INTENDED
APPOINTMENTS
RAYMOND CHENG
CONTENTS
Wednesday 16 February 1994
Intended appointments
Raymond Cheng, Clarke Institute of Psychiatry
Shari Novick, Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal
Deborah Whale, Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario
Phyllis Gordon, Ontario Criminal Code Review Board
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
Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:
Abel, Donald (Wentworth North/-Nord ND) for Ms Harrington
Hansen, Ron (Lincoln ND) for Ms Carter
Hope, Randy R. (Chatham-Kent ND) for Mr Mammoliti
Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South/-Sud PC) for Mrs Marland
Johnson, Paul R. (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings/Prince Edward-Lennox-Hastings-Sud ND)
for Mr Marchese
Clerk pro tem / Greffière par intérim: Decker, Todd
Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1006 in the Trent Room, Macdonald Block, Toronto.
INTENDED APPOINTMENTS
RAYMOND CHENG
Review of intended appointment, selected by government party: Raymond Cheng, intended appointee as board member, Clarke Institute of Psychiatry.
The Vice-Chair (Mr Allan K. McLean): I call the government agencies committee to order. Today we're doing a review of Raymond Cheng, intended appointee to the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry. Mr Cheng, please take a seat at the front. You have the opportunity to make an opening statement if you want to, or we can go right into questions. The choice will be yours, sir. You'd like us to go right into questions? We will do that.
Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): I think our paths have crossed slightly, because you've been connected with the Scarborough mental health coordinating committee. Could you say something about what you see you can contribute to the Clarke?
Mr Raymond Cheng: I can see that there are three roles I can play on the board of the Clarke. The first, of course, is that as a board member, it would be a continuing educational experience for myself and also for the other board members, because when you're in a board environment, you have pretty diverse groups of people and you kind of learn and understand from each other's perspective.
The second thing I would bring to the Clarke is community linkage. Traditionally, hospital-based institutions have not really worked as hard as they could to establish a reporting relationship with the people they serve. Also, community organizations have to become more coordinated and communicate with each other to make the best use of the available financial resources within the health system. The Clarke needs to articulate what it's doing and share those understandings and create agreements and linkages with other agencies so they know what it's doing and they're not going to duplicate resources.
The third thing is that the Clarke could benefit from a different voice, a voice that is representative of the increasing diversity of the population in Ontario and specifically in Metro Toronto. By having somebody who is a visible minority, I could bring a perspective about the southeast Asian community to the Clarke. When you do that, you make things more aware within the system, and the system can understand and try to enhance the way it provides services to the population.
Mr Frankford: Could you briefly give us any views on mental illness in the southeast Asian community and any differences you've noticed from the mainstream population?
Mr Cheng: In the mainstream, mental health is pretty well-defined and is given definitions based on traditional perspectives. In the southeast Asian community, mental illness is seen as a reflection of the whole individual. For good or bad, that does create an amount of stigma that makes it difficult for people in the community to access traditional services. We also have the problem that if you don't speak the language and you're dealing with service providers who do not understand the culture, where you're coming from, you are going to have a lot of difficulties in attempting to deal with mental health in a traditional way.
Mr Daniel Waters (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): How did you get here? What was the process? Were you contacted by somebody in the government? I believe, actually, there is a system within Clarke, the institute itself, but I'm not sure how that works.
Mr Cheng: From what I understand, I was nominated by someone who was already serving on the board of the Clarke. I was asked if I was interested in being on the board and I said I was interested. That's pretty much what the process has been. There has been no outside process, other than the fact that I knew the person on the board of the Clarke and she asked me if I wanted to be on the board. That's the nature of the nomination.
Mr Waters: That was the candidate-search process. You work with Hong Fook Mental Health Service. How would that work with your sitting on the board? You've been there for 10 years now.
Mr Cheng: Hong Fook Mental Health Service is an ethnoracial agency that provides mental health services to Chinese, Cambodian and Vietnamese consumers. The links Hong Fook has with the Clarke are in the nature of research. There is a great interest in the Clarke right now in doing cross-cultural research. In other words, let's take our traditional mental health model and see if this works or does not work with other cultures. So there's an amount of interaction going on there. As a matter of fact, Hong Fook sponsored a conference in 1992 called Desire to Connect, and several of the speakers came from the Clarke to do that.
In terms of what Hong Fook does with the Clarke, I don't think you should just look at that working association and the Clarke as being what really defines why I would be asked to join the Clarke. I have other volunteer work and other associations which interact with the Clarke and which I think has been recognized. Furthermore, I think the Clarke is really interested in reaching out and getting a board member who has these types of community linkages and someone who has the ability to indicate how they could go about improving those linkages.
Mr Waters: I'd asked for a few facts about the Clarke, and I was fascinated when I read some of the things because I had never thought of the Clarke covering such a wide variety of things; you think of it as being solely one thing. Looking at your CV, you really do fit in in terms of the drugs and the hearing groups as well as your commitment to mental health. I congratulate you, and I think you'll be a fine member of the board.
Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): I guess everyone who's appointed to a board or commission has some objectives in mind, and I was just wondering what yours are, your goals and objectives for serving on the board. You must have something in mind that you'd like to see changed.
Mr Cheng: It's a very good position to continue to learn. I regard my life as being a continual educational process, and being on the board will provide extremely good tuition at a very reasonable price.
In terms of my goals and objectives, I would like to take this opportunity beyond the learning ability. I think I can help the Clarke to learn to understand where it sits in the mental health system. I can bring feedback as a result of the mental health reform process and my community groups linkages and give them a broader and diverse understanding.
It works two ways. I really think I could learn a lot from the other board members, a lot about how the Clarke operates, and in turn I could give the Clarke the benefit of my complementary knowledge and abilities.
Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): How familiar are you with the current budget for the Clarke and the difficulties it's experiencing?
Mr Cheng: I have attended one board meeting as a guest. I have had a chance to review and look at the financial statements up to the third quarter. Apart from that, it's hard on the basis of one meeting to draw any great inferences on whether the Clarke is in a good financial situation, a bad financial situation, or just an ordinary financial situation.
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Mr Jackson: There isn't a single mental health facility in Ontario that's in a good financial position, but it's not their fault. We have increased demand and we're living in a period of funding restraint. Have you had any dialogue with persons at the Clarke or those who are supportive of your application that would indicate to you areas in which the Clarke is looking at ceasing operations or reducing access to program?
Mr Cheng: To answer that, if I step back a little bit and go into my community focus shell, the current mental health reform process is saying that we are going to move from institutional-based care to community-based care. Naturally, the Clarke is an institution, and it will have to deal with the consequences, as they become known, down the line of mental health reform and in what way that would impact on their funding.
At this point, not knowing a lot about the situation at Clarke, I would say the Clarke has to think about what it does best, which is as a teaching hospital, primarily in research and also in clinical care. Those three areas are within the current mandate of the Clarke. If you're going to see downsizing or potential financial restructuring, the Clarke will probably do best by not duplicating the efforts of the community-based system and going into its very own strengths and maintaining those strengths.
Mr Jackson: If I can move you into an area of your strength, the work you're currently doing in the community in linkages with your cultural community, you are assisting mental health patients currently with outpatient programs, community-based programs.
