CONTENTS
Wednesday 29 January 1992
Appointments Review
Clare Brenner
Michael J. Sullivan
Heather Rosemary Broadbent
Lloyd Marshall
D. Patricia Neilson
Alec Ross
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Chair / Président(e): Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président(e): McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East/-Est PC)
Carter, Jenny (Peterborough ND)
Elston, Murray J. (Bruce L)
Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND)
Grandmaître, Bernard (Ottawa East/-Est L)
Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent ND)
Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South/-Sud PC)
McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South/-Sud L)
Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)
Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay/Muskoka-Baie-Georgienne ND)
Wiseman, Jim (Durham West/-Ouest ND)
Substitution(s)/Membre(s) remplaçant(s):
Callahan, Robert V. (Brampton South/-Sud L) for Mr McGuinty
Haeck, Christel (St Catharines-Brock ND) for Mr Waters
Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes:
Wilson, Jim (Simcoe West/-Ouest PC)
Clerk / Greffier: Arnott, Douglas
Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, Research Officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1005 in committee room 2.
APPOINTMENTS REVIEW
Resuming consideration of intended appointments.
CLARE BRENNER
The Chair: Can we come to order, please. We are a little short of time so we will get under way.
Our first witness is Clare Brenner. Clare is an intended appointee as a member of the town of East Zorra-Tavistock Police Services Board. Mr Brenner, welcome to the committee. You have been selected for a half-hour review. That is 10 minutes allocated to each party. I will give you up to a minute, if you wish, to say something before we get into questions. Would you rather just move right on to questions?
Mr Brenner: Just go right ahead. That is fine.
The Chair: Okay. We will begin with the official opposition. Mr Grandmaître.
Mr Grandmaître: Mr Brenner, tell me all about your community. You seem to be a very active and very community-minded person, so tell me about your community and what you know about the police services board.
Mr Brenner: The community is roughly 2,500 people. I would say that probably 50% of the community is elderly people, like a retirement community. Mind you, that ratio is probably changing.
As far as the police services board goes, I applied for this position through an ad in the paper. It is going to be a learning experience for me. I have not sat on a board like this before. I presume at this time the job of the board would be to aim for unity between the community and the police department, not saying there is not that there now, but that would be one of the main concerns of the services board.
Mr Grandmaître: How would you describe your police force at the present time?
Mr Brenner: Being a small community, I would say the police department now and the community are very close together. A small community looks at its police department as members of the community, whereas in larger cities such as this you do not know everybody. In a small community everybody knows everybody.
Mr Grandmaître: What would you say are the most serious crimes that are committed in your community?
Mr Brenner: The most serious crimes right now are probably break and enters. There is a limited amount of drugs, but those basically are the most serious crimes, I would say, in a small community.
Mr Grandmaître: What is the relationship of your police force with young people in your area?
Mr Brenner: The police force in our town puts a lot of time in. They hold bike rodeos for the youth in the community. They have one officer who goes to the school and instructs the kids on drug abuse -- I know my own boy took the course -- and they put in a lot of time with the youth of the community.
Mr Grandmaître: Police forces are being criticized right across Ontario for their brutality, not only the way they handle visible minority people, but in general. Police forces are perceived at the present time as not being too friendly with their communities, with their citizens. Do you think it is only a perception and it is not a reality and it is not happening?
Mr Brenner: I would not say it is not happening, but I think no matter what you do, whether it is being a police officer or anything, you are going to get criticism from somebody, somewhere all the time. You are not going to please everybody all the time, but I do not think it is as bad as everybody is saying.
Mr Grandmaître: I am sorry. I do not have my complete notes, but the total budget for your police force is $250,000 for six officers, three uniformed and three others.
Mr Brenner: Three auxiliary.
Mr Grandmaître: Three auxiliary. Do you think your township council should have a bigger say in police budgets? After all, it is quite a large sum of money. Do you think the township should have more of a say?
Mr Brenner: I think the services board and the council should be able to work together. I know that personally, being with the fire department, right now the council is looking at a 10-year budget to project what kind of money it is going to need over the years, but I do not see any reason why a services board and a council cannot work together. They have their opinions and I have my opinions as to how much money it should cost, but the idea is to work as one and not work against each other.
Mr Grandmaître: So there is not a problem in your town of city council versus the police services board or the police force. That is not a problem in your town?
Mr Brenner: I do not see any problem there at all.
Mr Grandmaître: That is good news.
Mr Callahan: There is a bit of a furore caused over the non-swearing of allegiance to the Queen. What would be your position on that if you were a member of this board?
Mr Brenner: There again, each person has his own opinion. My opinion is that they should be able to swear allegiance to the Queen, but each individual has his own opinion and you have to respect that opinion.
Mr Callahan: To your knowledge, are there women who are interested in becoming police officers in your community?
Mr Brenner: I would not say there are not, but I cannot remember how many years it has been since we hired the last officer. I would say it is probably 15 years since they hired a police officer, so sure, there is probably interest, but there are no positions available at this time.
Mr Callahan: I gather your community is fairly small. Is there an indication of cultural mix there as there is in other communities throughout Ontario?
Mr Brenner: As far as other cultures are concerned, there is a limited amount. The only way I ever see them is mainly through my own kids and the other kids in the neighbourhood, and there is no prejudice to my knowledge whatsoever. I am not saying that some place in Tavistock there is not someone who is prejudiced, but it would be a small amount.
Mr Callahan: You are aware that the former Solicitor General announced that all police forces would have until 1 May 1992 to implement an employment equity scheme. Has your community, to your knowledge, moved along with that and will it be able to meet that?
Mr Brenner: Right now I imagine council has taken steps in that direction, not only in employment equity. I know East Zorra-Tavistock was one of the first places that actually took the first steps towards pay equity. The one thing with the mayor we have there is, when it comes to something like this, she is -- probably the proper word is not "a pusher," but she is one of the first ones to take those steps. So I would imagine that yes, they have probably looked into it.
Mr Callahan: Finally, I note in your curriculum vitae that you have been a volunteer fireman for 19 years. How many officers are on your force?
Mr Brenner: Right now the township of East Zorra-Tavistock has a chief over top of the township. Our department has one chief, one deputy chief and two captains.
Mr Callahan: They have been there for some considerable period of time?
Mr Brenner: The chief himself has been there probably 25 years. I have been there 20 years this year. Right now our department is fairly young. I would say after that we quickly drop down to guys who have been there eight years, five years and less.
Mr Callahan: Coming from a community that is relatively small in size, do you know these people quite well?
Mr Brenner: Yes, very well.
Mr Callahan: Do you associate with them on a social level, being a volunteer fireman?
Mr Brenner: Some of them, yes. One guy, for example, is my next-door neighbour.
Mr Callahan: Obviously you are aware that one of your functions, I believe anyway, would be in terms of any complaints that were filed against these people by members of the community for whatever. Would you have any difficulty, because of that relationship, in being able to deal with these matters in an impartial, detached way?
Mr Brenner: No, I do not feel I would. Even right now as a volunteer firefighter, if we have problems in the fire department, and everybody has problems once in a while, I have no problem. If my next-door neighbour was under me at a fire, I would have no problem disciplining him, or if he deserves credit, I would give him credit, whatever. I do not see any problem at all.
Mr McLean: Are there any females on the police services board now?
Mr Brenner: Not to my knowledge, no.
Mr McLean: Do you know who the chairperson of the board is?
Mr Brenner: We do not have one at this time because it is a new board being set up.
Mr McLean: This has not been functioning?
Mr Brenner: No, it has not.
Mr McLean: With respect to policing in Ontario today -- and I find the crime rate increasing at an astounding rate -- do you feel the police should be one of the key areas that should be looked at in all budgets with regard to making sure they are fulfilling the duty they are expected to? I am a firm believer that you can maybe cut recreation or something, but we should be increasing our police forces instead of decreasing them.
Mr Brenner: I think the police forces are a very important part of our society. I also have to agree that there is no way you could reduce your policing. Right now even in a place the size of East Zorra-Tavistock our police department is probably doing as much as it can with what it has. If the workload became any heavier, then it deserves more help.
Mr McLean: I know the OPP in Ontario is really upset with the understaffing that appears to be in a lot of the forces. It is a great concern to me because we see the forces actually having less staff because of the freeze in hiring, and here we have more crime. God, I think we are going in the wrong direction. Getting back to the specifics, would you be looking at an increase for the police in East Zorra-Tavistock?
Mr Brenner: Are you saying an increase in the number of men?
Mr McLean: Correct.
Mr Brenner: It would be something that I and the other members of the police services board, along with the chief of the police department, would have to sit down and talk about. Because this is just a new board, it is something the chief himself would know more about than I do at this time, but I do agree that the problem is there.
Mr McLean: I wish you well.
Mr Frankford: Can you clarify? This is a completely new board?
Mr Brenner: Yes. It has never been set up. In fact, myself, the other member who is here today and the mayor of the community are supposed to be, after confirmation, the members of the board. But up to this time they had what they called the police commission and it was just basically run by the council of East Zorra-Tavistock. I think there were three members on it from council. This board has never met to this day or anything.
1020
Mr Frankford: Is this some new piece of legislation? Do you know how it was created?
Mr Brenner: I believe it was legislated. I do not know. I only applied through an ad in the newspaper. I cannot really tell you for sure, but I think it was legislation that came into being.
Mr McLean: I can explain that for you, sir, if you would like.
Mr Brenner: Yes.
Mr McLean: The reason the board has not been functioning is that when the old members retired, there has been nobody reappointed. It has maybe taken a year to do that and now the reappointment is going to bring the board back up to its numbers.
Mr Frankford: So there was a board?
Mr McLean: Was there not a board there?
Mr Brenner: There was what they called a police commission, yes, and it was two members of council, I believe, and the mayor herself.
Mr Frankford: And there are now going to be three?
Mr Brenner: Now there will be three members again. The chief of police, two citizens, if you will, and the mayor herself will be the new commission.
Mr Frankford: Is the chief a member of the board? He will be there.
Mr Brenner: No. He will be there, though, because they are who you are working with.
Mr Frankford: Ex officio.
Mr Brenner: Yes.
Mr Frankford: But nobody said, "Okay, we need a police commission." There had been some sort of police --
Mr Brenner: Oh, yes.
Mr Frankford: All right. Do you have any thoughts on the efficiency of having a police commission of that size for a community and a police department of the size you are?
Mr Brenner: Yes. It is like any other job; you have to have an overseer. I guess with your job, my job, there is always somebody a little higher up who has to make sure things are operating properly.
Mr Frankford: I would say that this is a striking contrast. I am from Metro Toronto, where there are seven police commissioners for two million people and you have three for 2,500.
Mr Brenner: I see your point, but there again, there are problems everywhere. I realize that in a city this size, maybe you should have more. Do you know what I am saying?
Mr Frankford: I think I do. The crime that you mentioned, you said break-ins --
Mr Brenner: When I say break-ins -- I cannot rule out bank robberies, because we did have one in the last year, but that would probably be the most serious type of break-in we have had.
Mr Frankford: What about traffic --
Mr Brenner: Everybody has traffic accidents and traffic violations.
Mr Frankford: Yes. Is that a significant part of the police work there?
Mr Brenner: Yes, it is a part of any police job anywhere. If you said, how much time does it take up of their time, I cannot really tell you, say, if it is 50%. Besides just doing traffic violations, they are also, like I say, out working with the community. When you have a small community, they are very close-knit.
Mr Frankford: I presume as you get more into the job, you will be looking at allocation of resources and get a better sense of that.
Mr Brenner: Yes. It is hard for me to say, because I have never done this before. This is what they do, like 50% traffic violations and 50% with the youth of the community, I cannot answer that.
Mr Frankford: Do you have any sense of the relative importance of domestic disputes, domestic violence, in the sort of problems the police have to handle there?
Mr Brenner: No doubt there probably are, and knowing the three officers we have in East Zorra-Tavistock, I have no problem in assuming that they probably handle them very well.
Mr Frankford: But at the present time you do not have any firm thoughts on where the priorities should be or what things are going to come most to the attention of the police?
Mr Brenner: I would say no, not till I get into it more. Like I say, this is all new to me.
