Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

The House resumed at 8 o’clock, p.m.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Peel South.

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): Just before we start proceedings, I would like to take the opportunity to introduce to members of the Legislature a group of cubs, 1st Erindale “C” Cub Pack under Mr. Jan Graper and other leaders. Some of these young gentlemen come from Peel North and some from Peel South. Would the members join me in welcoming them here?

ALGONQUIN FORESTRY AUTHORITY (CONTINUED)

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Scarborough West.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That’s quite lavish. I appreciate that widespread applause, let Hansard record.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): From all sides of the House too.

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I think the applause was evident everywhere. If the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development (Mr. Grossman) was here, he’d have me correcting Hansard; but he is not, fortunately.

Mr. Speaker, I begin with an apology. Getting a trifle carried away at 5 o’clock, I think I described, amongst a number of adjectives, the ministry as corrupt, and I apologize for that. I must say, Mr. Speaker, that my problem is of, course, that I am so personally angry about the ministry’s behaviour around the Elliot Lake lung cancer report that it clouds my attitudes towards a number of other issues in that ministry and provokes me to unusual, uncharacteristic hyperbole. It is inefficient, incompetent, decadent, debauched perhaps; but corrupt, no. I withdraw that word as one which would be unseemly. I am sorry I used it.

Mr. Speaker, to recapitulate briefly on the five or six minutes I took before 5 o’clock, this party continues to be opposed to the logging in Algonquin Park, unequivocally. Can I say to the hon. minister that that was the most admirable thing about his statement? It’s the first government document I have seen which says unequivocally instead of unequivocably. I thought to myself what a sign of linguistic maturity, if nothing else, in the Ministry of Natural Resources, and it made me feel better. That apart, Mr. Speaker, I want to repeat that we could have supported the Algonquin Forestry Authority as a phasing-out operation, but cannot support it under any circumstances as a perpetuation of logging in the park.

We also continue to feel, Mr. Speaker, something that many of us in this party have felt for a considerable period of time, and that is a kind of inherent conflict of interest in a Ministry of Natural Resources attempting to preserve something as environmentally fragile as Algonquin, while at the same time engaging in the extraction of timber. I realize that this ministry encompasses many such potential conflicts of interest. This is the ministry which looks after the parks generally. This is the ministry which handles pits and quarries, and at the same time tries to maintain some kind of environmental preservation with it. This is the ministry which is primarily involved in extraction, whether it is the extraction of minerals or the extraction of timber. It has always seemed to me incompatible; and it has always seemed to us, I think, on the opposition side of the House, generally incompatible that the one could serve the other. Inevitably the ministry will be moved to extracting every inch of that 15 million to 20 million cubic feet per annum which will be taken from the soul of Algonquin.

Mr. Speaker, during the course of the debate on Algonquin Park much has been said about jobs. Before I get into a couple of details which I hope will be of value, I want to say a word about the jobs. This is not a situation where the choice is stark between environment on the one hand and jobs on the other. That kind of difficulty presents itself rarely in this province, and I have never felt that that juxtaposition, environment or jobs, is a realistic one anyway.

In this case, it’s particularly unrealistic. In this case, Mr. Speaker, it is our argument that we could preserve every single job that is presently in existence by exploiting the area within a 50-mile radius of Algonquin, and that there is absolutely no reason in the world for a job, directly or indirectly, to be endangered by the policy which we put forward or which the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. R. F. Nixon) put forward this afternoon; not a single job.

Obviously if one phased out the logging over four or five years, Mr. Speaker, which is the appropriate, the thoughtful and the reasonable way to approach Algonquin, obviously if one did that then the jobs are transferred gradually and reasonably to the periphery of the park and to the area within the 50-mile radius. It would probably be unnecessary for people to move; it would be unnecessary for them to lose any pay; it would be unnecessary for the communities of Pembroke or Renfrew or Barry’s Bay, or all the way over to Muskoka and Parry Sound, to be jeopardized in any sense by the policy which we are espousing in the opposition. The jobs would be secure; I want to make that clear, and nobody suggested for a moment that it should be otherwise.

I want to say something about the minister’s statement when he introduced the bill, because it said much about the approach the ministry has taken. The minister said:

“At this time I wish to stress that I have reconsidered the need to harvest timber from Algonquin Park and I can reaffirm unequivocally that the 50-mile zone is not a feasible alternative source of supply for park-dependent mills for the following reasons.”

And then he gives a number of reasons based on Mr. Pierpoint’s study, to which I’ll come in a moment. But it’s reason number two and reason number three which are really quite central. Excuse me; just as the minister consults with his research staff and expertise under the gallery, so I do mine. Do these figures correspond with our calculations over the dinner hour? Good, okay.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let me go on. The minister says:

“The industry of the region presently depends upon private woodlots for 40 per cent of its wood supply, but based on current trends in woodlot owner characteristics and attitudes, this source of supply is not secure and cannot be guaranteed for the future.”

The large area covered by the 50-mile zone, the checkerboard pattern of private and Crown land, and the scattered nature of the excess Crown timber present serious operational and financial problems which limit the recovery of this wood.

Let me say something about that for a minute, Mr. Speaker. What has not been paid enough attention to is the fact that the Pierpoint report, the document central to this whole debate now, deals only with Crown land. The Pierpoint report deals not at all with private woodlots. What is interesting, of course, is that what the minister is saying is that the private woodlots, held outside Algonquin Park, cannot be made operational to take up the slack of shifting the cutting from within the park to outside the park. And we in this party, as my colleague from Thunder Bay (Mr. Stokes) is going to tell you in a little while, we just repudiate that notion.

There is a certain inherent inconsistency in everything the minister has been saying. On the one hand he says he believes in good forest management, and on the other hand he plotted a 30 per cent available cut from allowable cut.

The minister talks so passionately about the Woodlands Improvement Act, and then says that it is not possible on private woodlots to get the kind of timber resources which would allow us to move out of the park. We reject that out of hand.

What the government is really saying is that it won’t come to grips with the private ownership of woodlots; that it will not come to grips with appropriate harvesting in the private, non-Crown land sector; that it prefers to desecrate Algonquin Park rather than manage the private woodlots, in all of the creative ways which other jurisdictions have found, in order to provide the alternative wood supplies from Algonquin.

There is outside of Algonquin within a 50-mile radius some 60 per cent of the private woodlots which could offer for the industry alternative sources of supply. The minister never looked to that in a serious fashion; never. And all that I suggest is that the minister doesn’t understand.

My colleague from Thunder Bay was explaining this to me over dinner. As a matter of fact, a very well known professional forester -- who once worked for the ministry -- explained to me at 6 o’clock that the possibility of developing private woodlots is enormous, but that this ministry, like too many ministries, refused to intrude on the private sector. Not to exploit them in this case, but to cohere them, to consolidate them, to regulate them, to make them productive; to do all the things the minister pretends to do under the Woodlands Improvement Act and suddenly jettisons when it serves his purpose.

And when it served his purpose not to find the wood in the private or public sector outside the park, the minister commissioned the Pierpoint report. I want to say something about this report, because let’s face it, Mr. Speaker, the debate around Algonquin Park hinges clearly on whether or not there is enough wood outside the park, within a 50-mile radius, to do the job that is done within. That’s where it all hinges.

Mr. Pierpoint of the forest research branch was asked by the minister to prepare a study on the availability of wood outside Algonquin Park to satisfy industrial requirements; and he did. I think it was a mistake -- just a personal reflection -- to ask someone within his own ministry to give authenticity to the figures which his ministry produced. I don’t, think that’s the way one does it. I think one gets an independent person or group to verify the figures one has produced. These figures are naturally suspect, because they are inevitably self-serving.

But let me assume, as I must and as I will happily, that Mr. Pierpoint did a job as best he could within his own very considerable knowledge and came to the conclusions that he did. I want to say one or two things about the report. I enjoyed it, but there were parts of it I didn’t understand. Happily, the parts I didn’t understand are irrelevant to the argument. The parts I did understand are useful for the argument.

The jargon was in some ways endearing but incomprehensible. I’ve heard of allowable cut, I’ve heard of actual cut, but until this report I’d never heard of available cut. And by God I hadn’t heard of operational cruise, I’ll tell you, Mr. Speaker.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Lewis: Well the member is speaking to a city fellow. That’s right. When I think of operational cruise, I think of south Yonge St. and I think sometimes of perhaps a merchant seaman on a day off; but I hadn’t for the life of me known that it applied to a sensitive analysis of the merchantable timber net which could be produced within the forest industry.

Well as I said, it was useful for me to learn the terms, to ask to have them defined and to read the jargon. Let me give members that delicious paragraph on page 4:

“On the basis of the inventory information, plus considerations of increment and rotation age or cutting cycle period [Thank God, Fred Burr understands it] an ‘allowable’ area value is determined which, under a sustained-yield approach, would be allowed to be cut in the next period. An actual area is then delineated and allocated for cutting. The inventory estimates of the volume on this allocated area, plus the estimated increment, is called the ‘calculated allowable cut.’ However, a more intensive sampling must now be made on the allocated area to give a more reliable evaluation of the actual amount of timber which might be harvestable from the area. This is called an operational cruise.... [I’d like to understand if I could.]

“In the operating cruise a closer consideration of actual harvesting situations can be made, which together with the larger sampling provides the closer estimate of the amount of timber which is realistically available to the local industry. This ‘available cut’ may well be substantially less than the calculated ‘allowable cut.’”

I want to tell you that may all have been pulled together for the laymen, but it really needn’t have been.

What is important about this document is the figures contained in table 3-1 -- available cut, actual cut and minimum deficit. That’s what is really important about this report.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I want to say something which will, I guess, surprise the minister a little. I think that Mr. Pierpoint’s report -- and we have looked at it very clearly, very carefully -- demonstrates conclusively that there is enough timber of all the necessary hardwood and conifer species outside Algonquin Park, within a 50-mile radius, to provide all the requirements that are needed. The report demonstrates it conclusively and in a fashion which is both analytic and inspired. I thank the report for that, because that information has been hard come by. It’s not easy, on the basis of the figures which the ministry gave us in May 1974, to make that kind of assertion because those figures were disputed. I presume these figures cannot be disputed. These figures say to the New Democratic caucus -- certainly to those colleagues with whom I’ve had a chance to discuss it -- that there is, in fact, all the merchantable timber one would want.

I am going to have to engage in a slightly detailed discussion with the minister. I don’t know how else to get around it, but I want to show the minister where we think the fallacies lie and where the alterations can be made and why this report is, therefore, so useful.

First of all, let me show him what has been done in the report which makes some of the figures inaccurate, and I don’t know how to deal with this except to put it to him directly. In the table which is central to this report, he indicates that in the area of hardwood outside Algonquin Park the available cut is 190,000 cunits, more or less. What is that, 19 million cubic ft? Yes, 190,000 cunits equals 19 million cubic feet.

Mr. Pierpoint says in the body of the text that the available cut represents 30 per cent of the allowable cut, and that would make an allowable cut outside Algonquin Park, within the 50-mile radius, of some 635,000 cunits on an average of the cuts in the two years. In fact, of course, the average of the cuts in the two years is nowhere near 635,000. The average is something like 340,000 from the minister’s own figures. They are just not accurate. One of the reasons they are not accurate is because of the assumption that the available cut represents only 30 per cent of the allowable cut. Those to whom I have spoken find that very difficult to believe.

But let me take the minister to another place in that table and try to show him in two different ways how Mr. Pierpoint’s report demonstrates that one can cut the timber within 50 miles of Algonquin. The minister calculates in the table -- and this is the crucial table in the report -- the deficit that would exist were he to depend on the timber outside Algonquin alone. He says, both in the report and in his statement, that that deficit would be somewhere in the vicinity of five million cubic feet per year. Take a look at the line under “minimum deficit,” and in every case, under conifer logs and poles and conifer pulpwood he includes the shortfall; under hardwood logs and poles he includes the shortfall; but he doesn’t include the surplus which exists under the hardwood pulpwood category.

