Mr Ted Arnott (Waterloo-Wellington PC)
Mr Marcel Beaubien (Lambton-Kent-Middlesex PC)
Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton West / -Ouest ND)
Mr Doug Galt (Northumberland PC)
Mr Monte Kwinter (York Centre / -Centre L)
Mrs Tina R. Molinari (Thornhill PC)
Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt L)
Substitutions / Membres remplaçants
Mr Gilles Bisson (Timmins-James Bay / -Timmins-Baie James
ND)
Also taking part / Autres participants et
participantes
Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming-Cochrane L)
Clerk / Greffier
Mr Tom Prins
Staff / Personnel
Ms Elaine Campbell, researcher, Research and Information
Services
The committee met at 0904 in the Best Western,
Timmins.
PRE-BUDGET CONSULTATIONS
TIMMINS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
The Chair (Mr Marcel
Beaubien): Good morning everyone. It's 9 o'clock and I'd
like to bring the committee to order this morning. Our first
presenters this morning are representatives from the Timmins
Chamber of Commerce. Could you please step forward and state your
name for the record.
Mr Gilles Bisson
(Timmins-James Bay): Chair, on a point of order while
they're coming up: To the committee members, both the government
and opposition sides, I'd like to welcome you to the city of
Timmins, part of the riding of Timmins-James Bay. I'm sure we're
going to have a varied group of people presenting from different
parts of this particular riding. I look forward to the
presentations, as I'm sure you do.
I want to let you know this
is actually one of our warmer days, so those of you who have been
complaining about the weather, I want you to know that we're
thinking this is kind of warm. You should have been here about a
week ago when it was -40. Anyway, everybody welcome and I hope
you have a good time. If you're around tonight, we can probably
show you around the town.
The Chair:
Thank you very much, Mr Bisson. We have to keep on going on our
travels.
Mr Bisson:
Oh yeah, you just want to get the warmer weather. I know what
you're like.
The Chair:
We'll spend a good day in your kind city today. Thank you very
much for the welcome.
Mr Kirby
Williston: Good morning. My name is Kirby Williston. I'm
first vice-president of the chamber of commerce. With me is our
manager, Keitha Robson-Morrell. Unfortunately our president, Ross
Stringer, is nowhere to be found right now, so I'll step in for
him.
The Chair:
On behalf of the committee, welcome. You have 30 minutes for your
presentation this morning.
Mr
Williston: The chamber of commerce represents a broad
spectrum of the Timmins business community-commercial, industrial
and professional-over 500 large and small businesses in the city.
Since its incorporation in 1949, the chamber has been recognized
as the voice of business for the community.
The chamber is proactive in
voicing our members' concerns with respect to local, provincial
and federal government policy while actively addressing
educational, civic, social and economic issues. It is in that
role that we wish to address you today.
This submission provides an
overview of a number of areas of interest for the Timmins Chamber
of Commerce and its membership. The three categories of priority
to the Timmins Chamber of Commerce are as follows: debt
reduction; investment and infrastructure; and economic
development.
Debt reduction: Eliminating
the debt and getting the fiscal house in order must remain the
number one priority for this government. The Timmins Chamber of
Commerce appreciates the government's early action to pass
balanced budget legislation and thanks the official opposition
for the support of this bill.
Over the last number of years
one of the provincial strategies has been to download certain
costs and responsibilities to the municipalities. Provincial
taxes reduce while municipal taxes increase. This has caused a
reverse taxation situation that is unacceptable to the taxpayer
and boggling to the municipalities as they struggle with their
new responsibilities and funds to provide service.
The Ontario economy is strong
but will not support tax increases. In an attempt to move beyond
debt elimination and move forward to an increasingly competitive
province with surplus budgets, the chamber recommends that no new
spending programs be introduced and that any new initiatives must
be financed with a reallocation of current monies. Business in
this province is continually doing more with less and they expect
the same from this government.
This government has been
credited with education reform and yet four school
boards-separate English, separate French, public English and
public French-exist in our region. One consolidated system would
no doubt reduce administrative costs and funnel more monies where
they belong-in the classroom.
Investment and
infrastructure: Living in northern Ontario, transportation and
communications are essential needs. The Timmins Chamber of
Commerce would like to thank the government for their proactive
approach to highway safety
and the addition of passing lanes on many of the highways that
surround our city.
There are some areas that
need government attention in this budget.
Currently Timmins is faced
with a telephone monopoly situation with both local and
long-distance service. The local service is supplied by Northern
Telephone, a Bell subsidiary, and long distance by ON Tel, an
ONTC subsidiary. Previous application to the CRTC to have Timmins
declared a high-cost service area has been denied. Current
application by Northern Telephone to the CRTC, if successful,
could result in an increase of a minimum of $8 per month, making
the monthly cost for local phone service in the neighborhood of
$28 to $29. This increase does not include a component to lower
the carrier access tariff to a competitive rate to make
long-distance competition a viable reality once the CRTC deems
the area open. These rates are a hindrance to both business
development and retention.
Tourism continues to be a
growth area for northern Ontario, specifically snowmobiling.
There is a need for government structure around this industry
through trail development, equipment and signage. Recently, the
Timmins Chamber of Commerce lobbied MTO to make provision for a
snowmobile crossing lane on the proposed bridge replacement on
the Porcupine River. Their response was that they are not in the
business of making such additions.
0910
Hospital funding and
physician recruitment in this province needs to be addressed. As
employers try to recruit a trained workforce, health care needs
to be accessible and of quality. Physician loss to the US and
non-location in rural settings is a growing concern.
The ONTC continues to
struggle with its operations costs and product mix. Certain
services subsidize others, with the sacrifice being service. The
Timmins chamber feels that a needs assessment must be performed
to ensure the viability of this entity. Business needs to be
competitive, and the ONTC has lost that edge. A restructuring at
all levels is required.
Economic Development: As
discussed previously, the current reverse taxation is causing
municipal tax rates to be unattractive when attracting new
business.
While the unemployment rate
in southern Ontario is currently at 6%, Timmins and many other
northern communities hover at 11.5%. A climate that promotes job
creation in all areas of the province needs to be
established.
The Timmins chamber has been
working on various initiatives that have the potential to bring
economic gain to the region. Believing that Timmins is a regional
hub, the chamber has met with Ron Barbaro, CEO of the OLC, and
has had discussions with DM David Arnoff regarding future casino
development in this province. While we understand that a business
case must be built, opportunities such as this are of great
importance to our area. Included in these opportunities are the
proposed superjail and nuclear waste storage. The Timmins chamber
has made every attempt to ensure that Timmins is in the forefront
in the pursuit of locating these major employment initiatives in
this community.
Employment opportunities are
needed; there is no doubt about that. Our youth are migrating for
their education and are not returning home. Our local community
college has noticed a continual decline in students over the last
number of years. To engage our well-educated youth, our community
must have opportunities for them in their chosen fields. Without
economic growth and new industry development, these opportunities
do not exist and we are left with an aging population.
Our community is currently
driven economically by the resource industries. With a recent
rise in gold prices, Timmins becomes more hopeful that future
exploration will result. This exploration has been reduced to
almost a halt due to slumping gold prices and the lack of
exploration incentives that previously existed. These incentives
are needed to keep mining in Ontario. We recommend that this
government seriously look at implementing an incentive package
that would encourage future exploration in the province of
Ontario. Ontario already lags behind most other provinces that
already offer a more attractive incentive package to encourage
this type of development.
In conclusion, decisions made
by government often tend to leave the north feeling left out,
rejected and unaffected by change. Northern Ontario needs to have
a larger voice and more consideration. A committee reporting to
the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines could be pursued,
with a representative from each of the municipalities. This
advisory committee could address how policy affects northern
Ontario. We feel that this committee would also serve to improve
communications within the northern part of this province.
The Timmins chamber
appreciates this opportunity to present our recommendations to
the standing committee on finance and economic affairs. It is the
hope of the chamber that these recommendations will assist you in
your pre-budget deliberations. Thank you.
The Chair:
We'll continue in the same rotation that we had yesterday. I'll
start with the official opposition. We have approximately six
minutes per caucus.
Mr David Ramsay
(Timiskaming-Cochrane): Thank you very much for your
presentation. To me it's bang on-you've nailed all the
fundamental issues that are very important for economic
development in northeastern Ontario. I represent the neighbouring
riding here, and our issues are very much the same and in fact
overlap many of those that you have brought forward today. One
that is of particular interest to me, that at first glance would
appear to be in the federal jurisdiction, I'm glad you brought
up, because there is an opportunity here for our provincial
government to help with the rebuilding of the telecommunications
system in northeastern Ontario. I think many people in southern
Ontario don't understand that we don't even have the basic tools
to work with in order to create a business and to run a
business.
The telephone issue is one prime issue. There are
7,700 households in the country, right across this country, that
don't have access to a private phone line; 4,850 of them are in
this area right here, most of them in my riding and a lot in this
riding here, under the jurisdiction of Northern Telephone Ltd, as
Kirby had said, a subsidiary of BCE. That's disgraceful. It's not
only disgraceful, it's harmful for our economy.
How can you access the most
modern electronic devices today, let alone not even being able to
have an answering machine, one of the first basic tools that
businesses started to use 20 years ago-a fax machine. Of course,
having your children try to get on to the Internet, not only is
it illegal to do that on a party line, it's downright dangerous,
because if the neighbour has to call an ambulance, you have
locked out that line. It's illegal for a very good reason, except
that's just handcuffing the people in our area from developing
through educational opportunities and certain economic
opportunities.
In our riding, we have a
Timiskaming-Cochrane telecommunications committee that has been
working with all of the telephone company providers, and there
are quite a few of them in this region. We're at the stage now
where the CRTC has responded to this need, has ordered Northern
Telephone to install private-line service within the next three
years, but we are going to the provincial government for some
assistance to help with this, because it's a $25-million
capitalization over three years. In order to keep the phone rates
competitive, we have to have some government assistance for that
capital project. So it's very important. I'd just like to say to
the government members that application is coming, and I really
appreciate, Kirby, that you have brought that up.
I have a few other things,
but I'll defer to my colleague Gerry Phillips because I'm not
sure how much time we have.
Mr Gerry Phillips
(Scarborough-Agincourt): Thank you. I appreciate your
thoughtful presentation. There are many questions I'd like to
ask, but let me start with the implication of a casino. I gather
the chamber has looked at that as an economic-development
activity. One of the things I'm quite interested in is whether
there is a net benefit to a community for a casino and slot
machines, whether the amount of money that comes into the
community is offset by the tremendous amount of money that leaves
a community to go to Queen's Park from slot machines and from
charity casinos, in that the government, just on slot machines
alone, will take in about $500 million to $600 million down at
Queen's Park from various communities. Has the chamber had a
chance to look at the net impact-money in, money out-and
determined that, on balance, you still think it's a good economic
activity for the community?
Mr
Williston: We've looked at a number of communities that
have casinos, and it has all been positive. Today, we have people
leaving this community to go south to casinos, so the money is
going anyway. Queen's Park is getting their percentage, but
they're leaving nothing in Timmins. As a regional centre, we
believe we should house a casino here.
Mr Phillips:
Good. I'd love to see any information you've got on that, by the
way, just because the ones that work really well are at the
border. Windsor and Niagara Falls work extremely well, and I
think 85% or 90% is US money. I'm interested in the impact.
Your first priority fiscally
is debt reduction, as I understand your document. The government
has already indicated its priorities over the next four years,
and that's about $5 billion on tax cuts, about $2.5 billion on
health care and about $500 million a year on debt reduction. So
tax cuts look like they're about 10 times what debt reduction is.
Has the Timmins chamber any views on that as the priority?
Mr
Williston: As we indicated, we see that the province is
doing very well; economically, northern Ontario is not. If the
tax cuts that have been put through so far have benefited the
province, they haven't benefited this part of it. So let's get
the debt down.
Mr Phillips:
That's an interesting proposal. One of your recommendations here
seems to me to be extremely sensible and one that any government
of the day, I would think, would embrace, and that's your last
recommendation on an advisory committee for northern affairs.
Have the collective chambers brought that recommendation to the
minister? I almost think that if I were a minister I would
welcome that recommendation. I wonder if you've had a chance to
advance it to the minister and whether there's been any
response?
0920
Mr
Williston: No, as a group of chambers we haven't done
that. But at our annual general meeting we have a caucus with the
northern chambers, so that will be brought up at that time. This
is a recommendation only from this chamber.
Mr Bisson:
Just a couple of things: First of all, I'm going to start with
your conclusion because I think your conclusion makes a lot of
sense. We need to find some way to increase the voice of the
north within the cabinet, within the Legislature and, more
importantly, even within the bureaucracy of government. The
geography is that there are 10 northern members. As good as we
are or as bad as we are-I think mostly good; I think we've
attracted very good members in northern Ontario, speaking as
one-we're still only 10 of 103. This is just not directed at
Conservatives but the Liberal Peterson government and the Rae
government, to make sure the voice is there. I think your
suggestion is a good one. I would point out, however, that that
did happen. The Peterson government under René Fontaine, who
was the minister of the day, had such an advisory committee and
so did Shelley Martel under the Rae government. That practice was
not carried through with this government and I don't quite know
why.
My only caution to the
government is-I think it's a great idea, I think you should try
to pick up on what the chamber has said here, but I think when
you do it you have to do it also in co-operation with the local
northern members. Too
often in these areas, because there are not the multitude of
provincial offices and all kinds of things to help people, people
end up in the MPP's office for almost everything. Often we're the
people who have the connections with this group over here or this
individual over there, so I think members would be able to play a
role in that. If you do that, don't leave us out of the loop. I
think that would be a wrong-headed thing to do.
The other thing you need to
understand is that the north is very different politically. Not
only did we not elect too many Tories up here, but we tend to be
very non-partisan. Even though I'm a New Democrat-no, seriously,
even though I'm a New Democrat, I know these two individuals. I
don't even know what their political affiliation is. They work
for the chamber of commerce. Normally, in southern Ontario that
would automatically mean to say they're members of the
Conservative Party. Up here I'm not so sure. We tend to be very
non-partisan and we work well. It doesn't matter who the member
is and who the chamber president is; by and large, we all have a
common goal and that's trying to advance the benefit of our
communities and generally the north. The north operates
differently and I think you have to understand that when trying
to put together these committees.
I want to come to the
economic development issues because to me and to you those are
the most important things up here. Everything derives from that,
bar none. The government needs to understand that the mining
industry has been a big part of what this economy is all about.
As of late, we don't see the activity in exploration. That means
to say we don't have geologists and prospectors in the field
looking for new mines, as we've had in the past. To put it
simply, as my friends here know, if you don't have people out in
the field looking for new mines, the mines that are now operating
eventually will come to an end and you won't have anything to
replace them. That is very troubling. In our community, we've
lost two mines in the last year: Detour Lake gold mines up at
Detour Lake, north of here, and the Royal Oak mine. That's a
substantial hit on this community and our region. We've lost
probably 600 direct jobs, and the spinoffs, when you figure that
out, are much higher than that.
The chamber was being very
polite in their presentation here, and I commend them for that
because I don't think we should come here and be confrontational.
They talked about the importance of having incentive programs for
mining exploration. The chamber knows, and I remind the
government, that you eliminated both OMIP, which was to support
exploration in mining in northern Ontario, as well as OPAP, which
supported prospectors. I think the chamber is trying to say in a
very polite way that those were very successful programs that
resulted in the creation of new mines. I, along with them, would
ask the government to look to restoring the budget to help those
along. I had to make that plug because I think those programs are
important. I agree with the chamber.
Now to my question: You get
the same thing as I do. You have people walk into the chamber as
I have people walk into my office who say: "I've got a great
idea. I've got the energy, I've got the vision, but I just can't
get the capital. I go to the bank and the bank says: `That's a
great idea but sorry, we're not going to secure your loan. We
think it's a little bit too risky.'"
What kind of incentive
programs do you think the government should be involved in in
order to assist an entrepreneur in northern Ontario to get that
business up and running? A straight loan? What would you
suggest?
Mr
Williston: I can say that I haven't been approached with
that problem myself, Gilles. I am sure you have.
Mr Bisson:
On numerous occasions. You are polite this morning.
Mr
Williston: No, I'm not normally polite. The chamber
doesn't have a position on that until they go to the table and
talk about it. I cannot give you one.
Mr Bisson:
Do you recommend-because one of the things that used to exist
before was a loan type of program that existed under the northern
heritage fund, where a small industry or business is able to go
and borrow money. It's not grant money, it's money that you
borrow and that you've got to pay back to the government. And
often it's the critical capital that's needed to get the banks
interested. Now, there used to be other programs under NOHFC and
NODC, Northern Ontario Development Corp, that used to do that. I
know of a number of businesses across the north that started up
on those particular programs. Would you be in favour of seeing
the restoration of some type of program that says that if I'm a
small entrepreneur from northern Ontario who wants to get started
and can't get money from the bank, some sort of program be set up
where they can get loan money, maybe at a bit of a higher risk,
get the cash to get that business up and running?
Mr
Williston: Naturally, anything that increases the
business or employment in this area we'd support. Whether it's
loans or grants or whatever, or in conjunction with the federal
program, I can't answer that. I don't have a position on it, but
certainly anything that will put more money out there for
entrepreneurs to start a business we'd support.
Mr Ted Arnott
(Waterloo-Wellington): Thank you very much for your
presentation. On behalf of the government side, I want to say
that we are very happy to be in Timmins. Your basic point is one
we agree with. We want the northern part of Ontario to benefit as
much from the growing economy that we've been fortunate to
experience in recent years in southern Ontario. We want you to
experience that same kind of thing. So I hope that these
deliberations taking place today, and yesterday in Kenora, will
give the government the advice it needs to make changes in its
budgetary policy to support economic development in the
north.
You talked about the
telephone issue, and Mr Ramsay made some very good points as
well. I wanted to ask you if that proposed increase that is now
before the CRTC, resulting
in rates of $28 to $29 for local service, would be a business
line or a residential line?
Mr
Williston: A residential line or any business line that
has less than three lines coming into the business, so if you
have over three lines there's no increase, but less than three
lines you're paying.
Mr Arnott:
So that may become a deterrent to business development. Mr Ramsay
talked about a program that he's supporting. I know there is a
program through the Ministry of Energy, Science and Technology
that has supported some communities in terms of upgrading their
telecommunications infrastructure such that it can be modernized,
and I would hope that the application that would come in would be
supported by the government. I just want to let you know that
we'll try to follow up on that for you. My colleagues have some
questions, so I'm going to pass over the microphone to Mr
Galt.
Mr Doug Galt
(Northumberland): Good morning and thank you for your
presentation. It was very much appreciated. Your comments about
the gold mines: I have a few shares and every time they go down,
the way to recoup is that you're supposed to buy more. It's not
working. Royal Oak dropped off the map unfortunately, one not too
far from here.
Your comments about your
feelings in the north about being left out, being rejected,
unaffected by the change may be a little more than in the rest of
rural Ontario, but that's a general feeling in rural Ontario,
that a lot is occurring in Toronto and in the big centres. It is
a little bit comforting to know that at least unemployment has
dropped some, that there's more employment in the north. Because
there is a boom in some areas of Ontario, at least it's there to
help and be a bit supportive.
The question I wanted to ask
you has to do with northern development and your comments about
an advisory committee. You may be dead on with that, but this is
a ministry that has a cross-functional activity as it looks and
monitors the various silos of activity within the government. Its
real purpose is to monitor what happens in each one and ensure
that the north is looked after. It's been there through all
stripes of government, so this is certainly not a partisan
question but rather, is that ministry effective in what it's
doing? When you're asking for an advisory committee, I'm
beginning to wonder how an advisory committee would fit in with
that ministry. That is its purpose to begin with.
0930
Mr
Williston: Why we would ask for an advisory committee is
because we don't feel we have any voice there when we have issues
such as the spring bear hunt or Lands for Life or Operation
Living Legacy, whatever you want to call it. There's very little
consultation with the northern part of the province, where we're
affected, where we live. We feel that a lot of the decisions are
made by people in the south who don't know this region or what we
represent or what we need to continue on. I guess it's a lack of
input into decisions that affect us. We don't need people from
southern Ontario telling us how we're going to run our operations
up here. Tourism: We need economic development here; we don't
need to say that there are going to be all kinds of tourists up
here. We're a long way away, and we know that. We want input into
decisions that affect us.
Mr Galt:
There's a tremendous amount of raw resources in the north; any
value added would be very helpful. I don't think you're going to
get into big manufacturing, that kind of thing. But if the
government were to move in the direction of this advisory
committee that you're suggesting, how would it be set up? Who
would sit on it? Who would appoint? Would it be councils in the
north? I'm searching.
Mr
Williston: We struggle with that as well. It's not an
easy decision. We indicated that the major municipalities in the
north should be represented on it, the Sudburys, the Sault Ste
Maries.
Mr Galt:
Then would the small municipalities feel like northern Ontario
does towards the rest of Ontario, "We're being left out, and
we're not being considered"? Would they have that same feeling if
you only got appointments from major centres?
Mr
Williston: I believe it would be regional
representation, as we have now, but you'd have the five main
regions.
The Chair:
On behalf of the committee, thank you very much for your
presentation this morning.
COLLECTIF CENTRE DE SANTÉ COMMUNAUTAIRE
FRANCOPHONE DE KAPUSKASING ET RÉGION
The Chair:
The next group this morning, le prochain groupe ce matin, c'est
le Centre de santé communautaire de Kapuskasing et
région. Pour le Journal des débats, pourriez-vous vous
présenter et nous donner votre nom, s'il vous
plaît ?
Mme
Marielle Cousineau : Marielle Cousineau.
Le
Président : Bienvenue.
Mme
Cousineau : Merci et bonjour. Je dois vous dire,
monsieur le Président, que ma présentation durera
peut-être cinq à 10 minutes au plus.
Mr Chair, I'm listed on the
agenda as being a municipal councillor. I am a municipal
councillor; however, I am presenting on behalf of the committee
that's trying to establish a francophone community health centre
in and for Kapuskasing. I'm pleased to have the opportunity to
speak with you on an issue which is important to the constituents
of Kapuskasing and the surrounding communities. I will be
addressing health care issues on behalf of the collective for a
francophone community health centre.
I would like to share with
you that the collective is composed of several members from the
community, persons who are from different walks of life. I have
attached to your document an executive summary of the proposal
which we submitted to the government last April, and in the
presentation that you have you'll see references to that
document. Due to work commitments, the other members of our
committee are unable to attend this forum, so they have asked me to make a
presentation on behalf of the collective and the community.
I should qualify my
presence by telling you that first and foremost I am a member of
the collective which is attempting to establish a francophone
community health centre. I've been working in the health field
for the past 21 years, and more specifically in the field of
addictions. I'm the executive director of North Cochrane
Addiction Services, which is referred to in the proposal and in
the executive summary as the sponsor. This agency is a
transfer-payment agency of the Ministry of Health and Long-Term
Care. And finally, I should add that as a municipal councillor I
chair the health committee of the Kapuskasing municipal
council.
Approximately eight years
ago the community came to terms with the fact that health care,
and I should say primary health care, was practically nonexistent
in our area due to a both chronic and critical shortage of
doctors. While this problem escalated to the point where members
of our community did not have appropriate levels of health care
and consequently feared the health implications, a few members of
our community came up with one solution which it was felt would
to a great extent alleviate some of the problems encountered by
our population and the local health care providers. To this day,
Kapuskasing and the surrounding municipalities are still victims
of this shortage of doctors, and we still believe that a
community health centre would respond to the needs and gaps of
our communities.
Given your role as members
of the provincial Parliament, I am certain that you could have
written my script in regard to the dynamics surrounding the
doctor shortage. This being said, we would like to reiterate to
you how this particular problem is affecting our communities from
a health and financial point of view.
The vision of the
collective would be to provide critically needed primary health
care, health education, illness prevention and health promotion
to special target groups of francophones, namely seniors,
low-income families, men who work in the forestry and natural
resources industry, children and youth. These groups have been
identified for being at a greater risk.
Kapuskasing and area were
officially designated underserviced over a decade ago. Physician
recruitment remains a major concern for our northern communities,
and while serious attempts are being made to recruit and retain
doctors, our municipalities are unable to compete with larger
communities from a financial, recreational and social point of
view.
For many members of our
communities, not having a family doctor or not being able to
access their family doctor is the rule, not the exception. A 1994
study reported that at least 25% of the population did not have
access to a family physician and that a further 25% could not
access physician services in a timely manner. The situation only
worsened after that time. Last year our communities, which have a
total population of 13,500, had five practising family
physicians. Community members regularly report inadequate
after-hours health care, health education, outreach and poor
continuity of care.
This already bad situation
is particularly difficult for our francophone population, who
virtually have no access to primary care services in their
maternal language. If the doctor shortage is perceived as
problematic, let me assure you that the shortage of francophone
doctors is even worse. We have one francophone doctor, who we can
assume will be retiring within the next few years, and one young
francophone doctor who started practising in January of this
year. These two persons cannot answer the needs of a 67%
francophone population.
Coupled with the shortage
of doctors is the fact that members of our community are
inappropriately accessing services. Given the inability to access
primary care services in a timely manner, a significant number of
persons resort to using the emergency room at Sensenbrenner
Hospital. Our study indicates that during a period of 12 months
ending on March 31, 1998, there were 20,665 unscheduled
outpatient visits to the emergency room of the hospital. This
averages two visits per person per year. Ultimately, if you
cannot access a family physician for whatever reason, you may
and/or will need to access hospital emergency services if no
other primary care services are available.
Notwithstanding the fact
that this is an inappropriate use of health care resources, it is
also a very financially taxing venture for our health care
system. We believe that services usually offered in community
health centres could respond to the needs of those seeking
primary care and at the same time prevent some illness by way of
education and health promotion. Consequently, we would benefit
from a better continuum of health care, which ultimately would be
more cost-effective notwithstanding the fact that our local
doctors would not be overwhelmed as they are with their present
workload.
0940
The distinct profile of our
population is another factor which supports the establishment of
a community health centre. A large majority of our population has
behavioural and socio-demographic characteristics that augment
the risk of health problems. These characteristics are better
described as low income, isolation, low education, high
occupational risk and advanced age. According to a Porcupine
Health Unit report on health status done in 1995, the Cochrane
district rates below provincial averages in almost every risk
category. As such, members of our catchment area are more likely
to smoke, drink, suffer from pain and discomfort, report living
in a dysfunctional family, lead a sedentary lifestyle, be
overweight, suffer from respiratory and cardiovascular problems,
have accidents and eat a nutritionally poor diet. This results in
significantly high morbidity, cancer and infant mortality rates
when compared to provincial standards.
We contend that a health
centre with appropriate primary health care services would help
our citizens lead healthier lifestyles and therefore decrease the
rate of health problems in our catchment area.
The project that we
submitted to the Ministry of Health last April included a
comprehensive plan for the delivery of primary health care,
health education and promotion, illness prevention and community
development.
The team would be staffed
by a family physician. We have reason to believe we may be able
to hire a salaried physician without difficulty. Our staff
composition would also include three nurse practitioners, a
registered nurse, a social worker, a health promoter, a community
worker and administrative staff. I would also like to point out
that the existing social service agencies are supportive of our
project and are prepared to co-operate, especially as it relates
to the delivery of services. A typical example could be to have a
prevention worker from the local children's services or again an
addictions counsellor specializing in work with seniors working
on the CHC premises or delivering services in co-operation with
CHC staff.
We know that, health-wise,
a community centre would fill the gaps and enhance our
population's quality of health. We know that, financially
speaking, our proposal saves the system money in the short and
the long term. I think we would all agree that the most important
thing in life is good health. If we do not have that, then we
have nothing. Therefore it would only make sense, when you
deliberate on the priorities of our province, that you conclude
that health matters are a priority and furthermore that
cost-effective health care services must be implemented in our
province.
The Chair:
Merci beaucoup. We have approximately six minutes per caucus, and
I'll start with M. Bisson.
M. Gilles
Bisson : Merci beaucoup, monsieur le
Président. Marielle, merci pour ta présentation.
J'espérais que la présentation aurait pu être
faite en français pour démontrer le fait de la
francophonie dans notre région, mais je comprends que tu as
choisi de la faire en anglais pour t'assurer que les membres du
comité peuvent comprendre ce que vous voulez dire sans
passer par le traducteur.
There are a couple of
things I want to raise that I think are important, if I can have
the attention of you government members for a second, Doug and
Ted. Thank you.
The government members had
the benefit of getting a presentation from this individual, who
is one of the key players in the development of this project. I
just want you to know that this is not a frill or something we
would like to have just because it is a good idea. There is a
real, acute doctor shortage problem in the Kapuskasing area, and
that includes Moonbeam, Fauquier, Mattice, Opasatika and all the
communities between.
What they are proposing, I
think, as you well understand, is a model that could end up
costing the government less money than we are paying now, because
what she is saying is true. We have people who have to run into
emergency wards every time there is something, not because they
want to be there but frankly because there is no other choice.
Just south of Kapuskasing and just north of here is a community
known as Smooth Rock. As Marielle well knows, a community health
care centre was established there, I guess, in René
Fontaine's time, to give you some credit. It is immediately
adjacent to the hospital. They only have one doctor in that
community. If we could get more, that would be really great. What
it allows is to take some of the pressure off that doctor so that
he doesn't burn out, because he has to worry about making sure
that the primary health care is given within the hospital. He's
also the chief of staff and the physician who takes care of
everything. Having it located in the way they did in Smooth Rock
Falls is a really good complement.
I just want to add that one
of the critical things to this is we need the government to move
on the nurse practitioners issue, because in Smooth Rock Falls
they're operating with nurses and they would like to be able to
get nurse practitioners into the system. I know in Kapuskasing
that it's part of the vision to allow nurse practitioners to
practise within the centre. We've recognized nurse practitioners
as a health profession through the Health Professions Act that
was enacted I guess under our government, but the issue that now
remains is that of funding, how we pay for these people and, as a
debate, do we do it out of the OHIP pool or should it be out of
the Ministry of Health budget? I urge the government to really
try to bring to an end this dossier that's been going on for so
long around nurse practitioners, because it would be a really
natural fit with this particular one.
There's one thing maybe you
can expand on. You touched on it somewhat in your presentation,
but I think it's something that needs to be said because it goes
back to the core issue, and that is that the mortality rate in
northern Ontario is higher as compared to the south. About two or
three weeks ago, as my good friend Mr Ramsay would know, there
was a report on the CBC looking at mortality rates across the
province, and northern Ontario stuck out like a sore thumb as
compared to other parts of the province.
Many people in the health
professions field-maybe I can get you to comment on this-start to
recognize that part of the issue, yes, is we tend to have
industries that are harder on people in the sense that working in
a mine is harder on your health than, let's say, working in a
bank on Bay Street. The other issue is, yes, people tend to smoke
more up here.
But one of the big issues
they're starting to recognize is access to health care service,
because often what happens if you live in Timmins or Hearst or
Kap or Moonbeam, if you don't have a doctor to get to, you say:
"Well, I think I'll wait. I'm probably going to be okay-I'm not
feeling so well. Oh, God, it's full blown." Now I've got a
life-threatening disease, where if I had caught it earlier maybe
that particular disease could have been averted.
The second issue is once
you come in to see your doctor, often what ends up happening is
you have to wait an increasingly longer time to get to see our
specialists. As a matter
of fact, this morning my wife is to see a specialist. It has
taken her something like four weeks to get an appointment from
the time that the doctor said, "Hey, we'd better get this
checked," to the point that she was able to get an appointment.
Four weeks was almost record time, considering what the situation
is. So it's a real issue up here. When they come forward and they
talk about the need to put together a health centre, it's looking
at all of that and saying, "We don't have only a problem where
we're burning out our doctors and people can't get access to
services; people are dying a lot quicker."
Part of the speculation,
and it would be interesting to do some really good studies on
this, is that immediate access to health care services seems to
be one concern. Maybe you can comment on that a bit.
Ms
Cousineau: Yes, definitely access is a primary concern,
but just the lack of primary health care, you know, not being
able to access information that would help you prevent illnesses,
is a major concern. Of course, the doctors are not able to
provide us with that information, given that they are so
busy.
I went to my own family
physician, whom I have been seeing for the last 15 years; one day
I went in, I had three problems and he told me I was to discuss
two and then I was out of there. I stayed there for two minutes,
and the funniest thing is you always keep the worst for the last,
so he never did find out what the actual real problem was. It's
that kind of situation that oftentimes people are put in, where
they cannot spend quality time with their physicians because they
are just overworked. We have five family doctors for a population
of 13,500. I believe that the rates usually are one doctor for
2,000 people, supposedly.
Mr Bisson:
Actually, about one for 400 in southern Ontario.
Ms
Cousineau: Well, we're not-
Mr Bisson:
It's just the case.
Mr Galt:
He's wrong.
Mr Bisson:
It wasn't meant as an attack on you, Doug. It's just that those
are the numbers.
The Chair:
I have to go to the government side.
0950
Mrs Tina R.
Molinari (Thornhill): Thank you very much for taking the
time to come this morning and make your presentation. We
certainly feel privileged hearing from you, someone with the
expertise that you have in the health care system.
We've been in the north for
two days now, listening to people from the north with various
issues. It reconfirms for us that one size does not fit all and
there are varying needs in various communities. Certainly every
presentation reconfirms that.
Some of the comments that
you've made with respect to the primary health care-are you
familiar with the pilot project that we have? I believe it's
called primary care reform, where there's a team of doctors in a
clinic, open 24 hours. It's similar to some of the comments
you've made here on the delivery of primary health care, where
you suggest hiring a salaried physician, three nurse
practitioners, a registered nurse, a social worker, a health
promoter, a community worker and administrative staff. It's
similar to that type of idea. Are you familiar at all with the
program?
Ms
Cousineau: I'm quite familiar with community health
centres: the Sandy Hill Community Centre in Ottawa, Somerset
West. I know all these community health centres. I know the
francophone community health centre in Toronto. The model that we
chose is not very different from that one.
Mrs
Molinari: Do I take it from your comments, then, that
you feel that sort of model would work in this community in
northern Ontario?
Ms
Cousineau: Absolutely.
Mrs
Molinari: Thank you. I'll leave some time for my
colleagues as well.
Mr Arnott:
I think you've put together a very compelling case as to why
there is a need for a francophone community health centre in this
area. I should let you know that there are quite a number of
communities that are experiencing a severe shortage of doctors.
In the area I'm privileged to represent, Waterloo-Wellington,
there are a significant number of communities that are
underserved by medical practitioners. So it is a problem across
the province, perhaps with the exception of the city of Toronto.
Many of the southern Ontario communities, even small cities like
Kitchener, have a shortage of doctors. The government recognizes
this and we have over the years put into place a number, of
incentive programs that quite frankly just aren't doing the job
to attract the doctors to the communities we need.
The government is committed
to working with the medical schools and medical students to set
up a program whereby their tuition would be free if they commit
to practising in an underserviced community for, I believe, a
five-year period after graduation. This is a program that the
government is committed to undertaking. I think that will be of
some assistance, although it will take a bit of time to kick in,
where there will actually be doctors in the communities, but I'm
hopeful that it will be a successful program.
Do you think it would be a
positive thing to set up a program like that?
Ms
Cousineau: Absolutely. But I think that only takes care
of part of the problem. Doctors usually don't like to focus on
primary health care. That, I think, is boring to them. They
prefer dealing with more serious illness. They're not into doing
health promotion or prevention, and that's what a health centre
is all about. Hiring a nurse practitioner would, I think, to some
extent take care of some of the gaps that we have. At least we
would have better screening and, therefore, better referral to
doctors when need be.
Ultimately, we're
presenting a project that we feel would answer the needs of the
community. It's not going to take care of all the problems, but I
think it would tremendously help our situation right now. I'm not
just talking about Kapuskasing, but the surrounding communities,
which I think are probably in a worse position than Kapuskasing because they
don't have clinics or doctors.
Mr Arnott:
I presume your proposal is with the Ministry of Health at the
present time.
Ms
Cousineau: It is, yes. It has been sent to Ms Loranger,
who I believe is in charge of the public health branch. I believe
the Honourable Mrs Witmer has a copy also. There are a number of
people who have our proposal.
Mr Arnott:
Now, when would you expect to hear a response?
Ms
Cousineau: Ms Loranger did respond to the mayor of
Kapuskasing and to the president of the community health centre
recently. What they're saying is that they're in the process of
developing a strategic plan, and of course I would imagine are
keeping community health centres in mind. They've been developing
this strategic plan at least since last April, so we certainly
hope that when they are finished with the strategic plan they
will be able to support community health centres, not just for
our area but for the whole province. I think it's a very
cost-effective way of handling some of the health care problems.
Doctors have a special place in our health care system, in
hospitals, but I think community health centres are your most
cost-effective way.
I'd like to remind you, if
I may, that approximately five years ago the Ontario Federation
of Community Mental Health and Addictions Programs related to its
membership, which we are part of, that 0.5% of the health care
budget in Ontario was dedicated to addiction services and I
believe maybe 3% of the health care budget was dedicated to
mental health services. This is peanuts, I would say, compared to
the budget. So I think it would be wise to invest in the
community in terms of health. If we had 10% of the health care
budget, we'd be really happy.
Mr Ramsay:
Thank you very much for your presentation. In fact, I've been
able to have time to go through your proposal, which is most
excellent.
J'ai un centre de
santé communautaire à New Liskeard. It's been very
successful. I'm quite surprised, since your model is very
similar, why the government has not given you approval since
April. What are they saying to you right now as to why this
hasn't been approved to date?
Ms
Cousineau: Like I said, they're working on a strategic
plan and I'm not so sure that they have decided whether they're
going to continue funding a community health centre. I really
don't know the answer to that.
Mr Ramsay:
The Catch-22, though, as you know, is that when the Minister of
Health announced the nurse practitioner program and initially
funded it for $5 million, the hiring of nurse practitioners was
restricted to three specific bodies: native health centres,
community health centres and nursing stations. In my area we only
have one of those and that's the francophone health centre in New
Liskeard, with their satellite in Kirkland Lake. So we have a
program out there, and in our area here we have graduates from
the nurse practitioner programs who can't find employment. While
there is no immediate answer to the doctor shortage situation,
there are people now as nurse practitioners who, as you have
stated, could really help alleviate the problems because now they
have the training and the authority to deal with mothers and
babies and ear infections and can prescribe for simple
infections. So they can do a lot of work and take a lot of that
work off the doctors who, as you have stated, are overworked.
We're kind of in a trap
here. I hope the government will soon make that announcement.
It's frustrating, as we have talked, as you have over the last
year, about the needs up here. Then the minister asked Dr
McKendry to make a report. He submitted his findings in November
and now the minister has formed another committee to look at his
report.
I'm not sure if the
government members understand how bad the health situation is up
here. I was wondering, from your communications with the
ministry, do you have a sense of when you might be getting the
word that either this model or another model would be the model
you could go with to provide primary care in the Kapuskasing
area?
Ms
Cousineau: We did wait after the election, of course,
because there needs to be time for people to settle down or
whatever, but we will start getting very active. This is critical
in our community. We will be talking to Ms Loranger. We will be
talking to the government. This is important. We're not asking
for much; we're just asking that the government help us establish
proper health care services in our community.
In terms of nurse
practitioners, we are aware of the proposal. The collective has
submitted a proposal to hire three nurse practitioners. We would
really like a community health centre but, given that call for
proposals, we did submit for three nurse practitioners, along
with other people in Kapuskasing who I believe have submitted to
hire a nurse practitioner. Hopefully in the near future there
will be announcements that will benefit our community.
