CONTENTS
Wednesday 3 April 1991
Appointments review process
Adjournment
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Chair: Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC)
Vice-Chair: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East PC)
Bradley, James J. (St. Catharines L)
Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East NDP)
Grandmaître, Bernard (Ottawa East L)
Haslam, Karen (Perth NDP)
Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent NDP)
McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South L)
Silipo, Tony (Dovercourt NDP)
Stockwell, Chris (Etobicoke West PC)
Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay NDP)
Wiseman, Jim (Durham West NDP)
Clerk: Arnott, Douglas
Staff: Pond, David, Research Officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1009 in room 228.
APPOINTMENTS REVIEW PROCESS
Resuming consideration of the appointments review process.
The Chair: Before we start on the agenda, I just want to put on the record a response to a question raised by Mr Grandmaître that dealt with the timing of the government's placement of books, binders, however you wish to describe them, outlining the appointments that are going to be available, the per diems, the time involved, etc.
The clerk has been advised that it is going to occur. Hopefully the government's timetable is 1 May that it will have those in public libraries and constituency offices. Mr Grandmaître raises the question of municipal offices. I do not know if any member of the government side recalls that being discussed. I do not.
Mrs Haslam: I do not think so.
Mr Waters: I do not believe it was.
Mr Silipo: What does Mr Grandmaître mean in terms of municipal offices? City halls, town halls?
The Chair: Yes.
Mr Grandmaître: Wherever people meet. Hopefully when they attend at councils.
Interjection: We could pass that suggestion on. I do not see that it should cause any great problems.
The Chair: The committee can formally pass that on as a suggestion that arose.
Mrs Haslam: They can examine this to see if it is possible.
Mr Waters: That was where we were talking about constituency offices and that was to expand on it.
Interjection: So the date is 1 May.
The Chair: That is right.
Mr Waters: That is the expected date.
Mr Grandmaître: Is that 1991 or 1992?
Mrs Haslam: I think 1996.
Mr Silipo: It is 1991 for the first edition.
Mr Grandmaître: Oh, I see, the amended edition, June 1998 or something like that.
The Chair: We have one hour allocated if we wish to utilize the one hour to determine whether or not the committee concurs in the intended appointments that we reviewed last week. Perhaps we could get a motion on the floor and then discuss the motion. We have to deal with these on an individual basis. I think they were all appointments to the Environmental Appeal Board. I guess we should do them on an individual basis.
Mrs Haslam moves that the committee concur in the appointment of Dr Leonard Gertler to the Environmental Appeal Board.
Mr McGuinty: I am going to concur in his appointment as well as in the two others.
I just wanted to take the opportunity to recognize something which probably happens fairly regularly but which is infrequently drawn to our attention. I was pleasantly surprised when I was asking a question of one of the prospective appointees here, a prospective member of the Environmental Appeal Board, and I learned, only happenstance, that these three gentlemen were in fact volunteering to work for the Environmental Appeal Board. It is my understanding they are under no legal obligation to do so.
I also learned that the chairman of the Environmental Assessment Board had offered up these two gentlemen to work on the appeal board. Often, we derive the impression from media reports and news gathered in other ways that the golden rule in a bureaucracy is that you never give up bodies and you never give up dollars. I just wanted to put it on the record that these are shining examples of something to the contrary and they should be recognized for that. l did not take the opportunity to do so when they were here, but I want to commend them for that.
Motion agreed to.
Mrs Haslam: Could I ask a question? We suggested that we had lots of time after interviewing these people, that those of us who had interviewed them were there. Why did we not vote right away? I believe it was Mr Stockwell who said no, he did not want to do that. I assumed that he would have had some objections, and there were not any. Why did we wait a whole week just to come and vote?
The Chair: I am not going to allow that kind of a discussion to take place. You can have that discussion afterwards with Mr Stockwell if you wish. We have a pretty full agenda and any member has the right to do that in respect to the fact that we are required to have unanimous consent if we want to deviate from the rules, and we did not get unanimous consent.
Mr Stockwell: It was unanimous consent to vote in favour.
The Chair: No, it was unanimous consent to deal with the matter. I do not want to get into that right now.
Mr Grandmaître moves that the committee concur in the appointment of Alan Levy to the Environmental Appeal Board.
Motion agreed to.
The Chair: Mr Silipo moves that the committee concur in the appointment of James Robb to the Environmental Appeal Board.
