CONTENTS
Wednesday 12 May 1993
Subcommittee report
Appointments review
Melvin Jack Ripley
Jack R. Shapiro
Gertrude Levac
Lyse Champagne
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
*Chair / Présidente: Marland, Margaret (Mississauga South/-Sud PC)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East/-Est PC)
*Bradley, James J. (St Catharines L)
*Carter, Jenny (Peterborough ND)
Cleary, John C. (Cornwall L)
*Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND)
Grandmaître, Bernard (Ottawa East/-Est L)
*Harrington, Margaret H. (Niagara Falls ND)
*Mammoliti, George (Yorkview ND)
*Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)
*Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay/Muskoka-Baie-Georgienne ND)
Witmer, Elizabeth (Waterloo North/-Nord PC)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:
Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L) for Mr Grandmaître
Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes:
Kormos, Peter (Welland-Thorold ND)
Clerk / Greffière: Mellor, Lynn
Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1005 in room 228.
SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT
The Chair (Mrs Margaret Marland): Good morning. I think we'll get our meeting started. We could start by approving the report of the subcommittee which has just been circulated to you, if someone could move that report, please.
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): I move adoption, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Thank you. Are there any comments on the subcommittee report? It's been moved by Mr Marchese.
Mr David Pond: Do you want me to speak to this, Lynn?
Clerk of the Committee (Ms Lynn Mellor): Yes.
Mr Pond: Under item 3, re certificate of April 15, 1993, Mr Cowan is getting appointed to three boards simultaneously, as required by the relevant statute. My notes indicate that the agency which the subcommittee chose to review him in the context of was actually the Laboratory Review Board, not the Health Facilities Appeal Board. According to Lynn, this is the principal one, so the paper you'll get from me will be with reference to the Laboratory Review Board, not the Health Facilities Appeal Board.
The Chair: So why does it have to say Health Facilities Appeal Board?
Clerk of the Committee: The Health Facilities Appeal Board is the principal appointment of the three; the other two only happen as a result of the appointment here.
The Chair: I see.
Mr Pond: Just to let you know, though.
The Chair: So that's one individual who's being appointed at the same time to three positions. Any other discussion? All in favour of Mr Marchese's motion? That's carried.
You're in favour, aren't you, Mr Curling and Mr McLean?
Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): Yes, I am.
Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I don't know whether the record signifies whether I was or I wasn't.
The Chair: I think everybody has to vote one way or the other. Let me just ask the clerk.
Clerk of the Committee: There's no abstention in committee.
APPOINTMENTS REVIEW
Consideration of intended appointments.
MELVIN JACK RIPLEY
The Chair: Starting with today's agenda then, I would like to welcome Mr Ripley, if you would like to come forward, please. Good morning, Mr Ripley.
Mr Melvin Jack Ripley: Good morning.
The Chair: Mr Ripley, if you would like to make some brief opening comments to the committee, then we will divide the time equally between the three caucuses to talk to you about your appointment.
Mr Ripley: Thank you, Madam Chairman. By way of opening, I'd simply like to say that I respect the work of this committee on appointments for government agencies and in particular my opportunity to come before you. I would also like to acknowledge the presence of Randy Hope, the member of Parliament from the riding I reside in, in the Chatham area. I guess those would be my opening comments.
Mr Curling: Can I just talk now?
The Chair: Yes, thank you, Mr Curling.
Mr Curling: Let me too welcome you, Mr Ripley, to this committee. This is my first day also, so there are many firsts, I presume.
I was reading your credentials, and they're quite impressive. It is quite timely too that you come before this committee to serve on this board, this corporation. Many times, when one is asked to serve on any corporation or any board, they always say it's an easy thing, and later on you find they attach more work to you, more and more and more. As a matter of fact, the Ontario Development Corp is into a real test these days -- and you know the mandate of the corporation -- considering that the government has just now decided it will cancel, whatever it calls it, the 17 offices internationally, the Ontario Houses. It's going to put a tremendous pressure on many of the small businesses here to operate. Do you see that cancellation, sir, making a great impact on the Ontario Development Corp?
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Mr Ripley: Actually, I have never really, up to this point, served on the ODC. Apart from having just a very sketchy idea of the mandate of the development corporation, I really don't have an informed and a good judgement on the point you bring up. I guess I feel it's important to do economic development in one way or another, and what the most cost-effective and most efficient way to do it is is not something I feel confident to talk about right now.
Mr Curling: Let me just read a little portion of its mandate. According to the 1992-93 Estimates Briefing Book from the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology -- the nice name they've put to it now is the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade: "The corporations' programs are intended to foster: innovation; entrepreneurship; expansion of both international and domestic trade...." It is that aspect, the challenge I put before you.
There are many times when government or whatever gives you jobs to do and it never gives you the tools. I was saying to you that, seeing that the government has now cancelled, for a cost-saving factor -- I don't know the rationale; I think it's trying to save money -- all of those offices in Japan, in New York, in Germany, I find that your job here will be quite expansive. I don't want to ask you your views of the government; I just want to say to you that your job will increase tremendously on this level, and the Ontario Development Corp mandate seems to be much more onerous, considering that the jobs abroad will not be done now. Do you think that will have an impact? In your own view, do you feel that the Canadian embassies abroad would be quite efficient to carry out some of the jobs intended to foster Ontario businesses and promote Ontario businesses?
Mr Ripley: I guess my response would be that, as you can see from my résumé, I'm currently chairman of Innovation Ontario Corp, which is a sister company of Ontario Development Corp, and, the extent to which I know both of these organizations, their mandate is to certainly build a strong economic development base in the province, which can not only serve the business needs of the provinces but to explore market opportunities abroad, outside the boundaries of Ontario.
Certainly Innovation Ontario, I think, has been very effective in helping to create and to assist small companies in that process. I just have a feeling that if you've got to make sacrifices anywhere, I'm happy to see that we're maintaining the strength of our base at home by support to IOC and budgetary support to ODC. I think out of that base, then, we can do a reasonably effective job in promoting economic development outside the province.
Mr Curling: Madam Chair, how much time do I have?
The Chair: You have just five minutes.
Mr Curling: I don't know if my colleague wants to ask a question.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): You're doing such a good job, I will let you continue.
Mr Curling: Thank you very much. At this time, Mr Ripley, in our economy I find that the bankruptcy of small businesses is so high. I come from the constituency of Scarborough North, where quite a growing --
Mr Bradley: Home of the Rouge Valley.
Mr Curling: Yes, it is, of course, as my colleague says, the home of the Rouge Valley and many businesses, as a matter of fact, a very, very fast growing community. Bankruptcy rates are pretty high, and I know this corporation is the one that provides loan guarantees to businesses of that nature.
I don't know if you've had a chance to look at the type of money that's available or whether you could comment: Is there adequate money going into the corporation? Do you feel that the government has provided sufficient resources to support or to assist those businesses that are really hurting now? I don't know if you've had a chance to see the budget of the Ontario Development Corp. Do you feel there are adequate resources there, and support you can get from the government?
Mr Ripley: I really don't know what the budget is of ODC in terms of what's available for direct loans and loan guarantees. If I had a comment, it would be just a very philosophical one.
I have this feeling that in good times, businesses out there are paying taxes and contributing to the public purse, and when times get soft and difficult, I like to think that tax-paying businesses have got some credits sort of in their account, in the tax accounts, in the public purse, that would allow them to be bridged during their difficult times to a period of time when the economy gets stronger and they can get back into a tax-paying mode again. So philosophically, I can support the idea of the government providing loans and loan guarantees.
Clearly, you've got to prioritize your money. I mean, you don't have --
Mr Curling: And that's the reason for my question, because the fact is that small businesses like those you'll be overseeing and giving loans to will have to be a priority of this government. Maybe just as a comment, not a question, and advice that I may give, if I can take this prerogative to do so: to make sure that adequate resources are given to the Ontario Development Corp and that the commitment by the government is such that the small businesses are being supported in that direction.
I say to you too that what I've seen in the past in the decisions that are made by the government, understandably so in some respects, about the fiscal restraint and cost-cutting measures that have been taken -- but I worry about the small businesses and I depend on a corporation like yours, if you're going to sit on that board, to carry the message, very loud, back to the government that without the proper resources, small businesses will just die, because they've already cut off that link internationally as to how they could export their goods and make markets available. I say that your corporation would play an extremely important role at this time.
