to see in the whole range of programs that we have. We are continuing our discussions with them, as I've indicated in these two days here, on the issue of funding for child care reform.

But overall, we continue to be very worried about what is going to happen on the whole issue of funding. The federal government has said to us that the only way it can address the longer term funding issue we have been putting on the table from the beginning of these discussions, and the $1.7-billion shortfall to Ontario from Ottawa, is through the social security reform discussions. While we haven't agreed that's where the solution should be, that it should be delayed to that point, we have none the less cooperated and will continue to cooperate in the discussions and would hope that today's announcement by the federal Minister of Finance is not an indication that things are in fact going to be worse than what we already hear. We'll have to wait and see and we'll have to continue to be both wary of the situation and I think insistent in our position that the taxpayers in Ontario be treated the same way as the taxpayers in any other province in the country.

Mr Wiseman: Would you say these discussions are close, that we are having a good, open and frank exchange of ideas, that some of the things we have been suggesting through our welfare reform that seems to be held up now because it has to go hand in hand with what the federal government is going to do -- are we at the table just to be patted on the head and told, "Thanks for coming, we're going to do our own thing anyway," or are we really at the table?

Hon Mr Silipo: I don't want to be unfair unduly to the federal government.

Mr Wiseman: Why? They're being unfair to us.

Hon Mr Silipo: No, in terms of the process, because I think they've had, again, their own problems in getting their act together. The trouble I have in answering fully your question is that I'm not really sure that at this point we have a clear idea from the federal government what it wants to do.

We have, as I said, put forward some very clear proposals and ideas. We've had some positive response on one piece of that in terms of the JobLink initiatives and the federal government indicating not only verbally but in terms of its financial contribution that it's something it supports. We've had, as I said, some interesting indications of support on the child care reform piece, we obviously will be even happier when we see the dollars, but we haven't seen, other than I guess through whatever might come in the discussion paper that is going to be forthcoming from the federal government, anything that resembles a position by the federal government.

In other words, we haven't seen the federal government come forward and say: "Either as a result of the preliminary discussions that we've had with the provinces or as a result of our own thinking, this is the way we believe the social security system of the country should be reformed. Now let's talk about whether those ideas are good or bad or indifferent." What we've seen so far is really a fair amount of discussion around particular proposals and, as I said, we have continued to put forward our ideas.

We will continue to be supportive of those proposals that come forward or ideas that come forward from the federal government which we think are good for the people of the province, and indeed for people across the country, and we will be obviously critical and watchful in terms of making sure that our own financial situation isn't made even worse by any further steps the federal government takes. But until we see something that's fairly concrete from the federal government, I'm not sure we can go much beyond that, because it's not like there are additional pieces we can do that we haven't done.

We've put forward our vision of what a social security system could look like, at least in terms of the areas that relate to provincial jurisdiction on the social assistance system, on child care, and I think we need to let the federal government do its part of the job. When they come forward, whenever that will be, with something that resembles a proposal, then I think we will be able to see how close we are.

Mr Wiseman: I'd like to change directions now and ask a couple of specific questions.

The Vice-Chair: Your colleague Mr Hope has a question.

Mr Hope: No, go ahead.

Mr Wiseman: On the "Interprovincial Comparison of Social Assistance Rates" sheet, this one that was handed out earlier --

Hon Mr Silipo: We didn't get one at this end of the table, but go ahead.

Mr Wiseman: I'd like to pursue the question of single disabled rates, because that does seem to be a little confusing. If you are single and disabled in Ontario, this says that a single disabled person should receive $930 a month. Does that include the $414 in rental cost?

Hon Mr Silipo: Yes.

Mr Wiseman: So they should receive a cheque for $930 a month.

Hon Mr Silipo: That's right.

Mr Wiseman: If that disabled person is receiving Canada pension plan disability, they would then subtract the Canada pension plan disability from the $930 and we would then be giving them the top-up so that their total monthly income would be $930.

Hon Mr Silipo: That's right. We would deduct the Canada pension plan disability benefit from whatever their entitlement under social assistance would be. One of the things we've been doing more aggressively, Mr Wiseman, has been to ensure that we track through those kinds of situations, so that in fact we've gotten better at making sure the information flow between us and CPP is much better than it was.