It’s very interesting that the one surplus which exists outside the park is not included in his table of calculations. Why isn’t it included? Because, frankly, it’s a self-serving document. My colleague from Thunder Bay has told me much in the last little while about pulpwood from hardwood and softwood sources, of the interchangeability in many operations now, of the variety that can be experienced from hardwood pulpwood in certain operations. It’s interesting to note that the minister has managed to omit that figure. If he includes that figure he then finds out that his annual shortfall would be about 2.6 million cubic feet, not five million cubic feet.

But what are we talking about when we use a figure like 2.6 million or even five million? What are we talking about when we say that? If the minister will look at his own figures in the table very carefully, he will find that what we are harvesting by way of conifer and hardwood outside Algonquin is some 26 million cu ft per year -- 26 million cu ft -- and if he has a shortfall of 2.6 million, then we are talking about a need for 10 per cent more outside the park than we are now getting -- just 10 per cent more. His answer to me is that 10 per cent more represents a very large amount of timber. Fair enough -- 26,000 cunits, 2.6 million cu ft.

Let me take the minister back to Mr. Pierpoint’s report and the astonishing shift he makes in the report. This strikes me as the Achilles heel of the document and I want to read it to the members carefully. On page 5, Mr. Pierpoint says in the third paragraph:

“For the areas in and around the Algonquin Park, operational cruise data were compared with the forest resources inventory data for the same forest stands. Data available for some of the working groups were not plentiful, but for more than half the working groups there were sufficient data to make reliable comparisons. In total, the operational cruise net merchantable volumes averaged just over 40 per cent of the inventory gross total volumes.”

All right, just over 40 per cent. Now listen to the next paragraph:

“This related reasonably well to actual harvest cuts made in areas of good market availability and stand accessibility, where utilization rates would be high. For example, in the Bancroft district, experience shows that scaled wood volumes from harvest cuts are approximately 30 per cent of the inventory gross total volumes. Since this figure appears realistic for actual market and harvesting situations, it was used as a factor by which to multiply the allowable cut expressed, in gross total inventory volume, for each management unit to give an estimate of ‘available cut.’”

My question to the minister is, why does he have evidence of a 40 per cent net merchantable timber from Algonquin and area -- it says “in and around Algonquin” -- and then to serve his purposes, he uses a 30 per cent figure based on the experience at Bancroft? What kind of report is that?

He may say to himself that it allows him some flexibility for error. I say to him that if he says that in and around Algonquin Park the average is over 40 per cent, then what right has he to use a 30 per cent figure from Bancroft? Nonsense. What kind of a document is it that plays that kind of arithmetic gymnastic in order to prove a point?

Now I come back to what I said before. His shortfall is 2.6 million cu ft per year -- 10 per cent of the total produced outside the park. The difference between 30 and 40, the last time I looked at it, Mr. Speaker, was also 10 per cent. I put it to the minister that if he used that 10 per cent, he would have, outside Algonquin, every single log he needed from without the park and wouldn’t have to put a finger on the logs in Algonquin.

Now the minister is going to say -- and some of his support is going to be provided, I presume, from his experts -- that the fallacy, Lewis, is the assumption that the pulpwood produced from the hardwood outside the park cannot be added into the calculation; that that’s really not fair; that the pulpwood from outside the park and the pulpwood -- or the pulpwood from hardwood and the pulpwood from conifer -- are not comparable and therefore you can’t really use those figures interchangeably. Well I am not sure that’s true. I am not sure that’s true.

I note that when it served the minister’s deficit purposes, he used every figure he could; but in case it showed a surplus he omitted the figure, and I don’t regard that as a very good statistical calculation.

But suppose that for the moment we relinquish that argument, which we think does prove conclusively that the material is available from outside the park. Let me show the minister something else which might not have struck his ministry. If we accept Mr. Pierpoint’s own assertion on page 5 that the net merchantable volumes average 40 per cent of the gross total volumes and apply that 40 per cent across the board, rather than the 30 per cent, and -- just to show how scrupulous we are -- if we add in to that calculation that only 49.2 per cent of the timber outside the park is good for hardwood, page 6; and 81.6 per cent for conifer, page 6; let me tell you the astonishing facts which emerge, Mr. Speaker.

It emerges that outside the park we would have a shortfall for hardwood of some 673 cunits -- or is it 6,730 or 67,300?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Bingo.

Mr. Lewis: Just one second now. I think that’s right.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): It’s 6,000 cunits.

Mr. Lewis: No, it’s not 6,000; it’s 673 cunits.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): A cunit is what?

Mr. Lewis: Multiply a cunit by 100 and you have cubic feet; okay.

I’m sorry; I’m now corrected. I’m going to go back. My memory failed me for a moment.

We would have a deficit in conifers, or softwood, outside the park, of 673 cunits. Right? Okay. And 673 cunits is what we’d have to make up; which is, what, 673,000 cu ft?

Some hon. members: No.

Mr. Lewis: No? Then it’s 67,300 cu ft.

Now, in terms of the hardwood, Mr. Speaker, there would be a surplus outside the park of 11,050 cunits, which is 1,105,000 cu ft.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Is that right?

Mr. Lewis: That’s right. The Speaker knows that.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Lewis: No, they’re not. They are Linda Thomas and Pat Johnston. They are researchers for the NDP caucus. They are not girls.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. Could we get on with second reading?

Mr. Lewis: I just wanted to make that clear, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Very interesting.

Mr. Lewis: It is. It should be, at least to Hansard, if not to you, sir.

I was in the committee when the Minister of Transportation and Communications was dealing with Krauss-Maffei and he dealt with Messerschmitt. He wasn’t sure Hansard could spell it, and he said, “Did you get that, dear?”

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Not me.

Mr. Lewis: I felt I had to correct the minister somewhere; it has been sticking in my craw for two weeks. Okay, now I’ll come back, Mr. Speaker. When we apply the 40 per cent to all of the figures, taking into account the availability, we get a deficit of 673 cunits for conifers and a surplus of 11,050 cunits for hardwood, meaning an overall surplus outside the park for our total requirements of one million cu ft per year. I want the minister to think about that for a moment, Mr. Speaker.

What Mr. Pierpoint’s document shows is that there is a surplus of one million cu ft per year outside Algonquin, given all of the needs that would be satisfied by the Algonquin-dependent industries and the outside dependent industries, using his own figures.

The minister said there would be a deficit of five million cu ft. That deficit is reached by applying a percentage figure from Bancroft to the realities of Algonquin Park. If one uses Mr. Pierpoint’s figures of 40 per cent from Algonquin Park to the radius outside of 50 miles -- and he uses the phrase “in and around”; that’s clearly what he’s talking about -- will give us a surplus of one million cu ft per year.

In other words, Mr. Speaker, there is no need to take another twig from Algonquin -- not a twig, not a leaf, not a sapling, not a full-grown tree -- unless, to use the minister’s comments, we want to do it for therapeutic harvesting reasons. Fair enough. My colleague from Thunder Bay will tell the minister that for therapeutic harvesting we would support a Crown corporation. We’d support a Crown corporation to do management outside the park; and my colleague from Thunder Bay is going to say something about that.

But don’t ask us to support a Crown corporation which serves the logging industry. That is preposterous. If the ministry wants to do therapeutic logging, by all means; we understand what forest management means. One only wishes the minister understood what forest management means and he would be getting a better percentage of actual cut from available cut than he is getting, and he would get a hell of a lot more available cut from allowable cut than he is getting.

In fact, he is getting more available cut from allowable cut than he pretends he is getting, only he cooks the books. I understand all the terms now; use them interchangeably with complete facility because I have now grasped them; and it took me a little while I may say.

Mr. Stokes: And cosmetic surgery.

Mr. Lewis: And cosmetic surgery as well for the forests, right.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact, just as I have learned one end from another agriculturally, so I have learned about trees in a similar fashion. That is called the greening of a leafer.

Mr. Speaker, I then come back to the central proposition, and I want to say to you, sir, something that I think is kind of interesting.

First of all, I have in my hand a letter which was sent to me May 27, 1974, from the division of forests, D. P. Drysdale, timber sales branch, signed by a Mr. Keddie -- I don’t know, perhaps on his behalf -- which demonstrated at the time that there was an amount of timber outside the park sufficient to fulfill all our needs. The reason that became controversial was the debate around the phrase “allowable cut.” So Mr. Pierpoint made his report and made the distinctions between allowable and available and actual cuts. All I want to point out, Mr. Speaker, is that using Mr. Pierpoint’s document, using all his figures and applying his percentages in a fair and scrupulous way, it emerges that there is a surplus of merchantable timber outside the park which would satisfy all of the needs presently satisfied by the extraction of timber from Algonquin.

Mr. Speaker, this is not a frivolous matter. What we have here is a kind of classic story of a government bent on destroying the environment for the purposes of the woods industry, and that is simply intolerable. There has to be some recognition somewhere that the recreational requirements of this whole province, and particularly southern Ontario in this case, have to be satisfied in large measure from Algonquin and that the government cannot allow even one per cent of that park to be logged every year, because the destruction or the park is incompatible with the experience of recreation, wildlife, camping or whatever; it is just wrong.

The government talked about getting rid of cars when it stopped Spadina. It can make the same argument about parks being for people, but it can make it, I would have thought, with rather greater force.

What does it all show over the last few months? It shows that the timber is there in a 50-mile radius outside the park. It shows that no jobs need be jeopardized; it shows that all of the contracts can be satisfied; it shows that even when the ministry takes into account the hardwood maple and the yellow birch, it can still satisfy the requirements from outside the park.

That’s the one thing which Mr. Pierpoint did for us that we were frankly uncertain about in this caucus: that is, what about the specific requirements of hard maple and yellow birch? Now we learn that that is also possible within a 50-mile radius of the park.

So I say to the minister, stop destroying Algonquin; he must relinquish his obsession to log that part, stop being beholden to the timber companies and pay some attention to the people of Ontario for a change. They don’t want the ministry to log that park. The woodsworkers in Ontario would not want the ministry to log that park if they knew there was an appropriate alternative and if they knew their jobs were secure.

Is the minister telling me that the woodsworkers in Barry’s Bay or Pembroke would oppose it if he said to them this timber is available within a 50-mile radius of the park? Are they unreasonable people? I don’t believe it.

Mr. P. J. Yakabuski (Renfrew South): The member’s figures won’t hold water.

Mr. Lewis: What they have always said to themselves up until now, and rightly, is how can we put our jobs on the line? The logs must come from Algonquin. Fear not; I understand that. I come from a party which faces that difficulty every day.

We face it with workers and unions engaged in glass and ceramic work when it comes to non-returnable bottle; engaged in mining the sand dunes; engaged in many of the environmental areas. We have to say to them: “Look, you’re not going to lose a job, because we don’t believe people should be put out of work in this case.” In this case of Algonquin it’s absolutely ironclad. I just don’t think it’s debatable much more. I really don’t. I think Mr. Pierpoint has done us an enormous service. He has made the argument conclusive.

Some of the figures, with respect, are not accurate because this new term “available cut,” is one of those drifting phrases which are called into use for self-serving purposes. As I pointed out to the minister, from Kennedy to Brodie to the Ontario Economic Council to Hedlin-Menzies, you show me the definitions that exist in Pierpoint. Pierpoint’s definitions are to make the case. All right, he did it, fair enough; but the evidence he adduces in the tables which he attaches to his report show that the logs are there outside Algonquin. For God’s sake leave the park alone. Lay off!

There is no need to take another scrap from Algonquin. The minister has the proof at hand. If he had good forest management, if he were prepared to use the material he has as evidence, if he were prepared to use some of the private woodlots under his woodland legislation, if he were serious about it in any way, he would have such a surplus outside Algonquin he wouldn’t know what to do with it.

Now we have all the figures to demonstrate it; so retreat. The minister should not dig in his heels in this instance. All he is doing is destroying the environment in the process, which makes no sense whatsoever and which is why we’re voting against this bill.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Victoria-Haliburton.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton): Mr. Speaker, let’s take a look at where that 50-mile radius would hit. It would include Timiskaming.