I have no further questions. Those are my comments to you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Curling. Mr McLean.
Mr McLean: Welcome to the committee, Mr Ripley. Did you ask for this appointment? Were you interested in applying? Who asked you to apply?
Mr Ripley: Actually, I got a call from the minister's office asking if I would be willing, as a cross-appointee from Innovation Ontario Corp, to sit on this board, and I said I'd be willing to let my name stand in nomination.
Mr McLean: You introduced your local member this morning. I thought maybe he might have had something to do with your appointment.
Mr Ripley: Well, I took the time to advise him of the pending appointment and my appearance before this committee, and I'm pleased that he took the time to be here this morning to show his interest.
Mr McLean: Do you have knowledge about the ODC? Mainly, which area are you familiar with? Are you familiar with section 12 with regard to the loan area? Are you familiar with the area that has to do with the offices that have been closed? Which area have you been most familiar with?
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Mr Ripley: I must confess that at this point my knowledge is very sketchy. I guess I somewhat define ODC in terms of its contrast to what IOC, the Innovation Ontario Corp, does. In my mind, ODC is a crown agency of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade committed to carry out the programs of that ministry which provide loans and loan guarantees to Ontario companies.
Mr McLean: But in the previous business that you had, did you ever apply or did you ever have a loan from the ODC in your previous businesses?
Mr Ripley: Never. I had no previous exposure.
Mr McLean: Do you know what a business has to go through in order to apply? Do you have some knowledge of that?
Mr Ripley: Yes, I have a fairly good feel for that.
Mr McLean: Do you think that perhaps they're a little strict on some of their requirements? I mean the working plan. They have to hire a consultant, most of them, to do the feasibility study of the operation of their business and what projections they're going to have, how many jobs are going to be created and all of that. Do you feel that may be a little strict or not strict enough?
Mr Ripley: I think you've got to do whatever is necessary to make sort of a cost-benefit judgement as to the worthiness of investing in or lending to a particular company. I am familiar with the fact that the agency puts up $5,000 maximum to applying companies, requiring them to obtain an independent consultant's advice, and I guess probably to verify the numbers and the information so that as an application comes forward, at least it has the further credibility of someone at arm's length beyond the applicant.
Mr McLean: I guess the reason I asked that question is the fact that there's one company that got $20,000 -- a licensed restaurant -- through the ODC. When I look at a company getting $20,000, the amount of cost there's got to be to go through to get that -- and you have to have the guarantee of the bank in most cases -- I often wonder if it should have been, say, that you can't get a loan of less than $100,000. Several loans are for $1 million, some $750,000, plus one for $20,000. I have to wonder if the cost is worth it, or why would somebody just get $20,000?
Mr Ripley: I have no idea what the floor level is.
Mr McLean: These questions that I'm asking you will help you probably when you're dealing with some of these requests that come before you, because you may say the same thing as I'm saying: Why would somebody apply for a $20,000 loan from the ODC? If they can't get it from the bank, why should the ODC then be lending a restaurant $20,000? It's a good, interesting point that I wanted to make.
I wish you well and I hope you enjoy it. You're retired now?
Mr Ripley: Yes, I guess that's the term I use. I was at a seminar last week up at Caledon Mountain Trout Club. It was on the topic of retirement and all of us agreed, at least those of us there, that it was a word we didn't care to use to define our state of life. So I consider myself to be repotted or going through the seven-year itch and trying to do something else.
Mr McLean: I wish you well and I hope you enjoy it.
Mr Ripley: Thank you.
Mr Marchese: Good morning, Mr Ripley.
Mr Ripley: Good morning.
Mr Marchese: Can I ask you a very simple question? Why is it that you want to be a board member of the Ontario Development Corp?
Mr Ripley: I think there are probably two or three reasons, one of which is that I think I can make a contribution. If you look down through my résumé, you can see that while I was employed for pay over the last 40-some years, I think I demonstrated an interest in doing something in a public way, working with government and other people just to enhance the country, if I could. So I view this as a chance to make a contribution and I think I've got background that would be useful.
Mr Marchese: Okay. The corporation's programs are intended to foster many different things: innovation, entrepreneurship, expansion of domestic and international trade, regional diversification, job creation, retention, development of the province's tourism industry. You would have the sense of these. Given your background, you probably would have heard about the purpose of this corporation. Would you say that the corporation has been doing its job in fostering these kinds of activities effectively or not effectively?
Mr Ripley: I guess my view is from one who has kind of looked at ODC, certainly from a distance. But I noticed you used the term "innovation" as well, so I sort of pull myself into the context of being chairman, presently, of Innovation Ontario Corp. In a very specific sense there, I believe that organization has done an extremely effective job of providing equity support and other assistance to small, technology-based businesses in the province. I think if we were not there to help these companies, the private sector just doesn't have a disposition to put money into early-stage companies.
There, unfortunately, I think we find an awful lot of failure of companies early in the game; if provided a little bit of bridge support, eventually some of these are going to turn out to be pretty good companies. But in a general way on ODC, I guess I only know it from what I read in the paper. In the last several years we can see that there have been a lot of companies needing help and assistance over these difficult times.
Mr Marchese: Mr Ripley, given your background, did you have a vision of where you would want the corporation to go, based on your experience, based on what you think would produce wealth creation in the province -- job creation in the long-term and wealth creation -- that is spread out to a lot of people within the province? Do you have a vision that is different from this? Are there things that you would do differently, or are they basically in line with what the corporation has been doing all along?
Mr Ripley: At this moment I don't have any different vision than what's out there. On one hand, I see ODC providing support to companies that have been around a long time. They've been in the news: the Algomas, the Worldways and on down to much smaller companies. Yet on the other hand, Innovation Ontario is providing support to companies that haven't been around a long time. They're just starting to get up off the floor and to get going with new technology. So in both of the areas that I think it is important to attend to, the established businesses and the new emerging companies, I think the development corporations in total cover the waterfront pretty good.
Mr Daniel Waters (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): One thing: I'd like to almost answer Mr Curling's concern about the overseas offices. I can tell you that the past Premier of the province is just now returning from Iran, where he has been working with the Ontario International Corp on a sale of some product. So just because the offices are closed doesn't mean that -- the activity overseas is definitely out there and people are working at it.
One of the things that I would like to get your feeling for is the balance between industrial -- working with the industrial sector -- and the commercial and other commercial ventures. Do you think there's a good balance within ODC between those two?
Mr Ripley: I presume you're talking about, there, sort of the industrial sector vis-à-vis the emerging service sector. I really don't know the stats on that. My guess is that there's a fairly heavy orientation towards the industrial sector, because that has tended to be the older sector and it's been around for a while, even though, I guess, the service sector began to emerge a decade ago.
It just seems to me -- and again this is just a personal opinion -- the service sector maybe has survived the events of the last three years better than the manufacturing sector. I would guess the service sector tends to be more domestically oriented vis-à-vis the manufacturing sector that's maybe impacted by how well or how much trade you have with other nations.
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Mr Waters: Do you think the ODC, or an arm of it, should become more and more involved with things like IRDI in Midland, where we went into research and development on moulds and dies? Do you think the ODC should be trying to work for emerging or more advanced technology, even if it isn't owned by a specific industry but more of a broad-based technology to increase and put new technology in the province?
Mr Ripley: Whether that's a mandate for the development corporations, I don't know. I know that federally there have been programs around that foster scientific research and provide tax breaks for companies doing that kind of thing. I know that on the IOC side of it, Innovation Ontario Corp, we tend to like to think that just at the stage where the research and development has sort of finished itself and you've got some promise of some commercial opportunity out there is maybe an appropriate time for IOC to invest. But that's a tough call, getting back into the R&D side of it.
Mr Waters: But don't you see the potential of that for the future of the province, where growth in new technologies is so great? I recall sitting in this very committee, actually, reviewing someone for the Fair Tax Commission from the manufacturing sector who was talking about the Canadian worker versus the American and Mexican worker, who was very clear about the fact that the Canadian worker is so versatile compared to anyone else within North America, that for new and emerging technologies we would be a natural, if there was the support for this type of thing.