Motion agreed to.
The Chair: That is that. We will move on to the next item of discussion on the agenda and at my request the clerk has prepared a memo which will hopefully assist us in this discussion. I guess David Pond has also prepared some material. I do not know if anyone has had an opportunity to review it; hopefully you have. I asked Doug to do this so that we would not be flying all over the map in respect to our discussion today and we might have something to guide us through this so that hopefully we can meet the deadline set down by the House in respect to reporting back on a permanent standing order. As you see by the approach that Doug is suggesting, that we review the temporary standing order on a line-by-line and word-by-word basis, perhaps we should initially discuss what Doug, the clerk, is suggesting and then see if we have consent to that approach. Does anybody have any difficulty with the approach the clerk is suggesting? Perhaps you do not even have it in your hands yet.
Mr McLean: This one from David Pond.
Mr Pond: You should have another one, sir, from Doug.
The Chair: One is from the clerk.
Mr Pond: Yes, that is the other one.
The Chair: Does everyone have a copy of the temporary standing order? Okay, so we are going to do this on a line-by-line basis. I will need one too, Doug. Perhaps we can begin then dealing with the terms of reference in 1. Can we have some discussion on 1? Any difficulty with 1?
Mr Silipo: I am sorry, Mr Chair. Are we agreed as to which of the approaches you were going to take?
The Chair: I asked if there was any concern in respect to the approach outlined by the clerk, which was initially the --
Mr Silipo: Are there not in fact two different approaches suggested there? One is to go through the document, through the terms of reference line by line, and the other is to just deal with general themes.
The Chair: Yes.
Mr Silipo: I was going to suggest that it might be more useful to start with that second approach and deal with any particular area. Then I think that the issues outlined in the rest of the memorandum from the clerk are a useful guide to us in terms of the various parts that we would need to deal with, the meeting time, a process notice, etc. There may be other issues that we want to add to that list, but it seems to me that covers certainly a number of the areas of concern that have been raised in the discussions today.
Mr McLean: Then delegate the responsibility back to the subcommittee.
Mr Silipo: Sure, yes, I would suggest that. But if members of the committee feel that they want to then have discussion continue in detail back here at the committee, I am comfortable with that as well.
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The Chair: How does everyone else feel about that?
Mr Grandmaître: How long would it take us to go through the terms of reference one by one?
The Chair: Who can predict?
Mr Waters: I do not know. It just depends on how much they want to change.
Mr Bradley: Big changes.
Mr Stockwell: Probably an hour debate on how we want to go through it.
Mr McGuinty: I was going to suggest that we use the second approach advocated by the clerk. Once we have finished taking that approach, if some of us felt that we should pursue it to greater depth by using the first recommended approach, we could consider that at that point.
The Chair: I guess we have a consensus on that. Some division within the Liberal reins.
Mr Grandmaître: I am sure we will get back.
The Chair: Okay then, we will get back. Who would like to start off with the general discussion talking about the particular concerns?
Mr Waters: I have had some discussions actually with people from our caucus over the last week or so. One of the things we have had a problem with is, because everyone is busy, they are substitutes. When we are dealing with appointees, it is time to have the same person there to vote as actually sat in on the interview.
One of the suggestions that we have come up with is that instead of adjourning at the end of the interview, we recess that part for the week, then reconvene both or have our discussion, then adjourn and go on with the rest of the business of that second day. I just filled that out for discussion on that aspect of trying to clean this thing up, because there are a lot of different things out there that we have heard, that people are having problems with, and one is that.
The Chair: Can you clarify that for me? So we finish today, after interviewing people; we recess --
Mr Waters: Recess instead of adjourn.
The Chair: What does that accomplish?
Mr Waters: On day two, instead of having to have substitutes in all day because there are two votes, that allows you to have the same people back in to deal with that particular topic. Then, if there was a substitute in and the regular committee member is available, that person can then take over afterwards in his full rights.
In the workings of the Legislature, l do not even know whether that is allowed. It is just an idea to try to accommodate it because there has been a problem where -- and I think all sides are faced with substitution -- you have had one person come in through the hearing, through the interviews, and then day two, a week later, you have someone else making the decision on it. I know that there has been a problem.
Mr McLean: But nobody is ever going to hold it down.
Mr Grandmaître: Let's be honest, would that make a big difference at the end of the day?