An hon. member: Half of Quebec.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: It would go close to Field; it would go very close to the town of Parry Sound.

Mr. Lewis: Yes.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: It would include Severn Bridge, Fenelon Falls, Bobcaygeon, Lakefield --

Mr. Lewis: It might do something for their economies.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: -- Eldorado --

Mr. Lewis: They’re still logging there now.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: -- Bon Echo and Calabogie. And one-third of all the area outside of Algonquin Park in that 50-mile radius is in the Province of Quebec and Ontario doesn’t have any control over it.

Mr. Lewis: Oh come on.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: It’s a fact! Take a look at the map.

Mr. Lewis: We are dealing with the area shown on the map, not in Quebec.

Mr. Stokes: Read the minister’s statement and read Pierpoint.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: I’m going to refer to what I know, not necessarily what the ministry knows and the configuration of figures the member for Scarborough West has played with.

Mr. B. Gilbertson (Algoma): He’s speaking from experience.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: I want to tell members that the companies in the timber industry in my two counties, which include quite a bit of this territory -- quite a bit of Algonquin Park, for instance -- tell me. I know how short of timber they are and how short of private land’s and resources that are available to them through the Crown. At the present pace of cutting those companies alone, within 15 years, will have no supply. That means that if we move companies that are operating in Algonquin Park into my territory to any extent to put a greater drain on the resources there it would mean those resources will be less than adequate for 15 years.

Mr. Stokes: That’s not managing the forest, that’s exploitation.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: That’s exactly what the member is suggesting. He is suggesting that exploitation of the forest resource outside that area be extreme.

Mr. Stokes: That’s what the government member is talking about.

Mr. Lewis: Let him show us the figures they’ve left out in that area.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: I am talking about what is a fact, not playing around with figures. The member is talking about one of the finest recreation areas in the Province of Ontario in that 50-mile radius -- one very heavily populated with summer cottages and summer lodges and summer recreation.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: The member is suggesting that the forest resource there be exploited to no end.

Mr. Lewis: No.

An hon. member: That’s right.

Mr. Lewis: No, to the allowable cut; just to the available cut that is indicated in the report, just the available cut.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Oh yes, the member is suggesting that it be exploited. I don’t think for one minute those people who own that land will go along with the member.

Mr. Lewis: It’s Crown land.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: It isn’t all Crown land; far from it.

Mr. Lewis: No, but the land that would give the government a million cu ft more a year is Crown land.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: All right; where is it?

Mr. Lewis: It’s within the 50 miles.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Where.

Mr. Lewis: Through the 50 miles.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Name 1,000 acres; let alone a 50-mile radius. Where is it?

Mr. Lewis: I have been given the map from this ministry which shows it.

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of Environment): Well, the member for Victoria-Haliburton happens to be in the area and knows it better than the leader of the NDP.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Name the area: tell us where the resource is.

Mr. Lewis: Ask the minister to name it, he knows where it is.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: He’s going to have hard time naming it.

Mr. Lewis: Is he?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Let me assure the member that in the township of Hindon he might come up with 3,000 or 4,000 acres.

Mr. Lewis: What is the member talking about?

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): What is he saying?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: I’m talking about the timber that the member for Scarborough West is talking about.

Mr. Stokes: It is obvious the member for Victoria-Haliburton never read the Pierpoint report.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: I don’t have to.

Mr. Stokes: Well sit down.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: All right; I’m talking about my area, which is only two counties of that territory.

Mr. Stokes: The minister makes the information available and he doesn’t even take advantage of it.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: I want to know where it is. And I hope the minister will tell me, because I don’t know where it is.

An hon. member: Vote against it then.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: My family, including my grandfather, have been involved in logging in this particular 50-mile radius. We have never logged in Algonquin Park; but we have been associated with Standard Chemical, which cut many, many thousands of these acres 50 years ago. Canadian Industrial Alcohols, with its own chemical company at Corbyville, has taken this wood resource from the beginning of the century until now. My own private land is 500 acres, but I’ll tell members this: No forest research was ever done on my land by the Crown. No one has asked me how much timber I have on my land. I happen to know.

Mr. Stokes: I think he is going to vote against the bill.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: I’m just telling the members opposite that I want them to prove what they are talking about when they claim there is a resource outside of Algonquin adequate to serve any more than the existing industry within that 50-mile radius, let alone Algonquin.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Ask the minister.

Mr. Lewis: May I just, on a point -- since the member is putting it this way -- the minister in his statement indicated that only 44 per cent of the 50-mile zone is private land; 56 per cent of it is Crown land, presently netting something in the vicinity of 44 million cu ft of allowable cut per year.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Right.

Mr. Lewis: Then it is out there. It is not a figment of someone’s imagination, and those are the figures Pierpoint uses.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: I agree with the member; but I want to ask him this: How much do they know about their own resource? That’s a good question.

Mr. Lewis: The member for Victoria-Haliburton will have to ask the minister.

Mr. Breithaupt: Ask the guy over there, he is the minister.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: That’s a real question.

Mr. Cassidy: Ask the minister.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: They know that they do not have the resource in that 50-mile radius to supply any more than the existing companies, if they are honest.

Mr. Cassidy: He is letting the cat out of the bag then, eh?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: And I say that advisedly.

Mr. Cassidy: The member is questioning the minister’s advice?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: All right, what if I do question that. I’d like to know where all this timber resource is.

Mr. Lewis: He is fairly cutting tonight.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: I want the members who represent that 50-mile radius to stand up here and tell us what they know about the resource in that area; and I think the members are going to get an eye-opener.

Mr. Lewis: Well okay.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Because they’ve got companies --

Mr. Stokes: Is the member saying Mr. Pierpoint doesn’t know?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Just be quiet; I am talking.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: It is my floor. I’m telling the members that I don’t know of any companies -- and I’m associated with most of the people who are in this industry through safety work, I talk to them two or three times a year, I hear them asking for more timber -- and I don’t know where this timber is. I want the Crown to tell us; because I don’t think there is enough for the existing companies in this 50-mile radius, let alone those companies which operate in Algonquin.

Mr. Lewis: Bad forest management.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: It isn’t bad forest management. It’s a fact of life.

Mr. Lewis: It is not a fact of life.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: The timber resource isn’t there. It’s that simple. The member was talking about future jobs for many people in that area. I think our companies can get along and exist and can operate, because they are slowly changing their operations to take care of it. Some are phasing out. But I say to you, Mr. Speaker, if we are going to employ all the people in our area who are connected with this industry, we have also got to take care of some jobs down in Brantford, and down where they make trucks in St. Thomas.

Mr. Lewis: Agreed.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: We have also got to take care of the furniture industry that operates here in southern Ontario, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lewis: Agreed.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: We have got to take care of the television set cabinet industry. We have got to take care of a whole host of people, like mill workers of all types in woodworking and associated industries, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lewis: Absolutely.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: We have got to take care of equipment sales and service people in Toronto and other repair places; and those on construction equipment that is used in the industry. We have got to take care of people who work in our existing stores throughout the year, and not just for summer seasonal work, because they are the mainstay of most of those operations. Mr. Speaker, we have got to come in and take care of the natural resources people who are in forestry, unless we put them out planting new trees. There are a whole host of these people who are operating in that industry.

I think it’s pretty sad for anyone to suggest this course who has only had two or three days to look at these figures.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Frankly, I remember two or three years ago, the Leader of the Opposition and some of the NDP were debating this. I think it was up in the Ottawa River area and also in Huntsville. If they haven’t talked to the industry itself in that period of time, that party’s critics should be asked why they didn’t do so. Phone calls to those people would have told them how much resource they had available.

Mr. Lewis: We went to the ministry and they gave us the figures. Are we not to trust them?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Why doesn’t the member find out for himself? He has criticized the ministry and said it was no good.

Mr. Lewis: We went to the source.

Mr. Breithaupt: Doesn’t the member for Victoria-Haliburton trust the minister?

Mr. Lewis: What the devil more can one do? We went to the ministry, we went to the IWA and we went to the companies. As a matter of fact, we went to the companies and asked for information.

Mr. Cassidy: Where has the member been for the last year? Why hasn’t he spoken up?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: I have studied the matter in my area and I know there is not the resource. I ask the other members of my party who represent that area to tell members opposite what the facts are. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The hon. member has the floor.

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): What hon. member?

Mr. Cassidy: At the very last minute.

Mr. Lewis: Let the member for Renfrew South have the floor; he is itching to go. Go ahead. We are all waiting.

Mr. Speaker: Does any other member wish to take part in this debate?

Mr. C. T. Rollins (Hastings): Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Hastings is on his feet.

Mr. Rollins: I have listened with a great deal of interest to what has been said here concerning lumbering in Algonquin Park. I have also listened to the figures that were mentioned about the Bancroft area.

Mr. Speaker, the lumbering industry as it is today is in a very crucial position at the present time. We have timber being harvested from within the park that is supplying the veneer plant in Tweed and supplying other mills within the area. We have under the ministry careful supervision on small permit operators operating locally through the Bancroft office in this industry. It would create a great deal of hardship if any further curtailment is made of timber operations in our general area.

I support the hon. member for Victoria-Haliburton exclusively on this opinion of his as to what it means in this area and what it means to families. If there were any further adjustments, it would curtail the operations to such an extent it would create hardship. We have many individuals that depend on lumbering; they are experts in their own walk of life.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Mr. Rollins: Ought one to take away from them their employment? They are willing to work and they want to work. They don’t ask for any further assistance, only to be given an opportunity. For small operators, it might be five or six men on a permit to carry on as individuals and be independent.

What the hon. member for Victoria-Haliburton has said also affects our area. Mr. Speaker, I support the minister’s proposal to have careful supervision of lumbering within Algonquin Park and to let the labouring people in my riding have an opportunity, as individuals, to carry on and not be penalized and put out of employment in such a crucial time where we need this employment to take care of our people and their families and to give them an education which they want to do proudly and not to be jeopardized by a whole lot more controls. Mr. Speaker, we have ample controls, and in my opinion possibly too many controls in some areas and too many people telling our people who want to work in the work force what to do.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Nipissing.

Mr. R. S. Smith (Nipissing): Mr. Speaker, I have a few remarks to make in regard to the bill.

We seem to have moved away from the principle of the bill, which is to establish the forestry authority. Of course, we have indicated that in our party we are going to vote against the establishment of the forestry authority, because first of all we feel it is the responsibility of the minister and his ministry to operate the park as a recreational area, first; as a wildlife area, second; and for those people who want to enjoy a wilderness area, third. We have stated that we believe the woods industry can be phased out of Algonquin Park over a length of time which would provide for facilities that would provide other jobs.

There is the question of whether, in the 50-mile radius, there is enough natural resources to provide for the industries that are already there. I have read the Pierpoint report and, as the member for Scarborough West has indicated, I have had some difficulty understanding it too, and I have lived with people who have talked about these things all their lives. I find there is some jargon used there that I have never heard before, and I’m sure there is some there that the minister has never heard before. I really can’t understand it, to some extent.

I do know, in spite of what that report says, that in the area that I represent and the area that I know best-that’s the area north of Algonquin Park, from say Cameron township across to Patterson and up, and this is within the 50-mile radius, at the top end of the park -- there certainly is not available in that area the natural resource to sustain the perhaps four or five industries that are dependent upon it in that part of the 50-mile radius outside of the park. There is no question in my mind that if there was a total ban put on logging in the park today, there would be industries in that area that would close and there would be jobs lost.

It may be well for anybody to stand up and say that there is hardwood there and that there is conifer in that area. But I know that area, and in the past 30 years that area has not produced enough hardwood to keep any small mill going. That is the area I know and that is the area I am talking about. There is no question in my mind that there would be unemployment created in that area if, in fact, logging was stopped in the park. The industries that are there are dependent upon the park for their natural resource.