1000
Mr Ramsay:
The problem I see with the time the government is taking to try
to find some sort of model is that maybe it ignores a local
solution such as this that I think is appropriate for your area.
I would hope that the ministry would have the flexibility to
really appraise a proposal such as yours to say, "You know, in
Kapuskasing and area this is probably a model that would work,"
because it comes from the local health care practitioners in the
area. It's very comprehensive. What I like about it is that it's
low-cost and that rather than just saying, "We need more doctors;
bring them in"-the highest-cost health care providers-you want to
establish a team of the most appropriate health care providers
for all the various ailments we have. I think it's a great model
and I'd certainly encourage the government to support it.
The Chair:
We have one minute left.
Mr Phillips: I think it is a
terrific model and it's one of the solutions we should be looking
at. I'm going to give more of a statement than a question,
unfortunately. The problem we run into, in my opinion, is that
the Ministry of Health is in a conflict-of-interest position
because they on the one hand are setting health policy and on the
other hand are the insurance company, if you will. What we're
finding is that right now the province pays about 60% of the cost
of health care in Ontario and the private sector pays about 40%,
and that is continuing to shift more to the private sector, less
to the Ministry of Health. So they've got a conflict. They'd like
to move cost off the province on to the private sector.
Second, we still have, to
use the jargon around the ministry, the "silos" where there is a
doctors' budget, there's a hospital budget, there's a drug
budget. Rather than integrating those budgets to what's in the
best interests of the community, we're still faced with that. I'm
just telling you what I think you're running into. I think most
professional people in the health area would say your model is
what we should be looking at-a lot of prevention, a lot of
integrated health care, even a lot of cost control. But I think
we're running into these two things. The Ministry of Health has a
conflict. It would be a bit like the insurance company being able
to essentially dictate who pays the bill-and it won't be them; it
will be somebody else. And we still have those silos.
So I'd urge you to continue
to push your proposal because I do think this could end up being
another one of the successful models we could use elsewhere. But
I think that's the roadblock you're running into.
My apologies for not having
time to ask a question, but more a comment.
Le
Président : Au nom du comité, merci bien
pour votre présentation ce matin.
CITY OF TIMMINS
The Chair:
Our next presenter this morning is the mayor of the city of
Timmins. I'll let the mayor introduce himself. I'm sure he's
quite able to do that. On behalf of the committee, Your Worship,
welcome.
Mr Victor
Power: Thank you very much. My name is Vic Power. I'm
the mayor of the city of Timmins. At this time I might say,
bienvenue à la ville la plus grande, la meilleure et la plus
chaleureuse au Canada.
On behalf of the municipal
council and the residents of the city of Timmins, I extend
greetings and welcome your presence in the city with a heart of
gold.
The concept of a
legislative committee travelling about the province to obtain
opinions is commendable. That you are here as part of the
pre-budget consultation process is even more commendable in this
period of rapid change, escalating costs and downloading by the
two senior levels of government.
I am certain that in its
travels this committee has heard many suggestions, and most of
them will cost the province money. It gives me a great deal of
pleasure to inform you today that I am making a proposal which
will not cost money but rather will reduce demands on the
provincial treasury. This in turn will help the government to
eliminate the budget deficit and continue to provide tax cuts to
all provincial taxpayers.
First, to provide some
background: Successive provincial governments have made it known
that they want more efficiency and cost-saving measures on the
part of municipal governments. From former premiers all the way
to Premier Mike Harris, the message has been, "Put your house in
order before you come pleading poverty to Queen's Park."
Let me assure you that in
Timmins, that message was not only heard but has been acted upon.
This municipality has tackled the tasks of reducing costs and
improving efficiency while balancing the need to maintain, and
even improve, services. I am pleased to inform you that by the
end of this year, Timmins will be debt-free. Perhaps in the
question period we'll have a chance to talk about that.
We have reduced the
municipal payroll, increased services in some areas and kept our
taxes below those in many comparable municipalities. Just as
taxpayers are asking Ottawa and Queen's Park to do more with
less, our taxpayers are watching city hall with a critical eye.
We welcome such scrutiny and the suggestions made by various
groups from within and outside the city.
I am here today to tell you
that to achieve its objectives, Timmins has accepted the theory
of performance management and benchmarking. Both the federal and
provincial governments are insisting that all publicly supported
organizations have a performance measurement framework that also
can be raised for benchmarking as well as for reporting to
stakeholders and taxpayers. The overall intent is to foster
administrative excellence in local government, but the by-product
is cost savings to the municipal taxpayer.
As creations of the
provincial government, municipalities receive a significant
portion of their annual budgets from it. Any savings at the
municipal level are therefore translated into direct savings for
the province. Timmins has been analyzing its operations for years
and through benchmarking will achieve even greater savings and
improved services and efficiencies.
All of which brings me to
the point I wish to make today: There should be an incentive for
municipalities that achieve the standards desired by the
province. These incentives should be monetary in nature and come
from the province. They would achieve two things: urge achieving
municipalities to even higher levels of efficiency and service
and spur municipalities that fail to meet the standards to
improve their operations.
Benchmarking is a method of
measuring a municipal service's process and performance and
systematically comparing them to the performance of other
municipalities to seek best practices. It is a technique for
improving efficiency and effectiveness of work processes that has
been developed and adapted by the private sector, the voluntary
sector and the public sector. By comparing performance measures
and processes, a municipality can increase its awareness of where and why to
improve, what to improve, how it might improve and how much to
improve.
Benchmarking takes time and
resources. A municipality that commits itself to the concept must
make the people available who have the authority to implement
change. They must be the people responsible for the process or
service and must be willing to challenge the agreed-upon common
wisdom. For municipal councils to commit the required time and
resources, they must see benefits beyond those produced
internally.
There are some
municipalities that feel they are doing fine with their present
practices and processes. They don't buy into the need for ongoing
change, evaluation and improved efficiency. The diversity of size
and range of local conditions that municipalities have to contend
with in a province as large as Ontario create excuses for some to
ignore benchmarking or to pay it lip service only. Thus, our
suggestion is that the province provide incentives to those
municipalities that wholeheartedly embrace the philosophy and
meet or exceed the criteria for their population range. Also,
there must be a form of encouragement for those who fail in their
efforts. Providing compensation to municipalities that achieve
the performance measurement standards will not cost money.
Nothing will be paid out until after municipalities have reduced
costs and improved efficiency, thereby reducing their demands
upon the provincial treasury. We urge the province to implement a
system of benchmarking for municipalities that will reward
exceptional performance financially, which will in turn encourage
participation, to the benefit of the taxpayers.
All of this is respectfully
submitted, and we invite your questions.
1010
The Chair:
Thank you very much, Your Worship. We have approximately seven
minutes per caucus, and I'll start with the government side.
Mr Galt:
Thank you for the presentation. How refreshing to have somebody
before us who's not asking for money and various spending
activities, particularly in the north, where we recognize there
are more difficulties. It's similar to rural Ontario; not that
different, but maybe a little more in the extreme.
I love your opening
comments, welcome to "the city with a heart of gold." If the
price goes up, it'll be even more welcoming, won't it?
I'm interested in your
comments. As I sit here and think about what you're saying, it
has an awful lot of merit. I think through probably what the
province and federal governments, governments in general have
been doing, it's been a reverse reward. Those who let their
infrastructure deteriorate-I'm thinking of water and sewers right
now-get so bad they come pleading to the government, "We need
more grants to replace them," and so we reward them for doing a
poor job. What you're saying is, reward those who look after that
infrastructure efficiently and do a good job.
I guess I'm struggling-it's
something like health-to get past this treatment of disease to
have enough dollars for preventative medicine, which probably
would be far more cost-efficient. How do you get past this point
that we're now into of supporting municipalities that are in
trouble and get to the point where you're rewarding them, and not
letting some of them that are in big trouble because of poor
management totally disappear from the scene?
A lot of our municipalities
kept taxes down and they tell us they're the best municipality
going, they've just been doing such a great job. Meanwhile, their
infrastructure is in terrible shape. They kept the taxes down,
and they're very proud of that, but they have a horrendous
infrastructure debt. How do we bridge and get to what you're
suggesting?
Mr Power:
For one thing, you look at their debt load and what they've done
about it. In our case, in 1991, with the inaugural address, I
announced that we would undertake a program to reduce our debt to
zero. At that time our debenture debt was $16 million, and we've
whittled it down to the point where in the year 2000, November 1,
when our final debentures are paid off, we'll be at zero. So I
don't think it takes a forensic accountant or an expert in
business administration to see that this municipality has done
something worthwhile. I think the government should recognize
that and reward those who have done that.
That is not to say that we
haven't made a lot of progress with our infrastructure. If you
drive around the city, you'll see where we have done a lot of
work, notwithstanding the fact that we have a very severe winter,
which you might have noticed this morning. Our costs for
snowplowing and snow removal are just out of sight, but you'll
notice that even on the residential streets the snow is out of
sight too. We have a lot of obstacles to overcome, but we are
overcoming them, and I think we should be rewarded
accordingly.
Mr Galt: A
lot of what you're doing, setting at zero for your debt-as a
province we set the deficit to a zero. That's just sort of
stopping the debt from increasing. My hat's off to you and your
council for having accomplished that, and I hope that because of
that, come the next election, you're rewarded for those efforts.
Certainly they're commendable and that's what all our
municipalities should be working towards.
I think maybe my colleague
has a question.
Mrs
Molinari: It's interesting to hear some of the comments
you've made and some of the recommendations that you're asking
that the province-I wonder if you, as a municipality, have done
any of the things you're asking us to do. I mean things like
rewarding progress within the various departments. Was that
something that you-
Mr Power:
Yes. For a number of years we've had a program whereby if an
employee brings in a positive suggestion that is cost-saving and
efficient, and of course within the boundaries of safety, that
employee is rewarded with a small cash award or other
designations that we
apply to that employee. We have encouraged input from the bottom
up. It's not a top-down exercise.
Mrs
Molinari: I have some experience in that as well. One of
the struggles that I recall going through when we were engaging
in this process was that some of the union groups did not wish to
participate in a board with a large deficit. What we did was call
on all of the employee groups to find savings within their own
departments and ways that they could do that. Of course, we had
incentive programs in place for that too, but we found that there
was some hesitancy in some of the union groups to participate in
it. Did you find any of that?
Mr Power:
We have excellent relations with the union groups, especially
over the past seven years. We did have our problems seven or
eight years ago, but that's behind us. We've moved on and our
relationships are very strong right now. In fact, practically all
of our contracts with our union groups don't expire until some
time in 2001 and with one group, 2003. So I think we've made a
lot of progress. We have a good rapport there.
Mrs
Molinari: I congratulate you on that. If I have time,
just two quick questions: Did you ever run a deficit, and what is
your annual operating budget?
Mr Power:
The city ran a deficit in 1990, I believe, but practically every
year we've had at least a small surplus. I didn't get the last
part of your question.
Mrs
Molinari: Your annual operating budget.
Mr Power:
The annual operating budget is about $67 million, but with
associated boards, it would be more like $90 million.
Mrs
Molinari: Thank you very much, and congratulations on
the progress you've made. I think it's commendable.
Mr Ramsay:
Welcome, Vic. It's always nice to be in your fair city of
Timmins, and you certainly are to be congratulated for the
management system that you have put in place.
I just have one question,
because I know my colleagues have many they would also like to
ask you. I'm wondering how you're doing on handling a lot of the
downloading that has been given to you in this city, especially
the highway system that you have inherited and the eventual
reconstruction of the highway system that you've been given and
how you're planning for that and if you think you'll be able to
handle that when that day comes.
Mr Power:
The only way we'll be able to handle the devolution of the
highways will be with help from the province. In Timmins, as
compared to other northern municipalities-and I can give you
examples-we have been burdened with 88 kilometres of highways
that heretofore we did not have responsibility for. This compares
with other municipalities-I'm talking about the major
municipalities in northern Ontario: Thunder Bay, Sault Ste Marie,
North Bay and Sudbury-that have had either no highways downloaded
or just a very few kilometres. We've had 88 kilometres. This is a
tremendous burden.
The one-shot financing that
we received a few years ago for that is pretty well gone now for
maintenance; a little bit left for capital. But there is no way
that we'll be able to reconstruct and do the capital work on
those highways without an awful lot of help from the province. We
have made representations to the MTO on that, and we're waiting
for a response. Of course, if that response is not what we would
like it to be, we'll have to go to the Ministry of Northern
Development and Mines and see what they can do.
Mr Ramsay:
Thank you, and good luck on that.
Mr Monte Kwinter
(York Centre): Mayor Power, I'm interested in your
model. I'm just curious to know, how would you reconcile the
benchmarking and how would you reconcile the performance
management? I'll give you an example. We were in Kenora
yesterday. They have a very special situation, everybody
acknowledges, which is relatively unique, so their benchmark
would have to be a little bit different. Then you'd have other
municipalities saying, "My performance management criteria should
be different than theirs because of my special situation," which
is one issue I'd like you to address.
The other one is if you're
going to compensate people for meeting their criteria, you're
going to have to announce what that compensation is beforehand.
My concern is that municipalities would look to that as saying,
"We've got to get that and we will revise our particular
performance based on getting that," and they'll just take that in
as their total compensation, whether they merit it or not. Do you
understand what I'm saying?
1020
Mr Power:
I think the first part of the question was how do you compare
Kenora with, say, Kingston or Kingston with Kincardine or
whatever. I realize that every community is different, every
community is unique, but I still think that if municipalities can
show that they are reducing their debt load or have in fact
reduced it to zero, automatically there should be a reward,
because they've done something. Everybody has had huge
obligations that have brought about debentures, but if you've
done something about it, you've proved that you belong in the
21st century, and I think there should be a reward. The second
part of your question I didn't follow. Could I have that again,
please?
Mr
Kwinter: The point I'm making is that you're going to
have to announce what compensation you're going to get if you
meet your target. It would seem to me that many municipalities
could adjust their budgets to make sure that they do get that
compensation. So that in fact it isn't compensation; they just
take it for granted that they're going to get it because they
have that ability to structure their performance and the
reporting of that to make sure they get the compensation.
Mr Power:
You probably have a valid point there, but surely with all the
people in the Ministry of Finance, they should be able to devise
formulas that would work. I can't answer that at this point, but
there have to be people within the Ministry of Finance who could
work out the proper criteria and rewards.
Mr Phillips: I appreciate your
comment on the debt. As you took yours down, the province, since
Mike Harris became Premier, has taken it up 25%. If you add in
Hydro, it was $30 billion. Hopefully your message can get through
to them.
Municipalities now have
assumed social housing and a large part of social assistance.
That's of interest to us, because that was contrary to the
recommendation that Harris got from his own Who Does What
committee. They said, "Don't do that," but he went ahead and did
it anyway. I'm just wondering how Timmins and the neighbouring
communities are managing that so far and is it, as you look down
the road, quite a workable thing and in hindsight you don't see
any difficulties in handling the social assistance, social
housing?
Mr Power:
Mr Phillips, Timmins belongs to the Cochrane DSSAB and we're a
53% shareholder in that entity. The matter of housing has not
been devolved as yet. At the present time, there are three
different housing groups within that DSSAB area, Timmins being of
course the largest. We have the Timmins Housing Authority, which
also administers the Timmins non-profit housing. I might say that
in the past three years we've spent an awful lot of money on
repairing and renovating those buildings. Our buildings are in
very good shape to be devolved to anybody. But the actual
devolution hasn't taken place yet. There are only committees
meeting now to see how that can be brought about, but it remains
to be seen whether that's going to be an improvement or not.
Mr
Phillips: Social assistance, I gather you've worked out
an arrangement-
Mr Power:
Social assistance is working. It was a seamless transfer. It
seems to be working.
Mr
Phillips: Good. So in your opinion, it's not a problem
in putting it on property tax?
Mr Power:
Here we have been assured by the executive director of the DSSAB
that as compared to 1998 there will be no increase to the
municipality in 1999 or 2000. I can't forecast what it's going to
be like in 2010. I might not even be the mayor then.
Mr
Phillips: I thought you were mayor for life.
Mr Bisson:
I want to follow up on that, Vic. Are you running or not?
I want to respond to a
couple of things that members of the government said, not in a
combative way. A comment was made by Mrs Molinari with regard to
the difficulties you had with your board getting the union to
participate in a process to deal with what at that time was a
financial crunch and their unwillingness. The only caution I give
to people who sit on boards is, don't go to them only when times
are tough. For years we've developed relationships at times where
both the employer and the unions sometimes are a bit
confrontational because of past practices, and all of a sudden
things get tough and we say, "Jeez, how come you don't want to
participate with us?" Well, they've had their head bashed in a
few times; they're a little bit leery of getting up there and
being stroked once again. So I think it takes a lot of courage on
both sides, both the employer and the union, to start those kinds
of processes, and sometimes it takes time.
In fairness, in the city of
Timmins I know at one point you had a very difficult time with
one of the particular locals. Vic, you and I were involved in
trying to mediate a solution to that, which finally in the end
worked, but it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of effort
and it means sometimes that we've got to take our lumps on both
sides.
Mr Galt made the
comment-and I just have to react to this-that we're rewarding
municipalities for letting go of their infrastructure by funding
them when they fall apart. Remember, when it comes to sewer and
water, municipal infrastructure by and large was a funding
project of the province, which paid about 80% or 75%, depending
on the programs. It's not that the municipalities let them go;
they just don't have the wherewithal to be able to fund the kinds
of projects that need to be done.
Vic, we've worked on a
number of them-the Aunor, the Delnite and others-where we've gone
out and got some dollars from the province in order to bring
water and sewer up to standard. And I look forward to the Buffalo
Ankerite that's coming on line, that we've been lobbying for for
10 years. So it's not a question of rewarding; it's a question
that the province always played a key role in funding water and
sewer. It's not a question where the municipalities didn't do
their job.
I've got to come back to
your idea because it's an intriguing one, but you need to explain
it a bit more because I think we're having some difficulty on the
committee trying to understand exactly how this would work. I
agree with the concept. You're saying that those people who go
out and do a good job of administering their municipalities
should be rewarded and not penalized-and I think that makes a lot
of sense-and those who are having a problem in being able to make
the kinds of decisions that need to be made to make them
accountable have to be sort of pressured a bit by maybe negative
incentives or whatever it might be. But isn't part of the danger
that if you reward the community to reach their goal and you give
them extra money, it just resets the clock and starts it all over
again, if you follow what I'm getting at?
Mr Power:
Yes, Gilles. By the way, I want to congratulate you. I understand
that you were the star of the show at the Chinese New Year.
Mr Bisson:
I'm not going to get into that. You weren't with me there last
night.
Mr Power:
I want to get back to your question. We're talking fairness here.
I'll give you an example: There are municipalities that have not
done a good job on their landfill and their water and sewage
system. We've done an excellent job on that. So we're not going
there asking for a lot of money for that type of thing, other
than that small project at the Buffalo Ankerite that you
mentioned. We're not going cap in hand. But there are other
municipalities that have neglected these things over the years
and they're the ones that are going cap in hand to the province, and chances are
they're going to get something. So we're saying we've done our
homework, we should get the grades.
Mr Bisson:
But the part I'm having a bit of a problem with is that in the
case of the city of Timmins, yes, you've done a good job in
building up our infrastructure-water, sewer, roads and others-but
that was because this city was successful, because of the work of
the council, the neighbourhood committees, your provincial
members, myself and Alan Pope before, in being able to lobby the
provincial government to give us the dollars, and the
municipality put up its share. I guess that's why I jumped in on
Doug's comments, because in some cases some municipalities have
not been as effective in lobbying the provincial government for
their share of dollars. In fact, I asked last year to get the
Ministry of Transportation's numbers about which communities got
which money last year overall. The city of Timmins got a
disproportionate amount of money as compared to anybody else-I
shouldn't say that-which is good.
Mr Power:
That's the luck of the Irish.
Mr Bisson:
No, it's because you guys are doing your job. I guess the problem
I have is that if we say we're going to give an incentive to
those who reach the benchmark at the end and we give them some
extra money, isn't the danger that they say, "OK, I've got some
extra money. I'm doing really good now. Maybe I can go back to
some of my past practices," and then you've got to start all over
again? Or am I misinterpreting what you're trying to accomplish
here?
Mr Power:
I'll give you an example. When the infrastructure program comes
out, and we expect it will fairly soon, we're going to have our
share from the amount that we don't have to pay off in debentures
any more. That's where our share is going to come from. We don't
have to increase the taxes to participate in the infrastructure
program. We don't have to borrow money. We're just going to take
the amount that we would normally have paid in debentures and use
that for the infrastructure program. So when we go looking for
something, we've done our homework and we should be rewarded. We
shouldn't have to say, "Please help us because we can't
participate in this."
1030
Mr Bisson:
So in fact what you're saying in the case of the city of Timmins,
which has always been a big proponent of building infrastructure,
is that if you're able to come up with your share, because you've
done a good job managing your money, the province or the federal
government should come up with theirs. That's what you're
arguing?
Mr Power:
That's right.
Mr Bisson:
OK, I see; it's not so much on the operational. The other thing
is on the DSSAB issue and the question of welfare. I've got to
put this plug in because my friend Jean-Marie Blier and other
mayors along the Highway 11 corridor would probably slap me if I
didn't make this comment. What's happened with us in the DSSAB is
that the city of Timmins, by and large, has been a fairly good
winner in this because we are the largest municipality in the
area. What's happened is-I think I'm correct in this, Vic-that
from the city's perspective your costs have not gone up in
transferring over to the DSSAB, but in the case of communities
like Hearst and others, they've seen an increase on their overall
costs. So for the city of Timmins, because it was the largest
one, it worked out. I know we're going to get into a bit of a
thing with Vic here, but we do love each other in the end, I just
want you to know.
Mr Power:
Well, Mr Bisson, no municipality lost anything because of
anything the city of Timmins did or did not do.
Mr Bisson:
No, it's not a question of what you didn't do.
Mr Power:
I re-enforced that at the last DSSAB meeting.
Mr Bisson:
No, I don't mean that as an us-against-them thing. I just think
the reality is that once you do these kinds of amalgamations
across districts like ours-and I think, Ted, you understand what
I'm getting at; you represent a similar type of riding with both
rural and municipal-the smaller communities end up being a bit on
the losing end of those kinds of deals because things tend to
gravitate more towards the larger urban areas. On behalf of those
communities, I think it's just fair that I point that out.
Mr Power:
We don't mind you pointing that out, but I want to emphasize that
the city of Timmins did not gain because other people had to pay
more. Perhaps the reason they have to pay more is that they
weren't providing as much in services previously, but we won't go
into that right now. We don't want to see them penalized, of
course. We supported a resolution where they asked that their CRF
look after whatever their increase is. We supported that, but we
don't want to be penalized because we have done our job.
The Chair:
Your Worship, on behalf of the committee, thank you very much for
your presentation this morning.
UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA
The Chair:
Our next presenter this morning is the United Steelworkers of
America. Could you please come forward and state your name for
the record.
Mr Jim
Kmit: My name is Jim Kmit. I'm the staff representative
for the United Steelworkers of America for Timmins and the
Kirkland Lake area.
The Chair:
Welcome on behalf of the committee. You have 30 minutes for your
presentation this morning.
Mr Kmit: I
come before you today to speak to you on the effect of the
closure of the Pamour and Nighthawk mine sites here in
Timmins.
First, let me give you a
bit of history. The Pamour ore body was first staked in 1909 but
for a number of reasons was not developed. In 1936, Noranda Mines
Ltd opened the Pamour location and in the mid-1980s began work on
a property off Nighthawk
Lake. In 1988 the mines were purchased by Giant Yellowknife Mines
Ltd and in 1991 Peggy Witte merged all of the mine locations into
one, naming it Royal Oak Mines Inc.
The list of mines here in
Timmins included Pamour, Nighthawk, McIntyre, Hollinger, Delnite,
Aunor and Hallnor. My understanding is that Kinross Gold now owns
all of these mines as part of their purchase which took place in
1999.
Pamour mine, Nighthawk mine
and the mill were operated by Royal Oak Mines. This company was
headed up by Ms Peggy Witte, who was the CEO of the company. My
presentation to you will deal with the effects on people and the
community when a major mining company is allowed to leave without
any responsibility to those workers and to the community.
At the time the company was
put into receivership, in the spring of 1999, there were
approximately 250 individuals employed here in Timmins.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the company appointed to oversee the two
mine sites and the mill, indicated that they would live up to the
existing collective agreement and continue to operate the mine.
They in fact did not continue to fund the existing pension plan,
and the plan became underfunded. The issue of the pension is now
being dealt with by our legal department.
What I believe must happen
in these situations is that the Ontario government must pass laws
in this province that stop companies like Royal Oak from
destroying workers' pension plans. The laws in this province must
be changed so that the pension plans are funded up front and/or
companies must be legislated to put monies away to be sure
workers are not shortchanged on monies owed to them from existing
pension plans.
Ms Peggy Witte was allowed
to rape the mines here in Timmins, take the profits and invest
them in her projects in British Columbia and leave the workers
with nothing. In addition, a short time after she and her company
filed for bankruptcy, she became CEO of another mining company in
the United States. So what occurs is that the workers and the
community of Timmins get nothing and she continues to live a life
of riches. Only a change in laws will stop this type of
injustice. In addition to the pension issue, when the mines and
mill closed, the workers received no severance and no termination
pay. Again, only changes in the law will stop this type of
injustice.
Companies should be made,
by law, to set aside monies made in good times so that when
situations such as what happened to Royal Oak occur, the
severance and termination monies are in accounts and can be paid
to the workers. In early 1990, the NDP government created the
employee wage protection plan. In two steps the Tory government
eliminated this program, under Bill 7 in 1995 and Bill 131 in
1997.
In addition, Royal Oak
walks away from what I consider an environmental disaster. They,
along with their predecessor companies, operate mines in the
community and leave the environmental issues to the community and
to the government, to pay for those disasters they left behind.
Law changes, again, are the only way to stop these companies from
raping the land, making big profits and leaving an environmental
mess for the taxpayers to take care of.
The government of this
province must act immediately to pass laws that guarantee that
companies like Royal Oak and people like Peggy Witte are held
responsible to workers and communities for issues like pensions,
severance pay, termination pay and environmental issues. I would
ask your committee to take our message back to Premier Harris,
that he immediately begin to draft new legislation to protect
workers and communities from the injustice created by Peggy Witte
and the Royal Oaks of this province and country. We would ask
that he pass legislation to make all companies responsible for
the issues that I have raised before you today. We would ask that
he assure us as taxpayers that we no longer will have to foot the
bill for these companies.
Presently, the vast
majority of workers from Royal Oak are collecting EI, with very
little hope of getting a decent job here in the community. Many
of them have had to sell their precious possessions that they
spent a lifetime to acquire. I'm sure Peggy Witte still has her
big yacht and her personal items such as her homes and cottages.
Why should she be allowed to keep these items and continue to
live a life of luxury while the workers who made her rich have to
sell off their possessions in order to just live? Why should
taxpayers like you and me have to pay for her mistakes? Why
should we have to foot the bill for the environmental mess she
left behind?
When the company Royal Oak
Mines Inc was making money, they should, by law, have had to put
some away for the workers and the community. Please change the
laws and stop this injustice.
I thank you for the
opportunity to speak to you today.
1040
The Chair:
We have approximately seven minutes per caucus. I'll start with
the official opposition.
Mr
Kwinter: I want to thank you for your presentation. I'm
just curious. In your presentation you say that this site is now
owned by Kinross Gold, is that correct?
Mr Kmit:
That's my understanding. My understanding is that Kinross Gold
purchased the sites, and included in those sites were all of the
mine sites that I mentioned. They did so for approximately $5
million near the end of last year.
Mr
Kwinter: Does the principle of successor rights not hold
that they are responsible for any of the labour contracts and
things of that kind when they purchase it?
Mr Kmit:
I'm not a lawyer, but I can tell you that the Ontario Labour
Relations Act does in fact say that we have successor rights.
Whether those successor rights include all of the workers who
were working there at that time-the successor rights, from my
understanding, and again, I'm not a lawyer, are that the union
represents anyone who works at that site. Whether that guarantees
that the 200 members who were steelworkers working at those sites are the same 200 who
will be there is a question that I'm not sure I know the answer
to.
Mr
Kwinter: Is Kinross actually operating these mines?
Mr Kmit:
Not at the present moment. Kinross has said through the media-and
I have meetings set up with Kinross on the 21st and 22nd of this
month, because I've indicated to them that I want to sit and talk
to them-that they probably wouldn't open the mine sites until the
price of gold is somewhat higher than what it is.
Mr
Kwinter: Could you also tell me about the environmental
issue? I know that mining companies have to set aside funds, when
they're through at a site, to rehabilitate it. Is that the
issue?
Mr Kmit:
The issue on the environment is, we probably don't know what all
the environmental damage is, but all you've got to do is drive
around this city and look at the open holes. Take a ride out to
the golf course and be careful you don't step into one. Take a
ride into Schumacher. The highway was closed for a long period of
time because of the cave-ins. That's all part of the
environmental issue, and God knows what else is happening under
there. We don't know, and she isn't about to spend her money to
find out. She's left the country.
Mr
Phillips: You have your finger on a key issue, and
obviously a very important one and one of the more dramatic ones,
because it changes people's lives forever. It's something we have
to think about. When the economy is growing, there are fewer of
these things. When the economy turns down, there are a lot more
of them.
Just to get myself clear on
this, the reason that the employees were not paid their
termination or their severance pay was that the company declared
bankruptcy? Is that what happened?
Mr Kmit:
That's right.
Mr
Phillips: And you were left high and dry.
Mr Kmit:
Everyone was left high and dry-the workers, the community,
everyone.
Mr
Phillips: As you point out, that's the fallout you now
have because of the change in the law. Formerly there was money
set aside for people like yourselves or your members where a
company declares bankruptcy, because you're the ones who probably
have the most direct, immediate impact. But the law was changed
in 1995 and, as you point out, updated in 1997 or so. Previously,
under the old law, if a company declared bankruptcy, your members
would have been entitled to a formula, I think, on severance pay.
Is that correct?
Mr Kmit:
That's right.
Mr
Phillips: What might that have provided to your members?
Have you any idea?
Mr Kmit: I
have no idea how much money that would have been. I'm sure it
didn't set them up for life. I'm sure it was a limited amount of
money, probably, and I'm only guessing, in the vicinity of $2,000
or $2,500.
Mr
Phillips: It was several weeks' pay. As I think you've
pointed out, this will be an issue not just for the mining
community but for other communities in the future.
On the pension one, what
happened there? I would have thought that was one area where your
members would have been protected.
Mr Kmit:
There is some protection. Right now our legal department is
handling the whole issue about pension, severance and
termination. Where they are with that presently-they're handling
that. Like I said, I'm not a lawyer. I think that's the only way
you can handle these situations.
My point is, when these
companies are making big dollars-and she was making big money,
and investing it all in another mine in British Columbia-she
should have had to put part of that money away for issues like
severance and termination, and especially issues like the pension
plan. The pension plan, from what I understand, was underfunded
to a small degree prior to PricewaterhouseCoopers taking over in
April, and then PricewaterhouseCoopers just let it continue not
to be funded. Therefore the amounts of money in there are way
underfunded from what they should be, and a lot of companies in
fact do that.
I know that International
Nickel-"International Nickel"; I guess I worked for them too
long-Inco in fact funds its pension up front. I think all
companies should have to do that. When we sit down and negotiate
a pension plan, they should have to put the monies up front, not
take that money and invest it in some mine in British Columbia
that didn't work anyway. That money should stay in the community
and should stay in the workers' pockets and be put away. When a
company like that goes bankrupt-I mean, she walks away from a
bankruptcy-I've got to be careful I don't get too emotional here.
She walks away from this and within three months is sitting as
the CEO of another mining company in the United States. All you
had to do was read the article: She's going to save this mining
company. I don't know how the hell she's going to save anything.
She made one hell of a mess of this one.
The Vice-Chair (Mr
Doug Galt): Thank you very much. We need to move on to
the next party, but just before I do I'd like to read a statement
to you, for your protection.
"While members enjoy
parliamentary privileges and certain protections pursuant to the
Legislative Assembly Act, it is unclear whether or not these
privileges and protections extend to witnesses who appear before
committees."
For example, it may very
well be that the testimony that you have given or are about to
give could be used against you in legal proceedings. I caution
you to take this into consideration when making comments, because
this is indeed all recorded in Hansard.
I'll move on to the third
party.
Mr Kmit:
Just to comment on that, I was raised in Burwash, so I spent 20
years there. If you don't know what Burwash was, it was a prison
farm south of Sudbury. So that doesn't bother me.
Mr Bisson: In my years on
committee, I've never heard a Chair actually read that off to a
presenter. I just wonder what the heck that was all about. None
the less, I'm not to going to speculate.
I want people, especially
on the government side, to understand what the issue is here.
This community, the city of Timmins and northeastern Ontario, by
and large benefited greatly by way of the mining industry. We
have a lot of good operators out there, and I think Jim
understands that. We have people out here who run good mines, who
take seriously their responsibilities, both to workers and the
environment. But every now and then we get a bad apple, and Peggy
Witte was one bad apple. Parliamentary immunity or not, I would
say that outside this room.
What has happened in this
case is that she took a profitable operation and basically said,
"I'm not going to reinvest any money into it over a period of
years to keep the plant up and running." She didn't spend the
kind of money she had to in exploration; she didn't spend the
kind of money she had to to keep the plant operating, with the
equipment in good repair; and she took whatever cash she could
out of that company in order to speculate and eventually build
what was the Kemess mine and some other ventures she had outside
of Ontario.
I for one as an Ontarian
say, "Yes, I understand in Canada we have a right, and that's
protected by the Constitution, and rightfully so, to move capital
across our borders within Canada from one province to the other."
But the issue becomes that if you're taking money out of
resources that are in Ontario without safeguards as to what
happens to those communities that you're taking the resources out
of, that's counterproductive to our province. What happened in
this case was she really did a number on this mine. I would
speculate that this mine could still be operating with fiscally
prudent management. Unfortunately, because of what's happened in
this particular situation, we've got 250 people in our community
who are no longer employed and the spinoffs from that are quite
disastrous.
1050
I just want to say to this
committee that I know most of these people on a first-name basis.
I used to work at this particular mine. That's where I'm out of,
the McIntyre mine, which was the former Noranda Pamour group. I
have a bit of a unique relationship with the workers because I
know most of them on a first-name basis.
There is not a week that
goes by that I don't get calls at home-in fact, two nights ago a
guy I used to work with came by my door-and I hear the stories of
what's happened to these people. They have lost all their
severance pay; they have lost all money that's owed to them by
way of wages, in excess of $30,000 per employee. This particular
guy who came to see me ended up selling his cottage. For 10 years
this guy, with his family, tried to build a cottage so they can
have a retirement home when they get older. The family has fallen
apart. They've had to sell their assets. He's struggling to find
work. He works a little bit for contractors as time goes by, but
really wonders what's going to happen when his EI runs out,
because he's not able to find permanent work.
I got a phone call on a
Saturday night at 10:30 from one individual Jim knows, because I
called him about it, where the woman was in tears as she called
me and said:
"My father told me when I
was growing up that when he was a young man looking for work, he
used to have to line up at the Hollinger and the McIntyre, hoping
he could get a job in the morning during the Depression. I never
thought I'd see the day, but that's what my husband now does
every day. He goes out the door and he's knocking at everybody's
door trying to find work so he can provide for our family."
Nobody wants to hire him.
He's been in one place for over 25 years and has no papers to
show for it. He's a competent, good worker, but no papers; a
little bit older. He's been banged up somewhat by the
industry-you know, it's the nature of the beast-and nobody wants
to hire him. These are real stories.
I think what Jim is saying
and what I want to echo is that we need to put safeguards in
place that say that in cases where these kinds of atrocities
happen, funds are set aside to ensure that the workers and the
communities are not left high and dry. For example, under
previous governments-it was started by the Liberal government and
it was enacted and put together by us-the mine closure plan was
put under the Ministry of Mines. In fact, Monte, I think you were
minister at one point through that. The idea was that mines would
set aside part of their profits so that in the event they close
and go bankrupt, there is some money set aside so we can go back
and fix the environmental problems that we may have. Now your
government has come along, by way of regulation, and stripped
that back greatly.
Our community is paying for
that because we've got mines that didn't have closure plans. What
happened in his case, at Royal Oak, is by the time the
legislation was enacted and put in place and the deadline came
for the company to put in their mine closure plan, Royal Oak
never did it. They never did what they were supposed to do, and
your government, from 1995 on, didn't take any action. I don't
want to throw stones, but we need to have laws that address this
kind of stuff, and I think we need to look at set-aside funds for
the cases of employment severance and stuff. I don't know how you
do that, because I'm sure we'll hear from the mine managers in
the next presentation about how that would be counter to good
business practices. But I think we have to challenge ourselves to
do the best thing, and that is to make sure that our communities
and our workers and the businesses that do business with these
people are not left high and dry.
On the issue of pensions, I
just want to say that I get the calls, like I said, on a regular
basis, where people who have worked there for 20 or 25 years are
really worried about what's going to happen when they retire. I
would make the plea that we need to move to some sort of portable pension system. If
there is an adequate pension within a company, we'd have to have
some sort of portable system that people are able to carry with
them from employer to employer. Long gone are the days when we
grew up and said, "One day I'm going to get a job at McIntyre and
I've got a job for life." That's how I grew up. That's what we
were expecting. Nowadays, young people going into the
workforce-God, if they can get work for two years, they're happy.
If they can get a job for six months sometimes they're happy. So
we need to re-look at how we do things in today's context and
have some sort of portable pension system that workers, employers
and maybe the government pays into to make sure we have those
retirement incomes for when people need to retire.
Jim, I know that you
continue on. I'm just wondering one thing, though. Where are you
now in regard to the severance issue? Are there any new
developments?
Mr Kmit:
Nothing new on the severance or the termination, Gilles, as of
this morning.
Mr Arnott:
Thank you very much for your presentation. You have very
eloquently expressed the nature of your concern and I think
you've represented your members very well in this. Certainly,
speaking for myself personally, I would empathize with the plight
of the 250 workers and their families and the community for this
loss of jobs. There's no question that it creates a tremendous
amount of disruption. We would hope that there should be
government programs to assist with retraining and so forth. I
would hope that there was some assistance from the provincial
government in that respect. I would think there ought to have
been.
I want to explore further
the pension issue. You've indicated here that the company went
into receivership in the spring of 1999. I was aware of that, but
I assume that the company's difficulties were also partially as a
result of the drop in precious metal prices, to some degree, that
would have made some of their mines uneconomic. But certainly
that's small comfort to the people who have lost their jobs.
You said that the pension
has been underfunded somehow. Was the company making its required
contributions up until that time, up until its serious financial
difficulty, when it hit the wall?
Mr Kmit:
My understanding is that, prior to it going into receivership,
she in fact was already underfunding it. Then after
PricewaterhouseCoopers took over and ran the receivership part of
it, they didn't put anything into it. So it just became that much
more underfunded. That issue, and I do say it in my presentation,
is being dealt with by our legal department in Toronto. As of
this morning, there is no update I can give you on that. I can
give you our lawyer's name if you want to talk to him. His name
is Rob Healey. He is our legal counsel in our Toronto office. He
is taking care of that aspect of it. As I like to say to my
members sometimes, that's way over my head. I got kicked out of
kindergarten for not shaving.