In the room immediately adjacent to this, Parliament is conducting hearings on Bill 120, which deals with a series of issues around housing needs. Virtually every mental health client-based group has come forward to suggest that legislative reforms are going to have a negative impact on program, in concert with accommodation, as it relates to interim or community-based steps to full community living. Are you familiar at all with this legislation, Bill 120, and its implications for persons with mental health problems who require program supports?
Mr Cheng: No, the legislation is not familiar to me. However, within the mental health reform process, there has been a committee, supports and services, which has been working on guidelines related to mental health. Four priorities have been seen as important, and housing is one of those needs, that if you look at things on a much broader level, if you don't have a stable place to live, that will almost certainly impact on your mental health. That is a very basic concept that everybody can agree with.
Mr Jackson: I couldn't agree with you more. The concerns are that clients you're currently assisting require a program component of community-based living; it might be shared accommodation with certain supportive living components, communal meals, that kind of aspect. The government is proposing to extend the rights under the Landlord and Tenant Act to include those persons who might be resident in those facilities or housing units if they are going to be in that facility for more than six months.
This has caused a concern on the part of mental health advocates who support community-based living. There would be certain impediments imposed under the legislation, because they have additional rights under the Landlord and Tenant Act. Most all the groups that have come forward that have expressed this concern and point of view have said it will force the institutional-based facilities to take back in some of these mental health patients who cannot and are not able to work within that program or who reject the program component of it.
As you're involved in that field and since the Clarke Institute does assessments and referrals, this may not surface as a problem you'll have to deal with. You didn't ask for the legislation. You've asked for accommodation with program components as a step to full community living. That's what you've been advocating and that's what we're developing. However, these new rights for tenants have caused some concern for patients and patient providers. I recommend you look into the legislation at least and be aware of it.
The Clarke Institute does extensive and broadly based mental health support service but also is involved with assessment of young offenders and with the assessment of criminal offences prior to sentencing and prior to remanding, correct?
Mr Cheng: I believe that's true.
Mr Jackson: Are you doing anything currently within your cultural community with persons in conflict with the law and mental health? If so, what is the nature of that work?
Mr Cheng: Our sponsoring agency, Hong Fook Mental Health Service, has social workers. These social workers, who speak Chinese or Vietnamese or Cambodian, are capable and often do interpretation and intervention on behalf of clients in all kinds of situations, particularly stressful situations. That's all I can say, basically.
Mr Jackson: You provide interpretative services for corrections facilities, for the police, for court appearances, for a whole series of things?
Mr Cheng: The agency is kind of like a jack of all trades, because it's well known in the community as having clients who are from these ethnic backgrounds and may have difficulty communicating in English. As such, I don't know for certain, I don't have particular facts and figures, but I would say Hong Fook is quite well placed to provide that type of intervention when it's needed, especially on a language level.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much for appearing before the committee this morning, Mr Cheng.
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SHARI NOVICK
Review of intended appointee, selected by official opposition: Shari Novick, intended appointee as deputy presiding officer, Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal.
The Vice-Chair: Next we have Shari Novick, the intended appointee as a full-time deputy presiding officer, Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal. Good morning. You have the opportunity to have some opening comments, or would you like to go right into questions? The choice is yours.
Ms Shari Novick: No, I'm prepared to answer questions.
Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): You could help me to understand this from the point of view of pay equity. In 1987, as you know, the Liberal government introduced this legislation, followed by amendments to the act by the NDP government. Many criticisms arose on the issue of how it came about.
I'll focus specifically on nurses and hospitals. When there were increases given to nurses, which were of course deserved, what is being seen now is some of the cutbacks: Because hospitals don't generate revenue, to pay nurses more you have to find it from within that budget. This is a very difficult process. Women, who in the past were being denied proper pay, deserve the additional funds, but now it is said that because the government does not flow enough money to the hospitals, it more or less undermines the process itself. Do you have any comments on that?
Ms Novick: I don't know that much can be done about the government's budgetary choices and how that may impact on the legislation and how it's administered. The principles set out in the act are clear, and through the jurisprudence that's evolved, certain approaches have been enshrined, and those would be followed regardless of the current economic climate or government choices. Other than that, I'm sorry, I don't have much comment on that point.
Mr Curling: Let me put it to you this way. Sitting on the tribunal, if there are laws you see there that, when administered, would not be serving the purpose well, would you be prepared to put forward recommendations that this should be changed because inadequacy exists within the law? There are bad laws and there are good laws, and as you said, it is enshrined. When I hear the word "enshrined," it's like it's cut in granite so we don't cut it any more.
Ms Novick: I'm sorry. Perhaps that was not the most appropriate word to use. Of course, this is quite a new area, and although the jurisprudence is still evolving, certain ideas have been suggested and followed. Of course ideas change and circumstances change, and I think there has to be a fluidity to how laws are interpreted and enforced. I may not know exactly what you're trying to get at, but I wasn't suggesting that approaches that have been taken now are engraved in stone or whatever the term is we use. There has to be a sensitivity to circumstances, but the basic premise of pay equity, as set out in the legislation, should be upheld.
Mr Curling: How do you feel about the fact that pay equity was first introduced as the concept of equal pay for work of equal value, and that has changed considerably? It has changed to gender-specific, really, to give equal pay to women underpaid for jobs traditionally done by men. Do you feel we should be moving to equal pay for work of equal value, regardless of gender?
Ms Novick: I certainly agree with that, and I think the legislation contemplates that. Generally, the scheme that's followed is that employees who are in what's called a female job class should be ensured the same compensation rate as those in what's been identified as a male job class where the work is of comparable value. What happens at times is that there could be men who are performing those jobs in what's been defined as a female job class and they're certainly going to be benefiting from the equalizing of the wage rates. I don't think we single out women, necessarily, although that's the effect of most of the changes that have come about.
But the law doesn't say, "Women now have to be earning as much as men." I think it says, "People who are working in those classes will be earning the same as the comparable classes."
Mr Curling: The legislation emphasizes that it's not because you're a woman that you're going to get paid as a man. It is that in those jobs traditionally done by men, when the study came out, it showed the discrepancy was pretty wide, and we now pay them for the work of equal value.
But my point, and the complaints I'm getting, is that people feel that when pay equity started off, it was on the premise of equal pay for work of equal value, regardless of gender. However, women were seen as being more exploited in that way. I just wanted to hear your view on that.
Are you quite familiar with the pay equity legislation? One has to be, to be on the tribunal, I presume.
Ms Novick: I would say I am familiar with it. I'm not very familiar with the sections of the act, and you referred to amendments that had been made. I'm really not that familiar with the legislative history.
Perhaps I should say at this point that this appointment to the position on the pay equity tribunal is a cross-appointment for me. I'm already a member of another tribunal and have been for two and a half years: the office of adjudication. We hear appeals under the Employment Standards Act by both employees and employers, and also appeals under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The reason I'm here is that I've been cross-appointed, as part of a pilot project, among three tribunals within the labour and employment field. So I can't say I'm intimately familiar with the provisions of the Pay Equity Act, but I'm hoping to become so.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): One of the things that governments have to wrestle with now, and tribunals have to wrestle with, and I guess individual members, is the issue of the ability to pay. People on the labour side of an issue would say arbitrators should be unfettered, should be able to make a ruling, and the employer should accept the consequence of that ruling. Employers try to make the case that we should take into account the ability to pay.