Mr Hayes: There is one thing here I think should be clarified. Mr McLean said that there was a lack of appointments and there was a gap in there. I do not believe that is really the reason at all. I think the reason is that the police services boards in Ontario were formerly known as police commissions and now they are governed under the Police Services Act. I think what we are doing now is fulfilling the obligation of that particular piece of legislation.
I have one question dealing with employment equity. I would actually like to hear some of your comments, because if you are talking about just dealing with your community, I know across this province in the small communities the police officers are not necessarily hired from that specific community, so it would not necessarily be an issue of saying they have to meet certain requirements right here in this community, like for women and other minorities, visible minorities, that have to be --
Mr Brenner: Right. Equitywise, I guess the first concern would be, say, hiring a woman police officer. As far as talking minorities is concerned, when you are talking other groups in East Zorra-Tavistock, you are probably talking less than 1%, and when you are talking about where the police officers came from, even in East Zorra-Tavistock, none of the officers who are there now were originally from East Zorra-Tavistock.
Mr Hayes: That is what I was getting at. Even to meet that need for employment equity, it would not be based on what the population there is, because you may be hiring that person from somewhere else in Ontario.
Mr Brenner: From Metro Toronto or -- right.
Mr Hayes: Yes.
Mr Brenner: I guess I have answered your question.
Mr Hayes: Yes, and I just want to compliment you on your community activity. I think that is very great and we need more people like you.
Mr Brenner: Thank you.
The Chair: No further questions from the government party? Mr Brenner, that concludes the questions. We appreciate your appearance here today and wish you luck.
Mr Brenner: Thank you for your time.
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MICHAEL J. SULLIVAN
The Chair: The next witness is Michael Sullivan, who is also an intended appointee to the East Zorra-Tavistock Police Services Board. Welcome to the committee, Mr Sullivan.
Mr Sullivan: Good morning.
The Chair: You are also a selection of the official opposition for review today, Mr Sullivan. We are going to go to Mr Grandmaître to begin the questioning.
Mr Grandmaître: Mr Sullivan, going through your CV I see you are a member of the Optimists Club. I know, being an Optimist --
Mr Callahan: I thought you were a pessimist.
Mr Grandmaître: -- a member of the Optimist Club, we are very interested in our youth and in promoting youth. Do you think your police force is doing enough to work with your youth community groups, and what extra work should they be doing with your youth communities?
Mr Sullivan: First of all, Oxford county itself started a program called VIP, which stands for values, influences and peers. I think it is about a seven- or eight-week program taught at school, and one of our police officers is assigned to appear regularly. In grades 5 and 6 they deal with items such as drug abuse, how to say no. With the police officer, they go down to the local courthouse in Woodstock to see what happens in a court case. The police officer also goes with them to the hospital to see what happens in an emergency case if a person overdoses. They show them the equipment they use.
For a small community like ours, the police are very high profile. I know at least one officer we have seems to be assigned to community service work -- not that all three of the officers are not able to respond, but this one officer, Constable Rudy, appears to be assigned to doing community work. I would suggest, since I have been living in Tavistock for eight years, this program the county sponsors but is being conducted locally by our local police force and our teachers has worked well.
Along with that program, we also have Police Week in Tavistock, as all the municipalities do, where we introduce our children to what could happen on the street. Either our local police force or an RCMP officer will come in and introduce our children to what drugs may appear to look like on the street. I think our police force has a really high profile among the children in our area.
Mr Grandmaître: How did you find out about this vacancy on the police services board?
Mr Sullivan: I was talking to a member of our previous council, who informed me that in fact it would no longer be council members' duty to form this police commission. I then responded to an ad in the local newspaper and submitted my curriculum vitae to the Solicitor General's office, and that is how I became aware of it officially.
Mr Grandmaître: Do you know what the total budget of your township is?
Mr Sullivan: I could not tell you, sir, no. I understand from listening this morning that our police budget is about $260,000. I really could not tell you what our budget is.
Mr Grandmaître: With the new changes, now it is called a police services board and not a commission. Most municipalities in the province of Ontario have a tendency to criticize police commissions, or service boards now, because in some municipalities, 80% of the budget goes towards policing. City council, at least mayors, are saying that they do not have much of a say in policing or its budget. Do you think it is fair that municipal councillors or city council should be tax collectors for a budget they have very little to say on?
Mr Sullivan: I believe that the province of Ontario decided upon the police services board, and whether that be right or not I have no say in. The board was constituted by law, and I believe that the board is going to be -- I guess high profile, you would say -- in any municipality when it comes to determining budgets and policing matters. I do not think there is a problem, whether you are a police services board member or a member of town council. I do not think there is that problem. We are going to be responsible for making sure the budget that is set by this police services board is adhered to, and I think that is going to be one of our primary obligations, to assure the council that we can adhere to something that is structured.
Mr Grandmaître: But you realize that when the police services boards are planning their budgets or drawing their budgets, municipal councils do not have much of a say in the structure.
Mr Sullivan: Yes. I agree with you, and I think we certainly have to be fiscally responsible. As we take a look across the province at what the government of the day has done as far as wages are concerned in the province, fiscally I think we have to be responsible. I think that is what this board is going to have to do.
Mr Grandmaître: Good. Good luck to you. I will pass on to Mr Callahan.
Mr Callahan: Just a few questions, Mr Sullivan. It is going to be similar to a question I asked the other gentleman. Do you know the police officers in your community quite well?
Mr Sullivan: Not on a personal basis. I know of them from working, yes.
Mr Callahan: You do not socialize or anything with them?
Mr Sullivan: Not with the police officers. I have had a social couple of hours with the police chief, but other than that, no. I do not go golfing with them, I do not bowl with them and I do not go over to their houses on a regular basis.
Mr Callahan: All right. You would not have any difficulty then, if some allegation was made, to be prepared to judge the matter in a fair and independent way?
Mr Sullivan: I can say this morning, sir, no, that would not be a problem.
Mr Callahan: Those are my questions.
Mr McLean: First of all, I want to correct the record for myself. I had indicated that I thought this was already a police services board that was appointed, and obviously it was not; it was a committee of council. The new Police Services Act now requires that any municipality that has its own force has to have a police services board. I just wanted to say that I was wrong when I was speaking. There was a board that had already been there.
You do not see any conflict of interest working for the government if you are appointed to the police services board?
Mr Sullivan: No, sir. As a matter of fact, in my position with the LCBO as store manager I am responsible for setting budgets, staffing requirements, making sure quotas are upheld. I do not believe there would be a conflict with my setting a budget for the police department or ensuring that the police department follows the Police Services Act.
Mr McLean: Could I have your comments with regard to the issue I raised with Mr Brenner with regard to police servicing across the province, where there has been a freeze on hiring? The problem we have is that there are still police officers who are retiring. Our force seems to be depleted. I have talked to superintendents and they are very upset because they are understaffed. What comments do you have in that line? What should we be doing in Ontario, not only with regard to East Zorra-Tavistock, but to policing across the province.
Mr Sullivan: First, sir, if I could address the policing in East Zorra-Tavistock, I suppose since I have resided there since 1984 the community has grown by quite a number of people or families. I think one of the responsibilities the police services board will have is to determine the amount of policing required, to (a) determine if we have the right number of people and (b) take a look at the equipment we have, whether it be the police vehicle or the communications equipment they use and determine whether that needs updating or if the numbers we have on staff at the police force are proper. That is going to be something that should probably be dealt with first of all. That is locally.
Provincially it is a tough call. I know what we are. Actually, we are surrounded by some police forces. South of us is Woodstock and north of us is Stratford. We are serviced by the OPP in Sebringville also. I really cannot comment on whether they are short of people and I do not want to predetermine their staff shortage or overage.
If you pay attention to the media of course, it would seem that a number of police forces are saying that they require more staff. I do not have those figures. I do not know what the figures they use to determine staffing are. I really cannot comment on it, but I think that will be one of the first jobs for a board member, any member, to determine the staffing requirements for East Zorra-Tavistock.
Mr McLean: I wish you well.
Ms Carter: I am interested in the question of job equity, which was raised before. I understand that in your area that means having a representative number of women and other minorities in the area. I am just wondering how you see the position of women in the police force. Do you think there are some advantages, some things that maybe women could attend to better? For example, are there a lot of domestic calls where maybe it would help for them to be involved in? Do you see women police as able to do everything the men do and to move through the ranks in the same kind of way a male police officer would?
Mr Sullivan: I believe that if police officers are qualified and go through the academy, whether they be male, female, black, white, Indian or Anglo-Saxon male, as long as they pass the qualifications of the police academy, they are police officers. Once you pass that, I do not think there is a big barrier, whether you are male or female, when you go to any call. You are an officer, you have a job to do, and I have never heard of someone who has thought less of a police officer because she was a woman. One expects that she performs her duties as well as anybody else.
As far as employment equity goes, it is a program that is legislated by the government. I would suggest to you that if an opening appeared in East Zorra-Tavistock, the police services board should and, I suggest to you, by law would definitely make sure every opportunity is given to hire under the employment equity act. There would be no doubt in my mind.
Ms Carter: What kind of pattern of crime and problems do you have in your area?
Mr Sullivan: I suggest that most of the reported crimes are probably break and enters as well as charges under the Highway Traffic Act. We read a lot in the paper about people drinking and driving. Those are a number of charges. The police department would have these records, guarded of course, but I am not aware of any major domestic problem in Tavistock. Certainly if you go to the local restaurant in the morning you would know about it, but as we sit here I think probably the busiest time for the police officers in Tavistock is laying charges under the Highway Traffic Act and break and enters.
Ms Carter: One final question: As you may know, there has been a new regulation with regard to political involvement by police which broadens their opportunity now. If they are not in uniform and not on duty, they can engage in most political activity. I just wondered if you had any comments on that.
Mr Sullivan: Not really. As a civil servant for many years, I could not go out and publicly put a sign on my lawn supporting someone. Since we have had that opportunity as civil servants I have not done that anyway, so I am hoping the police department would be objective. I do not really think that to do their jobs we have to care about who they vote for. I do not think that is a problem.
Ms Carter: Do you think that might cause problems in a small community, as opposed to in Toronto where people are maybe more anonymous?
Mr Sullivan: I do not think so, no. I do not think it would have any bearing on whether the chief of police supported a member of the opposition or a member of the Parliament of the day. I do not think that really matters. He is there to do a job.
Ms Carter: As long as he keeps it out of his job.
Mr Sullivan: Yes, exactly. I would not suggest that he buy a metallic sign supporting a party and stick it on the cruiser.
Mr Callahan: That's a good idea.
Mr Sullivan: Notwithstanding that, I do not think it would interfere with your job, no.
The Vice-Chair: Any further questions? If there are no further questions, thank you, Mr Sullivan, for appearing before the committee today. We are pleased to see you here.
The next candidate is on her way and is not here yet. I am wondering if we could have a five-minute break. Do not go too far, because they are usually a little early. Recess for five minutes.
The committee recessed at 1044.
1051
HEATHER ROSEMARY BROADBENT
The Vice-Chair: We have with us now Heather Rosemary Broadbent, an intended appointee to the Conservation Review Board. Welcome to the committee this morning. We have half an hour for the review. If you have any opening statement you would like to make, you are quite welcome to do so at this time. If not, then we will --
Mrs Broadbent: No. I am pleased to be here. I am hoping this appointment will go through. I am looking forward to it.
The Vice-Chair: The official opposition asked for the review, so we will start with Mr Grandmaître.
Mr Grandmaître: Do you think most of our municipalities in the province of Ontario do not really understand or appreciate the Ontario Heritage Act or have very little respect for it?
Mrs Broadbent: Actually the act is very old. I am very pleased to see that it is being updated. It is not a case of municipalities not understanding it. I think they realize it does not have a lot of teeth. May I go on?
Mr Grandmaître: Yes, absolutely.
Mrs Broadbent: One very fortunate part about the act is that because it was in place in the mid-1970s all new provincial land use legislation and local municipal plans now have heritage conservation clauses. The odd thing that has happened is that the newer legislation is a little more positive in protecting our cultural and natural heritage than the act which spawned the better clauses in conservation legislation. Consequently, bringing the act up to date now is very timely. A lot of municipalities have been concerned it is not strong enough.
