Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

The House met at 2 o’clock, p.m.

Prayers.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

I’m sure all members will wish to welcome the distinguished members of the Canadian Commission on Parliamentary Accommodation who are seated in the Speaker’s gallery this afternoon.

The commission today is under the acting chairmanship of the hon. Richard Bell, PC, QC, and amongst its number I would particularly like to welcome a former Speaker of the House of Commons, the hon. Marcel Lambert. I know the hon. members would like to welcome this group to our chamber this afternoon.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce to the members of the House that we have once again with us today a group of students from the Queensmount Senior Public School in Kitchener. They are in the east gallery. I hope they will enjoy their visit to the Legislature and that the members will welcome them.

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): Mr. Speaker, in the west gallery we have students from St. Paul’s Junior High School in Mississauga. I’m sure the members will join with me in welcoming them and their teacher, Mrs. Lanois, here this afternoon.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): Mr. Speaker, I would ask the members of the House to join with me in welcoming 36 students and three adults under the charge of Mr. Morris, the principal. The students are from Ridgeview Public School at CF Base, Falconbridge.

Hon. A. K. Meen (Minister of Revenue): Mr. Speaker, I would like the members of the House to join with me in welcoming 19 students and their teacher, Mr. Christopher, from grade 12 of Leaside High School in my riding of York East.

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

COMMUNITY COLLEGES ARBITRATION AWARD

Hon. J. A. C. Auld (Minister of Colleges and Universities): Mr. Speaker, yesterday the board of arbitration, chaired by hon. Mr. Justice W. Z. Estey, handed down an interim award on a contract between the Ontario Council of Regents for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology and the Civil Service Association of Ontario representing the academic staff of the colleges. Officials of my ministry and the colleges are currently studying the implications of the award on college budgets and the level of activity that can be accommodated. The award covers a two-year contract period, commencing Sept. 1, 1973, and ending Aug. 31, 1975.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Not long from now.

Hon. Mr. Auld: Salary scales are to be increased by eight per cent effective Sept. 1, 1973; 13.5 per cent effective March 1, 1975. The compound effect of these awards represents a 26.3 per cent increase over the two-year term of the contract.

Most of this award represents retroactive salary payments. Academic staff have already received up to $1,000 of this retroactive salary as a result of an interim award made by the board of arbitration in December. I anticipate the salary costs of the award for the current fiscal year can be met from the operating grant funds set aside for the college system for fiscal 1974-1975.

I should emphasize, however, that there will be no increase in the $200.2 million I have already announced as the available operating support for colleges of applied arts and technology for 1975-1976. The award of the board of arbitration also calls for some reduction in workload of academic staff commencing in September, 1975. To maintain as much flexibility as possible in college offerings to the community, the award establishes principles on which workload should be negotiated rather than providing for any fixed workload formula.

ONTARIO STUDENT ASSISTANCE PROGRAMME

Hon. Mr. Auld: Mr. Speaker, I have another statement regarding 1975-1976 student assistance. I would like to give the House details of student assistance programmes in 1975-1976.

As was stated in the Speech from the Throne, it is the government’s intention to ensure access to our learning and training institutions. With this aim in mind, we intend to increase the funds allocated to the Ontario Student Assistance Programme, commonly referred to as OSAP, and to introduce two new programmes which will provide assistance to students not now covered by OSAP.

These programmes will provide Ontario students with a total of more than $47 million in grants and bursaries. This amount will be more than equalled by assistance provided in the form of loans through the federal government’s Canada Student Loans Plan and through a new provincial programme, the Ontario Student Loans Plan.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to outline the principal characteristics of the two new programmes we are introducing, and then provide details of some of the changes we propose to make in the Ontario Student Assistance Programme.

Dealing first with the Ontario Student Loans Plan, this programme is designed to compensate for some of the shortcomings of the federal government’s loans scheme. The Canada Student Loans Plan has been, and will no doubt continue to be, of great assistance to a large number of Ontario students. However, it has failed to keep pace with changing patterns of attendance at Ontario’s post-secondary institutions and now leaves many students in need of financial assistance but unable to obtain it.

The Ontario Student Loans Plan will provide a source of financial aid for many of these students. It is designed to serve a variety of people, including part-time students, students taking certain upgrading courses to qualify for entry to post secondary programmes, students who require financial assistance but have already obtained the maximum amount permissible under the federal plan, and students who are unable to receive Canada Student Loans because the length or entry requirements of their programmes do not meet federal regulations.

The new Ontario plan will enable students in these circumstances to receive loans of up to $1,400 for a normal academic year, to a maximum of $4,000. We are currently working out the terms and conditions of the loans and expect they will be more or less the same as the terms and conditions of Canada Student Loans.

The second new programme we intend to introduce is the Ontario Special Bursary Programme. This programme is based on a successful experiment of bursaries being made available to part-time students, which is currently in effect at a small number of institutions.

The programme will provide non-repayable bursaries to the most needy part-time students and will permit people in very restricted financial circumstances to take post-secondary courses that may enable them to improve their financial situation.

Applicants to the programme must be receiving social assistance, be unemployed, or have a low family income. If they are eligible they will receive funds to cover the costs of their tuition and other compulsory fees, as well as any books or equipment they require. They may also receive an additional bursary of up to $125 per term to help cover other costs, such as baby-sitting, day care or unusual transportation expenses.

I have written to the various institutions inviting them to participate in the Ontario Special Bursary Programme. I hope the programme will be available at all universities and colleges of applied arts and technology in Ontario and at Ryerson and the Ontario College of Art.

Mr. Speaker, may I take a moment to deal with the Ontario Student Assistance Programme. Hon. members no doubt appreciate that OSAP is by far the largest student assistance programme and provides financial aid to approximately two out of every five full-time students in Ontario. There has been a good deal of public discussion about OSAP and the various allowances made under the programme. Consequently, I would like to spell out in some detail the changes we intend to make.

The total budget for the programme in 1975-1976 will be $46.55 million, an increase of approximately 16 per cent over expenditures in 1974-1975.

One of the principal concerns of students with regard to OSAP is the amount of money they are required to accept as a loan guaranteed by the government before they qualify to receive a grant from the province. New federal regulations enable us to raise the loan ceiling to $1,800. However, I am pleased to report that we have been able to retain the ceiling at $25 per week, or $800 over the course of a normal academic year.

With respect to the individual allowances for living expenses provided under OSAP, the board and lodging allowance will be increased from $32 to $40 per week; the allowance for miscellaneous expenses, which was increased last year from $9.80 to $11.50 for the current year, will remain at $11.50; and local transportation allowances currently $2.50 and $5, will be increased to $3 and $6 per week, depending on how far the student lives from campus.

These changes bring total living allowances to a maximum of $57.50 per week, an 18.5 per cent increase over the current year’s maximum.

I should also like to remind the House that in 1975-1976 tuition fees will be frozen at their current level, as they have been since they were last increased in 1972.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The government raises them after every election.

Hon. Mr. Add: We believe these measures -- maintaining the current loan ceiling, increasing living allowances and freezing tuition fees -- should enable students to enjoy a modestly improved standard of living despite the pressures of inflation.

Other changes in the programme include an increase in the amount students are expected to save from their summer earnings. This increase is based on increases in the minimum wage.

In addition, the amount parents are expected to contribute to a student’s expenses in the 1975-1976 academic year will be based on actual 1974 earnings, rather then estimated 1975 earnings. This change should take some of the guesswork out of the programme for parents and students, and will simplify the ministry’s verification process.

In conclusion, I would like to draw the hon. member’s attention to one further aspect of OSAP in 1975-1976. I referred earlier to the fact that students receiving financial assistance from the province are given non-repayable grants, whereas the federal government provides aid in the form of guaranteed loans. Consequently, increased OSAP allowances have much greater cost implication for the Ontario government than for the government of Canada.

For this reason, and because of the continuing need for restraint in all areas of post-secondary spending, the various increases we have made in OSAP for next year are, in some cases, not as generous as will be allowed under the federal government’s Canada Student Loans Plan.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. Auld: However, to ensure that the higher levels of support provided by the federal government are not denied to students who want them, OSAP applicants will have the option of receiving assistance from the Canada Student Loans Plan only, and of having their applications assessed according to its more generous criteria. Students who select this option will, of course, only be able to receive assistance in the form of a loan.

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, the plans I have outlined should continue to improve access to our post-secondary institutions for people throughout Ontario. I believe they represent another significant step forward in the development of student assistance programmes in the province and sustain our leadership in this field over all other jurisdictions in Canada.

Mr. Speaker: Oral questions. The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

REDISTRIBUTION BILL

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, before you begin the oral question period, can you confirm to the House that you received the report of the commission on redistribution last Thursday and conveyed it to the Minister of Culture and Recreation (Mr. Welch), who is just coming into his seat now, on that same day? And if that is so, would you not think, sir, that it is your responsibility, as our spokesman, to inquire why the government is sitting on this report since last week, when in fact it is a report that is of deep and great concern not only to the people of the province but to every member of the Legislature? What right have they got to sit on it?

Mr. Speaker: Well, of course, I can’t predict what action the hon. minister will take but just to settle -- order, please -- just to confirm the discussion and to clarify the discussion we had in the House last night, I have this which I might present to the House right now.

In reply to the question raised yesterday respecting the final report of the redistribution commission, I direct the attention of the members to the last paragraph of the order authorizing the commission, which was passed on Dec. 5, 1973, which paragraph may be found on page 209 of the journal of 1973 and reads as follows:

“That where no objection has been filed with the Clerk in the manner provided, or the report has been returned to the Speaker, either with or without amendment, the commission shall prepare a draft Representation Act in the form of a bill repealing the Representation Act and embodying its report, and the draft bill shall be presented to the Speaker forthwith and the Speaker shall transmit it to the appropriate minister.”

That clarifies that one question. So, as indicated yesterday, I received that bill last Thursday, the day, I am informed, it was received from the printers. The bill was immediately transmitted by me to the hon. Mr. Welch in accordance with the advice I received that he would be the minister to introduce the bill in the House and we’ll have to await further action by that minister.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct a question.

Mr. Speaker: The oral question period is now beginning. The Leader of the Opposition.

REDISTRIBUTION BILL

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wonder if the appropriate minister would explain to the House why he has retained the bill since last week, when it is, of course, one that should be presented to the House without delay.

Hon. R. Welch (Minister of Culture and Recreation): Mr. Speaker, it is my intention to table the reports at the appropriate time in the order of proceedings today.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: What is the reason for the delay, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. May I just further clarify my statement? The hon. minister did not receive it from me in time, I am sure, to have done it last week.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Assuming that the minister got it on Thursday, are we to expect that the government is going to adjust the report in some way before it is presented? It is good for him. It is good exercise. It goes with his department.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Welch: I got the report Friday afternoon. I am tabling the report this afternoon.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He gave it to the minister on Thursday.

Hon. Mr. Welch: After all, the report will be in exactly the form in which it has been received.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That is fine. They have all been busy for the last four days doing whatever it is they do.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): A goodie for today.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

TEACHER-SCHOOL BOARD BARGAINING LEGISLATION

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I have already asked one and I have another. I would like to put it to the Minister of Education. When he predicted, as reported in the Globe and Mail on Feb. 28, that he would introduce legislation dealing with teacher-board negotiations during the first week of the session, why is it that we still have not had this legislation when it is naturally of crucial importance in the situation the province faces at the present time?

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): Mr. Speaker, if my friend likes to read the Globe and Mail every day, and that’s a good place for him to get information, he would have noted --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- in the Globe and Mail of last Saturday that I indicated I hoped to introduce the bill some time about the week of April 7 or thereafter. He must have missed the Globe and Mail on Saturday.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Since we are concerned with the status of teacher-board relationships at the present time, would the minister not think that an attempt to introduce the bill earlier would perhaps have some ameliorative effect, if there is such a word, on the situation that we face? Why not introduce it now? Is he still considering his position?

Hon. Mr. Wells: I want to tell my friend that I suppose I have spent more hours thinking about teacher-school board negotiations than he could ever dream about.

Mr. Roy: It’s the minister’s job.

Mr. Breithaupt: Well, he should. It is his job.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Wells: We will be ready to bring in a bill that will be a progressive piece of legislation, when we have had a chance to fulfil the promises that I gave to the trustees and the teachers of this province --

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): It is a year and a half late.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): He is awfully slow.

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- that I would consult with them before I presented a bill to this House.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The minister is not changing his mind?

Hon. Mr. Wells: I am indicating that we are looking for a piece of legislation that will be effective, that will do the job and that will bring order to this particular situation.

Mr. Cassidy: The situation gets worse and worse.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I might just say that if there is one person who has brought disorder to this whole process in this province it is the leader of the official opposition.

Some hon. members: Shame.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Slap the desks like seals.