I know that at this point in time the ODC is not into that, necessarily, but I was wondering if you thought that was something we should look at.
Mr Ripley: I would hope someone's looking at it, because in my view I think a lot of people have long felt that as a country, as a province, we could probably do more to foster research and development in the country and in the province. It sort of remains an open issue, but the tendency is, I think, when you get under the pressure of declining profits, to kind of pull back a bit, and that certainly doesn't support the long view.
Mr Waters: I guess that's why I feel that whether it be through ODC or whatever, it's very important in those times, because it becomes even more important that the government indeed put some of its dollars into that type of investment.
Mr Ripley: I'm going to take the time after to do a little bit of research and find out where we stand as a province on that.
Mr Waters: Thank you. I wish you well.
The Chair: Is there anyone else? All right. Thank you very much for your appearance before the committee this morning, Mr Ripley. We appreciate your being here.
Mr Ripley: Thank you very much. We look forward to a growing Ontario.
The Chair: We all do.
JACK R. SHAPIRO
The Chair: Our next appointment is Mr Jack Shapiro. Welcome, Mr Shapiro. Please have a seat. This is a selection by the third party, so, Mr McLean, perhaps you would like to start.
Mr McLean: Welcome to the committee, Mr Shapiro. I see that you've been involved in the health field for quite a number of years. Are you presently a trustee of the Toronto Hospital?
Mr Jack R. Shapiro: Yes, I am.
Mr McLean: In that capacity, what do you do?
Mr Shapiro: In addition to being a member of the board, I am chairman of a committee that was recently established by the board called a community advisory committee, which is an attempt by the board to reach out into the community and seek the best possible counsel on how we can best serve the needs of the community. I'm chairing that and took the initiative in establishing it.
Mr McLean: Good. Is that the same hospital that has the cancer clinic? Is that at Toronto General?
Mr Shapiro: No, the cancer clinic is at Sunnybrook, in addition to the Princess Margaret, but at the hospital they have an oncology department doing surgery and providing other services.
Mr McLean: I'm interested in knowing, and I don't know whether you have the answers or not, but how many cancer clinics are there in Ontario? Do you have any idea? I don't remember.
Mr Shapiro: There are eight that are operated by the foundation: one in Toronto and seven others around the province.
Mr McLean: Is there one in Hamilton?
Mr Shapiro: Yes.
Mr McLean: I have a niece who is a doctor in cancer experiments in Hamilton and she's working at the Toronto hospital with regard to the cancer centre there, and I was curious to know how many there were, for an idea of the experiment. In your opinion, does there appear to be enough research money in order to do what you think is necessary or the medical profession thinks is necessary?
Mr Shapiro: I think it would be premature for me to answer that question. I don't have that information just yet. I have the impression from readings I have done that there are moneys available for well-considered projects and that there are well-considered projects being developed all the time, so there will be increasing pressures for money.
Mr McLean: What is your main reason for accepting this appointment on the cancer research foundation?
Mr Shapiro: There are two main reasons. One is a very personal reason. Like so many others, I have suffered losses through cancer. My own wife died after a two-and-a-half-year miserable illness, and I have felt that if there is anything I can do to help with the comfort of patients or improvement in morbidity or mortality rates which, God knows, are not within reach of many people, if I could do anything at all in that area, that's something I would really very much like to do.
The other is that I've had a kind of lifelong commitment to improving the access of health consumers to the very best possible care, and in an area as meaningful to all of us as cancer that's something I just wanted to be part of if I could.
Mr McLean: I hope you can help, because the concern I have is that we still seem to be having more cases every year. I'm wondering if there are enough funds in research to try to solve some of these problems, whether it's breast cancer or prostate or lung -- they seem to be the largest ones now. What's your knowledge of skin cancer? Do you have any?
Mr Shapiro: Nothing specific. We've all read the papers and we all know what the current threats are and everyone has followed with great interest the story of Premier Bourassa, but I really don't have detailed information on it.
I can say, just to get back to the other point you raised, however, that research is part of it but I am a strong believer in prevention. Although the potential within the foundation for prevention is present, it's not the main focus of the foundation. But I would hope that the foundation could play some role in inducing government and other agencies to increase the focus on prevention.
Mr McLean: It was a pleasure to meet you, and I hope that you can make a difference.
Mr Shapiro: Thank you, Mr McLean.
Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): One of the components of the foundation is the Ontario cancer registry. Do you have any familiarity with that?
Mr Shapiro: I've read of what they're doing and I know that the data are being developed and used effectively. I have no further information on it.
Mr Frankford: I wonder if I could take this opportunity to raise some aspects of it which I've become aware of since I've been here.
Mr Shapiro: Please do.
Mr Frankford: On another committee we were discussing freedom of information, and some people from the foundation or the registry came to see us and they talked about a number of things to do with the registry.
One thing that was quite striking -- and I'll declare a sort of personal interest in this because I myself have had three primary carcinomas of the large bowel over a period of years. So I asked the question, how could I be sure that I was registered as one person? I don't know how common this is, despite my medical background. It's obviously not very common, but it occurs.
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I wondered whether there was any way that I could check that I was considered one person, and they sort of said that with the privacy protection, I guess, I couldn't check on myself.
Mr Shapiro: I'm sure that information is available. I don't have it, of course, but it would seem to me not unreasonable just to want to be counted as one person and I would hope that the system would allow for that.
Mr Frankford: I think this is something you might well want to check into --
Mr Shapiro: I'm going to make a note of it. Thank you.
Mr Frankford: -- because I think this is a very important aspect. I mean, the assumptions that are made about changes in incidence may or may not be true, but I think unless you use the registry or something equivalent, unless one takes an epidemiological approach, we will never know.
I think the importance of this cannot be underestimated. In the medico-political sphere, a lot of discussions take place about breast cancer, and it's not even clear whether it is in fact increasing, whether it is a statistical artefact. Lung cancer for sure is increasing, and that happens to be the one which obviously is preventable. In the case of the one that I had, I don't know. If there was prevention, I will be glad to find it. There are some sorts of discussions about diets, but again I think, unless one gets an epidemiological handle on it, we're in the dark.
I would just throw out for your consideration that when one is talking of research, I think this is perhaps one of the cheapest and possibly most effective ways of going about it. Presumably, you're going to have to make some judgements about clinical research versus epidemiological research, and I don't know where your biases lie. If you want to elaborate on that, I would be pleased to hear, but I would suggest that an epidemiological approach has huge potential, and when we're talking about this in a political context, when we're talking about the allocation of resources, that is absolutely vital.
Mr Shapiro: I couldn't agree with you more. Coming from the public health field, as I do, we rely extensively on epidemiology. I quite agree with what you're saying. I do appreciate your raising the question and I'm going to be interested in finding out the answer to it. Thank you.
Mr Frankford: Just briefly, one thing that exists is the possibility of unique identifiers, and supposedly we have an OHIP system which has unique identifiers. I don't think it's working particularly well. Again, I think you might well want to look into that in conjunction with the Ministry of Health, because potentially, now that we've brought in unique identifiers, we can register the entire provincial population, which I think is not the case right now. I think there are probably some weaknesses in the figures that the registry has at the present time.
Mr Shapiro: Thank you.
Mr Marchese: Welcome, Mr Shapiro.
Mr Shapiro: Thank you, Mr Marchese.
Mr Marchese: The ministry is considering the establishment of a provincial advisory council to look at how to best use the limited resources we have in the whole field of cancer.
You talked about some of the experience you've had with the Toronto Hospital, particularly with the community advisory committee. I would presume that you've learned a great deal about that advisory committee and the potential good things that can come out of that in terms of how it advises the hospital.
What have you learned, based on that experience, that you could advise us or the minister or the ministry about how to put together the structure and the function of such a provincial committee?
Mr Shapiro: There's no question that the role of the community advisory committee of the Toronto Hospital so far has been absolutely invaluable. Where there were just enormous frustrations in the community over certain ways in which services were provided by the hospital, today there is an outlet for those concerns to be expressed and to be considered by the governing bodies of the hospital.
I would say probably the best advice I could give to anyone who would listen to me in the creation of this committee would be to make certain that there is strong representation from the patient consumer groups and from the community at large, because the vision of professionals sometimes gets so narrowly focused that they miss what are the big concerns of the people we're serving, and I would hope that that advisory committee would be strongly oriented to the community and to the patient groups.