The Premier has chastised publicly arbitrators who have made decisions which have been in favour of labour, in some cases, by saying that the government, or the taxpayer, does not have the ability to pay.
When you are making your rulings, is there any idea whether the government will be requiring that you take into account the employer's ability to pay? If you didn't, I would be afraid the Premier might be critical.
Interjection: We're going to pull out the Hansards on Bill 40.
Mr Curling: I think you rattled the cages over there.
Ms Novick: It's a difficult question to answer. Perhaps I'm naïve, but certainly now when I hear cases and make decisions which often involve large sums of money and it's made quite clear that the employer is unable to pay, it's not something I take into account now.
I am unaware whether, somehow, different pressures are there under the pay equity scheme. I wouldn't think that ability to pay would be one of the factors that comes into it, because I don't think it's set out in the legislation. Again, I'm not entirely familiar with the jurisprudence, but I would say that the scheme as set out is clear, and I think employers who are ordered to make adjustments have to do so, and whatever flows from that, flows from that.
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Mr Jackson: Shari, thank you for saying yes when you were approached to cross-appoint. However, as the chair and vice-chair of this important committee, it's rather unique, as there was to be, at least in the spirit of the legislation, a balance in the appointments between employer and employee groups. Whom do you represent?
Ms Novick: I don't represent any one side.
Mr Jackson: How do you think the government would be classifying you, if asked?
Ms Novick: To be honest, I think it would be difficult for them to classify me.
Mr Jackson: Who's the chair of the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal?
Ms Novick: I think there's an acting chair now, Mr Palumbo.
Mr Jackson: Is he an employee or employer appointee?
Ms Novick: The tribunal is set up in such a way that there are vice-chairs, or deputy presiding officers I think is the term used in the legislation, and then there are employer sidespeople as well as employee sidespeople, and those are there to provide a perspective from those two communities. The vice-chairs who sit on the panels are neutral and independent and are supposed to be sensitive to the concerns of each side, and perhaps are aided by the perspectives of the sidespeople, and I hope to follow that as well.
Mr Jackson: During your term in the office of adjudicator, what was your most difficult hearing decision?
Ms Novick: Probably the one I'm writing right now, which I shouldn't comment on.
Mr Jackson: Then your second-most difficult one. Are you writing any others at the moment?
Ms Novick: A few, yes.
Mr Jackson: Which one has given you the most difficulty?
Ms Novick: Not commenting on the ones I haven't completed, there have been some. Mostly, the difficulties I've experienced spring from the vague provisions in the Employment Standards Act. There are several that are vague, and you have to try to glean what the Legislature intended, and the meaning is not always so clear.
Problems arise in the mandatory retirement area in terms of retirees' entitlement to severance pay, which often represents a fair amount of money for people who have been working for the same employer for a while.
There was a case I wrote about a year and a half ago which dealt with, again, a severance pay calculation, and whether you would count separate periods of employment with one employer together to arrive at an entitlement. In other words, if an employee worked for 10 years with one employer and then left, worked elsewhere for a while and came back and worked for a short period and then was terminated, the issue arises as to whether he or she would be entitled, because there's a five-year threshold period, and, if there is entitlement, what the amounts would be. There were two lines of authority on that for quite a while, and I was lucky enough to hear a case involving an editor at the Globe and Mail.
Mr Jackson: I'm familiar with that one.
Could you talk to us about the recent intervention by the government with respect to pay equity, O Reg 491, that was done in 1993 and caused some furore of those advocates of pay equity in Ontario? You're essentially a government appointee from a government position into another government position. In terms of the degree of neutrality you were referring to in your abilities between employer and employee, would you have the same abilities as it relates to the government that's employing you?
Ms Novick: I'm not aware of that regulation, at least by number.
Mr Jackson: It was an intervention by the government which declared that a female job class does not qualify for a wage increase won by the male job class with which it has a job-to-job comparison, if that wage increase was the result of winning a classification grievance in arbitration. There were substantive dollars involved with OPSEU, and the government essentially legislated against the ruling of the Pay Equity Commission.
This is a serious matter, but from it springs forth questions about the independence and strength of the tribunal as would be exhibited through the chair and vice-chair. You've very clearly set out their independence and neutrality between the clients. I'm asking you if that would also account when the government is the employer and also your employer.
Ms Novick: I would say definitely, the same principles apply. That's something I deal with every day when I hear cases at the tribunal I'm now a member of. The Ministry of Labour participates as an active party at all the hearings because it is its officer who made the ruling that's being appealed against. I guess you could say similarly the government is a player in those areas.
Mr Jackson: The government isn't in the habit of intervening with labour legislation in a retroactive or negative fashion. This is rather unique in terms of labour law, and I classify pay equity as a form of labour law. I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with the case.
You will be leaving your employment. What are you earning with the current position and what do you understand to be your compensation level to work as the vice-chair?
Ms Novick: I'd like to clarify something. I won't be leaving to assume this position. It's something I'm going to be doing together. I'll still be a member of the office of adjudication, that tribunal, and the cross-appointment will mean I will hear some pay equity cases and that two of the vice-chairs who are now on the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal will hear some of the cases at our office. There's also a third tribunal, the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal, that's part of this pilot project, so it's a three-way cross-appointment.
Mr Jackson: Just so I understand the economics of all this, you're currently employed with the office of adjudication and you're doing that full-time.
Ms Novick: That's correct.
Mr Jackson: A portion of your time now will be devoted, even though it's a full-time appointment.
Ms Novick: That's correct.
Mr Jackson: You're collecting a stipend for that.
Ms Novick: No, that's not true.
Mr Jackson: Okay. I want to understand. They're not paying you to do this appointment.
Ms Novick: No. I'm probably working harder, but I'll be receiving the same pay.
Mr Jackson: I'm glad you had an opportunity to have that clarified for the record.
Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): You talked about the Employment Standards Act being very vague, and I would agree with you 100%.
Ms Novick: Certain parts.
Mr Hope: Quite a few parts, in some of our opinions. That's why we have to expand collective agreements, to make sure those loopholes the government before us forgot about we try to cover in collective agreements.
I've listened to Mr Jackson's and Mr Curling's comments. Employment equity came into place through the accord that was established between the two governments, and if it weren't for the accord I doubt the Liberal government would have moved on pay equity, because the mentality level is probably still the same as the Conservatives'. Those are the comments I wanted to make at the beginning.
I understand you're an adjudicator, referee, with the tribunal. That process gets to you when there is a stalemate between the two parties or three parties, right?
Ms Novick: Not exactly. What happens in the employment standards context is that there is an employment standards officer who investigates and makes a first-level determination of whether there's an entitlement on the employee's side, and, depending on which way his or her decision goes, the other party can appeal that determination to a referee or adjudicator. A determination has already been made by an officer, and then either the employer or employee has the right to appeal that decision to our office.