Mr. Lewis: The minister gives him more credit than he deserves.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Does the member have a supplementary question?

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Yes, Mr. Speaker, thank you. In the minister’s reply, he indicated the bill would do “the job.” Is he willing to explain to this House what exactly the job is that he has in mind?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, the job, of course, is to provide ground rules for harmonious bargaining between the teachers and their boards.

Mr. Roy: Supplementary?

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary. The member for Ottawa East.

Mr. Roy: I have a supplementary to the minister’s answer to my leader, Mr. Speaker. Does he not feel as Minister of Education that his delay for a number of years in bringing in adequate legislation has, in fact, caused differences and strikes, as for instance in the Ottawa area, and that be has helped to deteriorate the situation between teachers and school boards?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, I absolutely do not accept that. In fact, I might say that my friend is following a close second behind his leader in causing disorder.

Mr. Speaker: Does the Leader of the Opposition have further questions?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to put another question to the minister, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Lewis: How does the minister feel about us? We can subvert with the best of them.

An hon. member: The member for Scarborough West is third.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Lewis: I don’t want the minister to think we are amateurs.

SECONDARY SCHOOL DROPOUT RATE

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Since the minister was absent in the House yesterday when questions were put to his policy secretary regarding the dropout report from Toronto, can he give any further information, based on his interjections yesterday when he did enter the House, that would indicate that the dropout situation across the province is less severe than the Toronto report would indicate, since his own figures would show that in 1970, 71 per cent of the students in grade 9 managed to achieve grade 12 entrance, and by 1973 only 63 per cent of those students achieved grade 12?

Now those are the latest figures from the minister’s own statistics. The relative change in the dropout situation for grade 13 is that 38 per cent achieved grade 13 and 1971 and only 31 achieved it in 1973.

Mr. Speaker: Order, order please. I believe the hon. leader has asked his question.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The question, really Mr. Speaker, as I’m sure you would know, is: Is the minister not concerned about the quality of education which is resulting in this substantial problem of dropouts in the public system?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, I’d like to be able to give authoritative figures today. I’m having the report to which the hon. member referred studied very carefully in my ministry; I’m not prepared to comment any more on it at this point in time. I’d like to have the figures so that we can compare the Toronto dropout rate with the other suburban areas in Metropolitan Toronto and other areas of the province. I haven’t got those figures at the present time.

But I want to tell my friend that when we saw those figures in 1973 we appointed, as I indicated to him yesterday, a task force, in November, 1973, headed by one of our ministry people, with very broad terms of reference to collect, collate and to complete research on the problem of dropouts in this province.

They’re doing this in depth with 38 boards across the province. This in-depth study, which is being assisted by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, involves detailed interviews with people who have dropped out. This is presently going on and the report will be ready toward the end of this year. I think when we get that report we’ll have some very authoritative information and research upon which to base what we should do, should not do or how we should view this situation.

In the meantime, I’ll try to get some comparative figures for the member and some more detailed studies of the Toronto report, which I don’t want to comment on until we’ve had a chance to study it in more depth.

Mr. Speaker: Further questions?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: Since the minister has indicated that a review is being undertaken, could we not get, without delay, simply the statistical size of the problem to see whether students in the rest of the province are reacting the way those in the city of Toronto are?

Since it indicates a crisis in at least a perception of the quality of education in Toronto and in the province, rather than wait for the in-depth review, would the minister not undertake to provide at least the statistical approach that simply shows how many are dropping out at the present time?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, first of all I don’t accept that it shows a crisis.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Twenty-five per cent of the kids are dropping out and that’s a crisis.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I think to my friend every little thing that comes along is a crisis in education. It’s a problem, there may be certain manifestations of it and we have to look at them.

Mr. Lewis: It is a serious problem.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Now to have the kind of information that would be relevant to look at, we’re going to need the kind of information that our task force brings together. The problem today is that it’s like comparing apples with oranges. If one takes the Toronto report and compares it with some figures from Scarborough or from Brant or from someplace else, they’ve all done them in a different way and they read differently. They’re not comparing the same things and we don’t get a really accurate picture.

I think that’s unfair. I think the Toronto report points out quite clearly -- in the report itself although it doesn’t give the statistical information -- that the Toronto situation, in the area of the Toronto board, it is much higher than in the suburban areas. It says that itself, although I’m not sure the suburban areas have done the same kind of detailed research this report represents.

Mr. Speaker: Any further supplementaries?

Mr. Foulds: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: I’m a little concerned about the use of statistics. Surely this is a human problem and not a statistical problem.

What steps is the ministry taking to ensure that those students who have dropped out have the ability and the wherewithal to drop back into school when they want to and that the bureaucratic barriers aren’t put up against them that are presently being put up against them?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, certainly as far as the ministry is concerned -- and I can’t speak for everybody in the educational system who may come in contact with people who try to drop back in or come back into schools -- but as far as I’m concerned every barrier that makes it difficult for a person to come back into school should be removed.

We’re doing, as far as I’m concerned and on my instructions, everything possible to remove those barriers to make it easy and possible for a person who has left school to come back into the system.

Mr. Foulds: Specifically, has the minister a directive out to the directors of education and the principals to that effect?

Mr. J. H. Jessiman (Fort William): Does the member want a leave of absence?

Hon. Mr. Wells: I’m sure, Mr. Speaker, that we have sent memorandums to inform people on this. As my friend knows we have set some new ground rules insofar as treating mature students is concerned and giving credits for courses they had before they dropped out. All these things are being handled.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions, the Leader of the Opposition?

The hon. member for Scarborough West.

OPERATIONS AT REEVES MINE

Mr. Lewis: Could I ask the Minister of Health, briefly, has he had as yet the dust count levels which were available at Reeves mine before it closed down?

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, I have the latest reports on the Reeves mine, yes. I just got them today at about 1:55 p.m. Our own report, the latest report of the Ministry of Health, is at least two years old; however, there have been independent tests done that admittedly were very high.

Mr. Lewis: That leads to two sorts of curious questions. One is, why would occupational health not have tested an area of clear environmental danger for a period of two years to get asbestos fibre dust counts? And secondly, will we as legislators ever have access to the independent counts that were taken?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I can answer the latter question and say that no, I am not at liberty to give the independent counts. I am concerned that there was that length of time without a ministry check on independent counts.

However, recognizing as I do now just how many places we have been asked to be in that period of time, I have some sympathy for my staff’s inability to be in all the places they should be. They had been at that mine personally within the last two weeks --

Mr. Lewis: Yes, after the event.

Hon. Mr. Miller: In between the events, one might say -- looking over the feasibility and means of maintaining the mine in operation. It was the mine’s opinion, I believe, that they couldn’t meet our requirements in any way, shape or form because of the very great overrun that they were experiencing.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Is it not true that some of the counts at the Reeves mine site were as high as 28? And was the minister aware of the submission that was made to the Ham commission by the Steelworkers’ union?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am not aware of the specific recommendation; I am aware that the values are high. I certainly don’t think the hon. member is overstating them.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Mr. Lewis: That is quite incredible. If the asbestos fibre counts were as high as my colleague suggests -- and knowing a little about the source, I think he may well be right -- what is going to be done to monitor the health of the 150 employees who were there over a considerable period of time? That may be one of the highest exposures to asbestos fibre concentration on the continent in the last several years. How do we look at the health of those workers in the future?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I did answer that part the other day. If the hon. member will notice my answer to a supplementary, I think, from the member for Cochrane South, I gave some details of the health follow-ups that are going on and have been going on. We intend to carry those on in the future. We are trying to keep track of people in these areas.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): A supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Cochrane South.

Mr. Ferrier: Is the minister aware that the miners themselves have said there has been some carelessness in the time periods when they have had the x-rays and the chest examinations? If the minister is aware of this, will he take a second look at the possibility of having additional medicals carried out on these men in the very near future by his chest x-ray department up there?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I would be pleased to do any of those things to follow up on the health of the men, which is my primary concern. I don’t think it is one of the worst places, but I am certainly concerned about that particular mine.

Mr. Laughren: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: One more supplementary.

Mr. Laughren: Would the minister be prepared to recommend that those men who worked at the mine be retained on full salary by the company until all medical testing has been completed?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, that is not within my terms of reference.

Mr. Laughren: I asked if the minister would recommend it.

Mr. Speaker: Does the member for Scarborough West have further questions?

EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN IN GOVERNMENT MINISTRIES

Mr. Lewis: I have a question which leads from yesterday’s exchange with the Minister of Government Services. Who is the affirmative action appointee in his ministry?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I might speak on this since the overall question came to me.

Mr. Lewis: No, I did not put the question to the Chairman of Management Board. I thank him very much for his helpful and saving intervention, but I have a reason for asking this minister.

Who is the affirmative action appointee in the Ministry of Government Services?

Hon. J. W. Snow (Minister of Government Services): Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to advise the leader of the New Democrats that the woman in charge of this programme in my ministry is Mrs. Ann Taylor, a senior employee of the ministry who works in the personnel department. I don’t know her official title in that department, but I know she works very closely with senior management in recruitment of staff for the ministry.

Mr. Lewis: Was the minister aware of the petition in his ministry protesting the manner of the appointment without opening it up to alternative placement, to other people?

Hon. Mr. Snow: No, I’m not aware of that, Mr. Speaker. I haven’t heard anything about it. Nothing has come to my attention. This appointment was made, I believe, in early January and a letter went out from my deputy minister to all employees outlining the programme and advising of Mrs. Taylor’s appointment.

Mr. Speaker: Are there any further questions?

Mr. Lewis: Yes. What does the Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet want to say?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I wanted to enlighten the hon. member in regard to it and I didn’t think he wanted to listen. That’s what bothered me.

I wanted to indicate to him and to the House precisely what took place prior to the appointments being made and the directives that were issued.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Shouldn’t this be a ministerial statement?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, it’s no statement at all. I wanted to read the directive so that the members would understand.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: What question is the minister responding to?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. member for Scarborough West asked a question of the House leader.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I would like to indicate that the directives went from the chairman of the Civil Service Commission to the deputy ministers, and I have them if the members would wish me to put them on the record.

Mr. J. E. Bullbrook (Sarnia): We won’t ask that question again.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I think it’s quite necessary in regard to what happened yesterday. Despite the chatter which is coming from over there on the Liberal benches I’ll put this on the record. It was to the deputy ministers from Mr. S. W. Clarkson and is headed: “Affirmative Action Guidelines for Women Crown Employees.”

“Please find attached a copy of the Guidelines on Affirmative Action for Women Crown Employees for your information and action within your ministry.

“These guidelines were prepared by the executive co-ordinator, women’s programmes division, Ministry of Labour. They have been reviewed and recommended by the Civil Service Commission and approved by Management Board of Cabinet.

“It is requested that action be taken within your ministry as soon as possible to initiate the action plan which has been suggested in order to give substance to the affirmative action outlined.”

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s very helpful.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That was on Sept. 16, 1974. Oh, of course, from the protesting that was made yesterday one would think nothing had been done.

Then, on Nov. 28, a further directive from Mr. Clarkson to all deputy ministers was made:

“To all deputy ministers: Further to my memorandum of Sept. 16, 1974, requesting action in each ministry to initiate the suggested action plan prepared by the executive co-ordinator, women’s programmes division, Ministry of Labour” --

Mr. Roy: I like that word “action.”

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I’ll continue: “-- recommended by the Civil Service Commission and approved by Management Board of Cabinet, it was not envisaged either by the Civil Service Commission or by the Management Board of Cabinet that ministries would be requesting new complement positions to provide leadership in their ministry to implement the programme and to effect liaison with the women Crown employees’ office. It was, rather, expected that each ministry would assign the duties of a women’s adviser to an individual who would be responsible to the deputy minister for co-ordinating the ministry programme, with sufficient resources to ensure that the programme would be carried out.

“In view of the above it is suggested that ministries should reassess their plans for implementation of the programme, and, if they consider a full-time women’s adviser is required, be prepared to reassign present complement within the ministry to make this possible.”

Then, of course, there was a statement in the House following that. There is all sorts of material to indicate what is going on in different ministries, plus a substantive section of the Speech from the Throne. Let it not be said --

Mr. Lewis: That’s the funniest part.

Mr. Cassidy: The minister protests too much.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Let it not be said --

Mr. Lewis: Oh, indeed.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Let it not be said that we’re not doing anything for women in this year, 1975. It is a very positive programme.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: All these directives were from a Mr. Clarkson, was it?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: From the Civil Service Commission.

Mr. Lewis: Yes. Can I ask the minister why he didn’t feel it necessary to inform the members of the cabinet of an appointment so important within their own operating ministries?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: We were asking for a report back before we got into the implementation phases and that will happen. That will happen in the course of the next few days and then the member for Scarborough West will have his eyes opened.