Mr Waters: It could.
Mr Grandmaître: Tell me, would it really change some of these votes?
Mr Waters: So far we have not been getting any directives to support or not support.
Mrs Haslam: It makes it difficult for a substitute to come in and vote for someone he has not interviewed.
Mr Grandmaître: Yes, but again, let's be honest. People appearing before us -- it is a fait accompli. We have read it three or four days before in the newspapers that they have been appointed, so what is the difference between having the same three people vote on a fait accompli? We could have three different faces here sitting on different days and it would not make one iota -- it is a fait accompli. I think we should be looking at the powers of this committee. I know what you are saying. It does not look good when three different people accept what three other people did not have a chance to vote on. But let's face it, we could have had 16 different faces day after day and it would not make a difference. These people would still be appointed.
Mr Wiseman: I do not believe that is the view that we take. You are assuming that at no time in the future will we ever turn somebody down. I do not think that is an assumption you can make.
Mr Grandmaître: The day that you vote against the Premier's appointment, you will not be sitting in that chair.
Mr Silipo: I wanted to say a couple of things. I disagree wholeheartedly with Mr Grandmaître. I think there has been a real effort on the part of the government members on this committee to try to make this process work as well as it can work. When the issue was raised, I think it was from one of the Conservative members, if I recall, about the fact that people were here voting who had not been here to interview, that pointed out to us a real problem in the process. I think Mr Waters's suggestion is an attempt to address that.
I do agree with Mr Grandmaître on the larger issue that perhaps what we should be doing as we open the discussion on the terms of reference, rather than start to get bogged down in some of the minor changes that we can make to the process that would improve it, is start by having some discussion around the general nature of the terms of reference. We have obviously heard from the opposition members time and again that what they would prefer is that this committee become not a review committee but an appointment committee.
I think we need to be clear with each other about what we are saying, because when people are saying at the end of an interview, "I may support or not support this particular individual but I don't have any way of assessing whether this person is the best person," it comes right back down to the very essence of what we are supposed to be doing. We may in the end continue to have a disagreement about that, about what our role as a committee is, but at least let's be clear about what the present role of it is. The present role of the committee is not to appoint people. The present role of this committee is to review the intended appointments.
If we want to have a debate or discussion about whether this committee should appoint people, let's have that discussion, let's resolve that issue and then let's go on from there. I am certainly disagreeing with Mr Grandmaître in terms of the implication that he draws that the government members simply come here to put up their hands. I can tell you that in some of the earlier reviews we have done, if there had been perhaps more discussion about some of those appointments -- there were a few where I was actually wavering and I think some interesting things could have happened.
Having said that, though, I will just repeat and conclude by saying that maybe we should start by having the discussion about what this committee should be doing and put the procedures aside for a second, talk about that and then go from there.
The Chair: We have heard this debate take place since we have met and we have had this temporary standing order. I guess we have to go through it again. I guess in terms of trying to come up with some sort of report from the subcommittee, whether we can get a consensus report or not, is another thing to table. On reflection, I am wondering if we should not follow Mr Grandmaître's suggestion and maybe try to move through the terms of reference as quickly as we can. We only have an hour and a half this morning. Perhaps we will get into those kinds of discussions you are talking about, Mr Silipo, as we move along. l am just throwing this out for discussion because I think it might be more helpful to us than just getting into the same old harangues that we have had in the past.
Mr McGuinty: I am going to support you wholeheartedly on that, given the way this has evolved. Just now I think it would be more productive to go through with clause-by-clause.
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Mr Bradley: At the risk of disagreeing with my two colleagues, which can happen, just to show how independent we are over here, the problem with it is this: I think you have to decide overall what the role of the committee is going to be first. Then that will dictate how we are going to change this. If this committee becomes enlightened, for instance, and asks to have veto power over these, then this would change perhaps; if this committee were to be able to look at more than one applicant for a position, this would change then perhaps, and so on down the line.
That is why I think that, and it is not unlike what some of the members of the government side have said. Tony has said, for instance, that they perhaps want to decide overall what the role is going to be and once we have had that out, then we can decide what this is. However, you are the Chair and two or three Liberal members disagree with me, so --
The Chair: I agree with what you are saying, but I guess I am a pessimist having --
Mr Bradley: A "realist" is the word.
