CONTENTS
Wednesday 19 May 1993
Appointments review
Arthur Smith
Vance Latchford
Peter Faux
Subcommittee report
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)
Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)
*Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND)
*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
Clerk / Greffière: Mellor, Lynn
Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1033 in committee room 2.
APPOINTMENTS REVIEW
Consideration of intended appointments.
ARTHUR SMITH
The Chair (Mrs Margaret Marland): Good morning. I'd like to call this meeting of the standing committee on government agencies to order, and I would like to welcome Mr Smith. Would you like to come forward, please, Mr Smith, just to have a seat. The process is that if you wish to address the committee for a few minutes, you may, and then in rotation we go through the three parties, asking you questions, and we have half an hour to complete that time. So if you have any opening comments that you wish to address to the committee, please feel free to do so.
Mr Arthur Smith: Okay. Thank you very much. Well, first off, my name is Art Smith. As a brief introduction, I'm a farmer in Beamsville in Niagara region. I served for 12 years on the Ontario Grape Growers' Marketing Board, six of those as vice-chairman, during which time we negotiated with the governments of Ontario and Canada compensation for grape growers because of free trade and also the findings under GATT.
My final three years I served as chairman. I set out three goals when I started. They were to heal the wounds of a divided industry, to bring the industry together and to stop the downsizing of what was once a flourishing industry and get it back into a growth sector. We accomplished those three things, and I then retired as chairman.
Most recently, I chaired meetings for the farm products marketing commission regarding the apple commission and whether or not it wanted to establish a national farm marketing agency.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Smith. This selection was requested by the government party, so would someone like to start from the government?
Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): You say over the last five years with regard to the wine industry -- or shall I say grape and wine industry? Is that better? --
Mr Smith: I look at it as one industry.
Ms Harrington: -- that you have had a complete turnaround. Are those your words?
Mr Smith: I think that's fair to say.
Ms Harrington: Could you give me an idea of how you accomplished that? Was it an initiative of a group or of the individual actual farmers or of government involvement?
Mr Smith: I think if you went back five years in time, the governments of Ontario and Canada, but primarily Ontario, were very frustrated with the grape and wine industry. We had been running years of surplus production and it was an ongoing problem. We entered free trade. The government of Canada in its wisdom basically decided to give the industry away. We weren't smart enough to lie down and play dead. I guess it was through our perseverance as an industry, as a group of individuals, that we carried on and today are in a growth sector.
The varieties of grapes that are grown are different today than they were 10 years ago. We still have some of the same things, but proportionately everything has changed. The emphasis is on quality as opposed to a vin ordinaire, a cheaper product. The consumer is more aware today, due to our efforts, part of which came from the adjustment program and the funds from that program and the millions of dollars allocated to promotion, and I think a big part of it came with the efforts of a few people who said, "Let's get it together." As I said earlier, the government was very frustrated with the industry because it would hear the grape growers' story, it would hear a story from the wine council and then it would hear stories from individual wineries, all conflicting.
One of the things that I set out to do was to establish the goals of an industry. I felt that once we could establish a common goal for that industry and look at all the players -- there were the grape growers, the wineries, the government, what does everybody want out of it? Once you establish that, then the numbers kind of fall out and we can all work towards that common goal. That's what happened, and today you see only positive news about the Ontario grape and wine industry in the paper.
Ms Harrington: That's for sure. You were saying that you didn't just take the news -- this is five years ago. Was it yourself and another few individuals -- this is what I'm hearing -- who actually created a groundswell of working together that actually promoted this change?
Mr Smith: I won't take all the credit, but I went in the office and I said, "This is crap." Excuse my language. I'd been to enough advisory meetings -- and there you sit with two sides; you have the processing side and the producers' side -- and simply got fed up. I thought: "This is crazy. We've got to work together. Let's stop nickel-and-diming each other to death every time we turn around."
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I took it upon myself at that point to contact a few people on the wine side of the industry, people who were not negotiators. It wasn't through lack of respect for the negotiators, but rather the fact that they are negotiators. Everything they say, whether it's in December or February or August, they're always thinking in terms of negotiations in August, so they don't want to make comments in January that somebody can hang them with in August. So I had to get away from that group to a group that wasn't worried about dollars and cents per se, but "Let's talk about the goals of the industry."
I think the very first meeting that we had as a group was in Elmer Buchanan's office. In fact I think it was in this building, upstairs in one of the committee rooms. Rita Burak was there and I acted as a spokesperson for this group. She said: "I can't believe it. I can't believe that you people are in the same room together and that you're letting a grape grower talk for you." It's really a non-issue, but it was of major importance at the same time. That was the effect I was trying to get: "Let's look at this as a team, as one industry."
I have a simple belief that as you go through business, there's enough money out there that if we all take a little piece of it, we'll all survive. But if you have -- and you do have in tough times -- everybody trying to take from the other guy for survival, then you've got a problem. As long as times are good, there's more money out there and everybody can do that, I suppose.
Ms Harrington: What you're saying is you have a fairly good working relationship with this government as well as your local --
Mr Smith: I don't look at it as with the government, capital G, but rather with the people in the bureaucracy of things.
Ms Harrington: I wanted to turn to your new challenge here, the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission. You were mentioning the importance of having clear goals and getting everyone to focus and work towards that. What would you say were one or two of your goals for this commission?
Mr Smith: We read in the newspaper and hear on the news how tough things are. Indeed they are tough in agriculture, but I think that we can overcome to a large degree that toughness by working together. I think it's exactly what we did in our industry. I think we were the cutting edge of change. I look at the tender fruit industry, which I am more familiar with than a lot of others, and it's going through exactly the same thing we went through. If you can look at your problems collectively and how do we solve them collectively, then you can do it. I think that's the message that has to get out.