Mr Hope: With the experience you have with the Occupational Health and Safety Act and with the Employment Standards Act, carrying it now over to the pay equity, how do you feel that's going to improve the system or maybe hinder the system? I mean you as an individual who has experience in one practice.
Ms Novick: It wouldn't be fair to say the areas of law intersect greatly, but there's a certain sensitivity or general body of knowledge you accumulate through experience in one field that's somewhat portable, that you can take with you and apply, hopefully, to hearings under a different piece of legislation. I'll also be having some training before I actually hear pay equity cases, and that will give me a better grounding in what I need to know before I hear cases.
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Ultimately, I think it improves the system. It certainly provides the cross-appointees with an opportunity to expand their experience base and knowledge base among different areas. It probably also keeps us a little more interested or motivated, because after three years of doing the types of hearings we have, the issues seem to be repeating themselves. This is something new and something I've always had an interest in, so I'm hoping it'll be a positive experience for me. I can only hope the experience I bring with me somehow also helps the other members of the panel I'll be sitting with and the parties to the litigation.
Mr Hope: Sitting on the tribunal and being a woman -- I know there is still some mentality out there saying, "Here's the women again." With you being an adjudicator on this board and being a woman, will you have a biased opinion towards the outcome of an adjudicated process?
Ms Novick: I don't think so. I don't have one now. Issues sometimes arise which might raise a male-female bias, if you like. We hear a lot of cases dealing with pregnancy provisions, and I don't really take that into account when I make a decision.
Mr Hope: As one who has negotiated pay equity agreements, I wish you good luck, because the legislation is vague in some areas on pay equity. Trying to determine who is an employer is one of the other questions that's always out there. The Liberals didn't do a good job, and we're trying, through the amendment process, to clear it up. Hopefully, it will make your job much easier that the process before it even gets to you gets resolved through a negotiated process, which means your job will become easier. That is one of the ultimate goals, to make sure it can be negotiated between the parties first before it even reaches your stage of an adjudicated process. I wish you the best of luck.
The Vice-Chair: What pay range is this job in, do you know? I'm curious. Is it on a per diem basis?
Ms Novick: No. I'm a full-time member of the tribunal I sit on now, and I won't be receiving any pay increase when I go over to pay equity. If you'd like the actual figure --
The Vice-Chair: Just ballpark. I have no idea.
Mr Bradley: We're always interested in actual figures, because our pay has been frozen for six years.
Mr Hope: It's not going to be like your job, where you get paid as a member and then you come and sit in the chair in this committee and get extra pay. She's going to be doing it for straight pay with extra work.
Mr Bradley: You mean like when you're a parliamentary assistant and you get paid for breathing?
The Vice-Chair: What range is it in? Just a range.
Ms Novick: Things have changed, of course, with the social contract. Each of us probably has a different rate depending on whether you opt in or out of insurance plans and benefit plans. I always have a hard time answering when people in the bank, for instance, ask what my actual salary is, but I think the range is --
Mr Paul R. Johnson (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings): Between $50,000 and $150,000?
Ms Novick: That's a good range, yes.
Mr Bradley: Mr Chairman, on a point of order.
Mr Hope: Excuse me, but you had your time.
Mr Bradley: No, this is a point of order I'm asking right now.
Mr Hope: It better be a point of order.
Mr Bradley: What I'm interested in, in all of these things, is what people make. It's for your sake as well as mine, because you people all face out there, all of us, the wrath of the public, who think we get paid millions of dollars. They should compare what the elected members get paid to what people on tribunals and others get paid. That's all. I'm not saying they're overpaid --
The Vice-Chair: I really don't think he has a point of order. Thank you for appearing this morning.
Mr Hope: The member raises a very serious --
The Vice-Chair: No, it was ruled out of order.
DEBORAH WHALE
Review of intended appointment, selected by government party: Deborah Whale, intended appointee as chair, Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario.
The Vice-Chair: Deborah Whale is our next intended appointee as chair, Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario. You have an opportunity to make a few opening remarks if you want to, or we can go right into questions.
Mrs Deborah Whale: My only opening remarks are just that I'm pleased to be here to discuss the importance of agricultural research, not only to the community in agriculture but also to the province.
Mr Waters: We had someone in yesterday who's on it, so we have been enlightened somewhat about what you're doing. One of the things I would like to venture into is your opinion about the environment and agriculture. Is there a better way to do it, without all the chemicals?
Mrs Whale: That's why we're doing agriculture research. As you know, the Food Systems 2002 goal is to decrease the use of pesticides by half by the year 2002, and that's just one thrust we have in research.
Maybe a good way of indicating what I'm talking about is to talk about the poultry industry. We are currently, in 1991, able to produce almost two times more eggs per chicken than we were only 40 years ago, and that is done on half the feed that was required 40 years ago and half the land base. That in itself is a tremendous saving to the environment.
In addition, if we look at future research that's looking at the development of the egg industry, for example, if we were to replace the protein content of the diet of that chicken by synthetic amino acids, those acids are 100% digestible, which means there would be very little manure coming out of that chicken and very little nitrogen in that manure. If, in addition, we were to add phosphate-digesting enzymes to that feed, we would then have phosphate-free manure.
What we're doing for the environment in terms of research is so amazing, it's hard to even comprehend the scope of it all.
Mr Waters: I find that interesting. Both the Chair's riding and mine touch Georgian Bay, and one of the main loaders of our large water systems is agriculture with phosphates. If you can now remove phosphates from manure before it happens, it's obviously an interesting concept.
One of the things we didn't talk a lot about yesterday is research with animals. You talked a bit about the chicken, but is that going on with all the different types of livestock?
Mrs Whale: Do you mean research about animals?
Mr Waters: Yes, about animals.
Mrs Whale: Absolutely. A lot of it has concentrated on production research, which means we're simply trying to get more out of an animal, more meat, more milk, and also able to do that using less feed or more concentrated feeds. That's going on in virtually every animal industry because we have to be productive.
If you look at the dairy industry, for example -- and I am a dairy farmer -- we can now produce the same amount of milk in this province as we did, again, 40 years ago, with less than half the feed and a quarter of the land base. The competitive advantages that gives our farmers is really tremendous.
Mr Waters: Can we compete worldwide?
Mrs Whale: We sure can.
Mr Waters: And still protect our environment?
Mrs Whale: It's not "and still" protect the environment. We must compete worldwide and we must protect the environment. If we don't protect the environment, we won't be competing with anybody.
Mr Waters: The lady yesterday said the same thing, that we can compete, we are competitive, yet when I talk to farmers they're always worried about how they're going to survive, especially with GATT and all of these things happening.
Mrs Whale: You have to be worried, but when you're worried that keeps you on edge. Some of our best farmers are right on the leading edge of technology, and those are the farmers we have to encourage, those are the ones who are going to be competitive on our behalf.
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Mr Waters: What would be your, let's say, three priorities for research, or do you just feel a broad range of research is better?