The Chair: -- lived through this committee and others in the past. I do not think we are going to get that kind of agreement.
Mr Silipo: We may get some clarification.
Mr Stockwell: Mr Chairman, I think you are looking for consensus that just does not exist. You are searching for the Holy Grail and it is not going to happen.
Mr Wiseman: Who says the Holy Grail does not exist?
Mr Stockwell: That is a good point. Let's just say that it is a difficult task. Mr Silipo, I understand what you are saying, but I just consider it to be government pap. That is the party line and that is what they are paid to say and that is what they say. They look for consensus and they charge forward and hope that they can build this new forum in here to review appointments. I guess what we are looking for is what Mr Bradley has suggested, the veto power and so on, and I do not think the government people are going to agree with that. Beyond that, unless you get some kind of clout, it is really a colossal waste of time in my opinion. The members can suggest that they had some very serious and grave concerns about a few members, and gee, if they had more time to discuss it, they may even have voted against them. I will believe it when I see it.
Until we get to the point where I think there is a little bit of believability or a little bit of agreement that, yes, there could be someone turned down, then in my opinion we are working towards a consensus. It does not exist. Sometimes consensus does not exist. Sometimes you argue and debate and discuss and there just is not a middle ground. We are looking for something that is different from what you are looking for. We are looking for veto power; we are looking for a few people to come in on every appointment; we are looking to see a review process that includes more than one option; we are looking for a process where you people have a free right to vote and you can vote against an appointment by the government, which I have not seen. You claim it is going to happen but we have not seen it.
Whether you go by point by point or whether you go for the overall review or a global review, you want a consensus or to have some committee bonding or whatever the heck you want to call, I just think it is a colossal waste of time. You are going to have two dissenting points of view, the government side and our side. So take your pick. We are going to be here for an hour and a half; we are going to be no further ahead in the hour and a half than we were when we started.
Mr McLean: I have watched this process for some months. The government, when it makes its recommendations, picks the best person, it feels, for that position. We do not know who the other people are who have applied, but I am sure that when they make their recommendation, it is going to be a suitable recommendation that will be accepted. From the time that we have spent here reviewing them it has been an interesting process, but we really have not accomplished anything other than to concur that the people who have been appointed are acceptable. Until you change the structure of the committee and what the committee does, nothing is going to change. We are wasting thousands and thousands of dollars every year on these people and it is not changing anything.
The Chair: How about this? We will allot 10 minutes to each caucus and one spokesperson for each caucus to try to summarize what you would like to see this committee do and how you would like to see it structured and function, and then we can get on with the specifics. If one person can summarize it for each caucus, we will start off with Mr Silipo. Do you want to be spokesperson for the committee, or Mr Waters?
Mr Grandmaître: That is a good idea. Instead of an hour, we will only be wasting 30 minutes.
Mr Silipo: Sure, I would be happy with that.
Mrs Haslam: Make it five.
Mr Silipo: Yes, probably we could do it in less than 10 minutes.
I want to say at the beginning that I acknowledge that on this issue we may not have a consensus. I was not naïve enough to think that we may be able to get a consensus and that is not what I was suggesting in clarifying what it was that we saw as the role of the committee. There is very clearly a difference of opinion on this, from what has been said, and it may be that on the substance of what the committee is or should be there will not be a consensus. What there is out of two views of -- on the one hand, our view of the committee needing to continue to be a review committee, a committee that reviews appointments and, on the other, the issue that the Conservative and Liberal members have that this should be, in effect, an appointment committee, and there may not be a way to bridge those two positions.
I think there are ways, however, of improving the process, even if the committee remains a review committee, which is certainly, from my perspective, what it should do. Mr Waters was beginning on that process. In terms of some of the basic principles, I think that it is incumbent, and it should continue to be incumbent, upon the government to make the appointments to the various agencies, boards and commissions, because those appointments would then be subject to this public review process. That in and of itself places a stronger onus on the government, whether it is the Premier's office or whether it is the minister's, in putting together its intended appointments to be absolutely clear that it has chosen the best person for the position. Because, unlike in the past, those individuals will in most cases be asked to come before the committee and to answer publicly as to their knowledge of the job that they are going to go into and as to their qualifications with respect to that job. The simple fact of our existence as a committee, whether we agree or not with all the fine details of the process, that scrutiny ensures that in fact there is a high degree of seriousness placed on the appointments that are made.