It's not necessarily easy. The very nature of boards and having processors and producers sit together to go through negotiations is an adversarial role. During that process, over years, you do tend to lose some trust. To make it work, you must establish a trust first. So that's one of the goals.
The Chair: Ms Harrington, I think Ms Carter has a question too.
Ms Harrington: Okay, I'll yield to my colleagues. Thank you, Mr Smith.
The Chair: Ms Carter has two and a half minutes.
Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): You obviously have victories to your credit, but it seems to me there are more problems imminent, looming up on the horizon. Of course, this marketing commission is part of Canada's system of supply management, and we all know there's the Uruguay round with GATT going on at the moment. Does not this open up a whole new series of threats?
Also, while you're commenting on that, maybe we should be looking at the North American free trade agreement too and what the signing of that might do to the system as it affects Canadian farmers.
Mr Smith: Under the GATT issue and article 11 and whether or not it will rescind the import quota powers of supply management boards -- I'll stress supply management, because there are many, many different types of marketing boards out there. Supply management are the boards that seem to have a bad image, as it were. I don't know what they'll do with GATT; nobody can answer that question. But I think what you have to look at is, in trying to come to terms with fairness, whether or not we should ease border restrictions, you also have to look at what other supplying countries are doing. My expertise, my experience, lies in grapes and wine, but I can tell you that about four years ago you could buy a case of Italian wine landed in New Jersey for $4.65 a case. Our wineries were paying more than that for the empty bottles. You tell me where the fairness is, because that's what we need. You have to have a counterbalance, a countermeasure.
I listen to a lot of bureaucrats and members of Parliament, both federally and provincially, who claim that we were the boy scouts of the world and we allowed people to dump all over us and we were afraid to react. I don't think we can be afraid to react. But I think we have to look at what is fair play in all of this, and I don't have the answer for you.
Ms Carter: We can fight back.
Mr Smith: Absolutely.
Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): Welcome to the committee, Mr Smith. I guess my first question to you would be -- I know it's been touched on briefly here by some of the other members -- on some of the priorities that you would have once you become a member of the board, and you touched on two of them already. What would be the first steps that you would take?
Mr Smith: What would be my first steps, sitting on a committee? That's a very good question. There are ongoing problems in every board operation. One of the problems that I think has happened -- and I can't be specific -- when I look at the agricultural scene today versus what I assume it was like 50 years ago, we had farmers who were more in tune with the marketplace, be they peach growers or whatever.
Today, because we have marketing boards, marketing agencies, which simply means that you have a handful of people, be they elected or staff, who look after the marketing of a crop or commodity, the actual realities of the marketplace are far removed from the producer, and I think it is imperative that producers be more in tune, more in touch, with the reality of the marketplace.
We went through a situation in the winter where the apple marketing agency has, over a number of years, been looking at establishing a national marketing agency. If they got it, part of the hope, at any rate, would have been that they would have had border controls. To me, that wasn't the answer.
When I drove around the country and I looked at some old, standard apple trees and I have been in the supermarket and I've bought some Ontario apples, I could see what the real problem was. To me it was a quality problem. If you're going to compete with high-quality product coming from other parts of the world, then we have to change our thinking here. That's exactly what the wine industry did. It's exactly what the apple industry is going to have to do and it's exactly what peach growers are going to have to do. We have to stop looking at minimum standards and start looking at a better-quality product.
That is what I'm getting at: You've got to get more awareness of the realities of the marketplace to the grower.
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Mr Cleary: Another question that I have, not naming any particular marketing board: The members tell me that they're not kept properly informed on alternatives and what's going on. Would you like to comment on that?
Mr Smith: I can't comment on what other boards do. Running a marketing board, I guess, is no different than any governing body. You elect the people to make decisions on your behalf. Access to that information is available to growers and I believe that holds true for all marketing boards. It certainly was on our board. We did not mail out minutes of every meeting that we had, but if any growers were interested, they could come in and view those minutes.
We had a letter that went out to growers, about probably once a month would be my guess, as to what was going on within the industry, within the marketing board itself, what we were looking at. So I think that information is there, but a lot of it depends on the grower wanting to access it.
Mr Cleary: Another thing that I have to get back to and I ask everybody the same question. It's been bothering me for quite a few years about all the farm products that are coming back due to cross-border shopping. The area I represent -- it's just sad. Do you have anything you'd like to comment on that?
Mr Smith: I'm not sure if I understand your question.
Mr Cleary: It's dairy products, chicken, turkey.
Mr Smith: When I look at marketing boards, I look at chicken. I think it's the cheapest meat we can buy and yet it's the one that takes a lot of flak as a marketing board. I remember speaking to a group of people, Rotarians, and one guy got up and talked about going fishing. It cost him $500 for the weekend and he caught one fish. My comment was: That's an example of an unregulated commodity.
Yes, we have problems with people cross-border shopping but I remember, when I was a kid my dad raised some chickens in one free barn that we had. The price was up and down like a yo-yo. When the price went up, everybody jumped in and then the price went down and you lost your shirt. That's no fun either. Chickens are a six- or seven-week crop and that's what happens with it.
If we wish to stop that, then you have to look at implementations at the border; stronger controls at the border. There is nothing wrong with growers, producers making money. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it at all. This system is set up so that you have retailers on the commission, you have consumers on the commission, you have processors on the commission and there is a system in place whereby if somebody disagrees with the price of a commodity, they can take it to a hearing. It doesn't happen very often because people really have a great deal of difficulty in telling somebody they're not entitled to a decent living.
Mr Cleary: One other question I might have for you: What powers should the commission have over the internal affairs of the marketing board?
Mr Smith: The marketing boards work under regulations established by the province of Ontario and carried out by the commission itself. The local boards have a responsibility to the growers and there has to be somebody to oversee that or you can and will run into difficulty.