Mr Grandmaître: I realize it has to be updated but in my day most municipalities did not appreciate the act, for a number of reasons. One of the reasons was the cost involved, because when a home, business or commercial enterprise was considered to be heritage or had heritage or architectural values and was so designated, the owner of that property could not do very much in renovations and so on. If you wanted to renovate that property, you had to respect the heritage values. Most people wanted to get rid of these buildings because of the cost involved. I am talking about properties being designated in municipal official plans, right?
Mrs Broadbent: Yes.
Mr Grandmaître: Do you think that when a municipal property is identified or designated as heritage it should be expropriated automatically?
Mrs Broadbent: No, I do not. Although I have worked a great deal at the provincial level in my involvement with provincial organizations, I work at the local level and I can only speak with a great deal of authority about large rural municipalities. We have found that owners seek designation, not just because of the grants, but because it enhances their real estate value. I appreciate that if these buildings were not standing in the country but were in larger urban areas, the land they are sitting on might be worth a great deal more than the actual unit. Yes, you are right: then we run into a problem.
I believe a new heritage act will probably have a scale determining whether a building is of extreme importance and therefore expropriation or something might be more appropriate. However, if the buildings are of a lesser importance in scale, than obviously other methods of solving them which do not take away owners' property rights must be found. I believe a rewritten act will embrace this.
Mr Callahan: You will forgive me if I ask first -- your name is quite well known, and I just want to know whether or not you have any relationship to Edward.
Mrs Broadbent: None. I am not related to Edward Broadbent. I do not know whether that is a minus or a plus, is it.
Mr Callahan: It probably would get you -- it is kind of like my name, Callahan. In my former life, every time I called the Attorney General's department, I would say, "It's Mr Callahan." They would immediately put me through to anybody I wanted. They thought I was Frank Callahan.
The next question I would ask you is about an incident which arose where I guess London council had designated a particular historic site in London, on the Talbot Street block. I do not know whether you are familiar with that. The 180-day waiting period was scheduled to run out and a member of the Legislature passed a private member's public bill to require that a building permit be obtained by the developer before they could demolish the building. That is a fairly significant intrusion into the rights of a property owner.
If you had the ability to write amendments to the act, would you envisage that type of power being designated to municipal councils?
Mrs Broadbent: In fact, there are other municipalities that do have that power now. It is locally introduced -- not in the municipality that I live and work in. However, I would like to point out to you that in some cases owners of historic buildings have fought for and obtained demolition permits and then the site has been vacant for a very long time, usually in the middle of an urban area, looking desolate and run-down.
Perhaps thinking of it in the wider light, it might be an appropriate idea to know what that site is proposed for, if the future use is a viable and important use to the economy of an urban centre, and that the demolition is not merely for demolition's sake without a future use envisaged. Forgive me. I am not saying the new act should in fact include this, but I am suggesting that local municipalities may very well have a good point when they would like to know what is going to happen should the building be demolished.
Mr Callahan: I had not thought about your point as to whether a parking lot is more desirable than a heritage building continuing on the site. I suppose what you are saying is that if that provision or power were given, there should be some guidelines in the statute regulating the council's decision to withhold the permit. I would be concerned that without those guidelines, council could use this as a quiet form of expropriation without compensation. In other words, they could extend the 180 days simply by refusing to grant a permit unless there was some form of guideline they had to follow so that a party that wanted to challenge it could in fact challenge it effectively and obtain a building permit if it were appropriate.
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Mrs Broadbent: Yes, I think that would be very fair.
The Chair: Mr McLean, do you have any questions?
Mr McLean: I have a couple. Do you still work for the town of Caledon?
Mrs Broadbent: Yes, I do.
Mr McLean: Super. I have read your résumé and looked at some of the contents in it, and you are really qualified for this appointment. I have tried to get a heritage bill through the Legislature for about the last six years to have the third Monday of February declared a holiday. Private member's bills do not always go too far in the Legislature, but I have certainly made the people aware of our heritage, our past, and --
Mr Callahan: Why do we do them?
Mr McLean: I do not know why we do them, but they are done. I think it makes the people aware of what your feelings are and the great heritage that we do have here. Is there legislation being amended now to change the act?
Mrs Broadbent: Yes, there is.
Mr McLean: Have you had any input into that legislation?
Mrs Broadbent: Yes, I have. For a few years before this present effort I belonged to and still belong to a number of provincial organizations. My input is going through those organizations, and on Friday I will be at a forum about the new legislation.
Mr McLean: Right. That is super. I see all the organizations that you belong to, and it is tremendous. I wish you well. I know you will do a good job.
Ms Carter: You do have a long and impressive history of involvement with this kind of issue. I wonder if you could tell us a little about that and about the different aspects of heritage like archaeology, natural rural heritage, not just old buildings, and also why you think it is important, why it has been important to you and why you see it as a public issue.
Mrs Broadbent: I feel very strongly that it improves our quality of life to appreciate where we have been and where we are going. The interest in natural heritage is not new, but really has come to the forefront in the last four or five years when I have been the chairman of the natural heritage committee of the Ontario Heritage Foundation. That gave me an opportunity to meet a lot of people who have been actively involved in natural heritage conservation through the years. I suspect that 25 years ago we thought they were part of the lunatic fringe, but time has proven them to have understood and known what we all should have understood a lot earlier.
There are some very interesting people in that field. They care and they are dedicated and already, very slowly, the environment in which we live is improving. Canada has a great responsibility because we are such a large country. Things we do here will have wide-reaching effects.
With the cultural heritage, I expect the members have noticed that I have a rather distinctive accent and that my interest in history is attributed to that. That is quite untrue. I have indeed always been interested in history and geography, but it took my arrival in Ontario about 23 years ago to bring that to a head. I discovered very quickly that I was descended from or connected to founding families in Mississauga, in --
Mr Callahan: Any in Brampton?
Mrs Broadbent: Connections? Yes, at the lower end, which is just in the area of the border between Caledon and Brampton, and in Peterborough, in Dummer township, and then their sons moved up to Bruce. I must admit that it really does do something. My own grandfather was born on Queen Street. This interest in history started rather dramatically at that point.
I was very fortunate. Because I have always been prepared to put my back where my mouth is, I quickly became acquainted with people who were doing things in the cultural field, and have followed that through.
Ms Carter: Great.
Mrs Broadbent: With the archaeology, I helped the University of Toronto and York University with their field projects and discovered I had an aptitude for identifying areas which native people probably inhabited, particularly in the Caledon area. Eventually the professionals urged me to get my own licence. I have held an archaeological survey licence since 1981.
Ms Carter: I have been here about as long as you have, but I do not have any connections here.
Mr Callahan: You have lost your accent, though.
Ms Carter: You can tell me afterwards about the Peterborough one, because that is where I live.
Mrs Broadbent: I would love to.
Mr Callahan: You have lost your accent.
Ms Carter: Not altogether. In England the accents are all over the place. You can move 50 miles and they are quite different.
The Chair: Are you finished, Mrs Carter? Mr Hayes.
Mr Hayes: Mrs Broadbent, some of the present legislation dealing with heritage has been criticized for its inadequacies in protecting our province's heritage. You have already indicated that you are familiar with the legislation and some of the proposed legislation, but could you elaborate a little bit as to what you feel the inadequacies are in the legislation and maybe some of the changes that should be made to protect our heritage in Ontario?
Mrs Broadbent: You are speaking of the present heritage legislation?
Mr Hayes: Yes.
Mrs Broadbent: I must confess that in my job, I tend to use the Planning Act and the Environmental Protection Act to protect natural heritage. The Ontario Heritage Act was a very progressive piece of legislation for North America, but in the government of the day's reluctance to infringe on ownership rights, which I have to agree with, they perhaps were a little too soft in the legislation in that they gave all the power to local municipalities.
The act has some problems -- Mr Grandmaître referred to them -- in that it can be expensive. It can be expensive doing repeated newspaper advertisements. Very occasionally one has to do a metes and bounds survey. That too can be expensive, and that makes local councils reluctant to get into it. But local councils are very fortunate. If they appoint local architectural conservation advisory committees, they are almost always volunteers and they do all of the work. So the municipalities benefit from volunteer effort, but there are some expenses.
One of the other things that had been criticized but that in fact was very well thought out was the fact that one has to call for a Conservation Review Board hearing if there is a challenge before the designation or if there is a challenge to de-designate. That was well thought out because one of the requirements is that not only an owner but anyone else can challenge a designation, but it allows for anyone other than the owner to challenge a de-designation. So a member of the public can challenge whether or not it is worthy of designation, and at the other end of the scale, a member of the public can challenge the de-designation by a municipality if he or she feels it is inappropriate.
It takes a long time. I mentioned to one of the other members that there is no category to determine whether one building is perhaps of extreme provincial or national importance and another is of importance locally but may not be as important in the national sense.
One thing I would like to mention is that although there are about 800 municipalities and districts in Ontario and only 200-plus have these advisory committees, those 200 committees actually represent municipalities that have 70% of the population of Ontario. So although the figure seems small on the one hand, they are in the major municipalities.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your appearance today. We appreciate it.
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LLOYD MARSHALL
The Chair: The next witness is Mr Lloyd Marshall, who is an intended appointee as a member of the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission. Have a seat, Mr Marshall, and welcome to the committee. You have been selected for review by the Conservative Party, so I am going to look to Mr McLean to lead off the questioning.
Mr McLean: Mr Marshall, which area do you work in with the ONTC?
Mr Marshall: I am a conductor. Right now I am on freight, and I work freight or passenger services.
Mr McLean: Mainly on the rail freight?
Mr Marshall: Rail, yes.
Mr McLean: I think I remember reading that you are very familiar with the operation of the ONTC. Are you familiar with the bus operation of the ONTC?
Mr Marshall: Yes, I am. I am their labour representative.
Mr McLean: Do you see the expansion of their service as a plus?
Mr Marshall: Definitely.
Mr McLean: Did you agree with the proposal when the ONTC purchased Gray Coach Lines?
Mr Marshall: Yes. As a matter of fact, as the labour representative, I was very involved in that. We made some concessions, as a matter of fact, to make sure we did take Gray Coach over.
Mr McLean: The indication is that there is no direct subsidy from the government for that bus line. Would that be correct?
Mr Marshall: That is what I understand, yes.
Mr McLean: Do you believe the ONTC should be operating in the same bus lines as private enterprise? Do you see anything wrong with that?
Mr Marshall: No, I do not see anything wrong with it.
Mr McLean: You are familiar with the service between Toronto and North Bay and Toronto and Sudbury, so you are well aware of the transition that took place with the ONTC and the other bus company that supplies services on those routes, Penetang-Midland Coach Lines Ltd.
Mr Marshall: That is right.
Mr McLean: The information I have is that at one time the tickets were interchangeable. My understanding is that is not the case now. Would you see that as being a proper way to fulfil the obligations of the bus companies of this province? The tickets have always been interchangeable and apparently now they are not. Is that right?
Mr Marshall: I think you are correct, yes. I think that would have to be something that was worked out between the ONR and PMCL. I do not know why the change, if that is what you are asking.
Mr McLean: Are you familiar with the Highway Transport Board Ontario's policies at all?
Mr Marshall: To a certain extent. I have had part of it reviewed to me.
Mr McLean: The other question I have is with regard to the loss of the commercial operations for the rail freight. Do you see that as a continuing loss or a greater loss than the commercial operations?
Mr Marshall: I guess I am optimistic. I think it is going to diminish. I am hoping we can get rail freight back on in a profitable organization. We have to be profitable; that is what I am trying to say.
Mr McLean: I also see that the bus operation loses about $500,000 a year. Who picks up the losses?
Mr Marshall: At this point, I would not know.
Mr McLean: Who is the chairman of the ONTC now?
Mr Marshall: Mr Sinclair.
Mr McLean: What position does Mr Dyment have?
Mr Marshall: He is president.
Mr McLean: So there is the chairman --
Mr Marshall: The chairman of the ONTC and Mr Dyment is the president of the -- maybe I should do that again. He is chairman of the actual railway, or the operation. I am sorry, he is president. I am nervous here.
Mr McLean: That is all right.
Mr Marshall: He is president of the ONTC itself, but Mr Sinclair is the chairman of the commission. Did I do that wrong again?
Mr McLean: Right. You were involved in the negotiations. Would there be an increase in employees to the bus operation?
Mr Marshall: Yes.
Mr McLean: By how many?