When it comes to the issue of what the committee will do, again I think that it has been pointed out that the members of the government come to this committee very clearly looking at the individuals who are before us. It has not yet happened, as people have said, that we have voted against any appointments, but that may happen. In that sense, what also may happen, quite frankly, is that people on the government side may also disagree among themselves as to whether to support or not support a member. Then the issue compounds into the sort of question of what will happen if the committee, by majority vote or otherwise, were to vote against an intended appointment. It seems to me that while the government is not bound by that decision, it certainly would place a fairly strong onus on the minister's office or the Premier's office, as the case may be, to look seriously at the committee's recommendation which, according to the rules, becomes the Legislature's recommendation, as I understand the rules, or position. And while that does not give us a veto, it certainly makes it clear that as a group of people that has reviewed that appointment and found the person wanting, then it would seem to me incumbent in that kind of situation for the government to take another look at that intended appointment and possibly suggest someone else.
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I could go on and on, but I think I will stop because it seems to me that in terms of the issue, the committee should continue to be a review committee and not become an appointment committee. To get into the whole process of interviewing -- it is such a major shift in the process of appointments that I am not sure it accomplishes a great deal. But I guess I have to say, and I will be very honest about it, that I think the fundamental reason why I would disagree with the committee shifting to an appointment committee is because I do believe that should remain within the purview of the minister's and the Premier's offices. I think that is something I can defend. That is something that is quite legitimate, in my view, and that is something that still makes the review process useful.
I think that one of the things, quite frankly, we ought to start to also look at is the way in which we choose people to interview, because it seems to me, from looking back on the ones that I have been involved in, there were a number that we picked to review basically because we felt like we had to. I do not think that we should get ourselves into that position. If on the list of people that is before the subcommittee we really do not think that we have any objections to those appointments, well, we should be able to simply let them go through without parading people here just for the sake of doing it. Doing that, it seems to me, makes more of a mockery out of the process than simply saying, "Well, out of this list, we think that these are fine and therefore they should just proceed." So I think that is another aspect of it that we can do internally that also would add some more credibility to the process.
But short of those kinds of changes, and there may be a number of others, I am sure that if we go through the terms of reference item by item we certainly can agree to change. I think that in terms of the essence of the committee, certainly from our perspective it should remain a review committee.
Mr Bradley: I think if the government agencies committee is to have any real power, if it is to be a departure from what has happened in the past, the first thing it must have is the power to block any appointments. In other words, the committee should have veto power over the appointments of the government. It does not have that. It is not a significant departure from what has existed in the past. What we have had this portrayed as by the Premier, in my view, is a radical departure from what has been the practice in the province, when it is not.
So if we want that radical departure, if we want to take out the appearance, if not the substance, of patronage appointments and of partisan patronage appointments, then I think the committee has to be vested with the power to veto, so that if the committee turns down any particular applicant or proposed applicant, that applicant is not then proceeded with by the government in terms of an order-in-council appointment.
Second, I think that if we are to play a significant role, we would have to have the power to look at more than one person proposed for a position for appointment. If there is just the one person, it is very difficult to say that that person is the best. Mind you, if you had the veto power, that makes that less important. When I mention these, some are contingent upon the veto power. If you had veto power as a committee, then I suppose the government's proposing one person becomes more acceptable because then the government has to propose someone else. If they are not going to give a veto, it would be helpful and wide open if it were to propose a few people for a position and the committee could then make a recommendation.
This is a radical departure, but it has happened probably before in some cases, and that again is that if this committee is supposed to be a non-partisan committee, then the government should give consideration to equal representation of the three parties; at the very least, equal representation of the government and opposition on the committee. There was a suggestion made by Mr Harris when the select committee on Ontario in Confederation was established that if we were to see that as a non-partisan effort, it should have equal representation from the three recognized parties in the Ontario Legislature. That was rejected by the Premier. Again, it could be advanced in this committee that we could have equal representation.
Also, I think the committee should have the power to review reappointments to various agencies, boards and commissions, not simply the appointments. Perhaps a person's performance in that position has been such that members of the committee would feel the person should not be reappointed. In this case I would think, for instance, the government members would be particularly interested in that because some of the reappointments may be appointments made by previous Conservative and Liberal governments that members of this committee do not feel are appropriate. They are the kind of appointments that just kind of happen because people are in a hurry or because the Ontario federation of something says that person should be appointed, so the government kind of says, "Well, if they say it, I guess it should be," or, "There's going to be a rebellion somewhere if you don't appoint somebody." Let me tell you, that does happen. So I think being able to review those reappointments would be useful to this committee.