An hon. member: He did.

Mr. Lewis: Fine.

Mr. Speaker: Are there any further questions? The member for Scarborough West?

Mr. Lewis: No, I’ll have my chance later.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Downsview.

DISMISSAL OF WOMAN POLICE OFFICER

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the acting Solicitor General. In view of the dismissal of probationary constable Jacqueline Hall from Stratford police force, which was commented upon in the news media today, could the minister give us his views as to whether or not it is appropriate that police forces such as Stratford have women constables; and whether or not the termination of her probationary period just on the eve of the end of the 18-month period was reasonable and logical; and the extent to which the minister is looking into the circumstances surrounding her dismissal?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Provincial Secretary for Justice): Mr. Speaker, as to the question of whether women police constables provide a valuable service or not, in my mind I think that, yes, they do, under certain circumstances. I think this was recognized by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police recently and also the Ontario Provincial Police who are recruiting.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Waldo Monteith says -- Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Clement: With reference to the young lady referred to in the Woodstock area, if she feels --

Mr. Singer: Stratford.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Or Stratford area. If she feels that she has been unfairly dealt with then she has, of course, grievance procedure available to her. I’m advised that as of 2 o’clock today she has not seen fit to initiate any grievance procedure.

Mr. Singer: She is only a probationary constable.

Hon. Mr. Clement: She still has grievance procedure available to her under the Act.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Sandwich-Riverside.

REMOVAL OF ASBESTOS FIBRES FROM TAP WATER

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of the Environment: When will the minister send me an answer, as he undertook to do on Oct. 24 --

An hon. member: What year?

Mr. Burr: -- during the discussion of his estimates, to my question, namely, whether or not the distillation of tap water removed asbestos fibres from the drinking water?

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): Mr. Speaker, I thought I had answered that question several times. Distillation does remove some, but not all of it. We have had a report in on that just recently and I’ll send the member a copy.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Wellington-Dufferin.

HYDRO RIGHT OF WAY

Mr. J. Root (Wellington-Dufferin): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Energy. About a year ago there was some discussion on the Bradley Junction-Georgetown corridor, and I suggested that there should be a public hearing before a final decision was made and that they should keep off the agricultural lands if practical and possibly take the route over and down the Essa corridor. In recent weeks, I find that I --

Mr. Foulds: Question.

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): Question.

Mr. Ferrier: Question.

Mr. Cassidy: Is this a split in the Conservative caucus?

Mr. Speaker: Could we have the question, please?

Mr. Root: Yes. In recent weeks I have been getting a lot of support from local people, councils, and even the agricultural critic of the Liberal Party for this proposal --

Mr. Martel: Is that the question?

Mr. Root: -- and I’d like to ask the minister, what has he been doing? What does he propose to do about holding a public hearing before the last decision has been made?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Breithaupt: The answer is nothing.

Mr. Cassidy: Answer. Answer

Mr. Roy: The minister mustn’t let it go to his head.

Hon. D. R. Timbrell (Minister of Energy): Mr. Speaker, in answer to the hon. member, I’m very aware of his concern about this project.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): The minister should be, the member sits right behind him.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Within a very few days of my assuming this portfolio he was in touch with me both by phone and by letter. Since then I’ve spent a great deal of time studying all of the available material on the project. As well, as he may know, I went up a week ago Friday and spent most of the day there travelling all the lines and concessions to see for myself the sites that were proposed to be crossed with the hydro corridor. Also, a week ago Sunday I flew up in a helicopter to fly over all of the alternative routes.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Did the minister land on the Root farm?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: In addition, Mr. Speaker, I have been in touch with a Mr. William Mann, who is chairman of the local group in that area, I believe. I get the names of the townships mixed up; I think he’s in Erin township. Next Tuesday morning Mr. Mann is bringing in a group of people from that area representing the Federation of Agriculture and, I believe, the local councils.

I will make my final decision as to what to do on this after I’ve spoken with them.

Mr. Laughren: Is the member for Wellington-Dufferin the oldest Tory over there?

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary: the member for Huron-Bruce.

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Has the minister given any consideration to subjecting this particular line to an independent study on a priority basis?

An hon. member: Oh, no way.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows -- and we’ve discussed this several times -- my concern -- and I’m checking this out, as I mentioned to him late last week, but I’ve been ill since then -- my concern is that with the Bruce generating station coming on stream in a few years’ time I don’t want to have that station sitting there, locked in as it were, with no way of getting the power out.

I’m trying to determine whether, in fact, any of the power could be taken out of Bruce without this line and, if so, how much and for how long we could put it off. These are all factors which are entering into my decision. As I say, I don’t want to make a final decision until I have heard the local people.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Would the minister consider referring the matter to the royal commission announced by his policy secretary last week which will obviously be established for just this purpose?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: No, Mr. Speaker. The board -- or commission, if you want to call it that -- is for those projects planned between late 1982 or early 1983 and 1993. This project, this particular line, is to bring power out of a plant which will be on stream before that time. As I say, I chatted with the member’s colleague last week and the question became one of how long could that line be held up without losing money for the people of Ontario if that station sat there ready to deliver power but unable to do so because of the lack of the line.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Huron.

CANADA METAL CO. PLANT

Mr. J. Riddell (Huron): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of the Environment: Will the minister report to this House about the level of arsenic emission that has been approved for the new controls on the stack at the Canada Metal plant? Specifically, how many hundreds of pounds of arsenic will that stack spew out over the course of one year?

Hon. W. Newman: Is the member talking about Canada Metal?

Mr. Riddell: That’s right.

Hon. W. Newman: I’ll get an answer for him on that tomorrow. I’ll have my office follow through on it.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Lakeshore.

CHURCHES’ REQUEST FOR INTERNATIONAL FOREIGN AID

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): A question of the Premier: What is the position and response of the government to the five major churches of the province soliciting its aid and support with respect to international foreign aid programmes arising in this constituency?

Hon. W. G. Davis (Premier): Mr. Speaker, as I recall, I believe it was Bishop Ragg who made a presentation to cabinet when we were in London with --

Mr. Lawlor: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- respect to some assistance from the government in terms of food or monetary assistance in their programme. The concern that we expressed very briefly at that time was the role of the province in what is traditionally an area where the federal government has responsibility and to a certain extent has exercised it. I think the feeling of the gentlemen who were there in support of the brief was that here was a situation where the province might also assist.

I have arranged to meet with that committee and I assume there will be representatives from all churches. I can’t tell the hon. members, Mr. Speaker, just what date has been set but I remember signing a letter -- I think five or six days ago -- which, hopefully, will get to Bishop Ragg indicating that this meeting would be arranged. When we have had that meeting, Mr. Speaker, and explored it more fully I will be in a better position to report to the hon. member.

Mr. Lawler: A supplementary, please, Mr. Speaker: Is the government well-disposed with respect to extending monetary assistance in this regard?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I think all of us in this House are very sympathetic to the total situation and the need for certain nations of the world to have assistance. I think the determination that has to be made is whether we should be encouraging the federal government, on behalf of all of the people of Canada, to undertake a more extensive programme in this regard or whether individual provinces should become involved. If the member is asking me about my personal disposition, I would say -- and I would like to think all of us feel this way -- that this country can do more for those less fortunate. Whether it should be done by individual provinces rather than the federal government or in addition thereto is something, of course, about which the meeting is going to take place.

Mr. Breithaupt: I have a supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Ms. Speaker: One final supplementary.

Mr. Breithaupt: Since the members have received copies of certain letters sent to the Premier from people in their own particular constituencies, can the Premier advise us how many persons, approximately, have written in supporting this situation?

Hon. Mr. Davis: No, I can’t, Mr. Speaker, at this moment but I would be delighted to get that figure for the member.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Kent.

ONTARIO HYDRO POLICY ON AGRICULTURAL SUPERVISORS

Mr. J. P. Spence (Kent): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Energy. What is the policy of Ontario Hydro in regard to the agriculture supervisors across the Province of Ontario? I am told that last year there were 13 and now there are six. Is it the policy of Ontario Hydro to do away with these agriculture supervisors? This is a great concern.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that the agricultural supervisors will still be available to assist any farmer who is planning a new building on his property. There was the mention of the figures 13 and six, and I’ll be glad to look into that and find out if that is a question of vacancies, or just what the problem is. But certainly I would hope that they have no intention of reducing that.

Mr. Riddell: Along the same line of thought, why is Ontario Hydro being permitted to do away with the marketing division sales section? This is a group whose job has been to provide heat loss calculations for buildings and to specify insulation requirements. What’s going on in connection with the phasing-out programme of Ontario Hydro?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, I haven’t had a chance to acknowledge a reply to the hon. member’s letter to me of about two weeks ago, I guess it is now, but I have been looking into that. In point of fact, the heat loss calculations, as I understand it, are still being performed for individuals at a fee of $25. Now, I understand that the actual cost to Ontario Hydro is something in the order of about $40 or $45. I spoke with the chairman and president of Ontario Hydro on Friday morning, or early Friday afternoon, and mentioned to them that the member had been in touch with me and that I was concerned about this and I wanted to ask them for a complete report on the subject.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Port Arthur.

ALLEGED SHORTAGE OF HOME PROGRAMME PAYMENT TO THUNDER BAY

Mr. Foulds: Yes, Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Housing: Can the Minister of Housing explain why the cheque for the Ontario Home Rehabilitation Programme, which was delivered personally to the mayor of the city of Thunder Bay by the hon. member for Fort William, was short $158,000 last Friday?

An hon. member: Shame.

Hon. D. R. Irvine (Minister of Housing): Mr. Speaker, I’m not aware of the shortage, but I’ll certainly look into it.

Mr. Foulds: Supplementary: Is the minister not aware that they received only 25 per cent of the amount that they had bean led to expect, and can the minister tell the House when the city of Thunder Bay can expect the remaining 75 per cent of the programme?

Mr. Deans: Where is the rest of the money? That is what we want to know.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, the original allocation is only 25 per cent, unless the municipality asks for up to 50 per cent. We don’t give out the total allocation at once.

Mr. Lewis: The minister surely didn’t think the member for Fort William could afford it himself.

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of the Environment has the answer to a question.

Mr. Lewis: Order, Mr. Speaker.

EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN IN GOVERNMENT MINISTRIES

Hon. W. Newman: In answering a question of the leader of the NDP yesterday, I would like to correct what I believe to be somewhat of a misleading statement by the leader of the NDP in this House yesterday and reported in this morning’s press in reference to the activities of women advisers.

I admit I was unable to explain yesterday the activities of our woman adviser, because she reports directly to our deputy minister, Everett Biggs, in the area of administration of the ministry.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): That is a point of order; that is not a question.

Hon. W. Newman: It was a question asked yesterday, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I remember the hon. minister was asked a question yesterday which he wasn’t able to answer.

Mr. Lewis: A point of order: He didn’t take the question as notice, he just couldn’t answer it.

Hon. W. D. McKeough (Treasurer and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): The leader of the NDP doesn’t want an answer.

Hon. W. Newman: I said I would get the member an answer.

Mr. Lewis: Well, give it on a point of privilege later on.

Mr. Speaker: I think in view of the unfinished answer to the question yesterday, we should allow it.

Mr. B. Newman: (Windsor-Walkerville): If the member wants to ask questions in the House, he should expect to get an answer.

Mr. Lewis: The member is unbelievable. He is unbelievable. How many feet does he have?

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. W. Newman: On Oct. 31, 1974, Mrs. Blackadar was appointed by the deputy as the women’s adviser to act in liaison with the women’s Crown employees office in the Ministry of Labour. She was formerly executive assistant to the deputy. As an executive officer one, the salary range is $13,800 to $16,200. Our women’s adviser has addressed meetings of senior and middle management people explaining the policy of affirmative action for equal opportunity for women Crown employees and seeking their recommendations for objectives for recruitment, training and development of women and the criteria for identifying potential. As well, she has done some career counselling with individual women of the ministry.

Grace Blackadar has initiated career development workshops to be implemented by our personnel branch this April. She is presently assisting with the preparation of a special issue of an in-house publication directed toward the women in my ministry. She will also be showing some films to male and female staff on woman’s changing role in society. Our women’s adviser feels that consciousness-raising is very necessary in the early stages of the programme.

Mr. Lewis: Hear, hear. There are some who need it more than others.

Hon. W. Newman: Having read today’s press, Grace Blackadar, who is my co-ordinator, has asked me to express to the member her strong resentment at being insinuatingly referred to as a tokenism. She accepted her assignment in good faith because she is sincerely interested in the best use of human resource and in any effort she can make to bring this about.

Mr. Lewis: On a point of privilege.

Mr. Speaker: Point of privilege.

Mr. Lewis: On a point of privilege, Grace asked me to express to the minister in the House her resentment that he didn’t even know who she was.