Mr Wiseman: Yes, I understand that and I know that's been happening, and I think it needed to happen. My next question has to do with the rent subsidy. If this disabled person is living in a subsidized apartment and they were receiving Canada pension plan disability, would they still receive Canada pension plan disability, gains up to $930, and the subsidy, or would there be some calculation of a reduction of the single disabled on the basis that they're receiving a rental subsidy?

Hon Mr Silipo: In terms of determining the shelter portion of their social assistance benefits, we would take into account the amount of money they are actually paying for. So if their rent was a certain amount and part of that was being subsidized through the Ministry of Housing, then they would have to pay the balance of that. That's the amount we would take into consideration in terms of what we would pay through social assistance.

Mr Wiseman: Well, now I'm confused.

Mr Noel Duignan (Halton North): Could I have a supplementary on that?

Mr Wiseman: Sure, go ahead. Maybe it'll help.

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Mr Duignan: On that particular issue, isn't the rate already set, that if you're in a non-profit or co-op situation there's actually a set amount that individual can pay and only pays and that's the way it works, a monthly charge?

Mr Wiseman: My understanding was that if their income was solely from family benefits or from welfare, they would receive -- that was not calculated as income, but as soon as you're into Canada pension plan disability, it's 30% of that and then your subsidy would be, let's say, whatever it is, 30% of the Canada pension plan disability. Then the subsidy would be on top of that up to the total amount of rent that was necessary. My question is, do we start with this $930 base figure or how -- ?

Hon Mr Silipo: No, the $930 here -- the first line of this chart says "assumed rental cost" so these numbers assume that the rental cost the individual has is $414. If the rental cost is lower, then the person would be getting less than the $930. Kevin Costante could probably answer the question.

Mr Costante: There is a series of set rates, as I think the other gentleman indicated earlier, that are charged to people who are on social assistance and CPP and I'm sorry, I don't have that rate schedule with me. We would pay that actual amount, which I believe is often less than the $414 which is the maximum we pay for shelter for a single person, so they would get that. Whatever that amount is, let's say it's $300, plus the difference between $414 and $930 as their basic allowance. Am I making any sense?

Mr Wiseman: I'm a little less confused than I was when we started.

Hon Mr Silipo: I think if you look at the $414 figure, Mr Wiseman, as the maximum, that's the rental portion.

Mr Wiseman: Let's do it this way. If they have a rental cost, they get $414 for rent.

Hon Mr Silipo: No.

Mr Wiseman: No?

Hon Mr Silipo: If they have a rental cost of $414, they get $414. If they have a rental cost of $300, they get $300, not $414.

Mr Wiseman: We're going to have to go over some numbers later because --

Hon Mr Silipo: So the $930 that's here would be paid out to an individual who has a rental cost of $414.

Mr Tony Rizzo (Oakwood): That's the maximum?

Hon Mr Silipo: That's the maximum. If the individual has a rental cost of less than $414, then they would get whatever that difference would be less than the $930, depending upon their rental cost.

Mr Wiseman: Okay. According to the tables in the Welfare Incomes 1993, A Report by the National Council of Welfare, Summer 1994 Canada, the disabled person in the province of Ontario would receive approximately $11,725 per year, and the poverty line is calculated at $15,452 per year, which means they're receiving about 76% of what the poverty line is. Can you tell me first, do you agree with this poverty line evaluation, and how do you calculate the poverty line given that the cost of living across the province of Ontario varies so much?

Hon Mr Silipo: I think it's fair to say that as a ministry and as a government, we don't have a kind of an official position on those poverty line figures that you've indicated in terms of are those the kind of official statistics that we accept or not. What I think it's fair to say is true, that we know the amounts we pay, whether for single individuals, able-bodied, disabled, or for any of the other categories, in all instances are below the amount that would be payable if we followed either that indicator, or indeed some of the other indicators that come through Statistics Canada. That is something to keep in mind when people talk about what we are paying for in Ontario relative to other provinces, that we are still below, in effect, what many people would say are the acceptable poverty line indicators.

That's not something we're particularly happy about, but it's just the reality of where we are in terms of trying to manage the dollars that we have. That's just part of what, as I say, we have to keep in mind as we look at these numbers. You can present them in any number of ways.