Mr Marshall: I cannot tell you exactly. In the negotiations with the other unions, we protected all the people from Gray Coach who wanted to come to the ONR. There was no problem. They had their protection of seniority and even pension status to satisfy them. They hired approximately 50 bus drivers through the Gray Coach takeover.
Mr McLean: Are you familiar with PMCL?
Mr Marshall: Not really. I know they are in competition with the ONR in parts of southern Ontario. They are going before the highway transport board, I understand, over the Toronto-North Bay run and the Toronto-Sudbury run.
Mr McLean: I noticed in the paper the other day that the ONTC was advertising to take tours to the United States. Is it part of their mandate to take people out of Ontario to shop?
Mr Marshall: I do not think that was the intent of it. Yes, they run bus tours, mainly out of North Bay I think.
Mr McLean: Some time ago there was a move to take away the Twin Otters that were used by Nordair and put in Dash-8s. That announcement was made and that was going to happen. Then all of a sudden it did not happen. Are you familiar with that?
Mr Marshall: I cannot give you the reason. Obviously I am not on the commission as yet, but yes, it happened. I read about it in the papers the same as you did basically.
Mr McLean: How many years have you worked for ONTC?
Mr Marshall: Twenty-seven. I am still working with it as a conductor.
Mr McLean: Where is your run?
Mr Marshall: North Bay to Engelhart. Engelhart is a terminal point for freight.
Mr McLean: How far north does ONTC go?
Mr Marshall: Right to Moosonee. It goes to Engelhart, Cochrane and Moosonee, and it goes the other way, Timmins in the west and Rouyn-Noranda in the east.
Mr McLean: It does not go to Kapuskasing. No line goes through there now.
Mr Marshall: Yes, there is a CNR line. The ONR is in the process of buying the line to Kapuskasing, as a matter of fact. We have been in negotiations for that.
Mr McLean: Will that be a money-maker?
Mr Marshall: We hope so. Yes, I think so. If the Kapuskasing mill had gone down, I guess it might not have been saved, but I think with the Kapuskasing mill there, it is going well.
Mr Frankford: The scope of the crown corporation's operations is to include communications, freight services and tourism. Do you have any thoughts about developing those aspects?
Mr Marshall: I do not know how many people here are aware, but the reason the ONR has a problem with money right now is that we lost two major mines in northern Ontario, Adams and Sherman. Definitely, I think we should work with the customers to give better service and develop the north further, in both passenger services and freight.
Mr Frankford: Passenger services in rail or do you see other ways?
Mr Marshall: Rail and bus, both.
Mr Frankford: Have you had any thoughts about any innovative approaches that might make money?
Mr Marshall: It is very hard. The one I think the ONR put some faith in, but I do not know what is going to happen to it, would be Toronto's waste going to Kirkland Lake. That would have been a money-maker for the Ontario north, there is no doubt about that. But whether that is going to happen or not -- we know that is all under review.
Mr Frankford: I see it has one hunting camp which did actually make a profit.
Mr Marshall: Is that right?
Mr Frankford: You have no thoughts about developing that sort of thing further?
Mr Marshall: Tourism. They could definitely go further with that, yes.
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The Chair: Any member of the government caucus? Mrs Carter, do you have a question?
Ms Carter: You partially touched on the question I was going to raise, which is the loss to the northern railways, or what they planned, first of all with Dofasco going under, and then losing the garbage contract you had thought might come up. I understand that this feud is causing possible financial difficulties. Do you have any further comments on that?
Mr Marshall: On the waste proposal?
Ms Carter: As to what can be done in view of this situation.
Mr Marshall: It is not just that the northern economy is bad. Because of the vast regions, I think we have to develop more industries in the north. I just mentioned the waste disposal because it was one of them.
Ms Carter: Would you have thought that bringing waste north was a good idea?
Mr Marshall: I have mixed emotions on it for the obvious reason of waste going north. But if it is done because of the jobs involved and what it would mean to the region of Kirkland Lake, if it is done environmentally safe, I would not have a problem with it, no.
Ms Carter: So do you think there are any ideas in the pipeline that might take up the slack on this?
Mr Marshall: Not imminent. I think it going to be a long hard haul to get it back.
Mr Marshall: One of the reasons I feel it is important to have a labour representative on the board is because, when concessions come, if there have to be concessions, or whatever we have to do on the railway to make money, if we have a labour representative there, instead of mistrusting management he will be in the process of saying, "Okay, we have to do this," and then going back and explaining to the employees and to the members of the other unions exactly what took place, why it took place and why we are going to have to do this.
Mr Grandmaître: One or two short questions. Mr Marshall, do you think there is a conflict of interest between your being an employee of ONR for the last 27 years and your new added responsibility? Do you think there would be or do you have a perception of a conflict of interest?
Mr Marshall: No. I think the only time there could be a conflict of interest might be if we were dealing with monetary matters, supposing we negotiate a contract. I assume money matters from the ONR have to be approved by the commission. I think I am right on that. But I do not think it would be a problem; you can always declare a conflict of interest. I do not see that as a problem really.
Mr Grandmaître: You say all you would have to do is declare a conflict of interest?
Mr Marshall: Yes. In other words, I would not get to vote.
Mr Grandmaître: I am talking about perception.
Mr Marshall: Oh, the perception. No, I would not think so. What I found is there are companies like Tembec in Témiskaming, Quebec, and now Abitibi in Kapuskasing, where management and unions have worked and are working together. I think that would be the beauty of having a labour representative on the commission because they could work together.
The Chair: I just wanted to follow up on that in terms of perception. We dealt with the community advisory board for psychiatric hospitals yesterday. It is only an advisory board, but union employees of a hospital are only permitted to serve as observers. They do not have voting ability in respect of the deliberations of the advisory board. I know, for example, that schoolteachers cannot serve on the school boards they work for. There are a host of other areas across the province where similar situations do cause concerns. I think Mr Grandmaître's point is well taken, but obviously it is something you have given some thought to.
Mr McLean: You indicated that ONR is having some funding problems. Did I hear you right? They were very tight on their budget.
Mr Marshall: That is correct.
Mr McLean: Why then would you spend $7 million to buy Gray Coach when you are having funding problems?
Mr Marshall: I assume they are hoping they can turn Gray Coach around. I was not in on the decision obviously.
Mr McLean: Would that be a decision made by the ONTC or would that be a government decision?
Mr Marshall: I think it would go up the chain. Probably the president would start with it and it would go to ONTC, the commission, and then it would go to the government. I am not exactly sure of the steps.
Mr McLean: It would be northern development more likely than anybody?
Mr Marshall: That is what I would assume, yes.
Mr McLean: Right. The truck operation's loss is $1 million a year. Do you see that turning around?
Mr Marshall: I am not real familiar with the truck operations.
Mr McLean: You are in competition with them, are you not?
Mr Marshall: Not necessarily, not recently, not ONR. I think we work freight. They went to the sheds and we hauled some free and they hauled some out. There is some long-haul, but a lot of it is short-haul too.
Mr McLean: Is most of trucking division owned by ONTC or do you lease vehicles from other companies?
Mr Marshall: I cannot answer that question because I do not know.
Mr McLean: Have you been to the Hannah Bay Goose Hunting Camp?
Mr Marshall: No, I never have.
Mr McLean: It is making a profit. It sounds like it would be a good spot to go to.
Mr Marshall: Maybe tourism is the place to be in Ontario then. Maybe that is where the money is. I do not know.
Mr McLean: Perhaps at one time.
The Chair: Nothing else? Mr Marshall, thank you for coming down today. We appreciate your appearance before the committee and we wish you well.
We ended up starting off behind schedule and we have finished ahead of schedule, so not a bad performance at all. There is nothing on this morning. We are back again at 2 pm to spend a couple of hours on an appointment review and then we will be dealing with a consideration of some possible recommendations for a draft report. We are adjourned until 2 o'clock.
The committee recessed at 1127.
AFTERNOON SITTING
The committee resumed at 1403.
D. PATRICIA NEILSON
The Chair: Could we come to order, please. The first matter of business on the agenda for this afternoon is the review of Dorothy Neilson, who is an intended appointee as chair of the Northern Ontario Development Corp. Ms Neilson, would you like to come forward, please, and take a seat. Welcome to the committee. You have been selected for review by the Conservative Party. It is a half-hour review and we have 10 minutes allocated to each party for our questions and responses. I will begin with Mr McLean.
Mr McLean: I wanted to give you the opportunity to come to Toronto and visit and get away from the north and appreciate the north when you get back there all the more.
The appointment as chair: Are you presently on the board?
Mrs Neilson: Yes, I am.
Mr McLean: How many years have you been on the ODC?
Mrs Neilson: I have served on NODC since 1987.
Mr McLean: That is the Northern Ontario Development Corp.
Mrs Neilson: That is right.
Mr McLean: Is that the corporation for all of the north?
Mrs Neilson: That is the corporation serving the northern region.
Mr McLean: You are on the Rainy River Business Development Corp?
Mrs Neilson: That is right.
Mr McLean: Is that a separate one?
Mrs Neilson: The Rainy River Business Development Corp is a community organization that encourages business development in that particular area, but it is separately funded and it is owned and managed by the community.
Mr McLean: Okay, so is there an ODC office? Where is the head office for the ODC?
Mrs Neilson: The head office of the Ontario Development Corp is here in Toronto. The Northern Ontario Development Corp for that region is headquartered in Sudbury and our area would be serviced from a field office that is in Thunder Bay.
Mr McLean: How many members are on that board?
Mrs Neilson: There are I guess 14 who can be appointed at this point in time, and I believe there are a number of vacancies right now. I am not that familiar right now with where the --
Mr McLean: And do they meet monthly? How often do they meet?
Mrs Neilson: In the past, over the years I have served as a board member, we have met on a monthly basis and as required. We deal with loans and people's finances. We find that the business on a monthly basis seems to take care of it. If something comes up in the meantime, we can do other things to attend to that business.
Mr McLean: I want to get this straight. The NODC is the Northern Ontario Development Corp, and this appointment is to the ODC? It is to the ONDC.
Mrs Neilson: I understood that this review was for the position of chair for the Northern Ontario Development Corp.
Mr McLean: Right.
Mrs Neilson: And I know in the past that has been combined with a cross-appointment to the Ontario Development Corp. That may be where some of the confusion arises.
Mr McLean: There are 14 on the board and one vice-chair and a chair?
Mrs Neilson: That is correct.
Mr McLean: Do you know what the budget for the board is?
Mrs Neilson: I am afraid not, no.
Mr McLean: Is that administered back through to the ODC and head office in Toronto, to your knowledge?
Mrs Neilson: The Ontario Development Corp has a budget, and then it has allocated budgets for the three different areas, the north, the east and the central part. Then our director is the one who is in charge of administering the budget for that particular area.
Mr McLean: Who is your director?
Mrs Neilson: John Symington.
Mr McLean: Did you ask for this appointment? You are already on the board.
Mrs Neilson: That is right.
Mr McLean: Is the chair who is there now retiring, or what is happening?
Mrs Neilson: That is right. He has moved on. I am not that familiar with what is behind -- I was asked if I would be interested in sitting as the chairperson.
Mr McLean: Who asked you?
Mrs Neilson: I received a call from the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology, a person from that department.
Mr McLean: You do not know who it was? Do you have their name?
Mrs Neilson: There were a number of phone calls. I believe the phone call came from Diane Gumbs.
Mr McLean: I have no further questions at this time, Mr Chairman.
Ms Carter: It seems to be generally agreed that the development corporations do help business in their areas, they do perform a useful function, but on the other hand, this does cost the taxpayers money. Obviously there is the cost of running the corporation and the rates of interest are below the market rate and therefore the taxpayer is subsidizing that. What opinions do you have on the tradeoff between the costs and benefits to the community?
Mrs Neilson: That is a very good question and I think it is one that every development agency has to look at and look at very hard. It is money the taxpayer spends, so we always have to be evaluating our effectiveness. I look at economic development and business development truly as an investment in our business community. I believe it is a good investment. I think it is a difficult position to defend because the spinoffs of economic development are not always that tangible and it is very difficult.
Ms Carter: I was going to ask if there is any way you can really assess just how much difference it is making.