Mr Arnott:
Not only that, but members of the Legislature have to tread very
carefully when it comes to legal issues. If there's legal action
contemplated or pending, members of the Legislature really
shouldn't be making comments on it or getting involved in it. I
think the caution that the Chairman gave you today was in your
own interest, to try and make sure that you understood the
situation.
I think you've made a good
presentation. Members of the government will reflect upon your
comments. I'm sure the finance minister will be very interested
in what you've had to say today.
The Chair:
Any other questions on the government side?
Mr Galt:
If I may, Mr Chair. Thanks for the presentation. On the
environmental issue, certainly we've come a long way
environmentally. Some of the things you've referred to are
long-standing environmental issues. I think of the days when they
used to pile the ore on the logs around Sudbury and smelter it
that way-
Mr Kmit:
You're really showing your age now, I'll tell you.
Mr Galt:
You had to follow a rope to find your house, was sort of the
story they told. So we've come a long way. There are still holes.
Today we're supposed to put gravel pits back with topsoil to take
them back to a reasonable appearance, and similarly with mines.
This one in particular-what is the environmental damage that they
walked away from? Is there a lot of acid material? Is it sulphur
that's in the air?
Mr Kmit: I
guess the most obvious one-and you can talk to anybody who lives
in the city of Timmins-is the cave-in issue. Right now we have a
golf course that's caving in. We had a street in the community of
Schumacher that was caving in. They've now had to hire a company
to come up and drill holes, and I don't know what the end result
of that is. Maybe Mayor Power can tell you more than I can.
Who paid for that? You know
who paid for that: you and I. That's who paid for that, and we
didn't do that. That was done by the mining company. Why should
we have to pay for that? If monies were set aside for those types
of things, they'd be paying for it. They're the ones who made the
profit. You and I didn't, as taxpayers. We didn't make any
profit. They made the profit. But they can do whatever they want
with their profits, and all I'm saying is, take part of that
profit, when they're in good shape.
Yes, the price of gold had
some impact on it. But one thing about mining is, if you don't do
exploration, you won't continue to mine. So you have to reinvest
money back into your mine to continue to operate that mine. That
wasn't done. So even though the price of gold, yes, had some
impact on it, it was the fact that there was absolutely no
drilling done to find more gold and all of the monies that were
made at the two mine sites were shipped to BC for Kemess.
That is a direct hit on the
workers and the community. It was the community of Timmins where
the mine sites were. Why should she be able to take all that
money out of here and put it somewhere else and have nothing left
here for the community
or the workers? I don't know who paid for the drilling-I'm sure
Vic Power can tell you-but I think it was the government.
The Chair:
On behalf of the committee, thank you very much for your
presentation this morning.
1100
PORCUPINE MINE MANAGERS' ASSOCIATION
The Chair:
Our next presenters are representatives from the Porcupine Mine
Managers' Association. Could you come forward and state your name
for the record, please?
Mr Dan
Gignac: My name is Dan Gignac, and I'm representing the
Porcupine Mine Managers' Association.
The Chair:
On behalf of the committee, welcome. You have 30 minutes.
Mr Gignac:
Thank you very much. I don't think I'll take that long.
The Chair:
I'm sure you'll be asked a few questions.
Mr Gignac:
That's possible.
Mr Chairman, honourable
members of Parliament, distinguished guests and ladies and
gentlemen, as I said earlier, my name is Dan Gignac and I wish to
speak today on behalf of the Porcupine Mine Managers'
Association.
There are four main areas
I'd like to discuss. They include employment, taxation,
exploration and electricity. The provincial government can play a
definite role in overcoming certain barriers to investment and
can contribute to the prosperity of our industry and its
stakeholders. Failing to address our concerns will only
accelerate the decline of our industry in this country. Your
attention and consideration to the points I am about to present
is required so that our message is understood and seriously
considered by you and other elected officials at Queen's
Park.
On the employment side, the
Porcupine Mine Managers' Association is comprised of individuals
representing seven or so Canadian mining companies whose combined
local operations directly employ about 3,000 highly skilled men
and women. For those of you who may not know this, each direct
job created by a local mining operation in turn creates another
three spinoff jobs in the service sector. Therefore, in the
Timmins area alone almost 12,000 people owe their livelihoods
either in whole or in part to the mining industry.
At the provincial level
this represents almost 107,000 people. Let me put this into some
sort of financial and economic terms since it is the theme of
this discussion. In northeastern Ontario approximately $1.2
billion per year is paid in the form of wages, salaries and
benefits to mine workers. This represents 75% of the entire $1.7
billion spent by all mines in Ontario. In 1997 the average wages
and salaries for an employee exceeded $60,000. So from the
perspective of provincial income tax as well as a goods and
services tax, revenues from these high-paying jobs represent a
significant contribution to the provincial coffers, a natural
flow into the next topic, which deals with the taxation
issues.
The Ontario mining industry
contributes approximately $1.5 billion annually to government
revenues. Only mining companies pay a thing called the Ontario
mining tax, which currently stands at 20%. A promise had been
made to consider tax relief for the mining sector by the
government when the budget was, so-called, to be balanced.
Since that statement was
made, a comparative tax review task force has compared taxes paid
in six mining jurisdictions around the world, including the US,
Australia and elsewhere. They find that the average corporate tax
rate in Ontario is 45%, which compares quite negatively to those
outside Ontario that stand at between 30% and 35%. The main
reason for this difference lies within the uncompetitive Ontario
mining tax. We recommend that the tax be reduced to 12%, which is
essentially the same percentage rate as is paid in Quebec. The
impact this tax burden has on our industry is manifested in the
reduced return on investment and unfavourable fiscal environment
basically for a high-risk, capital-intensive industry such as
mining.
On the exploration side of
things, Canadian mines compete on global markets for payment for
their products. We're very fortunate to be blessed in this
province with some of the most prospective rock formations and
mineral potential in the world. A barometer for the condition of
the industry has always been the amount of exploration activity
and expenditures across the country. The higher the activity and
expenditure levels, the better the health of the industry, and
the better the chances also of finding and developing a new
mineral deposit. Between 1996 and 1998, however, Ontario mineral
exploration fell from $195 million and leading the country to
$124 million and second to the province of Quebec. This $70
million represents a 36% decline in investment.
From discovery to
production, a newly discovered mineral deposit may take five to
10 years, or even longer, to have a mine built on it. An
investment of several hundreds of millions of dollars is then
required.
Access to lands is another
key issue to the success of exploration. Under Operation Living
Legacy, we recently saw the creation of 64 new parks and
conservation reserves. We feel that inadequate attention was
given to the mineral potential of these sites before they were
removed from exploration. In fact, the entire process was
uncharacteristically fast for government, and it is felt that
some very vocal special interest groups helped fast-track the
cause. The mining industry supports the Living Legacy initiative
but feels we must maintain the right to be part of the process to
properly evaluate the potential of these lands which are so
important to our future.
Electricity is another area
of concern. Mining operations spend about $250 million per year
on electricity in this province. In fact, my company,
Falconbridge Ltd, is Ontario Hydro's largest single customer,
spending approximately $109 million annually. Ontario has the
second-highest
industrial rate in the country for electricity. The current
freeze on rates is certainly helpful.
The move to a competitive
electricity market, in theory, is welcome to industry, but
conditions for a competitive market do not exist at this time.
Ontario is the only jurisdiction in the world to not split up the
generating monopoly and advocate gross versus net load billings.
These factors discourage new investment in generating capacity.
Ontario Power Generation is using its market dominance and in
fact has confirmed the spectre of rate increases. There is a
definite need for a genuine competitive market to be created and
the elimination of the generation monopoly.
In conclusion, and how the
governments can help, the recession over the past few years, as
well as the collapse in Asian and European markets, has had a
significant negative impact on the operations and the sales price
for our commodities. Metal prices, though some have recently
posted some modest improvements, continue to be volatile; in
fact, over the past year, they have reached lows unseen for
decades. Copper and gold will probably never again see the prices
realized in the mid-1990s. These global economic realities we
reluctantly accept as the cost of doing business.
Government has shown,
however, a willingness to help. We are appreciative of the
legislation presented recently regarding property tax treatment
of vacant land and facilities. Also the 1999 Ontario Economic
Outlook and Fiscal Review contains a lot of good news such as the
promise of tax reductions; the elimination or the cutting of red
tape; moving toward a balanced budget; and the outlook for
economic growth, employment, investment and inflation is
good.
Mining is the main economic
engine for 50 communities in Ontario. It's a wealth-creating,
high-tech, high-productivity-in fact it's two times that of
manufacturing-and value-added industry. We continue to invest
significantly in employee training, safety, environmental
protection and research and development. Unfortunately, the
government's reluctance to act on taxation inequities and
continued adherence to vocal southern special interest groups
risks causing even further long-lasting damage to the
industry.
Thank you for taking the
time to consider these points. We, the miners of Ontario, offer
our best wishes in your efforts to build a responsible budget
that will help improve our industry and ultimately the quality of
life for all Ontarians.
1110
The Chair:
Thank you very much for your presentation. We have approximately
seven minutes per caucus.
Mr Bisson:
Your presentation, Daniel, was quite good, actually. I think it
touches on a number of issues.
Let me say outright that
I'm not only a northerner but a former employee of the mining
industry-the talc industry, asbestos, gold and copper. I worked
in different types of mines, and I understand far too well how
important mining is to our northern economy. But quite frankly,
these are some of the best jobs in northern Ontario-high-tech,
very interesting, very challenging, everything from production
workers all the way to engineers and the skilled trades. There is
plenty of opportunity.
My concern, however, is
that those opportunities are becoming less and less. We have not
seen in northern Ontario the net growth of the mining industry.
In fact, we're seeing the mining industry become smaller and
smaller. There are a number of reasons. One is technology being
brought in. For example, the company you work for, Falconbridge,
hires fewer people now than it did before, for more production.
Part of that is that we've gotten better at doing what we do
best, which is mining and processing ore.
I understand that we need
to keep competitive and we have to invest in those technologies;
I don't argue against that. But my worry is, as I look at new
mining on the horizon and I look at the activity that's going on
in the exploration industry, I'm really concerned, because we're
not having the degree of activity in exploration that we need to
have to keep people like you prospering and to get more of you
out there to provide these really good jobs for northeastern
Ontario.
If the government can do a
couple of things when it comes to exploration, what should those
things be, in order to assist the exploration community?
Mr Gignac:
There are a couple of areas, specifically dealing with
exploration, where I think the government can provide some help.
One of them is in the staffing levels of its Northern Development
and Mines offices. Often some of our exploration people go into
these offices and have a very difficult time finding anyone to
provide the service for them, someone to help them with either an
inquiry or some help.
The other thing is that the
way the work on the land is done has basically eliminated the
prospector from the equation. The prospector was always the guy
who was out in the bush, who was basically bringing the projects
and the properties to our people for additional work. Some of the
programs, the Ontario prospectors assistance program and a couple
of others, have basically ended over the past few years and are
in a serious state of decline. Therefore, without that first
initial input from those prospectors, we aren't getting as many
high-quality projects or properties presented to us for
review.
Mr Bisson:
I just want to echo that, because you need to understand that the
men and women who do the prospecting go out and flaunt their
projects. They get, as we say in the industry, a good sniff
somewhere. They do some work in order to be able to prove it up
and they go to these guys and others and say: "I've got a great
property. Do you want to buy into it or form some sort of
partnership?" It keeps the activity going. What we've got going
on right now is that there are far fewer people out there doing
prospecting because of the programs that have been cut, such as
OPAP and OMIP, and just generally with what's happening.
I implore the government, you have to go back
and revisit the decisions you made in cutting these programs,
because in the end it means that operations like theirs are going
to become less and less viable. For your tax base in the province
and for us in northern Ontario, it's paramount that these people
be kept as prosperous as possible.
I come to another point you
made in the presentation. I never looked at it that way and I
thought it kind of interesting coming from the mine managers, and
that is the issue of trying to find some way to give an incentive
on the basis of the wages paid by way of your employers and
employees. I'm not sure that's what you were saying, but that's
what I saw in it when you presented it. Maybe we can explore that
a bit.
That is, mining, by and
large, tends to pay well. It's one of the higher-paying
industries in Ontario. It is not uncommon for a good miner to be
making upwards of $60,000 a year. So it's kudos to the industry
and the unions for having come to that type of accommodation, and
it's profitable for both parties.
If I heard what you were
saying, you were saying that the mining tax that's charged in
Ontario is higher than in other jurisdictions, coupled with the
fact that we pay our employees more than other industries, and
there needs to be some sort of accommodation given to the
industry in recognition of that fact, to bring it into line with
other jurisdictions. I'm wondering if we should pursue the idea
of having some sort of sliding scale-not only for mining but
other industries where employers pay employees higher wages-so
that's reflected somewhere in their tax rate. I'm wondering what
your thoughts on something like that would be.
Mr Gignac:
Let me first of all clarify what I did say.
Mr Bisson:
I was trying to lead you somewhere.
Mr Gignac:
I know. What I did say was that there are a lot of high-paid,
high-skilled people working in the mining industry. Approximately
$1.2 billion per year in the form of wages, salaries and other
benefits-which include dental, medical and those other
benefits-is paid to our workers.
The second part of your
question is that-
Mr Bisson:
It was something that I saw as you were going through-I don't
think it's something that the mine managers have sat down
about-the recognition of the fact that mining tends to pay higher
wages but, conversely, it's one of the industries that has the
highest level of taxation. You talked about a 20% tax rate here
compared to Quebec. I'm wondering, should we have some sort of
sliding scale at the very minimum that says that if you have an
industry that pays employees above-average wages, that somehow be
reflected in the tax rate? That's what I'm asking.
Mr Gignac:
It's an interesting point. You're right, we haven't really given
that much consideration in those terms. However, what we are
asking is that the Ontario mining tax be based on some formula,
not just an arbitrary figure that's thrown out there. That's
all.
Mr Galt:
Thank you for your presentation. The two coming back to back is
most interesting. The government is about jobs, and that's the
kind of thing you're suggesting.
As was suggested to us by
your organization in Toronto, there needs to be a 12%-I'll go
back to what you said. You recommend reducing this tax to 12%,
the same rate as in Quebec. That rings a bell of what was said in
Toronto. My question to them, and the same to you, is, how many
jobs might that create in Ontario if that were done?
Mr Gignac:
It's difficult to put a number on that. Anything that can be done
to improve the bottom line of this industry will definitely
improve, first of all, the investment in exploration. With a
reduced tax, the economic picture in this country and the
willingness for either individuals or companies to invest in
Ontario will therefore increase. I can't give you a number of
jobs this will create, but what it does do is open the door for
additional exploration, which means additional mines, which in
turn means more investment, more jobs and so on.
Mr Galt:
I'm amazed at how accurate economists can be in predicting what
this will do. Maybe that's more good luck than good management;
I'm not sure. My economics went to 101 and no further. It's a
great selling point for our government, and if it can create X
number of jobs, then when they buy their gizmos and widgets, the
sales tax plus their income tax might more than recover the loss
of that tax on mines. So if you can come up with figures and have
support for them, you might be amazed what it would sell, rather
than just simply asking for a tax cut. The tax cuts that have
been created so far have been for a specific purpose: to
stimulate the economy, stimulate job creation. The end result is
a net gain in taxation.
Mr Gignac:
That point is interesting. I appreciate the heads-up on that and
I certainly will do what I can to make sure that our people-
Mr Galt:
The other one relates to prospecting company XY coming up with a
great site. Company ZW is interested in mining there. It's a
small community. We're talking of, say, 50 mine sites in
communities. It's a one-industry town. We constantly read in the
paper about a mine shutting down and the devastation to that
one-industry town. We heard about environmental and all the other
things, but those people are going to have to move from that
community. The work is only related to that one industry that's
now shut down. What should be done as you are making an agreement
with this prospecting company and it's going to become a
one-industry town? We're all excited about it at the time and
it's probably going to run for 20 or 30 years, more or less. What
should you people be doing and what should we be doing at that
point in time? That's the time for preventative medicine to nip
it in the bud.
1120
Mr Gignac:
When we think of communities such as Timmins, which in my view
has done and is continuing to do a great job in diversifying the
local economy, they're
no longer becoming the one-horse towns you referred to that many
smaller mining communities are. There's a big thrust and a lot of
effort being put forward in these communities becoming
diversified. I believe there are issues with regard to
environmental liabilities and limitations now, provincially, to
inhibit or restrict the creation of these new one-horse towns or
single-industry towns. In fact, I don't think it's done any more.
More and more our industry in remote locations is becoming more
fly-in, fly-out. The communities that presently exist that
support the mining industry are seen as feeders to these remote
mining locations and will continue to do well based on how well
the industry prospers and how well it does fiscally.
What we're going to see in
the next few years, gradually and eventually, are fewer and fewer
of these one-horse towns and more diversification in the cities.
As I said, Timmins, Sudbury and other mining communities are
continuing their work in diversification, and we applaud that. We
think it's great.
The Chair:
Mr Arnott, you've got a couple of minutes.
Mr Arnott:
You suggested that the mining tax ought to be cut and that would
stimulate economic activity. The government is probably
predisposed towards supporting that philosophy at least. As
you've said, there has been a commitment made, once the budget is
balanced, to look at that. As Mr Galt pointed out, the Ontario
Mining Association brought forward this idea last week when we
were engaged in hearings in Toronto.
I just want to make sure I
understand it. You said that the mining tax is 20% of what, net
tax payable?
Mr Gignac:
I believe it is 20% of profits.
Mr Arnott:
That's over and above the corporate income tax?
Mr Gignac:
Operating costs and everything else.
Mr Arnott:
Quebec is 12%.
Mr Gignac:
That's right. In fact, Quebec is seen now as being more
mining-friendly, as one of the most mining-friendly areas in the
world, actually, because of its fiscal policies, because of its
promotion of tax credits. There's a variation of the flow-through
tax issue that's still alive and doing well in Quebec. There's
maybe a more proactive approach to mining in Quebec than in most
other places.
Mr
Kwinter: Thank you very much for your presentation. As
has already been mentioned, last week we had a presentation by
the Ontario Mining Association, and many of the points you've
raised they raised.
I just wanted to comment on
a couple of things you mentioned, one in particular being the
fact that Falconbridge is Ontario Hydro's largest customer,
spending almost $109 million annually. When we sat on the
hearings when the government announced that it was going to
so-called privatize Ontario Hydro, the only area that they felt
would maintain a natural monopoly would be the wires, the
distribution system, because it made no sense to duplicate that.
But one of the strong factors in going this route was to open up
power generation to competition. We made the point at the time
that the sheer size of the generating arm of this new entity
would be a barrier to entry for a lot of people and that they
would dominate it. You're saying that this is exactly what is
happening.
It would seem to me that if
you had your choice you would probably like to look at the idea
of even somebody like Falconbridge doing some cogeneration, where
they would possibly provide their own generation capability and
then use some of it to supply other people.
Mr Gignac:
A few years ago, Falconbridge did just that, and looked at
opportunities. However, the conditions at the time were not
favourable to those sorts of things, and I'm not sure they've
changed or improved in recent years. You are absolutely right: We
still see this monopoly on the power generating side of things
that is inhibiting or restricting the opportunity for investment
in this part of Ontario Hydro's business by third parties.
We are also looking at
opportunities to buy power at economic rates from other
jurisdictions such as Quebec, Manitoba or even the States, and
we're not seeing that coming very easily or very quickly. In
fact, as I said in my statement, Ontario Power Generation has
told us that we can expect increased rates.
Mr
Kwinter: I want to ask you about one last thing, which
you also mentioned in your presentation. We have good geology in
Ontario, probably some of the best in the world. Notwithstanding
that, there isn't the same interest in developing it, because of
the fiscal situation. You're talking about Quebec. They don't
have any natural advantage per se. It's really a matter of the
government deciding that this is an important contributor to the
economy and trying to do whatever they can to encourage, in the
finest sense, the exploitation of that natural advantage. Would
you say that's a fair comment?
Mr Gignac:
I think that's fairly accurate, yes.
Mr Ramsay:
Thank you very much for your presentation. I would like to talk a
little bit about one area of the four points you made, and that
is exploration. It is sad that this government has cancelled
programs such as OPAP. That was a great stimulus to the small
prospectors, who, as you and my colleague here have said, are
really the people who find the mines and come to the big players
like you to develop them and to carry on the work. We need to get
some of those back, but I'd also like to have your opinion about
the federal government's role, possibly, in bringing back
flow-through shares.
I remember that 10 years
ago in Kirkland Lake you couldn't get into a hotel, you couldn't
rent a car or truck and the restaurants were full. It was because
of all the tremendous activity that flow-through shares had
generated. I think it's more important today to bring them back
than ever before, because of the great attractiveness our
technology companies are gaining in attracting investment
dollars, and probably some of the speculative dollars that used
to go into gold-mining shares. That investment and speculative
money is being attracted to other industries and away from the
ones that help northern Ontario.
I think we need to get some of those incentives
back, to make investment in resource industries attractive. I
think flow-through, with a better program, with some limits and
caps-because it was abused last time; I understand why the
government got rid of it, but I wish they hadn't and had maybe
just put those controls in there. I wonder what you, as a person
in the industry, think about this program.
Mr Gignac:
I believe that initiatives such as flow-through-and I use that
term loosely, because it's different now; at least the
terminology referring to that process is different. Flow-through
financing, though we in the industry admittedly saw a lot of
abuses in the way it was managed and manifested, did have a
positive impact on the industry. I know of at least five to six
new operating mines in northwestern Quebec and northeastern
Ontario, which are still operating today, that were the products
of that financing process. It was so successful that when the
federal government decided to reduce or eliminate that tax
credit, which basically saw $1.33 for every $1 invested in mining
exploration work come back to the investor, the Quebec government
decided they would maintain and support a form of that
flow-through financing, whereby $1.16 for every $1 invested in
mining would come back as a tax credit to the person or
organization that invested.
So you're right. Your point
is well taken. Yes, there were some positive economic spinoffs in
communities such as Kirkland Lake, Timmins-all across the mining
communities in Ontario. We saw some good things happen. Some
mines were found and they continue to generate a positive cash
flow in the form of taxes and other benefits to the government.
We think there's an opportunity there for a renewal of this
program in a more controlled, less frivolous format.
1130
Mr Ramsay:
So let's hope the federal government would do that against
federal taxes.
Mr Gignac:
I guess what I'm saying, Mr Ramsay, is that we shouldn't limit it
to only the federal government providing that incentive. The
province can also do something.
Mr Ramsay:
All right. So you would be stating, then, that it is one of the
competitive advantages of the Quebec mining industry that their
government has brought in on the provincial tax side a type of
flow-through system, and you would recommend that the Ontario
government do the same?
Mr Gignac:
That's right.
Mr Ramsay:
Good.
The Chair:
On behalf of the committee, thank you very much for your
presentation this morning.
LUCIEN GAUTHIER
The Chair:
Our next presenter this morning is Mr Lucien Gauthier. Bienvenue.
Vous avez 15 minutes ce matin.
Mr Lucien
Gauthier: Just to accommodate everyone, I'll speak in
English. Hello everyone. As you know, my name is Lucien Gauthier.
My family and friends call me Luc. The reason I haven't provided
you with any printed material is because my presentation has to
do with the family. At the present time, my family's predicament
is still in front of the court, so I don't think it would be
appropriate to comment in a written format.
I've read the other
presentations and I have to say that mine will be a little
different. First of all, I'd like to thank all of you for coming
up to Timmins. I think this is one of the first times that you've
come up here. I'm sure it will be appreciated by everyone who's
had a chance to do a presentation. Also, I'd like to congratulate
you because, in my opinion, the present Legislature has been one
of the most productive that I've seen in the last few years.
I don't have a PhD, but I
did study economics with Dr Francis Bregha at the University of
Ottawa. I think the best way for me to explain my presentation is
to say that the family unit and child care are very relevant to
economics and the province and our ability to compete
internationally.
Just recently, Pope John
Paul stated that the best way to help people is to provide
accessible quality daycare. If you look at my family, this is not
quite as simple as it may seem. My daughter, France, was
diagnosed with autism, a pervasive developmental disorder, in
March 1995.
For those of you who are
not familiar with autism, a pervasive developmental disorder, I
have a pamphlet and I will make some copies available. To
summarize, autism is a serious handicap where the child is often
unable to express themselves and they experience emotional
trauma.
With the assistance of the
early childhood education program, France started to say her
first few words at the age of four. It seemed to me like a
miracle that a child who was so challenged could be helped. It
seemed that France, my daughter, was going to be better. I have
to especially thank the resource teacher, who spent many hours
coming to the house and literally dragging the child away from
the home. Eventually, the child became accustomed to working with
the resource teacher. She attended the playgroup that we have
here on Wilson, which has also been very beneficial.
Eventually, the child was
placed in an early childhood education program at Northern
College, and all of our efforts seemed to get some results.
Unfortunately, because of a legal predicament, the moment was
short-lived and the presiding justice ruled that the children
both-
Mr Bisson:
A legal what? I didn't quite catch what you said.
Mr
Gauthier: I don't know exactly how to say it, but at the
time my spouse and I were in court.
Mr Bisson:
Oh, OK. Sorry.
Mr
Gauthier: The children were four years old. They had
never been with their mother, and she is seriously ill. The justice at the time ruled
that the children would be best with their mother and they were
not allowed to see me for quite a length of time. France's
condition quickly deteriorated. Add to that that she received a
serious head injury while she was with her mother and she
basically became like a wild animal. She lost eye contact,
speech. She started chewing the walls, hitting and biting
herself, and she was in a state of constant distress.
The details are public
record in the case of Gauthier v Gauthier, if anyone would like
to go to the legal library. I am presently negotiating with
McClelland and Stewart to have my daughter's autobiography
published. This goes into great detail about the child. At the
present time, France and Mathieu are doing fine. It is
questionable if France will ever speak again.
Some of you may question
what this has to do with how the province of Ontario should spend
money. On the other hand, some of you may see clearly that our
children are our future. I cannot stress the importance of early
childhood education programs, kindergarten and pre-school
programs. I believe funding for kindergarten should be
reinstated. Here in Timmins, we're fortunate. We do have
kindergarten, but I think the school boards are swallowing the
cost at the expense of other programs.
If you look at one school
board in particular that has just been separated into the English
and French Catholic boards, their old offices are presently
empty. They took a good school, St Anthony's, and transformed it
into an office. If you have the chance, drive by St Paul's school
and O'Gorman Intermediate; they have a number of portables
outside, which to me doesn't make sense when they had a school
they could have put the younger children in. Once I informed
myself, the reason was that they could not finance St Anthony's
school as a pre-kindergarten, because the province does not
provide funding for that. That school could not sustain itself.
My grandfather took care of that school from the time Timmins was
started. It had been renovated. There was a computer room
downstairs. There was a beautiful playground outside. I think at
the present time the school board is looking at renovating the
offices again.
This is not to criticize
anyone in particular, but it's to emphasize that the funding for
schooling needs to be more clear. I think you have the same
problems in Toronto. I know Timmins and Toronto are worlds apart,
but we've had numerous articles in the newspapers up here about
portables in Toronto. I think as you look back, the problem is
not solely a provincial thing. The federal government has a lot
to do with this. Not too long ago, Mr Mulroney was elected on a
platform of providing national daycare for our country, and there
were no more daycare spaces made available during that
period.
1140
To be brief, I think those
of you who are on the finance committee can look at the budget
for the Ministry of Education and look at funding specifically
for kindergarten and pre-school programs. As for the early
childhood programs, they specialize for children who have special
needs and they are not recognized per se. They are funded through
other agencies like Community Living and the Cochrane Timiskaming
Resource Centre. I think maybe the whole issue of pre-school
before grade 1 needs to be addressed and a plan has to be
made.
The vehicle for this has
been that for about six years now the province has had an
initiative called Making Services Work for People. I've followed
this in detail for the last six years with my daughter. At the
present time, we haven't heard too much about it. In a recent
letter that I received as a board member of Community Living,
they talked about a complete overhaul of child protection
services. This is long overdue. How it should be done, I don't
have the answers, but if you look at the number of cases in
Ontario where young children are not being taken care of, that
whole issue has to be addressed.
One thing the Legislature
has presently done is pass laws that severe neglect is also a
form of abuse, which it never was before. Just in the last year
the laws have been changed so that if a child is really severely
neglected, that is considered a form of abuse. You don't have to
hit the child, but if you lock him in a room and you don't feed
him and you don't take care of him, that's just as bad.
That is half of my
presentation. It's somewhat confusing for you, but if you look at
the Ministry of Education's reports over the last few years and
this initiative called Making Services Work for People, the
recommendations that have been suggested are very clear.
I think the federal
government must assume some responsibility too, and I commend the
present provincial Legislature for hammering away at the federal
government and trying to get its full co-operation.
The other half of my
presentation has to do with employment. At the present time
there's the Auditor General's report on the federal government
and there's some scandal going on about how many dollars are
being spent for job creation and whether they're really creating
any jobs. Let me tell you, I worked in Ottawa for 10 years,
sometimes right out of the Prime Minister's office, and what
they're talking about is just the tip of the iceberg. As long as
the federal government controls employment-and I know the
province has tried repeatedly to gain this portfolio and gain
control of employment. But when you all get back home and you
talk to the other members of the Legislature, this is probably
the most important factor in the Ontario economy right now. As an
individual who is unemployed, if I have to go and search for
employment I go to the federal employment office on Third Avenue.
From my experience, having worked 10 years in Ottawa, those
programs that they're spending a lot of money on are not really
working. I guess you could compare those programs to the American
model after the war period, where when certain members were
elected, whether they were Democrats or Republicans, so many
military bases or so much employment from national defence would
be given to those districts.
You just have to look at
the fact that people here in Timmins filed their income tax
returns this year in Shawinigan, Mr Chrétien's riding,
instead of sending them here to Sudbury. When Mr Mulroney was
there he built a large prison in his riding. When people are
unemployed and they read in the paper that this much money that's
to be designated for employment creation is being used as a slush
fund, it's somewhat disheartening.
I have no criticism for
you. All I have are words of encouragement that when you return
to Toronto you all support Mr Harris and you continue to hammer
away at the federal government to release the purse strings for
employment and let each province conduct their own employment
programs.
I could go into personal
history. In the 10 years I worked in the government I saw a lot
of employment given out and it was never on the basis of merit.
Basically, people who worked in political campaigns or who were
involved with the party in power were rewarded with this type of
money to create jobs. I think the province of Ontario needs to
make a plan, which is what you're doing right now. It needs to
address the federal government's employment strategy again. It
needs to look at all the current employment in Ontario, make an
index and look and say: "These are the people, we have so many
doctors, we have so many teachers, and here are the new fields of
employment."
Now we'll touch on the
first part of my presentation. There is a whole field today of
caregivers, and this many involve someone who is in the first
stages of Alzheimer's, someone who needs to be given assistance.
It would deal with someone who has suffered an injury and is
going through rehabilitation. You have a whole group of people
who are challenged, like my daughter, and other people whom I
work with at Community Living, and they need a certain amount of
assistance to live independently. I think Mr Harris said that
keeping someone in an institution cost $60,000 a year. To keep my
daughter at home, I think, costs the province about $8,000 a
year. I'm not telling you your business, but I think this plan
has to detail the new forms of employment and they have to be
supported.
In order for me to go to
work, I need to get assistance from three different agencies. One
of them is called Special Services at Home, another one is called
Extend-a-Family and another one is called Access Better Living.
I've had the caregiver hired through the three agencies and while
working with my daughter get paid three different levels of
salary. So one hour she's working she's making minimum wage, $6
an hour; the next hour she's working she's making $8 an hour; and
then another hour she's working she's making $13 an hour. It's
pretty hard to keep someone at $6 an hour when they can go work
with other families or other people at $13 an hour. This whole
field of care, whether it be for seniors, for people who have
suffered an injury, for people who are challenged or for
children, needs to be addressed.
A case in point is my
daughter, who has three caregivers to keep her in school during
the day. It's too much for one person; they've split it into
three people. She's not in a classroom; she's in a room by
herself. They have a time-out room that's very much like a jail
cell, and when she is not acting appropriately she's given a time
out in this room. Just to make a case in point, the position is
called a teacher's aide, but she doesn't spend any time with the
teacher and she doesn't spend any time in the classroom. She is a
student's aide. She's there to help my daughter, and I don't mean
to be critical, because the school has done some amazing
things.
The Chair:
You have one minute to wrap up.
Mr
Gauthier: OK, that's good. Anyway, the school is doing
amazing things. The little girl has not used the time-out room
recently. They've started to be able to work with her. The other
day she started to say her vowels, so once again the little girl
is back on track.
To summarize-and I'll cut
myself short here-and I think this is what you're doing by
travelling over the province, you need to have a very clear plan.
You have to look at employment and look at the different
categories of employment and you have to look where there can be
expansion and how that training can be provided to those people.
You have a number of courses, from early childhood education to
developmental services workers, and all these people basically
provide care for individuals so they can live independently. I
think there is a new initiative by the province to bring together
all the colleges and universities here in northern Ontario and
have them working under one flag, and not this college and this
university working separately. I would like to commend, like I
said, all of you because I think you're moving in the right
direction.
I know it's not crystal
clear and I haven't provided you with written material, but I
think my presentation has given you a feeling for what I'm
talking about.
The Chair:
And with that, Mr Gauthier, on behalf of the committee, I would
like to thank you for your presentation this morning.
Mr
Gauthier: In finishing, are there any questions? Is
there something I said that someone would like to make a comment
about?
Mr
Phillips: You did a good job.
The Chair:
Thank you very much.
Lunch will be served in the
dining room. It will be catered over here.
The committee recessed
from 1150 to 1304.
COLLÈGE UNIVERSITAIRE DE HEARST
The Chair:
Our first presenters this afternoon, la première
présentation, est du Collège Universitaire de Hearst.
Pour le Journal des débats, pourriez-vous vous avancer
à la table puis vous introduire, s'il vous plaît ?
Bienvenue, et vous avez la parole, monsieur.
M. Jacques Poirier
: Merci. Jacques Poirier. Je suis président du
Conseil des gouverneurs du Collège Universitaire de Hearst.
Je suis en présence de Raymond Tremblay, qui est le recteur
de l'université.
Tout d'abord, pour ceux qui
ne connaissent pas l'institution, je vais vous donner quelques
repères historiques très brefs.
Le Collège Universitaire de Hearst existe
depuis 1953. II aura bientôt près de 50 ans.
Affilié à l'Université de Sudbury en 1957 et
à 1'Université Laurentienne depuis 1963, il offre des
programmes de baccalauréat ès arts de trois ans dans
cinq disciplines, soit français, gestion, histoire,
psychologie et sociologie. Il offre aussi le baccalauréat
spécialisé de quatre ans en administration des
affaires. Les programmes menant à ces grades sont offerts
sur les trois campus, soit à Hearst, à Kapuskasing et
à Timmins. Il est aussi possible d'y faire ses études
à plein temps autant qu'à temps partiel.
Depuis la fondation de
l'institution, plusieurs milliers de personnes de la région
ont profité de ses services. Plus de 650 de ces personnes
ont obtenu leur baccalauréat au Collège Universitaire
de Hearst. Dans la région qui va de Hearst à Smooth
Rock Falls, près de 50 % des personnes qui
détiennent des baccalauréats les ont obtenus en
poursuivant des études au Collège Universitaire de
Hearst. Notre institution a donc formé autant de gens pour
cette région que toutes les autres universités de la
province réunies.
En 1996, le district de
Cochrane comptait 45 000 personnes de langue française.
Ce groupe représente la moitié de la population de ce
district et près du tiers des francophones du nord-est. Ces
gens vivent surtout en français dans des communautés de
petite taille à prédominance francophone. La population
francophone de ce district représente près de 10 %
de toute la population de langue française de l'Ontario.
Une des difficultés
que nous rencontrons lorsqu'il s'agit d'offrir des services
à cette population provient du fait qu'en plus d'être
relativement peu nombreuse, elle est dispersée sur un
corridor de plus de 300 kilomètres de long. À la
population de langue française du district de Cochrane
s'ajoutent une dizaine de milliers de francophones dispersés
à travers plusieurs communautés du nord-ouest ontarien.
Certaines personnes en provenance des communautés
limitrophes de Hearst, soit Longlac, White River, Wawa et
Dubreuilville, fréquentent le Collège Universitaire en
dépit de ces distances.
Malgré le nombre
extrêmement restreint de programmes offerts, le Collège
Universitaire de Hearst répond à des besoins importants
pour les gens de la région. Dans un sondage que nous venons
d'effectuer, nos étudiantes et nos étudiants nous
disent avoir choisi le Collège Universitaire de Hearst parce
que c'est une bonne institution de langue française, parce
qu'elle offre des cours près de chez soi et parce que
ça coûte beaucoup moins cher d'y étudier que
d'avoir à déménager ailleurs. En fait, pouvoir
étudier près de leur domicile leur coûte la
même chose que pour la plupart des étudiantes et des
étudiants du sud de la province qui ont aussi la chance
d'avoir des institutions à proximité de chez eux.
Il est bien certain que,
pour offrir des services de bonne qualité à des petits
groupes d'étudiantes et d'étudiants, ça coûte
à l'université plus cher par inscription parce qu'on ne
peut pas profiter des économies d'échelle que
permettent les populations plus nombreuses. Pourtant, ça ne
coûterait pas moins cher par inscription si l'on avait
à payer toutes les dépenses des étudiantes et des
étudiants du nord-programmes d'études, logement,
voyages, nourriture, divertissements-pour les forcer à aller
étudier dans les universités du sud de la province. En
plus, les universités du sud manquent déjà de
place pour accueillir toutes ces personnes. Donc, les
étudiants du nord risqueraient de ne pas trouver de place
dans ces institutions.
Mais le pire, c'est que de
forcer toutes nos étudiantes et étudiants à se
déplacer vers le sud pour faire des études
universitaires viderait le nord encore plus de ses ressources
humaines. II est en effet reconnu que la majorité des
diplômés du Collège Universitaire de Hearst
s'installent dans le nord en permanence ou y reviennent
après avoir poursuivi des études supérieures
ailleurs. II ne faut pas oublier non plus que la solution de
l'exil fermerait la porte de l'université à 50 %
des personnes qui étudient présentement avec nous. Ces
personnes ne sont pas mobiles pour des raisons personnelles ou
familiales et ne pourraient donc pas aller étudier ailleurs
même si on payait toutes leurs dépenses.
À tout prendre, cela
nous surprendrait énormément qu'un gouvernement
souhaite laisser tomber une institution comme la nôtre, ce
qui ne ferait qu'affaiblir la région sans même
entraîner de réelles économies, d'autant plus que
même les institutions de petite taille comme le Collège
Universitaire de Hearst ont un impact considérable sur le
dynamisme et la vitalité des communautés qu'elles
servent.
1310
Encore récemment, nous
recevions une invitation du maire de la ville de Timmins,
M. Victor Power, pour participer à l'élaboration
d'un plan stratégique visant à diversifier
l'économie et à créer davantage d'emplois pour les
citoyennes et les citoyens de la région de Timmins. On
oublie parfois que le Collège Universitaire de Hearst est
justement l'une de ces entreprises qui contribuent à la
diversification de l'économie et à la création
d'emplois.