To look at the issue that you've asked about in terms of regional variances within the province, we did do some work over the course of this year on the question of whether we should tie some of the benefits, particularly the shelter portion of the benefits, to various indicators regionally from one part of the province to the other. I think it's fair to say that at first blush you can justify doing that, and one could argue that we should do that. But as we looked at it a little bit further we came to the conclusion that, first of all, we would be creating a number of other inequities potentially by doing that, that sometimes when you mix together the shelter portion of the costs, you could say that on that basis, yes, you could justify a higher shelter cost in an area like Metropolitan Toronto versus a small rural community.

But on the other hand, when you factor in such things as transportation costs and other kinds of factors, the differences end up not being perhaps as high as one might initially think.

The difficulties that are entailed in putting those changes into the system, particularly in the system that we have in place now, again with the kind of largely still manually driven processes and systems that we have, we just found that, for the differences it would make, it would just create more problems at this point in time than it would solve, and so we're not proceeding with that. But as we get into the computerized system that we've been discussing here over the last couple of days and as we make some other changes, it's probably something that would be both sensible to pursue in the future and also more easily plugged into the system, were a decision to be made that it would be a useful thing to do.

Mr Wiseman: Okay, changing directions again --

Mr Hope: Yes, I've got a question.

Mr Wiseman: Okay, this will be my last question then. I heard on the news the other night that a councillor in a town near where I come from is suggesting that they put into place a clawback, a lien against houses of people who find themselves on welfare. It seems to me that that would be making victims of victims again. If they sold their houses, then they would have to pay back, out of the principal or out of the house, the amount of money that they received in welfare.

This, I think, would be counterproductive in that it would prevent people from moving, it would revictimize them again and it would probably force people who could move into houses or into shelter that they could afford in a position where they would have to go into rental accommodation because they would be losing the equity in their house. This would increase the amount of subsidies that would have to be paid for rent for people. In the long run, it would cost a huge amount of money in that, if a house were paid for, for example, people could live in it longer and it would be still cheaper to keep them in their houses than it would be to put them into subsidized rental apartments.

The goal of this councillor is to take it to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and eventually to your desk. I don't know if you've thought about that or if you've heard about this plan or if this person has contacted your office at all, but it seems to me that if a person has owned a house, that probably meant that they were employed, paying off their mortgage and were a victim of maybe the high interest rates, the dollar or whatever reason that their job was no longer there. This would be revictimizing them and putting them into what I would consider to be a downward spiral towards even greater poverty than they're already in.

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I think you've already got a good idea of what I think of the idea. Have you heard about this, and have you done any work in this area to examine what the long-term effects would be of a policy that would be of that nature?

Hon Mr Silipo: I hadn't heard of the specific proposal, but it sounds similar to other proposals that we've not only heard about but, to be fair, we've looked at as well, as a ministry. As we've had to look over the last year at a number of ways of trying to contain our expenditures, the whole issue of asking people who owned their own homes and were receiving benefits to contribute back into the system in one way or another some portion of that was one we did look at.

We've looked at a number of different models of how that could be done and we came to the conclusion, both in terms of the practicalities of doing that but also because of some of the broader policy issues that you've addressed in your comments, that it would not be either practically feasible or, perhaps more importantly, useful as a direction to go into, because what we would be doing is in effect taking away something that people have managed to build up over a period of time and which could also help provide a base for that family to be able to not only raise a family but to have something that provides a nucleus for them to be breaking out of a dependency on welfare. For those reasons as well, our sense is that it's not a wise course of action to follow.

I think we can say with more certainty now that we've also looked at how one might go about applying that kind of reduction, because that's what it would be, to social assistance benefits. As I say, I don't expect that as a government we're going to be doing a lot more work in that area in terms of how to do it, because we don't think that it's as sensible an idea as it might've otherwise initially seemed to be.

Mr Hope: Before I begin my questioning I was just curious how much time I have left.

The Vice-Chair: You have until 4:26.

Mr Hope: Until 4:26. What time does your clock read, because I want to make sure I got the right time here.

The Vice-Chair: It's 14 minutes after.

Mr Hope: It's 14 minutes after, good.