Mr. Speaker: The member for York-Forest Hill.

RESIDENCE REQUIREMENTS FOR UNIVERSITY ADMISSION

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): Mr. Speaker, I think this is a good time of the year to ask the Minister of Colleges and Universities whether he intends to use the tremendous clout which he has, by virtue of the fact that he hands out tremendous sums of money to colleges and universities, to influence the boards of admission, particularly of professional faculties of this province, to give a greater degree of weight or preference to the applications of children of long-term residents of the Province of Ontario than they have done in the past, where they have favoured the applications of children who establish temporary residence in Ontario simply for the purpose of being admitted.

Hon. Mr. Auld: Mr. Speaker, we have discussed this question several times in the House. I think I have indicated that it is apparent the public itself is interested in the admission practices at the universities, particularly in the professional courses.

Presently something less than four per cent of the accepted applicants are non-Canadian citizens or landed immigrants. In the graduate field particularly, there are far more Canadians taking graduate studies in the United States, for instance, than there are US citizens here. It would appear that the universities are taking the line that the hon. member has suggested, but I very much doubt that we will see the day when they are 100 per cent Canadian citizens. I don’t think any of us would like to see that.

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: One supplementary.

Mr. Shulman: What is the percentage of landed immigrants in the first-year medical class at the University of Toronto?

Mr. Ferrier: The minister should carry his statistics around with him.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. minister have the answer? If not, we could go on.

Hon. Mr. Auld: I have so many answers here, Mr. Speaker, that it takes a little while to find them.

Mr. Breithaupt: We only wish he would put them.

Mr. Cassidy: He is waiting for questions.

Mr. Deans: Why doesn’t he send us a copy and we will know which questions to ask?

Hon. Mr. Auld: I have now forgotten the question.

Mr. Shulman: How many landed immigrants in first-year medicine at U of T?

Hon. Mr. Auld: At U of T there were 1,743 applications and there were 240 acceptances. Of these, 2.5 per cent students have foreign visas and the rest are Canadian citizens or landed immigrants.

Mr. Speaker: The member for York South.

Mr. Givens: I have a supplementary question. Why does the minister resist the request for boards of admission to give preference to the applicants of long-time Ontario residence? Why does he resist this so much? He has resisted this time and time again. What is so unpatriotic about having the children of taxpayers of Ontario favoured in their applications at the universities of the Province of Ontario? I am not talking about Canadian citizens.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Auld: Mr. Speaker, first of all, as I am sure the hon. member is aware, the government of Canada puts up about 50 per cent of the grants. The Council of Ministers of Education of Canada, the provincial ministers, has met on several occasions and discussed provincial boundaries and borders and so on. They have all agreed that it is more desirable that there be complete student interchangeability, if I can put it that way, between Ontario and Manitoba or Quebec or PEI or Newfoundland. As a matter of fact, interestingly enough there is a very high percentage of Ontario students who go to St. John’s, Nfld. I don’t think that we want to put up any restrictions that will affect our prospective students in terms of where they wish to go.

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

Mr. Shulman: On a point of order, if I may, Mr. Speaker. I asked the minister a question. I asked him specifically what percentage were landed immigrants, and he replied that 97 per cent were citizens or landed immigrants. What kind of misleading information is that?

Hon. Mr. Auld: Excuse me. For medicine at the U of T in 1974, out of a total of 255 acceptances, there were 189 Canadian citizens, or 74 per cent; 60 individuals, or 23.5 per cent, were landed immigrants --

Mr. Shulman: That’s too many.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He is not prepared to tell us.

Hon. Mr. Auld: -- and six students with foreign student visas, or 2.5 per cent.

Mr. Speaker: The member for York South.

PRICE OF MILK

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food with regard to the proposed increase in the price of milk.

Mr. R. K. McNeil (Elgin): The York South farmer!

Mr. MacDonald: Would the minister give the House some assurance that the proposed additional two cents that is going to be put on by the dairies, in addition to the implementation of the milk formula for the benefit of the farmers, will be subjected to some review so that we can discover whether or not it is justified.

Secondly, in view of the price of milk, is the government on its own, or in conjunction with the federal government, going to consider the implementation of a permanent consumer subsidy -- I emphasize “permanent consumer subsidy” -- so that this vital product will not be removed from the reach of many low-income families?

Hon. W. A. Stewart (Minister of Agriculture and Food): Answering the last question first, Mr. Speaker, there is no action being contemplated to put on any permanent subsidy, or any other kind of subsidy that I know of, on fluid milk products, either by the federal government or by the provincial government. We’ve just gone through the process of the federal government having removed the five-cent consumer subsidy.

Mr. MacDonald: That was a temporary one, not a permanent one -- for election purposes.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: With regard to the first question, I was not aware of the increase in price until I saw it in today’s paper. We will be taking a look at it through the appropriate channels of the ministry.

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, by way of a supplementary, the minister has avoided or evaded my question; I don’t know which. Will the government implement some sort of review of the proposed additional two cents which the dairies are going to put on by unilateral action, subject and responsible to nobody?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, we have a Food Prices Review Board at Ottawa. If my hon. friend suggests that we should --

Mr. Laughren: Oh, stop it.

Mr. MacDonald: Go on.

Mr. Cassidy: He cops out again.

Mr. Laughren: He is the Minister of Agriculture.

Mr. MacDonald: Is the minister going to do something about prices in the Province of Ontario?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. We’re wasting time.

Mr. Cassidy: Those guys deserve to go.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: My hon. friend suggests we should do the same thing here, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker --

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I didn’t say that.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The question period is just about over. There are several members who want to place original questions. I will recognize the hon. member for Ottawa East.

OTTAWA TEACHERS’ DISPUTE

Mr. Roy: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A question of the Minister of Education.

In view of the fact that the Ottawa public school board teachers’ strike is now in its third week, and the reports are that there’s no way the classes are going to re-open prior to April, and since both parties apparently aren’t even talking to each other, is the minister taking any steps to see that they sit down and discuss this? Does he have anyone down there? In fact, why doesn’t he go down there himself and see if he can get them to start talking to each other?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, we are in constant touch with both sides. We have made offers to provide mediation when and if both sides are ready. A few days ago, as I recall, the teachers had indicated they were ready to have a mediator, but the board’s position at that time was that they would accept a mediator if the teachers would go back to work, which wasn’t acceptable to the teachers. At the present time they are both biding their time, I guess you might say, insofar as negotiations are concerned.

Mr. Roy: Why doesn’t the minister go down there and get them to talk to each other?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, both sides know that I and my ministry are available to assist them in any way possible.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Sudbury East.

HEALTH SURVEY OF ELLIOT LAKE MINERS

Mr. Martel: A question of the Minister of Health: When will he be tabling the report on the Elliot Lake workers that was undertaken by his ministry, involving sputum tests and dust tests, I believe?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I haven’t got a date on that yet, Mr. Speaker. I don’t know when the report will be available for me. I’ll find out.

Mr. Lewis: It is not a bad report actually. It is a fairly good report. I will tell the House about it.

Mr. Speaker: The oral question period has expired.

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson from the select committee appointed to prepare the lists of members to compose the standing committees of the House, presented the committee’s report which was read as follows:

Your committee recommends that the lists of standing committees ordered by the House be composed of the following members:

1. PROCEDURAL AFFAIRS: Messrs. Bales, Bounsall, Burr, Mrs. Campbell, Messrs. Carton, Dymond, Edighoffer, Henderson, Johnston, Kerr, McNie, Morrow, Reilly, Reuter, Smith (Hamilton Mountain), Smith (Simcoe East), Spence -- 17.

2. ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE: Messrs. Bullbrook, Carruthers, Davison, Downer, Drea, Ewen, Givens, Havrot, Lawlor, Leluk, Nixon (Dovercourt), Nuttall, Renwick, Singer, Taylor (Carleton East), Turner, Walker, Wardle, Yaremko -- 19.

3. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT: Messrs. Apps, Belanger, Braithwaite, Deacon, Dukszta, Eaton, Foulds, Hamilton, Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton), Jessiman, Lane, Martel, Morningstar, Parrott, Roy, Mrs. Scrivener, Messrs. Smith (Nipissing), Timbrell, Villeneuve -- 19.

4. RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT: Messrs. Allan, Beckett, Evans, Gaunt, Gilbertson, Good, Haggerty, Laughren, MacDonald, Maeck, McIlveen, McNeil, Rollins, Root, Sargent, Stokes, Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox), Wiseman, Yakabuski -- 19.

5. MISCELLANEOUS ESTIMATES: Mrs. Campbell, Messrs. Carruthers, Cassidy, Drea, Evans, Hamilton, Nixon (Dovercourt), Nuttall, Paterson, Reuter, Riddell, Root, Samis, Mrs. Scrivener, Messrs. Stokes, Villeneuve, Wardle, Yaremko -- 18.

6. PUBLIC ACCOUNTS: Messrs. Allen, Bales, Ewen, Ferrier, Germa, Havrot, Lane, Reid, Ruston, Smith (Nipissing), Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox), Wiseman, Yakabuski -- 13.

7. REGULATIONS: Messrs. Belanger, Deans, Havrot, Johnston, Maeck, Morningstar, Morrow, Newman (Windsor-Walkerville), Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox), Turner, Worton, Young -- 12.

The quorum of committees one to five and of the private bills committee to be seven in each case. The quorum of committees six and seven to be five in each case.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Wentworth.

Mr. Deans: Before you move the adoption of the report there are two comments I want to make with regard to it.

I think it doesn’t really make much sense for us to strike a select committee every year in order to set up the composition of standing committees. It would be much easier if we were to establish by rule of the House the numbers that each party would have in terms of the makeup of the committees and then the committees would simply send to the Clerk’s office a list of the members’ names they would want to sit on that committee.

It is quite obvious to me that the archaic procedure of meeting in the morning simply to read the names into the record and then to have the matter approved or not approved, according to the whims and fancies of two or three people, is time-consuming and wasteful. Unless the select committee is going to be given some additional powers to consider other matters pertaining to the way in which the standing committees might operate during the course of the year, the things we have done over the last number of years don’t make much sense.

I want to point out to you that today, for example, we -- my colleague and I -- attempted to raise the matter of the possibility of making a recommendation to the House on the issue of substitution during the consideration of legislation. We pointed out that it was in the best interest of the members of the Legislature that they be permitted to sit on a committee with all rights during the time when that committee was considering legislation in which or for which they hail a particular interest. This was refused by the chairman on the basis that he believed the committee didn’t have the power to make recommendations to the Legislature with regard to matters of standing committees. It doesn’t make sense that substitution be not permitted; it makes even less sense that a select committee be struck if that select committee’s only job is a stereotyped job to review the names submitted by the various political parties.

I point out to you, for example, Mr. Speaker, the committee this morning did something which may or may not have been within its scope but which we on the committee decided was worthwhile. That was to add one member to the complement of the public accounts committee. That seemed to make sense to us and yet that wasn’t within the terms of reference as they were set out. It wasn’t specifically excluded but it certainly was not included specifically either.

I point out that neither was the matter of whether or not substitution could be permitted for consideration of other than the estimates specifically excluded. It wasn’t included but it wasn’t specifically excluded either. It was as much the right of the committee to determine that matter as it was the right of the committee to decide (a) to add one member to the public accounts committee or (b) to establish the quorum for the committees since neither of those two things was specifically set out in the motion that the House approved on Friday last.

I put this to you. If we’re going to go through the motions of setting up an all-party committee to discuss the appropriate ways that standing committees might operate, let’s at least give it the right to speak about all of the things raised by the members during the debate that takes place on the motion made by the House leader to establish the select committee. Let’s at least allow the select committee, once established, the opportunity to deal with all of the matters raised during the debate and at least to recommend to the House appropriate measures to be taken, rather than simply saying they’re not matters to be dealt with by that select committee.

The truth of the matter is if they can’t be dealt with by the select committee, there is really no appropriate procedure within the procedures of the House to deal with these matters. It’s almost left to the whim of each individual standing committee to determine such things as whether the hearings it conducts will be conducted with or without any record being kept; whether or not the affairs of the select committee will be conducted by 12 or 13 members; or, for that matter, whether the membership should be changed in accordance with some other formula to be established.

I want to suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that if you’re going to follow this procedure in any new parliament we should reconsider the ways in which the committee is set up and the terms of reference given to the committee; and that the committee be afforded the opportunity to deal sensibly with all of the difficulties which may have arisen over the course of the previous year.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Kitchener.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker, I agree substantially with the comments that have been made by the House leader of the New Democratic Party. Certainly, if the committee which, in turn, strikes membership of committees is going to have any particular effect or usefulness as it does its annual task, there must be a number of other items which are within the province of that committee to discuss and recommend.