We've had boards go bankrupt in the past, and the commission has stepped in and helped out to make things fluid again. I think they have to have powers over local boards. I have no problem with that at all.
Mr Cleary: Do you feel the existing powers are adequate?
Mr Smith: From my experience, yes, but I'd have to go into that a lot deeper to properly answer your question. I have no problem with my years and my experiences with the commission.
We approached the commission, I guess it was two or three years ago, which I thought was perhaps unnecessary, but it was to make growers be able to plant Niagara grapes for a US company. We pulled out all these acres of grapes and my job, as chairman at the time, was to find markets and that was one of those markets. But we had to come to Toronto, we put a case forward and it was allowed.
Mr Cleary: Do you feel there are any environmental issues facing your board?
Mr Smith: Facing my board?
Mr Cleary: Yes, that challenge you as a board member.
Mr Smith: On the commission?
Mr Cleary: Yes.
Mr Smith: No. I really think that goes outside the mandate of the marketing commission. I've believed for a number of years that what starts off as a simple concept gets carried out and mushrooms well beyond that. You know, we had growers asking us to do things that were well outside of marketing grapes, and I refused. You don't want to get caught up in something that's well outside.
You have the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. I think that's where environmental issues should be answered and addressed, not through the marketing commission.
Mr Cleary: Thank you. Good luck.
Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): Good morning, Mr Smith. Welcome to the committee. Are you in favour of marketing boards?
Mr Smith: Yes.
Mr McLean: You would hate to see them done away with, I presume.
Your commission has a very powerful job. Of the several marketing boards, one of the main jobs you have is to investigate the cost of producing, processing, pricing and marketing of farm product. Have you been involved in any negotiations between the processor and the farmers or the marketing board with regard to their commodity pricing?
Mr Smith: Which boards? Any boards?
Mr McLean: Well, the milk marketing board.
Mr Smith: No, not with the milk marketing board. The only involvement I have had in any form of negotiations is 12 years on the grape growers' marketing board, where we negotiated directly with processors.
Mr McLean: Do you have any idea of how many cases the commission has dealt with over the past year? Is it several or a few?
Mr Smith: Just a few, I would think. My guess would be, under five.
Mr McLean: It would be less than five.
Do you want to give me your views with regard to the negotiations between the commodity groups and the processors? You've been involved in the grape and wine processing. What is the indication that I could have with regard to the negotiations that would take place?
I'll tell you why I asked the question. It's because it appears to me that a lot of the processing people hire the top lawyers. They have the upper hand, I think, so to speak, because a lot of our groups are farm-represented, farm-oriented. We may not have the professional people on staff of these large processing -- Ault, Beatrice -- people. Are we going to win this fight or are we going to lose it to the large processors, to keep the farmers on the farm?
Mr Smith: I think it goes back to my initial comments, and that is, what are the goals in industry? If the goal of an industry is to have a viable industry, producer-processor sector, then the numbers have to fall out to allow that.
To answer the other question about, will the farmers lose when the processors bring in the hired guns, during my experience -- it was my first year as chairman -- I had to go to arbitration. They brought in the hired guns and we didn't have them, and the wineries are still crying over it. Does that answer that one?
You don't need the hired guns. You need a little common sense, the truth and a damned good argument. That works.
Mr McLean: The problem I have is that with a lot of the processors, they have everything laid out, wages have increased, everything's increased in their commodity groups. But our farm people, their costs all increase too --
Mr Smith: Yes, absolutely.
Mr McLean: -- and they don't seem to be allowed an increase in their product. It always goes up at the other end, the processing end, but it doesn't go up at the farm end.
Mr Smith: That's because the processor has the option of doing business or not. If you're a buyer and the price is too high, you can choose not to buy that week. The farmer doesn't have that option. I feel sorry for farmers, being one myself, but when we got into the business we knew where we stood in the chain of events, which is not to say that we should give up and all go belly up.
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But something else has happened in agriculture, and that is our efficiencies. Our efficiencies have improved tremendously. Where we used to plant trees 20 feet by 20 feet, they're now doing it 12 feet by 7 or 8. We're getting our production per acre way up.
The other thing that has happened is that the consumer today is faced with more choice than he's ever been faced with before. We used to sell strawberries in June or early July. You can go into any supermarket right now and buy California berries for $1 a pint, probably. You can buy kiwi fruit; people didn't even know what that was 10 years ago.
Those are the realities that the grower community has to face. We can't change that; we're not going to turn the clock back. The sad reality is that farming is no different from any other industry. If you do not produce, if you are not efficient, you are going to go under, and trying to save them is wrong.
Mr McLean: But we've been saying that for 30 years, "You've got to get more efficient."
Mr Smith: And we have.
Mr McLean: Farmers have become more efficient.
Mr Smith: Far more efficient.
Mr McLean: But they still say they've got to be more efficient. Yet they don't get a price increase for four years, the processors get an increase every year, and that bothers me. So you still agree that the farmers should be more efficient?
Mr Smith: Yes, I think the farmer has to increase his efficiency. He's no different than any other industry. That's not the answer to the specific problem, but in many cases we are overproducing for our market, and this is the role I believe marketing boards should take. You have some with the ability of supply management that can set quota and manipulate, if you want, the kind of production they think will sell. They come under a great deal of fire for that. We have other boards that don't have those powers that I think should have. My personal experience would be that if you looked at the tender fruit industry, if you looked at the grape industry, if we had had the ability to target and say, "We believe we can handle X amount of produce over the next so many years," we wouldn't have been faced with some of these problems today.
Mr McLean: The commission requests minutes of meetings of some of the commodity groups. Are you aware of that being fulfilled, that these groups are providing their minutes to the commission?