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Mrs Neilson: I believe you can by looking not only at the jobs it creates -- because I think job creation can be a misleading way of evaluating it -- but in these times of the economy we are looking at something I call wealth creation, the creation of new dollars in that community. When we evaluate each case, I think that has to be brought up, and that is as a board one of the things that is discussed when we review a case: What are the true benefits of this project?
Ms Carter: So you could, looking back, enumerate various enterprises that are under way because of the help they got that would not have been otherwise and you really feel that has made a big difference?
Mrs Neilson: Definitely. The type of financial assistance the Northern Ontario Development Corp provides is that of a partner in that business. The banker is strictly your financer, but I believe NODC, through the way it can administer its programs and listen to what the needs of the client are --
Ms Carter: They are getting managerial help as opposed to just a loan?
Mrs Neilson: Managerial help, or maybe the flexibility. We offer them the flexibility so they can apply some management knowhow to certain situations. It is a very supportive role that we play, and very definitely we give a business some room to advance.
Mr Hayes: Ms Neilson, I guess some of the complaints people and MPPs and members of this committee have had from people in their own constituencies are about the red tape and filling out applications. Do you have any ideas how we can make it easier or make it more feasible for people to apply for loans or guarantees, whatever the case may be? Do you have some suggestions on that, or would you be willing to present these suggestions to the NODC?
Mrs Neilson: That is an issue that comes up over and over again as board members. Most of our board members are actively in business and red tape is always a concern to them, so it is probably one of those issues that comes up quite frequently at a board meeting.
I guess it comes back to my own philosophy, and I present this at board meetings over and over again: To go into business you need a business plan, you need a strategy for being successful. Especially in these times, considering the global market and the fast pace things are happening, if you do not have a business strategy, there is a good chance you are not going to be successful.
But we have to overcome -- it is perception of red tape rather than actual red tape, and what are we really looking for? It is communication between the consultant and the business owner so he definitely provides the corporation with what his business strategies are, what his markets are, how he is going to access them and what skills he has in order to make this business idea a successful one. Sometimes that is perceived as red tape because maybe someone has not really sat down and said, "This is what we're looking for." It is not just red tape. This is the information we need to definitely get through so we can make an informed decision about your proposal.
Mr Hayes: So you do not feel we have to improve on that?
Mrs Neilson: As the chairman of NODC, probably the biggest thing I think we have to concentrate on next is communication. I think there is all sorts of room for improvement in communicating our message to the business community so we are definitely perceived as being helpful and useful. Red tape is more of a perception and we need to get the message out of what exactly it is that we need in order to evaluate these.
Mr Hayes: I do not know about in your field, but I do know in other ministries the red tape is there and it is not just a perception.
Mrs Neilson: No, we always have to be trying to eliminate red tape. I think that is definitely one of the jobs the boards have to keep in mind, that administrators like administering. I think that is probably the true value of a board, to bring it back into the perspective of the small business owner and say, "Are we helping or are we hindering, and what do we really need to evaluate this?"
Mr Hayes: Good. One more: I guess the corporation has actually written off higher rates of loans than the commercial banks? Could you tell us what that percentage would be?
Mrs Neilson: I believe it is in the range of about 5%.
Mr Hayes: And the banks are what, about 3% or 2%?
Mrs Neilson: Well, no. I would say a bank is probably a little -- I am not an authority on this --
Mr Hayes: That is okay.
Mrs Neilson: I think it is in the 1% range, in that neighbourhood, and there are a number of different agencies between us and the banks that have varying degrees of write-offs. In my mind write-offs relate to risk and reflect the risk you are taking, and we are a development corporation.
Mr Grandmaître: Are you still holding the position of executive director of the Rainy River Business Development Corp?
Mrs Neilson: I work there four days a week.
Mr Grandmaître: Four days a week?
Mrs Neilson: That is right.
Mr Grandmaître: You will retain that position?
Mrs Neilson: That is correct.
Mr Grandmaître: Can you briefly describe your responsibilities with the Rainy River Business Development Corp?
Mrs Neilson: I am responsible to a board of directors for the business of encouraging small business people in our area to expand and start new businesses. I talk directly with clients. I make recommendations to a board of directors on small investments. Our office is used quite extensively for supporting a small business owner in some of his management strategies that he is trying to apply.
Mr Grandmaître: How supportive can you be? Let us say I am a businessman and I was to walk into your Rainy River office. How can you support me? Not knowing what business I would want to start, that I simply want to start a business in your area, how supportive can you be? I have $150,000 or $200,000 and I am asking you: "What kind of business should I get involved with in your area? What is the most needed?" How can you be supportive of this?
Mrs Neilson: The way we are supportive at the Rainy River Business Development Corp is that you come in and you would explain to me what it is you are trying to achieve and I would try and help you, getting back to the business plan, fill out the strategy so that you can access the markets you want to access and the human resources you need in order to put that plan together, as well as the financing. So you tell me what you want to do and I try and, not do it for you, but give you direction as to where you are going to access that type of information in order to put that deal together. We usually leave the financing to the last.
Most people come in to me and ask where they can get the money to do whatever. First, we take a look at where they are with their business planning process and whether they do actually have a business plan. We make sure they put a business plan together that makes sense from their point of view; after all, they are the ones who will be taking the largest risk. Then we help them shop for financing, and there are quite a few different places to look, depending on the situation, the type of business they are proposing.
Mr Grandmaître: Would you say, not with the Rainy River Business Development Corp but with the Northern Ontario Development Corp, that for people applying for your financial support, this would be their last resort?
Mrs Neilson: No, I do not believe it is their last resort with the Northern Ontario Development Corp.
Mr Grandmaître: It is not?
Mrs Neilson: No, it is not a lender of last resort.
Mr Grandmaître: Why would they go to you instead of going directly to the bank?
Mrs Neilson: We are a development agency, so we are looking at situations where the risk, for some reason or another, is possibly not acceptable to the banks.
Mr Grandmaître: Not acceptable to the banks?
Mrs Neilson: Not acceptable, that is right.
Mr Grandmaître: Why would your rate of interest be lower than that of the banks?
Mrs Neilson: Well, that is actually a good question. Interest rates generally tend to reflect the risk level that an individual is taking. It has been a long-standing policy of the development corporations to offer businesses that have a higher risk rating access to competitive interest rates.
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Mr Grandmaître: Competitive. Have you ever had any dealings with the Northern Ontario Development Corp as the executive director of the Rainy River Business Development Corp?
Mrs Neilson: Very definitely. They are a source of information and financing for many clients.
Mr Grandmaître: Information and financing?
Mrs Neilson: Yes.
Mr Grandmaître: You will retain that job as executive director?
Mrs Neilson: That is correct.
Mr Grandmaître: Do you not think there is a conflict of interest?
Mrs Neilson: No, I do not believe there is a conflict of interest.
Mr Grandmaître: How can you be the employer and the employee?
Mrs Neilson: I do not see where I am either at that point in time.
Mr Grandmaître: Well, you are an employee of the Rainy River Business Development Corp and you will be dealing with another level of government, if I can call it that. Do you not think that with your influence as chair of NODC and also executive director of the Rainy River Business Development Corp you would have an advantage?
Mrs Neilson: Because I do not receive any financial gain from the Northern Ontario Development Corp, the profile of the Northern Ontario Development Corp could very possibly be raised in our community -- just the profile of the Northern Ontario Development Corp -- because I am chairman. There are no benefits. Some of my clients may wish to access NODC financing and I would encourage them to do so because I believe the NODC is a good financial partner for them, and it would be the board's decision, not mine, whether or not that case fits within our mandate.
Mr Grandmaître: So you see no conflict of interest, or perceived conflict of interest.
Mrs Neilson: At this point in time, no. I have on occasion a case at our corporation, the Rainy River Business Development Corp, where if it comes to the board I declare conflict of interest and leave the room and do not participate in any part of the discussion to eliminate any perception of conflict of interest.
Mr Grandmaître: Do you not think it is very dangerous when you are placing yourself in that kind of perceived conflict of interest?
Mrs Neilson: No, I do not. I believe that being aware of it and sensitive to it is probably my best protection.
Mr Callahan: You were previously with the DC, were you not?
Mrs Neilson: I spent two years on the ODC board, yes, serving as a cross-appointment from NODC.
Mr Callahan: I may be wrong, but I understood your term on ODC was ended after only six months.
Mrs Neilson: No, I served two years on the ODC board.
Mr Callahan: I see. How did you come to leave ODC?
Mrs Neilson: My appointment was not -- I was appointed for a one-year span. It was up.
Mr Callahan: So you are saying you served your full term?
Mrs Neilson: That is correct, yes, two years.
Mr Callahan: All right. Have you been briefed by ODC before coming here today?
Mrs Neilson: I spent some time over at the Ontario Development Corp, that is correct.
Mr Callahan: Briefing you on what you would be asked?
Mrs Neilson: More or less. I have not been to a Northern Ontario Development Corp board meeting since December 6 and I wanted just to know if there had been any issues raised since then, because my term, actually, as a Northern Ontario Development Corp board member expired at the end of December. So I wanted to make sure that I was current if there were any new developments.
Mr Callahan: Had you had any experience in the chair of the ODC when you were there?
Mrs Neilson: No, I had not chaired.
Mr Callahan: You did not chair. Did you serve as vice-chair?
Mrs Neilson: No.
Mr Callahan: So this would be your first opportunity to chair a committee?
Mrs Neilson: That is correct.
Mr Callahan: What is the budget of Ontario Development Corp in comparison to the Northern Ontario Development Corp?
Mrs Neilson: It is considerably larger.
Mr Callahan: Which one is, ODC?
Mrs Neilson: ODC. I just looked at the annual report before I came and I know that NODC handles somewhere in excess of about $40 million.
Mr Callahan: What about the budget of the group you are with now, the Rainy River Business Development Corp? How does that budget compare?
Mrs Neilson: We are very small, with a very small budget, and deal with quite a few clients that NODC would not see, because we are geared to a very small business and very much a start-up situation. Our administration budget is $100,000 at the corporation I work for. We can lend up to $75,000 to one client.
Mr Callahan: Finally, you told me that you have not chaired or vice-chaired any committees at all on ODC?
Mrs Neilson: That is correct, yes.
Mr Callahan: That is over the two-year period you say you were with them. All right. Thank you.
The Chair: Mr McLean, you had some time left.
Mr McLean: I had other questions. Just following up on that, why did the vice-chair not move up to chair?
Mrs Neilson: These are questions that are outside my knowledge, to be perfectly honest. I do not know the answer to those questions.
Mr McLean: You sat on the board with them?
Mrs Neilson: That is correct.
Mr McLean: Was it not normal procedure in the past that the vice-chair would move up to chair?
Mrs Neilson: I have no idea if that is the situation or not.
Mr McLean: Are you on salary as executive director at Rainy River?
Mrs Neilson: Yes, I am.
Mr McLean: As chair, you will be receiving a per diem and expenses?
Mrs Neilson: That is correct.
Mr McLean: You probably feel that you could represent the people of Sudbury and those areas equally, the same as you would represent the people in Rainy River, being paid by the Rainy River Development Corp?
Mrs Neilson: The same as any business --
Mr McLean: If I was a person in Sudbury looking to you for leadership to help develop and create some activity in my community and you are a paid employee of the Rainy River Development Corp and also chair of the other corporation, would I not feel that you would be wanting to help your own board that is paying you more than you want to help me?
Mrs Neilson: This question has come up over and over again so maybe the best way for me to address it is this: What you are saying is that if there is a conflict of interest it is because one has a vested interest in one's community. Myself, as the executive director of the Rainy River Business Development Corp, yes, I have a vested interest. I would also have a vested interest if I was simply a businessman or businesswoman operating in that community. I want to see my community flourish; I want to see, as well, the north flourish.
That is not going to change whether I am executive director, or in my particular case I also have a partnership with my husband in a business up there. I have a vested interest in the community, and every board member, no matter what board member you choose as chairman, is going to have a vested interest in his or her own community. I think probably the advantage of the Rainy River Business Development Corp's connection is that I can take what I have learned from my experience there and apply it to other communities, because I have the advantage of seeing what is happening in the other communities as well.
Mr McLean: I think there is a difference because you are being paid by all of the business people and if I am a businessman myself, nobody is paying me except what I sell through or during my business.
I want to move on to the Farm Credit Corp, at which you are credit adviser. What amount of loans would be out in the area that you represent? Is it large? Would it be 50 or 200? I am curious.