It is interesting, of course, to note that we have had, I think, the happy result of increasing the membership, at least for this coming session, of the public accounts committee by an additional member. The comments raised by the member for Rainy River (Mr. Reid), who has served as chairman, are certainly without question reasonable ones since to be chairman of that committee, when there is a small opposition membership, means really to remove oneself from the day-to-day operation of asking questions or bringing up various points as the work of that committee is attended to. Having served as chairman of the public accounts committee for five years I think I am somewhat aware of the particular difficulties that can come up when committee membership has the chairman removed from the members otherwise available to the opposition. This, of course, has not been the case historically in all the other committees, as the chairman is chosen from the government membership which is, of course, substantially larger in the first place. I do commend the result of the deliberations at least to the point of including an additional member with respect to the public accounts committee.

I am interested, of course, in this whole matter of substitution. This has been raised for the last several years, and for reasons really unknown to me, the government has refused to allow this suggested change. Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, it is indeed time that all of the rules of the Legislature are reviewed, not only to refer to this particular item but to others. Within a month’s time it will be five years since the standing orders of the assembly were approved. They were approved on April 22, 1970.

Certainly there have been many changes and, I think, many benefits have resulted over the past year or so in the operation of the House and in the development and change of some of these rules. I think the results of the Camp commission report, particularly as perhaps they have affected both the member for Wentworth and myself in the creation of the positions of House leaders for the opposition parties, have I trust been helpful and useful to the operation of the Legislature.

There are though, particularly, other areas of concern which not only he and I share as being interested in the rules of the development of the House, but I’m sure which you share as well, Mr. Speaker. We have seen this whole matter of substitution referred to from time to time. Certainly it is time now to review this particular point and to allow for better and more reasonable operation of committees where the substitution of one member for the other can take place, so that the voting results -- and, indeed, the membership and co-ordination of the committee work -- will come to a better and happier form.

I would certainly hope that this matter can be actively pursued. I would suggest that this report now being considered should have added to it certain views from this House with respect to how we see the operation of the committees, at least in future if not now, and also our views with respect to the whole and entire matter of substitution.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton): Mr. Speaker, the committee structure of this House is usually prepared to deal with those matters relayed and referred to it. The terms of reference in regard to substitution were perfectly clear and therefore I ruled the member for Lambton’s (Mr. Henderson) motion out of order in the committee and it was upheld. But I do feel that matters of substitution were raised in the original motion placed before the House; it was discussed and the House did not see fit to place before our committee in terms of reference the opportunity for us to discuss this thoroughly and to report back.

I am very sympathetic to the idea of substitution in those committees myself; I have said so in the past. I am convinced it is one thing that would be an improvement. However, I do believe the House should by motion refer that to our standing committee on procedural affairs. I think that’s the proper committee; it has been in the past and substitution is one matter this House should seriously consider referring to that committee. I do not consider the striking committee as such was the proper committee. However, the House may see fit to consider it so at some point in time.

Mr. Speaker, the report of the committee is a recommendation to the House. The members of the striking committee did see fit to add one additional member to the public accounts committee, and in my moving of the adoption of the report I do hope that the House will join with me in recommending and accepting that motion in the report.

Mr. Speaker: Shall the report be adopted?

Mr. Bullbrook: No, I want to direct a question, if it might be permitted, during the course of some remarks and, if it is possible, have some response.

The problem with relying on the procedural affairs committee is a two-fold one. First of all, it very seldom sits. Secondly, it’s dependent upon government action that the procedural affairs committee sits, Mr. Speaker.

It is all well and good and very placid to say that this matter of substitution should be best dealt with in that committee. I’m inclined to agree as a matter of principle that the hon. member is correct. Could he possibly assure us that he could bring in an amendment? Why not an amendment now, for example, adding to the striking committee’s report that the question of substitution, as digested by that committee, be referred to the procedural affairs committee?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Why not?

Mr. Bullbrook: Because it’s a very vital thing. Why not? Why does he shake his head?

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: Because I was not allowed to do it by the terms of reference.

Mr. Bullbrook: Well if he wasn’t allowed to do it by the terms of reference, then he can make a motion now. I’ll make one if he wants. There’s nothing at all that prohibits us from activating that procedural affairs committee.

It’s obvious to many of us here in the House that at least members of the opposition are vitally concerned, Mr. Speaker, with the question of substitution. I for one sit on the private bills committee and the procedural affairs committee and yet I am not on the resources committee. My present and happy responsibility is as energy critic. As legislation comes before the resources committee it will be my obligation, hopefully, to go to that committee, lend some weight of debate to it, and I find myself completely stultified in active participation and supporting of my own position. That’s what happens. Certainly it happens.

Mr. Martel: It does happen.

Mr. Bullbrook: Certainly it happens. Why do we keep shaking our heads and saying it doesn’t happen? The fact of the matter is we know it happens. We sit there and see it happen.

Mr. Cassidy: Those guys are so simple-minded.

Mr. Bullbrook: We see a critic for the opposition debating with a minister and finding himself in the position of a political eunuch. He can’t do anything about what he’s talking about

Mr. Martel: Move a motion.

Mr. Bullbrook: That’s all we want to do. I agree, as a matter of procedure, that it should go before the procedural affairs committee; but to get the thing on the floor so that at least we will have some vote I am going to move an amendment.

Mr. Bullbrook moves that a member of each committee established by the motion may be substituted for by a member of his party upon notice given to the chairman or vice-chairman of the appropriate committee prior to the commencement of the day’s proceedings of such committee.

Mr. Speaker: It is my understanding that this was dealt with by the House last Friday when the matter of substitutions --

Mr. Deans: There was no motion.

Mr. Speaker: Yes there was; and it cannot be reintroduced in this way.

Mr. Deans: The House leader held a discussion, but there was no motion.

An hon. member: There was no motion.

Mr. Singer: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, the House leader gave the undertaking that the matter of replacement would be reviewed. Now we have had no direction from the House leader. We’ve got this motion. This will be the last chance we get before the committees are on their way to being set up. That’s what the House leader said, that the matter of replacement or substitution would be reviewed.

Mr. Speaker: Yes, but the matter of substitutions was dealt with at that time. I think it’s been a very useful discussion, however. I think possibly the House leader will have something further to say on that later, but in the meantime I must rule this motion out of order.

Mr. Bullbrook: I am sorry.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I’m sorry if I gave that impression --

Mr. Bullbrook: I am sorry, I didn’t understand. On a point of order, or for clarification, begging your indulgence, did you say that my motion was not in order?

Mr. Speaker: Yes. I believe it to be not in order because the matter of substitution was dealt with by the House.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): It wasn’t dealt with.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The member wasn’t here.

Mr. Speaker: Order please. Yes it was. There were certain substitutions agreed to --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The House leader said he would review it.

Mr. Speaker: -- and that closed that matter. The House leader indicated --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: On a point of order.

Mr. Speaker: -- he was going to review the situation. I don’t know whether he has yet or not.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: On a point of order, before the hon. member speaks, I would like to submit to you, sir, that it was not dealt with when the motion arose previously, but I would think that the most reasonable way out of what may become an impasse would be for the House leader to indicate that the government is prepared to recommend that the matter go before the procedural affairs committee for discussion --

Mr. Bullbrook: Right.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- with, hopefully, a recommendation that is going to come back without any partisan division --

Mr. Bullbrook: Right.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- but for the good of the committee system of the House. How about that? Let’s do that.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, I will stay with the proposal that I made to the House yesterday. I must admit that I have not had on opportunity to bring it back, but I will give it consideration, possibly before the committees start their function, or at the earliest possible opportunity I’ll come back with a proposal and see if it is acceptable to the House.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Speaking to the motion, might I just say, Mr. Speaker, that I would recommend to the House leader that a matter such as this should be discussed by representatives of all parties in the procedural affairs committee, rather than being totally the decision of the House leader and anyone lie might choose to discuss it with.

Mr. L. C. Henderson (Lambton): We’ll deal with it.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: This is a matter that does not divide the parties, surely, but is in fact a matter having to do with the efficiency of the whole committee system. I don’t believe there is a party decision here.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I’ll consider that too.

Report agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, I am tabling today for the information of the members of the House the final report of the Ontario Electoral Boundaries Commission.

Mr. Speaker: Motions.

Introduction of bills.

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT, 1975

Hon. Mr. Stewart, on behalf of Hon. Mr. Rhodes, moves first reading of bill intituled, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Amendment Act, 1974.

Motion agreed to; first reading of the bill.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, if I may, by way of explanation, I’ve been asked to say that the recent amendments to the Highway Traffic Act contained in Bill 177, 1975, enacted changes to the school bus stopping law which were to become effective on April 1, 1975. At the request of the Minister of Education, representatives of several school boards and representatives of school bus operators, I have been asked to introduce today on behalf of the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Rhodes), this bill which will have the effect of postponing the implementation of those specific amendments until Sept. 1, 1975.

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

Clerk of the House: The first order, resuming the adjourned debate on the amendment to the motion for an address in reply to the speech of the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor at the opening of the session.

THRONE SPEECH DEBATE (CONTINUED)

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough West.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Does the member have enough supporters?

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): I have as sturdy and as indomitable band of 20 as he’ll ever find. They are quite capable of running him in.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say as I begin that one of the things which gives me great pleasure, and I think gives the House great pleasure, is that I can participate in this Throne Speech debate in the presence of a co-colleague of all of us who has not been well but has happily returned to the House today, the member for Hamilton East (Mr. Gisborn). He has endured many such speeches, Mr. Speaker, with equanimity. I can’t imagine after all the years that he has been in this chamber, how he can still abide it, but he does, God bless him, and that’s a testament to his extraordinary resilience.

I’m going to freewheel through this Throne Speech at some little length. I’m not going to spend much time on pleasantries Mr. Speaker, in advance. The Throne Speech itself was an incomparably simple-minded and irrelevant document, and I don’t really think it deserves much more than that. I thought it was almost touching that the former provincial Treasurer should say that it was of a philosophic nature with thematic content -- no Aristotle he. The Speech from the Throne has about it the literary and philosophic quality of the editorial pages of the Globe and Mail, if it even ascends to that height. I suppose it could be given to a grade 10 class for parsing -- that’s a possibility -- or to a grade 12 class to show how you can turn the incomparable beauty of the English language into turgid drivel. But I suspect that just to consign it to obscurity would be the best place for it.

The Throne Speech therefore in this instance has to be merely a peg to my remarks. I am going to start with the Premier of Ontario (Mr. Davis) and I am going to end with him. That seems to me to be appropriate. He is after all the man who has masterminded Ontario’s present position, or he may be seen by some as the bête noire. He is a man who has experienced the flush of adoration in 1971 and the pallor of indignity in 1975. He is a man who probably feels much at this moment.

Mr. Speaker, I have been called in latter weeks by a great many people who are forever writing articles about the Premier. There has been one journalist in the gallery for the last week or so, waking to catch every breathless moment of the Premier’s words when he’s here for an article for a major magazine, the Canadian, I think. I was interviewed not long ago by someone from the refurbished, resuscitated Saturday Night about the Premier. I was interviewed not very long ago by someone writing of the Premier for Toronto Life. I must say it has a sort of florid political obituary flavour about it. I am amazed at all the queries.

When I have been asked to talk about the Premier -- I hope the Minister of Culture and Recreation (Mr. Welch) will convey my remarks -- I am inclined to talk about the Premier in some personal ways. I see the public man. I don’t see the private man all that much. I like the Premier very much. I consider him -- I always have -- a very generous and decent person. I have a sense of him that I have always felt in a very specific kind of way and which I really haven’t discussed very often publicly. My sense of the Premier is embodied in one very special role, and I suppose in a sense it leads into a number of things I want to say.

I have been one of those few in this Legislature who have been fortunate enough to enter the inner sanctum, to walk right into the Premier’s office. I want to assure his cabinet colleague it doesn’t happen very often, and it will never happen again after this afternoon, that I know. But I have actually walked into the Premier’s office. He has a little cluster of chairs off to the left of his desk. The Minister of Culture and Recreation has been there once or twice, so he knows there is a little cluster of chairs there. When they fall from glory or they are reappointed, I am sure they visit him in that little office.

You sit in the cluster of chairs in a very informal way, with the Premier smoking happily a very large cigar. I do the same, but mine is an Old Port and his is Cuban. It is all a matter of ideology.

We chat in a friendly way and then something invariably happens -- I am absolutely sure it’s orchestrated -- that encapsules the Premier for me. A kind of chime rings through the room. You know what I mean. I have always thought it sounds like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan. It’s a most extraordinary little chime.

The Premier’s eye turns and looks over to the console apparatus behind his desk where a number of hot lines are arranged, with little lights and buttons. It is kind of like the panel of a DC-8 just there behind the Premier’s desk. The Premier excuses himself with a nod of his head, he gets up and walks over to that console, and he clicks the little button that turns off the particular light.