The Vice-Chair: You have 12 minutes.

Interjection: Do you want to know how many minutes that is?

Mr Hope: No, no. I'm just curious because Mr Jackson has yielded his time and in a very short time I'm going to be yielding mine, so he better be here to finish his questioning so we can finish this process.

What I'd like to do -- and I'm glad this afternoon I got a chance to reveal the Tory policy and the direction they are going to totally desecrate this ministry. I guess when we deal with estimates, if the Tories ever happen to get in here, we don't have to deal with two pages, because there wouldn't be any other money because they've cut everything else out of the process.

I know Mrs O'Neill's laughing, but I don't have any policies to go after a Liberal government, so it makes it very difficult for me to ask questions about the impacts that the Liberal policy would have on this ministry because they don't have any policy.

I have to go back to the ministry and ask specific questions about some of the things that you're doing in dealing with the estimates. I'm going to focus my attention on the quality-of-life project in the ministry. My basic question is: Why is the ministry doing research on quality of life?

Hon Mr Silipo: We know that a fair amount of work has been done in the past on looking at how to measure the level of quality of care that we provide to people with developmental disabilities. But one of the things that we've learned over the years that we haven't been able to measure well is a distinction between the level of care that we provide and the quality of care and what that means for the quality of life for those individuals with developmental disabilities.

This particular initiative is aimed at, first of all, trying to describe quality-of-life issues, not from our perspective as able-bodied people without disabilities, but indeed trying to look at it very much from the perspective of those who have developmental disabilities and those who live with them and support them, and then to try to ensure that we set that as a standard and that we try to describe that in a useful way.

Everything that we do then, in the system, is geared around trying to meet that standard. We think it will be a very useful indicator and a guide to us in terms of decisions that we will want to continue to make around where to put our resources and how to ensure that our resources are being spent to ensure the highest level of quality of life for people. These are things that those of us who don't have any particular disabilities -- or, at least, visible ones, because I suppose one could argue we all do -- take for granted, but is something that we know is going to be an important aspect of the work. As I mentioned earlier, it's a piece of the work that we're doing in developmental services and will become an important part of the new framework which will be the policy that will guide the ministry over the next number of years in this area.

Mr Hope: We all hear the topics about quality of life is always on everybody's mind, whether it be disabled or physically able bodies that are out there, but why did the ministry develop complete new instruments rather than using the existing method of calculation?

Hon Mr Silipo: Largely because the existing methods -- and Brian Low, who is sitting at the table, could talk much more about this than I am able to -- measured more, as I was saying, issues around level of care, not questions around quality of life, because I don't think there is general agreement yet around how you describe and then measure quality of life. That's the overall objective of this initiative. Brian, do you want to add to that?

Mr Low: I think there's very little to add to what you spoke of. What we have done is look at other jurisdictions, both in Canada, in North America and abroad, and we have found just that: Most of the instruments used measure quality of care. What we are looking at are all aspects of quality of life that would be important to all of us. So it's more than just one particular aspect of quality of life that we will be measuring.

Mr Hope: With those comments around quality of life, how does the quality-of-life project relate to yesterday -- I don't know if you remember. Yesterday I was bringing up about the DS accountability framework process. How does the quality-of-life project relate to the accountability project in its comparator?

Mr Low: As we talked yesterday about accountability, rather than looking just at a program-by-program approach, both of these projects address the developmental services system. So while we will see accountability in how the programs are delivered, one of the measures that is very important is in fact the quality of life for those individuals who are being supported within the community. So with this instrument, it will be one of the measures that we will be able to use to determine if service providers are providing the level of support that improves the quality of life from the viewpoint of those individuals who are being supported.

Mr Hope: Mr Chair, being as Mr Jackson has resumed his position now, I yield the rest of my time and allow Mr Jackson to continue his questioning in 14 minutes.

The Vice-Chair: I'm sorry, Mr Hope, you'll --

Mr Hope: Yield my time and allow Mr Jackson 14 minutes.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Hope; I appreciate it. Mr Jackson, you have 14 minutes to conclude.