Mrs Neilson: I am sorry, you will have to clarify. We are with the Farm Credit Corp now?
Mr McLean: Yes, the loans that they have outstanding.
Mrs Neilson: I have no connection with the Farm Credit Corp in my particular area at this point in time.
Mr McLean: But you were credit adviser back until 1984?
Mrs Neilson: That is correct.
Mr McLean: Okay. You have nothing more to do with that now?
Mrs Neilson: That is right.
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Mr McLean: Okay. I am sorry; I did not read that. You are in the beef business.
Mrs Neilson: That is correct.
Mr McLean: How many cattle on the farm?
Mrs Neilson: Right now we have 100 head of feeders. You are looking at an outdated resume.
Mr McLean: That is since 1984?
Mrs Neilson: That is correct, yes, so that is no longer the situation. My husband and I are partners in our own business. We have a logging and a farm enterprise and we are working at developing one more enterprise in which I would be [inaudible] under the circumstances.
Mr McLean: Is the farm a paying proposition?
Mrs Neilson: The two enterprises combined, yes.
Mr McLean: You had indicated earlier on that you wanted to cut out the red tape in government and I was wondering if you had ever filled in any of the forms for NISA, the net income stabilization account, or for GRIP, the gross revenue insurance plan.
Mrs Neilson: It is on my shelf.
Mr McLean: Okay. Those are all the questions I have, and I wish you all success.
Mrs Neilson: Thank you.
Mr Hayes: Are you familiar with the farm entrants assistance program and the forms they had to fill out for that?
Mrs Neilson: Yes I am.
Mr Hayes: Do you find a big improvement there?
Mrs Neilson: Yes.
Mr Hayes: Do you think we are going in the right direction?
The Chair: Mrs Neilson, thank you very much for coming down here today. We appreciate it and wish you well.
Mrs Neilson: Thank you very much.
WALTER PITMAN
The Chair: Our next witness is Mr Walter Pitman, who is not a stranger to this building. Welcome, Mr Pitman. Mr Pitman is an intended appointee as the chair of the Task Force on Advanced Training. Mr Pitman, you were selected for review today by the government party. It is a half-hour review, 10 minutes of questioning from each party. We shall begin with Ms Carter.
Ms Carter: Hello, Walter. I certainly do not need to ask you about your past, because I have known you since 1968 and I have seen quite a lot of it unroll before my eyes, as it were. I know first hand how disinterested you are, how you always have new ideas, how you work hard and how you have a genius for getting on with people. I do not think I have ever known you to quarrel with anybody, and that is something, considering the chances you have had.
Mr Pitman: In the world of politics.
Ms Carter: What I would like to ask you is, what do you see as the mandate of this task force and how do you see it advancing the economic renewal we are hoping to achieve in this province and the cooperation between colleges and universities?
Mr Pitman: Thank you. That is a big question. This task force, I hope, will have a very important role to play in the next number of years, and I think you have identified the major areas in which we hope to make some progress. Every country in the industrial world is facing the question of whether in fact it has a trained force. I have been both in Spain and the United Kingdom just in the last few months and those countries are facing the same kinds of questions.
We have certainly a different world, a world of high technology, a world in which jobs are changing very quickly, in which individuals will have perhaps to retrain seven or eight times in a lifetime. We question whether we have a capacity in our educational system as it now exists to provide that kind of training in order to keep Ontario able to compete in this kind of world.
One thing Ontario has that is different is that it does not have a tripartite post-secondary system. Most countries in the world have systems of community colleges, universities and they also have what we have called polytechnics or institutions which provide young people with job-ready skills at a very high level, a rigorous level. At the same time, they provide a very broad perspective of, you might say, liberal arts or contextual learning. We do not have those kinds of institutions in this country because we have been so lucky for a great many years in being able to import our skilled people.
I know you know Canadian General Electric very well. I always thought it very interesting when I lived in Peterborough in your constituency to go down there and find that virtually all the people I was talking to had just virtually got off the boat. The implication is that for all these years we were able to import our highly advanced, skilled, trained people. For the last number of years we have not been able to do that and, ironically, we have not been able to produce the kinds of institutions that can fill that gap.
I find it interesting, for example, even south of the border in the United States, if you look at the spectrum of institutions that fill that gap, they run all the way from Rochester polytechnic right up to the California Institute of Technology. Cal Tech is the highest-level post-secondary institution in the United States. They have more Nobel prize winners on the faculty of that institution than we have in the history of Canada. In fact, the young people who graduate from high schools in the United States with the highest SAT scores do not go to Harvard or Princeton; they go to Cal Tech. That indicates the attitude towards the whole area of technology, that the highest-level institution in the country is called a technology institution. We do not have anything like this.
In fact, Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, which I was very happy to be involved with for a number of years, has found itself having to become more and more like a university in order to survive in the Ontario context, where young people have to have the credentials of the university as opposed to the credentials of a polytechnic.
At the same time, the college system has made a magnificent contribution to our economy, but they were produced 25 years ago in a very different kind of economy; certainly not that kind of global economy you just described. They were produced really to provide two-year programs in spite of the fact that if you read the legislation Mr Davis introduced 25 years ago, he talks about the fact that colleges would have two-, three-, four-, five-, six-year programs. They have never been able to develop to that degree. Obviously, at the same time as they were created, the financial strictures that developed in the post-secondary system came along and those colleges were not able -- as well as having to take on an enormous range of activity -- to lift up to that kind of level.
I do think we have a very real vacuum in our educational system. What I hear from the minister and from the ministry is a desire to see what we can do in relation to the universities and colleges we do have. How can we find a way by which they can cooperate and produce advanced training? I would like to add to that: To what extent can the private sector become involved in that process? Because in many cases they know what they need and they have the equipment, in many cases, that is needed to carry on the proper kind of training.
What we are really trying to find out is how we can create a different mesh that will allow us to produce the kinds of young people who can, not just compete in the new global economy, because I think that is an important thing, but rather that Canada can be in the forefront of a number of areas in making a contribution to, for example, the environmental wellbeing of the planet. It will not help the world for Canada to become a third-world country, to put it at its most rhetorical. It is important that we be able to stand up among all other countries who are making that kind of economic contribution. I do not know whether I have covered all your questions, but that is where I see this committee working.
Ms Carter: I do not have to ask you now, Walter, what you are going to do when you retire.
Mr Pitman: Yes, that is right. That is a very interesting point.
Mr Hayes: It is nice to see you, Mr Pitman.
Mr Pitman: Same here.
Mr Hayes: Actually, we just called you here so you can educate us a little more, that is all.
Mr Pitman: I do not believe that.
Mr Hayes: Anyhow, I was actually very pleased to hear your feelings in regard to importing high-tech people and skilled tradespeople because this has been an argument for umpteen years.
Mr Pitman: That is right.
Mr Hayes: I know in 1974 I represented the county of Essex at a meeting with -- Mr Davis was there. It was in Kitchener, and we had this problem that whenever a new industry was going to come in there was always a shortage of skilled tradespeople, and there is no question this has happened. The other thing I have noticed over the years -- of course, I worked in the auto industry -- is that what was happening with a lot of people, skilled tradesmen or tradespersons, if they did not come from another country, was that some of the small businesses, the small tool and die, the family-run operations would take on apprentices and train these people and then some of the larger corporations, because they could afford to pay more, were actually robbing from them and that really created a problem. Do you think that particular problem would be addressed by the task force? I think that is very important.
Mr Pitman: The more people with advanced training we can create, the less that becomes a problem. You are quite right. That has been one of the major arguments on the part of the private sector: "Why should be get involved in the partnership programs? Why should we get involved in training people in our company, because as soon as we get these people trained they will be stolen by somebody else."
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Mr Hayes: Right.
Mr Pitman: We have to develop a society in which there are many more opportunities for people to receive that kind of training so that, in a sense, stealing other people's employees does not become a kind of a habit and, in fact, eventually we develop a commitment on the part of all industry to train its own people in its own workplace, as the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board is certainly going to be involved in doing over the next number of years.
Mr Hayes: That is right. Thank you very much.
The Chair: We have a little bit of extra time. Any other questions now? Mr Callahan?
Mr Callahan: Welcome, Mr Pitman. This position you are being appointed to is a very important one, probably one of the most important ones in this province. The reason I say that is that I think the observation that if a person goes to a community college it is a dead end has put us in the dark ages.
I remember one day coming down here and seeing a couple of people who were out on strike -- community college teachers -- and I happened to know a couple of them because they were constituents of mine. They were complaining that many of their jobs were becoming obsolete because the class sizes were not large enough. It occurred to me that on the other side of the coin in the universities, certainly when I was there 30 years ago, at some of the lectures there were 200 and 300 people in the classroom, and I am sure it is worse now.
I recommended at that time, and I also recommended it to the present Minister of Colleges and Universities, that there should be cross-pollination where you would be able to take a year of university and then a year of community college and sort of put them together and perhaps take a full complement of both courses or as much as you wanted to, thereby reducing the size of the university classrooms and increasing the size of the community college classrooms and use the facilities to their optimum.
I do not see that in Vision 2000. Would you agree that might be a way of --
Mr Pitman: I think that is happening. What is taking place right now is exactly in that format. Somebody has been listening to you, because I think if you read the Globe and Mail this morning you will find there is a very considerable article there on this whole question of how the universities and the colleges are now prepared to develop a much more cooperative stance. The idea is, in fact, to make it easier for college students to move into university and back and forth and to bring those two sectors together.
The great problem has been -- in the beginning it certainly was -- that they did not want the colleges to be simply sort of pseudo-universities or second-class universities. They wanted those colleges to have their own reality and their own integrity. Therefore, there was this gap between the colleges and the universities, unlike the Americans, for example, where the junior college very often is used as an entrée to the university. In fact even in British Columbia they are developing that kind of format.
We in Ontario have kept them apart. I think there is now a realization that we have to get them closer together and that the young people of this province have a right to be able to move more easily between universities and colleges, and colleges and universities.
Mr Callahan: Having said that, the second thing was that there seems to be within our system strident rules that perhaps make sense in some areas but not in others. For instance, children with learning disabilities who attend university, if they miss their year -- I am not sure this is the case in all universities, but some of them -- they are required to remain out of that university for a period of two years. That, to me, is absolutely ludicrous, nonsense. That is a great rule for people who want to bum around and get themselves tossed out, but these kids should be welcomed with open arms back into the university the following year and given every opportunity to achieve.
That is another point I have given to the present Minister of Colleges and Universities, and I hope you in your capacity here would emphasize that this should be the watchword of the day, that these kids should be given full go-ahead.
Mr Pitman: I really have never heard of that before. That is a problem I have never come across.
Mr Callahan: I happen to think that if we do not deal with them now and we do not give them free access to the universities, they will wind up in the correctional system or other areas and we will pay for it down the line.
Finally, I have always had a concern that when kids get out of university and they go for their first job, their CV usually has on it: "What did I do? I cut grass. I worked at a gas station," or whatever. They have absolutely no credentials to get into a job. They usually have to take a job that is perhaps not one they desire just to get a year or two under their belts or some training inside an office, or whatever. That is why I think -- and you seem to share that thought and I hope the minister does -- that by giving them a bit of university with a bit of community college and practical stuff and maybe laced with a bit of co-op as well, it may very well give them the opportunity to decide what they want to do, let an employer see them so they can meld together and then get out and get a meaningful job when they finish.
I will give you a success story in my riding. Two young fellows got their MA from university, then went on to a community college and took computer technology. They now have a very successful business in Brampton, even in this depression time. Their success has come from what they got from the community college. I am sure the MA gave them the expanded vision to do it. But I really believe that is where we should be using that combination of universities and community colleges.
Mr Pitman: Very briefly, I could not agree more that we have to make our whole educational system much more flexible. We must make it possible for young people to be able to move between those kinds of institutions. I like the suggestion you have that cooperative education should be a part of this mix as well, that they should be out in the private sector. The private sector has to become committed and involved in the educational reality of, in a sense, training their own workers, as well as expecting public institutions to do it. I think there is every chance that flexibility is developing.