He picks up the receiver, taking the cigar out of his mouth. He puts the receiver to his ear, because it is always a terribly important call --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Lewis: -- and the most benign smile crosses his face. I have never seen a sense of such intense and acute satisfaction as when that receiver comes off, the light goes on, the phone call comes through. I suspect it’s the closest thing to political eroticism this chamber has ever witnessed. And I sense about it all: That is power. That’s power. That to the Premier is the exercise of power.

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): He is talking to his wife.

Mr. Lewis: Alas, I’ve never been there at that moment. It’s always Fleck or --

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): Or some flack.

Mr. Lewis: Or a flack or Stewart or Kelly or Macaulay --

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Or Clare.

Mr. Lewis: Or Westcott. I can’t think in my entire experience --

Mr. J. Dukszta (Parkdale): Ross Shouldice.

Mr. Lewis: Or Ross Shouldice. In my entire experience I don’t think it’s ever been a cabinet minister. But then, maybe they don’t have access to the lines.

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): He grimaces when a cabinet minister calls.

Mr. Lewis: I have always seen the Premier as a man who absolutely loves the trappings of power. I don’t deny him that right.

Mr. Bounsall: So short-lived.

Mr. Lewis: He enjoys it immensely. It is for him very much the nature of the political process. But what has happened in Ontario is that what goes with that exercise of power -- however incidentally it is revealed about men in positions of influence -- whatever has happened to that power, the leadership that must accompany it has gone. And if the Tories in Ontario can be characterized in any phrase, in terms of the present problems which beset them and overwhelm them, it’s the failure of leadership.

Mr. Bounsall: They should pull themselves together.

Mr. Lewis: I don’t mean that in a very personal way about the Premier at all. I’m talking about the collective leadership of a government. I’m talking about the capacity of a party to govern. I’m talking about the ability to identify issues, to isolate them, to work out alternatives, to provide solutions, to do it lucidly, to do it promptly, to do it without evasion and forthrightly. That’s the nature of political leadership. It requires some sensitivity, it requires being direct and open, and it never happens any more in Ontario. The failure is absolutely total. The failure of leadership is what leads so directly to Ontario’s political disaffection.

It’s most amazing that it should have happened so quickly. It’s most amazing that it should have happened on so many issues simultaneously. In the place of leadership in this province now, there’s a kind of arthritic defensive government. That’s what we’re left with. They are turning ever inward on themselves, drawing comfort from each other, and rejected by the world. It’s not incestuous, but they are forever thawing comfort from each other.

They are paranoid about the media; that’s another classic comment on this government. They are angry when they should be gentle, and reticent when they should be outraged. They are creative about trivia, and helpless when it comes to matters of substance.

It’s the classic last days of the old regime; absolutely classic. They move and retreat, move and retreat, move and retreat.

I told my colleagues at the Ontario NDP council meeting that the moving and retreating was like a political metronome ticking away the life of the government. You can watch it happening, Mr. Speaker. You can see it in policy after policy. Everybody in the province is aware of it, except perhaps the Tories themselves. But it’s true, isn’t it? They are forever the last to know.

There’s no accessibility left about the government or the Premier. There is a certain inevitability about the collapse which is coming. As a matter of fact, it’s almost Shakespearian. The Premier could be Hamlet, if he lost a little weight

The inevitability of the Tories’ defeat that is coming is documented in the broad failure of leadership in one area after another.

And what I want to do this afternoon -- it’s going to take a little time, but I’m going to do it as specifically as I can -- is to indicate in a representative number of ministerial areas where the government has failed and how, and what the failure of leadership means. I am not going to do it just in critical terms; I am going to try to provide the House with a sense of what the New Democrats would do as an alternative because that is what we understand by way of leadership in this province; that is what we understand the craving of the electorate to be -- for candour and some kind of leadership for Ontario.

I am going to deal with some ministries very briefly and with others to document a case. Let me assure the Minister of Labour (Mr. MacBeth) I will be coming to him, I would think, by Thursday afternoon. I am going to deal first, although he isn’t here, with the Minister of Housing (Mr. Irvine). I want to say about the Minister of Housing -- and I hope it will be conveyed to him, Mr. Speaker -- that he is drowning in his announcements and his rhetoric; the entire bureaucracy of that ministry is reduced to churning out endless press releases. I have never seen anything like it in my experience in this House. The whole ministry is one giant paperweight; that is the way they spend their time in the Ministry of Housing. One can’t, in fact, cover the reality of the Ministry of Housing.

Let me try to put it in figures as simply as I can. In the Province of Ontario the government had 110,000 starts in 1973; it had 85,000 starts in 1974; it will be lucky to make 75,000 starts in 1975. A worse record of the provision of shelter is not known in this country. It is fair to say that this government has provided a great many housing units in the past although never anywhere near the need in absolute figures but the cumulative decline is really quite extraordinary.

The Minister of Housing is forever reminding us that he would like us to view it on a fiscal year basis. Do members know how many houses we are going to have in Ontario on a fiscal year basis, 1974-1975, by March 31? It will be 77,110.

Mr. T. A. Wardle (Beaches-Woodbine): Up 2,000.

Mr. Lewis: What a fall that is from the 100,000 which were predicted whether on an annual year basis or on a fiscal year basis. We never used the money that was available in housing in this province. That was the crime. We let $11 million sit in the Treasury in 1969 and 1970; $6 million in 1970-1971; $13 million in 1971-1972; $54 million in 1972-1973; $49 million in 1973-1974. We left $133 million unused over those five years in the Province of Ontario. And the crisis which we face today is, in fact, inherited from all the years when the government preferred to make public pronouncements rather than to build housing. The Conservatives were toying with the dreams and expectations of Ontario and toyed with them in the most cavalier fashion.

We understand the game that is now being played. The government first started to attack the municipalities; now it has turned its guns on the federal government. Every diversion in the world is attempted except the real one, Mr. Speaker, which is to provide housing by the Province of Ontario for the people of Ontario. I cannot imagine a more hopeless record than this. Let me just take you through it.

June, 1974 over June, 1973, housing starts were down 45 per cent. July, 1974 over July, 1973, housing starts down 19 per cent. August, 42 per cent; September, 41 per cent; October, 45 per cent; November, 41 per cent; December, 57 per cent; January, 1975, 30 per cent; February, 1975, 53 per cent. Can one imagine a more calamitous decline in the provision of shelter in any province in the country? And when one looks at what it means in terms of cost, if I can find it that way, the average cost in Metropolitan Toronto for the first half of March, 1975, was $60,499 per real estate transaction.

Now look at what the Conservatives have done to housing in Ontario. They have priced everybody out of the market. Do members remember the Land Speculation Tax Act that was brought in here last year? Do they remember the kudos that was claimed for it about lowering housing prices? Do they know that this is the first time in years -- in fact, probably in the history of this province -- that the average price per home in any given month has exceeded the $60,000 figure? Gone are all the promises of mid-1974, when it was said that the Land Speculation Tax Act would result in a serious drop in house prices in Metropolitan Toronto and other urban centres.

If we continue as we are in terms of cost of housing, Mr. Speaker, and in terms of number of units then we will be at a level of production in the vicinity of 65,000 by the end of this year. We will be lower than any year since 1966 and, if the government members want to understand why all of the under-30s are deserting them -- if they want to try to understand why there is so much anxiety in the body politic about the housing situation, then it’s because of the unavailability of shelter; it’s because of the cost and it’s because of the extraordinary reduction in numbers. It goes further than that.

One of the things we don’t talk about often in this House, Mr. Speaker, is the question of rents and the impossible situation which is faced by people who have to rent. We forget that 50 per cent of Ontario, or very nearly 50 per cent, now rents accommodation. We forget that the vacancy rates are down below one per cent in many major urban centres. None of them seem to care over there. I want to come to that later too -- about the human consequences of social neglect, because that’s the nature of this government; that’s the way it works.

Mr. Speaker, if you take a look at the CMHC figures which have finally begun to add rents into their calculations since they filled out their documentation as a public body, the following pattern emerges:

Between June 1974 and January 1975, one-bedroom apartments went up 14 per cent in the Toronto area; two-bedroom apartments went up 25 per cent; three-bedroom apartments went up 18 per cent. In a one-year period, December 1973 to December 1974 or January 1975, the jump for family accommodation, for two-bedroom apartments, was 36 per cent and for three-bedroom apartments 32 per cent. We put a little advertisement in the --

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): You would have to be a cabinet minister to afford it.

Mr. Lewis: Sure you would have to be a cabinet minister, Mr. Speaker. You can’t believe how these rents are clobbering people who are either on fixed incomes, low incomes or middle incomes. We put a little advertisement into the Toronto Sun a week or 10 days ago, and it read as follows:

“Attention: Has your rent gone up? How much? We’d like to know. Please call NDP research -- ” and the number is there. I’m not going to give the government members the number. We don’t want them phoning us and I know they’d never find it by themselves.

The kinds of patterns of rental increases that we’re identifying through the phone calls -- coming in, I may say, a good many a day -- are really amazing. Let me give you some examples, Mr. Speaker:

Greenwin runs an apartment building at 155 Balliol: A two-bedroom apartment rent went up from $245 to $318, a $73 increase or 30 per cent. Meridian, at 55 Oakmount: A one-bedroom unit went from $172 to $225, a $53 increase or 31 per cent. At 225 Markham Rd. -- not far from where I live, I know the area well -- Fathom Holdings: Two-bedrooms up 26 per cent. Another Meridian apartment at 106 Goodwood Park in East York: From $163 to $223, for 37 per cent. At 12 Auburndale Court in Rexdale, Sonol Investments: A two-bedroom, up from $200 to $270, 35 per cent.

Interjection by an bon. member.

Mr. Lewis: Cadillac, 77 Quebec Ave. in High Park: A one-bedroom, up 20 per cent.

As I walked in here this afternoon I was given figures that had just come in on the phone today. I don’t know whether I could find them. They all vary. Yes, here they are. I jotted down a couple that are particularly appropriate. At 120 George Henry Blvd., Cadillac Fairview: Three-bedroom, up from $239 to $314, 31 per cent. At 370 Riddell Ave., a Tannenbaum apartment: Two-bedroom, from $234 to $315, 35 per cent.

Will the government tell me how it is conceivable that people at the end of a lease -- if lease they have and for never more than a year, let it be said, in most of these places -- can cope with increases of $50, $60, $70 or $80 a month, increases which reflect 20, 25, 30 or 35 per cent? We did this last year as a party because we were interested. Last year we put it in the Toronto Daily Star. The Star wouldn’t let us run the ad this year. The Star discriminates against homosexuals who want to place ads and political parties which want to place ads; another ideological confusion, I would think. In any event, we are not allowed to place an ad of this kind in the Toronto Star. The Toronto Sun said “yes.”

Last year the increases in rent were roughly in the 15 to 25 per cent range. This year the increases in rent are in the 25 to 35 per cent range. The Minister of Culture and Recreation is holding the fort singlehanded against the infidel, sitting here watching the storming of the gates placidly, knowing full well that for the moment he’s in control; for the moment, and barely.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Picking his teeth.

Mr. Lewis: He is not picking his teeth. What a nonsensical thing to say; it’s hardly cultural.

Mr. Foulds: It is recreational.

Mr. Lewis: Does he bite his nails too? He doesn’t have nearly the aggression I have, my friend.

Hon. R. Welch (Minister of Culture and Recreation): I don’t put ads in the papers.

Mr. Lewis: No, I’m sure he doesn’t, and then only in the personal column. I want to say that although he can receive it in a fairly phlegmatic and relaxed way, what it does to individual people, of course, is beyond contest.

We also did something else, just in order to cover all bases, we inquired with the Metro Landlord and Tenant Advisory Bureau. They are up to 20,000 calls a year now. I don’t know how the devil they handle it, in terms of the load they have, with the people they have there.

Very few people phone the Metro Landlord and Tenant Advisory Bureau in order to question them about rent increases, because they know there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it; absolutely nothing that can be done about it. But, in fact, the rent increases that they are noting just idly by the phone -- let me give you the percentage increases, Mr. Speaker -- are as follows, just for the last few calls they took, I think in the last couple of weeks: 23 per cent, 23 per cent, 43 per cent, 24 per cent, 56 per cent, 24 per cent, 48 per cent, 33 per cent, 24 per cent, 43 per cent, 23 per cent, 50 per cent, 27 per cent, 26 per cent, 39 per cent, 31 per cent, 41 per cent, 50 per cent, 26 per cent, 79 per cent.