I am not suggesting to the minister that this should continue. I’m suggesting to him that his ministry, along with the minister who sits beside him, should be investigating that area, looking at other alternatives, so that the logging can be phased out and so that those industries can be changed to other types of industry. I’m not talking about tourism, because tourism is for poor people, and it has created enough poor people in northern Ontario. That is not what we want as an alternative. But if we take the top half of the park and go north on the map, I think I would agree with the assumption in the Pierpoint report that there is not sufficient natural resource to support the industries that are there.

So it is not a black and white situation insofar as that report is concerned. The report deals with the whole, total area and deals with it as one sum put together, and that’s different from dealing with each individual area that surrounds the park.

Since I come from an area that is individual and different and has no connection whatsoever with Dickens or Burns townships, I have to look at what would happen in that specific area that I represent, or that I come close to representing. I believe that there may be some areas of the park where logging could be stopped right now and the natural resource could be provided outside the park. There may be some other areas where logging could be phased out over a longer period of time in order to support industries where unemployment would be created if they were forced to shut down right away.

I don’t think it’s a simple solution that can be provided on a black and white basis of either close it down or let it go. I believe, from this point of view, that the ministry is wrong in taking the overall position that we are going to allow logging to continue in the park regardless of what it does in any specific area.

The other point I would like to make is that if this ministry had, over the past 30 years, maintained reforestation and sustained-yield operation in that 50-mile area outside the park, today we would certainly have no need to touch the natural resource that is within the park. But that has not been the case. There is no sustained-yield operation in my area, to speak of. It’s been take, take, take for 50 years, and as a result there is nothing left. I think this applies to a large area around Algonquin Park.

There is no question that the best protection of our natural resource has taken place within the park. If we had used those same principles outside the park we would have been a lot better off today in most areas of this province, including some that the minister himself represents. In my total area we would be better off, because logging or any type of wood production in my area is almost finished. It’s a dying industry; in fact, it’s almost dead.

I think the minister has to look at Algonquin Park as a large recreational area in the centre of our province, but he has to treat it in a different manner for different areas until the time when he can totally phase out logging within the whole area. There is no simple solution that can be applied across the board to the park and the 50-mile area that surrounds it. I think he might have to have a number of different solutions in a number of different areas for perhaps a different number of years; different periods of time. I think that is the rational way to look at it.

As far as the establishment of the forestry authority is concerned, I think it’s just a farce. I don’t know who the minister is going to put on it who would be any better or make any more difference than the people who are now working within the ministry. If this goes ahead, what he is saying is, “The people we have in our ministry are incapable of doing this type of job.” I would say to him that if the people he has in Algonquin Park are incapable of doing this type of job, then God bless us for the rest of the people he has outside the park; because his best people are there, and if they can’t do the job, what about the rest of the province? It’s just got to be terrible.

So I say to him that he should withdraw the bill. He should look at the whole situation again and come back with a realistic plan that, perhaps over the next 10 to 15 years, would phase out logging in the park and at the same time create employment for those people who would lose what is now their way of life.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Cochrane South.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): I’d like to make a few comments on this bill, Mr. Speaker. I can sympathize to some degree with what some of the other speakers have said because I did five in the area east of North Bay when I first started out in my former career, and I have some insight as to the nature of the people who work in the wood products industry there.

One thing that concerns me is the growing demand for recreation among the citizens of our province, and as our areas become more largely urbanized and the pressures of life within the cities become more acute with greater stress, the need for the kind of recreation that is available in our provincial parks becomes greater than ever. I think that that demand is going to increase. In fact, an article in the Ottawa Citizen suggests that over the next 30 years the public demand for recreation of the kind offered in Algonquin Park is going to increase three times. I am not sure what the projection of the population is, but I suggest that the use of Algonquin Park by the public for recreation purposes is going to increase and increase.

I believe, although he can correct me, that the minister in his master plan has suggested that a limit is going to have to be placed on the length of stay of people who are going into the park. Perhaps that raises the question that even the ministry itself is not too confident that the park is going to be able to meet the recreation demand that is going to he placed upon it. I know when I was on the former committee we discussed the need to establish satellite parks, and I believe some movement is going to be made in that direction. Even so, I suggest that to provide the recreation areas in the form in which they are going to be required, Algonquin Park is going to have to be used in its totality.

I would feel that this bill, in perpetuating logging in Algonquin Park, is flawed in principle. I believe that logging must end, but I believe that it must end on a phased basis and time is no doubt necessary to work out the details of phasing it out.

My leader has suggested that within the 50-mile radius an alternative supply of wood could be found to meet the needs of the industry. Perhaps the industry would have to change to some degree. Perhaps there is wood there that is not being utilized but which could be utilized, should there be a change in the industry. I know in my own area, for a long time poplar was not much in demand, vet in the last few years we have seen waferboard production growing in the Timmins area; this can take all the poplar that is available and some of it, the larger poplars, is being shipped to Cochrane.

Perhaps use could be made of poplar or some of the other species outside the park that at present are not being utilized. Perhaps some jobs could be created in that fashion. I think that is an area of the province where governments must try to provide some alternative employment -- provide some development that has not taken place there in the past. I think in many respects, as my own travels through that area suggest, it is even less developed than northern Ontario. It shouldn’t be just an issue like this that provokes a crisis. The government should have been acting even before this to do something about the problem.

If the area is to be preserved in the state necessary for the various recreational activities demanded by the south, then I feel that the people here in the major centres must be prepared to put out large sums of money to develop additional employment opportunities in that area. What jobs may be lost are being lost to accommodate certain people in the urban areas, so if that’s the case then let the urban area plough in a considerable amount of money to provide alternate and even better employment in a number of areas in there and to direct some of the industry that’s here into some of the towns in the areas that will be affected.

There’s no reason in the world why that can’t be done. The problems of transportation to markets are not the same in that area of the province as are faced in the north and the northwest. So I suggest that the time required to phase out the industry should have been the thinking behind the minister and not the perpetuation of this logging in Algonquin Park, as this bill suggests.

I am not so sure that this authority is going to be that much of an improvement over the kind of work that could be done by members of his own staff. I have seen how some of his staff operate in my own area and they do some fairly good supervising up there. The phase-out period I think could be handled by his own ministry just as well as this body set up here. I believe the government would have done much better if it had provided a time span to phase out the logging and to provide alternative employment, and to see what wood species are there that might be used in an alternative way in that 50-mile radius to provide jobs.

But the recreational needs of the people must be met and I don’t feel that recreation is a luxury or a frivolous thing. I believe that in the kind of society we have and the pressures that are upon people, they must have these escape hatches, these ways of breaking away from the heavy pressure of the urban areas. As I said, this report stressed that the demand for recreation is going to grow at three times the population rate.

Well, here is an area that has been set aside for many, many years; I commend the government of the time when this was set aside. I think that the time has come in drawing up a master plan to leave it for recreation and to work in the 50-mile radius to find as much, if not all, of the wood we can that is necessary for the industries -- use some of the wood that’s there, perhaps. To diversify the industry if possible the province should be prepared to put in large investments to provide other kinds of industries to provide jobs for the people who live there.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Parry Sound.

Mr. L. Maeck (Parry Sound): Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening not as the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier) but as the member for Parry Sound, one of the constituencies that has perhaps the biggest area of Algonquin Park within it. There is approximately 50 per cent of Algonquin Park in the riding of Parry Sound, and about one-third of the 50-mile radius that has been spoken about this evening is in the riding of Parry Sound.

First of all, let me say that I agree with the hon. member for Nipissing regarding the north part of the radius north of Algonquin Park. Certainly there is not enough timber there now to supply the existing facilities without having the input from Algonquin Park.

With regard to the Parry Sound riding itself, the district of Parry Sound, I would remind the House that some 100 years ago it was logged for white pine. It was then logged for hardwood, then logged for hemlock, then cut over for cordwood and pulpwood. At the present time we are having a great difficulty in keeping the sawmills in the east side of the Parry Sound district supplied with timber. As a matter of fact, some of them on the east side are now acquiring timber from Algonquin Park itself.

I point out the D. A. Clark veneer plant which is located in South River, my home town. It was constructed there about six years ago. They have not been able to obtain a licence because there is no timber available. They exist simply by purchasing from private owners or from other people who are operating within the park who have some excess lots that they’re able to buy. So, certainly there is a lack of timber in the east Parry Sound area. I cannot understand how we can arrive at the figure whereby we can say there is enough timber, or even half enough timber, outside of the park to facilitate the industries that are now dependent on resources from the park.

I wish some of the members of the opposition would take the time to go into Algonquin Park, and not just drive along Highway 60 but take a look at the woods operations that are now going on in the park. Consider what was happening 15 years ago and look at what’s happening today. Certainly, silviculture is now being used extensively in Algonquin Park. The marking system for the trees at the present time leaves very little to be desired as far as silviculture is concerned. There is a silviculture area at Swan Lake which demonstrates what can be done with yellow birch. I think some of the members of the opposition who are so doubtful about the harm that’s going to be done to Algonquin Park should look and see what were actually doing. I don’t think they’d be nearly as opposed as they pretend to be, or say they are.

Mr. Cassidy: There won’t be any yellow birch left in 15 years.

Mr. Maeck: There will be no yellow birch left in 15 or 20 years anyway, because they are all dying, and that’s the reason that they should be cut now. As far as I’m concerned, if we’re going to allow these trees to die, man may as well make use of the resources as have them die.

Mr. Cassidy: It’s no tribute -- if the yellow birch will end in 15 years -- to the quality of silviculture in that area.

Mr. Maeck: They die back automatically.

Mr. Lewis: It says something about the forest management policies of the Tories in 30 years if we’re running out of yellow birch.

Mr. Maeck: We talk about the 3,000 jobs in Algonquin Park, but I think we have to remember that there are many, many related jobs. Nobody has mentioned anything about the quality of the timber that is necessary to keep these related jobs going.

Mr. Lewis: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

Mr. Maeck: The quality of the timber is available, as far as I’m concerned, only in Algonquin Park. It’s not around the edge; certainly not in the area that I know and that I’ve lived in all my life.

We all drive up to Algonquin Park, we take a look at it and we say it’s a beautiful place. But I want to remind the House that we have been logging in Algonquin Park for 100 years and it’s the way it is today because of the logging that’s been going on.

If members take a look at some of the federal parks where no logging has been allowed for many years, they will find great amounts of timber that has fallen over, it’s impenetrable and it’s a great fire hazard. That is not happening in Algonquin Park. Algonquin Park is one of the most beautiful spots in the Province of Ontario; there is no question about it. I think one of the reasons it is that way is simply because we have logged it and logged it properly.

I give some credit to the Algonquin Wildlands League. They have won a victory of a sort simply because I think they have made the government and the people of Ontario much more aware of Algonquin Park than we were 15 or 20 years ago. If one looks at the silviculture and the way we are handling the park resources today, I see no reason why that can’t continue in conjunction with recreation. Under the master plan, 22 per cent of the park will remain in the primitive zone. We intend to log only two per cent per year.

Mr. Ferrier: I thought it was only nine per cent.

Mr. Maeck: No, it is 22 per cent. So concessions have been made both ways.

Mr. Cassidy: Big deal.

Mr. Maeck: Well, I think the hon. member has to understand that the resources are necessary, for the economy of this province; not just in terms of the 3,000 people in Algonquin Park, but the many related jobs here in southern Ontario and probably over in Ottawa, where the hon. member lives. Those things have to be taken into consideration.

Mr. Cassidy: There is hardwood to spare in the province without going into the park.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Maeck: The authority itself, by having an authority, is going to eliminate 18 licences in Algonquin Park and regulate where the timber is going to be cut. The way it works today, there are 18 licences and each licence-holder cuts in a certain area of Algonquin Park. In other words, we have 18 different places where they are cutting logs, all at one time. The authority will be able to regulate that to the point where we will not be cutting in 18 places at once. I am sure they will also be able to find a market to make better utilization of the products that are going to be cut.

All in all, the forestry authority is certainly going to be a benefit to Algonquin Park; there is no question about it. It is certainly going to have access to the ministry people for its assistance. The people that the member for Nipissing mentioned, our staff in Algonquin Park, are probably the best staff we have in Ontario; I agree. But those people will still be available to the authority. All in all, on behalf of the people of the riding of Parry Sound, I would commend the minister for this bill and I certainly support it.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Renfrew South.