Mr Jackson: Thank you, Mr Hope. Minister, I was trying to secure a couple of documents which have been forthcoming from your ministry. I have a document which I receive quite frequently, the closures of non-profit child care centres. I have another series of them with respect to closures of for-profit or commercial centres. I am trying to determine why, with 48 hours' notice, it's impossible to get the same statistics that are being generated, even your last-known entry. These are statistics that you maintain in your office, I suspect.

Hon Mr Silipo: I can only assume, Mr Jackson, that it's because people have tried to get the most up-to-date figures for you. Presumably what you have goes back in time and I'm sure that what you have we could have easily reproduced.

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Mr Jackson: There was a time when these weren't being kept. What the understanding was, and a promise by your government was, that these would be regular reportings. I was getting them for about a year and then they stopped; then I had to revert to the order-paper-question approach. Have you stopped keeping these kinds of stats? Because, if you have, that's a whole other issue, but if you're keeping them, then quite frankly, you're keeping them from me as well.

Ms Roch: Could I just add that I guess we had misunderstood your request for information, Mr Jackson. We were focusing on two pieces of information for you. We were focusing on details that you requested around child care conversion and information on bailouts. We thought you were focusing specifically on the program, the $1.8 million that's being allocated on a yearly basis for bailouts, and that's what we were preparing for you.

Mr Jackson: I should know better. I attempt to table specific questions. You only get exactly what you ask for, nothing more, and it would have been helpful. I did table a series of questions, unless you've not had an occasion to look at those, but I'll move off of that, if I may.

There was considerable discussion about the social assistance rates, and I was very pleased that you were able to give me some numbers that we could all look at and agree on. We know that social assistance rates have received about a 14% or 16% increase in the four years you've been a government, and that surely is leading the country. It has resulted in some substantive costs, obviously, and I wonder, given that we are three quarters of the way through the year, if you already have your quarter stats in terms of your payout on the $6.8 billion. In other words, I don't expect you to have your third-quarter stats, but have you got your first- and second-quarter payout numbers to determine what variances you'd have in terms of your payouts on social assistance in this province?

Hon Mr Silipo: What do we have at this point?

Ms Proctor: We don't. I think we're still behind in terms of the provincial. Do you want to speak to that?

Mr Costante: We will get an audit payout, but that is not always indicative of what the actual trend is, because there is a time lag between municipalities spending the money and billing the ministry and then our checking of that and sending the money to them. So actual spending to date we can likely get. I'm sorry I don't have it here, but it's not a fine indicator, if you will.

Mr Jackson: You still have this. We have not changed the payment and transfer payment methodology, the accounting approach in this province, for several years. Amounts have changed, demand has changed, but the timing by which we make the transfers and to whom we make the transfers have not changed. So you still have year-over-year comparators, and really what I'm asking you is: Are we going to be under or over? Any time I'm considering a ministry, I want to look at its largest single payout, because if there is a variance or even a substantive variance anticipated, clearly that's important information for the estimates committee to know, because if there is an overage you're going to have serious problems; if it's an underage, that's found money.

Can you give us a sense of where you are with your numbers? You have your hard number in your estimates, which is a guesstimate based on the future year's demand, adjusted according to anticipated government policy changes.

Hon Mr Silipo: Mr Jackson, if your question is referring to the kind of forecasting that we have at this point around what we're expecting the situation to be for the balance of this fiscal year, we are working through those numbers now with our colleagues in Finance. As I've indicated in my opening statements and elsewhere, we have seen clearly a reduction in the number of people on social assistance over the last four months. So we have a level of confidence in terms of saying that the amount of money that we expect to spend on social assistance benefits this year will be lower than what we had originally forecast into this year's estimates, but exactly how much that will be we can't tell you with the level of certainty at this point that we would like and perhaps you would like.

There is still some work going on about whether what we see in terms of the drop now reflects a return of the seasonality factor that has been there traditionally and whether we're going to see an increase in the winter months, as we saw prior to the last three years. So that's why. If that's what you're getting at, we will have that information --

Mr Jackson: Do you do it quarterly or monthly?

Hon Mr Silipo: Yes, we will have that information. We don't have it yet. It will probably take us -- my guess is another month to a month and a half to be able to work those through.

Mr Jackson: But are you doing them monthly or quarterly? Because if it's quarterly, we're right in the middle of analysis. If you do it monthly, you can just give me last month's.