Mr Smith: The board that I represented sent its minutes to the commission on a continuous basis, all the time.
Mr McLean: Of the six boards that are empowered to negotiate prices with processors, have you known any of them that have had to go to arbitration?
Mr Smith: Yes.
Mr McLean: Which ones?
Mr Smith: I suspect they all have, from time to time. We have twice during my involvement: once when I was chairman, once when I was vice-chairman. Now, we have never gone over the entire spectrum. In the grape industry we were pricing on 17 or 20 different classifications of grapes and we normally came to agreement on all of them. Periodically, we could not come to agreement on one or two of those.
Mr McLean: Grant Smith used to be the head of the Ontario Milk Marketing Board. You're not related to Grant, are you?
Mr Smith: No, sir.
Mr McLean: You probably knew him.
Mr Smith: No.
Mr McLean: Never knew him? So you're not familiar with the milk marketing board then?
Mr Smith: I haven't had a great deal of experience with it, no.
Mr McLean: I hope you become familiar, because I'm a dairy farmer.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr McLean. Thank you, Mr Smith, for appearing before the committee this morning.
SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT
The Chair: Members of the committee, before we proceed to our 11 o'clock appointment, could we just have someone move the report of the subcommittee, please? Thank you. Moved by Mr Waters. All in favour of the subcommittee report which you have before you? Carried. Thank you.
VANCE LATCHFORD
The Chair: Mr Vance Latchford. Welcome, Mr Latchford. In your appearance before the committee this morning you are more than welcome to make a few opening comments. There are 30 minutes split equally between each caucus to ask you questions. Would you like to make some opening comments first?
Mr Vance Latchford: No, I have none, thanks.
The Chair: All right, thank you. The third party made the request, so we'll start with the third party.
Mr McLean: Good morning, Mr Latchford. Why did you apply for this position? Are you involved in the housing authorities at all?
Mr Latchford: I've lived in and been involved in public housing since 1979. I became active first in the communities in 1983 in my own community. I've broadened that activity to include involvement on a Metro-wide scale. I've made extensive use of freedom of information legislation and as a result of that have an extensive library of public housing and federal housing policy and consultants' reports and so on. I currently provide support to residents' organizations and other people who have need for that type of assistance.
Mr McLean: Do you live in a housing authority residence?
Mr Latchford: Yes, I do.
Mr McLean: There are a lot of newsletters that have been sent out with regard to the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority. Are you familiar with some of those newsletters that go out?
Mr Latchford: I'm currently a sitting member of the editorial board of the Homewards newsletter which is a residents' newsletter funded totally and produced by the housing authority.
Mr McLean: My understanding is that some of that material has been very detrimental to the private landlords. Is that right? I've just been told that, and I'm curious to know if that is a fact.
Mr Latchford: Homewards, as an MTHA-produced publication, does not touch on such matters that I'm aware of. I've been on that committee for about six months and I've not seen anything of the sort.
Mr McLean: What is your ambition as far as sitting on the authority is concerned? To increase the numbers of units we have or make the ones we have better? What is your main thrust of what you want to see happen?
Mr Latchford: I want to improve the efficiency of the housing authority. I want the housing authority to take serious steps to address both the staff morale problem and the significantly inconsistent manner in which it consults with its tenants and how it carries out those consultations. I think there are some real problems in both those areas.
Mr McLean: I'm curious, because I have people come in my office from my community complaining about the housing authority and complaining about some of the conditions they're living in within the housing authority. That's one of your aims, to try and clear up some of those problems?
Mr Latchford: I believe we must improve the work environment, improve people's feelings about their work and about themselves and we can then move immediately to perhaps do some delayering, if that's possible, and enhance the efficiency and service delivery. I'm committed to all of those things.
Mr McLean: The Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority housed 761 new tenants from October 1 to December 31, 1992. It seems like a large number of new tenants. Is there a big turnover in some of these residences?
Mr Latchford: My understanding is that there is a fair turnover in the communities, yes. Turnover is higher in some communities than others.
Mr McLean: Why would that be?
Mr Latchford: I think a multitude of reasons. People's life circumstances change. They get married and move away. I left MTHA for a period of about a year and a half and got married and wound up back in Metro housing about two years ago. I guess some people want to leave the housing because they're not happy with the conditions.
Mr McLean: Do you think the tenants have enough say in the operation of the units, the group they're involved in? Do you think the tenants themselves have enough say, or do you think the housing authority has too much say?
Mr Latchford: I don't think they have enough say. My sense is that there should be something done to have as many decisions as possible being made by the communities. I'm talking about the local management staff and the tenants getting together and reaching agreement around realistic solutions to jointly defined problems.
Mr McLean: In the community you live in, do you have enough people offering their services to sit on that board? Is there an election, or are people just appointed to sit on the housing committee of that residence?
Mr Latchford: Some communities have residents' associations or committees; other communities do not. The community I live in is a 34-unit community, and we do not have a committee. We've had some difficulties getting a committee together because of people's frustration with the lack of responsiveness on the part of local staff.
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Mr McLean: The management of the units, the management committee with regard to the authority: Does it respond when you have a problem within your unit that needs repairs? Are they quick at responding or are they taking weeks and\or months to do the job?
Mr Latchford: It depends on the nature of the thing I want done, but I don't see them doing anything special for me. I don't think they respond as quickly as their written documentation would suggest they ought to be responding.
Mr McLean: What about security? Is that a problem?
Mr Latchford: Security's a problem in a couple of ways. The first way in which security is a problem is that the public housing provider ought not to be in the security business. The limited resources available to it would not allow it to do it effectively.