Mr. Yakabuski: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and participate in the second reading of Bill 155, a bill to establish the Algonquin Forestry Authority.

I might say at the outset that as a member of the Algonquin Park advisory committee, and as a member representing a part of the area that would be affected by the banning of logging in Algonquin Park, I feel that I have some obligation to participate in this debate.

Let me commend the ministry for the policy they have put together here and the introduction of Bill 155, because I feel the establishment of an Algonquin Forestry Authority is the only possible, reasonable, sensible route that this government can take.

Let me go back some years to the establishment of Algonquin Park in the year 1893. At that time, among the five basic themes that prevailed and dominated were these:

Protection and maintenance of the watershed. I might say that the Ministry of Natural Resources, by continuing to renew the old logging dams, has done a lot toward preservation of the watersheds in and around Algonquin Park; both it and the Ministry of Public Works have done a commendable job in this area.

The management of and experiments in forestry. Over a long period of years, as the other speakers have outlined, logging has gone on in Algonquin Park. I have to repeat what the member for Parry Sound has said, that because logging has gone on in Algonquin Park for the last 100 years it is the fine, beautiful park that we now have. If logging had not been allowed in Algonquin Park for the last 50 or 100 years we would have what some people would term a jungle.

I’m sure that if the people of Ontario, as individuals, were given an opportunity to view a managed forest in Algonquin Park and an opportunity to view an untouched forest in Algonquin Park, 98 per cent of these people would opt for the managed forest.

Over the years, and especially over the last 20 or 25 years, I have to say that the ministry has done a remarkable job with Algonquin Park. The increasing number of visitors to Algonquin Park each year is astounding, and they go there because this ministry has made provision for them there. It is not just some place into the wilderness that they go. There are many attractions there, besides canoe routes and so forth, and we’ve always maintained that Algonquin Park is for people, and people of all interests, not of special interest groups but people of varying interests.

That’s the kind of policy this government has followed, the concept of multiple use. Bill 155 will continue to show that kind of policy for Algonquin Park in the years to come.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Is that why the government kept the private camps in there?

Mr. Lewis: Not to mention tourist shops.

Mrs. Campbell: Concessions.

Mr. Yakabuski: I mentioned the question of a healthy forest or a jungle. The continuation of logging in Algonquin Park, with the kind of supervision and management that it has been receiving and will receive in an intensified manner under the new authority, will certainly continue to make the park the kind of park that the majority of people in Ontario want to see.

The leader of the NDP has bandied around figures in a very convincing fashion. I thought for a while he even had the minister convinced.

Mr. Lewis: I doubt it.

Mr. Yakabuski: However, I have to tell him that they won’t hold water.

Mr. Lewis: Why?

Mr. Yakabuski: We have heard the member from Haliburton, we’ve heard the member for Parry Sound; I, too, live in the periphery of Algonquin Park. Without having the advantage of the knowledge of being foresters or anything like that, we know full well that the periphery, or the 50-mile radius that we discussed will in no way support the lumbering industry that we talk about.

I’m surprised, to some degree, that the leader of the NDP should look upon the loss of jobs both on the job site, which we will call Algonquin Park, and then all down the line reaching out away down into southern Ontario in every direction. Someone just mentioned to me a moment ago what effect it might have on Thunder Bay, where some of the logging machinery is made. Somebody else mentioned what it might do to the automotive manufacturers, their truck divisions.

Mr. Lewis: Not a job need be lost.

Mr. Yakabuski: Somebody else mentioned what it would do to the furniture industry.

Mr. Lewis: The government loses the jobs, my friend. What about Champlain Lumber at Blind River? What about Champlain Lumber at North Bay? Why isn’t the member crying about those jobs his government threw away in the lumber industry? Don’t cry to us with crocodile tears.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Yakabuski: When the leader of the New Democratic Party was speaking in this debate we extended him the courtesy of uninterruption.

Mr. Lewis: Oh, come on. There was some friendly heckling. I was heckled, Mr. Speaker, intermittently.

Mr. Yakabuski: The leader of the NDP on June 20, 1974, made a statement -- and this is before he even talked of the 50-mile radius. At that time he was going to send them away back someplace I don’t know where. He said:

“With resource alternatives in such close proximity to Algonquin Park, the 3,000 men employed in pulp and paper, logging and sawmill operations in and around Algonquin could be redeployed with only slight adjustments, and any dislocations within the overall industry would be minimal.”

Mr. Lewis: That’s right, and it will be phased in as well. It is not done overnight.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Yakabuski: Mr. Speaker, I would like to hear the leader of the New Democratic Party or anyone else in this province make that statement in Huntsville, Barry’s Bay, Pembroke --

Mr. Lewis: I did.

Mr. Cassidy: He has.

Mr. Lewis: With respect, I did.

Mr. Yakabuski: -- with the full membership of the United Woodworkers present.

Mr. Lewis: There is no such thing as the United Woodworkers, by the way.

Mr. Yakabuski: Anyway, I talked to some of these people who belonged to the woodworking union, and this is what they told me, Mr. Speaker. One of them in particular told me: “I was born in a Liberal household.” He was born in a Liberal household, but he said that later in life when he became involved in the trade union movement he joined the CCF or New Democratic Party.

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): Then he matured.

Mr. Yakabuski: But he said. “Let me tell you, Paul, that is the last vote I or any of my colleagues will be casting for the New Democratic Party.” He said. “The leader of the New Democratic Party is only interested in the city vote.”

Mr. Lewis: I will tell the member he is in more trouble than we are -- he needn’t draw any solace there. It is the last conversion to the Tory party he will ever be able to register.

An hon. member: Don’t bet on it.

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Both of the members should go out and have a wake.

Mr. R. S. Smith: Is that the same guy who has a concession in the park?

Mr. Yakabuski: So I’m surprised, Mr. Speaker, that the leader of the New Democratic Party would treat the loss of jobs in the lumbering industry in and around Algonquin Park so lightly.

Mr. Lewis: No, no. On a point of order, I am not going to let that member get away with this kind of stuff.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Lewis: No, sir. On a point of order, I said not a job would be lost -- and I want that in Hansard -- not a job. The government treats its lightly.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Renfrew South has the floor.

Mr. Yakabuski: We don’t.

Mr. Lewis: Where are the 200 jobs for Champlain Lumber, eh? Where are those 200 jobs today? The government threw away the jobs.

Mr. Yakabuski: These jobs would be maintained.

Mr. Lewis: The government threw away the jobs.

Mr. Yakabuski: To many people, this is the way of life.

Mr. Lewis: Where are the jobs in Blind River today?

Mr. Yakabuski: Many, many people who live in that area have logged and have worked in the lumbering industry for generations.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right, and they should have their jobs.

Mr. Yakabuski: As a matter of fact, one young man who worked for some two years for a brokerage firm down here in the city went back.

Mr. Lewis: I can believe it.

Mr. Yakabuski: He went back to a chain saw or a truck because he loved working in the lumbering industry and loved the outdoors.

Mr. Lewis: I agree with him.

Mr. Yakabuski: This is a way of life with them.

Mr. Lewis: So why did the government let the jobs go?

Mr. Yakabuski: And the NDP would disrupt that.

Mr. Lewis: No, sir. The government has let the jobs go -- 200 jobs in the last three weeks.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Yakabuski: We have not let the jobs go. The Algonquin Forestry Authority will guarantee that those jobs will remain.

Mr. Lewis: What does the government do at Blind River? What does it do at North Bay? How is it saving the jobs?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Renfrew South has the floor.

Mr. Lewis: Well, there was a pause. I thought I’d fill it. If I see a pause I fill it.

Mr. Yakabuski: The position this government has taken with regard to this bill is not the easiest position. It’s not perhaps the most popular position, because on one hand it doesn’t satisfy completely or to any great degree the lumbering interests; on the other hand it doesn’t satisfy to a great degree many of the people who have certain recreational interests. But it was the only sane, reasonable and responsible position this government could take. I have to say as the member representing part of that area that I’m very proud that this government had the stamina and the fortitude to maintain its position insofar as Algonquin Park is concerned.

I mentioned a little while ago that it was a way of life, and it certainly is a way of life to those people up in that part of Ontario. They have just as much right to live by the lumbering industry as miners have in certain parts of northern Ontario to live by the mining industry. They have just as much right to live by the lumbering industry in that part of Ontario as the fishermen have on the east and west coasts of Canada to live by the fishing industry.

Mr. Lewis: So let them live -- don’t take away their jobs.

Mr. Yakabuski: The leader of the NDP treats it in a very easy fashion, a simple fashion.

Mr. Lewis: The government has just thrown 200 jobs away in the last three weeks.

Mr. Yakabuski: “They can be moved to new jobs 50 miles away.”

Mr. Lewis: Through Blind River and North Bay. The government threw them away by not allowing them to.

Mr. Yakabuski: “Phase out lumbering in Algonquin Park.”

Mr. Ferrier: Doesn’t the member want some industry in Barry’s Bay?

Mr. Yakabuski: And the Liberal Party; they have no position on this.

Mr. Lewis: Well, that is their problem.

Mr. Yakabuski: At least I must give the NDP a certain amount of credit because they have taken a certain position on this question. But the Liberal Party has taken none whatsoever.

Mr. Breithaupt: The member should have listened to our leader’s speech.

Mr. Yakabuski: The leader of the Liberal Party --

Mr. R. S. Smith: Well, on a point of order, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Yakabuski: I have the floor, Mr. Speaker. We --

Mr. R. S. Smith: I rise on a point of order.

Mr. Speaker: What is your point of order?

Mr. R. S. Smith: The member is misleading the House. I just took a position on the bill 15 minutes ago.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. member can’t say that now.

Mr. R. S. Smith: He is deaf, dumb or indifferent.

Mrs. Campbell: All three.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order, please.

Mr. Lewis: He is clearly all three.

Hon. L. Bernier (Minister of Natural Resources): The member is striking pay-dirt.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Nipissing I am sure didn’t mean to say he is misleading the House. Did I hear it?

Mrs. Campbell: Yes, he did.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Singer: He didn’t say he was deliberately misleading the House.

Mr. Yakabuski: Mr. Speaker, I want to go on to point out to you and the House --

Mr. Lewis: That the government is throwing away jobs.

Mr. Yakabuski: -- that they really do not have any firm position over there.

Some hon. members: Oh!

Mr. Yakabuski: Now, up in Huntsville and Ottawa, after the Algonquin Park report was announced --

Mrs. Campbell: The Conservatives are really scared of us, aren’t they?

Mr. Lewis: They are, in fact. I am sorry to say they are.

Mr. Yakabuski: -- in July, 1973, the leader of that party was quite firm in saying that the loggers should be kicked out of Algonquin Park. And then he got a lot of flak, and he made a trip to Barry’s Bay and Madawaska in late August, 1974.

Mr. Lewis: I read those clippings too; they are kind of funny.

Mr. Yakabuski: He made a trip so he would make himself knowledgeable with regard to the problems surrounding Algonquin Park.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, that is true.

Mr. Yakabuski: But who did he go to see, Mr. Speaker?

An hon. member: Who?

Mr. Yakabuski: He didn’t call in representatives of the various companies that logged in and around Algonquin Park.

Mr. Ferrier: Did he call the hon. member?

Mr. Yakabuski: He just went to see one company, his friends, and boy, did he ever get it that day. Well, he came back with his horns pulled in and trimmed. And today, here in the Legislature, when he rose to speak on this particular bill --

Mrs. Campbell: To oppose it.

Mr. Yakabuski: -- he was pretty mild; he was pretty meek about the whole thing. He talks about phasing out over a long period. I asked them when would they phase out logging operation in Algonquin Park -- in 1975? In 1980? In the year 2000? In the year 2050? All they say is, “We would phase them out over a long period of time.”