Mr Callahan: They used to do that, and when the community colleges came into play they got out of it. The other feature of that whole thing of one year of university, maybe one year of community college, and maybe some co-op, is that you thin out the ranks in all of these institutions. You have put some of them into the workforce during the year when others can be back in either the college or the university. If it was done appropriately, you would probably have class sizes that would be far less burdened. You would probably be able to let more kids into the universities, perhaps the borderline ones who cannot quite make the tag. I certainly wish you well in your role in this. You have impressive credentials. I am not sure that I particularly buy the top part, but then we all have our own political commitments.
Mr McLean: Some years ago the community college system was established in this province. At that time, a lot of us felt that this was a program and a college system that was going to train and retrain people in the workforce in skills development and that type of thing. Do you think it has failed us?
Mr Pitman: Oh, my goodness, no. Not for a minute. I think that when the colleges were set up they were given what was an appropriate mandate at that time. But history is moving so quickly now that no institution is able to cope for very many years with the environment in which it finds itself. So that now what you have is a need for higher-level training, advanced training, which the colleges have never been given the resources to accommodate.
The colleges of Ontario have had enormous success, I think. It is just an incredible success. They have enriched the communities individually and the community of Ontario collectively. They have given new chances and starts for young people who otherwise would never have gone to any kind of post-secondary institution. At the time when they were started, about only 10% to 15% of the young people in this province had any kind of post-secondary experience. Now it is nearly 50% who have at least some kind of post-secondary experience, so they have been an enormous success. But, as I say, with the world, especially the economic world, moving so quickly, we are now into a global economy which even five years ago was not fully conceived but certainly 10 years ago was scarcely noted even by the foremost economists of our time.
Mr McLean: Do you think we need a committee, a group of people now to develop advice for advanced training?
Mr Pitman: I think there are some things we do not know. We are not quite clear as to where the lines should be drawn between the colleges and the universities and what specific skills the private sector really needs. This task force was working with two or three other task forces. I think there are about four other task forces trying to restructure the whole post-secondary system of this province. It is really a very exciting moment in time in this province. We do need to take a look at advanced training. A group of people will be gathered together who will be able to give very good advice to the minister.
Mr McLean: The problem I have had with the system over the years is that there appears to be people, aged 45 to 55 approximately, who have been laid off and do not know what to do. I thought the colleges were there to put those people back into college to earn a skill, to try to get them back into the workforce again somewhere. I think that is failing us, though.
Mr Pitman: Well, they have done that.
Mr McLean: A limited amount.
Mr Pitman: There have been thousands, tens of thousands of Ontarians who have been recycled, you might say, through the college system. It is done very quietly. It is not done with great fanfare. Perhaps that is one of the differences at the provincial level and at the federal level. If I had $1,000 for every retraining program and unemployment program that has been launched by the federal government in the last 25 years I would be able to retire without even a pension. There has been a myriad. Some of it has been smoke and mirrors, quite frankly.
But right down at the individual community level, right down in Windsor or in Peterborough or in London and so on, the community college there has been working with employers. I would say that part of the problem with the community colleges has been that they have been too successful, in the sense that they have been doing what you are suggesting. At the same time, they have not had the chance to develop these three- and four- and five- and six-year courses that Mr Davis talked about, that would provide the kind of advanced training being provided in some institutions in other countries.
Mr McLean: Do you think there could be a problem due to the fact that the colleges are provincially owned and a lot of the programs are federally funded and there is a problem there to get them to work together?
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Mr Pitman: It has always been a problem. It has been a problem from the very beginning in the sense that the federal government tends to turn the tap on and off. Of course, when you have an institution that has to have some kind of regular flow of resources it creates havoc. I would say that the college presidents have be the most entrepreneurial individuals in our communities to be able to do the kind of shifting and movement that is necessary to be able to keep the college together as these programs come and go just exactly as you have described.
Mr McLean: Would you be looking at that?
Mr Pitman: Yes, I am sure we will be looking at that. We will be looking at the total spectrum of how in fact we can produce the best-trained, advanced-trained people in this province to serve the industrial needs of this province and to serve the individual needs of young people in this province.
Mr McLean: But we are talking about now, for the next year. When the ministry is talking about no funding for skills development, that kind of bothers me.
Mr Pitman: It is tough. To some extent, though, and here I hope I am not going to be facetious, 1% gets your attention. I say this as someone who has been engaged now in administration for 20 years with four provincial institutions. Like a hanging, it concentrates the attention.
I think institutions in this province are now realizing that the world is never going to be the same as it was in the early or mid- or late 1980s, that in fact there has to be a restructuring. I think that in the work of these task forces, including the one I am hoping to be a part of, there will be more cooperation and more effort to accommodate what appears to be the only solution in terms of that kind of restraint, and that we will be able actually to make some success out of that kind of pressure.
Mr McLean: A final question from me, then: Is there any way the Ministry of Skills Development could proceed to put up some help to retrain some of these older workers?
Mr Pitman: I think Skills Development is certainly working in that field. I do not pretend to have a detailed knowledge of the programs available, but certainly this advanced training is going to be dealing with ongoing, continuing education for people throughout their working lives. To some extent, the kind of -- I think the minister calls it -- zigzag educational system, in which people do in fact move from one institution to another over a lifetime, and out of the private sector into the public sector over a lifetime, is going to have to deal with people who, as you say, have lost their jobs, are perhaps in mid-career and now have to try to find another opportunity. Certainly, this kind of training, advanced training, has to accommodate those people.
Mr J. Wilson: I just want to say at the beginning, having gone through the University of Toronto I spent a great deal of my time reading articles published by yourself in various books.
Mr Pitman: Thank you very much.
Mr J. Wilson: Although we are of a different political stripe there is no doubt, I have a great deal of respect for your opinions on a number of fronts. You really do have a varied reading list that you have provided.
I have two questions and both are very different. When the minister made the announcement of the task force, I met within days a group of teachers in my riding, particularly up in Collingwood where we have been hit very hard by the depression. There is a great deal of scepticism out there. "Well, it is another task force and there is a myriad of recommendations." I sat on the board of governors of U of T and spent a great deal of time reading stuff like this that was available in the legislative library. What do I say to my constituents now that I have the opportunity, and indeed the privilege of meeting the chair of this task force? What do you really hope to achieve, in a nutshell?
Mr Pitman: What I hope we can achieve is a higher level, a much higher level of understanding of how we can produce the kinds of advanced, highly trained people our economy needs. I think that everyone is aware of the fact that we are no longer hewers of wood, drawers of water, that we no longer can depend on our resource industries. We have to have, certainly, a solid service sector, but we also have to have some kind of a manufacturing economy, and that economy is going to be highly technological. The question has been as to whether we have been able to produce the kinds of people to do that.
I hope you can tell them, your teachers as well, that in order to do this we are going to have to have young people who have a good, sound base from that high school and from that elementary school you have in Collingwood and the various areas around Collingwood, and that their role is not going to be in any way diminished by the fact that attention is going to be given to advanced training.
I would like you to tell them as well that out of this, I hope we are going to have a better society, because I think that in order to produce the kinds of people we are talking about, we want to have people who are creative, imaginative, entrepreneurial, who have initiative, who in a sense are going to make their societies and our communities better as a result, that is, I am not completely convinced that competing in the new global economy is the only reason why we should be doing this. It is not just to be competitive. I think it is to be more humane. I think it is to be more caring about the kind of society we live in. So you might say I have very idealistic expectations for this kind of task force.
Mr J. Wilson: That is great, and I suppose that will serve you well in the task force deliberations. I do have a question, though. Oh, this is a tough one. It is really not meant to be nitpicky or anything, but I see in the reading list that you gave a paper on the free trade agreement from a cultural perspective. A lot of your language today has been -- well, you have mentioned hewers of wood and drawers of water and globalization and competitiveness. I just came from Asia where they have signed a free trade pact, or are in the process of doing so. I had a number of discussions with people there. What was your view of the FTA?
Mr Pitman: That is a reading which I think goes back some years. My main concern for the free trade agreement at that time was when I was involved with the Ontario Arts Council. Our concern was that our publishing industry was going to be undermined and our television, that our capacity to produce Canadian culture was going to be eroded. That, I think, was what that speech was mostly about.
Mr J. Wilson: So it was not really on the manufacturing sector.
Mr Pitman: No, I do not think so. I cannot remember that speech very well. I do not remember having much to say about that.
Mr J. Wilson: I am not sure I know what I was saying in 1986 either. Thank you.
Mr Hayes: Ask me.
Mr J. Wilson: I have a clue what it is, Pat.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Pitman. We appreciate your appearance. We knew there was some little misunderstanding; we are glad you were able to make it today. We wish you well with these very significant responsibilities.
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ALEC ROSS
The Chair: Our next witness is Mr Alec Ross, who is an intended appointee as a member of the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority. Welcome to the committee. You have been selected for a half-hour review by the government party. I am going to look to a member of the government caucus to lead off.
Mr Hayes: Mr Ross, are you familiar with the Burgar report? That is the interministerial committee that was put together in 1987 to look at and review conservation authorities.
Mr Ross: I am aware there was a review. I did not know it was called the Burgar report.
Mr Hayes: In that report there were a number of recommendations which were highly controversial among conservation authorities, and they still are controversial. Some of them talked about the number of conservation authorities in southern Ontario. This recommendation was that the number be reduced from 33 to 18, through amalgamation, for example, like the amalgamation of the Upper Thames Valley Conservation Authority and the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority down in the Kent county area and London. How do you feel about that?
Mr Ross: If it makes ecological sense, it is not that bad an idea, I suppose. As I am sure you are all aware, the bigger they get, the more unwieldy they get. You are going to have a lot more competing interests and it is going to be hard for a person from one end of the proposed amalgamation to relate to the interests of someone from the other end. That is an obvious difficulty that will probably arise, but that exists in smaller ones too: conflicts between rural and urban. I do not know. It would have to be examined on a case-by-case basis, obviously.
Mr Hayes: There is another area, too, where I have had complaints myself and I am sure other members have. Do you feel that sometimes there could be a conflict between the conservation authority and the Ministry of Natural Resources? I will give you an example of just one case in my own riding. The individual wanted to do some work in the creek and the conservation authority gave the okay. Then the Ministry of Natural Resources got involved in it on top of that. Then, of course, you have your Fisheries and Oceans. It seems like a lot of duplication. Do you think there is something the government could do, or even the conservation authorities together with the Ministry of Natural Resources, to address this situation and maybe stop some of the duplication in some of these areas?
Mr Ross: Everyone, to a degree, is jealous of their jurisdictions, and some amount of duplication is inevitable, I suppose. As I understand, that is what the conservation authorities were established to do: to provide some kind of liaison between all these different jurisdictions, not necessarily competing with different jurisdictions -- municipal, provincial. I think the key is to establish good communication between the authorities and the bodies that would be involved in a certain decision and be commonsensical about it. If they see duplication, then they could find out which person is best qualified to handle it and let him handle it, without ruffling anyone's feathers. I know there is always a certain amount of politics that gets involved in these things.
Ms Carter: I understand that like other bodies and other conservation authorities Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority is hard up. They are having a financial crisis. They have used a lot more recently than they were using before and they are running into a deficit. It seems very sad that one program that seems to have largely fallen by the wayside is the planting of trees, which is the kind of thing one would have thought was at the very core of what we want them to be doing. It is a bit like libraries: When they get hard up, the first thing that goes seems to be the buying of books. The authority apparently is blaming the government. I just wonder what your opinion is on this whole issue and the adequacy of the grants received.
Mr Ross: On the grants, or on the issue that they are not planting so many trees in the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority?
Ms Carter: I just wonder whether that is really the first thing that has to go, what the situation that brought that about might be.
Mr Ross: From what I understand of the activities of our particular conservation authority right now, the priority is a new kind of educational centre that it is building in one of the conservation areas. It has already raised something like $300,000 from the community and the province matched it. They are trying to get together the rest now. Perhaps they have decided to devote their attention to that particular project and perhaps tree planting and some other things may have fallen by the wayside. But I agree; I think these people's attention should be given to those sorts of things because we would like to think that the conservation authorities are in the business of conservation.
Ms Carter: Could you tell us more about that project and what it hopes to achieve?
Mr Ross: As I said, it is an educational centre. Presumably there would be school groups and those kinds of groups coming in to learn about the habitats, wildlife, etc, in the conservation areas. I think that is a really laudable sort of initiative because in my opinion education is really absolutely critical. We have people of a certain generation and mindset who will have a certain world view towards the environment, if we must put it that way, and I do not think they are going to change, and that outlook may not be entirely compatible with what one would like to see happen in terms of ecological integrity for the watersheds. So the place to start is with young people. I am all for the project. As I understand it, it is going along pretty well.