There's a need to shift initiatives in public housing to putting pressure on properly accountable sources, such as Metropolitan Toronto Police, for example. I think the housing authority providing its own security just serves to isolate the tenants from the community at large, and I don't think that's positive.
The Chair: There are four and half minutes left. Do you have any questions, Ms Witmer?
Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): No, I pass.
The Chair: All right, we have three speakers for the government.
Mr George Mammoliti (Yorkview): Thank you and welcome, Mr Latchford. I know you to be a very hardworking and very caring individual in MTHA. We've known each other for a number of years.
Mr Mammoliti: In my previous life as the representative of the workers there, you've had some very constructive things to say to me in terms of staff and staffing. You know that my concern has been for a long time, and it still is, the effectiveness and perhaps the way MTHA carries out its regular routines and the structure that's there to allow those routines to take place; more specifically, maintenance. In my opinion, maintenance is the most important thing, and the way perhaps management deals with that.
Having said that, I also believe and I have believed for a number of years that tenants need to play an active role in the decision-making. I've always felt that the roughly 17 levels and layers of government within Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority is just a little too much. The levels of management there and the bureaucracy there has built up to a degree that it gets to a point where service isn't being addressed.
The minister, in putting together a package called Planning Together, had the right idea, asking tenants to participate. I'm not too sure that it's worked 100% in terms of getting the right mechanism together to get things started. The first question that I'd ask you is, would you agree that we need more tenant participation in the decision-making?
I've got three questions, Madam Chair, so I'd ask that you bear with me. That's the first one.
Mr Latchford: Yes, absolutely.
Mr Mammoliti: Yes? Good. Second question: Have we now perhaps identified a problem, the problem that has existed for years, that being that the decision-making and the bureaucracy at that level isn't necessarily helping the tenants and that the best people to help the tenants might be the tenants themselves?
Mr Latchford: I think we've yet again identified the problem you just spoke to. I think that the approach is to in fact put something in place that would see tenants helping themselves to put them into a position where they can assert themselves and see themselves as reasonably equal partners in the process.
Mr Mammoliti: Would you agree with conversion of public housing into a co-op or non-profit type of a deal? There's $250 million being spent each year by the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority alone.
Mr Latchford: I think it's a viable option. My concern, though, is that there are some significant problems with housing stock at this point in Metro Toronto and also with the cost, as you say. I'm wondering whether it might not consume a considerable amount of time at the expense of the tenants, I think, and the government and the private sector or the public if we were to abandon what is under way now, the planning process.
Mr Mammoliti: I'm not suggesting that at all.
Mr Latchford: Apart from that, I agree. I think it would make sense to do something like that.
Mr Mammoliti: In terms of the current expenditure now -- and I'm glad you made the comments about security. Metro Toronto Housing is the third-largest landlord in North America, and we are not only landlords but we've turned into a huge security system, as you say. A large portion of that $250 million goes to pay for security, security that I think tenants could perhaps do a little bit better if we give them the appropriate training, and it would be a lot cheaper too.
But we've also turned into a huge recreational type of landlord as well. We're providing all sorts of programs for our tenants. I'm not too sure whether we should be doing that. I think we should be doing it to a degree, but I think we're doing it a little bit too much.
Would you not agree that the tenants in MTHA should be asking themselves this question: "Do you want your toilet fixed or do you want to play basketball?" These are the types of questions that I think we need to start asking our tenants in MTHA. Let's face it, today's budget day and we are going to be having to cut somewhere. These are some of the suggestions that I've already made, on areas we should be cutting. Shouldn't tenants have to decide whether they want their toilet fixed or their wall plastered or whether they want to play basketball or hockey?
Mr Latchford: Absolutely, but further to that, the comments you've just made raise another concern. That is, is MTHA in the housing business or is it in the "do it all for you-ism" business? The things they are doing only serve to isolate the public housing tenants from the community at large, and that, in my own view and experience, is a disempowering, controlling type of management of the situation, and that's not acceptable.
Mr Mammoliti: What are the types of suggestions that you're going to make, sitting on the board, to help improve all the things I've talked about, seeing that we agree on most of them?
Mr Latchford: I think we need to address how workers are treated, first of all, because I think we need to improve relations. We need to also define and put into place a process that sees tenants taking part in a meaningful way at the local level, where it really counts. What I'd like to see, actually, is local communities making decisions around their own budgets and around their own priorities and making quarterly reports to the board and basically having the board approve those in conjunction with the MTHA budget committee of tenants, which has just been put into place.
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Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): Welcome. I know you're a constituent of mine. One of the things one hears in Scarborough frequently in general meetings is that Scarborough has more than its share of public housing, and this is usually coming from a very negative position, implying that it's a problem. Do you have any thoughts about how one can reach out to the community and improve the perception -- or the reality -- of public housing in a community such as West Hill?
Mr Latchford: That's a difficult one. My thinking is that we could start that process by integrating the public housing tenants into the community at large; stop providing services ourselves. Another thing could be to have the tenants more involved themselves in doing things that they need to do rather than having the housing authorities advocating for them. The public housing tenants are not mentally deficient. They became public housing tenants because of some life circumstance, and other than that, they're quite capable of fending for themselves. There may be a component of the public housing tenant population that requires some assistance. Certainly, there are services available outside of the housing authority that can do that.
Someone who appeared before this committee some time ago talked about tenant empowerment and community involvement and things like that, and they spoke to it in terms of having to water and to feed them. My sense is that if you have to water and feed something, then what it is you're watering and feeding doesn't feel that it has any real place or any real control over its own destiny. So I think we need to set something up that allows tenants to be fully participating members of the community. Then I think some of the community attitudes would change.