Cette entreprise offre des
services de très bonne qualité. Nous en avons la preuve
puisque nos diplômés qui poursuivent ailleurs pour se
spécialiser ou pour faire des études supérieures
réussissent très bien. Elle procure des emplois à
plusieurs personnes hautement qualifiées, soit une vingtaine
d'emplois à plein temps et une quinzaine à temps
partiel, pour des détenteurs et des détentrices de
maîtrises et de doctorats qui ne pourraient pas travailler
dans le nord sans la présence d'une université. Ces
personnes apportent des compétences importantes dans les
communautés où elles vivent et travaillent. De plus,
les activités de l'institution ont des retombées
économiques importantes partout dans les régions de
Hearst, Kapuskasing et Timmins.
Les gens de la région
ainsi que le personnel de l'institution connaissent très
bien l'importance d'une institution comme le Collège
Universitaire de Hearst. C'est pour cela qu'ils lui ont
assuré un appui indéfectible au cours des années.
Entre autres, lors de la récente campagne de
prélèvement de fonds pour l'aide financière
aux étudiantes et
aux étudiants, nous avons recueilli, auprès des
individus, des entreprises et des organisations de la
région, cinq fois plus par inscription que les autres
universités de la province en ont recueilli en moyenne.
Aussi, au cours des cinq
dernières années, tout le personnel a accepté des
réductions de salaire pour permettre à l'institution de
mettre en place un projet d'amélioration de ses services,
malgré les restrictions budgétaires qui, par un
malheureux hasard, l'ont frappée plus durement que les
autres universités de la province. Et cet effort se poursuit
puisque les ententes collectives qui ont été
acceptées pour les trois prochaines années sont
extrêmement raisonnables. Elles prévoient que les
salaires des années 2000-2001 auront rattrapé les
salaires de 1992, donc, vous voyez, très raisonnables. Les
salaires sont en moyenne de 20 % à 30 % moins
élevés que dans les autres universités, pourtant
les gens qui y travaillent sont aussi bien qualifiés chez
nous qu'ailleurs.
Pour lui permettre de
continuer son oeuvre et de progresser, et compte tenu des
particularités et de l'importance de son rôle, le
Collège Universitaire de Hearst a soumis une demande au
ministère de la Formation et des Collèges et
Universités pour qu'on lui accorde dorénavant une
subvention de différenciation de 550 000 $. C'est
pour appuyer cette demande que nous nous présentons
aujourd'hui devant votre comité, en espérant vous
convaincre, comme nous le sommes nous-mêmes, que nous avons
dans le Collège Universitaire de Hearst une institution
importante, efficace, utile et très nécessaire.
Merci.
The Chair:
Merci pour votre présentation. We have approximately six
minutes per caucus, and I'll start with the official
opposition.
M Ramsay :
Bonjour, messieurs, et bienvenue à notre comité. Merci
pour votre présentation.
I am very concerned about
your presentation. I was certainly unaware of the grave financial
situation that your university is in, and I was wondering if you
could elaborate on how grave a situation it is to the survival of
your school, the financial situation that you are in today.
Mr
Poirier: I will let Raymond Tremblay answer since he
deals daily with this problem.
M. Raymond Tremblay
: Assez simplement, si la subvention de
différenciation que nous avons demandée ne nous
était pas accordée, notre université ne pourrait
pas fonctionner plus d'une autre année ou peut-être
deux autres années avec les réserves qu'elle a
présentement.
Mr Ramsay:
Well, that is very frightening. As you know, and as you've
outlined in your presentation here, it's very important that we
attempt to provide post-secondary education for our children in
northern Ontario. One of the primary reasons we lose our children
is that they go elsewhere to pursue that post-secondary
education, and institutions such as yours are very vital and very
important to our communities.
This has been supported
lately through a report the provincial government had
commissioned in regard to the shortage of doctors. Dr McKendry,
in his report, has now recommended that a medical school be
established in northern Ontario, which absolutely reinforces your
position that it's important to support our post-secondary
institutions in the north.
Because of your location
and because of the small enrolment, as you've pointed out, it's
difficult to keep a small university financially viable, and
you're right in trying to apply for this extra funding, because
it's very difficult to run a university at the scale you're
trying to do. I hope the government members have been convinced
by your argument that it's vital that a university such as yours
is preserved, because while it may be small, it plays a very big
part in the life of northeastern Ontario and our future. I
certainly hope the government members take this back and
reinforce to the minister that you need this money.
I find it very interesting
that you are so successful in your fund raising, which I think is
proof also, receiving five times the amount in your fund raising
that other universities do, of what tremendous community support
you have. I'd be interested to know what percentage of your
operating budget is made up of monies that you raise through your
fund raising efforts.
M. Tremblay
: C'est un très petit pourcentage. Tout l'argent
qu'on a recueilli jusqu'à maintenant est allé pour un
fonds de bourses aux étudiants et aux étudiantes.
À chaque année, avant qu'on a créé le fonds
fiduciaire d'aide aux étudiants et aux étudiantes qui
ont reçu de l'aide du gouvernement provincial d'ailleurs, le
gouvernement provincial a contribué 50 %. C'est un
« matching fund » qui a obtenu la
contribution du gouvernement provincial, et c'est seulement pour
donner de l'aide financière aux étudiantes et aux
étudiants qui ont besoin d'aide financière.
En général,
à chaque année avant ça, on faisait des
prélèvements de fonds, mais c'était toujours pour
donner des bourses d'études aux étudiants et aux
étudiantes pour encourager les études universitaires
dans une région où il n'y a pas une très grande
tradition universitaire et où les gens ne vont pas
naturellement à l'université. Donc, on voulait essayer
d'inciter plus de monde à poursuivre des études
universitaires en leur offrant des bourses d'études.
M. Ramsay
: Merci, monsieur.
M. Bisson
: Raymond et Jacques, merci beaucoup pour votre
présentation.
Je pense que, s'il y a un
message qu'on peut donner aujourd'hui au comité, c'est
l'importance de la demande qu'on fait de la part de
l'université. Comme ils ont dit, ça fait plus de 50
ans, environ, que l'université est en place, et on se trouve
dans une situation où, si on ne trouve pas des solutions aux
problèmes financiers-ce n'est pas un problème que vous
autres ne vous gérez pas. Le problème, c'est qu'on a
besoin de l'argent pour être capable d'opérer les
programmes nécessaires pour attirer les étudiants et
donner la qualité d'éducation, franchement, qu'on doit
donner. Présentement, si vous ne le savez pas,
l'université est en train de faire cette demande.
Le problème est que,
si on essaie de comparer l'université de Hearst avec
Laurentienne ou Nipissing ou Lakehead ou l'Université
d'Ottawa, c'est un peu mélanger des pommes avec des oranges. Je
pense que c'est la seule manière de le dire. Ce qui arrive,
c'est que parfois quand on parle avec les bureaucrates, ou
même quand je parle directement à la ministre, on nous
dit, « Oui, Gilles, mais si tu regardes le coût
par étudiant, basé sur les autres universités,
l'université de Hearst est très bien
servie. » Mais il ne faut pas comparer ces deux
affaires-là ; ce n'est pas la même affaire.
L'ouvrage qu'on a à
faire ensemble avec l'université-je sais que vous autres
êtes en train de faire des démarches à travers la
bureaucratie pour en faire la demande, et c'est quelque chose que
je m'engage à faire avec vous.
Mais on veut sensibiliser
les membres du comité au fait qu'il ne faut pas regarder ces
institutions-là d'une manière égale, parce
qu'elles ne sont pas égales. On n'a pas le nombre
d'étudiants à l'université de Hearst à cause
de notre géographie-c'est la seule université
francophone de la province avec beaucoup d'historique-pour
être capable de la comparer avec Lakehead ou n'importe
quelle autre université.
1320
Ceci m'emmène à
ma question que je veux poser soit à Raymond ou à
Jacques : Vous avez dit tantôt dans vos réponses
à M. Ramsay qu'il y a vraiment la possibilité que,
si rien n'est fait, l'université pourrait fermer ses portes.
C'est quelque chose que vous n'avez pas trop dit publiquement
jusqu'à date. Pourriez-vous peut-être élaborer un
peu son importance ? Ce n'est pas quelque chose que vous
voudriez mettre sur une pancarte ; ça va être
contre-productif de l'autre bord.
M.
Tremblay : Effectivement, ce n'est pas quelque
chose qu'on va annoncer, parce que nous avons des étudiants
et étudiantes d'inscrits dans nos programmes
présentement. Ces personnes-là se sont inscrites en
espérant pouvoir compléter leurs études
universitaires chez nous dans les programmes de trois ans et de
quatre ans. Nous devons être en mesure d'annoncer nos
programmes deux ou trois ans d'avance pour intéresser les
gens à venir poursuivre chez nous. Une fois rendues chez
nous, il faut être en mesure de les rassurer que les
programmes vont être offerts au moins pendant trois ou
quatre ans après leur arrivée chez nous.
On ne voudrait
définitivement pas semer la panique chez nos étudiants
actuels, premièrement, chez les étudiants potentiels
qu'on essaie de recruter pour venir chez nous qui sont
présentement en 11e, 12e,
13e année et qui pourraient dire :
« Bon, l'université de Hearst, on est mieux
d'éviter d'aller là parce que sa situation
financière n'est pas très certaine et son avenir n'est
pas très certain. » Donc, bien sûr, ce n'est
pas quelque chose qu'on annonce.
Dans notre esprit à
nous, il n'est pas question que l'université de Hearst ferme
ses portes. Ça n'a pas de bon sens. C'est une institution
qui est tellement utile et nécessaire que l'on ne peut pas
concevoir qu'elle puisse fermer ses portes. Donc, ce n'est pas
contradictoire de ne pas l'annoncer, mais on va vous le dire
parce que je pense que le gouvernement a une responsabilité
face à la population. Ce que nous voulons communiquer comme
message, c'est que de notre côté il est vrai que,
à cause des conditions dans lesquelles notre institution
travaille, avec une population peu nombreuse et dispersée,
nous n'offrons qu'un nombre très limité de programmes.
On a juste six programmes différents sur une
possibilité de 100, 150 programmes qu'offrent les
universités. On ne peut pas s'attendre à attirer toutes
les personnes qui sont intéressées à aller à
l'université dans le nord. On a juste cinq ou six
programmes. Avec ces cinq ou six programmes que nous offrons,
nous attirons déjà un pourcentage extrêmement
élevé de la population étudiante
universitaire.
Cela a des
conséquences : on garde les jeunes chez nous ; nos
jeunes peuvent rester dans nos familles et garder une vie dans le
nord qui est intéressante et qui ajoute le dynamisme de la
jeunesse.
M. Bisson
: C'est un point qui est important et qui a besoin
d'être fait. Le gros problème que l'on a ici dans le
nord, c'est que parfois nos jeunes qui partent pour
l'Université d'Ottawa ou de Toronto ou Western se font une
vie dans ces coins-là et ne reviennent pas. Nous dans le
nord avons besoin d'avoir le monde formé aux
universités et aux collèges pour être capable de
rester dans nos régions puis aider à développer
notre économie, créer des opportunités
économiques pour le futur. Le gros succès du
Collège Boréal et de l'université de Hearst,
spécialement de l'université de Hearst parce que
ça fait plus longtemps qu'elle est ici, c'est qu'ils
attirent les étudiants. Quand on donne l'opportunité
aux étudiants d'étudier chez eux dans leur langue-c'est
un point important-les francophones répondent à
l'opportunité, et ces jeunes-là restent chez nous.
À la fin de la journée c'est nous qui en
bénéficions, ayant ces jeunes adultes formés qui
sont préparés à rester dans leur région puis
à participer dans l'économie avec les connaissances
qu'ils ont bâties à l'université. C'est un point
qui a besoin d'être regardé. C'est un investissement,
ce qui regarde beaucoup aujourd'hui, mais à long terme c'est
un investissement pour le nord de l'Ontario.
C'était mon
« speech ». Tu peux faire des
commentaires.
M.
Tremblay : Je vais peut-être revenir sur ce
que M. Ramsay disait plut tôt quand il parlait des
circonstances dans lesquelles une institution comme la nôtre
travaille. Avec de très petits nombres, c'est difficile
d'avoir des économies d'échelle. Il est vrai que c'est
pratiquement une mission impossible que de maintenir une
institution universitaire dans les conditions dans lesquelles
nous la maintenons. Je pense que ce n'est pas pour rien qu'il y
en a juste une dans la province, et si elle existe encore c'est
parce qu'il y a des gens dans la région qui sont
déterminés qu'il n'est pas question de la laisser
tomber.
The Chair:
Merci, monsieur Bisson. On the government side, Ms Molinari.
Mrs
Molinari: Bonjour et merci pour la
présentation.
I have a couple of
questions, but first I'd like to make some comments on your
presentation.
One of the things we've been hearing yesterday
and today is clearly that decisions that we make as a government
can't be a cookie-cutter approach and that one size does not fit
all. We need to take the individual situations and look at them
and how they affect each situation.
I thank you for all of the
comments you've made in highlighting some of the difficulties and
challenges you face with a small university. Some of the
questions I had have already been answered because of questions
from the previous speakers, and those are as to the viability of
the program and how you're able to offer a diversity of courses
with such a small number. With the six programs that I understand
you said you offer, do you find that a number of students are
able to gain from the programs you offer what they need from a
university education, or are they in need of having to also
pursue a different university for things that you may not be able
to offer?
M.
Tremblay : C'est bien certain que les gens qui
veulent absolument des programmes différents de ceux que
nous offrons et qui ont les moyens d'aller ailleurs vont
poursuivre des études ailleurs dans d'autres
universités dans ces programmes.
Dans le petit sondage dont
je parlais où on a demandé aux étudiants et aux
étudiantes pourquoi ils avaient choisi l'université de
Hearst et comment c'était important pour eux d'avoir la
possibilité d'étudier près de chez eux et de chez
elles, ils nous disent que le plus gros désavantage qu'ils
voient à étudier chez nous, c'est le choix limité
de programmes. Même dans les programmes que nous offrons
comme, par exemple, la psychologie ou le français ou
l'histoire, les gens souhaiteraient avoir un petit peu plus de
choix de cours que les cours essentiels que nous offrons
présentement. Étant donné nos circonstances, nous
n'offrons que les cours qui sont absolument obligatoires pour que
les gens puissent compléter leur programme, dont ils ont
absolument besoin.
Plusieurs de ces
cours-là sont offerts sur un cycle de deux ans, par exemple.
Donc, les cours ne sont pas offerts à chaque année.
Alors, si quelqu'un a la malchance de manquer un cours une
année, cette personne-là doit attendre trois ans avant
de reprendre le cours parce qu'il ne s'offre qu'aux deux ans.
Cela présente des problèmes d'organisation même
pour nos étudiants et nos étudiantes.
C'est bien sûr que si
on avait un meilleur choix de cours-c'est ce que nous
espérons, à long terme, dans notre esprit au niveau de
l'institution. Nous ne voulons pas nous limiter au choix de cours
que nous avons présentement. Si nous réussissons à
aller chercher un financement de base convenable pour assurer ce
choix limité mais de base, nous espérons pouvoir offrir
des programmes dans des domaines qui sont absolument essentiels
dans notre région, par exemple, du côté des
sciences forestières, qui serait un secteur tout à fait
approprié pour la région dans laquelle nous nous
trouvons.
Mrs
Molinari: Thank you very much for your response.
The differentiation grant
that you're requesting here as an annual grant-in your initial
presentation, you stated that if you were not given this grant,
you have one more year of survival. My question is, would you be
able to offer additional programs if that were given to you, not
only being able to survive, which certainly we hope will continue
to happen because of the unique service that you offer for the
francophones? Would that money give you something to be able to
increase some of the programs in forestry and other areas that
you want?
1330
M.
Tremblay : Non. On aurait besoin de financement
supplémentaire pour offrir des programmes nouveaux. Du
côté des sciences et des sciences forestières, il
faudrait obtenir du financement supplémentaire
approprié pour être en mesure d'offrir ces
choses-là.
Mrs
Molinari: Just to finish off quickly, you have been in
communication with ministry personnel and staff already,
requesting some of these issues here. I'm glad that there's been
some communication happening there and I thank you again for
bringing it to the attention of the finance committee, because I
think it's important that, as a financial issue, it's also
brought here and, hopefully, can be included in our report. It
will certainly be helpful. Thank you very much once again.
Le
Président : Au nom du comité, merci pour
votre présentation cet après-midi.
M.
Tremblay : Merci beaucoup de votre attention.
CROSS COUNTRY ONTARIO, NORTHERN ONTARIO
DIVISION
The
Vice-Chair: I call the next delegation forward, Ken
Gauld and Ambrose Raftis, members of the cross-country skiers
federation for the northern Ontario division. We appreciate
having you here.
Mr Ambrose
Raftis: My name is Ambrose Raftis and I'm the president
of the Englehart Nordic Ski Club. I'm here with Ken Gauld from
the Kapuskasing club, Bob Blanchard and Don Robson.
Essentially, we work
together as a committee with the northern Ontario division of
Cross Country Ontario. The committee was established in an
attempt to develop a little bit of political visibility.
Cross-country skiing is not a mass sport but it's a sport that
creates a lot of enjoyment and pleasure in lifestyle value for
people in northern Ontario.
Ontario is lagging behind
the province of Quebec and other areas in the development of
recreational opportunities for winter adventure tourism.
Additional investment and coordination are required if Ontario is
to take part in this growing market. Ski clubs and other
facilities have a substantial portion of the capital investment
in human resources required to develop and maintain these
facilities but they need assistance to move from what is
currently a local community-based service into a broader winter
tourism market. This paper is a preliminary discussion on how
this can be done.
Like snow machine tourism,
cross-country skiing requires extensive investment in facilities
and machinery to compete for growing tourism industry. This
project is designed to
aid ski clubs and other winter adventure tourism in northern
Ontario to undertake the capital investment required to develop
their facilities to a standard that would meet the needs of the
travelling winter tourist.
This project would see
setting aside funds within the heritage fund, or other government
agencies, targeted towards the continued development of
wilderness adventure tourism facilities. This development would
take place over a five-year period. This application would see
the setting aside of matched funds for marketing, facility
updating and equipment replacement in northern Ontario.
Part of this funding would
be used in the development and linking of Internet sites. This
site would supply information to potential travellers detailing
venues for winter adventure tourism. This would allow the single
sourcing of information to people throughout Ontario and the
world on winter adventure tourism in northern Ontario. This part
of the proposal would require additional funding.
Understanding the market:
Cross-country skiing is a lifestyle sport covering the full
spectrum of ages from five to 85. Cross-country skiing is
inexpensive and can be enjoyed at a variety of equipment and
skill levels. Skiing, and particularly cross-country skiing, is
one of the most effective aerobic exercises and helps those who
discover it enjoy winter. Let's face it, we have winter four or
five months of the year. It's about time we got good at it.
Cross-country skiing in
northern Ontario is currently done at a community club level.
Maintenance and development are done by volunteers who spend
countless hours clearing, maintaining and grooming ski trails,
often with outdated equipment. The current market serves only
community-based needs, with little or no market exposure.
But people love to travel,
and there is a lot more to northern Ontario than what you see
from the highways. Travel is a large part of the winter adventure
but travelers need to know where they are going and what will be
there for them when they arrive. Few adventure tourists would
jump into a car and travel 500 kilometers to a location, only
hoping that they could find accommodation when they arrive.
Winter travel tourism requires reliable information and confirmed
reservations.
Over the last 10 years
skiing has changed. With the introduction of skate skiing,
cross-country skiing has now an even broader appeal to youth,
teenagers and their families. There is a large and growing
intermural series of events that brings people and their families
who enjoy the challenge of competition to different venues across
the province. These loppets are held in major centres that
attract thousands of skiers from across the continent. These
major tourism events supply both classic and skate trails. Skate
trails require different equipment to set and maintain trails.
This equipment is currently only available in larger clubs. This
equipment is large, with widths over 14 feet and a price tag of
well over $200,000.
One only has to travel to
the ski areas of Collingwood or Quebec to get a sense of the
potential for outdoor winter recreation. These same facilities,
on a smaller scale, exist across northern Ontario and could
supply winter recreational entertainment to a much larger
clientele base with little additional cost. People in areas that
have developed a winter-based recreational industry have learned
to market and celebrate the natural beauties of winter snow.
Quebec, which we are modeling our market approach after, has
developed a linking of individual facilities, using both central
reservation services and Internet information. Our proposal would
use this concept but expand on it to include information on each
of the individual facilities, their trails, snow conditions,
grooming policies and contact names to inform and attract
tourists to the area.
The Northern Ontario
Tourism Marketing Partnership is spending $120 million over the
next four years to market, with a "winter is fun" approach to
selling winter charm. Northern Ontario is slowly awakening to its
tourism potential as it continues to develop an understanding of
itself as a desirable destination for urban dwellers.
Market growth: Adventure
tourism is the fastest-growing tourism sector, having reached a
steady growth of 20% over the past number of years. Moderate
winter temperatures in the south combined with the lack of snow
are building additional pressures for development of winter
tourism industries in the north. Skiers and winter adventurers
are slowly spilling into the north for long-term excursion
holidays, attracted to the north by its reliable snow conditions.
Busloads of skiers travel north to enjoy the facilities that
exist. They are, however, being blocked from traveling any
further by inadequate information. The consistent lack of trail
conditions or facilities information has restricted the flow of
tourism and the development of the industry.
Market profile: Our target
market groups would be those interested in a longer-term holiday
similar in nature to a summer excursion. There are two advantages
to this market group. Many of these people are enjoying early or
semi-retirement and have the money and time to travel. Potential
markets are people who often live in expensive urban areas and
are looking to downscale their homes and their lives. This may be
accomplished by moving away from the high-cost, busy environment
of the city to a small town. While many people think of retiring
to Florida or some other warmer climate, winter people who have
grown up enjoying winter weather are more attracted to areas that
have summer recreation and developed winter facilities. A
well-serviced small town with low housing costs, summer
recreation and well-developed winter facilities is far more
attractive to some than a hot, expensive and dangerous Florida
condominium. The town of Elliot Lake is a living example of how
northern Ontario small towns can attract retirement capital to
sustain economic activities.
1340
Let's be honest, the
attraction of winter facilities is not going to pack the highways
with people coming north. There are, however, hundreds of
thousands of people retiring every year with millions of dollars
in financial assets.
The retirement age for many of these people is in their middle to
late 50s and they are not looking for a sedentary, restful
lifestyle. A casual survey of cross-country facilities shows that
the majority of people using the clubs are of retirement age.
Many people nearing the end of their working life are looking for
the peaceful, neighborly atmosphere that small northern Ontario
towns can offer. One way to let them know what we have is to
bring them here for a holiday.
The north needs to prepare
itself to take a portion of this large market by improving the
quality of life available to the current and potential residents
in the area. Improving winter facilities is one way of promoting
this.
Current market position: In
a search on the Internet of the top 90 cross-country skiing sites
in North America, northeastern Ontario wasn't even mentioned.
There was no mention of the 30 or so cross-country ski venues
between Bracebridge and Thunder Bay, over 1,000 kilometres away.
To the winter tourist who is looking for a new venue to ski,
northern Ontario doesn't exist. The northern Ontario market, with
the exception of Thunder Bay, is not presented as a desirable
destination. This proposal will change that.
Individual clubs lack the
resources required to bring their facilities up to a standard
that is expected by travelling tourists. Travelling tourists have
been around and they know what they want. Clubs need to improve
their grooming equipment, communications and building facilities
to attract their share of the much larger market in the
south.
Clubs and other winter
tourism facilities are undercapitalized. They are forced to
purchase used, inadequate equipment and spend large amounts of
money to maintain it only to end up with machinery that breaks
down during the season. Clubs end up spending much of their
resources on trail grooming and have little or no money to update
their building facilities. These organizations need a capital
infusion to complement their economic means and get them to the
plateau required by tourism.
This proposal is headed up
by a working group in the northern Ontario division of Cross
Country Ontario. It is developing a funding proposal that is
currently targeted at the northern Ontario heritage fund. It is a
similar proposal, smaller in volume, to the one that was
initiated by the snow machine clubs several years earlier. It is
this funding model that gave us the very successful snow machine
trails that attract people from across North America.
This proposal would be
comprised of a set-aside fund that would be established to
operate over a five-year period. The bulk of the money would be
available for the first two years of the project to get the
necessary capital expenditures underway. The proposal would
include the development, with all non-motorized sport facilities
in northern Ontario, of a complete and up-to-date Web-based
information system that would allow the linking of all these
venues together.
Just to stop there for a
minute, Quebec has a set-up like this. If you look up the Quebec
tourism industry on the Internet you'll find that they have a map
of their province. The map is broken up into divisions, and each
division has a series of areas that you can look into. People
from anywhere in North America who want to look for a place to
develop that sort of holiday, when they look at Ontario, they are
locked in. Nothing goes further north than Bracebridge. When they
look at Quebec, they've got the whole province covered. It's
linked together and they have a common system. They've taken the
structure of tourism and built it into an industry.
I think northern Ontario is
getting to the point where we should be able to develop that
level of maturity in the industry. We've got a lot of committed
people in the industry but they work on it as volunteers, much
like the snowmobile organizations. It's not a big economic
infusion but it's a vital one to a lot of small areas in Ontario
that have summer tourism activities and that aren't surviving
because they have no winter support for them. In the areas where
the motorized vehicle winter tourism activities have developed,
it's stabilized a lot of the summer facilities because they can
use them both year-round. So this is some of the rationale behind
northern Ontario's approach.
Each participant would be
linked to a central Web system that would be set up by area. This
is a substantial improvement over the Quebec model. People would
be able to pick any location in northern Ontario and get a
subsequent page. Each area or venue would have their own page and
would update their own information, so that people could actually
get a fairly personal perspective of where they were going. This
would give them accommodation, pictures of the facility, a
description of the trails and a routinely updated trail condition
report.
This set-aside fund would
be available to clubs and entrepreneurs who are developing
non-motorized winter recreation in a matched funding formula.
These funds would be available for major capital expenditures
such as buildings, trail development, grooming equipment,
signage, marketing programs and Internet development. There may
be some long-term funding required for groomer replacements, but
new machines should last 10 years or more.
Benefits: Initial benefits
arising from the investment of these funds would include the
increased cash flow to local communities for travel,
accommodation and trail fees to clubs. This increased level of
winter tourism would complement the summer tourism, resulting in
increased year-round employment in the north.
It would be advantageous to
the clubs, the communities and northern Ontario as a whole to
develop existing facilities to the point that they became tourist
destinations. This funding will position northern Ontario to take
our share of the increased growth in this sector. It will close
the gap we currently have relative to Quebec and the northern US
in winter tourism. It will supply a cost-competitive holiday
excursion in areas throughout the north, attracting a sector of
the population who are looking for a winter experience. With
improved traffic, additional development can be funded by the
clubs and other
organizations to further enhance both the experience of adventure
tourism and the local club supporter.
In conclusion, in the 1930s
people took the train from Toronto and got off in Temagami to
enjoy the beauty of the outdoor wilderness. Cross-country skiing
offers a diverse range of touring, from the tracked and set
groomed trails where both classic and skate skiing can be done,
to outback trails that go between chalets, to untracked
wilderness skiing. All of these activities require varying levels
of support, starting with bus, train or car transportation,
equipment purchase/rental, chalet/change rooms, meals and
accommodations. Most but not all of the facilities required to
make this are available in northern Ontario. Organization and
standardization of quality are required to attract consumers who
are looking for the fresh air and the facilities required for
winter sport activities.
With global climate change
and the length of the snow season becoming shorter in the south,
northern Ontario is positioned to become a preferred destination
for the larger volume of southern Ontario skiers. Some of these
may enjoy the natural beauty of the north and the experience with
nature enough to make it their home. While we cannot read the
future, we can plan for it. We would like to prepare for the
inevitable growth by moving into winter tourism with an organized
and comprehensive approach.
We are looking for your
support, encouragement and direction in order to assist us to
move from community-based tourism to a broader provincial
clientele. Thank you.
The
Vice-Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation.
We have four minutes for each caucus to ask questions or make a
statement, starting with the NDP.
Mr Bisson:
I have to say to the members of the government, I think one of my
great frustrations in this particular area is that organizations
such as this that are in the recreational aspect, be it, in this
case, cross-country skiing or others, have great difficulty just
doing what they're doing now, because they're basically operating
strictly on volunteers and the fundraising and do's that they do
themselves.
We know by experience that
when there's a lack of dollars on the part of the province-one of
the things that the government did when they got elected in 1995
was take away many of the programs, in the name of balancing the
budget. We can get into debate on, was that that wise or wasn't
it wise, but the point is, the dollars are no longer there.
There's a very small pot of money, the Trillium Foundation, that
everybody is trying to access. In our region, for these kinds of
projects, I think there's a total of $160,000 or $260,000 for our
region, which includes Mr Ramsay's riding along with mine. So
when you're trying to do something that in the end could be a net
benefit, not only to the members but to the community and to the
north generally, it's very hard to get the dollars going.
I just want to illustrate
it one way. You're here today at what used to be called the
Ramada Inn. We call it now the Comfort Inn, or-
Interjection: Best Western.
Mr Bisson:
Best Western. I should know these things; I live here. You notice
there were lots of snowmobiles outside today. Those aren't local
people. The government back in the early 1990s, and your
government again just recently, decided it was wise to invest
dollars to develop the snowmobile trail. As a result, there are
tons of businesses in northern Ontario that are getting the
economic spinoffs of that investment that was first made by our
government but then carried on with yours so that businesses such
as this one, people who sell snowmobiles, people who sell tourism
destination packages, local restaurants, others who have built
along the trails, are basically reaping a benefit from that very
small investment.
I would argue that for
every dollar we invested in developing the snowmobile trail
system, the northern part of the province got that back tenfold.
I think we have an opportunity here for these kinds of
organizations if the government saw their way to saying, "Yeah,
we recognize that tourism is one of the things that we've got to
do better in northern Ontario," to giving the staff of the local
MTR offices in our region and giving the staff of the northern
development people-who are really good people who work really
hard with these organizations-the ability, by way of programs, to
help these people along and developing strategies and having
funding models in place that allow us to get these kinds of
things up and running.
One quick question: How
many volunteer hours do you put into this, any one of you
guys?
Mr Bob
Blanchard: Oh, 2,000 maybe, at least.
Mr Bisson:
As an individual?
Mr
Blanchard: Myself, yes.
1350
Mr Bisson:
These guys go out every day and are doing it for no dollars. They
are doing it out of passion, and I'm sure you see similar things
in your own ridings. But imagine what we can do if we give these
people a little bit of support-the net benefit, not only to our
communities but to our northern local economy.
The
Vice-Chair: We move on to the government side.
Mr Arnott:
Thank you very much for what you've given us here today. I think
the analysis that you have put forward in your presentation is
very sound, about the potential that exists for cross-country
skiing in the coming years. I think you're absolutely right,
there is tremendous potential and you're well positioned to take
advantage of that.
Getting back to your
specific proposal, you pinpoint the need for an up-to-date
Web-based information system. Do you have any idea how much that
aspect of your proposal would cost? I would think it would be
fairly nominal.
Mr Raftis:
Yes. Not much at all. The strategy is to move the accountability
for each venue right to the venue owner so that we would
basically build the central model and then they could link into
that, which really has no cost to us. The cost to the clubs would
be for their site. They could put local information into it so
that when people contacted them it would be like meeting
somebody. You could see a picture of the president here.
It makes the world a lot
smaller, because when people get away from Toronto they sometimes
suffer from the lack of people around them. They feel a little
nervous about that. But if they know they're going to someplace
where there is somebody they are going to recognize or there's a
phone number and they can talk to somebody, they can get a real
feel for what's there, a visual appreciation of what's there,
then I think it will extend their sense of it. I don't think
that's a big part of it at all, but I think it probably will pay
very well.
Mr Arnott:
It would be helpful to have the provincial government involvement
to tie everything together.
Mr Raftis:
It would fit well with some of the marketing they're doing too,
but again, we're not developed to the point that people have
enough confidence to present themselves to the public. That's
where we're short at this point in time. When you open your doors
to the public, there are expectations there. I think what we have
to do is help people in the north get to that level of confidence
that they can say: "Yeah, come on. We're going to be ready for
you. We're going to welcome you, and we're going to have
facilities that are going to keep you happy."
Mr Arnott:
The one thing that I would observe is missing from your proposal
is a dollar figure, what you would need to do what you want to
do.
Mr Raftis:
The reason that's not there is we're working with a large number
of organizations. What we want to do is go and talk to a large
number of the clubs and other operators and say: "What sort of
plans do you have? I don't want to pick something out of the air.
What plans could you actually finance, so that we can pick a
figure that has some precision to it and argue that based on the
fact that we have substantial information behind it?" What we're
going to be doing is working with some of the clubs to put a
five-year development plan together and then taking those totals
and putting them together and doing some projection based on
that.
Mr Arnott:
If there was a set-aside fund, as you've described here, by the
provincial government, you would look at local contributions
matching whatever the provincial contribution was?
Mr Raftis:
Yes. I think there are benefits for local people. They're willing
to put money into it, and they've done that traditionally, so
that would be the basis of it.
Mr Arnott:
Thank you.
The
Vice-Chair: OK, to the official opposition.
Mr
Phillips: I very much appreciate the presentation. I
looked out my window last night and there were 30 sleds out
there. There are probably 30 or maybe 15 rooms that were rented
here in this hotel last night because of the sleds. I think you
play a huge future role.
I'm conscious of global
warming. I drive a sled too, but I'm from Toronto so I'm always
looking for where the snow is, and it seems to go further north
every year. I wonder if your organization has looked almost
scientifically at this. Over the next 10 years, what can we
expect in Ontario in terms of where there will be a reasonable
amount of snow for sledding and cross-country skiing? Because my
intuition is that it is moving further north every year. It would
be helpful for me if you know. If you've got that, tell us; if
you don't have that, where might we find it? Because my instincts
are you've got a great future, because people are looking farther
and farther north for what you provide.
Mr Raftis:
I do have a bit of a background in climate change. I've been to
some conferences on it and have some personal interest in it.
Essentially I think northern Ontario is probably one of the most
stable areas for climate change long-term. The reasons for that
are because we're not close to big water bodies and also because
we have a fixed precipitation freeze-up. Our precipitation in the
wintertime locks in, in the snow, so we don't have the potential
for the big swings in temperature that they get in more tropical
areas.
Having said that, what's
projected to happen is that there will be a shortening of the
winter season. It doesn't mean that we won't get winter in
southern Ontario, but it will be shorter and more dramatic, and
it will warm up earlier. But because northern Ontario is farther
north, it will warm up later and cool off earlier. So the line
where winter tourism activity will have a longer season will be
moving further north. They'll still have seasons in the south,
but they'll be shorter and more dramatic and start later. In this
business, if it starts late it's very disastrous for us, because
people don't put the capital into new equipment, new sleds. If
they don't see it before Christmas, chances are they're going to
say, "It's too late this year."
So the critical part of the
season is the early season. That's when all the money is spent
and that's when all the commitments by the organizations are
made. So if everybody sees a bad winter coming, everybody stops
spending money and the industry sort of freezes up. For that sort
of an industry, I think northern Ontario is a place that's going
to be fairly stable over the long term as far as snow loads
go.
Mr
Phillips: My own gratuitous advice is to make that a big
part of your presentation.
Mr Raftis:
OK. Sure.
Mr
Phillips: David, you had a question.
Mr Ramsay:
Hi, Ambrose. How are you doing?
Mr Raftis:
Good.
Mr Ramsay:
Good to see you. Good presentation. I'm very interested in your
remarks here about a consolidated Web site. I've had a person
from Haileybury in my office for about the last seven months who
has a Web site but has been frustrated with the inability to
consolidate all the aspects of all our communities so that, as
you said, you can link to accommodations, gas stations,
drugstores, everything people would need as they travel
through.
I'm not sure if you're
aware, but tonight at 7 o'clock at the Haileybury School of Mines
there is a presentation where this fellow has linked up with the
ecology centre in Mattawa and other organizations and
municipalities. For
the first time they are presenting their proposal for this
amalgamated Web site that would include all aspects of tourism
for all municipalities throughout northern Ontario. I think its
tentative name is NorthNet Now. I'm going to be going to that
tonight and will be very interested to see if it would be
appropriate that your interests are linked there, because it
seems to me that if we can get it down to one source for anybody
who wants to come to the north, whether they link into it because
they have put in their search engine "cross-country skiing" or
"northern Ontario" or a particular community, it might be good to
have one place to go on the Internet for all of this
information.
I'm going to be very eager
to see how this looks tonight and if this would be adequate for
all the organizations and all the activities we have in northern
Ontario.
Mr Raftis:
One of the advantages to the Internet sites is the linking. What
we would see is people would come into it from a skier's
perspective, and the clubs would maintain their information,
because that's the next layer of information. The next layer of
information we need would be the service industries, and we could
link to that. So what happens is people would receive their
information in a logical, sequential fashion, the process in
which they need it, and each one of them would be supported by a
different source of information. The initial one would be fairly
fixed. The next layer would be the club one, because they would
have variable levels of information, changes they had to
incorporate; and then the community, the motel accommodations,
the restaurants and all that, could put in their information.
What we foresee doing is
having the clubs take the accountability to ensure that their
local people are represented, maybe through that Web site. They
could just link automatically to the Web site. So we could build
the two layers and hook on to the last layer if that accommodated
it. The advantage with the Web sites is they're so flexible you
just link to different areas that you want.
Mr Ramsay:
Yes.
Mr Raftis:
Did you have something?
Mr Ken
Gauld: Yes.
The
Vice-Chair: You haven't had a chance to speak. Go
ahead.
1400
Mr Gauld:
My name is Ken Gauld. I'm representing the Kapuskasing Nordic Ski
Club. I'd just like to interject something. Not only were we
talking about the Web site, tourism and all that, but I would
like to get down to the community level also, dealing with each
individual community. In Kapuskasing, our ski club is right in
the community. We're within one and a half kilometres of the
centre of the community. The strong point about our club is the
local volunteerism. Plus, I was a previous chair of our hospital
board. I understand what's happening in the medical field, with
doctors and all that. I can honestly say that one of the biggest
selling points we have in Kapuskasing, as late as last week, is
if we need an anaesthesiologist, the ski club is next door. If
you want to go skiing, their paging system works very well. Sure
enough, they do come, and they really enjoy it. I'll tell you
this right now. They're out two, three hours a day, because they
have not been able to do it in southern Ontario. That type of
exposure gets them thinking about coming and living in the north
with their families, even for a short period of time-five, 10
years. That is what the north needs. Also, the children see this
and they encourage it: "Let's cut the smoking garbage and go out
skiing," or things like that. They're constantly doing this.
At a local level our club
is finding-and we passed out the brochure-that we're very well
set. We're very self-reliant. We have no debt, and we're
struggling to get the machinery that is needed to do the proper
thing to enhance these trails and this equipment. It goes for
curling; it goes for many aspects of the community. That's what
makes a strong community. That's what we also have to get across.
If the public come and see this as tourists, see a very strong,
developed community, they know they've got a good thing and
they're going to enjoy it.
You people were in Kenora
yesterday. Lake of the Woods is a big attraction. The people look
after it and the people want to come. We can do the same with
skiing and winter sports in the north.
The
Vice-Chair: Thank you, Ken. You went overtime, but
that's all right. You hadn't had a chance earlier. Thank you very
much for your presentation. It was most interesting. Best of luck
to your organization. We'll take it under advisement.