Mr. Speaker, do you know how that would make a worker in the Ottawa Valley or in Parry Sound, Huntsville, Pembroke or Mattawa feel -- that, “Some day, some time, we are going to lose our jobs, we are going to have to pick up roots and move”? It’s like having a death sentence hanging over you and not knowing when the day of execution is.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: The member’s government is the executioner for the workers in Ontario. The government is the executioner.

An hon. member: Right on, Paul.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Yakabuski: And then, after he got his fingers pretty badly pounded up there by his friends --

Mr. R. S. Smith: I have decided the member is dumb.

Mr. Yakabuski: -- he went on to say they should be phased out and they should be compensated.

Mr. R. S. Smith: There is no choice, he is just dumb.

Mr. Yakabuski: They should be compensated. And I say, compensated for what? The timber in this province, in Algonquin Park or on any Crown land -- and some on private land-belongs to the people of the province.

An hon. member: There’s a change of heart.

Mr. Lewis: Well, that is something.

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): That is some discovery.

Mr. Yakabuski: And I would like to know more about this compensation. Am I to assume, Mr. Speaker, that this compensation we speak of is to pay off the lumbering company and say to hell with the workers?

Mr. Lewis: Oh, come on.

Mr. Breithaupt: The member is not foolish enough to really believe that?

Mr. Singer: Yes, he is.

Mr. Yakabuski: Well, if it’s compensation -- if you are going to be phased out -- that means operations would cease and what about the workers?

Mr. Lewis: Who is going to compensate the 80 workers of Champlain Lumber in Blind River, or the 200 jobs dependent on it? Where was the member’s government then?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please, this is the member for Renfrew South’s presentation.

Mr. Lewis: There was another pause.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The member keeps bringing in a red herring.

Mr. Lewis: It is not a red herring, it is about the lumber industry outside the park. The government doesn’t save jobs in the lumber industry; it is hypocritical about it. It doesn’t care about jobs in the lumber industry.

Mr. Cassidy: What about that firm that went down in Barry’s Bay?

Interjections by hon. members.

An hon. member: They’re mad.

Mr. Yakabuski: Anyway, Mr. Speaker, the bill before the House today, as I said earlier, is the middle-of-the-road route, the only reasonable and practicable route that any government could take under these circumstances. I am pleased the ministry has taken this route, because to us who live in that part of the province it means the preservation of those jobs. Algonquin Park will continue to be administered in a most efficient way whereby the majority of the people of this province will be able to enjoy it for a long while.

When I talk about the manner in which park affairs have been handled up until this time, I want to read from a letter received from a German forester, one Prince Friedrich Karl Hohenlohe-Waldenburg --

Mr. Lewis: Prince Waldenburg?

Mr. Yakabuski: -- one of Germany’s chief consulting foresters. This is what he had to say after a visit to Canada, in which he had a side trip to Algonquin Park.

Mr. Lewis: When was that?

Mr. Yakabuski: This was in October, 1973.

Mr. Lewis: Was he levitated?

Mr. Yakabuski: No, I wouldn’t say that.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Yakabuski: This is a quote from his observations of the management efforts in Algonquin Park. It says:

“Impression from a day’s visit to Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. By the courtesy of the Ontario provincial government, Ministry of Natural Resources and especially Mr. George, forest management supervisor, I was kindly invited for a day’s visit into the park to see both recreational and logging use of this vast and most important forest region of Ontario.

“Logging in recreational forests is a familiar site to a forester from central Europe. As European forest areas are limited and human population dense, logging and recreational areas have to co-exist. Clear felling is tolerated to some degree where scenic beauty is revered, although thinning and various controlled regeneration cuts are more normal. So I was most surprised to see how carefully logging operations in Algonquin Park are controlled [This is even before the authority is created] in a way I never had expected to find in Canada.”

Mrs. Campbell: Why does the government need the authority?

Mr. Yakabuski: He says:

“In the hardwood regions we visited, only selective cutting is done to enable all-age management. This is the type of management in certain species and is considered to be very complicated and costly in operation, while in most cases other types of management have secured European forests for two centuries and highly improved the conditions of these natural forests so badly damaged between the 16th and 19th century.

“In Algonquin Park hardwoods, three various grades of selected cutting result in abundant natural regeneration of maple, beech and other species and make the tops of remaining trees develop strongly. The tourist’s impression is of a natural mixed stand of all ages with the occasional open area. Here, in an original wilderness, old trees torn down by gale, snow or mere age may have stood. This compares favourably to a homogeneous, equally-aged stand with hard-growth competition, smaller tops and less light penetration.

“Strict control of cutting is taking place, so that the amount of thinning is predetermined. Based on intensive research of every type of stand and every grade of cutting, exact foundation base areas have been defined. This was demonstrated to me at the timber research station at Swan Lake. Representative inventory shows species, present diameter structure, basal area, height and volume of all forests separated into certain blocks of the same type of stand. From there, computer-made tables enable the forest management supervisor to decide which grade is to be taken and what diameter limit is set. If, however, individual marking is done, still more control of forest appears and a very natural look can be attained.

“Once again I had the impression that Canadian foresters, and especially the Algonquin Park management, have means to control forest use more accurately than we do in Europe.”

Mr. Ferrier: Listen to that.

Mr. Yakabuski: To continue:

“Of course, this is partly due to the homogeneous structure of large areas of Algonquin Park. European forests often show a scattered mixture of smaller stands, being homogeneous only in themselves. European forest management inventories just make sure the forest keeps or improves the present structure of age, volume and species, leaving the method to personal choice.

“Canada seems to protect its recreational forested areas by stricter regulations, although there are fewer visitors per square mile for recreation purposes than in Europe. In addition, views and places such as lakeshores, etc., are preserved and must not be touched in any kind of logging operation. Beyond the first 100-ft line limiting this area, logging can only gradually rise to the full amount of thinning and must not be visible from the lake’s surface.

“Air inspection showed in at least one region considerable damage by gale. These broken masses of wood, of course, make very natural scenery but they cause very serious danger for remaining forests by insects to conifers and by fire to both conifers and hardwoods. Most of them are inaccessible. Improved access for logging, especially some more forest roads, could save neighbouring stands by clearing these damaged areas.”

Note, Mr. Speaker, what this noted forester said --

Mr. Ferrier: Did he write that letter to the hon. member?

Mr. Yakabuski: -- about this area that was severely damaged by wind in late July or very early August, 1973. He mentions what a danger it creates. Now, if we had left all of Algonquin Park to nature, we would have dozens and dozens of the situations as he mentions here. And that would not be good forest management.

“Although I must say logging touches Algonquin Park so slightly and in such a well-controlled way, compared even to the garden-like managed central European forests, in my opinion a perfect conservation of natural resources and an enormous region for recreation in unspoiled wilderness is provided at the same time, using this present method of management.

“I wish to express, once more, my sincere thanks for having the opportunity to visit this park.”

Mr. Speaker, I think that points out very well some of the things that we, as citizens of this province and perhaps even as members of this Legislature, are not aware of.

Many of us here in this House, and many people residing in the city of Toronto and in the more urban centres of this province, feel that Algonquin Park has been ravaged, exploited and everything else. That is just not the case, Mr. Speaker. Algonquin Park has been extremely well managed over the past 20 years.

I have to admit there may have been times -- and I’m sure there were -- when the lumbermen were not lily-white. I know there are things that the companies may have done over the years that we certainly wouldn’t accept today. But I have to say in all sincerity that I firmly believe that those days are gone. They are days that are long past. I think the average lumber company and the average woods worker today are well aware of the other assets of Algonquin Park, and not only the wood resources. I think both the companies and those who work for them act in a very responsible fashion.

That is why, as a representative from the area, I am pleased that this bill has been introduced, that the Algonquin Forestry Authority will be established, provided that this bill passes this House, and that we can continue to keep Algonquin Park as a show-place, not only for our people, but for people from all over the world. I’m sure that with the increased inspection, if you want to call it that, or surveillance, we will have in the years to come a great recreational and resource asset right at our fingertips.

I am sure that in the years to come, 10 or 15 years hence, the people who come after us will be very pleased that the era, when it seemed to be in vogue to ban everything that touched nature, will have passed. They will say that this government, led by an able minister and ministry staff, took this course in the year 1974 --

Mr. Cassidy: That is nonsense.

An hon. member: It is not.

An hon. member: He is right on.

Mr. Cassidy: They will be clamouring in five years to stop the logging, if we don’t do it now.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. The hon. member has the floor.

Mr. Yakabuski: -- so that Algonquin Park will be preserved, not only for those of special interests, but for all the people of the Province of Ontario. Thank you.

An hon. member: Here’s the expert.

An hon. member: Now we are going to hear from the expert.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Ottawa Centre.

Mr. Cassidy: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: Throw them all out.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please; the hon. member has the floor.

Mr. Cassidy: We can’t have this heckling going on, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lewis: Look at this, look at this levitation.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Cassidy: It would derange the decorum of the House to have any decorum at the time in which I was uttering a few words, Mr. Speaker, and --

Interjections by hon, members.

Mr. Yakabuski: When has the member ever said a few words?

Mr. Cassidy: What’s that?

Mr. Gilbertson: He is long-winded.

Mr. Lewis: How about Blind River?

Mr. Cassidy: Oh I’ll say a few words. No, I think the member for Scarborough West has made an interesting point about the fact that the Conservatives don’t care about finding alternative opportunities for eastern Ontario, for Parry Sound, for the North Bay area, for Victoria-Haliburton, when --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Cassidy: I would ask, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Cassidy: Over the last three years that I have been in this House --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Cassidy: -- I have not once heard the member for Renfrew South raising the question about other kinds of job opportunities in his particular riding, nor the member for Parry Sound, nor the member for Victoria-Haliburton --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Cassidy: Not one word.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Mr. Cassidy: When the firms closed down, I didn’t hear a word from them.

Mr. Lewis: Bunch of eastern reprobates.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I would ask the hon. members to allow the hon. member for Ottawa Centre to speak. And I would ask the hon. member for Ottawa Centre to return to the principle of the bill.

Mr. Cassidy: Fine, okay.

Mr. Lewis: He is right on the principle. They have no principles over there.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Cassidy: And one of the principles of the bill, Mr. Speaker, is the very simple question of about 300 jobs a year over a period of about eight or 10 years. This is what it would take in order to phase out the logging in the park and provide alternative job opportunities for people who are currently working in the park.

Interjections by hon. members.

An hon. member: Think about that.

Mr. Cassidy: If you want to talk about the number of people who are affected, Mr. Speaker --

Interjection by hon. members.

Mr. Yakabuski: That’s socialist crap. Those people couldn’t manage anything, couldn’t do anything, couldn’t run anything.

Mr. Cassidy: Oh, we do pretty well out west.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, let it go on record that the member for Renfrew South accuses me of socialist talk while supporting a bill to create a Crown corporation to log in Algonquin Park.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: The only thing the member for Renfrew South has ever been able to run is a concession stand in Algonquin Park.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Yakabuski: We only talk about --

Mr. Cassidy: I would just read from a letter, Mr. Speaker, from the director of the timber sales branch in the Ministry of Natural Resources, which was written Nov. 20, 1973 -- that’s just over a year ago -- to an inquirer, which says specifically that:

“The estimated employment dependent on the timber resources of the park has been determined as approximately 1,400, earning an estimated $5 million.”

Now, I will grant, with the member for Scarborough West and others in the House, that the number of actual jobs within the park is moot. We are not exactly sure how many it is.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Mr. Cassidy: But the estimate that I have from the ministry is that after you take away the people who were in the hardwood and softwood lumbering industry outside the boundaries of the park -- who were working within the 50-mile radius at this time -- you have 1,400 people.

Over a period of about 10 years that it might take in order to phase out logging in the park entirely -- over that period -- you are talking of somewhere around 150 jobs a year in a province which is currently creating somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 jobs a year.

Hon. G. A. Kerr (Solicitor General): That’s a really facetious argument.

Mr. Cassidy: We have all heard the Minister of Treasury, Economics and Intergovernmental Affairs (Mr. White) say what a fine job the Davis government is doing in creating jobs.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: A couple of hundred here, a couple of hundred there.