Mrs Whale: I know you're aware of the six priorities ARIO has in terms of research, and certainly competitiveness is there on the top for a reason. As well, the interaction of agriculture and the environment is next in line for a reason. Within those six broad areas we have to concentrate our research, but there's another question: Do we just do research across the broad spectrum of agriculture and hope it will hit somewhere important? I think not. Particularly in a time of declining budgets, we have to be very aware of what we're doing, where we're leading research and why we're leading it there. We have to be aware of where in Canada we can be particularly competitive, in Ontario specifically. Where are the niche markets that are going to give us our best avenues for competitiveness? That's where we have to lead research.
Mr Waters: I guess this is a pet peeve of mine, that we say to our farmers, "You cannot put this on your fields or on your crops or you can't feed it to your animals" or whatever, and then we turn around and put a tolerance level for something that's being imported into this country.
Mrs Whale: That's right, and it's a source of great concern among farmers. At the recent 2002 conference, that was brought up a number of times. It doesn't make any sense to put limitations on our farmers if we're going to turn around and import those things from other countries. If indeed we feel it's important for our land base not to have certain things applied for it, surely it's just as important for Mexico's land base. We have to be careful that we don't have a two-pronged approach to this.
Mr Ron Hansen (Lincoln): You're going to be promoted from vice-chair to chair, so you've sat a while, you've seen what the institute is doing. Do you have one or two priorities you would like, as chair, to initiate with the board coming up? It's not that you're one to wind up, but you're still a driving force with the board.
Mrs Whale: When I look at the scope of the board and I see that it is producers who represent every aspect of agriculture and agribusiness people, with an increasing emphasis put on people in food processing -- we're looking at feeding what we produce into the food market as well as into other markets -- it's really important for all of us to constantly assess the priorities and the directions of that research. It's important for me as chair to ensure that everyone in agribusiness and in production, agriculture, has an opportunity to feed into that knowledge.
Very importantly, and something we've started as an added initiative this year, is to make sure that we're very aware of what's happening in the entire OASCC system, the Ontario Agricultural Services Coordinating Committee. It's a huge system, as you know -- 91 committees, something like 780 members -- and it is their recommendations from each of the specific committees that feed into ARIO. It behooves us to very definitely take into consideration what those OASCC recommendations are when we make our final decisions, but I want our members to sit in on OASCC committees on a regular basis so we know very definitively who those people are and where they're coming from.
Mr Hansen: As an MPP from the Niagara area, we have a lot of surplus fruits, and I'm taking a look at what we can do with the surplus fruits, crushing etc. I'm looking into that right now so the farms are viable in our particular area. I've always gone through the ministry, but what are you going to do? How do I interact with your board to say I have some ideas? Is that a possibility, to open up the doors?
Mrs Whale: Definitely.
Mr Hansen: How does this information, what you find out, get down to the farmer? It seems that everybody at the top knows what to do and the correct way to do it, but often the person who's farming doesn't find this information out unless it's a large farm.
Mrs Whale: First of all, in terms of your input, that's where OASCC comes in. You are very welcome to be represented on any OASCC subcommittee that you feel fits into the production of your area. I would strongly recommend that you do that, or that you ensure that the representatives from your area who are there are doing a good job. They have to be knowledgeable people and they have to be people who go back to their commodity groups and report.
In answer to your second question, this whole area of extension between the researchers and the producers is very important. Unfortunately, with government cutbacks, that's getting cut back. However, I really do believe, in agriculture in Ontario, we have a very good extension service. It reaches into all corners of every rural community. Every week, if you pick up rural newspapers, you will see lists of workshops you can attend, and speeches, and you can get information on your computer and you can get printed information by the truckload. Perhaps the difficulty is not so much in the lack of material as just the time to assess it all. It really is overwhelming to me. While I think we can never stop improving the extension services, we're really well served in Ontario.
Mr Cleary: You say you're a dairy farmer. Are you involved in any other kind of agriculture besides the dairy?
Mrs Whale: No. We have a dairy farm, and it's a closed-system farm; in other words, we grow all our own breeding stock and all our own feed.
Mr Cleary: Being that you're a dairy farmer, should we be following the US on the new technology to increase milk production?
Mrs Whale: BST.
Mr Cleary: Yes. I didn't want to mention it.
Mrs Whale: I knew that would come up today. First of all, we need the legislation to allow it to happen here. You know what's happened in Europe: They've asked that that legislation be delayed because they need time to assess what it's going to do to the industry, and Canada's in probably the same position. But we always have to remember that when our competitors have a product and we do not, we have to realize the consequences of that.
In general, we know very well that science has indicated that this is benign technology, that this is not a technology we have to be afraid of in terms of health and safety of food. Nevertheless, as an industry we have to look at whether the consumer is going to be accepting of BST milk. That's something industry is going to have to work at. They sure didn't do a very good job of selling it, in the first place, to the consumer. If indeed the industry as a whole feels it's going to be detrimental in terms of milk sales, I think we have a problem, and I don't know how it's going to be solved.
As a producer, we know that between 10% and 20% increase could be derived from BST, but at the same time we have to improve our management skills. So producers too are going to have to consider whether they're the type of people who can manage BST properly and indeed can use it to improve their milk production, and then, if they do, whether they can afford to buy more quota.
Mr Cleary: Do you feel that's happening right now in some dairy herds in Ontario?
Mrs Whale: That people are administering BST? Not that I know of. However, you could and it would be undetectable. It's a naturally occurring substance, so there's no test for it. But I don't know of anyone, and I am not using it.
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Mr Cleary: We already talked about some of your priorities. Would that be one of them, to get more information and research on BST?
Mrs Whale: No, because the research has been done and it is definitive and it's worldwide. We don't need any more scientific research on BST. The issue now is one of management and one of consumer preference.
The Vice-Chair: Can we have the full name of BST just for the record so the people reading this --
Mrs Whale: Bovine somatotropin.
Mr Cleary: In your opinion, what's the greatest threat to our Ontario farmers, our producers and our distributors?
Mr Jackson: Politicians.
Mr Cleary: That's true.
Mrs Whale: There are a number of threats to Ontario agriculture. One of the threats may be a perception of that agriculture. It's really important for people who are deciding how to be supportive of agriculture, from the government side, to realize that approximately 20% of our farmers produce 80% of the products we eat and export, and that the food industry in Ontario represents a $43 billion business, the second-biggest industry in Ontario.
With those two things in mind, we have to look, when we're deciding on legislation etc, at where the production is coming from. We should be looking after our best and our most competitive farmers and realizing that many people who call themselves farmers really are very small producers.
Second, it's important to realize now that GATT is an order, that because of GATT we are going to have to reduce direct subsidies to farmers by 20% now and maybe more in the future. It behooves us, then, to look at putting more money into research. Research is GATT-green; it means it is not countervailable. If we really want to support our active and productive farming community, we simply have to give them an edge through putting more money into research.
Third, but we are doing this, we have a tremendous emphasis now on research on environmental sustainability, and I know that has to continue as the years go on. I realize that in Ontario now we only have 10.1 million people here, but in 40 years that number's going to double, and it will be doubling, more than likely, in our prime growing areas. We have to sit down and decide how much value we put on our prime farming lands and go about and protect them.
Mr Cleary: Just your opinion: Might competitiveness be compromised if we emphasize too much on environment and regulations? It was already touched on a bit here.