ELEMENTARY TEACHERS' FEDERATION OF ONTARIO,
LOCAL 1
The
Vice-Chair: Our next delegation is Deborah Murray,
president of the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario,
Local 1, Ontario northeast. Welcome. Just say your name and your
associates' names for recording purposes. You have 30 minutes for
a presentation. Whatever of that time is left over, we'll have
questions and statements from the three parties, to be divided up
evenly.
Ms Deborah
Murray: I'm Deborah Murray. I'm here this afternoon with
the vice-presidents of our local, Jim Paterson and Dale
Livingston.
I would set our comments
with regard to education in the context of-for example, we're
here together in a room and we just heard people talking about
the enjoyment of a sport. People were sharing anecdotes about
communication on skidoos. If we could imagine ourselves in a
situation where we were having a dilemma in transportation and
someone promised us equitable treatment around transportation, so
we're all in a room listening to someone tell us they're going to
straighten things out and make it so it's fair for everyone;
there'll be equity involved and we're all going to get a proper
means of transportation for ourselves. So the presentation is
made, and I understand the structure of this equity situation
that's coming forward to us. Then when we walk out to the parking lot we see a
parking lot full of blue four-door sedans, and there's one for
each of us. The challenge is that when we've been sitting in the
room, the retired couple that does Meals on Wheels and the family
of four with a dog had been envisioning a van with the doors that
open on both sides. The custodian who coaches a hockey team was
envisioning a Suburban. So indeed these people were given a
promise of something, an equity, but their needs were very
distinct and different. So when they got outside, indeed there
was transportation, but not what they needed.
The Elementary Teachers'
Federation of Ontario, local Ontario northeast, represents over
400 teachers and educational workers, from Temagami in the south
to Hearst in the north. The teachers who work with students,
families and communities in this northeast region have a great
deal of heart. The communities have heart. It is their schools
and the health of these schools that is in danger.
In a recent Environics
survey, the government received low marks its for handling of
education. What prompted this concern?
The funding model, with its
various formulae, was set in place to establish equity among the
students of Ontario. Our brief history with the model indicates
that this medicine is not working. In the northeast, geography
and population distribution are critical variables not adequately
accounted for. Inadequate funding reveals itself in many
forms.
I make a small aside: I
noticed that the two members were sharing a look at the map of
the province in the northeast and are very well aware of the
geography and the impact that we, representing the members who
work there, and certainly this district school board, face in the
delivery of services to a geography of the area that you were
just reviewing.
Elementary educators have
been working to implement multitudinous new curriculum documents.
The funding model has provided fewer teachers and the impact is
played out in the reduction or complete elimination of library
programs, computer specialists and music. A properly staffed
resource centre is essential for this new curriculum, providing
the necessary resource materials. Qualified teachers should be
peopling these facilities and computer labs. In many schools in
this jurisdiction the library is theoretically closed, and in
others, staffed by volunteers.
The formula of one teacher
for every 25 students for classroom purposes and 1.5 teachers for
every 1,000 students for library and guidance will not guarantee
equity in an area like ours.
Just as an aside note, when
you reviewed that map, that kind of population density is not
going to exist, so our single-school communities have no hope to
staff a school adequately with the proper teachers who are
qualified in those areas.
Inadequate staffing
establishes unreasonable demands in delivering the required
programs. We have the curriculum documents. What of the resources
and staff to share them with the children? Despite best efforts
by the board's technical departments, it is not uncommon for
computer labs to be down for weeks and even months at a time. I
make no exaggeration here on this one. I'm out of the school
right now, working on behalf of my members, but I taught in a
school where they came in to run a special program for educators
and something happened to the server. Our whole lab was down for
three months.
The progress review of
Ontario's new district school boards, District School Board
Ontario North East-the EIC report of July 5, 1999-identified that
funding problems have hampered the board's efforts in this area.
This same progress review acknowledges the benefit derived from
sharing perspectives and experiences with a wider range of
colleagues in this amalgamated board. It is fundamental that when
we come together we are discussing curriculum strategies rooted
in a premise that the same level of programs would be universally
offered to all the children in our communities.
Again as a side note,
within this district school board, the schools in the Timmins
area and two in Kirkland Lake offer full-day, every-day
kindergarten, but it's not universally offered in this system.
When you look at the delivery of immersion programs and core
French, there is a wide range of delivery. Communities have come
to expect that level of service. The funding model doesn't
support that, but for whatever reasons, the boards maintain
those-political purposes, whatever. They maintain those because
they're historically established in these six predecessor boards,
but by doing that, it very severely impacts the services in other
schools because they're putting staff and resources into areas
that are not being funded by the government.
In order to do this, to
achieve equity, we indeed have to treat situations differently.
Sharing assessment practices and curriculum development becomes
problematic when some teachers have the opportunity to work with
early learners at the kindergarten level every day and others
attempt to cover this same volume of material over a year of
alternate days.
Programs such as Mathquest
2000 and Open Court, a language program, which meet the
kindergarten curriculum requirements, are structured for delivery
five days a week throughout the year. Some teachers are asked to
deliver this in half the time but with the same observation and
reporting demands. Full funding for all-day, every-day senior
kindergarten must be restored as well as expanding junior
kindergarten funding. We must support our youngest and most
vulnerable.
1410
I can think of a specific
situation of a teacher who was in a situation of alternate days.
One day, the first day of the week, she is working with 31 junior
kindergarten children. The next day, she receives 20 senior
kindergarten children. This one teacher is responsible for
tracking 51 students. At that particular age, as well, she has
the most significant responsibility in the early identification
of learning needs. We have those numbers about averages of 25,
but it doesn't play out that way when you have the geography that
we have.
Class size: Within District School Board Ontario
North East some of our largest classes exist in these early
years. Statistically, the board meets the average class size
criteria. Our single-school communities have little flexibility
in relation to class size solutions. Research has long identified
the importance of smaller classes in the primary grades,
especially when considering the identification of learning
problems.
Special education: Split
grades are common in our smaller schools. Multi-grade situations
reduce the amount of attention any individual child receives.
This is compounded by past cuts to special-education funding.
When you take into account inflation and enrolment changes,
funding for special education is at least $50 million less than
the level provided by boards prior to the new funding model. The
recently announced $40 million for special education still leaves
this area in a deficit situation. We can endlessly discuss
numbers and play a shell game of dollars; the reality is special
education services have been cut.
A stack of validated files
creates pressure on the heart. Indeed, I was in the special
education coordinator's office last week and saw that stack of
files sitting on a shelf behind her desk, validated files of
students. For lack of funding, many identified students do not
have the service due to them. Provincial school students have
returned to District School Board Ontario North East, and there
is no support.
Funding was originally
intended to be portable, but associated support dollars have not
followed the students transferred to the jurisdiction this year.
What I heard most recently is that we're in the net of having six
identified students come into the area, never mind the ones of
those validated files sitting on that coordinator's shelf. But we
had two identified students, in terms of ISA funds, leave the
area and eight come in, so there is that net of six. There is no
money to pay for the services due those children, no money to
this board.
Indeed, the funds were
supposed to be transportable. For whatever reasons, when the
contact was made with the ministry, they said: "That was the
original intention, but the money gets sent to board X and we
have no way of-how do we pick it back from there and track it
with the child? It's something that is going to be looked at."
But in the interim, the impact is here. On the horizon are the
children yet to be identified. New high-needs students do not
have funding. There must be an open review of all eligible
students and an in-year review for new students.
The other class size issue:
An overall general concern is the distribution of dollars to
elementary and secondary students. There has been a long history
to this inequity. I think we currently have a situation with
regard to the foundation grants, that there is just under a
$600-per-pupil difference in the dollars attributed per
elementary student versus secondary, and there is no rationale to
that.
The arbitrary assigning of
100 square feet per elementary student and 130 square feet per
secondary student neglects the reality of space necessary for
resource and music rooms, labs, special education rooms,
gymnasiums and play spaces for kindergarten and primary.
Elementary students are just as deserving of learning
opportunities in proper facilities.
Both students and teachers
grow weary of the delivery of physical education, music or
special education in an open space, closet or converted
lunchroom. Compounding the fact that only 100 square feet per
elementary student is financed, there is no way to guarantee the
money actually reaches the elementary student. Money generated by
those elementary students is deposited into the board's account.
However, there is no system in place to track its spending on
elementary as opposed to secondary.
Staff: There is a definite
impact on teacher morale. Teachers in our board are being asked
to provide greater services than in the past, with larger
classes, fewer resources, new curriculum documents frequently
unsupported with necessary materials, fewer professional
development days, greater distances to travel to meet with
colleagues and increased accountability. Bill 160 recommended 200
minutes of preparation time, yet funding does not cover this.
Such recommendations must be supported within the funding
model.
School councils are
frequently left trying to support their teachers through
fundraising. The fundraising activities range from money for
school trips and sending children to music camp to science
equipment and computer programs. The essentials should not depend
on the charity of the community.
A recent survey by
Environics found that Ontarians want government spending on
education to increase. A solid majority of Ontarians, seven in
10, want the government to spend more than it is now on
education.
Will you listen?
The Chair:
Thank you. We have approximately five minutes per caucus, and
I'll start with the government side.
Mrs
Molinari: Thank you very much for your presentation. It
is enlightening for me to listen to some of the unique
circumstances in various school boards. As I have said before,
and say to you as new presenters, the cookie-cutter approach does
not work, and every situation needs to be looked at individually.
You have highlighted some unique needs. Looking at the map, the
large area you cover here, as opposed to some of the smaller
areas in some of the southern boards, certainly there are
differences and unique circumstances there.
You mentioned some issues
around special-education funding. Some of those areas are not new
to us, in that an improvement needs to be made. It's an evolving
funding mechanism. The minister did make an announcement recently
putting more funding into special education. That is something
that will be ever-evolving. There will be input from the boards
as to how that is working and what the ministry can do to improve
it.
The same with the education
funding model: In the past it was clear from a number of boards
and parents who had said that the model in place before this new
model was not equitable and changes needed to be made, and a change was made. That is
not to say it is perfect. Since the new education funding model
was adopted, there have been changes to it. Again, it is
something that is evolving until you get it the way that it suits
everybody's needs in a perfect way.
You made some comments with
respect to the 100 square feet per elementary and 130 square feet
per secondary student, that there is no accounting of whether
that is how the dollars are being spent specific to the different
sections. Your are right, and that is because the boards are
given the flexibility to spend the money in ways such that one
year it may be more in one area and another year it may be more
in another. There is some autonomy and responsibility with the
local boards to determine those expenditures.
One thing that concerns me
about what you said has to do with special-education funding, if
you could expand on it a little further. It is my understanding
that the new funding model put in place would move the funding
with the student. It wasn't in the past, and it was the definite
desire of the ministry that that would happen, that when a
student moved to another school, the funding would move with that
student. You mentioned today-and I have heard it mentioned by
some other presenters, which concerns me and certainly I am going
to try to gain a better understanding of how and why that is
happening. Could you elaborate a little further on that
particular case, to give me a better understanding of a unique
situation of an individual school board and how they deal with
it?
1420
Ms Murray:
I don't have a specific example. In conversation with people who
handle special education in this district school board-as you
indicated, they were given to understand that-I'm not sure of the
exact language, but in terms of the portability of funds, for
example, if I as a special-needs student transferred from, say,
the Rainbow board to district school board 1, the money for the
services that I may have been attributed should then come to this
board. For whatever reason in terms of the paper chase, the trail
that needed to be generated to ensure that, apparently, from what
was explained to me, that does not happen. It's apparently
something they are going to look into, but it has not happened
this year.
Mrs
Molinari: Another question, if you have the answer of
what the board is spending with respect to special education-not
the exact figures, but I know that a number of boards across the
country are spending above the special ed allocation and the
money is coming from the discretionary portion of the budget that
they have, that they can access. Do you know whether the board
you're with is spending above that?
Ms Murray:
I don't have that information.
Mrs
Molinari: Again, thank you very much for your
presentation. It's very informative.
Mr
Phillips: Last week, the Elementary Teachers' Federation
presented one of the more startling numbers to me, and that was
that the average class size had gone up by about 10% in junior
kindergarten, senior kindergarten, grades 1 and 2, which was
contrary to the popular government description of what was going
on. That struck me as serious and odd. Has that been the case
here or have your class sizes dropped?
Ms Murray:
For specifics on kindergarten specific to the 35 schools in this
district school board, I could not give you the exact averages on
that. I know of many particular schools. I gave you the example
of the junior kindergarten with 31 students. I know of others of
26, 28 children. I think it's in Englehart that we have classes
of 31 and 24 children, so there's a teacher tracking 55 children.
The numbers are up in those communities because physically, for
example, in Haileybury and Englehart, where those numbers are up
like that, there is a school, a classroom.
Mr
Phillips: You don't know the average class size?
Ms Murray:
No. I think what you're saying about the numbers about the
province was probably shared with you by our people in their
presentations. When the government gave that opportunity for
choice, when they moved away from the special funding to keep
numbers down, the boards made other choices.
Mr
Kwinter: Ms Murray, I would just like to pursue this
statement you have in your presentation: "Money is deposited to
the board's account, however there is no system in place to track
its spending on elementary as opposed to secondary." Could you
give me an example? Has that actually happened in your particular
board?
Ms Murray:
I'm not here attempting to make any remarks that would question
the way our board tracks its money. My understanding is that in
terms of the foundation grants and monies per pupil etc that are
attributed, they're put into the board's account. The board has
the various envelopes it can spend to, but to know that per
pupil, in terms of the foundation grants, the money generated for
elementary, it is definitely spent in the elementary panel-I
don't know of any way that you would ask the board or how they
could track that information. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm
not implying that the board's hiding anything from us. I just
don't think there's any board probably that has the mechanism to
track that. I think it would certainly be something for the
ministry to investigate a process for. We made the comment in our
piece here that elementary kids deserve equal to secondary. We
certainly deserve the money that they're generating into the
system to be attributed to their needs.
Mr
Phillips: Another issue you touched on here is the local
school fundraising, and that's of interest to me because while
everyone wants and encourages parental involvement in schools, I
think there is a terrific danger that if local fundraising
becomes an important ingredient in terms of the quality of
education in a school, you do end up, in areas where a school may
be located with families of modest income, with a level of
education well below that where there are families that can
afford it.
There's a private member's
bill before the Legislature right now that would allow for
donations to schools to be tax deductible if you donate your computer and
whatnot, which at least raises questions to me of-and by the way,
the same thing is happening in health care, where it is somewhat
easier for well-to-do communities to raise capital money for
health care.
Is that an issue-and it's
just emerging, in my opinion; it's just starting-that we in the
provincial government should be concerned about, or is it
comparatively minor in the education system?
Mr Jim
Paterson: If I could speak to that, I know that in my
community of Kapuskasing we have some concerns about fundraising.
First of all, there's a safety issue of young children being out
on the street selling chocolate bars or whatever. I guess too we
have to question what the fundraiser is for. If the school really
believes these fundraisers are for important parts of the child's
education, then I think we should fund it; the government should
fund those things. I don't think we should rely upon children to
go out and raise funds.
It becomes a competitive
thing, one school doing a meat sale, other schools selling
chocolate bars and so on. I know as a parent there are times of
the year where you can't sit down for more than 10 or 15 minutes
in the evening without somebody knocking on your door wanting to
sell you something. Those are some of the things that happen in
our communities. There's also less of an industrial base that we
can touch on to raise these kinds of funds.
Ms Murray:
If I could add a point there in terms of the legislation that
might come forward, I had the opportunity when I was sitting with
the College of Teachers and one of the appointees from the
community was a high-profile person in the financial
district-it's interesting, the point you make, when we are
talking about resources and supporting one's school and you
consider the lobbying potential of people in that sort of profile
and what they are able to donate or not compared to the average
family and citizen in communities where there aren't those kinds
of jobs. When you think about the 416-905 area, all those
companies and corporations, when they donate stuff, where is it
going to go? She was a vice-president of a large company and was
saying that they are refurbishing their computer department.
These were very usable pieces of equipment, but of course where
was that stuff being donated? To her child's school. Are they
going to be screaming to the government that they are in need?
No. They just got those computers.
Mr Bisson:
Three questions. The first one is, I had an opportunity sometime
before Christmas, probably December or November, to meet with
elementary teachers in Moosonee-Moose Factory who are teaching in
the provincial schools there. One of the comments they were
making, and something we've been doing some follow-up on, is what
you touched on in your presentation, which is the introduction of
the new curriculum that hasn't been followed by the books. In
many cases, in Moosonee for example, the only book they had
received was the math book, or was it the English book? It was
one or the other; I can't remember which one. The rest of the
program-science, mathematics etc-was being taught by basically
cutting and pasting different things from books that the teachers
had in their own collection or out of the school repository-I
won't even call it a library, if you take a look at it. They
basically cut and pasted things on to paper and gave them to the
students. That is a pretty extreme case, but how much of that
actually happens within some of the other schools within your
area?
Ms Murray:
I would say that's very common in our area. Speaking at a meeting
two weekends ago to one of the teachers in Iroquois Falls and
talking about how she spends a good part of her Saturday and
Sunday, she's an immersion teacher, so she spends a good part of
her Saturdays and Sundays translating information from old-there
wasn't even, say, a new science book or whatever to translate.
She was taking old resource materials, following the new
curriculum and translating to generate material to present to the
children.
Mr Dale
Livingston: I was just going to add to that. I teach in
a 7-8 school of about 325 or 330 kids. I'm currently teaching
grade 7 level, and the only textbook I have to support the new
documents is a math textbook, as Gilles alluded to.
Mr Bisson:
Is it the math?
1430
Mr
Livingston: It's a math textbook that I have. I have
about 32 copies of it. For history, which I also teach, I'm using
the old grade 7 textbook, and now that the document has changed,
the curriculum, I'm also using grade 8 textbooks. So I am cutting
and pasting, plus the resources that I have collected over the
years.
Mr Bisson:
So that is more or less the norm as well as in other schools.
Mr
Livingston: In the school that I'm in, and I suspect
it's probably-
Mr Bisson:
One of the calls that I make to the government and one of the
things we ask-I don't think people are opposed to change overall
when it comes to curriculum. We've been doing that for years in
the system. It's not the first government to have changed
curriculum within the school boards. Believe me, we've all done
it. But at least when we do that, we should make sure the books
are available at the same time because it makes it very
difficult. I know I'm hearing that up the coast and I was
wondering if you were getting the same.
The other-you were going to
add something?
Mr
Livingston: I was just going to add one more thing to
that. In the rush last year to order new textbooks and so on, I
suspect just from my own experience that for some of the
textbooks that were purchased, on a scale of 1 to 10, we probably
could have selected better textbooks as far as what the document
wants you to teach.
Mr Bisson:
The other thing is the one-school communities, an issue I'm
dealing with actually with the French Catholic board, and I'm
wondering if it's the same within your elementary system.
Opasatika is an example, and-Dave?
Interjection: Jim.
Mr Bisson: Jim. Sorry. I always
get names mixed up. I'm one of these guys. I should know him
well, for God's sake.
Opasatika has a small
community of around 800 or 900 people, somewhere around there,
just north of Kapuskasing by about an hour. They have one school,
which is mixed classes and they are in a situation now, because
they don't have-I think the magic number is 70% occupancy within
the school. They are at 65% or 66%. The school board is looking
at closing the school, which serves kindergarten up to, I
believe, grade 6 or grade 7, and transporting the kids down to
Kapuskasing in order to go to school.
As parents, I think we all
agree we don't want our little toddlers on buses running down
Highway 11 to go to school 45 minutes or an hour down the
highway. We're right now in a bit of a fight of our lives trying
to keep the school in Opasatika around this funding issue. I know
Mr Ramsay has the same problem in Iroquois Falls when it comes to
the French public. So I'm wondering, in your situation-I still
get lots of calls from Iroquois Falls. What a wonderful community
that was to serve. You're very lucky to have it, but that's
another story. I always make my plug for Iroquois Falls.
Anyway, do you experience
the same thing? Do you have schools within district school board
1 that are in the same situation, where one-school communities
are at risk?
Ms Murray:
At this point I know the board has a process in place for
accommodation review. I think we have fears that there are
schools in that situation. None has come to our attention, but
certainly there are areas that we are fearful of, I think more so
in the southern part of this board, in the area that Mr Ramsay
represents.
Mr Bisson:
I haven't heard of any in the northern part. That's why I was
wondering about your school board. I've heard of it in the French
system but not in the English.
Ms Murray:
I would say that, tragically, this is the kind of stuff, the
rumour mill thing that you hear because there haven't been bona
fide accommodation review meetings to this point, but you just
have to look around and realize. The challenge there is that it's
unrealistic, in terms of the travel time that these children
would have to be on a bus, to think of closing those schools.
Mr Bisson:
Jim, a quick question.
The Chair:
We have run out of time.
Mr Bisson:
Just a very, very quick question.
Jim, I'm getting a lot of
calls in the Kapuskasing office from parents who are having
difficulty with kids with special needs. I'm wondering, is there
something different going on in the schools now as compared to a
few years ago to see the increase in casework that I'm getting in
my office in Kap?
Mr
Paterson: I think this is something that is area- wide.
There's more identification going on, and more and more
special-ed kids, for whatever reason, whether it's society or
whatever, are being identified as needing help. They are
definitely there and, once again, as Deb has said, services are
not there to help them.
The Chair:
On behalf of the committee, thank you very much for your
presentation this afternoon.
Ms Murray:
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you.
SOUTH PORCUPINE ARENA ASSOCIATION
The Chair:
Our next presenter this afternoon is the South Porcupine Arena
Association. Could you please step forward and state your names
for the record.
Ms Brenda
Torresan: My name is Brenda Torresan. I'm the first
vice-president of the South Porcupine Arena Association.
Mr Burt St
Amour: Burt St Amour, executive director of the South
Porcupine Arena Association.
The Chair:
On behalf of the committee, welcome. You have 30 minutes for your
presentation this afternoon.
Ms
Torresan: Thank you very much. It's actually an honour
to be here and to have this forum to speak to you. It's not often
we have this. I apologize for my voice, but a hockey tournament
took it away this weekend.
Dear sirs and madam, we are
the South Porcupine Arena Association and have been in existence
since 1939. We were formerly recognized as the Porcupine Skating
Rink Co Ltd.
In 1977, a board of
directors was formed and became responsible for the management
and the operation of the arena.
In 1991, we were advised to
commence application to establish a non-profit organization. This
would allow us the opportunity to obtain grants and funds not
accessible to corporations, as which we were legally registered.
Realizing major renovations were forthcoming, and to properly
reflect our position as a community service and facility, the
process was initiated and obtained.
In 1993, the arena began
phase one of the renovation project. This task was accomplished
with the assistance of devoted volunteers and dedicated staff and
board members. The financial assistance obtained through a grant
from the Ministry of Recreation and Tourism was a contributing
factor to the initiation of this project. The association was
required to match these funds in order to qualify, and we did
successfully.
In 1994, the arena
continued with phase two of the renovations. Again a grant was
obtained, however, this time from the Ministry of Northern
Development and Mines. Again, the association was required to
match these funds in order to qualify. However, we did not have
the cash and therefore applied for a loan. The process that
ensued became very discouraging. Because of our non-profit
status, no lending institution was willing to finance our
project. We were advised that the corporation status would have
satisfied their lending requirements, but now, as a non-profit
organization, it was not within their guidelines. The association
did manage to obtain alternate financial assistance as a result of a
board director allowing their private residence to be mortgaged
for the benefit of the association and thereby completing phase
two.
The arena presently
operates on an approximately $300,000-per-year budget. For 10
months of the year, the arena is booked to capacity. In the two
months it's not in operation, the arena staff embark on
completing major repairs and maintenance work.
The South Porcupine arena
is a historical and monumental building with a history of
memories. It is a recreation facility which entertains old and
young and provides a service to the residents of the city of
Timmins and surrounding area. It is the only one, or one of the
few arenas in northern Ontario, that operates at no cash value to
its citizens.
At present, we are home for
the Porcupine Minor Hockey Association, the Tisdale Figure
Skating Club, the Timmins Ladies Senior "AA" Vipers Hockey Team,
the Timmins Ladies' and Men's Sponge Puck Leagues, the
Falconbridge and Placer Dome Recreation Leagues, the Porcupine
Oldtimers League, the South Porcupine Recreational League, local
schools and clubs.
We are now facing phase
three of our project. This phase will consist of a new arena
floor and the installation of handicap ramps at the main
entrance. These two items are another major financial task for
this association. The floor will not withstand another year and,
without its replacement, numerous organizations will suffer.
In seeking financial
resources, they have all but diminished in size and monetary
contribution. Our facility and service is in critical need of
funds to complete phase three. We are unable to obtain a loan
from any financial institution due to our non-profit status, and
the allocated funds that are available to our area are not
sufficient based upon the government's new and/or changed
criteria for qualification. We are asking you to consider
providing the South Porcupine Arena Association with a
substantial financial subsidy to allow phase three to be
initiated and secure the placement of the numerous non-profit
organizations that rely upon our existence. Without your grant or
resources, this task will not occur. Subsequently, the previous
major financial assistance received will be to no avail.
1440
As taxpayers and members of
the community, as board members and directors of the South
Porcupine Arena Association, as volunteers of our community-based
recreation facility, we are asking you, representatives of our
provincial government, to invest in your youth and the future of
tomorrow. Support them with one of the only arenas in our
municipality, ward 2. The numerous organizations and the
thousands of participants would be truly grateful. Please
sincerely address our request.
I trust that if you have
questions from this-I wasn't familiar with your format-we
certainly could answer them for you here.
The Chair:
Thank you very much. We have approximately six minutes per
caucus. I'll start with the official opposition.
Mr
Kwinter: I'd just like some clarification. On page 2 of
your presentation, in the first paragraph, last sentence, you say
it operates at a no-cash value to its citizens. What does that
mean?
Mr St
Amour: I can answer that. We used to get funding from
the city of Timmins to operate their South Porcupine arena. Right
now, whatever revenue the arena brings in, as far as revenue
minus all our expenses, we're at a break-even proposition. So
when we say that it doesn't cost the taxpayers any money, a lot
of arenas in northern Ontario probably have a deficit. One
example is probably the McIntyre arena, which loses about
$350,000 a year. We do not have a deficit; we always break even
or we always have to make sure we have enough money in the bank
to do any repairs the following year. So when I say "no cash
value to the taxpayers," it doesn't cost the taxpayers here in
this city any money to operate that building.
Mr
Kwinter: I would suggest you change the word "value,"
because it obviously presents a great value to the taxpayers but
no cash cost to the taxpayers.
Mr St
Amour: No cash cost, then.
Mr
Kwinter: That was very confusing to me.
When you talk about a
substantial financial subsidy, how much money are you looking
for?
Mr St
Amour: We made application to the Trillium Foundation
for $200,000. We understand that the floor will probably cost
more. Like in the other two projects that we did-I have to give
you one example. If we'd had to get a contractor to come and do
all these first phases of renovations, it probably would have
cost us approximately $700,000 to $800,000. We were able to do it
for about $300,000 because of the volunteers and everything else
from the local community.
Mr
Kwinter: You state that this new arena floor is also
going to consist of the installation of handicap ramps. Are you
aware that there are government programs to finance handicap
access to public facilities?
Mr St
Amour: We are aware that it was through the Trillium
Foundation, and that's the only source of revenue we have applied
for right now.
Mr
Kwinter: Have you heard from them?
Mr St
Amour: We heard from Mr Bisson, saying that there was
only so much money allocated to this region. Because it was a
minimal amount and they only allow $75,000 for a one-time grant,
we weren't too energetic that we were going to get it this year.
You have to remember that our floor is coming up about 10 inches
in the middle.
Mr Bisson:
It takes a lot of water on the sides.
Mr St
Amour: It takes a lot of water on the sides. It's very
hard to keep level ice. That's why, when we applied to the
Trillium Foundation, we found out-and that was the only access
grant that we tried. We tried for the heritage corporation about
six or eight months ago. They were very supportive and said, "Oh
yes, that's what we're
looking for: arenas to stay open 10 months of the year instead of
six months, and everything else." But then something happened
after a couple of months, and they said they were changing the
criteria and were going more into telecommunications, and that's
where the funding was going to go after that.
Mr
Kwinter: I would suggest you pursue that again with the
Ministry of Citizenship and Culture and through the heritage
fund, because they do that. Not only that, but they encourage
people to make these facilities accessible to the handicapped.
You should pursue it.
The other thing I really
would like to find out, because I'm involved in a couple of
organizations that are not-for-profit and they certainly have not
had any-there's been no inhibition about the banks providing
funding. In fact, it's just the opposite. The fact that there
isn't any profit being taken out by shareholders and everything
that comes in stays there, as long as you can make the business
case, they will fund it. I am surprised when you say that you
cannot get funding because you're non-profit.
I'll give you an example.
The Ontario Jockey Club, which is a mammoth organization, is
non-profit. That doesn't mean they don't generate a pile of
money, but it is a non-profit for tax reasons and they get all
sorts of government assistance and funding. I would like to hear
about your experience with that particular area.
Mr St
Amour: I can only speak on the experience we had when we
did the second phase of the renovations. At that time, we had to
match the funds, which was $200,000, and it came up very quickly
so we really didn't have the money set aside for that renovation.
We didn't really think there would be a problem, because we had a
building that was worth about $2 million and we thought we'd go
to the bank and say, "We have an arena here that's worth $2
million; can we borrow on this arena?" Every lending institution
we went to in the city of Timmins refused us by saying, "If we
have to foreclose on an arena, it wouldn't look too good
community-wise." Every lending institution that we went to, even
though we could show in our financial statements debt
servicing-we were able to show them that-we didn't get anywhere
with that at all. So what we did was, like we said in the
presentation, two members of the board of directors put their
houses up as collateral. We're almost finished the debt already.
We have about one more year left, and their houses will be clear
of the debt. It was a very trying time during that second
phase.
Mr Bisson:
That was going to be my question, the two individuals who put up
their houses. Most of us would recognize that most people
wouldn't do that, put up their own houses as security towards the
reconstruction of an arena or anything else. I think it shows the
degree of support that, as we call it, "the barn" gets in the
south end of the community. It's really an integral part of the
community. There's a lot of history, a lot of good memories going
back there. I think that's significant.
The question is: I
understood that it was paid now. It's not?
Mr St
Amour: It's got one more year, Gilles.
Mr Bisson:
One more year? I thought it was paid.
Mr St
Amour: Right now we have some money set aside. If we
ever do get the funding for this third phase, we will probably
clear off the debt totally of the other one.
Mr Bisson:
The other thing is just to clarify what my colleague Mr Kwinter
had raised in regard to "no cash value to citizens." You don't
get an operating subsidy from the municipality?
Mr St
Amour: We don't get anything. This is basically the
first year that we've done this. After all my ice rentals and
revenue, I'm able to operate that arena just off the revenue of
my ice. So far, we also have access to funding through Nevada
tickets and bingos. Right now we haven't had to touch those and
we're trying to keep those for capital expenditure projects or
something like a breakdown.
Mr Bisson:
Which always happens. It brings me to my point to the government
members, because I don't know of any other arena that is actually
like yours. You say there are others, but I'm not aware of them.
I know that the government, a couple of years ago, was toying
with the idea of trying to figure out ways of transferring arenas
off of the books of municipalities to not-for-profit or private
corporations so that the operation of those arenas would not be a
financial burden on the municipalities. I know the city of
Sudbury was looking at doing that, and there are a few other
municipalities around the province. I know that, when questioned
about it, the Premier, Mr Harris, said: "This is a good idea. If
we can find some sort of way of being able to involve the private
sector by way of fundraising to take this burden off of the
taxpayer, that would be a good thing." What we come to now is
that you actually have the example to the government of what it
is that you guys have been preaching. You've got one of these
organizations out there that is not getting any tax dollars; they
operate strictly by way of what comes through the gate and
basically by way of fundraising.
The frustration that we've
had, and it comes back to one of the earlier presentations, is
that the Trillium Foundation is about the only game left in town.
I don't just mean Timmins; figuratively, is what I'm saying.
They're a great organization. I think you know them as MPPs. They
support a lot of really good projects in our communities.
Unfortunately, in the past we had many more dollars to access
various organizations. Northern Development and Mines had
programs; the Heritage Fund certainly was there. The Trillium
Foundation-I'm not sure if their budget was bigger or smaller,
but I know they played a bit more of a role. The Ministry of
Tourism and Recreation was playing a big role at one point. It
gave an opportunity to groups such as yours to go out there and
work with local staff to figure out, "How can we do some planning
so that next year or two years from now we can do the kinds of
repairs that we need to our facilities to keep them current and
keep them in good stock?"
The problem we're running across is, when
basically the only game in town is the Trillium Foundation and
everybody's lining up at the gate of Trillium trying to access
dollars, it really makes it difficult when you're trying to do
these kinds of projects. What happened in their case is that they
have a project that is worth more than the maximum grant that
would be allowed by the Trillium Foundation. When I spoke to the
manager out of Sault Ste Marie in regard to this particular one-I
think the number is actually $100,000, Jerry, maximum?
Mr Arnott:
It's $75,000.
Mr Bisson:
Is it $75,000? Just for the record, Jerry Corriveau works with
the ministry of tourism and recreation. A great guy; you should
give him a raise. He's always working with the people around here
and across the riding.
1450
The point is that their
project is above that threshold, so they're really in a Catch-22
situation. If they're lucky enough to get a grant of $75,000,
they're left with one heck of a shortfall. It's like the
chicken-and-egg syndrome. If we make one plea to the government
it is this: Give these people the tools they need. The
investments we make by way of the Trillium Foundation, or
whatever mechanism, to support not-for-profit, volunteer-type
groups like this go a long way, because often they're the only
game in town. For the Trillium Foundation, Jerry, the total
budget for our region is $400,000? It's about $300,000; I forget
what the numbers are.
Here's the problem: In Mr
Ramsay's riding, which is almost as big as mine-you see the
map-and our riding, we have all these communities that are
competing for $300,000, and it's a drop in the bucket. It's money
well appreciated, but we need the government to take a look at
it. It's not like some other communities in other parts of the
province where there is a multitude of activities people can
participate in. Here that's basically what you've got, and we
need to find ways to augment those funds so that organizations
like the South Porcupine arena are able to do the work they
do.
My last question-and I know
I'm coming to the end-
Interjection.
Mr Bisson:
I do again? I'm a lot faster than I think I am sometimes.
The Chair:
You're good at talking.
Mr Bisson:
You know me well, Marcel. What the heck.
If you were to go forward
with this particular project and get a 50% or 75% matching grant,
could you raise the rest of it? Would you be able to go
forward?
Mr St
Amour: Yes, we could. I think we've shown in the past
that we could do it and I know that we could do it again. The
first two phases, however we did it, we were able to do it. If we
had to do it again, we could do it again.
Mr Arnott:
Thank you very much for your presentation. You should know that
this will form part of the public record that will be presented
to the Minister of Finance before the budget is finalized. I
would think that if there was need demonstrated across the
province for these kinds of projects, there would be a good
chance the Minister of Finance would want to be encouraging and
supportive of the needs that exist in terms of our recreational
facilities.
You said that you need a
new arena floor. What's wrong with the old one? Can you give me a
better idea of what the problem is?
Mr Bisson:
It takes a lot of water to fill the holes.
Mr Arnott:
It's cracking, isn't it?
Mr St
Amour: The floor was poured about 25 years ago. What's
happened is that the arena business has changed drastically over
the last five years. We are one of the very few in this city that
operate 10 months of the year. Our floor was not made for that
many months of operation, so every time we take the ice out, the
frost heaves our floor, because there is no insulation.
Twenty-five years ago they just poured cement and that was it.
We're now up about 10 inches in the middle, so it's a big hump
right now. As Gilles says, yes, there's a lot of water filling in
the sides.
We've tried to change the
look in this area for these arenas. As I said, most rinks only
operate six months of the year. By staying open 10 months of the
year, we're encouraging other hockey teams and other
organizations coming in from Sudbury, North Bay and others which
come to the city of Timmins. Some people have said, "Maybe you
shouldn't keep the ice in," but in other ways it's also
encouraging a lot of tourism and everything else. So that's what
we're trying to do with the South Porcupine arena.
Mr Arnott:
Is there an arena in Schumacher?
Mr St
Amour: Yes, that's the one I referred to, the McIntyre
arena. There are two bigger arenas in town, the McIntyre and the
Archie Dillon Sportsplex, which at one time had summer ice. I'll
just give you an example. They used to bring in, say, $25,000 in
revenue, but it used to cost them about $55,000 in expenses. I
couldn't operate that arena if I were to operate like that. So
that's the arena. They go about $1,000 a day in the hole.
Mr Arnott:
Is there a recreational lacrosse program in the summer months in
South Porcupine?
Mr St
Amour: No. When we renovated for those two first
phases-we are a hockey arena. The figure-skating club and hockey
use the arena. We use it all summer. That is basically what we
use it for.
The Chair:
On behalf of the committee, thank you very much for your
presentation this afternoon.
TIMMINS AND DISTRICT HOSPITAL
The Chair:
Our next presenters are representatives of the Timmins and
District Hospital. Could you please step forward and state your
names for the record.
Mr Wally
Wiwchar: Good afternoon. My name is Wally Wiwchar. I am
the chairman of the Timmins and District Hospital board.
Mr Esko Vainio: My name is Esko
Vainio. I am the executive director of the Timmins and District
Hospital.
The Chair:
On behalf of the committee, welcome. You have 30 minutes for your
presentation.
Mr
Wiwchar: When we first heard we might have to make this
presentation in Kenora, I was a bit concerned. As you can
appreciate, having to make a half-hour presentation that far away
reinforces the distances and the isolation we have to face when
working in northern Ontario.
We are pleased to be here
before your committee to make this presentation at your
pre-budget meetings. We appreciate this opportunity to outline
some of our concerns relating to the provision of health care in
the north.
You have in front of you an
information package that includes our presentation this afternoon
and a couple of documents I will be referring to.
As chair of the largest
hospital in the area, the only C-level hospital, we have a basin
of referrals that serves patients from the James Bay coast west
to Chapleau-or maybe it's northwest to Hearst if you look at the
map-east to the Quebec border and south to New Liskeard. It would
be very easy for me to present a litany of problems that have
been overlooked or avoided by this and previous governments, but
I think that would be unproductive and would reinforce the
perception that we are beggars looking for handouts. As a
chronically underfunded hospital servicing close to 100,000
residents, we have jumped through every possible hoop. We have
participated in every study put forth. Our staff and our board
have been committed to providing quality health care to meet
district expectations and patient needs.
Our calls for help in the
past have not resulted in the financial support that health care
so desperately needs. Our financial difficulties have precluded
us from actively pursuing some needed clinical service
enhancements for patients in the district. As an example, over
the past week I received four letters from residents of this
community concerned about the lack of ophthalmological services
here and the fact that they have to travel long distances to
Sudbury or North Bay, or in one case Peterborough, to take family
members for eye surgery as basic as cataract removal. I
personally have had to take my mother-in-law to North Bay and my
mother to Sudbury in winter driving conditions. There is a
population base here that would support an ophthalmologist, but
unfortunately the cost to the district hospital would be in the
area of $150,000 from an operating budget that is way overtaxed
as it is. Because we don't have adequate funding, we have to deny
our residents that basic level of service.