Mr Frankford: Let me just comment on one other thing and perhaps get your reaction. I think there's considerable misunderstanding about the terms that are used. "Public housing," "non-profit housing," "subsidized housing" are all lumped together and there's a feeling that this government has been building OHC housing, which of course is not the case. There has been no OHC housing built since the early 1970s under a previous administration. Do you have any thoughts about how we can improve the understanding of what the different forms of housing imply?
Mr Latchford: I don't necessarily have any ideas on that. My thinking is, why are people so interested in what kind of housing somebody lives in? I think the era of building public housing is over. The government doesn't do it any more. Maybe we want to create higher profiles for cooperative-type housing and perhaps non-profit housing.
Mr Cleary: You touched earlier on the efficiency of doing this. Just exactly what did you mean there?
Mr Latchford: Well, I'll give you an example out of the 1992 estimates. Salary dollars allocated to a 34-unit complex in West Hill were $56,000, and I think there are opportunities to be more efficient than that. As Mr Mammoliti stated, there are significant opportunities to have tenants doing some of the things for themselves and that could reduce the costs significantly. That's one of the options.
Mr Cleary: That would be your goal, to do that?
Mr Latchford: I think so, yes.
Mr Cleary: I must say that I'm not as familiar with the housing in Toronto as I am with some other areas of the province, but every time I turn on the television, I hear there are problems of safety in the housing units. Would you like to comment on that?
Mr Latchford: Yes. I think we need to give the tenants some incentive to protect their own communities. We can do that by shifting power to the local level, with some accountability. I think it's important that the taxpayer be accounted to, but other than that, I think people ought to be able to manage where they live in a way that makes things more unpalatable for those who want to engage in anti-social behaviour.
Mr Cleary: Then I understand that you are saying the tenants should have more say in who is housed in the housing authority?
Mr Latchford: That is something I would like to see. I have some concerns sometimes about how people speak of people with psychiatric difficulties and so on and so forth, so I think something would need to be done to ensure that those people aren't further isolated and marginalized.
Mr Cleary: I understand that you get into the housing authority with a point system. Is that correct?
Mr Latchford: That's correct.
Mr Cleary: How would you work that, then? How would you have the point system and then choose who you wanted in there?
Mr Latchford: The point system as it currently is, its predominant feature I guess is looking at income. I think we not only need to look at income -- although perhaps take a bit less of a look at income -- but look at people's ability to generate income: Let's look at how people may be able to move on if they want. But the ideal situation, I think, is to try to, ultimately, within a few years down the road, come up with a situation where we don't see large public housing communities as they are currently.
Mr Cleary: There's been an argument for and against public housing. I take it that you're in support of it?
Mr Latchford: I think it's necessary, but it's not necessarily necessary in its present form. I think the present form of public housing gives rise to significant concern.
Mr Cleary: Is that the only reason you support it?
Mr Latchford: Well, I think there are people out there, and I've been one of them, who are not able to financially support themselves. I've got to live someplace. Public housing has been created, horrendous amounts of money have been spent, and it seems to me that to unravel all of that by getting rid of housing stock or significantly changing some of it is perhaps not the route to go.
Mr Cleary: Thank you, and good luck.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Latchford, for appearing before the committee this morning.
Mr Latchford: Thank you.
Mr Mammoliti: On a point of information, if possible, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Yes, Mr Mammoliti.
Mr Mammoliti: The figures that are shown in this briefing report that we have in front of us tell us that the annual operating budget for MTHA is between $230 million and $240 million. The actual budget is $350 million for MTHA. On another point of information, almost $12 million of that is currently being spent on security in Metro alone.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Mammoliti.
PETER FAUX
The Chair: Mr Peter Faux. Welcome, Mr Faux. If you wish, you may address the committee briefly if you have any opening comments, and then we will rotate through the three parties with questions.
Dr Peter Faux: I'd just like to say that my name is Peter Faux. It's actually a British name. I often say no Frenchman would call himself "Faux."
I'm a practising psychiatrist. I've been practising psychiatry in the province of Ontario since 1973. I've applied, as a psychiatrist, to be a member of the review board under the Mental Health Act.
The Chair: I appreciate you giving us the correct pronunciation of your name. Do you have any further comments?
Dr Faux: No, I don't.
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The Chair: All right, thank you. Mr Cleary, would you like to start?
Mr Cleary: Doctor, what are your thoughts on the Mental Health Act?
Dr Faux: I've been practising within the Mental Health Act during my almost 20 years of practice. Personally, I think it's more than adequate. In the area of involuntary committal, I think it provides the psychiatrist assessing a patient with adequate leeway to make an assessment for involuntary committal.
Mr Cleary: Do you have any thoughts on the ability to identify dangerous persons or individuals?
Dr Faux: Within the act, the person has to be suffering from mental disorder, and then the criteria become dangerousness to self, others or imminent physical impairment. It makes it a behavioural definition that there has to be in evidence a behaviour, which I feel is much better than making it a state of mind. I think that having dangerousness as the criterion is an improvement over simply having had it, in the old days, as a state of mind or a mental disorder.
Mr Cleary: Am I correct in saying that things have changed and today patients can refuse treatment?
Dr Faux: Patients have rights and treatment is based on informed consent. I prefer to look at it the way that we can treat someone based on informed consent, and where the person is not able to form the informed consent, then the patient would be made incompetent. With informed consent, patients do have the right to refuse treatment.
Mr McLean: Welcome to the committee. You're psychiatrist-in-chief at St Joseph's Health Centre?
Dr Faux: Yes, I am.
Mr McLean: You're on staff, full pay, there?
Dr Faux: No, I'm not. I'm really a private psychiatrist. I'm not paid by the hospital.
Mr McLean: You're paid by the individual.
Dr Faux: OHIP, yes.
Mr McLean: Right. Over 20 years the Mental Health Act has been amended on a number of occasions to strengthen the rights of consumers and the patients. The previous questioner asked you the question with regard to patient rights. Do you believe that the patients have enough rights today?