I think that all OIC appointments should be eligible for review by this committee. My understanding is that the government is looking at some that it may remove from the category of order in council. It used to be OPP officers or something that you had to appoint, which seemed nonsensical for the cabinet to be doing those. There may be a legal reason for that. I do not know what that legal reason would be, but that is the kind of thing that we could have.
Another concern that we have is the amount of time, the time frame, for looking at the candidates and finding out about the candidates. There seems to be a rather brief period of time. Again, I recognize that governments want to move quickly to fill those appointments. However, it seems to me that this committee, if it is to fulfil its responsibility, must have more time to be able to do so.
We do not now have the right to call witnesses or ask for written submissions about the candidate. I understand the queasiness of people with that. I note the federal government does have that, and there was a feeling by some that, well, you do that, so how does a person defend herself or himself? If somebody sends in a letter saying that this person is a rat and listing things about the person, perhaps even personal things about the person, or if somebody appears before the committee and makes some charges against the person, how does that person reply, and does that in fact discourage anybody from coming forward? So I understand those arguments, but if you are going to have the closest of scrutiny of the proposed candidates for any particular position, then I think you would have to entertain other witnesses coming before the committee to say why that person would be not useful or useful. So you may have a cheerleader here or you may have a detractor here and/or you could have written comments to the committee.
The Chair or the committee or the subcommittee might be in a position to decide whether in fact some of that information may be in camera. That is something the legal people would have to determine. Ethically we would have to determine what is in camera and what is not. There may be instances where things are brought to light that may have no basis in fact, and the committee in camera may want to look at those particular comments.
So I think we really are in that position as the official opposition of saying that those would be the bases upon which we would think we would like to see this committee work.
The Vice-Chair: If we are going to allow 10 minutes to each party, we are way over on your party.
Mr Bradley: Oh, okay. That is fine. I am sorry. I did not know I took that long.
The Vice-Chair: If Stockwell wants to take over now, then we will leave the decision to --
Mr Bradley: My last comment, as I say my last sentence, is that there is a great concern that many members read about these appointments in the media before they come to us.
The Vice-Chair: Mr Stockwell, did you have any comments that you wanted to make?
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Mr Stockwell: The difficulty is that this was sold to us at the time by the Premier as some process that would alleviate or stop the patronage appointment. That is the way it was sold to the media and the people, and I at least go back to the way it was sold. I guess that is where my difficulty with this whole process starts. If that was the sense of what this committee was going to do and if this was the thought that went into striking this committee, to review these appointments, then it is frankly a colossal failure. It is not doing that. To sell it that way is insulting, I think, to the people and to the opposition parties. If it were not so sanctimoniously announced that, "We are clean; we are aboveboard; we are better than Conservatives and Liberals because we're going to strike a committee to review appointments," then it would not bother me so much to sit through this and do what I consider to be a waste of time.
It was sold in that way and now we are sitting here going through a process, when not a single member of the government has voted against any applicant, any appointment. It is a committee that is totally stacked in favour of the government. There is not a vote you can lose if party solidarity holds true. We are asked to sit here and, I suppose, lend legitimacy to this process, and that is the great difficulty I have with this. I spoke to it in the House. I think our caucus agrees that we are lending credibility to this committee when there is not any to be had.
Now, I would be fully in favour of those recommendations put forward by the Liberals where we have veto power or we have the right to interview more than one applicant and so on and so forth. If it is not going to happen, I think we should save the taxpayers a tremendous amount of money and cancel this charade and allow the Premier to do what every other Premier has done and make the appointments as orders in council and then let him stand or fall on his own two feet. We would not review the process, which makes sense to me simply because no one is getting turned down, and you would not have the ability to stand up and pretend that you are better than any other previous government because you have this travelling road show here that is supposed to comment on appointments that you never turn down.
So in my opinion, and I believe our caucus's opinion unless you are going to give this committee some power, unless you are going to allow it to have the veto right, unless you are going to allow it to request that it be allowed to interview more than one applicant, unless you are going to allow those kind of things to take place, then by our participation we are only lending credibility to the charade.