Ms Proctor: We work those figures through on a quarterly basis --

Mr Jackson: Okay, that's fine.

Ms Proctor: -- but the cash flow in the first quarter is slow too, so you don't have quite the same picture.

Mr Jackson: Minister, in every category of social assistance we're leading the country, and as I said, that may be seen by some to be significant. Some view it as a testimonial to the sensitivity of society by the total numbers of people that they can provide welfare to. Others, obviously, in other provinces, don't feel that way.

Much has been discussed about what our party's policies would be with respect to social assistance, but you are familiar that we have indicated that for all the FBA matters with respect to the disabled we feel that level is worthy of support and should be protected. Are you familiar with that, when you've read our Common Sense Revolution?

Hon Mr Silipo: It's reassuring to hear you say that again.

Mr Jackson: But you've seen it in print, which is -- right, good.

Mr Hope: What else did you say?

Mr Jackson: Well, no, there is some changing in attitudes.

Mr Hope: Draconian measures will be used.

Mr Jackson: Well, the sole-support parents, predominantly mother-led families, as you are well aware of. We don't disagree then that you would -- when my party and my leader says that's a sufficient level of support --

Mr Hope: I didn't say that.

Mr Jackson: -- and since you're funding at that level, you consider that a defensible level of support.

Hon Mr Silipo: Yes, we do.

Mr Jackson: So we're in agreement with respect to single --

Mr Hope: No, not with his party. It's a totally different philosophy.

Mr Jackson: We're in agreement with --

Mr Hope: Your leader is health and education.

The Vice-Chair: Mr Hope, you're out of order.

Mr Hope: Well, it's important that the facts are being stated before the public and not simply the policy of the Conservative caucus.

The Vice-Chair: Mr Hope, you're out of order.

Mr Jackson: What part do you disagree with your minister on from his response so far, Mr Hope?

Mr Hope: I'm disagreeing with your comments.

Mr Jackson: You're disagreeing with your own minister.

The Vice-Chair: Mr Jackson, would you address your questions to the minister.

Mr Jackson: Thank you. At least he's earning his $9,000 extra money today, $5,000 each interjection.

Hon Mr Silipo: We're all trying to do our job as best we can, Mr Jackson.

Mr Jackson: And so's the Chair, if you'd talk to your assistant.

The area of concern I have is an area of concern that my leader, Mike Harris, has, and apparently so now does your Premier, who on September 3, I guess, to the Empire Club said, and I quote the Premier directly, "Welfare has for some become a permanent source of income and a permanent way of life."

The Premier goes on to say: "That is something that needs to be changed. Welfare should not be a permanent destination." Do you agree with your Premier's statements in this regard?

Hon Mr Silipo: We've always, I think, been consistent in believing that welfare, except for those individuals who require ongoing support, and they tend to be people with disabilities or older people or people in sole-support family situations -- what we all hope happens is that social assistance is seen as a program of last resort.

Mr Jackson: That's not what your Premier is saying. He says that for too long it's been a program as a destination, and he wishes to change that.

Hon Mr Silipo: I think I know what the Premier was talking about, and I think what he was talking about was the fact that we haven't put into the system for many years the kind of emphasis that we need to on retraining and otherwise linking people back to the workforce. That's what we need to do and that's what we are doing through Job Ontario Training and through JobLink.

Mr Jackson: Then the Premier goes on to say, and I'm quoting directly from his speech, "The objective of welfare administrators should be to reduce welfare roles." You concur with that position as well?

Hon Mr Silipo: Absolutely, and again the way in which we think we can most effectively reduce welfare roles is by doing exactly the kinds of things that we're doing through Jobs Ontario Training and through JobLink, which is providing people with opportunities so that they can get jobs and keep jobs. By doing that, we'll make the welfare roles drop.

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Mr Jackson: Do you feel then that when the government says, "Instead of increasing your benefits, we feel that because they're the richest benefits in Canada, any additional income would have to be tied to training, employment, upgrading of some form" for the category here where we're the highest paid in Canada, and North America I'm now told, for able-bodied, single, employable males, for example -- do you not agree with what the Premier said to the Empire Club with respect to that?