Thank God, Mr. Speaker, there is one province in this country, the Province of British Columbia, which has a piece of rent control legislation which forbids any landlord, under the present shortage of rental accommodation, to extract more than 10½ per cent from the tenant. That is what we should have in the Province of Ontario, make no mistake about it. As long as we have this kind of shortage they don’t hold their tenants to ransom; which is what we are doing in Ontario with the complicity of the government.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Lewis: Five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, all 11 of them over there.

Mr. P. J. Yakabuski (Renfrew South): Tell the other side of the story. They have no rental accommodation in BC since the rent control programme.

Mr. Lewis: In the absence of --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please, the hon. member for Scarborough West has the floor.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): There’s only one cabinet minister present.

Mr. Lewis: The absence of cabinet ministers is made up for by the presence of the member for Renfrew South, as we all know. Right, right.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I think his presence is some kind of a plot; dastardly at that.

Mr. Yakabuski: The member for Scarborough West should not tell us that. There is no rental accommodation going up in BC. It is the outrageous result of Barrett’s socialist policies. No rental units are being built.

Mr. Lewis: Just a second. My friend can make his speech in the Throne debate when he wants to, and he can grunt animatedly too.

I want to say that the failure of leadership of this government in the housing field, as all people feel and all surveys demonstrate, is one of the real millstones around the neck of this God-forsaken government, because there is nothing left to it. They have done nothing on condominiums to prevent conversions. They have done nothing about the conversion to adult-only buildings. They have done nothing about rent control, and their provision of accommodation in the private sector is hopeless. And it will never change until over there they abandon that old free-enterprise fetishism of theirs and recognize that the only way there will be houses in this province is when the government acquires land from developers, and many people in Ontario are beginning to understand that.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let me turn to the Minister of the Environment (Mr. W. Newman). Again, as in all of the critical areas of this government, there is a failure of leadership. And I want to tell you that the Ministry of the Environment is the laughing stock of environmentalists in this province -- probably right across the country. It is also true that the minister is pleasant enough, but his policies are open to ridicule everywhere. And one need only document it very simply.

To this day there is no environmental impact legislation in the Province of Ontario, and so everything happens, from the construction of Stelco at Nanticoke to 7,500 residential units on the Niagara Escarpment, without the slightest environmental impact assessment worthy of the name; not one, not one.

One would have thought that after all these years there could be some spontaneous response about environmental pressures -- none at all. They’ve got an Environmental Hearing Board established under that ministry which continues to be a laughing stock. The behaviour of the Environmental Hearing Board in the downtown lead hearings in the city of Toronto was frankly a scandal.

My colleagues, the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) and the member for Parkdale met earlier with a committee representing a large number of citizens that had come to the Legislature to present a brief in terms of the lead pollution in downtown Toronto as a result of Canada Metal, Toronto Refiners and Smelters, et al. They wanted the hearing board farce to stop.

This government has set up an Environmental Hearing Board, but has given it no powers worthy of the name. It allows itself to be run roughshod over by a number of lawyers who abuse public hearings for the purpose of making a stated case on behalf of corporations. And the Environmental Hearing Board takes it all passively.

The programme for recycling and reclamation in this province is laughable. And we are still obsessed with waste management. Isn’t it incredible that to this point in time, no matter how often the Leader of the Opposition asks, no matter how often I ask, we still don’t know whether the Hope township landfill site is to proceed or not? That’s called the failure of political leadership.

Last night at 8 o’clock I met with a group of constituents from the riding of my colleague from Wentworth (Mr. Deans), the Binbrook anti-dump committee, yet another group of citizens facing the prospect of a landfill site over 500 acres in size to take the waste disposal from the Hamilton-Wentworth region. This is yet another group of citizens driven to frantic protestation because the government will not proceed with its reclamation and recycling plans. That’s called the failure of political leadership.

I stood outside yesterday afternoon with the Minister of the Environment as he wandered through the Pollution Probe caravan. And he was sitting in the caravan counting his flip-tops, just peeling them off and throwing them in the air -- “She loves me; she loves me not” -- with his little flip-tops from the cans.

You know, I’ll tell you something, Mr. Speaker. When I listen to that minister I feel if bluster were bottles there wouldn’t be a can left in the Province of Ontario.

He sat in the caravan yesterday talking to the reporters, talking to the members of Pollution Probe, promising nothing and making no efforts at providing any responses to the solid waste task force and the recommendations by that task force. It’s called the classic failure of political leadership.

When he refuses to say what is happening to the Hope township dump, it’s called not levelling with the public of Ontario. There is simply no recognition in the government any longer of what policy alternatives mean -- not complex, not incomprehensible, just real and direct. There is no recognition of that at all. No recognition of straight talk; no recognition of leadership.

When one leaves the Minister of the Environment, one can move comfortably to the Minister of Health (Mr. Miller), that very lovable minister, the man most likely to be hugged in public. Does it happen to them at cabinet sessions? Do ministers feel badly about it? Do they feel detached when people turn to the Minister of Health with an affection they never showed for others? He has bitten off a great deal, that man. He’s trying very hard at it. He gives public admonitions where admonitions are required. He shafts the acupuncturists when he’s not happy with what they’re doing. He’ll now allow the Minister of Culture and Recreation to straighten his ears, courtesy of OHIP. That too has been reinstated in the last several days.

Everything that is fairly modest, the Minister of Health is able to do. But in the three most critical areas of health social policy, he is, as all his predecessors, completely defunct. Do you realize, Mr. Speaker, that we have entered the year 1975 and there is no programme for the serious construction of community health centres right across Ontario to reduce the cost of hospital beds in Ontario and to shift the emphasis to preventive medicine? Do you realize that we have come through 32 years of Tory rule, and in March, 1975, we still don’t have a preventive medical alternative to the most rigid, inflexible and inefficient delivery system man and woman can devise?

Do you realize, Mr. Speaker, that we have come right through to March, 1975, and despite all the talk of the last years, we still have not arranged an alternative method of payment for the medical profession? They are still on fee for service. They are still getting their net $45,000 plus per year -- and every year going up. We still haven’t worked out salary arrangements, capitation arrangements, fee for service plus salary -- all of the things that we have talked about -- to prevent health from being destroyed in terms of the charge on the public purse. None of that has occurred. All of the major problems then remain acute failures of political leadership.

Beyond that, there is another matter now which has become central to the life of Ontario. I want to deal with it briefly. It’s the matter of occupational health. It’s a matter of protecting the workers of Ontario in their work environments. Here the failure, the abdication, is truly shocking.

I don’t ever quite know how to deal with all of this. I don’t understand what has happened to the Minister of Health on the issue of occupational health. I must say that to you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t understand how he can respond in a whole range of other areas but on the issue of occupational health is reduced to personal paralysis. The fact of the matter is that there is something wrong with that occupational health branch, and I want it conveyed to him as strongly as possible. There is something wrong with that branch. We sit here with equanimity and we listen to it being tossed off.

The occupational health branch was in Reeves township at the Johns-Manville asbestos mine two years ago, to do asbestos fibre level testing. Do you ever bet? I would be prepared to stake a seat on it, that the levels of asbestos fibre emission two years ago were well above the permissible levels in Ontario. How does it happen when men work in an environment so fraught with danger that it’s never followed up? What? Overwork? Claptrap! They just don’t care.

We saw it, as a matter of fact, by those incredible memos which were exchanged around the mining industry in Elliot Lake. I don’t understand it. I say to the Minister of Health that he simply has to move in and clean house because we are dealing very much with the life and death of workers. I couldn’t believe what I picked up today but I am sure it’s true. I am sure nothing happened in that intervening two years, just as very little is happening now.

What about lead? I am going to have a lot more to say about lead. We in this party are going to have much more to say about lead in the weeks ahead. It’s going to be an issue measurably of the asbestos, silicosis, mercury kind in this province because of what is emerging about lead. But the occupational health people have done the same thing. They get report after report. The emissions in the plant are at a danger level. The dangers to the community are documented. No one does anything about it. They cluck-cluck when another child enters Toronto’s Sick Children’s Hospital with a blood-lead level greater than 60, 70 or 80 or whatever the level is supposed to be. I guess 80 is the permissible threshold limit value in Ontario.

Mr. L. Maeck (Parry Sound): The leader of the NDP is talking about the minister behind his back.

Mr. Lewis: It is the apologists for the status quo who are emerging in the occupation health branch, and I feel direct enough with the Minister of Health that I have no qualms about saying that.

As I say, the Minister of Health offers admonitions. I got a very interesting letter from the Minister of Health just yesterday. I am not even going to go into the details of it. I had brought to his attention a request to the occupational health branch about a potential or possible safety hazard in northern Ontario, a request that had come to them in June, 1974, and they had done nothing about it until they were reminded in January, 1975.

I wrote to the Minister of Health, and I said, “Can you explain this to me? Can you tell me about it?” He wrote me back and said he was no happier about the lapse of time than I was and he had made his feelings known, or words to that effect. I think I have paraphrased him accurately.

How do you explain a two-year absence of occupational health testing in one of the most dangerous work situations in the Province of Ontario, Mr. Speaker?

I was up at the Oliver Mowat school when the community gathered to hear the various presentations about the possible dangers of asbestos from the Johns-Manville plant. I heard the presentation from Dr. Cowle at that school. I am going to say something now that I feel very reluctant to say, but I am going to say it anyway. I haven’t heard as facile and gratuitous a presentation in a long time. It worried me, not because of its lack of content but because of what it said about the attitude of the occupational health group.

Mr. Bounsall: Clean out the entire branch!

Mr. Lewis: More than that, all of the old saws about blue asbestos being the serious hazard compared to everything else were trotted out by people no less than those medical practitioners in the Ministry of Health, when they all know that the major studies by Selikoff and Nicholson had been done in areas where blue asbestos fibres weren’t even present and that all of the resulting deaths, the mesothelioma, the lung cancer and the asbestosis that is chronicled is as evident when you are using white asbestos fibres as blue asbestos fibres, To drag that blue herring across the scene is to do a disservice to all things in occupational health.

That branch worries me. It worries me that they know they are exceeding the threshold limit value right now in a number of working locations in the Johns-Manville plant in Scarborough, and no one seems to he concerned about it. It worries me that people know that the present level of two fibres per cubic centimetre is an inadequate level and no one does anything about it.

There is even a major international symposium next week in New York at which papers will be given to demonstrate occupational hazards and carcinogenesis, and it will be attested to again that the levels we accept are dangerous levels. How does it go on? How does it happen?

Dr. Cowle recently sat down with Dr. Charles Bryan, head of respiratory research at the Sick Children’s Hospital. Dr. Bryan had approached the Minister of Health about the possibility of doing some work with Johns-Manville people after he read about what had happened in the papers. He was referred to Dr. Cowle. He has had, I gather, a very excellent discussion with Dr. Cowle.

I have in front of me an excellent letter from Dr. Bryan, dated March 3, indicating the kinds of things which should be done and what he would like to do. I presume maybe the occupational health people are doing it or will be doing it. I think he feels satisfied on some grounds. What the physicians in the field want to do, anxious and interested as they are, are pulmonary lung function tests for the workers, sputum cytology, a lot of x-rays; and do them not just for the workers but for the children of the families.

Do members know that Dr. Selikoff’s most recent work dealt with the wives and children of the asbestos workers in Paterson, New Jersey, who were exposed to levels not all that much in excess of the levels in Scarborough? Do members know that they have found a 40 per cent x-ray abnormality in the wives and children? What’s happening with the children and the wives here in Ontario?

How is it not possible to develop a programme in conjunction with the Hospital for Sick Children, with the Toronto General or with Mount Sinai where they have the special respiratory research unit? How is it not possible to do it in conjunction with Montreal and McGill where they now have a grant from the Department of National Health and Welfare, to monitor the situation and to explore it? Why is it that Ontario can never enter into it?

Mr. Martel: They wait until it’s too late.

Mr. Lewis: Why isn’t it possible for the Minister of Health to establish an occupational health institute in this province, comprising government, unions, industry, the medical profession? The kind of body that would help the minister set standards, provide enforcement, provide regulation and move in like an iron fist if it was varied from by a fraction at any given moment? That’s the kind of thing we would like to do. That’s called political leadership. That’s called not operating in a vacuum. That’s called showing some initiative in the face of an incredible occupational health hazard. But there’s no such leadership. There’s just gobbledegook or, as one of my associates in the caucus told me, there’s bafflegab which is another neat phrase to describe the sounds emitted from the government front bench when dealing with matters of occupational health.

I want to raise something else with the House. Where is the co-ordination in all of this? To this day nobody knows what anybody else is doing. The Workmen’s Compensation Board doesn’t know what occupational health is doing. Occupational health doesn’t know what Labour is doing. Labour doesn’t know what Natural Resources is doing. We watch the whole pattern unfold in a clinically fatal way and nobody knows what anybody else is doing. They can’t be so unresponsible and callous that they watch people get ill and die without responding. It means that people don’t know. Where is the co-ordination? We would like to establish the co-ordination.