Last week, we submitted our
three-year deficit recovery plan to the Ministry of Health and
Long-Term Care for consideration. For your information, there is
a media release and recovery plan newspaper article in your
packet.
Our proposal is for a
partnership with the ministry to jointly work out our financial
problems in pursuit of fiscal viability. Again, we are not here
to beg. Instead I am here to remind you that common sense should
dictate the solutions to recurrent problems. Many of those common
sense solutions-I hate to use that term, because I know it is
part of a political platform-have been communicated to government
through one report or another.
What is the Timmins and
District Hospital's mandate? We are the only level-C hospital in
what the Health Services Restructuring Commission has called
network 13, composed of nine hospitals, including Hearst,
Kapuskasing, Smooth Rock Falls, Lady Minto Hospital in Cochrane,
Anson General Hospital in Iroquois Falls, Bingham Memorial
Hospital in Matheson, Kirkland and District Hospital, Chapleau
Health Services and of course the hub, Timmins and District
Hospital.
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Network 13 forms the
largest network of hospitals in Ontario, servicing the health
care needs of its population of, as I mentioned, close to
100,000. As a level-C hospital, we are able to provide specialist
services in smaller community clinics such as Hearst and Smooth
Rock and to the larger scene by referral to Timmins. A loss or
reduction in these specialty services would result in an
increased travel requirement for patients and their families to
larger southern centres.
In looking over the
composition of your committee, I noted that you're all from
southern Ontario and you're all within one hour's travelling
distance of a tertiary care facility.
Mr Bisson:
I'm from up here.
Mr
Wiwchar: Oh. Gilles, I'm sorry. However, the rest of
this committee is. You're within one hour of a tertiary centre.
In northern Ontario, from Timmins, for example, it is a
three-and-a-half to four-hour driving situation to Sudbury, to a
larger centre. If you're from Hearst, it's closer to seven or
eight hours. It is easy to say that you can fly, but the airline
service is sporadic at best and subject to the whims of Mother
Nature. So the tertiary care hospitals are not as accessible as
they are in southern Ontario.
A yet-to-be-released public
health report, Report on the Health and Status of the Residents
of Ontario, by professor Larry Chambers of McMaster University
and funded by the health ministry, has revealed disturbing
results. In your packet, there is a yellow sheet that gives you
some of the demography, or the incidence.
Residents north of Parry
Sound have the highest mortality rate compared to six other
provincial health regions. Northern Ontarians are the least
healthy people in the province. If you look, you can extrapolate
that the Cochrane district is even worse than the whole of the
north.
People in the north are
disadvantaged in many ways with health care. There is limited
access to health care. These are bullets right from the report.
The morbidity rates for various diseases are higher than the
provincial average, for example, cardiovascular, respiratory,
cancer and injuries from accidents. Chronic disease rates are
higher.
The report cannot be shelved or overlooked. It
must become the catalyst for action by the government. Beyond the
obvious need to address today's operating deficits with long-term
solutions, we are drawing your attention to several broad areas
that we think the government has to look at.
Mr Vainio:
First, investment in technology: In numerous government documents
we are challenged to provide quality health care which avoids
duplication of efforts, provides care as close to home as
possible, avoids unnecessary transport or travel for hospital
services, is responsible and accountable to those it serves and
strives to meet or exceed the appropriate level of care as
identified by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.
The technology to link area
hospitals and beyond, via information technology, telemedicine
projects such as the North Network and digital imaging with
teleradiology, is not futuristic; it is here but needs the
financial resources to bring its benefits to the patients in
northeastern Ontario.
Imagine a victim of a
snowmobile accident in Moosonee being transferred to Timmins for
treatment and requiring periodic visitations in Timmins for
follow-up. Using modern technology, the initial diagnostic
imaging could be done in Moosonee and the data instantly
transmitted digitally to Timmins for reading. The old technology
means that film would be transported by air to the radiologist in
Timmins. Via teleradiology the specialist could provide
diagnostic and therapeutic assistance by CT scanning, MRI or
whatever. Once the diagnosis is facilitated and the treatment
initiated, consultation with specialists, whether in Timmins,
Sudbury or Sunnybrook Medical Centre, can be accessed through
telemedicine. The North Network needs to be supported and
expanded not at some time in the future, but now.
The greatest immediate need
in Network 13 hospitals is the investment in information
technology, essential since the structural and natural obstacles
currently facing the north are unlikely to change. In health
care, information technology will provide a tangible means to
more efficiently respond to transferring patient data between
hospitals, improve financial management, and provide the level of
access and care common to patients in urban areas of the
province. Information technology will assist with the recruitment
of specialists, address community isolation, the weather and
availability of emergency services locally. I would reinforce
with you that almost 50% of the specialist work at our hospital
is in servicing the residents outside of Timmins. The percentage
is increasing. We expect the same levels of financial support for
IT as were granted to larger hospitals reviewed by the Health
Services Restructuring Commission.
Initiatives such as the
NEON group, the Northeastern Ontario Network, a partnership
between seven hospitals in Chapleau, Englehart, Kirkland Lake,
Temiskaming, Timmins, Sudbury and Network North, formerly the
Sudbury Algoma Hospital, need financial support. The partnership
was created in 1998 to facilitate a regional approach to health
care information systems by having all member hospitals utilize
the same health care information system, which in this case is
Medical Information Technology's-Meditech-integrated health care
information system. Charted diagnostic test results, patient
histories and previous treatments performed at one NEON hospital
will be able to be accessed from any of the other NEON sites,
eliminating unnecessary duplicate testing and procedures when
patients are being referred from one institution to the
other.
Mr
Wiwchar: Within your packages there are two documents,
Physicians for Ontario and From Crisis to Stability, that are
part of the next portion. The McKendry report, Physicians for
Ontario, on physician supply and distribution issues, as well as
a northeastern proposal, From Crisis to Stability, needs to be
acted on sooner than later-the reason basically being that we're
losing doctors throughout the north because of inactivity.
The McKendry report
identifies the larger provincial concerns and lists the
recommendations on pages 73 to 87. I did not give you the whole
report; I just gave you the recommendations. The entire report is
quite bulky. I have attached the recommendations to our brief.
Physician recruitment and retention have always been a
significant issue in northern Ontario. Over the past few years,
shortages have also spread to many southern communities and, in
turn, have aggravated the situation in northern communities.
Southern solutions-and I
emphasize "southern solutions"-imposed on all doctors have
impacted significantly on northern health care and created
situations where neighbouring communities are competing to
attract doctors from larger communities, albeit on a temporary
basis, but it causes communities such as Timmins to have doctors
withdraw privileges so that they can do lucrative weekend
coverage in smaller communities.
You might recall that this
summer, as a result of the Scott sessional fee implemented to
solve the emergency room shortages in small rural southern
hospitals, we have lost doctors who have seen more lucrative
economic opportunities. There are communities in the north where
a doctor can leave Timmins to practise in a small outlying rural
clinic and be paid $150 an hour for being on call. In order for
them to work at our hospital, they are expecting the same
consideration. The result is that we have had nine doctors
withdraw hospital privileges and leave orphaned patients at our
doorsteps, that is, patients who do not have a doctor. Orphaned
patients have become a major issue at our hospital, and it's
growing. Our family physicians are now required to manage the
orphaned patients who now account for 4,500 patient-days per
year. This represents 36% of the workload on the medical
floor.
Our doctors have indicated
that the current OHIP rates for in-patient work are insufficient
to remunerate them for looking after these patients and are
proposing a reorganization that would cost the hospital $500,000
a year, this at a time when we are facing a substantial operating deficit with no
relief in sight. The end result is a reduction of services and
the layoff of hospital staff. The hospital and the medical
community in Timmins are in a difficult position. Everyone agrees
that the physicians are inadequately remunerated to perform many
of the duties the hospital requires them to do. They also agree
that the funding for these services should not come from hospital
operating budgets. For example, a doctor covering on a medical
floor gets $16.28 for that visit. That takes him away from his
office where he could see six, eight or 10 patients in the same
time, because most of these visits in the hospital take upwards
of 45 minutes. Then add the driving time from their offices to
the hospital, parking etc. For the one hour of professional
services in the hospital they are making $16.28.
The problem we have is the
same as in most other medium-sized hospitals. We have fewer and
fewer family physicians doing more and more work with sicker
hospital patients. Physicians leaving hospital work cite the
reasons as the payment system, the in-patient acuity, or the
sickness of the patients-patients in the hospital are sicker
today than they were 10 years ago-and lifestyle choices. Many of
these family physicians have young families and they're not
prepared to work 12, 14 or 16 hours a day.
1510
Patients backed up in
emergency departments waiting for a doctor to agree to look after
them-to agree to look after them-is simply not a viable option
for our community, for the hospital, for the physicians and
clearly not for the politicians.
We need you, our elected
representatives, to ensure that doctors are appropriately
compensated, and we don't feel that the current negotiations with
the Ontario Medical Association will result in significant
changes to the levels required, particularly when it comes to
on-call services. We need you to advise the Ministry of Health to
free up monies for hospitals that would support new models to
keep physicians working in those hospitals. We support that
alternate payment programs would go a long way towards retaining
our doctors.
Many current initiatives
have focused on recruitment and retention in the short term but,
once these initiatives expire, there is no enticement to address
long-term retention. The successful resolution to the chronic
shortage in the north will entail a multi-faceted approach.
Governments must not create funding arrangements that further
exacerbate our problems.
A case in point is a
situation we recently had where a local specialist was going to
Thunder Bay to cover on a locum. The doctor from Thunder Bay was
coming to Timmins to cover for the doctor from Timmins who was
going to Thunder Bay. Why? Because there were economic
enhancements to the package for them to work in the other
community, to leave their home community. This is a travesty of
the health care system. Many of the solutions are right in front
of us, but no one is listening.
Mr Vainio:
Funding for equity of health not for competition in service: The
current practice of giving money or incentives to smaller
hospitals only strains working relationships and creates
competition for doctors. A case in point is the special and locum
incentives available to small hospitals. Smaller area hospitals
are offering huge compensation packages-over $1,500 per day-to
doctors willing to provide coverage in emergency rooms. These
funds do not come from hospital operating funds but from grants,
incentives and accrued surpluses. The targeted doctors for this
coverage are doctors practising in medium-sized hospitals.
Timmins and District Hospital, for example, is not eligible for
these grants and incentives. To retain its doctors, the hospital
is faced with providing comparable incentives out of its scarce
operating funds.
Grant money and incentive
assistance from government should be helping all northerners, not
just a portion, especially when hospitals overlap in serving the
same population, but at different levels. At best, government
money must not be used to create and foster competition for
scarce resources, human and otherwise. This becomes an escalating
situation, and identified problems are not resolved.
Please, no more southern
solutions to northern problems. They don't work. We urge you to
read From Crisis to Stability, which we have attached to our
presentation. Dedicate the financial resources to address
recruitment and retention strategies proposed in seven identified
categories: (1) educational initiatives; (2) lifestyle
initiatives; (3) service delivery models; (4) remuneration
retention strategies; (5) regional integration initiatives; (6)
opportunities to explore expanded nursing roles; and (7) regional
infrastructure development.
Not all of them cost money.
Remember, northern solutions for northern problems.
Mr
Wiwchar: In a recent letter to Mr Tim Hudak, Minister of
Northern Development and Mines, I drew his attention to the
concern over Timmins and District Hospital's ineligibility to
access special grants from the northern Ontario heritage
foundation for medical equipment and capital improvements because
of our community's size. That same restriction applied to
Sudbury, Sault Ste Marie and Thunder Bay. Timmins and District
Hospital needs those precious dollars to continue to provide
health care support to the small communities that were given
grants. A recent study, as Esko mentioned, shows that our
referrals have grown to almost 50% of the specialist work coming
from these smaller communities. Once again, common sense should
prevail. Please look at the larger picture when establishing
criteria for special grants, because often the populations from
those smaller communities are being serviced in the larger or
medium-sized communities.
Mr Vainio:
The bottom line of our presentation is that our province needs to
provide a priority investment to improve the health status of
northerners, who represent the population at highest risk for
illness and disease. Again, what Wally showed you was the sheet
that shows potential years of life lost provided by the Northern
Health Information Partnership in Sudbury from a report they did in 1998 indicating
that northerners are at very high risk for death from various
diseases compared to the rest of Ontario.
The following areas must be
addressed in a concerted fashion:
We need health promotion
and disease prevention programs building on what exists in some
parts of the north-heart health programs and diabetes
programs.
We need diagnostic and
treatment services; for example, expanding women's health
services, renal dialysis services, as well as oncology or cancer
care services.
We need rehabilitation
programs. For example, my previous employment was at the Sudbury
Memorial Hospital. If you're not a resident of the Sudbury area,
there's only one other community in northeastern Ontario that has
a cardiac rehab program. Patients who have had a major cardiac
event and have had to be hospitalized in Sudbury-had balloon
angioplasty, had heart surgery-go back to their communities.
There is no cardiac rehab program except for one in North
Bay.
These are some of the
issues that face northerners. Again, Sudbury continues to receive
patients from the northeast, from the Cochrane district, and
those patients keep on going back again and again because there
are no programs locally to help them out. The same holds true
with pulmonary rehab programs.
Recruitment and retention
of health care professionals must be dealt with. Resolve the
hospital-based physician remuneration issues, as well, they
pointed out. We need an investment in health care technology.
It's very important that the hospitals are linked to provide the
best information exchange for patient care purposes, not to
mention being able to bring those hospitals into the modern era
with some of the technologies that are required to communicate
with one another, not to mention handling their own management
and financial situations.
There needs to be support
of northern level-C regional referral hospital needs. Again, the
level-C regional referral hospitals are in Thunder Bay, North
Bay, Sudbury, Sault Ste Marie and Timmins.
Please don't forget about
northern health care needs as you return to the south.
Winston Churchill once
said, "Give us the tools and we will win the war." That too
applies today.
We would like to end with a
medical analogy. It is either cosmetic surgery today or it will
be amputation tomorrow. You have the power to influence
decisions. Do you have the will? The challenge is collectively
ours to address the health care needs of today and tomorrow in
the north. We must remember that the future can be managed. It
should not be allowed to unfold on its own.
Thank you again for this
opportunity to be part of your pre-budget hearing process.
The Chair:
Thank you very much for the presentation. We have approximately
four minutes per caucus.
Mr Bisson:
Just quickly, how often does that happen, where you talked about
doctors travelling at cross-purposes when it comes to locums?
Does it happen a lot?
Mr
Wiwchar: This was one incident that was divulged to us
two weeks ago, when we had a meeting with a specialist. I'm sure
there are other examples. I don't want to get into the specialty
areas, but we heard of one where there was a three-doctor
rotation to three different communities. Through that grant
program, it becomes very attractive. Doctors will schedule their
holidays to get the extra economic incentive of going elsewhere.
Those grants do not come under the capping formula.
Mr Bisson:
I know. I'm going to look into that because that's really not
utilizing dollars the way that we should.
For the committee's
benefit, the unfortunate problem we find ourselves in with the
Timmins and District Hospital is that it's a little bit of a
creature of its own success. We successfully worked towards
building a new hospital. That was done in the early 1990s.
Unfortunately, funding models changed in the 1990s, and that was
partly our own government, given what was going on in the
economy, and basically you guys have continued on with that. But
the other thing is that the hospital has done a really good job
of trying to develop the services that are necessary for our
community. More and more it is being utilized as it should be, as
a regional centre.
What's happening is that
these guys are trying to operate this hospital not just for
Timmins but for everybody who was mentioned in the presentation.
Unfortunately, we've been having this deficit problem with the
operating budget now for the better part of eight or nine years,
that I can remember. Recently they've had to, by force by the
Ministry of Health, present a deficit recovery plan. I wonder if
you can speak to what the effect of this is going to be when it
comes to existing services and future services, because we're
talking $2.8 million that has to be trimmed from your budget,
according to that plan.
1520
Mr Vainio:
In the first go-round with our recovery plan, and we're waiting
to have a meeting with the ministry to pursue it further, we
forecast that our annual operating deficit would be in the range
of $5 million to $7 million in three years' time if we did
nothing. Again, the range is because of certain assumptions that
we were using.
The recovery plan itself
identifies $2.8 million worth of savings plus $640,000-odd worth
of new revenues. For the balance of that money, we're looking for
support from the Ministry of Health in regard to transitional
restructuring dollars as well as operating base adjustments. In
essence, since we started a strategic planning process as a
hospital, we have tried not to cut the level of services to our
local community and the district we serve with this operating
plan. We hope it will be acceptable to the Ministry of Health. If
we don't receive the money the hospital needs in order to recover
financially over the next three years, we would probably have to
make major cuts in the level of service we provide.
Mr Bisson:
And then transport more patients to Toronto, at a greater cost to
the overall system.
Mr Vainio: That's correct.
Mr Galt:
Thank you for your presentation. I believe you're the first
hospital board to come before the committee, and maybe the only
hospital board, as I glance over the list. I really appreciate
your thoughts. We have heard other health groups presenting, and
there is a common thread there, but a hospital board is very much
appreciated.
The whole health area is
such a struggle that we're going through. I think you're probably
quite familiar with the study that McMaster and the University of
Toronto did on the cost of health care today: $2,000 for every
man, woman and child; by the year 2030 the cost of health care
projected will equal our income. I think that's pretty scary. Not
to belittle the comments you're making here today, but I think it
sounds like chicken feed compared to the decisions we'll have to
make by, say, 2010. There are going to be some pretty big, major,
tough, life-type decisions, I think anyway, with the technology
that's coming on and the aging population. You've heard that many
times over.
Part of the physician
availability problem goes back to 1992, and I'm not blaming the
previous Ontario government. It's my understanding the federal
government came out with a report that we had more physicians and
more spaces to train them than we needed. So we shot a bunch of
them down. I guess it made sense at the time, but it doesn't
today.
I have two questions, and
they relate to your offhanded comment that-I've got to understand
this better-if a physician from Thunder Bay comes to Timmins and
a physician from Timmins goes to Thunder Bay, they're both better
off, and we, the taxpayers, are not better off, but the patients
at least get service. That's what I understood you to say. Could
you explain that so I understand it better?
Mr
Wiwchar: Under the current locum enhancements, the
economic benefits to a specialist from Timmins practising in
Thunder Bay or Sudbury, whatever, allow them to go through the
cap that is imposed on their fee structure. So, naturally there's
an incentive for them to go to another community to practise.
Mr Galt:
Oh, it relates to the cap.
Mr
Wiwchar: It not only relates to the cap but to the
incentive they would get for being on call. They could not be
working one hour overnight, not be doing any consultation, and
yet be paid $150 an hour for that hour that they're on call. So
there is an enhancement. We have doctors from Timmins who close
their practice down for a week and, with the weekends, that gives
them a chance to practise in a smaller community, and they can
make upwards of $15,000 in that one week. It's by the grant
structure, the fee structure that exists for underserviced
areas.
You'll notice in our
presentation that we tried to avoid mentioning specific hospitals
because-what's the saying?-as the watering hole starts to shrink,
the animals start looking at each other, and we don't want
to-
Mr Galt:
You have some beautiful comparisons in here.
Mr
Wiwchar: I'm not as good as Mr Bisson.
Mr Galt:
Maybe all of a sudden I understand why in July, when I had a
kidney stone and went into the Trenton hospital, the physician in
the emergency ward came from Kingston, and how gracious they were
to rotate in that practice to come up and serve that hospital. I
think I now understand why they were so gracious.
Mr
Wiwchar: And you can appreciate a young doctor coming
out of training with loans somewhere in the region of $60,000 to
$70,000 to $80,000 wanting to maximize their income during those
first years of practice, so they're prepared to go to the smaller
communities-and God bless them, we need them. However, it impacts
on our level and our ability to provide in our communities.
Mr Galt: A
last quick question. We've heard it before: disease, illness,
chronic disease, more of it in northern Ontario than in the
south. Why? Is it the weather conditions? Is it the-I don't know.
Why?
Mr
Wiwchar: I also happen to sit on the board of the
Porcupine health unit. We have been looking at this. Primarily
it's a case of lifestyle: dietary factors. In some of these
situations, it's environmental factors also. I think Mr Bisson is
very familiar with the workers' compensation incidents, and those
have related occupational disease structures. I think we can
explain them away, we can rationalize them away. Some of it is
just basic dietary issues, tobacco use, alcohol use.
Mr
Phillips: Thank you for a very professional presentation
and very good backup material. Thank you to the board, who give
all their time to health care.
You say in your brief that
the solutions will not be found in the current round of
negotiations between the government and the doctors. But that is
where a lot of these kinds of issues seem to be debated and put
into contractual language. While the solutions may not be found
there, there will be agreements reached there that may make the
solutions less easy to find. Have you any advice for us in terms
of what we should be thinking about as these negotiations go
on?
Mr
Wiwchar: If you look at the two documents we passed out
to you, many of them are not remuneration issues. Many of them
are lifestyle issues. Many of them are factors or strategies that
we can put into place without going to the remuneration
package.
The current OMA
negotiations are not, to my understanding, looking at issues
surrounding the actual operation of doctors within the hospital.
We're not too confident that's going to result. There's an
undercurrent among the doctors in the north, and the doctors
don't support some of the initiatives that the OMA is taking, but
that's their organizing group. If you look at the power structure
of the OMA, it is such that the family physicians have one voice
around the table, an equal voice with all the specialists, so
they are diluted by numbers and they're not very confident that
their issues will come to the front. The negotiations have to be
completed by the end
of March, I think, with recommendations by the end of April.
Mr Vainio:
If I could add to that, it's important that through the
negotiations the best result we could hope for is that there is
going to be more remuneration for physicians doing hospital-based
work. That relates to whether it's family physicians,
geriatricians, specialists etc so that there isn't a disincentive
to pull away from hospitals and do lucrative office practice,
which is the current disincentive.
Mr
Wiwchar: I guess we're saying there is some support for
Mr Harris's position to put some of the doctors on salaries.
That's one option.
Mr
Phillips: We had discussions earlier today about the
jargon in health areas, these silos, and my feeling is that we're
continuing to operate with the silos. I believe the language in
the contractual agreements between the government and the doctors
is fairly specific and therefore institutionalizes and legalizes
some of the concerns you have. That would be my judgment. Does
the Ontario Hospital Association have sufficient input into those
discussions, in your mind?
Mr
Wiwchar: That's a good question. I know that David
MacKinnon meets regularly with the minister. He is the president
of the OHA. I guess we've got some quandaries that are beyond the
parameters of the Ontario Hospital Association. We're not always
convinced that the Ontario Hospital Association speaks for
northern Ontario. That's why we've at times almost threatened to
form our own association, which we think would be
counterproductive. But when you look at the structure the way it
is in southern Ontario, the emergency room crisis in Toronto got
rapid attention. Our crisis here is just as impending.
Twenty-three million dollars was thrown at a problem in one
weekend. Very quickly solutions can happen in the south, but it
seems up in the north we get isolated.
The Chair:
On behalf of the committee, gentlemen, thank you very much for
your presentation this afternoon.
Mr
Phillips: Do you treat frostbite at your hospital
too?
Mr Galt:
Or hypothermia. On a point of privilege, Mr Chair: Do you suppose
the management of the hotel might turn the heat up just a little
bit?
The Chair:
We requested that a while ago, as a matter of fact before lunch.
I think that's probably as good as you're going to get it
today.
Mr
Phillips: My glass of water is frozen.
Mr Galt: I
went to get a cup of coffee just to hug it.
1530
PORCUPINE PROSPECTORS AND DEVELOPERS
ASSOCIATION
The Chair:
Our next presenters this afternoon are representatives from the
Porcupine Prospectors and Developers Association. Please step
forward and state your name for the record.
Mr Robert
Calhoun: Good afternoon. My name is Robert Calhoun, and
I'm here representing the Porcupine Prospectors and Developers
Association.
Mr Stew
Fumerton: My name is Stew Fumerton, and I'm the
vice-president of this association.
The Chair:
On behalf of the committee, welcome. You have 30 minutes for your
presentation.
Mr
Calhoun: In the information package you received,
immediately behind my text you will find three or four pages from
our newsletter, the Explorationist. The title is a little bit
hard-hitting, but that's the way we feel most of the time. Behind
that you'll find additional coloured graphics of what I am going
to speak about. I would like to acknowledge the Prospectors and
Developers Association of Canada for providing the pages that
make up the end of the booklet you received. I would also like to
thank my colleague Mr Fumerton here for providing the beautiful
colour graphics.
Chairperson and committee
members, good afternoon. As I said, my name is Robert Calhoun. I
am a professional geologist, and I am here today representing the
Porcupine Prospectors and Developers Association.
As president of this
association for the past two years, I have seen a dramatic shift
in the employment level of our membership. Since December 1997,
when I personally fell victim to the present downturn in
exploration activity, I have received reports on nearly a monthly
basis about another group of people who have lost their jobs, and
too often I've had to announce another company which closed its
doors completely. It's rare that any of these developments made
it into the local media, let alone the media based in southern
Ontario. The object of this presentation is to gain your support
for what we feel is the single most viable solution to the
collapse of the Ontario mineral exploration industry: the
flow-through share program.
Today I will present the
facts of the situation. The Ontario and indeed the whole Canadian
mineral exploration industry is in the worst downturn in its
history. High-risk capital, on which this industry survives, has
become nearly impossible to raise. Moreover, most of the
available exploration capital is going to projects elsewhere in
the world. For the decade leading up to and including 1992,
senior Canadian companies tended to spend proportionally most of
their exploration dollars in Canada. In 1992, the ratio was 60:40
in Canada's favour. The expected ratio for 1999 is about 20:80
against Canada.
In Ontario, total
exploration expenditures are expected to be approximately $80
million for 1999. This is a drop of over $120 million since 1996,
when over $203 million was spent by all sectors of the industry,
including monies spent around operating mines. The junior mining
sector has suffered a comparable drop in their exploration
budgets. This drop has left many of our junior mining companies
insolvent and without the necessary funds to undertake an
exploration program.
This lack of money has led
to the loss of human resources. Professional geologists and
geophysicists who no longer practise and diamond drillers
familiar with sophisticated hydraulic and electro-hydraulic
equipment have been forced to seek other types of employment.
This has eroded Canada's pre-eminent global position as a
provider of professional consultants and skilled operators.
There are many causes for
the present situation, including economic slowdowns in other
parts of the world which have contributed to the downturn in base
metal demand and the weakening of metal prices, in particular
copper, nickel, lead and zinc. Gold prices have been depressed
since 1996 due to sales by central banks resulting in the lack of
interest in exploring for gold. Just as a point of fact, gold is
down $4.35 today. The Bre-X scandal and the emergence of the
Internet sector have further eroded investor interest in the
mining sector, particularly the junior sector.
What does this mean for
Ontario? The shift of investment capital away from mining has
lead to a dramatic decrease in market share. An ever-increasing
share of high-risk capital is being directed towards Internet
dot.com stocks. Toronto, which has long been one of the major
power bases in the world for risk financing, is now losing that
distinction. Ore reserves in Ontario are on the decline and have
been for a number of years. This will impact on the mining
royalties that the Ontario government collects in a few short
years as mines continue to close and no replacements are brought
on stream. Northern and rural communities in Ontario whose
economies are supported by two main pillars, mining and forestry,
are at risk.
The Fraser Institute, which
ranks mining jurisdictions in the Americas, has dropped Ontario
from the second-most favoured jurisdiction to seventh place in
just one year. One of the major contributing factors to this drop
was the shift in public policy known as Lands for Life. This,
however, was not the only factor. Changes in government policies
in other provinces have resulted in those provinces being
favoured over Ontario. In particular, our neighbours to the
immediate east and west, Quebec and Manitoba, have made it known
that mining is important to them and they are willing to share
some of the risk. Also, both of these provinces have instituted
permitting measures designed to facilitate mineral development
rather than hinder it.
Ontario is underlain by
some of the most productive geological features anywhere in the
world. Ontario also hosts a number of world-class ore deposits of
copper/zinc, nickel and gold. In addition to these more
traditional deposits, recent discoveries have been made in
phosphate, resulting in the establishment of a new mine near
Kapuskasing. Diamond exploration in the province is also on the
increase and could lead to the development of Ontario's first
diamond mine.
What needs to be done?
There needs to be a short-term stimulus to create investment
interest in Canada. This stimulus would kick-start exploration in
Ontario and Canada and it would increase the probability of a new
discovery in Canada. Any new discovery would invoke an
industry-wide recovery and this recovery would stimulate the
economies of rural and northern communities in Ontario no matter
where in Canada the discovery is made.
1540
We feel that the biggest
single solution is an enhanced flow-through share tax measure.
Because of the high inherent risk associated with exploration,
Revenue Canada presently allows exploration companies to write
off 100% of their exploration expenditures in the year they were
incurred. Because most junior companies have no income, they
issue flow-through shares and pass along the write-off to the
investors who purchase the shares. The investor can then write
off 100% of any money invested against any income.
The shares cannot be sold
for one year, and when they are sold, Revenue Canada deems that
the investor bought the shares at zero dollars and taxes the
entire proceeds of the sale. In effect, this is a tax deferral
system, a system in which everyone wins. The investor gets a
deduction in the year of acquisition; the company gets funded;
governments collect taxes on the exploration activities and, more
importantly, collect taxes on the new wealth generated from any
new mines created. Northern and rural communities also benefit
from a highly effective regional development program. One other
important factor is that all funds raised in this manner have to
be spent in Canada.
During the recession in the
early 1980s, the government allowed a premium of 33 1/3%,
allowing investors to deduct 133% of their investment against any
income. The funds raised in this time period stimulated the
economies of northern and rural communities, led to the discovery
of a number of new mines and laid the groundwork for the
discovery of two world-class diamond mines in the Northwest
Territories. This strengthened the tax base on which all levels
of government depend.
The exploration industry
has developed a new and improved flow-through system. Valuable
lessons were learned from our previous experience. The new,
time-limited, focused flow-through program would be defined by
the following key elements: The premium would be 40% initially to
capture the attention of the investment community; there would be
a regional development focus on northern and rural areas; the
money raised could only be used for surface exploration; and
there would be a scale-down formula that will lead to the
termination of the program by December 31, 2002.
There is a limited cost to
the Ontario government. The program is underwritten two thirds by
the federal government and one third by provincial governments.
However, the program is a tax deferral situation. If the program
fails, the cost to government is zero. If it is successful, the
new economic activity stimulated by exploration and the discovery
of new mines will generate new tax revenues to offset the initial
cost. The new activity will reduce the number of people receiving
unemployment benefits, reduce the welfare costs in some
communities and stimulate secondary industries like
manufacturing, the service industry and equipment suppliers.
In summary, there is a need to stimulate the
exploration industry, and the focused flow-through program for
high-risk investment has the best chance of success. It will
increase exploration activity and may lead to the discovery of
new mines. These discoveries will create employment and economic
activity in northern and rural areas.
The focused flow-through
program is a tax deferral system. Exploration and mining are
still pillars on which this country is supported. So we ask you,
as members of the Ontario finance committee, to lend your support
to this program and to urge the federal and other provincial
governments to institute the program as soon as possible. The
reason we ask you, as members of the finance committee, is that
we are asking the Ontario government to forgo tax revenue in the
short term which will be recovered in the long term and in the
interim will support the northern Ontario economy.
My colleagues and I are not
looking for a handout but rather a hand up. Thank you for your
attention.
The Chair:
We have five minutes per caucus and I'll start with the
government side.
Mr Galt:
I'm just interested in the timing. We've also had the miners come
before us wanting the tax structure brought down to 12%, which
would be quite a boost for the mining organizations.
But you're talking here, in
prospecting, about the flow-through as delayed revenue for the
province, and I can follow that thinking. The one that's
bothering me-Lands for Life started out where it should have been
a win-win for everyone, and that seems to be what I'm hearing.
You've zeroed in on 1997, when there were some problems with
prospecting and mining and the environmentalists were concerned
from the other side.
Where has that left you, is
what I'm trying to sort out, in prospecting that's so against
you, from what I'm hearing in your presentation? I'm just not
getting the facts, the details, to really appreciate and
understand it. Can you help me there a bit?
Mr
Calhoun: As far as the Lands for Life issue-and they've
now called it the Ontario Living Legacy-they have removed lands
and placed them into parks on which we can't explore. As a
statistic, it takes 25,000 claims to find 100 claims on which we
want to do advanced exploration to find one claim that might hold
a mine. So as they take away land from us, it reduces the area in
which we can look. Some of the land they have taken is in
high-mineral-potential areas, and that reduces those 25,000
claims that we did have down. There's still land to be looked at,
but every time they take away more land for parks and restrict us
from going in there, that hurts.
Mr Galt:
You're telling me that the areas designated Lands for Life, or
the Legacy, is 100% you cannot touch.
Mr
Calhoun: Right, in the areas they have designated as
parks. They do have conservation reserves in which they are
restricting the forestry companies but we are still allowed to
explore.
Mr Galt:
That explains why I hear from the other side and the
environmentalists in the south who are saying: "We didn't do
anything. You're still letting them mine and carry on in those
areas." I think you've explained it to me to be a little clearer
on where they're coming from on both sides.
Mr Arnott:
Thank you very much for your presentation. I want to make sure I
fully understand your proposal in terms of enhancing the
flow-through-shares tax measure. You've said that right now an
investor can write off 100% of their investment, right?
Mr
Calhoun: Right.
Mr Arnott:
And you're suggesting it should go up to 140%, with the
provincial government making up the difference?
Mr
Calhoun: The 140% is two thirds subsidized by the
federal government and one third by the Ontario government.
Mr Arnott:
All right. And really it wouldn't cost the provincial government
anything.
Mr
Calhoun: You're going to forgo taxes. If someone puts in
$100,000 against their income, you are going to forgo the taxes
that they pay, but they get the shares-
Mr Arnott:
Only in the short term, though, right?
Mr
Calhoun: That's only in the short term, and when they
sell their shares and hopefully make a profit on them, then you
will tax it as if it was zero when they bought them.
Mr Arnott:
I think I understand. Thank you very much.
Mr
Kwinter: I just want to let you know that I support your
proposal. I think it's important, and it's important that people
understand.
You say, "What does it mean
for Ontarians?" and you say, "Ore reserves in Ontario are on the
decline." Well, the ore is not on the decline; it's the
identifiable reserves that are on the decline because there
hasn't been enough money spent on exploration to identify new
reserves. I agree with you that that is a major problem. I've
said this many times, that the geology in Ontario is probably the
best in the world, or among the best in the world. There isn't a
problem with that. The problem is that with the mining tax of 20%
and with the red tape and with, as you say, the restrictions on
getting into certain lands, there is a disincentive for Canadian
and Ontario development companies to pursue projects in Ontario.
They go elsewhere. You point that out quite dramatically when you
show how the ratio has changed, and now you've got 80% of the
Canadian companies looking elsewhere. I think that is a very
serious problem when you consider that not only do we have good
geology here but we also have, and have the reputation of having,
some of the best mining people in the world. I think that is
absolutely critical.
I just want a
clarification. When you say the money raised can only be used for
surface exploration, does that mean you can't fly over and use
that kind of technology?
1550
Mr
Calhoun: No. Under the old flow-through system, and Stew
will correct me if I'm wrong, you could put in an exploration
shaft and charge that money against flow-through shares. You could actually do some
underground mining under the old system and use those dollars to
do that. This one is just for doing airborne surveys, ground
surveys and diamond drilling. Once you start to get into the
situation where you are developing a mine, then you would go for
funding from your major company outside the flow-through system.
This is just to stimulate surface exploration and put guys like
Stew and me back to work.
Mr
Kwinter: I think you also identified another problem. At
one time the junior mines and the mining industry were one of the
only games in town for investors because of the great tax
incentives. It was also a chance to maybe get lucky and hit a
Hemlo or something like that. But what has happened now is that
you have all these Internet companies and IT stuff, which has
really caught the attention of speculative investors, coupled
with the sort of down reputation of the Vancouver Stock Exchange,
which was a great source for raising money for these kinds of
projects. I think all of that has compounded. All these things
together have created a sort of negative impression of the
industry, and I think it is really going to take some help by the
government's allowing your proposal-the tax flow shares-and just
bringing to the attention of the investing public the
opportunities and how they can be exploited, in the finest sense.
Do you have any feeling about that?
Mr
Fumerton: Mining is a high-risk game, and your odds of
winning are very slim. But if you do win, your odds of a reward
are pretty good as well. So in terms of exploration, this thing
is to get attention back from, say, Internet stocks that have
certainly hogged the limelight for quite a while, getting
attention and driving their shares up. I keep making the analogy:
What are the odds of a computer engineer being able to write one
line of computer code that is going to basically displace Bill
Gates? In our case, one drill hole can make it. Take the instance
of Kidd Creek. It just took one drill hole to set North America
on its heels. You can do a lot of work, a lot of preparation,
hard study and all the science, but there is still a tremendous
component of luck that we can't control. So we have to keep
trying to overcome those odds. This is where one drill hole, if
done by a reputable company and all the rest of it, can really
have an impact. I don't think that situation exists in Internet
stocks and things like that.
Certainly we have a bad
reputation on Bay Street, and on Granville Street in Vancouver.
But it's to try to get the attention back to another valid
high-risk game. Unless we can raise high-risk capital, this
industry is dead. I don't think the exploration industry can
survive another year on this downturn. It will be wiped out.
The Chair:
Thank you very much, Mr Kwinter. Mr Bisson.
Mr Bisson:
On the issue of odds, the odds of being able to make it on the
market in a mining stock are far better than you would do on a
lotto ticket or at a casino. I know far more people in this
community who made money by investing in these kinds of projects
than people who won the lotto or at the casinos. They all say
they made money at casinos, but I have never seen the actual
cash.
This chart that you put
together, headed "Ontario Exploration Expenditures," tells the
story. Members should take a look at it; I forget what page it
is, it doesn't say, but it's headed, "Ontario Exploration
Expenditures." It tells the story. It's an interesting story, if
you go through it. You see that through the late 1980s there was
a large increase in activities in the exploration market. That,
quite frankly, was because the federal government at the time,
and just a bit before that, had put in place the enhanced
flow-through share system which was 133 1/3%. The amount of money
that was being spent in David Ramsay's riding, my riding, Len
Wood's riding and other ridings across northern Ontario by
private sector individuals was phenomenal. You couldn't rent a
truck, you couldn't get a diamond drill. Restaurants were packed.
People were shipping food into the bush. The airlines, private
companies like Commercial Aviation and others, helicopters-there
were all kinds of spinoffs going on. There was work to be had and
good-paying jobs. What's interesting is that at the point that
the government decides to stop the enhanced flow-through share
system, you see an immediate drop in activity in exploration.
Then it goes on further until 1990-91.
I come to my point. One of
the first groups I heard from when I was elected in the fall of
1990 was one of your predecessors, Dave Meunier, and I think
Steve Parry, who walked into my office and started telling me the
story I'm hearing here today again. I didn't know a hell of a lot
other than I worked in the mining industry and I figured it made
some sense, but I didn't pay too much mind to it. They rang the
alarm bell in late 1990, saying, "If your government doesn't do
something, we're going to lose all our exploration and we're
going to see the dollars go out of Ontario into other
jurisdictions in Canada and out of the country all together." I
didn't listen, to be quite blunt, when they first came in to see
me. It wasn't until the group itself started Save Our North,
where the mining exploration community-the prospectors, the
developers, the miners, the diamond drill workers-got together
and started this group called Save Our North and went after our
government something ferocious. They were the most highly
effective lobbyist group I've ever seen in northeastern Ontario.