Mrs Whale: That's right. Every farmer out there knows that if he doesn't have a highly productive land base he's not going to survive. Recently, farmers have initiated a program called the environmental farm plan. There will be thousands of people, myself included, who are in the process of developing environmental farm plans for their very own farms, an indication of where we put the emphasis on the environment. The only time that emphasis is going to hurt us is if we find ourselves in a situation that we talked about at the beginning; that is, putting rules and regulations into place for our own producers, yet turning around and allowing products into this country that have been produced using those same processes or the same additives and external applications that we are not allowed to use. We have to be very careful that this is a fair playing field.
Mr Bradley: My question is on the effects of urbanization, whether you believe your agency should be -- or is it? -- conducting research into the effect of the granting of severances and subsequently the semiurbanization of farm areas. A little bit has been alluded to so far, in terms of the fact that you have people concerned about the environment. Some of those are genuine, but as soon as you have the urban people move out, the Ministry of Environment and Energy, particularly under the new Environmental Bill of Rights, will be chasing smells, will be chasing dust, and will be chasing bird-bangers.
Mrs Whale: That's right. It's interesting that you should bring that up, because at our meetings last week we were reviewing the new structure of the University of Guelph-OMAF agreement. One of the six new programs that has been set up is called Sustainable Rural Communities, and the discussion centred on just exactly what that program was going to do, where the research dollars were going to be put. There was a heavy emphasis being put on the need to find out where the problems were in terms of land severance policies, land use policies: Let's amalgamate that body of knowledge and figure out what we're going to do about it, how we're going to protect prime farm land, how we're going to protect right-to-farm legislation etc. That's a very important issue, and it's one we now have to find money to fund if we're going to indeed add that new program on to our U of G agreement.
Mr Jackson: Mr Chairman, I have no questions, but I know you certainly have a couple.
The Vice-Chair: Yes. If you have no questions, I'll ask two or three, just from the chair. Is yours a family farm?
Mrs Whale: Yes.
The Vice-Chair: Do you have hired help?
Mrs Whale: Yes.
The Vice-Chair: How many would you have?
Mrs Whale: We have one full-time person and one part-time.
The Vice-Chair: Have you had them for several years?
Mrs Whale: Yes.
The Vice-Chair: Have you cut back on your help?
Mrs Whale: No.
The Vice-Chair: Do you use insecticides, atrazine etc?
Mrs Whale: Yes, as little as possible. As you know, there's new technology out there which can scan fields with computers to find out where the weeds are and only spray on those spots. A lot of farmers are using that, and the farmers in our area have access to that equipment through our local co-op.
The Vice-Chair: Are there many organic farmers in your area?
Mrs Whale: Not very many, but there are a few.
The Vice-Chair: Do you find that a lot of farmers today are cutting back on the insecticides they are using?
Mrs Whale: Most definitely. For one thing, we have to be cost-competitive and those are expensive inputs. For another thing, as I said, there's new machinery today which allows us to really reduce the amount of insecticide and pesticide that we're putting on fields. In addition to that, there are new tilling practices and planting practices which are emphasizing decreased use of herbicides and pesticides.
The Vice-Chair: You mentioned earlier that we have to keep the farm land for agriculture. In the area where I live, five years ago the land was all grown in corn or it was rented out. Today that land is sitting there growing in weeds. Nobody is farming it, and there's thousands and thousands of acres of excellent land sitting there doing nothing. Your area is probably the same.
Mrs Whale: My area isn't, actually, because it's just a very competitive farming area. It's north of Guelph. We don't see that in our area, but I certainly have seen it in lots of areas. People are looking around for alternatives for that land, and one of those alternatives is tree planting.
In southern Ontario, particularly with our population pressure, we're going to be facing those kinds of issues that they faced in Europe too. Europe has realized that if it, for example, wants to maintain its tourist influx, it has to maintain a good-looking land base, so very often they pay people to stay on farms to keep them looking good for tourists.
I don't think we've reached that point yet, because we still have a lot of land and very few people, but we're getting there, and we have to decide what alternatives are good for land like that.
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The Vice-Chair: What has your research institute done with regard to methanol? Have they done research and made some recommendations with regard to its promotion?
Mrs Whale: A lot of research was done, particularly in the engineering department at the University of Guelph, and there were on-farm methanol plants as well. But it hasn't proved to be economical yet, and it seems to me that the emphasis is decreasing on research in that area, and I see increasing emphasis on things like ethanol production from corn, for example. But if it can be made economical, it's certainly something farmers would use.
The Vice-Chair: But you have looked at that aspect?
Mrs Whale: Yes, for sure.
The Vice-Chair: How many cattle do you milk?
Mrs Whale: About 80 right now.
The Vice-Chair: That's why you've got some hired help. We only milk about 45 and can't afford help.
Mr Waters: Our heart goes out to you, Al.
Mr Hope: Mr Chair, with your permission, because I've heard her talk about cattle and milking, I was wondering if she's familiar with stray voltage at all.
Mrs Whale: Yes, I am.
Mr Hope: Would the research be looking into the stray voltage issue?
Mrs Whale: It's interesting. There's a fair bit of research that's being done on that at two of the CAAT colleges, and, much to my surprise, their research indicates that stray voltage is not a factor in milk production.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much for appearing before the committee this morning. I wish you well. Look after our farm industry. It's important. They all like to have lunch, these people, and they've got to realize where it comes from.
Mr Paul Johnson: Just think, Al. If you use BST, you'll be able to produce the same amount of milk with about maybe 35% of the cows, you'll still save on the environment, you'll have fewer cows to milk and you won't have to worry about hiring a hand.
Mr Bradley: I thought the Premier's office used BST.
The Vice-Chair: That's not how it's spelled.
PHYLLIS GORDON
Review of intended appointment, selected by third party: Phyllis Gordon, intended appointee as member, Ontario Criminal Code Review Board.
The Vice-Chair: Next is Phyllis Gordon, intended appointee as a member of the Ontario Criminal Code Review Board. Please have a chair at the front. You have the opportunity to make an opening statement, or we can go right into questions, whichever you would like.
Ms Phyllis Gordon: I suspect we should just go ahead into questions.
Mr Jackson: Your résumé has extensive experience in dealing with the law, and you've provided supports for children with psychiatric problems and disabilities, as I see it.
Ms Gordon: Many years back, yes.
Mr Jackson: You're currently at Parkdale Community Legal Services as the clinic director. Is there a reason you moved from the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal to clinical community work?
Ms Gordon: There are many reasons I elected to apply for the clinic director job at Parkdale. I enjoyed my work at the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal. It was the startup stage of a new tribunal, so it was very interesting in terms of the development of procedure and process and fundamentals. It was, however, a solicitor's position, and I had been active in practice both in Hamilton and in Kingston prior to going to the pay equity tribunal, and had, as you can see from the résumé, done an awful lot of community work over the years. I felt that whatever management skills I thought I might have I could bring to a place like Parkdale. I essentially was interested in the work they do, very much community-based work, and they work with the law school at York University. It seemed to me to be a v
ery expansive position to move to, and I'm glad I took it.