Mr Marchese: Thank you very much. Good luck.
The Chair: Ms Harrington, and we have four minutes left. Ms Carter is following you.
Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): Thank you very much, Mr Shapiro, for coming. I'm pleased to meet you.
I have two questions, first of all the concern about coordination of services across the province. As you know, there are very limited funds. I come from the Niagara area, in fact I represent Niagara Falls, and there is a problem of transportation sometimes to the Hamilton facilities. How would you view in the future regionally coordinating services and making sure that care is actually available everywhere.
Following from that, your organization, the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation, as well as the Princess Margaret Hospital, are the two leading concerns here. How would you see them working together in the future, probably in a more integrated manner? How would you address that?
Mr Shapiro: You could appreciate that the information and knowledge I have on this subject comes from extensive readings but not from direct contact with the principal players, and everything I've read has left me with a strong feeling that this is something that really top priority must be given to.
In reference to the Princess Margaret and the foundation, they are both governed by legislation and hopefully would have seen a higher level of cooperation and integration of services than has so far taken place, and I would hope that I might be able to play some role in building some kind of consensus where there is no consensus perhaps on certain questions today.
As to the provision of services at the regional level, I think it's absolutely essential that there be a coordinated, holistic approach towards all of the needs of the patient community so that on a regionally organized basis, people know what services are available to them and have ready access to those services. I think that's another area of top priority.
The Chair: Ms Carter, a minute and one half.
Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): First of all, welcome, and I'm intrigued to see that you moved the first successful motion at a Saskatchewan provincial convention calling for the establishment of a medicare system.
Mr Shapiro: Source of great pride to me.
Ms Carter: That's the beginning of a long and interesting history, I think, and we all hope that it continues into the future as we would want it to.
Now, we've already raised in this committee and you have mentioned, the question of prevention versus cure. I have read literature that suggests that something like 90% of cancers are environmentally produced in some way or another, whether it's the general environment or workplace problems or just sheer bad habits like smoking and drinking.
Mr Shapiro: And diet.
Ms Carter: Yes, and yet when we look at organizations such as the one you're going on or I hear my local cancer society people talking and so on, the emphasis seems to be on research for cures, and I think there's a danger, apart from the fact that we'd all rather not get cancer than have it and be cured. There's a question of money too, that it's far more expensive to have to put something right that should never have happened in the first place. I'm just wondering if you have more to say on that whole question of how we can prevent rather than have to cure.
Mr Shapiro: I'm not certain of the 90% statistic, although I too have read very big figures, but certainly I do believe that this is an important area for government intervention. When there is clear-cut information that given environmental or lifestyle activities contribute to the incidence of cancer, I think that government intervention becomes appropriate with a view to reducing the incidence. Certainly I would want very much to see the foundation playing as active a role as possible in promoting prevention as the primary goal of the battle against cancer.
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The Chair: Thank you, Mr Shapiro, for appearing before the committee this morning. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr Curling. Mr Curling, just before we start your time, we have some very important people in the room this morning and I would like to introduce the grade 8 students from Flamborough Centre school near Hamilton. I hope that you will be enlightened by your tour of the Legislature today and observing the legislative process. I also hope that some of you will be interested in sitting where we are sitting at some time in the future, because indeed in the future some of us will eventually need to be replaced. Thank you for being here.
Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): Thank you, Ms Marland. In view of the fact that I am conducting the tour, they may well be enlightened. Thank you kindly.
The Chair: Thank you to the member for Welland-Thorold for bringing these young people, and we welcome your attendance here today.
Mr Curling: With that note, of course, the students are experiencing a change to or a replacement or an addition to the board. Mr Shapiro, I want to welcome you coming before the committee so I could ask you a few questions myself.
First, I want to say, when I read your résumé, I see you come with a tremendous amount of experience. Few people who come to sit on boards and commissions have that experience, and I look forward to you contributing very well to this board.
I just want to clarify one thing. I noticed that you are president of a Saskatchewan company from 1950 to present. I was somewhat confused whether you live here or in Saskatchewan.
Mr Shapiro: I live here, and my business is in Saskatchewan.
Mr Curling: Okay, so you continue to conduct business there?
Mr Shapiro: Yes, I do.
Mr Curling: I just wanted to clarify that. One of the most controversial parts of treatment here of any disease is money: Do we have enough money for research? It's always said that the battle of cancer has received a lot of money and other diseases have not. Do you think there's adequate money being received for cancer treatment and cancer research, and if so, do you think that the money comes in a way that somehow the other research has suffered from that aspect?
Mr Shapiro: Mr Curling, through the Chair, I think it would be premature for me to answer that question today. In a general way, I can give a glib answer and say there's always need for more money for research, but in effect I would have to have a better handle than I have had an opportunity to get so far on what the research needs really are.
Mr Curling: I gather, too, that not only will you be a member but also your name would be put forward to be the chair. Do I understand that properly, that you'd be also the chair?
Mr Shapiro: I understand that to be the case as well.
Mr Curling: So when we are appointing you today, we are looking at your credentials today as a member and hopefully that the Lieutenant Governor consider you to be the chair. Is that the --
Mr Shapiro: That's my understanding.
Mr Curling: The issue of mammogram tests has come up especially lately. It is felt that it has not done very well when we thought that this was the thing, that if women have these tests pretty early, they avoid cancer. Do you have any comment on that, in the direction they are going with these mammogram tests, and should they encourage it more or are they seen to mean that it does not help in any way with cancer at all?
Mr Shapiro: Well, I think everyone was surprised to see the results of the recent research that showed that for testing women over the age of 50, the whole mammography program really did not improve the statistics at all. Everyone thought that they would be more productive in that age group. So I really think that this is an area that has to be studied once again to see just whether that is a productive way of spending money or not. I think it would be premature yet, from what I've been able to read, to conclude that the whole mammography screening program should be ditched; I don't think that is yet indicated. But certainly there's reason to question whether the expenditures of money in this area are being sufficiently productive at the moment. It has to be researched further, I would say.
Mr Curling: It seems to me that the concern, though, as soon as we feel that we have found a way and where government can fund these activities, I would almost call it -- without that many funds having been directed at that area and this is one of the things. AIDS is another area where somehow a lot of money is running into some sort of drugs that we feel will assist in AIDS treatment, and now we're finding out it doesn't really help, but millions of dollars have been spent in this direction.
Would you say that this is somehow a signal to how we approach things, and when we see research that comes up and says we have the answer to cancer, that we look much more carefully at it because we know we have a public pressure that would say we should run in that direction? Do you think this is a cautious way now that we've --
Mr Shapiro: I think there's room in everything for healthy scepticism. I know I saw in this morning's paper that they're saying in Saskatchewan now that ECGs are not productive, and yet every time people visit a doctor for a checkup an ECG is on the list. But all I would say at the moment, until I had more information on the mammography screening, is that there's an indication from these studies that there's room for some scepticism about that being the key approach for breast cancer.
Mr Curling: I just want to thank you for coming before us, and I feel that the knowledge and experience you have would be a great contribution to this board, and wish you luck and all that goes with it.
Mr Shapiro: Thank you, Mr Curling.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Shapiro, for appearing before the committee.
Mr Shapiro: Thank you very much for having me.
GERTRUDE LEVAC
The Chair: Our next intended appointment to be reviewed by the committee is Gertrude Levac. Good morning; welcome. Would you like to have a seat, please. Would you like to make some opening comments briefly to the committee, Ms Levac?
Mrs Gertrude Levac: Yes, I will. I come from a small community called St Bernadin located in the township of Caledonia in the county of Prescott. I have lived there for the last 35 years on a 400-acre dairy farm, which I now operate with my son since the death of my husband in 1989.
I was born and raised on a farm, also. I attended rural schools and I got my secondary school graduation diploma from the Plantagenet high school. I then attended the University of Ottawa Normal School, what they call now teacher's college, for one year. I taught in rural separate schools of Prescott for five years, before I got married in 1958 and settled on a farm in the township of Caledonia.