They scared the shit out of me, to tell you quite frankly,
because I understood that if we didn't do something to try to
deal with this, not only was it bad for our economy, it wasn't
very good for my political future either. Because of that, I
really started to pay notice, and that's what happens in
politics, that's a reality.
The story goes on, and
there's a point I'm trying to make here. If you notice, it
finally bottoms out in 1992 and then you see it start to
increase. The reason that mining exploration increased after 1992
is because they were successful in lobbying the provincial
government to do some things. We put in place incentive programs
for prospectors and developers under programs like OMIP and OPAP
and enhanced some dollars there; we did the ERLIS project, which was the earth resource
lands information system; a whole bunch of tools that the mining
community needed to do their jobs and to send a message, more
importantly, to the mining community and the investors that
Ontario's open for business and we're serious about mining. They
wanted a declaration by our government, then Premier Rae, to say,
"Ontario mining is important and it's an important part of our
economy and we support it." After those activities you see it
start to increase and we again start to see activity in the
mining sector. Not more than about four years ago, we had quite a
bit of activity going on in this community as well as others.
The story goes on. After
1997, when your government decided to get rid of programs like
OMIP, OPAP and a whole bunch of other things like Lands for Life,
boom, it's going down again. My plea to you is that the story is
in the numbers. What these gentlemen are coming forward to us and
talking about today is an innovative way to utilize the power of
the provincial government to lever some dollars from the federal
government. If you agree that we have an enhanced system of 40%
above the federal share, you automatically put on the hook the
federal government because they're putting 100% in on the
deferral of the taxes.
I think this is an
important initiative that's being put forward. I'm going to
invite these gentlemen, along with other prospectors in the
north, to come to Toronto and hopefully meet with Mr Eves and
others to try and convince them that this is something we should
be looking at putting in our budget this spring, because it would
pay back the province and the mining communities big time.
Mr
Fumerton: I'd like to interject here a bit. The crucial
date to us is Paul Martin's budget, if we can get pressure on him
to include this flow-through in his budget, because the province
and the federal government have a joint tax system. It's the
federal regulations that we're pushing for at the moment, and
we're basically asking for provincial support to lobby the
federal government at this present moment to get this
flow-through system going.
The Chair:
Thank you very much, gentlemen. On behalf of the committee, thank
you very much for your presentation this afternoon.
1600
ONTARIO SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS' FEDERATION,
DISTRICT 1
The
Vice-Chair: Our next delegation is OSSTF, district 1,
Ontario North East; Tony Sawinski, vice-president. Please come
forward and introduce yourself and your associate. You have 30
minutes in total for your presentation, and what's left over
after your presentation is divided up between the three caucuses
for comment and/or questions. The floor is yours.
Mr Tony
Sawinski: My name is Tony Sawinski. I'm the
vice-president of OSSTF, district 1. With me today is Tim Rorke,
who is also involved with OSSTF for our local area.
First of all, I would like
to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to address
some of the concerns we face in northern Ontario. I believe
hearings such as this one are important in a democratic society.
However, I stress that they are important only if the words
spoken by any presenter are truly heard and a resulting action
takes place. Are these hearings just smoke and mirrors so it can
be stated that the public had a say? Is the budget already
predetermined? I hope that this is not the case. Will my
presentation be pigeonholed as coming from a special interest
group because I am a member of OSSTF? Anyone can be labeled as
such. Who doesn't have an interest or concern that is special or
dear to him or her? I trust that the panel before me will take
heed of the concerns I have for our educational system. Having
said all that, let me begin my dissertation.
This past Christmas I was
travelling home from Brantford. After North Bay the conditions of
the highway were treacherous. It took over six hours to plow
home. Not a single plow, sand, or salt truck was seen going
northbound. Only two trucks were seen going south. Such
conditions are being experienced far too frequently,
unfortunately ending in tragic results. Not too long ago there
would have been a fleet of trucks on the highways, ensuring the
safety of those who traveled on them. Is this the result of
privatization and contracting out?
How do these conditions
affect the students in our northern schools? Extracurricular
teams like Reach for the Top and basketball require travel to and
from different communities in the north in order to compete
against schools in their district. I think you will agree that
these extracurricular experiences are important to the
development of our youth. One can never ensure the highways will
be 100% safe, but to reduce maintenance in order to fulfill the
promise of a tax cut is playing Russian roulette not only with
the lives of motorists but also our children.
Another result of living in
northern Ontario means many students are bused to school. These
buses must travel on the highways I have just described. Logic
would dictate that if the roads were that bad, then they should
not be traveled upon. Today, as in the past, such precautions are
taken. However, these poorer road conditions exist now even when
there is a light snowfall. Does this mean that whenever there is
a snowfall these bussed students stay home and don't go to
school? If that is going to be the reality that we in the north
must endure, then our children's educational experiences will
suffer. All that is required is a return to the same level of
service that we had.
The busing concern will be
compounded when schools are closed as a result of the
disappearance of the mitigating grants. School closures will
result in more students being bused and over a greater distance.
The Education Improvement Commission reported: "We note that the
practice of consolidating schools cannot be applied to sparsely
populated areas of northern Ontario as readily as to some areas
of the south. The excessive transportation distance would result in students spending
too much of their day riding a bus, which would not enhance their
ability to learn."
Mitigation funding will
continue for 1999-2000, but it will be reduced and eliminated
over the next two years. "Mitigating" is an interesting word.
"Mitigate" means to make or become less harsh, severe or painful,
but as the grants disappear, ironically the impact on education
will be harsh, severe and painful. How many more cuts can the
educational system endure? The Education Improvement Commission
has reported that if the board cannot find additional
efficiencies, it will experience a shortfall when the mitigation
funding is no longer available.
Currently, Ontario's
educational funding per pupil has dropped from 22nd to 55th out
of 63 North American jurisdictions during the past 10 years. This
has had a dramatic impact upon the education delivered by our
school this past decade. The following are some local
examples.
(1) The number of teachers
has been reduced by over 5%. Fewer teachers result in larger
class sizes. Fewer teachers result in fewer or diminished
extracurricular activities like volleyball or wrestling.
(2) At my school, the
school nurse's hours have been reduced from 40 a week to one
morning a week. This service of communicating, diagnosing,
treating and referring was an invaluable asset to our students. A
former student and athlete of mine, Kylie Szczebonski, is
completing her nursing diploma this year. She has had 17 job
offers outside of Ontario. To date she has not received one offer
in our province. She would love to stay not only in Ontario but
in her hometown. She would relish the opportunity to be our
school nurse or a nurse at our district hospital. However, the
reality is that these institutions are not only not hiring but
are in fact continuing to lay off nurses.
(3) There are fewer
guidance counsellors and librarians to help students with their
problems and research respectively. As we enter this new
millennium, our society is evolving and increasingly getting more
complicated. Thus, our students need to look for more direction
than they did in the past. How do we offer these services with
shrinking resources?
(4) There are fewer
custodians available to keep our schools clean and safe.
Recently, Mrs Kernick's son was required to clean the washroom at
a local elementary school. The number of hours for the custodian
had been cut, thus students were now being used to clean the
washroom. In fact, after completing his duty, there was no soap
to wash his hands.
(5) The recent funding
announcement for special education is welcome news. However, will
it be enough, and how accessible will it be? The funding
mechanism has made it difficult for us to address the costs of
delivering programs and services to new students entering our
system, students who demonstrate increased need and students
returning to the board from outside specialized programs and
services. Despite the commitment to address such issues mid-year,
there has been no process to do so. Transferring students from
other boards brings with them the paper trail but no actual
monies.
(6) Drastic funding cuts
for adult education programs came into effect in September 1996,
before amalgamation and the new funding formula for the whole
public school system. At that time the funding for an adult
student over the age of 21 was dropped from $5,800 to $2,257 a
year, a cut of approximately 60%. It has remained at $2,257 under
the new funding formula.
The immediate effect on the
PACE centre, our local adult educational facility, in September
1996 was the loss of two full-time teachers. Within a year the
equivalent of one full-time teacher was lost, two part-time
teachers, two periods of ESL and one period of mathematics. We
now have just four full-time teachers remaining, including the
coordinator/guidance counsellor/teacher, who are still trying to
offer a viable program, grades 10 to 12, leading to
graduation.
Because of the limited
staff available, most teaching sections are combined classes. In
our most extreme example, one teacher in one class handles the
students taking grade 11 business math, grade 12 business math,
grade 11 technical math, grade 12 technical math, grade 11
advanced math and grade 12 advanced math. This situation results
in a much heavier and more stressful workload for the teacher
than if the same number of students were working on the same unit
in the same course in a normal secondary class. It also means
less help is available for the students in each course since the
teacher's focus is so divided. Only three sections out of 10 this
semester are single-coded classes.
1610
Funding cuts have also
caused a big change to their clientele. In order to cover the
costs of this program, the PACE centre has moved to a blended
model. They are forced to take in more students between the ages
of 16 and 20 who do receive full base funding. The alternative
students who are sent out of regular schools to the PACE program
are often disruptive and need more supervision than the adult
program was set up to handle. Most do not blend well with the
highly motivated adult students in the class. The troubled
younger students have a much higher rate of absenteeism and much
poorer work habits. The culture of the school as a whole and the
rate of progress within the classes have deteriorated with the
increased number of students under 21. Both adult students and
the alternative students deserve a dedicated program of their
own, but in many boards this is no longer possible because of the
funding cuts.
(7) There is a difficulty
in hiring qualified teachers. The remuneration and working
conditions have declined in the past decade for Ontario teachers.
A number of teachers have jumped out of the factor 85 window.
This has resulted in a shortage of teachers, especially in the
areas of math, science, computers and technology. Fewer men are
entering the teaching profession. These people are seeking
employment in other careers or outside of Ontario. A number of
states offer bonuses to teach south of the border; bonuses such
as down payments on a home or a free car are being offered. If you were
just coming out of teacher's college and could earn more money-in
American dollars, mind you-receive a signing bonus and not teach
seven out of eight, where would you work?
My understanding is that
Quebec teachers will receive a raise of 9% over the next three
years. Will this make it more difficult to attract qualified
French teachers, many of whom teach in northern Ontario?
Currently, jobs in northern Ontario have been posted with no
applicants interested, reposted with the same result, and
reposted again under a different position. Principals are
frantically trying to fill these positions with anyone they can
find. If it is so difficult to find qualified teachers for
positions in Timmins, it is virtually impossible to hire someone
for communities like Cochrane or Smooth Rock Falls.
(8) At my school the number
of positions of responsibility has been reduced from 26, with
time release, to 11. The proposal for next year is a further cut
to six, with no time release. These people had performed a
variety of tasks to facilitate the smooth functioning of the
school. Their duties ranged from coordinating intramural
programs, tracking and addressing poor students' attendance, to
facilitating new curriculum and acting as a resource guide to
instruction and teaching techniques, just to name a few. Who will
now perform these duties? When will they perform these
duties?
I think it is necessary to
mention another effect that the recent expedited changes and the
financial crunch have had on front-line workers. There is a human
factor we must not forget. Teachers are asked to be teacher
advisers, to teach new curriculum, to evaluate and assess in a
different way, to complete report cards in a different fashion,
to do on-calls in lieu of supply teachers and to perform headship
duties. Last year the premiums for our long-term disability
insurance skyrocketed by a 40% increase. This was a result of our
poor experience. In other words, more teachers are becoming
severely ill tryingly to do the job asked of them. Last year we
had six out of our 100 teachers on LTDI. I believe the national
average is 16 per 1,000 workers. Our rate is almost four times
higher than that average. Others are coping by doing fewer
extracurricular activities.
I have highlighted a number
of problems of the restrictions of educational finance. I would
be negligent if I did not offer any recommendations. I suggest
the following:
(1) Allow boards
flexibility of local taxation rights to deal with the diverse
nature of their students and geographical differences.
(2) Incorporate the
mitigating grants into the funding formula so no further damage
occurs in our educational system.
(3) Reinvest in education
the money saved by the government from the monthly debt payments
of the unfunded liability. This amounts to over $300 million a
year.
(4) Restore funding to
adult education programs to provide these students with an equal
opportunity for success.
As illustrated, the current
funding for education does not adequately meet the needs of our
students. Investing in our children and adult education today has
a direct positive impact on our future generations. Education is
not a business, and our students should not be treated like
widgets.
The continued financial
strain on the public schools will bankrupt the system. Will
voucher and charter schools rear their ugly heads in Ontario?
Such schools have failed in both the United States and Alberta.
The implementation of charter and voucher schools would result in
a two-tiered educational system. Businesses are waiting
anxiously, like vultures, to run our schools for a profit. Thomas
Jefferson once stated, "We must dream of an aristocracy of
achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity." Public
education levels the playing field for all participants. Do we
want to regress back to where a doctor's son becomes a doctor and
a miner's son becomes a miner only because of the unequal
opportunity that will exist in a two-tiered system?
As I was growing up, I
remember how proud people were living in both southern and
northern Ontario. Globally, our educational system was deeply
admired and much respected. Now our youth must leave northern
Ontario and even leave the province to find opportunities for
public sector employment. In the last half of the past decade,
Ontario has experienced unprecedented economic growth and will
continue to grow over the next several years. The money is
there.
I remember a tune aired on
both radio and television. I will not attempt to try to sing it
for you, but there was one line I wish to share with you:
"Ontario: A place to stand, a place to grow." Unfortunately, we
still stand, for we cannot move. We no longer can grow, but
wither in the desert of financial underfunding.
As you write your report
and make your recommendations, I implore you to invest in
northern Ontario, invest in education and invest in our children.
Thank you.
The
Vice-Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation.
We have barely four minutes per caucus, beginning with the
official opposition.
Mr
Phillips: I appreciate the thoughtful presentation. The
first thing that caught my eye was that there are 5% fewer
teachers currently.
Mr
Sawinski: Yes. That was as a result of the social
contract.
Mr
Phillips: That happened four or five years ago, did
it?
Mr
Sawinski: It happened, I believe, between the years 1993
and 1995, or thereabout.
Mr
Phillips: So that's the 5% fewer teachers.
Mr
Sawinski: In fact, locally the impact was 6%. I think
the actual number was that each school had to reduce their staff
by 4.75%, but the reality was that some were reduced even more.
Locally it was 6% for us.
Mr
Phillips: But there has not been a reduction in the last
few years, then, I gather?
Mr
Sawinski: No, there hasn't.
Mr Phillips: One of my concerns
is what is happening with the extracurricular activities. I
happen to be a big fan of extracurricular activities because I
think the educational experience is far broader than what happens
in the classroom. In some places in Ontario I'm quite worried
about what's happening. Extracurricular activities just seem not
to be occurring. Is that the case here, or is there no problem
with extracurricular activities? Is it an issue that we, if we
believe in extracurricular activities, should be concerned
about?
Mr
Sawinski: Locally the problem varies from school to
school. There are some schools that are trying to maintain the
same extracurricular activities that were experienced in the
1980s and before. I'm at a school that is trying to maintain
those activities, but I can tell you that in many of the schools
in northern Ontario they're either not offering the same number
or they are just limiting their resources to a few activities in
the school.
1620
Mr
Phillips: Another area of concern to me is adult
education. For years we all believed strongly in lifelong
learning, that education isn't something that ends at a certain
age. Yet the approach on funding for adult education appears to
have turned that around in what I regard as the wrong direction,
which is a lot less opportunity for adult education, when
everything we know is that you've got to keep trying to upgrade
your skills and your learning. I'm certainly aware of some areas
where that's had a profound impact in terms of fewer adult
students. I see you've got some statistics in the back of your
presentation. Where do you think we're going with adult education
in Ontario, and have you any advice for the committee?
Mr
Sawinski: If there's continuing lack of funding in adult
education, then you're going to have fewer adults who are either
getting that education or being retrained and who as a result
won't have the same job opportunities down the road, or any job.
I feel that if they don't get a job, then they may be a burden on
the social safety net, and they shouldn't have to be if they got
the educational experience that they deserve.
The
Vice-Chair: We'll have to move on to the third
party.
Mr Bisson:
I have two or three questions. It's interesting that you're the
first, at least today, who's come forward and talked about the
condition of roads and how it affects attendance at school. I
travel up and down Highway 11, and there are many times when a
two-hour drive takes three or four hours, or you end up staying
overnight. Are you seeing a marked increase in actual school
closures in the last couple of years because of road conditions,
or a drop in attendance?
Mr
Sawinski: Maybe not necessarily in Timmins, but in the
outlying areas like Iroquois Falls, Cochrane and Smooth Rock
Falls, yes.
Mr Bisson:
That's interesting and something we need to raise in the
Legislature, because this winter it's a lot more apparent. I'm
getting calls in the office, and I see it myself, that a number
of times the private contractors, who try hard-and they're good
workers like everybody else, but there is no longer the
monitoring that used to be done by the Ministry of
Transportation, what they used to call the highway patrols or
patrol yards or whatever it was. As well, the standards that used
to be applied by MTO are lower. The contractors, trying to make a
buck, are running their trucks faster. The problem with a
snowplow is that you run it faster and all you do is blow the
snow over the top and put it back on the highway. So we're seeing
a real negative effect, especially in the snowy parts of the
season.
I want to ask you a
question in regard to the comments you made about the per-pupil
funding ratio that we find now in Ontario as compared to in the
past. We are told that the future of the Ontario economy, as it
is across Canada, is in making sure that we have, as best as we
can, well-trained workers and well-trained professionals within
our economy. If the trend is to less funding in our education
system, both at the elementary and secondary levels and then
later on at the post-secondary level, what kind of long-term
effect do you think this has on our economy when it comes to the
professionalism and the training afforded to workers and
professionals?
Mr
Sawinski: Are you referring to the actual workers or the
students?
Mr Bisson:
I'm saying that basically we're told that a highly motivated,
skilled worker makes money for a company and that's what makes
your economy go, having good people. If we're spending less on
education rather than more, as compared to other jurisdictions,
does that disadvantage us when it comes to our competitiveness
towards other jurisdictions?
Mr
Sawinski: In my report I indicated that a number of
teachers are leaving the profession because of retirement and the
85 factor, and we're not able to replenish those people with
qualified teachers because either (a) they're not entering the
profession at all or (b) they're looking outside the province
because monetarily they're getting more money.
Mr Bisson:
What I'm wondering about is the people who are actually working
in industry: the electricians, the mechanics, the professionals
who are out there, the engineers etc. If we're spending less per
pupil than we used to, does that mean it hinders us and the
possibilities that the economy affords us in the future? That's
what I'm wondering, or is that just too far out in the future to
really think about?
Mr
Sawinski: I'm not sure.
Mr Bisson:
Another thing: Point 4 on page 3, I've never heard of that. A
child by the name of Kernick was told to clean a washroom? That's
the first I've heard of this. That distresses me somewhat.
Mr
Sawinski: The way I found out about this, she had
written an editorial in the daily press and I called her and
spoke to her about the incident.
Mr Bisson:
Was it punishment?
Mr
Sawinski: No, the students were asked to do that.
Mr Bisson:
What school?
Mr
Sawinski: Golden Avenue.
Mr Bisson: I'll check that out.
Thank you.
The
Vice-Chair: OK. Time is just about up anyway. We move on
to the government.
Mr Arnott:
Thank you very much for your presentation. I appreciate your
advice.
You summarized, towards the
end, four specific recommendations, and there's one I wanted to
ask you about. In point number 3 you said, "Reinvest, in
education, the money saved by the government from the monthly
debt payments of the unfunded liability (over $300 million per
year)." Can you tell me a little bit more about what that means,
what you're suggesting there?
Mr
Sawinski: Approximately two years ago, there was a
surplus in the teachers' pension fund. Well, maybe I'll go back
and give you a little of the history before that. It goes back,
basically, to 1990 when there was a partnership agreement between
the government and the teachers. At that time, the teachers took
over control of investing the plan. There was an unfunded
liability. There wasn't enough money for the future cost. The
government was making monthly payments of about $30 million
a month. About two years ago, there was enough surplus in money
in the plan where there was an agreement between the two partners
to pay off that total debt, so that essentially there is a
$30-million-a-month savings to the government. I'm just saying
that since that is a savings and they don't need to pay that
debt, reinvest that money into education.
Mr Arnott:
Has there been a contribution holiday as well for teachers?
Mr
Sawinski: No, there hasn't.
Mr Arnott:
They're still paying the same?
Mr
Sawinski: We pay about 8.9% into our pension fund. It's
quite high.
Mr Arnott:
So really it's the growth in the stock market that has enabled
this contribution holiday to take place.
Mr
Sawinski: There has been no contribution holiday.
There's been a surplus. You're correct. There's been a surplus
because-
Mr Arnott:
I understand what you mean.
Mr
Sawinski: That's been used to offset the unfunded
liability.
Mrs
Molinari: Thank you very much for your presentation.
It's always interesting to see different perspectives around
similar issues. I also appreciate the fact that you had some
specific recommendations here. You've made a presentation and you
have some specific ways that the government could react with
decision-making and policies to accommodate some of the comments
you've made.
I have a couple of
questions. The teacher that you stated is teaching six different
math courses in the period of a year, is this the exception
rather than the rule? You stated this is an extreme example. By
that I take it that this would be an exception rather than the
rule?
Mr
Sawinski: There are only four teachers at the PACE
Centre so that would be 25% of the staff.
Mrs
Molinari: So these are specific to the PACE Centre that
you're talking about?
Mr
Sawinski: Correct.
Mrs
Molinari: With respect to the PACE Centre, which has
moved to a blended model, your presentation states that they're
blended into an adult education program? That's where the PACE
students are directed into an adult education program?
Mr
Sawinski: Yes, they would be sitting in the same
classroom.
Mrs
Molinari: So that's how one specific school board
reacted to the servicing of the PACE students with the funding
that is available for PACE students?
Mr
Sawinski: That's correct.
Mrs
Molinari: There are some cases where some parents of
PACE students feel that a blended model would be appropriate, but
certainly when there's that kind of an age difference, it
presents some difficulty. Thank you for pointing that out. I was
not aware that that was happening anywhere in the province.
The flexibility of local
taxation: One of the common themes before the new funding model
came out was that the way education was funded before that was
that those boards that were rich in assessment received more
money and the boards that were poor in assessment received less
money. Therefore, those in the south-Toronto-with all the
commercial and industrial land and the condensed residential had
more money by virtue of the assessment to provide for education,
and the northern boards and boards that had less assessment got
less money. The funding model was an attempt to give every
student in the province equal dollars to provide for
education.
1630
The
Vice-Chair: We've run out of time. If you just have a
quick response, then we'll move on.
Mr
Sawinski: I didn't get a question there yet.
Mrs
Molinari: Quickly, how did the new funding model
specifically affect your board, not having access to taxation but
having access to per-pupil equalization dollars?
Mr
Sawinski: First of all, the funding model, even though
it gave an equal distribution of money per student, was basically
down to the lowest common denominator and not raised up to the
largest common denominator in terms of the funding per student. I
can't tell you specifically how it affected the per-pupil
expenditure locally, but my understanding is that it's less. What
we're asking for is just to give the board some flexibility.
The
Vice-Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation
and coming forward. Have a good day.
NORTHERN COLLEGE OF APPLIED ARTS AND
TECHNOLOGY
The
Vice-Chair: Our next presenter is Cathy Hart, regional
director, north, of the Northern College of Applied Arts and
Technology. You have approximately 30 minutes in total for
presentation and also responses and/or questions from the three caucuses. We'll
divide it up evenly after you finish.
Ms Cathy
Hart: My name is Cathy Hart. I'm the regional director,
north, for the Northern College of Applied Arts and Technology. I
want to thank the committee for coming to Timmins, first of all,
and for allowing presentations from the various sectors.
Representing the post-secondary sector in northeastern Ontario, I
think it's important that our voice be heard and I appreciate
being able to be here today. I'm speaking on behalf of Michael
Hill, our president, who was not able to be here today. I think
you've all been given a copy of the brief I brought with me. I
would probably choose to discuss that rather than read it to you.
However, I will cover some of the points that I think are
important to be noted in there.
I guess most important for
Northern College, the college of northeastern Ontario, is that
for the first time in our history we're facing a deficit, and
it's a cumulative deficit. This concerns us to a great extent. We
are not alone in this, as I'm sure you've heard today or
throughout other presentations you've listened to. The health
sector in northeastern Ontario's in difficulty. Our
resource-based economy is in difficulty. It's our feeling that in
order to look at the difficulties and still provide services to
our region, we need to look at how the government can assist us
in solving our own difficulties.
Really what we're asking
today, in summary, is that the government look at how the
colleges are funded, how that funding is distributed throughout
the province and how it can be redistributed or reworked in some
way to promote some equity throughout the province in terms of
funding to smaller colleges in rural areas as opposed to the
larger colleges in the urban areas that have high-tech
industries, that have a sound industrial base and that have a
multitude of opportunities for partnerships that are just not
available to small northern Ontario communities and in particular
the college. That would be the premise I would be looking at
today.
We have recently
restructured-I introduced myself as the regional director, north.
In an effort to look at our deficit and position ourselves for
the future we have restructured Northern College. We are now
three regions: north, central and south. As the regional
director, north, I'm responsible for the communities of Timmins,
Iroquois Falls, Cochrane, up the Highway 11 corridor as far west
as Hearst and Calstock and north to Moosonee and the coastal
area. The north region is a fairly significant region. We also,
as you probably know, go as far south as the Haileybury-Tri-Town
area to the Temagami area, so that we do cover a large area in
Northern College. We're hoping that with the restructuring and
with the regional groupings we will be able to get into each of
our communities and work with our communities to provide training
and educational opportunities that will put us and the
communities in good stead to solve the economic difficulties
we're having as a region.
We certainly feel very
strongly that an investment in education is an investment in the
economy, and an investment in education is an investment in
people, and I think people are the most important resource we
have.
As we're struggling in
northeastern Ontario to survive, Northern College certainly feels
that we must invest in post-secondary education in the college
system. That will allow us to not only help the communities but
help the people within those communities.
We recognize that the
government is providing special opportunities through programs
such as SuperBuild, access to opportunities and strategic skills
investments, and while we laud those initiatives by the
government, they do not always work for northern Ontario. Many of
the initiatives depend on private sector partnerships,
particularly with head offices in large, high-tech industries
which we just simply do not have in the north. Therefore,
although the initiatives are very important and we would never
say, "Stop the initiatives," we feel that we need to look at and
have the government look at initiatives that will support the
north as well and take into account the fact that we do not have
all the industries that other people do.
Northern College, you may
or may not be aware, and I've indicated somewhat, covers a very
large area. We own three campuses: the Porcupine campus here in
Timmins, the Kirkland Lake campus and the Haileybury campus. We
rent campus facilities in Kapuskasing and in Moosonee. Those are
our main structures. We cover a very large area. We do get rental
assistance for our campuses in Moosonee and Kapuskasing at this
point in time.
As we look at the campuses
that we own and the physical structures that we own, we continue
to have infrastructure costs. We find, of course, as everywhere,
that the costs for utilities, supplies and telecommunications are
increasing. Our population base is not increasing. Our student
population base, on which we are primarily funded, is not
increasing, and therefore, there is difficulty balancing the
infrastructure costs and the utilities costs in light of the
other declines that we're facing. Those costs that we have need
to be addressed, and we need some assistance with those
particular costs.
We have worked very hard at
Northern College to provide access to the communities within our
region. We've done this through video conferencing and audio
conferencing. We are probably leaders to some extent in the
province in that area. We were among the first colleges to offer
complete programs through audio conferencing. We have financed
this on our own and with our own resources. Having done that and
in trying to provide access, we are now finding ourselves in the
position where our reserves have run out and, as I've indicated,
we are now in a deficit position. So we certainly need some help
with that, as would other community colleges in the north.
You will see in the
presentation the distances that we travel. Our president's office
is located here in Timmins at the Porcupine campus. It's a long
way to our other campuses, and the last presentation talked about
the distances we have to travel to get to other campuses.
Probably the one area
of growth population that we have in this province right now is
in the aboriginal population. Our Moosonee campus serves the
aboriginal population of the coastal area, the James Bay coast.
That is our only campus that is not accessible by road;
therefore, our costs to service that area are increased due to
the costs for travel to the area. That is another factor which
affects our ability to serve our communities.
As we look at the economic
relationship that we have with the communities, we feel-and I
trust that you feel too-that community colleges are an integral
part of the communities and they are a very important part in the
economic status of communities. As I think I've quoted there,
we're landlords, we're consumers, we're builders, we're
investors, we're taxpayers, we're innovators and we're leaders.
We play a very important role in the communities. We've given you
some indication of the economic impact of our presence in the
communities, looking at from approximately $15 million in the
Timmins area to $1 million in some of the smaller communities.
While that may not sound like a lot of money to people from
southern Ontario who are used to dealing with a lot larger
numbers, those numbers are very significant in northern Ontario.
The economic impact of not having a college would be severely
felt within our communities.
1640
We've often talked about
people who leave the north to get education and training. Very
often the trend we see is, once people leave the north, they do
not come back to the north. So we're facing, if you will, a brain
drain within the north. I think it's important to allow and to
provide access to education and training in home communities so
that people can stay at home, can continue to raise their
families in their home community, can continue to contribute in
their community in an economic sense and in a social sense and in
the total aspects of the community. So it's very important that
we are able to continue to provide that access.
That leads me into the
funding formula for the college system. I trust you are aware
that the funding formula in the college system is such that there
is a fixed pot, if you will, or a pie as we call it. The slice of
the pie that you get and the size of the slice depends on the
enrolment in terms of post-secondary education. As colleges grow,
you may or may not get a bigger slice of the pie, depending on
how the other colleges in the system grow. For example, Northern
College could in fact grow by 100 students; however, if the large
colleges like Humber and Seneca and Fanshawe grow by 1,000
students, they will continue to get more money than Northern,
even though we have grown. That puts us at a great disadvantage
in terms of trying to obtain finances to get out of this
particular system that we're in.
I'm sure you know also
that within the college system there are many colleges that have
quite sizable surpluses. One might look at that and say: "Why
does the college system need fixing? There's lots of money in the
college system." I think a closer look at that would reveal that
while the larger colleges are indeed seeing surpluses, the
smaller colleges, and in particular the northern colleges, are
not seeing that same prosperity. That's where we're asking the
government and the committee to look at how the system is funded
and how it can be more equitable in terms of the population base,
the demographics, the industrial base of our communities. We have
recommended that the funding formula for the colleges be amended
to recognize and compensate for the significant regional
disparities that characterize our post-secondary system and to
ensure access to education for residents in small
communities.
The government recently
introduced key performance indicators, KPI. We at Northern
College think this is very beneficial, and we're very much in
support of the KPI initiative. While we support it, we do have
some difficulties with it. Because we're small, our sample size
is small. That can affect the statistical reliability and
validity of the results that the government will be looking at to
determine whether our funding will be affected by the KPI
results. There is 2% of college funding assigned to each of the
five KPIs, so a college is in jeopardy of losing 10% of its
funding if it falls below the average for KPI.
For example, in a small
community college in northern Ontario, it may not be unrealistic
to think that there are nine graduates of a program. In doing the
survey for getting jobs six months later, it could be that three
of those graduates have jobs out of the six who were contacted.
That looks like, "If six people were contacted and only three
have jobs, we're only spending at 50%." That is not statistically
reliable or valid in anyone's books, and yet that would be the
number we would look at. If we fell below, say, the 88% standard
of the province, our funding would be affected for that
particular KPI.
That's a concern to us.
While we applaud the accountability and we welcome being
accountable to our consumers, we do have some difficulty knowing
that the accountability could be affected. Of course, if you lose
money, you are not able to then fix what, if anything, is broken
if it happens to be broken. So another recommendation to the
committee is that the funding tied to the KPI take into account
regional and demographic circumstances.
As I mentioned earlier,
the government has initiated several partnerships and is offering
programs such as the access to opportunities, the SuperBuild
fund, the strategic skills investment fund. As I indicated, the
funding for those very much has been tied to partnerships with
private industry, and in some cases it has been a matching dollar
for dollar, that the government will match what the colleges are
able to raise in their local areas, their local communities.
Because we are in the
north, we do not have a large industrial base, we do not have a
high technology base, and that direction is very much where the
government's initiatives have gone. So, once again, those put a
college such as Northern College at a disadvantage: We are not
able to raise the
funds and therefore we are not able then to build on the
initiatives or to really gain from the initiatives.
We recommend that the
initiatives supporting post-secondary education be so structured
as to meet the needs of all our institutions and regions and not
exacerbate further already significant difficulties of our
regional institutions.
I've talked a bit about
the fact that we are in isolated communities, that we have a lot
of distances between our campuses. We have worked at reducing our
expenses over the years. We have looked at rationalization of
programs; we have looked at rationalization of staffing. We have
done that on our own. We are finding now, and I guess this was
inevitable as we started, that once you start to reduce staffing
and once you start to reduce as much as we can infrastructure, we
get to the point where we no longer have money to invest-we
cannot invest in our people, we cannot invest in our
facilities-and this causes us difficulty.
Our infrastructures are
all aging. We have some severe weather conditions. Heat is very
important. I see you sitting with your coats on over there.
Mr Galt:
Especially on this side of the room.
Mr
Bisson: It's about time we put you guys in the cold.
Ms Hart:
That's something like my office has been for the last few
days.
It's important to know
that we do not have the same needs and circumstances that people
in other regions of the province do. What we are asking that this
government look at in this upcoming budget is, and again our
recommendation, that the government recognize how well Northern
College has coped with reduced support by investing an infusion
of funds to ensure our ongoing ability to serve our region with
quality educational and training services and to assist in the
maintenance of our buildings.
In looking at an area,
and this area is a continuing saga, I guess, of the
federal-provincial training agreement, over the last number of
years the portion of monies allocated to northern Ontario and
particularly our region has decreased dramatically. We recognize
there are ongoing talks with the federal government to get the
funds over to the province. However, in the meantime we are
suffering at Northern College because our funding has been cut
back. Therefore, we recommend that the Ontario budget ensure that
all citizens of Ontario have equitable access to training funding
regardless of geographic area by finalizing the training
agreement transferring responsibility to the province.
While we laud the
initiatives that have happened, we have some concerns as a
northern college, in particular our Northern College, but I think
I would speak on behalf of many of the northern colleges. We
request and hope that you will support the recommendations we're
putting forth today. Thank you very much for this
opportunity.
The
Chair: We have approximately four minutes per caucus,
and I'll start with M. Bisson.
Mr
Bisson: Can you explain something on the key performance
indicators that you talked about? If I understand what you're
saying, if your college is situated in a region where there's
higher unemployment and thus the graduates are not able to get
employment, somehow you'd be penalized?
Ms Hart:
Potentially that's true, because the statistics for the
graduation employment rate are done six months following
graduation. That is the window. So there is an attempt to contact
all the graduates six months after graduation.
1650
Mr
Bisson: A good idea in the sense of finding out if the
college did a good job, but it may not really reflect the job
that you did, if you know what I'm saying.
Ms Hart:
That's true. Exactly.
Mr
Bisson: To what extent would you be penalized?
Ms Hart:
Two per cent of the funding. Each KPI is allotted 2%, so if we
fell below the provincial average to a certain extent, we could
lose that money.
Mr
Bisson: Is that now in place?
Ms Hart:
The funding will start, I believe, next year, so not right now.
There is still time to look at that.
Mr
Bisson: That troubles me because-I think members would
agree-in areas in rural and northern Ontario where unemployment
rates might be higher, compared to Metropolitan Toronto, that
could be a real problem. We've got a bit of a problem already in
regard to the funding.
The other thing is that
you talked about the inequity of the growth formulas-the note I
put in here. I don't quite understand what you were getting at.
You were saying, "If our college is to get 100 students and the
other college in Guelph gets 1,000, we don't get the same amount
of money per student." How does that work?
Ms Hart:
The formula is based on growth. As one college grows, they get a
certain percentage. So if one college grows by a larger
percentage than a smaller college, their percentage would be
increased-the piece of the pie, because the size of the pie does
not change.
Mr
Bisson: So what you're doing is redistributing the funds
within the pie.
Ms Hart:
That's correct.
Mr
Bisson: I get it.
Ms Hart:
So the smaller colleges suffer because of that.
Mr
Bisson: When was the last time there was an infusion of
new dollars for the operational side, an increase to the overall
pie?
Ms Hart:
The funding has decreased I think roughly at least 17% over the
last four or five years.
Mr
Bisson: That explains where your deficit comes from,
partly.
Ms Hart:
That's right.
Mr
Bisson: I thought you were opposed to the fact that-in
the case of 1,000 students versus 100, where they get more than
you, I was going to say that only makes sense because they've got
more students. I didn't realize-
Ms Hart:
It's the percentage.
Mr Bisson: You were
overall. OK.
The
Chair: On the government side, Ms Molinari.
Mrs
Molinari: Thank you very much for your presentation. I
appreciate that you have some recommendations here as well for us
to look at and narrow down exactly what you're asking us to do in
order to fulfill some of the difficulties you're
experiencing.
I had the opportunity to
meet with Joan Hommer just recently. She impressed upon me some
of the uniqueness of the colleges in the north and how what is
needed in the colleges in the south and other areas is certainly
different than what's needed in the north. The Ontario Jobs and
Investment Board report also stated that there is uniqueness in
some of those post-secondary institutions. So there is a
consistent message there that it's unique and there are unique
ways of servicing and assisting some of the difficulty that you
experience.
The KPI, the key
performance indicators that are being talked about, there are a
number of results that would come out of that. Employability of
course is one, but it's also graduation and OSAP defaults and a
number of things. It's also to help students choose which college
and university they would like to attend-it's almost like a
report card-and also helping the students choose their programs
and their direction.
You mentioned a bit about
the labour market development agreement. There have been ongoing
negotiations now with the provincial government and the federal
government. We had Minister Pettigrew when the negotiations
started and then the minister was changed to Jane Stewart, and
with all the difficulties that exist now within that portfolio,
talks are at a standstill at this point. But certainly we look
forward to having that agreement, because we feel that we would
be able to better service some of the needs the federal
government was servicing if we can do it at the provincial
level.
I'm not going to take up
much more time. I know some of my colleagues have some questions
and comments. But I'm looking forward to meeting a number of the
various college presidents and talking about some of the
uniqueness in the area. So thank you very much for your
presentation today.
Ms Hart:
If I may, you raised a point that was not included, and that was
the OSAP default rates and the fact that it's a report card. If I
could, I'd like to marry that with a comment from Mr Bisson about
the report card, that we can be penalized if the report card is
not good. In an area that's economically depressed, the
likelihood of the graduation rate, and also then employer
satisfaction, can be affected.
We are also affected by
the OSAP default rate. If our students cannot get jobs, they
cannot pay back their OSAP loans. Northern College happens to be
one of two colleges in the province-the other one also being a
northern Ontario college-that is in a position where they have to
pay OSAP default rates back. So we feel that again, we are being
hit by that, because if our students cannot get jobs they cannot
pay their loans.
Their loans also-and I'm
not sure how much knowledge you have on that-are that if a
student goes to another educational institution and incurs a loan
at that institution and then comes to Northern College, Northern
College has to incur that loan from the other institution. Again,
that's a good point. I think we will put in our submission that
this also needs to be looked at in terms of that causing great
financial hardship to a college that is in an area where the job
rate is less, where the employment rate is less and where the
students and the colleges are getting hit with a double whammy by
having to pay OSAP defaults as well.