Dr Faux: In terms of the Mental Health Act?
Mr McLean: Yes.
Dr Faux: I feel that the Mental Health Act is a good balance between, say, my professional responsibility to treat, duty to protect and patient rights. It's a balance and I feel that it definitely upholds the patient rights end of that balance.
Mr McLean: Do you think that most psychiatrists have the potential to identify dangerous persons adequately? Have they trained in the field enough to be able to spot that dangerous person?
Dr Faux: Dangerousness is a very difficult area to assess.
Mr McLean: Maybe I'll make it easier for you. Oak Ridge is an institution where they are there on a Lieutenant Governor's warrant. Every once in a while somebody will apply to be released. We have the board that comes to interview those people to find out whether it feels that the dangerous offenders who are there are going to be able to be released. Maybe you could explain and expound on that.
Dr Faux: I never worked at Oak Ridge, but my understanding at Oak Ridge is that many of the people there are under the Criminal Code, that they've been found unfit to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity. So the board assessing them would be different than the review board that I'm applying for. The criteria would be the same under both in terms of the assessment of dangerousness, however.
Mr McLean: Do you think that our parole board is fulfilling its duties to the utmost with regard to some of the decisions that have been made with regard to sex offenders, mainly, who have been released and perhaps should not have been? Who's advising those people? Are there psychiatrists advising these parole officers? Are they basing it on their own facts that they receive?
Dr Faux: I honestly don't know.
Mr McLean: So at Kingston where they have the parole board hearings, there's not a psychiatrist on staff there who is advising the parole officers who handle the case for that individual?
Dr Faux: I'm sorry, I really don't know.
Mrs Witmer: I'd like to go back to the discussion and the questions that Mr McLean asked regarding dangerous persons. What is your understanding of the concept of "dangerous" and the criteria that's set out in the act which the review board must interpret when hearing patients' appeals?
Dr Faux: Under the act, "dangerous" applies to danger to oneself -- in other words, suicidal behaviour -- or danger to others -- homicidal behaviour -- and both are based on behaviour, both are based on either a verbal or actual physical behaviour, in addition to having a mental disorder.
In the prediction of dangerousness, as in the prediction of suicidal behaviour, past history is always very important, and dangerousness to others, in terms of future dangerousness to others, has become one of the main criteria for predicting future danger, as opposed to dangerousness at the moment, which you'd base on the actual events presented to you.
Mrs Witmer: Yet recently there have certainly been instances where we haven't been able to determine the extent of how dangerous an individual is to either himself or to his community. What are your thoughts? And I know Mr McLean asked this. Are psychiatrists able to really identify potentially dangerous persons? How accurate can you be, because I think the public is a little concerned at the present time about what is happening, not only with psychiatrists, but I think, again, we go back to the sexual offenders and paedophiles who are released, some of the people who are stalking their families and what have you. As a psychiatrist, how capable are you of identifying these potentially dangerous people?
Dr Faux: Well, we're not. I mean, we are the experts, based on our training, but you are ultimately assessing human nature, which can be unpredictable. I don't think there's anyone who would say that we would have a foolproof test, like you'd have an X-ray or a lab test, to prove, yes, you are dangerous. So it is ultimately based on knowledge and experience, but it comes down to a human decision.
Mr McLean: I'd like to go back to the consent to treatment. What is the patient's right with regard to consent to treatment, your knowledge of it?
Dr Faux: The patient, to consent to treatment, should have an awareness of the disorder, an awareness of the treatment and know the risks and consequences of receiving or not receiving that treatment.
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Mr McLean: But what right has the patient to say, "I don't want any treatment"? Do they have that right?
Dr Faux: If the patient can fulfil the criteria I just mentioned, then he's in a position to give an informed consent opinion and, yes, then he does have the right to say no.
Mr McLean: What numbers would you anticipate there would be who have done that -- any idea? -- patients whom you have looked at or patients whom you are aware of in some facility who have said, "No, I'm not taking any treatment"; what number I would look at in Oak Ridge who are saying, "No, I don't want any treatment"? It's pretty hard to figure that out but --
Dr Faux: I've only practised in general hospitals in Brampton and now in Toronto, and it would, in my experience, be a small percentage. You're looking at maybe 10%. But it would change dramatically with the institution you're in.
Ms Carter: I note you were born in Peterborough, Dr Faux, and that is the city I represent.
Dr Faux: Oh, I see.
Ms Carter: So I'm pleased about that. The function of the review board is to decide on people's competence in various directions, I understand, and part of that, I presume, would be whether they would remain in an institution or whether they would be considered capable of being outpatients or living independently and so on.
I wonder whether the crucial point there is not a theoretical decision about that person but what there is out there in the community and what's actually going to happen to him. For example, I had a letter put under my office door this morning. It was somebody who said her son was a schizophrenic and had been in hospital, had been released, only to find that his apartment had been rented to somebody else. He has nowhere to go and she is beside herself.
So does the question of competency not depend very much on the situation that somebody meets coming out, and is that something that concerns you?
Dr Faux: Very much. The state to which the patients are returning -- their domicile, their living conditions -- is very crucial, for instance, in whether they could have a relapse and return to the mental health system. I can't agree more with you.
My understanding -- although I'm applying for the review board as a consultant, I have yet to sit on the review board -- is that in review board hearings, this issue is addressed. Where is the patient living were he to be discharged? With deinstitutionalization etc, really the asylum is no longer available for patients to remain in.
In my experience, if you look at all the systems of mental health community delivery, I think a comprehensive case management system is probably the best, in terms that you'd have one person assigned to that patient -- for instance, the individual you mentioned whose apartment has been leased to someone else and whose belongings are either on the doorstep or the pavement -- and this person would then be able to track that person, be able to keep in touch, get the person another apartment etc.