After the birth of my fifth child, I quit teaching and in the fall of 1968 the job of clerk-treasurer of the township was offered to me. It was supposed to be a two-hour-a-day job that I could accomplish while caring for the children, but I soon discovered that it was a full-time job, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because the office was in my home.
This increase in the workload was mostly due because at this period the construction of several municipal drains in the township was started. The township of Caledonia is one of the best farming areas of eastern Ontario, but the land is very flat and needs the drainage. About 75% of the land surface drains into the South Nation River and the balance into the Ottawa River.
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Another incentive was the fact that at that time, municipalities in our county were eligible for a two-thirds grant for the construction of those drains, so much so that when I retired in December of last year after 24 years of service to the township, I left behind 119 drain construction files and 116 drain maintenance files.
But the township doesn't count that many drains. There are approximately 80 municipal drains. But when the farmers started to install tile drainage in the 1970s, we found out that many of these drains were not deep enough to accommodate the tile drainage and we therefore had to maintain and improve several of them under section 78 of the Drainage Act.
Now, you do not process so many drains without encountering many problems. I appeared before the referee -- Judge Clunis at the time -- once, and in front of the drainage tribunal at least three times, twice with Mr O'Brien as chairman and a couple of years ago with Mr Goodal as chairman.
As you know, the clerk of the township acts as the clerk of the tribunal, so I have some notion of how the tribunal functions. When a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food asked me if I'd be interested to serve on the tribunal because there would soon be some vacancies, I hesitated for a while but --
The Chair: Excuse me, Ms Levac. Are you going to be very much longer? Please complete it, but they are supposed to be brief opening comments. If you're almost finished, just please complete it.
Mrs Levac: Yes. I just wanted to --
The Chair: Go ahead and finish it if it's only a couple of minutes. That's fine.
Mrs Levac: I decided to make the application and maybe use some of the experience I have acquired over the years, but it is for you, honourable ladies and gentlemen, to judge if I have the necessary qualifications to act as a member of this tribunal. So thank you for listening to me.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr McLean.
Mr McLean: Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I can see that you're qualified; I can tell you that. If you've been a municipal clerk, you've been involved.
But I have a couple of questions I want to ask you with regard to the drainage ditches. You're familiar with the ward ditches?
Mrs Levac: Yes.
Mr McLean: Do you feel that the engineering reports, the stages as set out through the municipal drainage act, are too strict and time-consuming?
Mrs Levac: Well, the procedure is time-consuming. It is, especially now that we talk more and more about adding environmental assessments on these projects. So it is time-consuming.
Mr McLean: But with your experience, I'm sure, as a clerk, you were -- what's the word? -- you just couldn't believe the amount of time it would take to have a drainage ditch established under the Drainage Act. I know at times you would say the process is flawed, would you not?
Mrs Levac: Well, sure. You have to follow the Drainage Act. Otherwise you might fall into trouble: so many days before the meeting for consideration of report and so on and so forth.
Mr McLean: Exactly. My question is, would you be looking at making some recommendations to change the Drainage Act in order that the process could be shortened?
Mrs Levac: Yes, I imagine some modifications could be made.
Mr McLean: Such as? I'm an ex-warden, a county councillor, and I'm a little bit familiar with it, too. I know I was frustrated at times. But when somebody new is going on this board that has the experience that you have, I would hope that they would be looking at making some changes. So the question was, do you think it could be shortened, and how?
Mrs Levac: It could be, but certain steps have to be timed to the appeal process, if there is an appeal, where they have to wait so many days, and maybe this could be -- and I know that in a certain case we had to wait for the Ontario Drainage Tribunal to sit quite a while, so this did delay the project.
Mr McLean: Right. Well, the 119, I think you said, construction plans: Is that for farm drainage, for tile?
Mrs Levac: That's all for farm drainage, but to accommodate tile drainage. Now, by "construction file" here, I mean petition drains under section 4 and major improvements under section 78, and my maintenance files are under sections 74 and 76.
Mr McLean: In the last years that you were a clerk-administrator or clerk, were you using the amount of money that was allotted to you for the farmers?
Mrs Levac: We sure did, and I know that last year we didn't have enough money to cover 50% of the drainage superintendent's salary.
Mr McLean: What type of farmers were putting in tile drainage -- dairy farmers?
Mrs Levac: Dairy farmers, mostly, yes, and crop.
Mr McLean: I'm surprised, because in our area the farmers have not got enough money to hardly make a living without putting in tile drainage.
Mrs Levac: Loans are available through the township.
Mr McLean: The farmers are still using them up?
Mrs Levac: Not as much as they did, let's say, 10 years ago.
Mr McLean: But they're still using the amount of money that you're allotted to lend them.
Mrs Levac: Yes, and we were allotted more last year.
Mr McLean: I'd like to go back to the municipal drains, because I think that's a major bone of contention with regard to the way that they're established and the way that you have to get approval from your neighbours, and if they're up across the side road, how it's assessed.
I'd like to try to find out, from your point of view and the experience you've had, how you're going to shorten that process. That's a major contention for all municipal councils, and there's got to be some recommendations for that, through the engineering reports.
Mrs Levac: Yes, from the time the engineer's report is filed, you have to send out the orders within 30 days. I imagine this could be shortened. Then after the meeting for the consideration of the report, what I find strange there is that within five days you have to send a copy of the provisional bylaw to the neighbouring participating municipality, but you have 30 days to send it to the owners and the director and the rest of the people. So this could certainly be shortened there too, because within five days you've got to have the bylaw ready for the participating municipality, and why not send it to all the others to whom you have to send the bylaw?
Mr McLean: In your 20-some years, how many had been established in that municipality?
Mrs Levac: How many drains?
Mr McLean: I'm talking about municipal drains.
Mrs Levac: Municipal drains: I went back to the office yesterday and I counted 77.
Mr McLean: That's a lot.
Mrs Levac: It is for a small township. Yes, it is.
Mr McLean: I'll pass. How much time did I have left? I must have used pretty near it all, did I?
The Chair: Yes, you did almost use all of it.
Mr George Mammoliti (Yorkview): I have a question for you. It's more of a case, actually. My constituency office has been going nuts with a particular community, and a decision that North York made a number of years ago is driving a bunch of home owners crazy in my community.
Twenty-five years ago there was a subdivision built, and in the backyard there was a drain installed at the back door of each home. The drain apparently, at that time, was approved to go into a particular sewer. I'm not sure if it was the grey water or if it was another sewer or the sewer drain. There's a grey water sewer system or another one. I'd have to look into that.
A few years ago North York had passed a bylaw that would ask for all of the drains to be covered or redirected into another system at the cost of each home owner. The home owners are having to dish out $600, $700 for what I believe is a North York or a municipal expense. Would they be able to appeal to you under this circumstance, and if so, what would be the procedure? Would there be any acts that would forbid them to appeal to the tribunal?
Mrs Levac: You mean the owners?
Mr Mammoliti: Yes, the owners themselves. They got together.
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Mrs Levac: I think they have to go to the clerk and file an appeal.
Mr Mammoliti: Would this be something the tribunal would look at in terms of making a decision on who's responsible for paying for the drains to be covered or the drains to be rerouted 20 years after it was passed by the municipality?
Mrs Levac: It was passed, but do they have an engineer's report there for covering --
Mr Mammoliti: Yes.
Mrs Levac: Oh, they do. Well, then, if there is an engineer's report, I imagine they had to have the normal procedure, and they can certainly appeal to the tribunal.
Mr Mammoliti: So the tribunal would look at something like this?
Mrs Levac: I think so.
Mr Mammoliti: And after you'd make a decision, would that supersede any of the decisions that perhaps a municipal council would have made?
Mrs Levac: Yes, it does, and I think it's written in the act that the tribunal's decision is final.
Mr Mammoliti: So if the tribunal decides later that the municipality is responsible in paying for the covers for the drains, then the municipality would have to pay for it?
Mrs Levac: I would think so.
Mr Mammoliti: Thank you very much. You're going to be busy.
Mr McLean: You'd better be clear on that very fact you have to go to your municipal council first to get them to apply.
Mr Mammoliti: They did.
Mr McLean: Then they will look into it and --
Mr Mammoliti: They did already.
Mrs Levac: Yes, because I think an appeal can be made under section 50, I guess, by a municipality to the Ontario Drainage Tribunal.