The comment was made earlier in the meeting, "How come we didn't approve these people right away?" Well, l am not going to do anything to speed this process up. I am not going to do anything to help you people continue this charade, because I see it as a charade, and by assisting you I am just assisting you in fooling the folks, pulling the wool over their eyes, and I do not believe this is helpful to the people. It is a colossal waste of taxpayers' money.
So if we are just going to sit here today and argue about the merits of this committee, my party's position is very clear. Unless or until you give this committee some real power, then we are simply showing up. We are going to put our hands up at the appropriate time. We are going to do what we have to do to point out this charade that we are going through, and all this talk about going through line by line or a full review, it matters not. It matters not, because you have created this charade and your party has sent the message out that you are cleaner and more aboveboard than any other elected official, and then you put this charade in place. I am not here to help you. I do not like the process, and I think the process is stacked, slanted and unfair, so I am here to point that out at every opportunity.
Mr Hayes: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: You know, we talk about "let's try not to be political" and all these kind of nice things here and "try to work together," and yet you hear members who sit here and talk about, first of all, equal representation. The only time I am aware of equal representation on any of the government committees, including the past ones, is if there was a minority government and probably when we had the accord. Even when we had the accord, the government had the majority of the members on there.
The Chair: That is not a point of order, but I am going to allow you to get it on the record. Go ahead.
Mr Hayes: Okay. I wanted to make something here. I know that Mr Stockwell mentioned about the review. Yes, that is what Bob Rae did say, a review, and that is what we are doing there. But the other thing is that I get a little bit perturbed when I sit here and listen to members call this thing a farce and at the same time they have sat on this committee and voted for people who they want on their committee because the people are not affiliated with the New Democratic Party, and then when they do not like the person who we want to appoint, they call this a farce. That has happened on this committee, where we have had people walk out and call it a farce after they voted for the people who they wanted, and I think that is quite hypocritical.
The Chair: This is not productive at all. Mr Wiseman, I hope it is not more of the same.
Mr Wiseman: I think that when we were first starting this process, we had some representations here that were very interesting. I cannot remember the name of the personnel firm that came in and did the seminar, the very first group.
The Chair: Stevenson Kellogg?
Mr Wiseman: Yes. Then we had Felix Holtmann who came and made some interesting conversation and comments about the process. I think it would be interesting to review that information from the point of view of looking at it now that we have gone through the process for a period of time, and to come back and take a look at what they had to say about process and what they felt might be useful to come out of this process. If I remember correctly, Mr Holtmann had some good points about this committee and had some ideas about what is possible and what is not possible. I do not have that information handy with me, but perhaps we could ask the research officer to dig up the Hansards from those and we could maybe have a review of that and go down a road that might come up with something more beneficial than sitting here throwing mud at one another.
The Chair: In my observations of this -- and I could be wrong and open to criticism on this -- it strikes me that what has transpired here today and what has occurred in the past indicates pretty clearly that from the perspective of the opposition parties, any change to the standing order is going to have to include some pretty dramatic changes in respect to either having a veto power or equal representation of opposition members and government members on this committee. That seems to be the key element, if you will, in terms of how the opposition members have voiced their concerns. I think that covers it primarily. You get into all the other nitty-gritty things about how the OIC comes to us and those sorts of things, the workings of the committee, but I think that is the basic problem, if you will.
If we cannot overcome that, I am not sure that we are going to spend a lot of productive time in terms of going over all of the specifics of whether we need one committee or two committees. I guess we can, but what I am suggesting here, throwing this open for discussion, is that we have a number of issues that have been raised by the clerk and by our research officer, matters that have come to our attention over the past period of time. We also have the material Mr Wiseman has appropriately brought to our attention again and reminded us of, and I am wondering if it may not be more appropriate for the various caucuses to try and come back with specific proposals on how they would like to see this new standing order worded and structured. I am just wondering whether we are going to have anything fruitful occur here today. We have already had the positions outlined in essence. I am just wondering if that may not be a more expeditious way to proceed.
Mr McGuinty: With reference to Mr Wiseman's point, I do not think we should be trying to reinvent the wheel here. The Macaulay report has some significant bearing on what this committee should be doing, and that is the most recent report. It is a thorough and thoughtful report. One of the key areas it dealt with was agency appointments. According to Macaulay, this could best be achieved by -- I am just reading from a statement here -- opening up the pre-appointment process, ie, advertising for and screening potential candidates, as he did not feel that an open process can be accomplished by means of a legislative committee system, as proposed by the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly.