Mr Jackson: We'll get to your actual appointment, but I'm very interested in the depth of your background. Around the time you were practising in Kingston, and parallelled with your interests at the time, you may recall there was a public outcry when the local rape crisis centre was about to shut its doors and yet funding had been transferred to the Kingston Penitentiary for sexual assault criminals. This occurred around 1987, and it triggered a series of debates in the House and a shifting of the funds. I just wondered if you were familiar with that. I know you were doing work with LEAF and other organizations in the Kingston area around that time.
Ms Gordon: No, I never worked with LEAF. I worked with the interval house. I don't think my CV indicates LEAF. I was not involved in that issue.
Mr Jackson: No, I knew you weren't. I meant whether you were familiar with it, given that you were a sessional lecturer at Queen's law and you were also involved with -- a couple of other items here that caught my eye.
However, my reason for asking about that very narrow area is because you're about to receive an appointment to the Ontario Criminal Code Review Board, and of course the issues around public safety are foremost in the public's mind at the moment and there are substantive pressures being put on the board to release people into the community. I just wondered if you could share with the committee some of your views so we can get a sense of your perceptions and, with your experience, a sense of the kinds of decisions you feel would be fair.
Ms Gordon: Generally, my interest in this appointment actually comes because I see it as a very difficult task, the balancing of the public interest and the rights of individuals. I believe the legislation set out in the Criminal Code actually sets a priority for public safety and that the safeguards that have been given to accused people who are incarcerated in the mental hospitals as a result of criminal behaviour are particularly rights to be reviewed, not necessarily rights to be released. I think there's a distinction. There's a right to not be forgotten.
My experience leads me to be interested in adjudication in particular, and in balancing. I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist and would see my own task on the board as more the balancing and weighing of the legal issues and the considerations the Criminal Code sets out.
Mr Jackson: You would be aware that there have been some highly publicized cases of the failure of certain individuals; when the board wasn't always right, would be one way of putting it. In my community, the Jonathan Yeo inquest was quite filled with problems around this whole issue. It is of considerable concern that the circumstances that emanated from the Yeo decision can be traced back to treatment by the Clarke Institute and boards such as this one.
I just wonder to what extent you see the pendulum swinging a little bit back, where, because you are a layperson and not a psychiatrist -- you are a lawyer, but I still see you standing in the shoes of the public as a member of this committee and not the prescribed judge-chair or retired judge-chair or the psychiatrist. I think we have to look to you to balance off the special interests of community safety.
Ms Gordon: I currently work in a community-based organization that has activities in many parts of Toronto life, basically, in many areas of the law. One of the areas we work with are people called psychiatric survivors in the area of Parkdale. Another area the clinic is very involved in is the rights of victims of sexual assault and victims of domestic violence, family violence, and street assault. In fact, the interests of the public and the individual in a sense are actively at the clinic. Now, it's never occurred in my tenure that the same person has been involved, and I've not had to make judgement calls.
Mr Jackson: But they won't be at the board.
Ms Gordon: They won't be at the board, but I think I'm bringing to the decision-making a sensitivity to women's issues in particular that the clinic has been involved in with respect to sexual offence.
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Mr Jackson: If time permits, I want to have one final, follow-up question.
The Vice-Chair: You've run over your time.
Mr Jackson: I know that, but I said if time permitted, Mr Chair.
Mr Frankford: We were really on the question I was going to ask. I know where the legal clinic is located, an area where there's a significant ex-psychiatric population. I was wondering if your experience there had given you any opinions on the work of the board.
Ms Gordon: Indirectly. One of the tests the board looks at is the needs of the accused. It's really apparent, probably anywhere in the province but especially in our area, that it's hard to find places for people to live well once they're released. That's an issue, and it's an issue that if there isn't a proper plan, I would think, in many cases the board would decide not to release. It is critical that the environment to which the person is going be examined. Hopefully, if it were a different time of fiscal policy or whatever, if we weren't in such a restraint period, one would hope for better community-based services for people. In that sense, yes, we know how difficult it is to find places. The rooming-house issue is really hard for people who come out of Queen Street.
I guess I'm just repeating earlier what I said to Mr Jackson. The issues of random violence really are very upsetting to people at the clinic, and we have considered going for standing on behalf of victims. We haven't done it yet, but we've been wondering whether we should be. This clinic has many different interests, and I think I bring that kind of understanding because of my work at the clinic.
Mr Frankford: In your work on tribunals, you would be seeing the availability of follow-up services and housing as something that would very much influence your decisions.
Ms Gordon: I think it is important, yes.
Mr Frankford: You'll still be at the clinic, or is this going to be a full-time position?
Ms Gordon: As far as I know, this is a very part-time position.
Mr Jackson: You can't live on it.
Mr Hope: Looking through your résumé, I see you practise with Mary Ann Higgs in Kingston. I know her dad very well. He lives in Chatham, in Kent county. I know Mary Ann very well, as a matter of fact.
I wanted to talk about the role and responsibility now that will be placed upon you once this committee makes its decision on your appointment. The protection of the public from a dangerous person, the mental condition of an accused: Taking those two major factors, how are we going to balance the public concern and the rights of an individual? I mean, it's easy for somebody to say, "I was nuts at the time" before a court; trying to balance that with the general public's concern. We all read the papers today about how people feel about people who have committed such crimes.
Ms Gordon: I can't honestly answer that question yet. After a couple of years of adjudicating I would be in a much better position to tell you everything I bring to those decisions. I come to the question fairly fresh, in a sense. I have not been on the bandwagon for either side, if you will. In that sense, I'm quite neutral.
The legislation makes it quite clear that you don't release unconditionally unless you're sure -- the language is "is not a significant threat," so the balance is set out in the legislation itself for a full release in favour, I suppose, of protecting the public, is the way I read the legislation.
It's very difficult in a vacuum to be asked one thing or another. Each case is a case. I've done enough adjudication in other contexts with arbitration work to know you have to listen to the evidence. You really do need to listen to the evidence and you need to listen to the plans and what the future issues are for people.
I think we all know from our own experience of knowing people who have depression, not necessarily that they've committed criminal acts with a mental disorder, how critically important the follow-up is and the support that exists. I can't answer the question in a total vacuum. Everything has to be heard. In particular, I would rely on the expertise. I probably have some skill in asking questions of experts and would use those skills. It's not necessarily psychiatric expertise that I've cross-examined or questioned in the past, but I certainly will be interested in following through and asking the questions that seem to me to be the most relevant.
Mr Waters: I'd like to touch on patients' rights. Oak Ridge is actually in the Chair's riding, but it's so close to the boundary that we both live with Oak Ridge in our riding. We've had ongoing problems with the rights of patients. I went to tour the facility with a minister of the crown and we were not allowed to walk down certain corridors because it would infringe on the rights of patients. One patient actually got the plans to the institution, and the staffer who relieved that patient of the plans was brought up on a discipline hearing because, after all, the patient had the right to the plans.
Mr Bradley: Welcome to Ontario.
Mr Waters: This was previous to us being in government; these things go back a long way. There's got to be a balance. At times, in our communities the people feel the balance is not there. I would like your opinion on whether you feel the balance is there or whether we've gone overboard with the rights of these people who are being held, especially the major, violent ones.