Mr Waters: I have a couple of questions. One of the things that I've seen over the last number of years, and it concerns me about maybe the types of drains that we're installing in farmers' fields, is that when we have a wet year the drains are very good, but when we have a dry year we don't have the moisture content any longer in our soil. Indeed, in 1990 and 1991 in southwestern Ontario, where there's extensive drainage, we had farmer after farmer in problems because their land was almost a desert, and lo and behold, in a lot of cases they've drained the water off. I'm wondering if indeed there isn't a better way of dealing with this rather than trying to drain the water off, and indeed drain wetlands historically is what we have done to make them workable farm land. Are we doing the best thing?
Mrs Levac: The future will tell. I know there is quite a conflict right now between environmentalists and farmers. We need the drainage, but in fact we have no control over dry and wet years. In wet years we need the drainage to take a crop off the land. Some of these questions are very difficult.
Mr Waters: I come from the tourist area, and in Muskoka we don't have a lot of drainage going on. There's a bit in the Simcoe side of my riding where we have more farming. I guess I'm curious about how these things physically work. Don't they have some means of at least shutting down the system and holding the water on the fields, should you be looking at a dry year, or maintaining a level of water within the field system? If all it is is a drain that runs out into a ditch and you don't have any way to maintain some sort of water level, you would --
Mrs Levac: I imagine some gadgets could be installed in the drains to do this, but this would be very expensive and add up again to the cost of maintaining the drains.
Mr Waters: But isn't it just as expensive if you get a dry year to see all of your labours from the spring and all of that -- yes, you've got on the land a month before you should have and you've got your crop in three weeks before it should have been in, and all of those things are wonderful, but come July when the heat hits and your crop burns in the field --
Mr McLean: That's the gambling of farming.
Mrs Levac: That's right.
Mr Waters: Yes, as Mr McLean just said, it's the gambling of farming, but believe me, those farmers didn't come to this Legislature and say: "Bail us out. We have a problem. We need relief from drought."
Mrs Levac: I'll just compare 1991, which was dry, with 1992, which was very wet. In 1991, even if it was very dry, the corn crop in my area was good.
Mr Waters: Corn loves it.
Mrs Levac: Yes, it loves the heat. But last year on my own farm we had to plow over 50 acres of corn which had not ripened.
Mr Waters: Was it drained land?
Mrs Levac: Yes, it was. My 400-acre farm is all drained.
Mr Waters: So in essence the drainage didn't resolve your problem; Mother Nature overrode it.
Mrs Levac: It did, I must admit.
The Chair: Ms Carter has a question too. I'm just letting you know you have three minutes left; two and a half, actually.
Mr Waters: I just have a very quick question, so no preamble or anything. The wetlands policy: Do you see that affecting the Drainage Act?
Mrs Levac: I sure do. I had copies of this in the township office last year, and as you know, it will affect Caledonia township because we have the Alfred bog in there and we do have a couple of very important municipal drains crossing this bog. Some contractors have started to take black muck out of the bog, on the outskirts of the bog. They're making good money with this, but it was stopped. I've sent a letter here through a council resolution, and we got a letter back from the Ministry of Natural Resources that we could not give permission for removing any more of this black muck. So slowly I see that, yes.
Ms Carter: You've partly covered what I was going to ask. I think your questions brought out that there may be problems with actual drainage of agricultural land from the farmers' point of view, but I wanted to ask you more about how much impact drainage has or can have on what would otherwise be wetlands. I understand that a very large percentage of what used to be wetlands, certainly in southern Ontario, has disappeared already and I wondered if you felt that this is a problem that we need to --
Mrs Levac: I think the Alfred bog will be saved because it was owned by individuals, but the Nature Conservancy of Canada has bought what Hardy Farms owned, which is a couple of thousand acres, and I think there are procedures right now for buying more of the Alfred bog, and with them having their hands over it -- I hope, anyway. I am a farmer's wife; I am very much for farming, but I am very much also for the conservation of the Alfred bog, because it regulates our water table in the ground and I think it's very important.
I didn't like at all this black muck removal from it, and I hope the government and the Ministry of Natural Resources will not only have a policy but will force the townships to stop this black muck removal, because right now there are no laws to prevent it. They've told me so many times that black muck is not topsoil. You can pass bylaws to prevent the removal of topsoil, but black muck you can't. The gravel or rock removal, that's all legislated, but black muck is not. We tried to pass a bylaw and our solicitor told us that we had no backing to stop it.
Ms Carter: So I think you --
The Chair: Sorry, we are out of time. Mr Curling.
Mr Curling: I have no questions but wish you all the best in your new appointment, should it be endorsed.
Mrs Levac: Thank you. If it is endorsed, I will try to do the best I can to serve.
The Chair: I'd like to thank you for appearing before the committee this morning, Ms Levac. I think you're very impressive in answering the questions of the committee members this morning. Thank you for being here.
Ms Harrington: A point of personal privilege.
The Chair: Yes, certainly.
Ms Harrington: I just want to comment that I find this candidate extremely well qualified and I'm very pleased that she's a woman.
Mrs Levac: Thank you very much. I was one of the first women to work in our region. It was a nice experience.
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LYSE CHAMPAGNE
The Chair: Our next intended appointment is Ms Champagne. Would you like to come forward, please. Welcome to the committee this morning, Ms Champagne. Do you have some brief opening comments which you would like to make before the committee members have an opportunity to talk to you?
Ms Lyse Champagne: No, not at present.
The Chair: You do not?
Ms Champagne: No.
The Chair: Okay, that's fine. Mr Curling.
Mr Curling: Welcome. Thank you for coming before us. I have so many things to ask you that I don't know where to start, but let me start from this point of view. How did you apply for this post?
Ms Champagne: I saw an advertisement in the newspaper. The job interested me. I was not aware that you could actually apply for such an appointment, and I applied and went through the process.
Mr Curling: Were you quite surprised that you were being asked to come before the committee and being considered for acceptance? Were you quite surprised about that when you were --
Ms Champagne: Well, having worked in the government, nothing ever really surprises me.
Mr Curling: Did they give you a mandate, an outline of the Assessment Review Board, how it operates? Were you given one, a mandate, an outline of the role of the Assessment Review Board?
Ms Champagne: Yes.
Mr Curling: You were given that? You were given the mandate that said this is the operation, this is what it does?
Ms Champagne: Yes, I was given information.
Mr Curling: I'm glad for that. So I presume, having applied, having been given the mandate, the only thing they didn't give you was some of the controversial issues that surround all that. Are you familiar with many of the controversial issues that the Assessment Review Board has to deal with?
Ms Champagne: Because I live in downtown Ottawa, I'm very familiar with the whole controversy over market value assessment. Having worked for the urea formaldehyde foam insulation program for three years, I was very aware of the controversy over UFFI as devaluing property.
Mr Curling: You know the saying "where angels fear to tread"? I was just wondering if you're familiar with the issues and you said, "Okay, I want to take on these issues." I want to consider you as an angel or the other individual who sees all these issues and, "I'm going to tread right into these issues."
I want to ask your opinion on some of these issues, then. What do you feel about market value assessment?
Ms Champagne: I have a personal opinion and I also have a professional opinion.
Mr Curling: Do you want to give us both of them?
Ms Champagne: Okay. Personally, having lived in the downtown area for 14 years, I did not feel that market value assessment was the way to go and I was against it, although it personally did not affect my own taxes, because my house had been renovated and I was already paying more taxes than all of my neighbours.
But having worked in government for 20 years in a variety of programs, I learned as a public servant to work with the program as it was structured and to deal with the parameters of the program. So in terms of my appointment to this review board, if market assessment is the case in Ottawa and the base year is 1988, that's what you deal with. You're not there to debate the pros and cons of whether it should even be on that basis or not.
Mr Curling: Will you be supporting market value? I know you have a professional view and a personal view. I ask you, would you be supporting market value assessment if you're on that board?
Ms Champagne: I don't think it's part of the mandate of a board member to be for or against the assessment. It's to adjudicate complaints against the assessment system that's in place.
Mr Curling: One of the concerns that the board will have to be dealing with -- as you know, members serve, as they say, at the pleasure of the Lieutenant Governor. I'm always trying to find out the pleasure of the Lieutenant Governor anyhow. In other words, they will serve until they may feel that they've had enough or the Lieutenant Governor, whoever that is, feels that person has had enough. The average service, I gathered, on the board is about six years.