Mr. Cassidy: It is beyond the capacity of this province -- I know it is beyond the capacity of the government -- but is it beyond the capacity of this province to find somewhere in the region of 200 jobs a year, particularly when the resources in hardwood and the other kinds of timber necessary exist in the same vicinity as the logging that is currently under way in Algonquin Park? Is that beyond the capacity of this province? The answer is clearly that what is wanting is the will and the commitment on the part of the government, certainly not the ability to do it.

If members of the government get up and say that it is not possible, out of 200,000 jobs that were created in the past year or so in the province, to find 200 jobs for one year’s transition from logging within the park to logging on the fringes of the park, then I say that the government is completely incompetent.

Mr. Yakabuski: Let the hon. member go and tell those people they’ve got to go. Just kick them out of their homes.

Mr. Cassidy: I would say in addition, Mr. Speaker, that I find it regrettable that such crocodile tears be shed over these particular jobs when the members from the areas affected do not get up week after week and month after month. They aren’t heard asking why so many jobs go to Metro Toronto and why so little is done for the east and north of the province. Not one word comes from those self-same members of the government.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: The hon. member is wrong.

Mr. Cassidy: They don’t ask questions about the wall-to-wall industry that is going in and adding to the congestion of Metro Toronto with firms that could provide employment opportunities for our people up in eastern Ontario -- in Pembroke, in Renfrew, in --

Mr. Yakabuski: All our questions are not asked under this roof.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Cassidy: The member for Renfrew South didn’t ask about the demise of that timber firm -- I have forgotten the name of it now -- whose proprietors had an ODC loan and then were submerged, and reduced to the point of putting an advertisement into “This Week in the Madawaska Valley” to say that they had had the rug pulled out from under them by the Conservative government.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Mr. Cassidy: We didn’t hear him try to defend those particular jobs.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: He hasn’t talked on this bill at all.

Mr. Lewis: Of course he has talked on it.

Mr. Cassidy: But when there’s a phantom threat -- that’s what it is, a phantom threat -- because of the desire to keep one part of southern Ontario accessible for recreation purposes, then the crocodile tears start to flow.

Mr. E. M. Havrot (Timiskaming): Read him the report of the German forester again. He just doesn’t understand.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): There’s the anti-Haileybury member for Timiskaming again. “

Interjections by hon members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, I must say this whole debate is deplorable, because we have come so close to actually getting a really positive decision from the government about Algonquin Park.

Mr. Lewis: Let the member for Timiskaming calm down and go back and build a nursing home in Haileybury.

Mr. Havrot: And we’ll put the hon. member in it too.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. member for Ottawa Centre has the floor.

Mr. Cassidy: All the readings that I have, Mr. Speaker, are that the government has been wavering very sharply on this particular issue. In fact to give him credit, the predecessor of the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development, Mr. Bert Lawrence, from what I can establish, fought as hard as can be within the confines of the government in order to get the policy decision made that logging would be phased out of Algonquin Park. Now, whether he wanted to do it in five, 10 or 15 years, I think it is probably immaterial. Mr. Lawrence was a man who knew the park intimately, who commuted there every summer. He knew its back routes. He knew its trails. He knew its campsites. He loved the park. He cared for it. And he knew what had to be done.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Why didn’t the member say that when he was here? All the member did was criticize him.

Mr. Lewis: We did.

Mr. Cassidy: We did, as a matter of fact.

Hon. Mr. Crossman: All the member said was how inadequate he was; never a good word.

Mr. Lewis: Well, we said that too.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Would you allow the member for Ottawa Centre to continue, please?

Mr. Cassidy: At the meeting in Ottawa, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Lawrence --

Mr. J. H. Jessiman (Fort William): Respect for the dead!

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Cassidy: At the meeting in Ottawa, Mr. Lawrence went about as far as he could as a cabinet minister when he said and I quote: “I think that the control of fires and the control of disease may be the only reasons for harvesting at all in Algonquin Park.”

Everybody at that meeting knew where the then Provincial Secretary for Resources Development stood, but because of the attitude of the Ministry of Natural Resources, because of the pressure put on the ministry and on the government by the timber-cutting companies, because of the pressure put on the minister by people who are on the boards of such organizations as Power Corp. and so on, it was decided by the powers that be in the Tory party that logging would not be phased out. The minister gets up in the House, in introducing this debate, Mr. Speaker, and says, on the advice of the Algonquin Park advisory committee the government has decided to permit logging to continue in the park. I say to the minister that is a fabrication, because when the advisory committee in 1971 said: “Well, okay, you can keep on with logging in the park,” they then were never given the opportunity to reconsider that.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: The member is off base completely.

Mr. Cassidy: In May, 1971, they said a Crown corporation was desirable, but the minister knows perfectly well that the opinion of the majority of members of that committee had changed by 1973 when they delivered their final report. The new terms of reference that were given to the committee in 1972, which wiped out its previous terms of reference, did not permit the committee to consider afresh the questions of logging in the park. And therefore they never got to it.

The ministry knew that position. In fact the ministry, as I understand it, was even preparing alternate cutting sites to the south of the park to which the logging companies could be transferred when the logging was taken out.

Mr. Jessiman: What an authority on logging!

Mr. Cassidy: What’s that? I’m sorry, I missed the question.

Mr. Lewis: He said the member was an authority on logging.

Mr. Cassidy: All right; well I’ve learned a bit about it during the course of research on this particular question.

Mr. Lewis: So have I; I’ve learned a great deal about logging.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, the government wavered again after the definitive announcement that John Robarts was to be the president of the Algonquin Forest Authority. And now, of course, we hear nothing about that. He has clearly been tarred with a conflict of interest, because of his directorships on Power corporation and the Abitibi corporation, which have interests in the park; and because of the fact that he presided over the continued logging of Algonquin Park during the years that he was Premier of this province.

It’s a pity, though, that the best instincts of the government were not allowed to be felt and that the ministry didn’t make the decision. I say to you, Mr. Speaker, and I predict to you, that the time will come when the government of Ontario ends logging in Algonquin Park. That time will come.

If it’s this government, it will be forced to it kicking and screaming. In this and so many other things, it will eventually for a number of reasons change its position and decide that logging shall go out. If it’s our government, we will go forward on a sensible programme to phase out the logging and provide alternate job opportunities.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Don’t stand on one foot too long.

Mr. R. G. Eaton (Middlesex South): Waste our resources!

Mr. Cassidy: Let me say a word to the members who have spoken on this matter. In the first place, it seems curious to me that on the one hand the hon. member for Renfrew South should heap paeans of praise through the words of a German forester on the Ministry of Natural Resources foresters and their operations in Algonquin Park --

Mr. Lewis: Right.

Mr. Cassidy: -- while the hon. member for Victoria-Haliburton and the hon. member for Renfrew South themselves are at the same time doing everything they can to undermine -- what’s the name of that report?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lewis: The Pierpoint report.

Mr. Cassidy: -- the Pierpoint report prepared by a member of the same staff. They can’t have it both ways.

Mr. Speaker: Order. What is your point of order?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: I didn’t say that. I didn’t mention one person’s name or one employee of Natural Resources, for whom I have the highest respect; unlike some members of the opposition who later apologized.

Mr. Stokes: The member admitted he never read his report.

Mr. Cassidy: He didn’t read the report. I would just question, Mr. Speaker, if he has such high respect for the staff of the ministry, why is it then that they have been saying consistently that the ministry is wrong?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Can’t I disagree with the report? Members opposite do all the time.

Mr. Cassidy: We know what it is. The hardwoods are not available from private land in the 50-mile radius at the price that the operators want to pay. That’s the ministry’s fundamental problem. It’s not that they’re not available. The hon. member for Victoria-Haliburton knows perfectly well that within half a mile of the major highways in his riding and the ridings of Hastings, Frontenac-Addington and all of those ridings along Highway 7 or to the north of it, there are vast areas of Crown land that aren’t even touched. They were logged 50 years ago and haven’t been touched again.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Oh no!

Mr. Yakabuski: No. How ridiculous can one be?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Name 100 acres! Any 100 acres, name it. Can he not do that? He doesn’t know what he is talking about.

Mr. Cassidy: Some of them don’t even have hydro because they are so remote right now.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Name 100 acres.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Yakabuski: He has no idea what timber is available outside Algonquin or in it.

Mr. Cassidy: Fine, I’ll get a map.

Mr. R. Hodgson: Any 100!

Mr. Lewis: What does he know? From the Black Forest he knows! This is Algonquin.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Back to the books.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, when we phase logging from Algonquin Park we’ll start with a declaration of policy.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: The member better sit down before he makes a complete fool of himself.

Mr. Cassidy: Second, there will be some certain special areas where there are particular problems.

Kiosk has been raised. Kiosk is a good example, because of the fact that it is actually within the park and there’s a community there. I would imagine the people of Kiosk would probably continue to find employment for quite a substantial period of time in a phasing programme, because they would be asked to remain within the park for the areas where there was regenerative logging and logging for the areas of high recreational use. That’s the kind of thing one would do with the particular problem of Kiosk.

There may be a couple of other areas where there are particular problems that may require longer than a seven- or eight-year period to phase out. For most of the people now engaged in logging in the park it is perfectly simple, over a short period of years, to find alternative occupations in logging, particularly if we bear in mind that a substantial proportion of the logging workforce, in fact, is relatively mobile.

Let’s face it, many of those people of whom he speaks are relatively mobile and already live 50 or even 100 or 150 miles away from the places at which they work at logging in the park. Clearly, therefore, if they are going to be working 100 miles from home they can be working in other areas and not the areas in which they are working right now.

If the logs are available on hardwood tracts in the province and in the 50-mile radius as they are -- after all Mr. Speaker, according to the ministry’s figures only about 11 per cent of the allowable hardwood cut in the province is being cut. I don’t want to go further with my leader’s figures, but he has put a pretty definitive case on the record.

Mr. Lewis: I think they are right. Those figures are right.

Mr. Yakabuski: It’s absurd.

Mr. Cassidy: With the logs that are available, we then have to ask ourselves a question: Why is it that the operators want so desperately to stay in Algonquin Park? Is it not simply that they have grown accustomed to dealing with one operator, one owner, the Crown, which has been complaisant in its treatment of the private logging industry, and therefore has been allowing this resource to go at far less than cost?

I did some research on this. Why is it -- if I can speak in a general way -- that a third of the acreage logged in Ontario every year is neither regenerated by action of the ministry, nor by action of die operators, nor by natural regeneration? It is just simply left barren. Why is that permitted in this province? Why is it that the ministry receives only $15 million in revenues but spends $40 million for its operations in our woods? Why is it that the operators don’t even pay their way on 200 million acres of Crown land? Why is it that the major reforms in logging policy in this province have always come after exposure of the kind of vandalism perpetrated by the industry, and there has never been any recognition or any movement by the ministry before?

Why do these things happen like that all the time? Why is it that people say that now, with the wildlands league, the operations of silviculture are greatly improved? For God’s sake, there was a Conservative government in power when the trees that are being logged right now began to grow, back in the beginning of the century.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right.

Mr. Cassidy: Where were the Conservatives then? Where were the Conservatives back in the 1940s and the 1950s?

These sudden-death conversions --

Mr. Yakabuski: All good policies for the past 30 years. It is the Hepburn era he is talking about.

Mr. Cassidy: Nonsense. That was such a short era.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Yakabuski: I am going to go into that one of these days. I am going to talk about conflict of interest.

Mr. Cassidy: To heck with history, Mr. Speaker. Let me read a speech by the minister --

Hon. Mr. Kerr: He is defaming Woodsworth.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Ottawa Centre has the floor.

Mr. Cassidy: I think they should all be tossed out, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: It might be better if you spoke to the Speaker rather than speaking directly to the members across the floor.

Mr. Cassidy: I am speaking to you all the time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lewis: He is speaking to you. He is just not looking at you, and you really can’t blame him.