Mrs
Molinari: But in your presentation you state you
strongly support the initiative.
Ms Hart:
We certainly support being accountable to our constituents. We
absolutely support that, and we support that we provide quality,
just as any other institution or public sector. Absolutely.
That's not the issue. The issue is having the funding tied to the
initiative in which the statistical reliability and validity
would be in question.
The
Chair: With that, I have to go to the official
opposition.
Mr
Kwinter: Right now, your funding is based on a
per-student basis?
Ms Hart:
Yes.
Mr
Kwinter: Throughout your presentation you talk about the
demographic decline and that your enrolment is declining, which
automatically means that your funding is declining.
Ms Hart:
That's correct.
Mr
Kwinter: What are the trends? What do you see happening
to your enrolment? Do you see a chance for it to turn itself
around or do you see a steady decline over the coming years?
Ms Hart:
I think the reports that have been done over the last-
Mr
Kwinter: If I could just ask you one more thing: What
has been the rate of decline historically over the last, say,
five years, if you have that information?
Ms Hart:
I'm sorry, I don't have a number for you, although in a report
today the Far Northeast Training Board indicated that the decline
of the regional population has been 7%. We're questioning that
figure. We're not quite sure if it's that high. It seems like a
very high rate. I think we can say with some certainty that the
population of northeastern Ontario is declining. I don't have the
rate. Certainly, as it declines there's a threat to our student
population and the student numbers.
This is particularly why,
in the past, we have looked to telecommunications, audio
conferencing and video conferences to provide access, to reach
out to our communities, to the smaller communities, to try and
get right into their home communities. This is also the reason
why we have just restructured, to focus on regional needs. I hope
I stressed in the written documentation I've given you how
important it is for Northern College to look at northeastern
Ontario needs, and to look at those from a regional point of
view. I think that's crucial. We have the answers; we just need help working
towards the solutions.
Mr
Kwinter: It seems to me that all governments-and this
has been going on for some time-have and should recognize that
the north is a special situation and that if you're going to deal
strictly on economic viability there's no reason to put anything
up in the north. There's got to be a reason why you have to have
a northern solution for the north. I support that completely. I
just feel that again, that is the point that has to be made: You
can't have "one size fits all." I think that is one of the
problems we have.
Ms Hart:
I would certainly agree with you. I'm not here to advocate for
breaking away for a northern Ontario province, but to be
equitable it has to be looked at. There are inequities and one
size certainly does not fit all. Nor does one size in all of
northeastern Ontario fit all, or northern Ontario. The northeast,
the northwest, Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury-we all have different
realities, and those realities must be addressed within their own
regions, because each one is quite different. So one size
definitely does not fit all, whether it's north-south or within
the north itself.
Mr
Phillips: Thank you for a very informative presentation.
One of the challenges is trying to determine what is the fairest
way of allocating resources among colleges. Has your organization
attempted to get fairness at the table with the other colleges
and been unsuccessful, or has that been a route you haven't
pursued?
1700
Ms Hart:
I think certainly we collaborate with other colleges and we
collaborate within our community, not just within the college
system, to look at ways of maximizing the resources we have. So
far, no college has offered to give us any of their reserves.
However, we would be open to that if they chose to do that.
There's a limited amount
that we can do, certainly in terms of brokering programs. The
larger colleges in the south are more than willing to do that.
That allows us to start programs but to not necessarily have all
the resources to go into, say, the second or third year. Students
can transfer to the south. Not all students want to do that. So,
yes, there's collaboration. In terms of the funding formula,
there has not been a change in that.
The
Chair: We have run out of time. On behalf of the
committee, thank you very much for your presentation this
afternoon.
Ms Hart:
Thank you very much for the opportunity.
LECOURS EXPLORATIONS
The
Chair: Our next presenter this afternoon is a
representative from Lecours Explorations. Could you come forward
and state your name for the record, please.
Mrs Rita
Lecours: Good afternoon. My name is Rita Lecours.
Le
Président : Bonjour.
Mme
Lecours : Bonjour. On m'avait demandé de faire
ma présentation en français mais puisque je l'ai faite
par écrit en anglais, il y a des termes qu'il sera
peut-être plus facile de dire en anglais.
Le
Président : C'est votre choix.
Mme
Lecours : Je vais lire ma présentation en
anglais puis, de temps en temps, si le mot est trop difficile
à dire, je vais peut-être le dire en français.
C'est correct ?
Le
Président : C'est bien.
Mme
Lecours : D'abord, je vous remercie pour l'occasion
que vous me donnez de venir présenter. Je pensais simplement
rencontrer quelqu'un un à un. J'ai d'abord écrit à
l'honorable Tim Hudak. Alors, je veux commencer par lire la
lettre.
"Honorable Mr Tim
Hudak,
"I have a matter in issue
with the provincial government, which I would like to discuss
with you.
"I would like to bring to
your attention that some mining activities have taken place. Some
prospectors and developers, including myself, would like to
continue conducting these activities with the help and
cooperation of the government.
"On February 8, 2000 in
Timmins, I'll be making a formal representation to the government
through [MPP] Gilles Bisson at a `pre-budget financing committee'
where I will raise some of the issues I'm concerned with.
"As I was reading from a
news release communiqué from the Ministry of Northern
Development and Mines dated March 29, 1999, `Mining will always
be one of the cornerstones of the northern economy,'" said the
honourable Mr Hodgson. "`Our government is determined to do
everything it can to support the industry, particularly the
prospectors and developers who are fundamental to the industry's
future.'
"Based on this
declaration, I hope to meet with you or your representative on
that day if possible."
My name is Rita Lecours,
prospector since 1994 with my son, Gérald Lecours. We're a
serious small entrepreneur company called Lecours Exploration.
Both my son and I came from a business/lumber industry family
background. My dad, J.D. Levesque, came from Rouyn, Québec,
in 1948. From a small beginning, he developed a thriving lumber
industry which eventually employed hundreds of people, brought
growth to the town and area, and taxes to the government.
On my husband's side,
three brothers named Arthur, Georges and Fred Lecours, also moved
from Quebec to eventually operate a thriving lumber industry,
which was also good for the Hearst and area economy. Both
families prospered in Hearst and established their families
there.
The north was built by
persistent, hard-working people who believed in their vision and
put deep roots in the ground with their small ventures, which
were eventually profitable to the town and area and to the
economic growth of the province.
Now I, Rita Lecours,
believe that there are other natural resources in our region
which haven't been explored to their potential yet. I quote from
Mario's Mineral Potential: "A treasure trove lies beneath the
surface of our province. With properly supported exploration, we can continue
to discover these treasures for the benefit of all the people of
Ontario."
For my part, the Hearst
region is my work area. Since 1994, Lecours Explorations have
been active in claiming properties, assaying, trenching, beep mat
surveys; we did dynamite, worked with a plugger and had visits by
three different geologists. All of these costs were personally
covered by Lecours Explorations.
My interest in
prospecting started in 1994. For advice, I consulted my
brother-in-law, Mauril Jean. He was a successful businessman in
logging equipment and industrial machine shop, but also a
hard-working prospector himself at the time. With his
information, I went to the Timmins Ministry of Northern
Development and Mines office. I purchased my prospector's
licence. Louise, one of the employees, took time to instruct me
about how to go about prospecting. With videos on staking and
claiming properties, plus various literature, I came back to
Hearst confident that the ministry would be there to help me, as
I was told.
On a personal note, Mr
Jean showed me what kind of maps I needed to get for the aerial
photographs of the township and area I was interested in. I first
was disappointed that the Ministry of Natural Resources was no
longer giving that service, but the Hearst Lumbermen's
Association helped me in obtaining those aerial photographs. From
the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, I obtained some
topographic maps of different townships surrounding ours on which
we had no information.
Why would the surrounding
townships have an aeromagnetic survey done while ours was blank?
After many attempts on my part to the ministry, I said to Louise:
"Is it possible that the work has been done in that area but the
report is somewhere else?" She said: "I'll tell you what, Madame
Lecours. I'll look and inquire and phone you back if I find
anything." That day went by with no news from Louise. I really
needed those maps to start exploring the area of interest. The
next morning, there was a phone call from Louise, who said: "You
know what, Madame Lecours. I found sections of maps of old
surveys done in 1962 in a filing cabinet." From that point, M.
Jean, the independent prospector, informed me that there was a
beep mat available from the ministry.
By phone, I reserved the
use of the beep mat for a week in May 1994.
1710
With the beep mat, we
found many conductors. After assaying a few, I phoned the Timmins
office to have their comments on the results. We chose to bring
some samples personally to Timmins instead of sending them by bus
or mail, as requested. The geologists were quite impressed with
the type of rocks we had and offered to have them assayed.
Trusting that this offer would help us, the rocks were left with
them. Time went on and on and on. We never had any results nor
any acknowledgement at all on whatever happened with our samples.
We had been forgotten.
I took some samples to
the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines office in Thunder
Bay, and I'm very grateful to Mr John Mason, who helped us as
much as he could, not being of his district. I guess he was
limited as to how much he could help.
The Thunder Bay office
had some of our rocks assayed, and within a few weeks they sent
us the results, which were very encouraging. Mr Mason also
offered us the use of the plugger, which we used to drill holes
to do some dynamite. We did some manual trenching and found good
surface samples.
When Mr Brian Atkinson
was transferred to the Timmins office, I was told by Mr Mason
that I would get co-operation from Mr Atkinson. Two days after we
called Mr Atkinson, he was on the site to visit our property. He
then realized that our property indicated that the underlying
green stone was wider than indicated on regional geological maps.
This is a quote from Ontario Geological Survey, open file report
5972, report of activities, 1997.
We were informed of and
encouraged to attend the symposium being held in Kirkland Lake,
which we did. This led to two junior companies visiting our
property. Then we did some mechanical trenching. In order to
advance the property, geophysical surveys are recommended to
attempt to define additional targets for mechanical stripping or
diamond drilling. If sufficient financial resources are
available, a geological survey should also be carried out.
If I understand well, the
resident geologist would come back only when we were at the stage
of drilling targets. Does this mean that we need to spend $45,000
in order to have another visit from the ministry?
So far the help we had
from the ministry was: no reports and no news from samples we
brought to the Timmins office; a cancelled work report which was
done with the help of a ministry employee after we traveled to
Timmins; in Sudbury, our work report is not accepted and our
claims are cancelled without notice.
Upon phoning Sudbury to
know the reasons as to why our work report had not been accepted
and why they did not give us time to bring corrections, I tell
this particular employee that it was mean on their part to treat
us that way after I had been told that the ministry was there to
help. The employee asked, "Who told you that?" With an arrogant
voice, I'm told that I have no business there if I'm not more
knowledgeable than that.
I communicate with the
Timmins office to inquire if I can put an objection against that
decision. Yes, I could, but I would have to sign a letter of
appeal which would represent some legal matters. I chose not to
get involved in a legal battle but to start again and claim back
our property instead.
Regarding the OPAP, after
inquiry regarding this program, I am told that it is not worth
applying. I would only lose my time, since I had no chance. This
year though, in 1999, Lecours Explorations does make an
application to the OPAP, but we are refused, we're told, because of lack of
experience; we were working with outdated maps.
I could go on and on.
Where is the assistance to the prospector and explorer?
Please allow me to quote
from a news release communiqué dated March 29, 1999:
"`Mining will always be
one of the cornerstones of the northern economy,' said Hodgson.
`Our government is determined to do everything it can to support
the industry, particularly the prospectors and developers who are
fundamental to the industry's future.'"
Is there any chance for
newcomers? Shouldn't a prospector who is ready to use his own
money be compensated, especially if he discovers conductors which
are assayed?
Lecours Explorations has
spent a considerable amount of money exploring, and from that
work we have given the ministry a lot of valuable information.
How can the ministry encourage us, compensate and give us
incentive to go on?
In any type of business,
I believe that the grassroots work is one of the most important
factors, if not the most important factor. I was pleased to read
from the news release communiqué by the Honourable Chris
Hodgson that he reaffirmed the importance of this work. More
assistance to prospectors would help in ensuring that new mineral
deposits are found in northern Ontario.
Mr Jean, my
brother-in-law, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on 78 of
his claims. He was another prospector of vision who invested his
own time and money to help discover new deposits. For well over
five years he poured into that industry, only to have his claims
cancelled without any notice from the government. He had always
been faithful with his work reports, but after a serious
accident, not realizing the state of his work, he was stripped of
his ownership of claims, which his wife and son discovered after
his death. His death had resulted from this accident. When
someone has worked so hard for so many years, would it not be
fair to send a reminder to prospectors and explorers when their
claims are to be brought to terms?
This is how I see the
situation. Here we are in the bush, working hard, doing what the
ministry requires of us. We then send the ministry our very
precise work report. It becomes public and anyone working on
computers and the Internet can just sit in a comfortable office,
gather all that information and then, like a fox, just watch for
the fallen bird and grab hold of it, if it's of interest to them.
Please give us a break and inform us when the ministry refuses
our work report. Since we pay more than 60% in taxes to both
governments, how much or what percentage of this amount is
reinvested in the exploration sector in our area? The same
treatment was done to us also. Yes, it's business, but can't we
treat one another with more respect? I don't see that as part of
a good incentive.
Alternatives could
include bringing back grants for companies, tax incentives-flow
through-changing environmental laws, making new parks in southern
Ontario instead of northern Ontario, and building new
infrastructures in northern Ontario. There are other existing and
proposed programs from our neighbouring province of Quebec which
could be used as examples of incentive, and I've got copies of
those that I'm referring to.
I want to believe that
our government will have the wisdom to find and put in effect
solutions to support and encourage exploration, which is
fundamental to the industry's future.
I ask that God direct you
in your decisions. Respectfully yours, Rita Lecours.
1720
Le
Président : Merci beaucoup. On a trois minutes
pour chaque caucus pour les questions. I'll start with the
government side; you've got three minutes.
Mr
Arnott: Thank you very much for your presentation.
You've given us a very thorough outline of your experience in the
prospecting business since 1994, and we thank you for that.
I would say to you in
response that you're absolutely right, in the sense that as a
taxpayer and as a consumer of government services you have every
right and expectation to demand courteous and professional
service from the employees of the provincial government. If that
didn't happen, I'm sorry, and we should check into it.
You've outlined the need
for enhanced support for prospectors, and we hear you. If we look
to the future and want to continue to have mining in Ontario, we
need to support our prospectors. The concept of enhanced
flow-through shares is something that has already been brought to
our attention this afternoon and you've highlighted that again,
and it's something that I think the government needs to seriously
consider.
I don't have any
questions, but I just wanted to again thank you for your
presentation and wish you all the best.
Ms
Lecours: Thank you.
The
Chair: Anyone else on the government side? If not, I'll
go to the official opposition.
Mr
Kwinter: Thank you very much. I found your letter very
interesting. The recommendation you made at the end of your
letter we've heard from the Ontario Mining Association and we've
heard today from people in the mining industry.
But I just wanted to ask
you about your role as a prospector. When I've talked to mining
people over the years they always tell me that the prospector is
the key to their business because they don't have the ability to
go out and do that. They depend on people like you and others
like you who go out and sort of bird-dog these finds and then
once they get them in most cases haven't got the resources to
develop them on their own, so they have to go to the major people
and get investors and do all of these things.
When you started you must
have had some advice, some counsel, as to where to go. I'm sure
you just didn't walk out on the street and say, "I'm going to go
here." How did that work?
Ms Lecours: Well,
you might find it funny, but it's a vision I had. One evening I
was watching a TV program at home alone about mining and the
discoveries. I'm a believer in God and I believe in his
directive. It's like I saw that particular area in a vision, an
area I already knew, but I had never thought of going prospecting
before. From that, I knew precisely where I needed to go, if that
answers your question.
Mr
Kwinter: And the results, I assume, confirmed your
vision?
Ms
Lecours: Yes.
Mr
Kwinter: And where does that stand now?
Ms
Lecours: In which way do you mean?
Mr
Kwinter: Do you still have the claim?
Ms
Lecours: Yes, we still have the claims, and if we had
some financial help, we have other areas we believe we would go
into. We would claim more. We were with a very knowledgeable
geologist. The work he proposed on the claim we have been working
on since 1994 is about $45,000, just that alone. We have other
areas in mind that we would like to claim also, but it's costing
a lot of money. The two mining companies that came to visit our
claim, because the investors have not been there really for a
couple of years, they didn't have the money; otherwise, they were
interested in optioning it and working on it. But because of a
lack of money, that's why they-
Mr
Kwinter: One last thing, just for curiosity: What is it
you found? What mineral did you find?
Ms
Lecours: So far it's copper and zinc, but the three or
four geologists who came all said that when they look at the
area, it's an area that would be good for gold.
Le
Président : Merci beaucoup. Gilles, vous avez
trois minutes.
M. Bisson
: Merci beaucoup pour la présentation.
For the committee's
interest, and I guess to make the point, often in the industry
the realty is that 99.9% of gold mines or copper mines or zinc
mines that are found are found by people like Rita and her
company. I just give one little example. Sometimes they think,
"What do you guys know? You're operating on a hunch or you've got
a vision," or whatever, and often people try to dismiss you. I
just want to tell you one story. A couple of prospectors back
about 15 or 20 years ago believed that up in the Hemlo area there
was gold, even though everybody had gone through there, all kinds
of money had been spent. The majors had spent dollars in doing
exploration, and everybody concluded, including Northern
Development and Mines, that there was no potential for gold finds
in that area. Well, the rest is history. John Larch and Don
McKinnon went up there on a grubstake. They didn't even have the
dollars to go out and do the thing themselves; they had to borrow
money from a few individuals to have enough money to buy balogna
and bread and everything else they needed to survive in the bush
for a couple of weeks. They're now multimillionaires. A whole
industry has been created, three gold mines, up in that area.
The complaint I got from
Rita is that what seems to be happening is that because of the
reductions, to a certain extent, at Northern Development and
Mines on the mines side, it's becoming increasingly more
difficult for people like Rita to get the kind of support we used
to get out of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines to
help them with everything from the map systems to assistance
having to do with the technical information we need. The call she
made to me was: "What's going on here? We're not getting the kind
of assistance we need." So I bring back the point, and it's
something I'll follow up with Rita later.
The other thing you
should know, Rita, is that the Porcupine developers' association
was here earlier and made the exact point you do around an
enhanced flow-through share system. It's something I want to work
with them and others on, because I really believe that if we
don't pay the attention we need to to the prospectors now, our
industry is in grave, grave danger in the not-so-distant
future.
Peut-être que tu
peux faire un commentaire ?
Le
Président : Vous voulez faire un commentaire,
madame?
Mme
Lecours : Je n'étais pas ici cet
après-midi. On est entré plus tard mais j'aimerais
savoir s'il va avoir un follow-up? Est-ce que ça donne
quelque chose d'apporter ça.
M. Bisson
: Pour vous expliquer ce qui arrive à ce point
c'est que le comité, les membres du gouvernement avec les
membres de l'opposition vont faire un rapport qui va être
donné au ministre des Finances et le ministre des Finances,
lui, regarde l'ensemble du rapport pour faire des décisions
pour son budget.
Nous, notre
responsabilité comme membres de l'opposition, comme
gouvernement, c'est de s'assurer que le gouvernement prend vos
présentations au sérieux et c'est ça que je
m'engage à faire pour vous.
Mme
Lecours : Dans les copies que j'ai apportées,
le programme du Québec puis une autre proposition qui a
été faite par un géologiste québécois,
aussi une proposition qui a été présentée
pour le Québec, je crois qu'il y a des bons points qui
mériteraient d'être examinés.
M. Bisson
: C'est exactement les mêmes points qui ont
été faits plus tôt.
Mme
Lecours : Oui? Ah bon.
Le
Président : Au nom du comité, madame
Lecours, je vous remercie pour la présentation très
intéressante cet après-midi. Bonne chance.
Mme
Lecours : Merci.
1730
MUSHKEGOWUK TRIBAL COUNCIL
The
Chair: Our last presentation this afternoon is a
representative for the Mushkegowuk Tribal Council. Could you
please come forward and state your name for the record.
Mr
Bisson: You can also clarify the title.
Chief Lawrence
Martin: The name is Lawrence Martin. I am the Grand
Chief from Mushkegowuk Tribal Council.
The
Chair: On behalf of the committee, welcome.
Chief
Martin: I am honoured to be here to do a presentation
and to point out some of the issues and perhaps some of the
recommendations we can make from our tribal council to the
government and the corporate members who are in the room
today.
I've been the elected
Grand Chief of the Mushkegowuk people for about a year and a half
now. This is the first time that an election like this took
place, where everybody in the seven communities that I represent
voted, and I, along with the Deputy Grand Chief, was elected at
that time.
Since then, we have been
really busy trying to develop what we call a regional government.
We found that because of the status quo of our situation in our
communities this could not happen. We have to unite and
reorganize so that we can have a united front in terms of how we
address the issues we have in our communities. Of course, we're
always looking at ways in which we can forge partnerships,
protocols with everyone who is involved: federal and provincial
governments, corporations and so on. This is a nation-building
exercise that we're doing and, in so doing, we are able to
identify a lot of opportunities. I'm very excited. I see a lot of
opportunities, just like the last speaker was talking about
opportunities in prospecting and so on. I see those opportunities
also, but there are issues in the relationship that we have as
First Nations people, with the provincial government especially,
that we have to resolve so that development can happen in
partnership with our people, government and corporate
entities.
We have to look at
history for us to really understand where we come from. If you
can imagine that there's a map right here in front of you, and up
there you see Hudson Bay and James Bay, and Timmins is right
where we're sitting-it just happened to be right here. The
communities I represent up near the Hudson Bay coast are
Attawapiskat, Fort Albany, Kashechewan, Moose Factory, and down
south here New Post, Missanabie and Chapleau. Within those seven
communities we have about 10,000 people. When you look at the
history, you can see when the Europeans arrived here 300 years
ago. Moose Factory, by the way, is probably the oldest community
in Ontario, as you've probably read in your history books, and
it's still there. What we've had to do is look at that and see
all the changes that have come to our people. Some of those
changes are positive and some are negative, and we have to accept
both.
In the planning process
we've had this past year, we looked at that history and watched
as the Hudson's Bay came in, and then the missionaries and the
governments, and then the BNA Act was put in place and then the
Indian Act came in 1876. In 1870 there was a Rupert's Land Act,
in which the lands were turned over to Canada with the condition
that they would look after the interests of First Nations people
in this country. After that came, in our area anyway, Treaty
9-that was enacted in 1905-and Ontario was also a signatory to
that particular treaty. But nothing happened as far as treaties
go until the 1950s, during which communities became organized,
reservations came into play and programs and services became part
of what was being provided to the people as per treaty, as per
the Indian Act and so on. Also around that time, we take a look
back and see that First Nations people for the first time were
allowed to vote in Canada. That was only in the late 1950s and
early 1960s. So the history is important to look at in this
process.
As we look further and
further up, we see back in 1982 the Constitution of Canada, in
which it includes First Nations people being recognized in their
aboriginal and treaty rights, inherit rights. That's important to
note.
Also, as we go along, we
see all these different changes that have happened up to the
present day. My job is to look at the history and to see how we
can all be working together, no matter how much development has
happened here in the province, and there has been a lot. We can
see that. As I fly back and forth to my communities that I
represent, I can see the extraction of all the trees from the
land; I can see mining sites here and there. But when I land in
my community I see poverty; I see houses that are full of people,
two or three families in a two-bedroom house. I see kids running
around because they have no place they can call their own. I'll
see a lot of dropouts in our education system because of the
inadequate system that's there now, that's been run by the
federal government for so many years, and we have little access
to the provincial education system without having to make
payment. Of course, we don't have the means to make payment.
When I look around my
communities I see 80%, 90% unemployment. As I said, there's
something wrong with this picture. I hope in my job, in this
three-year term that I have, I can extend invitations to the
federal government, to the provincial government and to the
corporations, to other communities and other people, so that we
can work together and change that. When that treaty was signed in
1905, the elders then had a very different understanding of what
they signed. They told us time and time again that the treaty was
signed to share the lands and resources, and for us to benefit
together. But that kind of picture that I'm painting you, which
is a realistic picture, is not our definition of sharing, that's
for sure. That's what I want to change. I want to be able to come
forward to strike these partnerships so we can make things happen
a lot better.
When we look at some of
the communities I represent up at the Hudson Bay-James Bay coast,
the remoteness factor is huge. The cost of living is much higher.
For instance, we did a little comparison between Timmins grocery
prices and Kashechewan's. It was a 125% difference, to a
community that has 80% unemployment-$19 for a bag of milk in cash
in Kashechewan, compared to down here where it is $2.99 or
$3.99.
These kinds of things
really hamper how we can enjoy life, enjoy the benefits that
everybody else is taking for granted down here. Of course, we also don't
have the infrastructure. We don't have a permanent road system
beyond Cochrane, I guess, and then from Cochrane we just have the
railway that goes up to Moosonee, and from there you just have
the winter road. There is a barge system that operates in the
summer, and of course there's the air transportation, which is
fairly high.
We'd like to look at an
infrastructure that can accommodate these changes. Again, we've
talked to the various ministries in the province and also with
the federal Indian affairs people. There seems to be a need to
work towards something we can collectively work at and develop
for the benefit of all. So that's part of the things I'm working
on.
Being where we are, we
can only look and work harder to try and find ways so that we can
have our children benefit from education and other services. You
probably heard this past year that our Mushkegowuk council took
the Ontario government to court on the Ontario Works program. We
simply said that particular program doesn't work in our
communities when we have high unemployment, high housing
problems, no place for our trainees to be given any kind of
training time, placements. It just doesn't work.
I don't want to just fill
you with all these gloom-and-doom kinds of stories. There's a lot
of good stuff that happens in our communities too, and much of
this has to do with our language. We have been able to maintain
our language and our tradition and our values and our culture.
That's been really important for us. We're still very close to
the land and we're always out there as much as we can be,
although it's getting harder and harder. You have to look at the
whole picture. You can't just focus on one section.
For instance, now a lot
of our young people are complaining that since there are no
jobs-and of course if they can afford a snow machine, they can't
have it. If you're on welfare, you cannot have a snow machine.
You have to sell it. So it doesn't make sense. You just keep
going around in this vicious circle.
1740
The other good thing that
is happening in our area, and a very important thing, is the
extension of the hydro grid from Moosonee up to Attawapiskat.
That is going to change the cost of goods as far as hydro
services go. Right now we have diesel-operated generators and the
diesel is brought in on the winter roads. Sometimes it has to be
flown in when the energy runs out. But now, through a special
arrangement with the Department of Indian Affairs, we have a
10-year agreement with them in which they will finance up to $44
million of the $54-million project. The other $10 million is
coming from Ontario Hydro Services, in a partnership, and almost
$5 million is coming from the Ontario heritage fund.
By establishing these
kinds of partnerships and working relationships, we are starting
to make a little headway. But it was a hard thing to achieve and
it took about three years to put that together. We still haven't
completed the project; we're still working on it. We were hoping
that this particular winter we would have been able to haul the
goods to start installation this year, but because of weather and
because sometimes the banking industry doesn't allow certain
kinds of loans to go through, with all the deregulation that is
happening in electricity and energy, that is causing some
problems beyond our control. But those kinds of things are what
we are looking at.
Overall, when you look at
the difference, even from the 1970s and the 1980s, of how many
people in our communities are now educated-I had to leave my
community to go to high school in North Bay when I was 14 years
old, and many of our kids have done that. But now we are starting
to have high schools in our communities. We now have one in Moose
Factory, in Kashechewan and Attawapiskat, and that is starting to
make a bit of change. Now we are starting to have a few more
people in post-secondary, now we have a couple of lawyers, now we
have a couple of people with doctoral degrees in education, now
we have people in business administration, and now we are really
starting to move.
Of course, with that come
the questions and a different understanding of what has been
happening in our history. Our respected elders have been sitting
there quietly waiting for those treaties to be honoured. Now the
younger generation is saying: "Come on. A lot of stuff was
stolen; it was not a fair treaty. However it was worded back
then, that was not the understanding of our elders."
There is now a need to
look at this relationship very strongly. As we pay attention to
the new provincial policies, Living Legacy, where I come from
it's called the undiscovered lands. It's the year 2000 and here
it's undiscovered lands. I can respect that from a planning
purpose; however, it feels again like we are being left out of
the whole planning process, and we are not going to allow that.
We don't have any choice but to say we have to be part of this.
We're part of life here today as we are, just as I am sitting
here, and we have a lot of young people, maybe 65% or 70% of our
population, under 25. That is going to make a big difference in
how our relationship is going to be. If we are going to have
development-miners, prospectors, loggers and so on-we have to
have that recognition of First Nations people as having been the
first people here and therefore should have some significant role
to play in how the development takes place from here on in.
Without any kind of
government participation, we negotiated a memorandum of
understanding with a diamond company up in Attawapiskat just
before Christmas. There, at least, the company showed there was
some respect and understanding for First Nations people to have
this traditional right to the traditional lands and therefore
they need to be negotiated with. At least that's a start. They
are now in the advanced exploration stage for diamonds, and we
anticipate more visitors of that nature.
We recently met with
northern development and mines about Operation Treasure Hunt-I
really like that name-to look for other samples of minerals
that may be in the river systems. We do want to work with that.
We are not against development at all. Don't get me wrong here. I
just want to emphasize that we need to be part of it. If you come
to our communities and stay with us for at least three weeks, you
will see what I mean. Life would be different. So that is what I
am hoping for.
The other thing that I'm
hoping for too is, because we keep arguing the same topic over
and over, and we're back in court at the end of February on the
appeal over this Ontario Works over a very simple matter, all
we're saying is, we want to work together and we're being told
no. All that we're looking for now and that I want to recommend
is perhaps some kind of special task force that can look at the
costs of various programs that are being put on to aboriginal
people-on reserve, off reserve-in Ontario, and to develop a
partnership with the federal government and also the corporate
entities on how we can start including First Nations people, and
to apply some of these policies that I hear about that talk about
equality and so on.
We're very much open to
that idea. We will continue to bring these issues forward and to
try to work with people who may or may not want to work with us,
in the belief that our children need to benefit from the jobs.
That's what we're looking for.
I shall leave it at that
point. If there's any time left and if you have any questions,
I'll leave that to you.
The
Chair: Thank you very much. We have approximately four
minutes per caucus. I'll start with the official opposition.
Mr
Phillips: Thank you, Grand Chief. I read the court
decision. It was profoundly important but got very little
attention. It essentially said that no government can
unilaterally implement programs without-I think they used the
term-government-to-government consultations with the First
Nations. As I say, it got very little attention around the
country, when I thought it was huge.
You indicated that you're
back in court at the end of this month. Is that correct?
Chief
Martin: Yes, the 28th and 29th. This is the appeal
that's going on.
Mr
Phillips: I know this is a difficult question. Any
expectations on when that proceeding may finish and a judgement
ruled?
Chief
Martin: It will be taking over two days in the
courtroom. Judging from the first court appearance we made-it
took about four months to get the ruling out-we can anticipate
maybe something along those lines.
Mr
Phillips: I look forward to that. As I say, that ruling
got little attention but it was huge.
My second question is, in
terms of the consultation with the provincial government and the
First Nations, how well is that going? How is that done? I can
remember when there were regular meetings between the Chiefs of
Ontario and members of the cabinet. Is that still going on, and
can you give us any indication of whether there are any
recommendations on how the relationship may work more
smoothly?
Chief
Martin: It seems to be a hit-and-miss operation. I know
in some cases there's been some consultation with First Nations
taking place on some mining activities. In some cases, there
hasn't been any. My only recommendation is a need to have the
various ministries that are involved in this plan of endeavours
to keep closer contact with the First Nations organizations and
the communities that are being affected. We did quite a bit of
negotiation with a particular company, Agrium mines, just outside
of Kapuskasing, and now that negotiation has been bogged down
because there was no consultation supplied. As a result, the
First Nation there, Constance Lake, is now seeking a legal route
to try and make sure that there's consultation and there's better
understanding by the community members of what is actually taking
place.
The communication part
needs to be enhanced. That would be my recommendation. As far as
the companies go, I have found so far that most of the companies
we've dealt with have been really co-operative. They just don't
seem to know the rules. Nobody really seems to understand exactly
what consultation means or to what extent you have consultation.
That can be defined a little bit more by working with the First
Nations themselves.
1750
The
Chair: You've still got a minute.
Mr
Phillips: Oh, good. The distribution of the proceeds
from the Rama casino, was that widely viewed as a positive step
in the First Nations community?
Chief
Martin: At the outset it was a very positive thing to
have established with the provincial government of the day, but
as it turns out, it took a real tough negotiation process to
finally come to some kind of agreement as of today. The picture
changed somewhat. It's still hopeful for the communities,
however, to continue to try and draw some revenues from that. At
this point, because of all that I mentioned in my presentation,
the money that's required for the infrastructure, housing,
economic development and social services, the Rama dollars
represent some of that, and a lot of the communities have already
gone out and spent their money even though the Rama money hasn't
been distributed yet. They're paying a lot of money in interest
to the banks just to make sure they get their housing projects in
place and so on.
Mr
Bisson: Grand Chief Martin, I want to echo something you
said earlier in your presentation to members of the government.
That would be to take up the offer to go up into some of these
communities and stay for a while, because it shows you to what
extent things have been allowed to let go.
The basic problem was
that we have inadequate funding on the part of the federal
government to those communities, to the point where there is no
infrastructure in some cases, and we have the types of problems
that lead to everything else as far as societal problems within
the communities.
I was interested, because
it's the first time I've heard anybody say this from within the
native community, to talk in a candid way about how the newer
generation, your generation and mine, within the native community
are now the leaders after the benefit of having gone to
university and gotten the education from universities and
colleges and such. They are starting to understand and are
starting to participate in a way where basically they are saying,
"Listen, we want to be included in what's going on economically
in Ontario," and that is difficult because people aren't used to
sharing on our side of the fence. For years, if you had a lumber
company go in and do logging activities next to a native
community, or a mining activity, you just went out and did it.
You didn't bother talking to the aboriginal First Nations
community; you just did your thing.
Now all of a sudden your
leadership, the leadership of our generation, is saying: "No, no,
no. We want to sit down at the table and figure out how we can
get a piece of the pie for our citizens." I'm glad you said it:
It takes a lot of goodwill on both sides because we need to find
the kinds of solutions in the end to give everybody equal
opportunity.
I'm just wondering what
your experience has been generally. You made the comment in the
case of Attawapiskat where that particular mining company said,
"We didn't know, but we recognize that and we'll sit down." Is
that the norm, or is there still quite a bit of resistance?
Chief
Martin: There is some resistance because the companies
are saying, "We've already applied for and have received the
permits that we require," from MNR, MNDM or MOE, whatever
particular ministry is responsible. They feel at first that they
don't have to sit down and negotiate with First Nations people,
but when we start bringing up the constitutional rights, the
Constitution of Canada, and map out the history, then they start
to understand.
Mr
Bisson: But aren't they, according to the regulations
now, supposed to point that out at the beginning? For example,
I'm a prospector. I'm going out to stake a claim or possibly
bring a mine into operation on traditional grounds that are
affected by the First Nations people. Isn't the Ministry of
Northern Development and Mines supposed to point them in the
direction of the native leadership right away, and is that not
happening?
Chief
Martin: A lot of times it's just a letter from some
ministry office that gets sent maybe to the band office, and it
may be hanging there, but not everybody goes to the band office.
How many times have you gone to city hall and just hung around
there to see what kind of bulletin-
Mr
Bisson: I try to stay away from city hall.
Chief
Martin: There you go.
The
Chair: With that, Mr Bisson, we've run out of time. I
have to go to the government side. Mr Galt.
Mr Galt:
Thank you, Grand Chief, for your very thoughtful presentation.
It's from the heart, particularly as you talked about the big
picture.
But as I listened to you
zeroing in on things like 80% to 90% unemployment, that's beyond
my understanding and comprehension. I'm not disbelieving you.
It's just that, being from the south or whatever, that's
absolutely phenomenal. You went on and mentioned two to three
families in a small, single-dwelling home. Certainly conditions
are very different than we're familiar with.
I'm just curious about
your election and understanding the governance, and I would just
like to explore that for a moment, if I may. Are you elected from
among the other band chiefs as a grand chief, and is this annual?
How do you end up as a grand chief?
Chief
Martin: I get elected the same way as you do.
Mr Galt:
It's an open election among all those 10,000 people?
Chief
Martin: It's an open election, yes.
Mr Galt:
Like a mayor might; it's open in a community.
Chief
Martin: That's right, and it's for a three-year
term.
Mr Galt:
This is like an upper tier, and then there are all the other
bands, several bands within that jurisdiction?
Chief
Martin: That's right. In my council area there are seven
chiefs and councils. Each local community will have a chief and a
council. That's representative mostly of the Indian Act system.
The Indian Act says that for every 100 members you have to have a
councillor, so there's a councillor for every 100 people in that
community, plus a chief.
But in my case, it's been
developed by the people. This is what they wanted. They thought
this was something that would represent them more, over and above
what the chief and council are doing locally. I was also the
mayor of Sioux Lookout just a few years back, so I had that
opportunity to be part of the system and understand it and know
what the problems are.
Mr Galt:
It's interesting you mentioned Sioux Lookout. My daughter and
son-in-law lived there for six or seven years. They were with
Wawatay and he is now with the aboriginal channel in Ottawa.
Chief
Martin: I used to be the executive director of Wawatay.
Who are they?
Mr Galt:
They moved this last past summer. I'll chat with you
afterwards.
Chief
Martin: Oh, yes.
Mr Galt:
Just coming back to this council, the tribal council is made up
of other band councils. Is that the way that would be
constructed?
Chief
Martin: Yes.
Mr Galt:
Do I still have some time, Mr Chair, or are we running out?
The
Chair: Yes, a minute and a half.
Mr Galt:
You've come before us and you've got a lot of problems here. What
specifically can we do in this upcoming budget that would be of
benefit to you?
Chief
Martin: It seems a little bit too late to really do
anything in this upcoming budget. That's why I recommend even
some kind of a forum in which we can go a little bit further and
discuss these issues that we have. I didn't even have time to put
together what kind of monies are now going into our education
system, or how much
money is going into long-term care, child care and so on, to be
able to pick out exactly how much money is coming in from the
province, and also, there is the need to examine some this 1965
welfare agreement between the federal government and the
province, to see what kind of a sharing of costs is associated
with that and how much is actually going in from the province to
the first nations.
I think there's a need to
examine this. If you recognize that there is a special situation
here and that we should examine it, then I think my goal would be
accomplished, that we can take a look at that in the near
future.
Mr Galt:
Thank you.
Chief
Martin: We could also do a position paper to outline
exactly what I'm talking about so that you can see in black and
white what these costs are. How much time is available?
Mr
Bisson: One thing you could do is drop the appeal on the
workfare issue.
The
Chair: I won't entertain any discussion across the
floor. On behalf of the committee, thank you very much for your
presentation this afternoon.
Chief
Martin: Thank you.
The
Chair: Before we adjourn, there are a couple of items
that I'd like to bring to the committee's attention. The taxi
will be leaving the hotel at 7 o'clock sharp. The plane is
leaving at 7:30. The dining room is also open. We're told that
they're going to be fairly busy. However, they do have a buffet
if you want to eat before you leave.
Mr Galt:
Are you serving dinner tonight on the plane?
The
Chair: I don't know if I'm serving dinner tonight on the
plane.
This committee will
reconvene tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock in Brockville.