What this has done, they said in the past, is not really allow the people to come in, people who reflect the community, people serving on the board who are the reflection of women, minorities, disabled, francophones etc. They feel that a sort of training session should be set up. How do you feel about that? How long do you feel a member -- first I'll ask you this one -- should serve on a board like that?
Ms Champagne: I hadn't really thought about a length of time, but I presume that after a while, you acquire some valuable information and experience and it would be a shame if you only sat on the board for a year or so. I don't personally know how long I would want to serve on this board, not having done any of the work yet.
Mr Curling: In other words they call this thing "employment equity," and they feel that not only in jobs themselves, but on the boards and other areas, it must reflect the community, the demographics of that community, and this is not being done. You'd be much for that; in other words, to see that more minorities -- minorities are becoming the majorities now, anyhow -- more people who are visible minorities, women, disabled, are serving on the board more.
Ms Champagne: I think it's important that on something such as a tax review board, a body like that, people who come before the tax assessment review board see themselves reflected. I think it's very important for the board members to be approachable and to be ordinary citizens people can relate to, rather than feel that they're dealing with a bureaucrat or a politician, which they might have biases against. If you want them to feel they have a fair hearing, they should be able to see a variety.
Any one appellant is only going to see one judge, one board member, so they're not necessarily going to see the diversity at any one time, but if they want to find out, I think it's important that the board reflect a variety of people, not just in terms of race or in terms of language or sex, but in terms of just whether you're linked to appraisals or real estate or in any way sort of familiar with the subject; also someone like myself, who doesn't have the technical background, who can be trained to deal with an issue that affects every citizen who owns property.
Mr Curling: One of the things, Ms Champagne, that has hounded this government -- and it has not been able to deal with it efficiently -- is a common word called "backlog." They have been backlogged in every area. They've been backlogged in the justice system; I call your area one of the justice system. They've been backlogged in human rights, in the courts, all over the place. As a matter of fact, you're not an exemption from hearing -- this review board here -- that there's a tremendous amount of complaints, a tremendous amount of backlog there. Being that you're a bit familiar with that, do you feel the adequate resources are there to deal with this tremendous backlog that is also at the Assessment Review Board?
Ms Champagne: I'm not aware of whether they have sufficient resources are not. I know that they have recruited, I think, 24 new members, but whether these are additional members or all replacement of outgoing members, I'm not aware of.
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Mr Curling: People are waiting for ever and it's going to get worse too, with even the mayor in Scarborough, Joyce Trimmer, who's going to make some complaints to the Assessment Review Board. Every city will do its own thing and each member, each individual householder, will be doing this. It will increase this backlog, it will increase this burden upon the Assessment Review Board.
I'm just worried that the board, with its great intention -- and you, also -- to serve, would just be overwhelmed with the government not bringing forth sufficient resources with which to do that. The government keeps changing its mind from one time to the other on what direction it should go in. That would cause a greater concern for the board itself. But even that board, in making recommendations to the government to get on with decisions -- the thing is, as you said, some people have expertise in the sense of appraisal and insurance and all the professional knowledge, but you come also as a citizen, a concerned citizen, who would have that feeling about individuals who feel they're being denied, I call it, justice, that their case is not being heard, that one of the main problems is not the board, so to speak, but the government.
Could I regard you as someone whom, when I hear that things are being pushed, you'd be one on the board who'd be getting the government to make decisions so that they move forward, especially the market value assessment situation? Would you be one of those advocating that the government make up its mind so that you could act efficiently?
Ms Champagne: I don't think that's within my role as a board member, to do that.
Mr Curling: I would encourage you to make it one of your roles as a board member, to make sure that you get proper direction from government. I would encourage all people who are appointed on boards who come forward here to make sure that you have the resources.
I would plead with you, and if you don't, when you leave here, I will plead with the next one, regardless of what board they are, to make sure government is decisive in the things that it does. Can I then appeal to you? My time is up?
The Chair: Yes.
Mr Curling: Can I just ask, can I appeal to you to be one of those advocates there?
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Curling. Mr McLean.
Mr McLean: Welcome to the committee this morning.
You're an intended appointee to the Assessment Review Board. What does that board do?
Ms Champagne: Pardon me?
Mr McLean: What does the review board do?
Ms Champagne: It basically adjudicates on any complaint brought before the board concerning an assessment in a municipality.
Mr McLean: Are you familiar with the working group's paper on property tax?
Ms Champagne: I'm familiar with the working group in that they have reported but I have not read the document.
Mr McLean: You haven't seen the document?
Ms Champagne: No.
Mr McLean: Will you be looking at it shortly? The working group makes some recommendations. You're familiar with the report but you don't know what's in the report. Is that right?
Ms Champagne: I'm familiar with some of the things that were being discussed when they were having their hearings but I'm not up on what they actually recommended regarding tax assessment on property.
Mr McLean: Are you familiar with the amount of appeals that were made in Scarborough this year?
Ms Champagne: Not in Scarborough, no, but I realize there's quite a backlog in the Ottawa area, which is where I come from.
Mr McLean: How many would there be in the Ottawa area?
Ms Champagne: How many complaints? I don't know. I just know it's up considerably in terms of percentage.
Mr McLean: Thousands?
Ms Champagne: I don't know.
Mr McLean: I notice from your résumé that you've done a fair bit of research and that you were a public relations individual, mainly.
Ms Champagne: Yes.
Mr McLean: You're going to find this position a lot different, are you not?
Ms Champagne: Yes.
Mr McLean: Why did you apply for this position? Did you apply or were you asked?
Ms Champagne: No, I applied, and I felt that it was a part of my background that I wanted to explore, the idea of quasi-tribunal adjudication. I had done a lot of public advocacy work and I've worked for a lobby group, but I've worked mostly on the government side and as a government employee I worked in liaison with lobby groups. I just thought it would be a good opportunity to develop the adjudicative aspect.
Mr McLean: Are you familiar with the working group's criticism of the Assessment Review Board, any of those criticisms that it may have?
Ms Champagne: No, I'm not.
Mr McLean: The part with regard to experience and training, have you been briefed on that? How long is it going to take you before you would be able to attend hearings and make your decisions known with regard to appeals?
Ms Champagne: I was briefed last September when I had my interview, but I haven't been briefed since then. But I'm sure I will be briefed on it. I know there was a two-day orientation course that they start with and then you start going to hearings and start accompanying other people at hearings.
Mr McLean: You're from Ottawa. Do you believe that you will be doing a lot of the work in Ottawa or across the province? How will that affect you? Has it been indicated to you that you will have to perhaps travel the province or go wherever is needed?
Ms Champagne: Yes, I've been informed of that.
Mr McLean: You're well aware of that?
Ms Champagne: Yes.
Mr McLean: What is the per diem per day on this position? There must be a per diem, is there?
Ms Champagne: It's $34 an hour.
Mr McLean: It's $34 an hour.
Ms Champagne: Yes.
Mr McLean: How is an hour figured? Is that travelling time or is that working time?
Ms Champagne: I don't know.
Mr McLean: You don't know? Well, say, this is going to be an interesting tribunal. I have no further questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr McLean. Mr Mammoliti.
Mr Mammoliti: Thank you. Welcome to the committee. Mr Curling had asked you a couple of questions, and I agree with you in terms of your mandate. I think if we had all tribunals starting to lobby governments and tell governments what they should be doing, we'd be in one big mess in this province. The tribunals are to make decisions after they've heard from both parties, and I think you're right in terms of your mandate. If the Liberals ever become the government again, I'll remind Mr Curling of exactly his words today.
Mr Curling: Can't hear you.
The Chair: Could you speak up a little bit, please. Thank you.
Mr Mammoliti: Yes, I'm sorry, Madam Chair. Thank you, by the way.
Market value assessment: My community, North York, is very upset at the fact that our government has decided to send it back to Metro for a number of reasons, as well as Scarborough. Scarborough has lodged literally thousands of appeals. So has North York; so has my community.
I agree with my community and I've made that quite clear. I think that we need to do something around equalization, and market value assessment was the closest thing to a fair package that people in North York and people in Scarborough and people even in other areas outside of Toronto would have seen.