Ms Gordon: I'm not really well enough informed to answer your question fully in terms of what the rights are right now for people who would be at Oak Ridge. I actually toured Oak Ridge many, many years ago. When I articled at the Attorney General, somehow I managed to have a personal five-hour tour, and I was overwhelmed. It was a long time back, though. Patients assisted in the tour, right through, interestingly enough. I was allowed right through. I wasn't an MPP, though.
Mr Waters: That must have been a while ago.
Ms Gordon: I can't really answer the question. I'm sorry. If we're talking about internal rights that can lead to some level of self-esteem and therapeutic advancement within the institution, that's one thing. If you're talking about taking away a minimal civil right within the institution as punitive, I think you should be clear it's punitive, but I don't think you should then pretend you're providing therapy. There are real issues there, and that's a conundrum that I don't think any criminal justice system's solved yet.
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Mr Bradley: I would have thought that the members of the government, my good friends on the other side, would not then have blocked the victims' bill of rights which was put before the Legislature, if there were great concerns in this area. Perhaps the next time it comes up, it will not be blocked.
How were you approached for this? How did you find out about this job being open? Did somebody phone you?
Ms Gordon: No. There was an ad some time back in the Ontario Report, or something like that, for the chair of the tribunal. I got interested in it and I sent in a résumé.
Mr Bradley: Have you been politically active in years gone by?
Ms Gordon: It depends what you mean by "politically." I have been small-p politically active by being a member of boards of directors of groups, community membership, that kind of political activity, and many years ago I was a member of the NDP.
Mr Bradley: One of the problems we encounter has been alluded to by some of the members. Mr Waters, I thought, made a significant comment about the fact that there is a perception, real or not, on the part of a large portion of the public that the pendulum has swung very much in favour of -- I hate saying one side or the other, but to one side of the issue in terms of mental health.
Many of us, as MPPs, get questions from our constituents and pleas from families of mental health patients, who have on their side advocates who are very well organized, very well -- I don't know if they're well paid, but they're well organized and very committed to the cause. The family may have a different point of view, but nowadays you almost have to be out there committing a crime or about to commit a crime or harm to someone before you can be confined. Many parents, many spouses, many members of families are very concerned about this. In your view, because you're dealing in this general area, is this is a legitimate concern, that in fact advocates have won the day and that families and others are now in a position of not being able to influence the placement of members of their family?
Ms Gordon: Bottom line, I agree with the trend of the reforms that were made to the Mental Health Act. There have been great abuses, which we don't hear about, in the past; people who have been kept in institutions -- I'm not talking right now about criminal conduct, I'm talking about the civil side -- people who have been kept there for a long time. The people we know in the Parkdale community are often without their families now; their families are not there to support them. They come from all over the province and the city, wealthy areas of the city as well, but they haven't been received and supported in their families. I don't see it as an issue you can just say yea or nay to. They're really subtle questions.
Mr Bradley: That's a fair answer to say that.
I think of people who suffer from schizophrenia, for instance, parents who are often in a different position than the people themselves. I had a woman who called me -- I'm sure she called every other political office -- and predicted her daughter would die. And her daughter did die. There was no question in her mind. She pleaded with everybody. I was not in a position to do anything; others were not. She wrote a letter to the editor and said, "I predicted this, and it has happened." In that case, it was the person herself who died as a result of the fact that she had all these rights, had the right to put herself in a vulnerable position where she ended up dying, even though this somewhat elderly mother was endeavouring to prevent that from happening.
That's the point I'm making when I say the pendulum appears to have swung so far to the other side that we're giving people the right to do harm to themselves and to die. How do we find a better balance?
Ms Gordon: It's very hard to argue or to discuss something from one case, again where you don't know -- it's almost like being asked to adjudicate in advance. If the mother had been capable of convincing the institution that her daughter was of imminent danger to herself, she should not have died. Something went wrong in the system as it played out in that story. It could have been years of frustration on the part of the mother, I don't know; she could have quit, might have stopped trying to use the system. But for somebody who is in imminent danger, there is a method of providing them treatment or at least keeping them in the institution.
There are going to be mistakes. I don't know how we balance it all out, and I don't think any of us -- I can't speak for everybody. I don't have the wisdom to solve all those problems. I do know there are lots of problems on the side of people who've been in mental hospitals for a long time who have had no support, who have really lost their life, have been overdrugged, overmedicated.
Maybe the pendulum will swing back to a middle ground. I don't know how it'll happen and play out. My hope is that people will get more sensitive to the questions of treatment and rights combined and that we'll deal better, but it's going to take a long time. We're very far from where we were 50 years ago or 100 years ago.
Mr Bradley: I'll just make an observation and give some time to the Conservative Party, which wishes one more question, with the consent of the committee.
In my estimation, if the public could vote for this position, they would certainly be voting for the pendulum to come back. I know we appoint these commissions, and I'm not saying the public will is necessarily going to be correct, because perhaps not all the information is available. I simply want to reflect as a committee member, as an elected member, what I am hearing in my constituency, albeit from individual people, and it doesn't mean it's a good cross-section, but my suggestion would be that the public is what you would call fed up and would be much more radical on this than even I on this particular issue.
I promised, if the committee consents to it, to give Mr Jackson time for his final question.
The Vice-Chair: Do we have unanimous consent? Thank you.
Mr Jackson: Thank you, committee and my colleague. When we were discussing, your last comment had to do with domestic violence. That triggered a question, because this board you're about to be appointed to looks at a threat to society but not to a specific other member of society, as I understand from some of the hearings I have reviewed.
In the case of domestic violence, there's sometimes threats back at individuals, in particular women, who were the victims. They do not have standing, nor do they have rights to have impact statements before your board.
How will you be able to bring that sensitivity to those board decisions when in fact your mandate is focused on the broader question and not the specific question of the safety of an individual who's been threatened, or one whose manifestations of antisocial behaviour are directed specifically to an individual and this is known in the psychiatric reports?
Ms Gordon: You're saying that the psychiatric reports would themselves indicate that the accused has continued to make threats against his wife?
Mr Jackson: That the nature of his violence is general but focused at an individual who feels threatened. When this is before the parole board, it can dealt with. This is not the parole board; this a different board.
Ms Gordon: I'm finding it a little difficult to answer, in one way, because obviously, as you know, I haven't spent a lot of time learning the jurisprudence of this board yet. However, I think it's fair to say that the crown, which is entitled to come, can draw the board's attention to those kinds of observations that would be in the medical reports.
I think there's a distinction between a threat that was made at the time somebody's trial occurred or when he was found unfit to stand trial, and if he's been at Oak Ridge for 12 years and what he's doing now. A lot of it's timing as well.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you for appearing today. Good luck.
I ask the committee now to determine whether it concurs with the interviews this morning.
Mr Waters: So moved.
Mr Jackson: I second it.
The Vice-Chair: All in favour? Opposed? Carried.
Finally, we have a report of the subcommittee.Are there any amendments or changes, or could we have a motion to adopt the subcommittee report?
Mr Waters: So moved.
The Vice-Chair: All in favour? Opposed? Carried.
This committee is adjourned until about March 23, I would think. Good luck. Have a good holiday.
The committee adjourned at 1152.