Ms Carter: So would you feel that by extending maybe the range of facilities available we would be able to keep more people out of psychiatric institutions?
Dr Faux: Yes. If we had more community, more case-managed systems, I think we could do a better job with the people who are out there.
Ms Carter: Do you think there's any place for these people to work together to give themselves a greater feeling of empowerment and independence, for example, maybe by having a drop-in centre where they can meet each other and discuss their problems and so on? Would you think that was important?
Dr Faux: Yes. At St Joe's, we're just on the westerly lip of Parkdale, and there are many centres within the Parkdale area -- drop-in centres, community -- where you can just drop in for a cup of coffee, maybe a chat, if you're so inclined, and I think that's very important.
Mr Frankford: I assume you've had experience with the review board in your professional career.
Dr Faux: Yes, I have.
Mr Frankford: Would you like to share some experience and also any thoughts about ways you would like to change it?
Dr Faux: To be honest, I only recently moved to St Joseph's. In Brampton I had only one patient have a review board hearing. But since I've arrived at St Joseph's I've had several. Really, through my experience with the review board -- I'm now applying to be a consultant on it -- I found it to be very fair, understanding and to really act in the best interests of the patient. In fact, I've seen them as part of a therapeutic tool that the hospital has in terms of helping people. So I have no interest or thought on changing the review board or the Mental Health Act, just really upholding it and making it work better by pursuing what's in there.
Mr Frankford: Is it your role, either as an individual psychiatrist or as the chief of department, to take the initiative and suggest that people are reviewed?
Dr Faux: No, no.
Mr Frankford: Who takes the initiative?
Dr Faux: It comes directly from the patients, in almost all cases.
Mr Daniel Waters (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): Thank you for coming in. You've heard a lot about Oak Ridge. Mr McLean and I are neighbours. One thing, because you may not be aware of it, is that Oak Ridge is a criminal institution, but on the same property there is a mental health facility as well as an addiction facility. I would assume that the people you're dealing with more frequently are the people at the mental health facility than at Oak Ridge.
Dr Faux: That's right.
Mr Waters: In that respect, I represent the community of Midland. We have a problem, and that is that when people go in there, such as schizophrenics, when they come out they're usually on medication. We have more than, let's say, the provincial average, because these people tend to stay in the community into which they're released. I guess it's the aftercare and the need for someone to be there to make sure that they take their medication, because without it, you and I both know where they end up. The police pick them up, they go through the court system and end up back in, for the most part. I guess I would like your views on this aftercare or extended care or whatever you would like to call that, and the need thereof.
Dr Faux: I think, Mr Waters, I can pretty well answer you the same way I was answering Jenny Carter from my home town. I feel personally that we need a comprehensive case management system where you have a case worker assigned to a specific number of patients and that person is ultimately responsible for following these patients; let's say to make sure they get their Depo medication monthly, to make sure there are no problems in their rooming home, to have them attend the community health centres and the physician visits. I really feel that if you don't have someone out there with responsibility to make sure that the system works for these people, they just drop through the cracks in the system.
But unfortunately, case management systems are expensive, they're costly, and I think for that reason we don't see more of them. They definitely have the potential to make the system which is there work, but you need someone following these people through. With people with schizophrenia, often you can't give them a specified appointment. You can have them drop in at certain times. The case manager, though, often is required to bring them to your office. Since coming to Toronto I've been amazed at some of the landlord and landlady people out there who will act as case managers in a real humanitarian way. But unless there's someone out there doing that service for these people, they just are not capable of following through on appointments.
Often, I don't feel that the system is lacking as much as that there needs to be someone to help these people get through the system and to be benefited by the system.
Mr Waters: I know the plight of the people, not only since I've been their representative but for a long time prior to that. My concern is that there seems to be a recognition of the need to fund the hospital for the care, but it's getting the recognition of what I believe are actually the long-term cost savings of being able to have these people in the community, in the support systems that they need within the community. How do we heighten the awareness of that need? Or could you, do you think, as a member of this board, find some way of heightening the awareness of the need and indeed the cost savings of dealing with these people more at the community level so that they're no longer in the hospital in the cycle they're in now?
Dr Faux: As a member of the board, I'm really there to act as a consultant, to provide psychiatric input for the Mental Health Act. What you're saying is that we have the association for general hospital psychiatry. Organizations like that often are lobbying for more improvements in community mental health dollars, but I'm not sure how that would fit in with this present appointment.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr Faux, for your appearance before the committee this morning.
How would the committee like to deal with this morning's appointments? Do you wish to move them individually or are we going to have one motion for all three appointments?
Mr Waters: I move one motion for all three.
The Chair: Is there agreement to move all three at once? All right. Mr Waters has moved the appointment of Mr Arthur Smith, Mr Vance Latchford and Dr Peter Faux. All in favour of Mr Waters's motion? Opposed, if any?
I have to advise Mr Cleary and Mr McLean that if you do not wish to vote, you have to leave your seat. Are you voting in favour or in opposition? Against. All right. I'd like to thank the members of the committee.
Item 5 on the agenda is the review of the operation of agencies, boards and commissions. We have two outstanding reports, and Mr Pond has some comments on those reports.
Mr David Pond: They were supposed to be ready today and they're not, for which I apologize. They'll be ready next time. Mea culpa.
The Chair: So we'll deal with those reports at the next meeting.
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): Should we have the appropriate motion to reprimand? Just kidding, David.
The Chair: There will be a meeting of the subcommittee following this meeting, if those members would stay.
Would someone like to move adjournment? Moved by Mr Marchese. All in favour? Thank you.
The committee adjourned at 1154.