Hon Mr Silipo: No. In fairness, Mr Jackson, I think you're misreading into the Premier's statements. The Premier would not have talked about tying the provision of benefits to people being on training programs. What the Premier believes, what I believe and what this government believes, is that if we provide people with those opportunities, they will take advantage of them, and that's exactly what we're doing.

On the whole issue of benefit increases, we haven't increased benefits this year because we think that when we compare what we are providing to the --

Mr Jackson: I didn't ask about increasing them this year. We know the programs you have in place. They're similar to the programs my leader Mike Harris has suggested. We go a little bit further because we say that not all levels should be enriched. In fact --

Hon Mr Silipo: I think you --

Mr Jackson: Sorry, Mr Minister --

The Vice-Chair: You have one minute to conclude.

Mr Jackson: Why I raise the issue is because within the package, we recognize that the savings we can make, particularly from those on social assistance, able-bodied males, particularly the young ones -- that instead of having those high levels, the moneys could be better spent, and we have indicated that half a billion dollars should be put into children's services in this province.

Now, Minister, earlier in these hearings you indicated that you didn't have enough money and you wish you'd had those kinds of additional revenues. I'm simply asking you, Minister, that if Mike Harris was your Premier and you were the social assistance minister of this province, would you see a valuable reassessment --

Interjections.

Mr Jackson: Would you consider it helpful and appropriate to have redirected those kinds of funds to children's services in your ministry, half a billion dollars worth, after many of the concerns being expressed in the last two days about the availability of those funds to meet the needs of those children before they are employable and before they run into the kinds of difficulties they are --

Hon Mr Silipo: I think it's a simplistic solution, Mr Jackson, because I think it ignores the fact that, first of all, when you look -- and you've done a lot during these last two days, and prior, to tell us about how we should be moving closer to some of the things that are happening in Quebec and leaving aside all the things we are doing that actually are reasonably similar.

The rates that are paid out in Quebec are not that different for single employables from what we pay, which indicates that in those two provinces there's a good reason why benefit levels, even for single employables, need to be higher than elsewhere --

Mr Jackson: The biggest boost came because of the provincial election. You know that.

Hon Mr Silipo: -- because of the cost of living. We were talking earlier, I think in your absence, about that, and it's interesting, when you look at the single employable rate, to note that in fact it is the lowest in terms of meeting what Statistics Canada indicates is an acceptable level of income. So that's something that's there.

Now all of that having been said, I would reiterate what I've been saying all along and what I will continue to say, which is that whether it's for single, employable individuals, whether it's for anybody who fits into any of the other categories, what we have to do, as a govern- ment and as a ministry, is to continue to do exactly the kinds of things we have been trying to do and have been doing, which is to put more emphasis on training and other supports that will help people on welfare reconnect back to the workforce. Because that's what people want, that's what people need and that's what our job is to do: to provide those opportunities.

If we do that, we will provide not only the opportunities for those individuals and their families, but we will get the numbers of people on welfare down, which is something that will help all of us as taxpayers.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Minister, for that response. We are now very close to completing nine hours of detailed questions of the Minister of Community and Social Services and his staff. I want to thank the minister for his participation in this committee, as well as committee staff and ministry staff for making themselves available to answer these questions.

We now move to votes on Community and Social Services estimates.

Mr Jackson: Mr Chairman, it's customary to ask if there are any final questions to be tabled, and I wanted to table these two additional --

The Vice-Chair: If you wish to table additional written questions, Mr Jackson, we will receive them at this time.

Hon Mr Silipo: Could I just say, Mr Chair, before you move to the votes, first of all, that we will make sure we proceed to provide answers to those questions that have been tabled as soon as we can and, secondly, that I've appreciated very much the opportunity to be here and discuss these important issues with members of the Legislature.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you, Minister. We now proceed to the votes.

Shall vote 701 carry? Carried.

Shall vote 702 carry? Carried.

Shall the 1994-95 estimates of the Ministry of Community and Social Services carry? Carried.

Shall I report the 1994-95 estimates of the Ministry of Community and Social Services to the House? Agreed.

This concludes today's meeting of the estimates committee. We meet again tomorrow, room 228, for the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, starting at 10 o'clock. This meeting stands adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 1636.