He made specific recommendations, and one of those was that a council for administrative agencies should be created to seek out, interview and assess potential candidates. It may be that, given the practicalities, it is beyond the realm of this committee to deal with specific interviews and that end of it. But there should be some other independent body between the government and this committee which is ensuring that the people of Ontario are getting the best person for the job. I have no confidence that that is being done right now. This is a proposed solution from an independent source.
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Mr McLean: On much the same line as what Mr McGuinty said, the fact is that I was wondering if there was somebody, the author of the Macaulay report or somebody, a designate, who could appear before the committee, having now known what we have done, and give us some comments on whether it has been fruitful or whether there should be some changes.
Mrs Haslam: We already did this.
The Chair: We had a gentleman appear before us who was a counsel of the Macaulay commission and we have had some discussions with Mr Macaulay himself and on a couple of occasions he has indicated a willingness to appear before us, but I am not sure.
Mr Silipo: If the committee members want to bring someone back or bring somebody to help us through with this, I am certainly not going to object, although I am not sure that we can bring anybody from the outside to tell us what we should be doing with this. I think it is really a decision that we as a committee need to make.
I have to say, having listened to some of the comments, particularly from Mr Bradley, that there are actually at least a couple of what I hope are major points that he made that certainly personally I would agree with. I think that therefore, while the positions may still be far apart, there are still some areas. I, for example, think that it would be useful for us to look at the whole area of having the ability to review reappointments. I think that is an area that certainly strikes a sympathetic chord with me. It is something that I would want to think a little bit about and certainly would want to talk with my caucus members here a little bit more about. It seems to me that is an area that is worth our while taking a look at.
The question of whether we should have witnesses or the whole area of whether we should get information to the committee members by other people about the intended appointments is an area that I have some hesitation about. As I indicated on one of the appointments, it did not really matter to me what somebody else's opinion might be. But having said that, there may be some kind of information that it might be useful to look at getting from other people.
We have to be quite careful about how that was structured in terms of protecting the rights of the intended appointee, and certainly whatever we put in place would have to ensure that the person was made fully aware of any information that was provided to the committee members and had an opportunity to rebut that information. Although I have some hesitation about how to do it, I would be quite open to our taking a look at that in some more detail and seeing if there in fact was any way to accommodate both kinds of needs.
On the question of veto power of the committee versus equal representation, I guess I still make the point that it seems to me that although it is not written as clearly as people would like it in the standing order, I could almost make the argument that the committee does have a veto power already. I would be hesitant to think that the government would proceed with an intended appointment if this committee were to turn down someone who appeared before us. In that sense it seems to me that we already have that veto. Again, it is something that I am not prepared to accept at this point in time, but I certainly would want to think a little bit more about that.
If something like that were to deal with some of the major objections that people have to the process, it seems to me that we are not as far apart on some of those issues as might seem. So maybe it has not been that useless a process.
The Chair: Time will tell. I am trying to perhaps over-simplify this, but we are talking about retention of the committee as a review committee with a number of significant changes, or a committee with a veto right or equal representation, or we are talking about what Macaulay and Mr McGuinty talked about there, taking it outside the Legislature and having some sort of independent body involved in this review process, sort of middlemen/women, if you will.
I still would like to throw out the possibility of each caucus taking upon itself the responsibility of coming up with a firm proposal, whether it is an endorsement of the Macaulay proposal or whether it is a committee with a veto power and a number of other changes that you see are required, or a review process with the other significant changes that you should take.
Mr Silipo: I agree with you, because I do not think that at this point we are going to get much further.
The Chair: That way we could have three firm proposals on the table before the committee which we can all discuss, at least three firm proposals, and discuss them and the merits. We may have a number of alternatives. Could we agree on that, that all will sit down? Is it possible to have something for next week? Do we see a problem with that?
Mr Stockwell: Not at all.
The Chair: So at least we can circulate the proposals. If we can have them prepared in written form and turned into the clerk, we will circulate all three to various members of the committee. Doug will be calling the subcommittee members representing their caucuses to remind you perhaps midweek or early next week that we are looking for that document. Could we leave it at that today then?
Mr Stockwell: Good job, Mr Chairman.
The committee adjourned at 1107.