There is a working group that has made some recommendations. A part of those recommendations, of course, is to revamp the property tax system to be a more fair and equitable one. In North York we have ratepayers, home owners, who perhaps own homes and are paying an average of $3,000, in my opinion -- $3,200 -- for property taxes a year. Homes in, say, some areas in Toronto which are four or five times bigger than those homes are paying less in property taxes.
These appeals that you're going to probably sit in on and probably going to make judgements on are going to come to you and say: "This is unfair. This is the reason why I want my property taxes reduced." At the same time, it's going to be very difficult, I know, for the board to be able to make decisions on literally thousands of assessments that have been lodged.
If there were a message, and I'm sure that after a few hundred of these hearings you're going to have a message -- even though it's not in your mandate, you're going to have a message for the particular minister in terms of resolving this issue -- what do you think that message would be to that minister in perhaps what the government should be doing to try and rectify that, even if you don't believe in market value assessment? There must be some sort of a solution. What could my government be doing to perhaps resolve some of these disputes?
Ms Champagne: I think it would be up to the chair of the board, having reviewed everything that's happened, to perhaps write some policy suggestions or whatever to the government, but I don't think as a board member -- all I can do is report on the cases that I've heard and what the general trend seems to be without necessarily passing judgement on it. Having worked in government for years, I did that all the time.
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Mr Mammoliti: Do you think it's fair that a home that's perhaps five or six times bigger than a home in another area of the city is paying less in property taxes?
Ms Champagne: I don't think size of house is necessarily the only criterion in terms of use of public transportation or whatever. There are so many factors involved that you can't just go by the size of the house or whether you have two and a half bathrooms or any of these things.
Mr Mammoliti: How about income? Would that play a role with you in determining it? Somebody who perhaps is a millionaire is paying less in property taxes than somebody who's unemployed.
Ms Champagne: No. I can only go by what assessment system is in place and judge according to that. The fairness or unfairness of the base system that I'm working with is not part of my mandate. If it were, you'd have chaos. It's like a judge starting to say, "I know what the law says but I think X."
Mr Mammoliti: Doesn't sympathy play a role in this position?
Ms Champagne: I think you have to show sympathy to the appellants so that they know they're not being shafted, but you also have to show that you can listen to them fairly and judge according to what is already in place.
Mr Mammoliti: Thank you.
Mr Frankford: Welcome. I'm also representing a Scarborough perspective. I don't know if you've seen the clippings that we got in our research package. We have some cuttings from the Toronto Press, some rather colourful language: "Scarborough, Toronto Launch Tax War": "`It's the Genghis Khan school of accounting,' says Toronto councillor"; "Residents Angry Over Tax Fight: Toronto-Scarborough Battle Like a Dime-Store Spy Novel"; Star editorial, "A vicious tax war is raging between the cities of Toronto and Scarborough." Are you prepared to be part of the peacekeeping forces?
Ms Champagne: I worked for the UFFI program, the urea formaldehyde foam insulation program, for three years. In North York I faced 750 angry home owners who were playing to the cameras, and I basically had to stand there and explain what the government's program was as fairly and as politely as I could.
I could sympathize with them that they were very angry because they felt the value of their houses was plummeting and they were facing health problems, but the government had established a program and all I could basically inform them on was the government program.
I see this situation as being very similar. The program had its parameters. I couldn't change them. As the secretary to an advisory council of home owner groups, I would relay to the minister what they were saying in terms of their anger and their feeling that the program was inadequate, but all I could do basically was report on what was happening. But in this case I did not have an adjudicating role, so it's a bit different.
Mr Frankford: Do you think that this war could be a step towards some equity or do you think it's a tactic to jam things up so that people will throw up their hands and go back to find a better solution?
Ms Champagne: I really can't comment on that.
Mr Marchese: I was one of those who opposed market value assessment for a variety of good reasons. First of all, my community would be terribly affected in terms of the residents, but I also didn't see it as a fair way to tax people, because it's not based on people's ability to pay. Market value assessment doesn't correct that injustice.
So for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it would affect railway companies, vacant lands, municipal parking authorities and Hydro's right-of-way corridors, all of which would be passed on to us in terms of cost, it was compelling in terms of reasons to oppose it.
But I also understand that the Assessment Review Board is not there to adjudicate on these matters and it would probably be wrong for you to talk about how to deal with that. Presumably your role is to compare one house to the other within a street, and that's how you assess whether people are overassessed or underassessed. That, as I understand it, is what you do. Market value assessment doesn't come into that in terms of your role.
As a question, I would be interested in knowing what you view as the fundamental guiding principles that you would use to make sure that people get a fair hearing.
Ms Champagne: Basically that they get notice of hearing, that they get a chance to state their case, that each party gets a chance to cross-examine the other and that they get a written decision which outlines the reasons why the judgement has been made as it has been made, and that you clearly show that there's no bias.
Mr Marchese: Would you say that your communications skills, which are numerous in terms of your curriculum vitae, would be helpful in terms of making decisions, written and oral?
Ms Champagne: I think so, because although I've never done any adjudication, when you work in public relations -- especially for the government, because basically you're not working for a private company, you're working for a government program -- you make judgements all the time: Is this the right approach to take? How is this going to seem to the public? etc. You're always trying to see the impact of the program on people.
Mr Marchese: Thanks very much. Good luck.
The Chair: That completes the questions from the members of the committee. I'd like to thank you, Ms Champagne, for being before the committee this morning.
Ms Champagne: Thank you.
The Chair: I would like to ask the committee if there is a motion to approve all of today's appointments.
Mr Waters: So moved.
The Chair: That motion is moved by Mr Waters. Is there any discussion of that motion?
Interjection.
The Chair: This is a motion for all of them. If you wish, they can be voted on individually, or if you wish to move an exception to that motion for an individual --
Mr McLean: It doesn't matter what I do. Just do as you like. You're going to do it anyway.
Ms Harrington: We'd like to know what you would like to do.
Mr McLean: I would have liked to have had the vote on the first three and the vote on the last one separate.
Mr Waters: If he so wants to amend my motion to that, Mr McLean is perfectly within his rights.
The Chair: All right. Then we'll accept an amendment to vote on appointments number one, two and three first, and then vote on the fourth one separately.
All in favour of the appointments of Mr Ripley, Mr Shapiro and Ms Levac? All in favour of those first three appointments? Opposed?
Mr Curling: There's one in there -- you see, the way you package it --
The Chair: No, I'm not packaging it. I'm taking direction from the committee as to how you would like to vote on these appointments.
Mr Curling: Maybe I can't change the motion. I vote against it, because the fact is, Madam Chair, that I know what you said and I'm just observing it. I would have liked to have separated Ripley out of that and vote against it; vote on them separately.
The Chair: Recognizing that this is the first committee that I've chaired, I'm trying to take direction from the committee. I think the committee members are perfectly happy to vote on each appointment individually. That gives every member an equal opportunity to vote, and I think it would be better. So would someone like to move the appointment of Mr Ripley?
Mr Waters: So moved.
The Chair: Moved by Mr Waters. All in favour of the appointment of Mr Ripley? Mr Mammoliti?
Mr Mammoliti: Yes.
The Chair: Okay. Opposed to that motion? Mr McLean, you have to vote.
Interjections.
The Chair: I'm taking direction from the clerk, and the clerk advises me that we cannot abstain in committee. We have to vote either in favour or opposed.
Mr McLean: What section of the standing orders -- I'll vote no and make it easy for you.
The Chair: Thank you. It is in the standing orders. All right. We have that. The vote is carried for Mr Ripley's appointment.
Moved by Mr Waters to appoint Mr Shapiro. All in favour of that motion? That is a unanimous vote, all in favour. Thank you.
Moved by Mr Waters, the appointment of Mrs Levac. All in favour of that motion? That motion is unanimous.
Moved by Mr Waters, the appointment of Ms Champagne. All in favour of that appointment? Opposed to that appointment? Thank you. That motion is carried.
Mr Marchese: I move adjournment.
The Chair: I would just like to say that there will be a brief meeting of the subcommittee. Mr Marchese has moved adjournment of the committee this morning. Thank you.
The committee adjourned at 1151.