Ms Carter: Will they be actually taken out into the area?
Mr Ross: Yes, into the Little Cataraqui Creek conservation area. There is a marsh there and lots of trails. They can go around and look at chickadees, go cross-country skiing or do whatever they want.
Ms Carter: Will they actually spend the night or will it be just for the day?
Mr Ross: I do not know. It is not even built yet. They want to get it going by the fall, but as to the programs, I do not know what they have in mind.
Mr Grandmaître: I came in late. I do not know whether Ms Carter was addressing the deficit of your conservation authority when I came in. Did you bring this up?
Ms Carter: Yes.
Mr Grandmaître: You did mention it? I am sorry. What do you think of the budget cuts?
Mr Ross: It is a reality. We are living in tough times, etc; I could reel off a thousand clichés. Cuts are going to be necessary and we have to live with them. One thing: If the authority is not able to get more money from the government, if I can put it in those terms, then it is just going to have to generate more initiative on its own behalf to get funds from the community. Maybe that is another area that not just ours but all conservation authorities are going to have to move in: become not necessarily more autonomous, but at least devote more attention to raising funds by themselves instead of relying on matching grant schemes and that sort of thing.
Mr Grandmaître: What you are saying is that if you do not get sufficient provincial dollars you will increase your levies to the 14 municipalities involved. Is that what you are saying?
Mr Ross: Not necessarily. That is one interpretation of it; that is not exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking more in terms of private fund-raising initiatives. There is one thing they did to raise money for this. I am not sure if you heard about the educational centre they are planning. They had a land lottery whereby you bought an acre of the conservation area and then your name was put on a list. That is how they raised the money. That is a creative sort of thing that generates funds from the community at large, from people who are willing to do that -- without going directly to the municipality, which may or may not perceive a direct benefit from increasing its contribution to the authority. This is very much the case with this educational centre. Because it is in Kingston, the main beneficiary would be Kingston area schools. People from Bedford township, or from one of the more northern communities such as Brockville, what are they going to get out of it? Nothing, but they are contributing to it, so I think the beneficiaries are going to have to work harder to justify themselves.
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Also, fund-raising would raise the profile of the conservation authority in the community. A lot of people do not know what it is; they do not care. It is just another sort of government thing. It is an entity and nobody knows what it does. There is a regrettable lack of knowledge and outright ignorance in the community. I do not mean to say that in a derogatory way. Why should they pay attention to it? They may not have any reason to have to know what Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority is. But if we can make it more relevant to them -- that comes back again to the educational role -- then perhaps it would be easier to raise money privately.
Mr Grandmaître: Are you familiar with the two previous reports that were done on conservation authorities?
Mr Ross: Mr Hayes referred to the Burgar report, which I had not known the name of. I am not sure which other one you are referring to.
Mr Grandmaître: The Bill Ballinger report. He was the parliamentary assistant to --
Interjection: That was not finished then.
Mr Grandmaître: I know, but it was still done. Two reports were done. Apparently the two reports mention that we should be looking at the total setup of our conservation authorities in the province of Ontario, and very little has been done since 1987. Now the present minister, Mr Wildman, is saying, "We believe a reform is needed," and so on and so forth, and the first thing this government does is cut back on our transfer payments to you people. It is difficult to understand that a reform is needed and that we are going to cut back on your funds.
Mr Ross: A reform is going to have to happen if they are going to cut down on funds, is it not? If that is the way it is, then that is the time for people to put their heads together and get creative.
Mr Grandmaître: Yes. Do you think we have too many conservation authorities right now in the province and we should amalgamate?
Mr Ross: To be honest, I have not analysed the size of each one. I know we have a pretty big one. They vary in size. It is hard for me to answer because I am not familiar with the size and the composition of them all. Are there 38, 35, something like that?
Mr Grandmaître: There are 35.
Mr Ross: Whether amalgamation of certain authorities would make things cheaper, I do not know, because there would be a certain amount of increased administration involved, I would think, in covering a larger area.
Mr Grandmaître: Are you familiar with the hunting problems that you have in that conservation authority area?
Mr Ross: Hunting problems with deer and that sort of thing? There is nuisance beaver trapping. I am not sure which problems you are referring to. If it is the deer overpopulation, this is not confined to our watershed.
Mr Grandmaître: No. They are hunting on your ground.
Mr Ross: I was not aware of that, actually, no.
Mr Grandmaître: I see. What will be your first pet project once you become a member of this authority? Do you have a pet project in mind?
Mr Ross: I do not know if I would call it a pet project. If you peruse my résumé, my interests and knowledge lie in the field of communicating with the public. I was a reporter for the Kingston Whig-Standard -- that is how I actually first learned about the authority -- and I have a pretty active interest in the outdoors, so I would gravitate towards the committee that is looking at the educational centre, community relations, trying to, again, raise the profile of the CRCA in the Kingston area community.
Mr McLean: How long have you lived in the Kingston area?
Mr Ross: I have been there for six years now.
Mr McLean: Who asked you to fill out an application for this position?
Mr Ross: No one asked me, but I was working at Queen's University a couple of months ago and a professor there, Dr Fyfe, is the vice-president of the authority now. I was just talking with him one day about the authority. This was purely by chance. He let me know there was a vacancy open and suggested that maybe I would be interested in this sort of thing, so I did bear it in mind.
Mr McLean: You graduated from York University in 1980.
Mr Ross: No, I did not graduate from York in 1980. I did one year at Glendon College in that year and I graduated from Carleton a few years later.
Mr McLean: Your résumé intrigues me. I would just like to know how you do it. Within the last 12 years you have been all over North America, Europe, the Far East, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China. You have been hiking and you have been mountaineering and you have travelled three summers, 1987, 1988 and 1989.
Mr Callahan: You are just jealous because you only got to Buffalo.
Mr McLean: You have canoed 5,000 miles. Do you work, other than doing a bit of journalism?
Mr Callahan: He got frequent flyer points.
Mr Ross: Frequent paddler points, more like. Yes, I work. I am self-employed. I am a writer. I freelance and I am working on a book about that canoe trip you referred to. I do not know. How do I do it? You do it. You decide and you do it.
Mr McLean: You must live with your parents?
Mr Ross: No, no.
Mr McLean: Do you live on your own?
Mr Ross: No, I am married. My wife hangs around.
Mr McLean: I do not think I will ask any more questions, Mr Chair. That is it. I wish you well.
The Chair: Mr Ross, I want to make a comment, because of course part of the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority falls within my riding. I have noticed over the past number of years that because of the decreasing dollars that are available to conservation authorities, there have been some changes made. In my area there is a conservation authority park, a dam to control the water flow through Brockville, flooding and so on, but they have closed down the camping ground and they have made a number of changes which are negative, just simply because they do not have the dollars.
I have no idea whether this would work or not, but it seems to me there was an interest a number of years ago by a service club in the Brockville area, the Lions Club, which has about $200,000 or $300,000 in the bank.
Mr McLean: Wow.
The Chair: Yes, they are quite well off. I am wondering, since you are going on to this authority, if you would be receptive if the authority would take a look at innovative things like approaching a service club or service clubs and saying, "Look, we're prepared to lease you this area for $1 a year for 20 years and here are the conditions you have to meet to follow the guidelines of the ministry and the authority," and let them run it. There are no costs associated to the authority. We are talking about someone like the Lions Club, which could put in a swimming pool, reopen the campground and do an enormous number of things that are of benefit to the community at large, and it is not costing the taxpayers a red cent. Right now that park is declining. We do not have tax dollars to do it. I think, let's look in other directions, and I just place that thought with you as one possible avenue to explore. If you have any reaction, I would certainly appreciate hearing it.
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Mr Ross: That is a good idea so far as it goes, I suppose. I am not familiar with the park so I cannot make any definitive pronouncements on it, obviously, but the idea of sticking in a swimming pool and that sort of thing kind of gives me the jitters. It does not strike me as conservation.
The Chair: They built a swimming area there a number of years ago.
Mr Ross: If one were going to lease it to a service club, provided the conditions were conservation-minded and made ecological sense, then yes, I do not see any problem with that. But if it were going to be, you know, "Let's open the Lions Club amusement park," sorry, no. I am sure that is not what you are suggesting.
The Chair: I was not suggesting that. I was saying you lay down the criteria, and the authority would have the ability to lay down the conditions of any leasing agreement.
Mr Ross: I think that is a good idea. It is certainly worth looking at anyway, because we are in a bind.
The Chair: And it is not going to get any better. Thank you very much. We appreciate your appearance here today. Good luck.
The next matter on the agenda is the determination on whether the committee concurs on the intended appointments reviewed. There have been quite a number of them we have reviewed today. You may wish to do it on an individual basis, individual motions, or if no one has any difficulties with any of the intended appointees we have talked to today, we could deal with it in one motion.
Mr Hayes: I will make a motion that we concur with all the intended appointees that we dealt with today.
Mr McLean: Not in one motion.
The Chair: Not in one motion?
Mr Grandmaître: No, Mr Chair. I prefer that we go through the list one by one.
The Chair: All right.
Mr Hayes: Second mine then?
The Chair: No, we do not have to. If we do not have unanimous consent to deal with them all as a group, we have to do them on an individual basis. Can we have a motion in respect to Clare Brenner, the police services board in Tavistock?
Mr Hayes moves that the committee concur in the appointment of Clare Brenner.
Motion agreed to.
The Chair: Mr Hayes moves that the committee concur in the appointment of Michael Sullivan.
Motion agreed to.
The Chair: Mr Frankford moves that the committee concur in the appointment of Heather Rosemary Broadbent.
Motion agreed to.
The Chair: Ms Carter moves that the committee concur in the appointment of Lloyd Marshall.
Motion agreed to.
The Chair: Dorothy Neilson, intended appointee as chair of the Northern Ontario Development Corp?
Mr Callahan: I move that this concurrence be deferred for two reasons. First of all, Mr Grandmaître raised the issue about --
The Chair: Can I interject here that you do not require a motion; it is simply a request for deferral under the standing order.
Mr Callahan: What I was trying to do was to get our research to answer the question Mr Grandmaître asked about the conflict, number one. Number two, I am advised on good advice that this lady served six months of her tenure and was let go. If that is a fact, and I put that question very clearly to this lady, then she has not in fact been candid with the committee. I think those are two important aspects to be determined before the vote takes place.
The Chair: Under the standing order, if a member requests a deferral, it is granted, but we will have to deal with it tomorrow. You will get a deferral until tomorrow. Under the standing order we have up to seven calendar days to a future meeting, and the only future meeting within that time span is tomorrow.
Mr Callahan: Does it matter that I move to defer? I will not be here. I am only here today. Should it be moved by Mr Grandmaître?
The Chair: It is a request and you are qualified as a substitute on this committee. That is quite appropriate.
Mr Callahan: But I need not be here tomorrow.
The Chair: No.
Mr Grandmaître: So what you are saying is that we will have to deal with the Ms Neilson case tomorrow?
The Chair: That is right.
Mr Callahan: I wonder if research could determine those two issues. One they may not feel qualified to do is the question of conflict. Certainly the question of how long she was on that committee could be found out very easily, I would think, and that should be known by the committee before it votes.
The Chair: We will have that information.
Mr Hayes: I think the members have a legitimate concern and we can follow up on this and get the proper information so we can make the right decision so everybody is pleased and there are no questions. Yes, we will go along with that. We are very easy to get along with.
Mr Callahan: You are a sweetheart, Pat.
Mr Hayes: I would not go that far.
The Chair: Moving right along, we need a motion to concur with Mr Pitman's appointment as chair of the Task Force on Advanced Training.
Ms Carter moves that the committee concur in the appointment of Walter Pitman.
Motion agreed to.
The Chair: Mr Hayes moves that the committee concur in the appointment of Alec Ross.
Motion agreed to.
The Chair: If you take a look at your agendas, we have a closed session coming up to deal with some possible recommendations for our draft report. I am going to adjourn the regular part of the meeting and we will move in camera in two or three minutes, after Hansard has departed.
The committee continued in camera at 1527.