Mr. Speaker: I recognize that, the Speaker recognizes that.

Mr. Cassidy: They have a more provocative mien than you do, Mr. Speaker.

The Minister of Natural Resources in his speech to the Ontario Forest Industries Association on Jan. 22 -- which was actually read for him by the Minister of Transportation and Communications -- paid tribute to the government’s generous treatment of the forest industry over the past 24 years, and I quote:

“Our stumpage rates have not been altered since 1952. It is doubtful if you can say this of any of your other raw materials. [It certainly is doubtful.] We are mindful of your concern for increasing costs, while at the same time recognizing that the owners are entitled to a fair and reasonable return from their forests.”

The owners, Mr. Speaker, are the public of Ontario in the vast majority of the cases, because most of the logging in this province is carried out on Crown land, and the stumpage charges that are charged by the ministry are probably the only fee or price in the province that hasn’t changed since 1952.

Mr. Yakabuski: That is why the member shouldn’t be against the bill. It cancels all those licences in the park.

Mr. Cassidy: If it cancelled the licences and brought in the authority in order to phase out the logging over five, or six, or seven years, while providing alternative job opportunities, we have said again and again that we would support it. But that’s not what the bill says. The bill is a commitment to the continued exploitation of Algonquin Park.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Where does it say that?

Mr. Cassidy: It even permits an increase in the logging in the park rather than a decrease.

Mr. Lewis: Hear that!

Mr. Yakabuski: That is letting down the workers.

Mr. Cassidy: There is not even an assurance in the bill, Mr. Speaker, that the companies will pay their fair share for the logs. There is some reference to a reasonable price and that the authority should get a reasonable rate of return, but nothing more than that. Given the way in which this ministry has held hands with the forest industry and played footsie with the forest industry these many generations, given the fact that they never saw fit to raise the stumpage charge, we have no assurance and no confidence in the ministry that they will do any better with the Algonquin Forestry Authority.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Does the member want the cost of housing to go up again?

Mr. Cassidy: The companies are finding the heat in the park pretty hard to bear. They’re finding some of the rules that have been laid down for them a bit tough, so now they’re saying: “Okay, we’ll let the ministry do it for us; we’ll hand it over to them.” And the ministry is coming in to bail them out and to create what is needed, which is a fair price for this resource -- which is a scarce and dwindling resource -- while at the same time --

Mr. Yakabuski: Does he think the operators are happy with this bill?

Mr. Cassidy: -- preserving our only substantial, really major recreational environment in southern Ontario on an unspoiled basis.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: He is not looking at the Speaker.

Mr. Cassidy: I know that Polar Bear Park is unspoiled wilderness, but I think it’s north of the treeline. In addition, it’s simply not within reach for people in Toronto, for people in Ottawa and the other urban areas of the province. The interest of the rural people and of the loggers, and so forth, must be protected. But we must have --

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Support the bill.

Mr. Yakabuski: Support the bill.

Mr. Cassidy: -- the foresight to do that, while at the same time protecting the future for our kids --

Mr. Yakabuski: Come on down.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order.

Mr. Cassidy: -- and our children’s children’s children. I don’t want to stand up when my grandchildren come to me in 25 years’ time --

Mr. Yakabuski: That won’t work.

Mr. Cassidy: -- I don’t want to have to tell them that the park was raped and I permitted it. I’ll be proud to tell them that whatever happens to Algonquin Park, I did whatever I could to ensure that the natural environment of Algonquin Park was kept. That’s what we want to see, Mr. Speaker, and that’s why we’re going to oppose this bill -- and we call on the government to withdraw it now.

Mr. Speaker: Does any other member wish to speak before the minister?

Mr. Lewis: Come on, aren’t there any other vested interests here?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: We’re protecting the working man.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. Lewis: Now the truth. Now the big guns come into the picture.

Mr. Yakabuski: A lot of loggers in the north.

Mr. Ferrier: The minister is shaking in his seat now.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order. The member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. Lewis: He knows about logging.

Mr. Yakabuski: We know where his heart is.

Mr. Stokes: Mr. Speaker, I’ve waited seven years in this Legislature for anybody to take seriously a realistic forestry management programme in the Province of Ontario. This is the first occasion that we’ve been able to generate enough interest in forestry -- one of the mainstays of the economy of the Province of Ontario -- and it took the exploitation of those values in Algonquin Park to get the kind of participation that we have had here in my tenure in this Legislature.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: He hasn’t been here forever, has he?

Mr. Stokes: No, I haven’t: but seven years is a considerable time to wait to have a realistic --

Mr. Lewis: Believe me, it feels like eternity.

Mr. Yakabuski: Forest management is going on all the time.

Mr. Stokes: I would question, Mr. Speaker, the speed and so-called urgency with which the minister introduced this Bill 155, An Act to incorporate the Algonquin Forest Authority.

Mr. Yakabuski: The member has known since July, 1973.

Mr. Stokes: It was given first reading --

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: He has been debating it for six years.

Mr. Stokes: -- late in the afternoon, last Thursday.

Mr. Yakabuski: We told him in July, 1973.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Let him admit he didn’t do his homework.

Mr. Stokes: Immediately after --

Mr. Ferrier: Bring those fellows into order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Eaton: They don’t like it when they get some of their own medicine.

Mr. Stokes: -- immediately after the introduction of this bill I met two assistant deputy ministers out in the hall, Mr. Art Herridge and Mr. Lew Ringham. They wanted to know if there was going to be much opposition to the bill itself and whether or not there was going to be any prolonged or detailed scrutiny of the Pierpoint report; something that had just been placed on our desks about 10 minutes earlier. I said: “It will take us at least the weekend to digest what is in the report, do a critique on it and ask some questions as to some of the conventional wisdoms contained in the report.”

I was given an assurance by Mr. Herridge that he would be returning to the city on Tuesday and either he personally, or somebody within the ministry, would be more than willing to sit down and discuss the details of the Pierpoint report, and make us aware of some of the premises and some of the directions they chose to go, and would be more than willing to fill us in on any of the details. But because of the so-called urgency of getting this bill through second reading, we haven’t had the benefit of their thoughts on a lot of the so-called conventional wisdoms contained in the Pierpoint report.

My leader, in conjunction with my colleagues and myself and our staff, has gone over the details of the report and we have tried to analyze in an honest, a sincere and a realistic way the assumptions and the claims made in the report that led the minister to introduce this bill setting up a Crown corporation to be called the Algonquin Forestry Authority.

I’m wondering, Mr. Speaker, whether the minister thought that he could silence the opposition and discourage a detailed analysis of the claims that have been made by hurrying, in this way, the passage of this very important piece of legislation through the Legislature.

I want to assure the minister that we, too, are concerned about what happens to Algonquin Park. We are also concerned about the jobs, notwithstanding the fact that the member for Parry Sound, the member for Victoria-Haliburton, the member for Hastings, and the members for Renfrew South and Nipissing have suggested that we in this party couldn’t care less about the jobs of those people who are so reliant --

Mr. Gaunt: The member for Nipissing never said anything like that.

Mrs. Campbell: No he didn’t.

Mr. Stokes: He was concerned about the jobs.

Mr. Gaunt: He was concerned.

Mrs. Campbell: He was indeed.

Mr. Stokes: Yes, we too are concerned about those jobs. We are really, genuinely concerned about those jobs, and if we thought for one moment there was going to be a mass lay-off of people who depend upon that resource for their livelihood, we wouldn’t be standing here making the argument that we are making tonight.

Mr. Lewis: That’s right. That’s fair enough.

Mr. Stokes: We have a genuine concern for those who rely on the forestry resource in the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes region.

I’m just wondering, when Mr. Pierpoint detailed this study and made it available to the minister, whether he thought back and thought how fortuitous it was that the person who was responsible for setting up Algonquin Park in the first place -- I think it was a Dr. Zavitz, if I remember correctly, in the 1880s or the 1890s -- happened to choose on a map an area of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes region that happened to be so much more productive than the rest of the area that we are talking about, the periphery within a 50-mile radius of the park boundaries.

Are we to believe that he had a special gift that made it possible for him to delineate the borders of the park and say that is precisely where it is going to be? I don’t believe that for one moment. I think for the minister and those members on the opposite side who have spoken in favour of this legislation to suggest that an area, by the minister’s own admission, five or six times greater than the actual area of the park itself isn’t capable of providing a sufficient amount of timber of all species, whether they be hardwood or whether they be conifers --

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: It doesn’t have it. There is a difference between capable and what it hasn’t got.

Mr. Stokes: If that area five or six times the area of Algonquin Park is not capable --

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: It doesn’t have it.

Mr. Stokes: Well, all right, okay, but if it isn’t capable, it is really a condemnation, a severe indictment of this ministry over the years, to come up with an adequate forest management policy in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region.

The member for Parry Sound mentioned the silvicultural practices, the experimentation and the reforestation that is associated with the Swan Lake area inside the park under the expert guidance of a chap by the name of Mac MacLean. Had the ministry put him out into the periphery of the park, when he is doing such wonders in a plot that is controlled, where the ministry is carrying on these reforestation, silvicultural practices, therapeutic logging and cosmetic intervention by the minister and his staff, I wonder how much better job the ministry could have done on the periphery of the park, which admittedly is five or six times the size.

For anybody to suggest that simply because it happens to be inside the park as opposed to outside the park, it is of necessity more productive, I find extremely difficult to believe. I have never heard of the kind of concerted effort to undertake any silvicultural or regeneration practices in the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes region, which is a traditional hardwood stand, to the extent that the ministry has done in other areas where coniferous species are, in fact, the dominant species. I am told by people within the ministry that because of the ability of the hardwood species to reproduce on their own, given the proper sunlight, there isn’t the need to engage in the silvicultural practices and the good husbandry that is required in many, many areas of the province where the climatic conditions and soil conditions militate against reproduction in the order that we would like to see it.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Take the member for Ottawa Centre out and give him a lecture.

Mr. Stokes: It is much simpler to allow for the regeneration of the species that we are talking about, in the areas that we are talking about, both for conifers and the hardwood species. I want to say in the strongest terms possible, Mr. Speaker, that I think that a statement by the ministry that there isn’t a sufficient capacity on the periphery of the park, which is five to six times larger than the area contained in the park, has to be a complete condemnation of the way that the government has mismanaged the traditional hardwood forest in southern Ontario.

Hearken back to what the Kennedy report said in 1948, up to the Brodie report in the late Sixties, and shortly after that the Ontario Economic Council report, and the Hedlin-Menzies report -- but particularly the Ontario Economic Council report, where they said this ministry stood condemned because they weren’t utilizing many, many areas of the province, particularly in southern and eastern Ontario, where the climatic conditions and soil conditions are much more conducive to the reproduction of this resource that we are talking about.

I see the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Stewart). I engaged him in a little dialogue during his estimates, where I asked him to what extent he was trying to prevail upon those people who held significant blocks of land that would be considered useful for the production of trees, as opposed to a marginal farming operation. He said that thanks to the efforts of the Ministry of Natural Resources, and with the urging of his own ministry, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, they had finally convinced the owners of private land in southern Ontario that this is something they should be doing. Now we get the Minister of Natural Resources saying how successful the Woodlands Improvement Act has been over the years; and they were opening up whole new vistas for a resource that hadn’t been tapped to the extent that it was possible in the past, but all systems were “go” for the future by the implementation of the Act and making better use of the private woodlots. What did he have to say about that?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Would this be a convenient place for the member to break his remarks?

Mr. Stokes: Fine.

Mr. Stokes moves the adjournment of the debate.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, before I move the adjournment of the House I would like to call the following order of business; pared: item 5, considering bills 139 and 152; 7, Bill 68; 27, Bill 144; 18, Bill 129; 19, Bill 130; 20, Bill 131; 32, Bill 154; 15, Bill 118; 6, Bill 55; 5, Bill 62. That is through to Thursday evening; on Friday we will call the budget debate. If the opposition is co-operative I have another list ready to go.

Hon. Mr. Winkler moves the adjournment of the House.

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 10:30 o’clock, p.m.