I have an even more central question to ask about the occupational health branch and that has to do with the Elliot Lake survey which, coincidentally enough, my colleague from Sudbury East raised in question period. I had no idea he intended to. What’s happened to that survey? What the devil’s going on in the province. As I recall it, the request came to the minister in October or November, 1973. The survey and the tests were done in February and March, 1974. It’s now March-April, 1975. What’s happening to the document? How long dues it take to look at x-rays? How long does it take to analyse the lung function tests? What is it with the occupational health people?

I want to tell you something, Mr. Speaker, that also worries me very much. Do you know that from the day of that survey to the present, the one man who knows more about the Elliot Lake x-ray situation than any other person in this province, Dr. Charles Stewart of the Workmen’s Compensation Board, head of the chest division, probably the most notable man in his field at the board -- probably in the province generally in chest matters -- from that day to this, Dr. Stewart has never been consulted, not once? How is that explained? How does that happen?

Here’s a man who was a doctor in Elliot Lake. Here’s a man who read the x-rays for years. Here’s a man who, in 1974, went back and re-read the x-rays and much of the data. How did it happen that the occupational health branch set itself up and apart from such knowledge and expertise?

And how does it therefore happen that the findings of the occupational health branch differ so fundamentally from Dr. Stewart’s findings? How did that happen? A medical difference of opinion? Scientific evidence? How will we know? The key figure was never consulted with. How does it all occur? What does it say about the occupational health branch?

Let me tell you something about it. The occupational health branch survey of the miners in Elliot Lake shows, I am told authoritatively, that there are 23 cases of silicosis presently in Elliot Lake -- 23 cases; it is quite unbelievable. Dr. Stewart, in writing the International Labour Office on Workmen’s Compensation Board letterhead -- and anyway, this information is now public; I don’t think it is wrong to read it -- he said:

“There are at present more than 40 men working in Elliot Lake who have confirmed radiological silicosis. Most of these men are working on surface and non-dust exposure jobs, but there are a few still working underground. The majority have mild to moderate disability only, some have no disability, and a small percentage have major disability.”

How does a doctor who is intimately familiar with it, who has gone back to check, find 40 cases of radiological disability and radiological silicosis, and the ministry’s study turns up 23 cases? I want to know something about the occupational health branch. I want to know more than that. That study in the occupational health branch turns up 47 people who have probably early effects of silica dust inhalation. Dr. Stewart turns up 100 additional men in dust exposures who are at risk. He says:

“This means that, in my opinion, all demonstrate some of the stigmata of silica dust effects or pre-silicosis. In other words, those changes in the chest x-rays which we know in others have often progressed to frank radiological silicosis.”

Let me read more of the letter, Mr. Speaker:

“Included in this 100 are those whose x-rays show very early changes, often subtle, and occurring in men who started work prior to 1961. Some of these men have positive tuberculin tests -- not all -- and therefore this adds slightly to the risk factor. There are approximately 30 men in this borderline group. The majority of approximately 64 show more distinct x-ray changes than those seen in the prior group, and which clearly suggest incipient silicosis or pre-silicosis. Once again, all of these men, with the exception of two or three, started work before 1961.

“Finally, there are a half dozen cases of pulmonary sarcoidosis, which should be included in this risk group.” That was half a dozen cases, but the survey conducted by occupational health shows no cases of sarcoidosis. How did that happen?

Let me read you Dr. Stewart’s conclusions, because I think they are important. He says:

“It follows from this breakdown that a great many of the 100 men concerned -- and this is over and above those who have real silicosis -- are not presently in urgent need of removal from dust, and in fact the majority have no significant pulmonary impairment.”

To show you how direct a person he is, he doesn’t exaggerate things, this man. He continues:

“Many of these men can continue working underground, but since almost all of them started work before 1961, and because a recent environmental study revealed the majority of dust counts to be above the threshold limits value, then almost certainly a majority will develop frank silicosis if they continue underground. This must be the assumption, since almost all the men who develop frank silicosis so far started work before 1961.

“This group of 100 men by no means includes all men who started work before 1961 and who have continued in dust exposure uninterruptedly to date. It may well be prudent to consider all such men at risk, even though no x-ray changes are evident. All have accumulated a significant radiation load in addition to free silica over these years, and a limit should be placed on their continued exposure.

“It would seem reasonable for the future to impose a 20-year limit on all men exposed to dust and radiation. For those now working and who started before 1965, ideally a 15-year limit should be set and certainly 20 years should be the absolute maximum for those who started before 1961.”

Stewart and others are people who have immersed themselves and their whole lives in dealing with this issue and those johnnies-come-lately from occupational health wander in and do a survey -- which we’ve waited more than a year to receive -- whose figures correspond not at all with the findings of those who’ve been on the spot for years. Maybe it says something about x-ray readings; maybe it says something about occupational health; I suppose what it mostly says is the time that is permitted to lag between interest and policy. It’s called the failure of political leadership and, again, in this instance, it plays with the lives of workers.

Let me leave that with the Minister of Health and ask him simply to pursue it as he will, although I want to add one last footnote to it. I’ve become a perambulator of international conferences. I enjoy international conferences on occupational and environmental health matters. The Minister of Health not very long ago raised a question about Dr. Morgan’s survey at the University of Toronto in its link between asbestos and laryngeal cancer. Dr. Cowle made a similar offhand remark at the Oliver Mowat meeting. I want to say something to the minister -- the quality of the work that Dr. Morgan did compares very favourably with the quality of the work in the health study at Elliot Lake and I can’t imagine what possesses the occupational health branch that the most knowledgeable people in the province are not called in to participate.

What is it about the ministry? What is this defensiveness? What are those apologias? Why can they not start to fight a hazard on behalf of workers? Why must they forever excuse and prevaricate? I don’t understand it and the workers who are sick don’t understand it either.

It’s a natural move for me to shift from Health to Natural Resources while I’m on Elliot Lake, and I’m not going to spend time because I’d become absolutely irrational when dealing with it. It’s a perfectly dreadful ministry in every sense. I don’t care whether it’s Algonquin Park or the recognition of northern needs, the Ministry of Natural Resources just demonstrates a failure of political leadership that’s abject and total.

I just want to bring to the attention of the Legislature one small point: The dust counts at Rio Algom in Elliot Lake, whether or not anybody in the Legislature on the government’s side cares, are still running above the recommended threshold limit. I have time and it’s worth putting it on the record. The mines people themselves, the mining companies, say that silica dust of the kind found in Elliot Lake should not be in concentrations of greater than 200 particles per cubic centimetre. The Ministry of Health says no greater than 176 particles per cubic centimetre. To go over four, five, 10, 15 particles is pretty serious in the long run, so it has been chronicled, to health. In Rio Algom -- and I hope to have figures on Denison by the end of this week -- the level is 273 particles per cubic centimetre in 67 out of 77 locations tested in January.

Let me read what the Minister of Health said on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 1974, when he tabled his original dust report. He said, and I quote from page 6233 of Hansard:

“It is clear from this report that prompt action is necessary to correct this condition. The report also contains a list of the measures recommended for controlling the quartz hazard, and also for improving the methods now used to monitor that condition.

“As the House will be aware, the presentation of these recommendations fulfils the present responsibility held by the Minister of Health in this matter, but I am assured by my cabinet colleague, the Minister of Natural Resources, that aggressive and constructive steps will be taken immediately by his ministry to follow through with corrective action involving those directly affected in the Elliot Lake area.”

Did he mean to mislead the House, I want to ask the Minister of Health? It wasn’t deliberate, was it? It was an inadvertent misleading of the House.

A little later and on the same day, the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier) said in answer to a question from the House leader of the Liberal Party, who asked about the tabling of the survey, “Yes, Mr. Speaker, I might say that we have some very positive plans and steps that we will be taking.” I say, we say, balderdash.

That was Dec. 10. It’s more than three months later and the minister hasn’t corrected a thing at Elliot Lake. I don’t know whether it’s the Minister of Natural Resources who is at fault or whether it’s the Minister of Health who has now conspired with him to be at fault but they can’t toy with people that way with flip little comments in the Legislature in response to legitimate questions put to them by the opposition. Nothing has been done. Some would say it was a direct misleading of the House. I think it was worse than that but I can’t say it so what’s the point?

A final footnote about the Ministry of Natural Resources. Seldom has a ministry been so neatly blackmailed by a corporation as in the case of Johns-Manville and the Reeves township mine. I want to call that in because my colleague from Cochrane South (Mr. Ferrier), in whose riding the mine is located, represents many of the workers; and my colleague from Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren) has many of the workers in his riding. They’ve met with the workers and they’ve talked with the workers.

Mr. Speaker, the closing down of the Johns-Manville mine in Reeves township was a vindictive, corporate act. It was meant to penalize the workers because Johns-Manville had been criticized publicly. There were nine years of asbestos ore body left. It would have been possible with modern technology to bring that mine and mill into a model for the North American continent as my colleague for Nickel Belt suggested the other day. It could have been run by way of a Crown corporation. As it now stands Johns-Manville is not paying the men for the days they lost in the interim period before formal termination was registered. The company has thumbed its nose at the government. The government made no announcement at all. It made no public statement. Johns-Manville is laughing at the government.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): It shouldn’t be allowed to operate.

Mr. Lewis: It should not be in this blessed province, as a matter of fact, to behave that way.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): Throw them out.

Mr. E. M. Havrot (Timiskaming): Throw them out.

Mr. Lewis: Members cannot imagine the way in which the company has dealt with the workers up in Reeves township.

Mr. Havrot: Don’t be so sanctimonious.

Mr. Martel: Maybe the member can tell us about his statement regarding the Indians.

Mr. Havrot: The Indians? Would the member like a few?

Mr. Martel: Yes, tell us about them.

Mr. Havrot: What does the member know about it?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order.

Mr. Lewis: Does the member have some statements he wants to make?

Mr. Martel: What was the price?

Mr. Lewis: I presume that the member for Timiskaming is as enlightened as the hon. James Richardson. Is that fair? Am I on base? I would have stopped that.

Mr. Havrot: I don’t even know what he is talking about.

Mr. Lewis: I must say Mr. Speaker, to the Minister of Health or to the few --

Mr. Martel: They’re about to leave us.

Mr. Lewis: I am driving them out. They are now down to nine. It is a bravura performance on my part; I think when I get down below five I’m stopping for reasons of egocentricity if nothing else. I insist on having more than five Tories here. There must be enough of them to be able to call a vote should they feel the government collapsing around them.

I don’t know how the minister allows these corporations to get away with it. He has treated Johns-Manville with kid gloves from the outset. He has done nothing very important to clean up internally that plant in Scarborough and he allowed them to play fast and free with the economic livelihood of 200 workers up in Reeves township. It is a scandal what Johns-Manville has done to him.

This is a real freebooting, entrepreneurial outfit, make no mistake about it. What it has done in the United States is a chapter in itself. I have a delicious couple of paragraphs, Mr. Speaker, which I want to put on the record, from the vice-president of Johns-Manville, Dr. Paul Kotin, who is based in Denver, Col., and who asked me to say these things so I might as well read directly from his letter.

After this man came to Canada and held a press conference and said that Johns-Manville could conform to the minister’s regulations; after he told scientific colleagues and then me personally in Chicago that Johns-Manville could bring the Reeves mine and mill well down below the recommended level and that he bad “a blank cheque” to do it with, the corporation closed it down.

Mr. Havrot: Why?

Mr. Lewis: They closed it down as a petulant corporate act. That’s why. They wouldn’t spend the additional money.

An hon. member: That’s the corporate ethic.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, it’s called the corporate ethic. Then Kotin has the effrontery to write me a letter, two paragraphs of which read as follows:

“Finally, I hope that you and other members of Parliament, to say nothing of other constituencies concerned with health, safety and environmental quality, will take the opportunity to commend Johns-Manville in taking the serious step of shutting operations on the basis of its commitment to employees and environmental health.

“I need not tell you that in this particular situation and in the current economic milieu, this move is an expression of corporate regard at the very highest level and where commercial considerations are clearly of a second-order concern.”

Mr. Ferrier: What a twisted mind that man has.

Mr. Lewis: In terms of my ethnic inheritance, Mr. Speaker, that’s a piece of corporate chutzpah which won’t be equalled in this House.

Let me come to the next area, and that’s the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Stewart). Everywhere one turns in this government the repetitive theme of failure of leadership is documented in ministry after ministry. All the things a public expects from a government cannot be followed through. The Minister of Agriculture and Food has just announced, through the Throne Speech, that there will be a farm income programme. When was the Throne Speech? It’s right here in front of me -- March 11, 1975.

On Feb. 16, 1975, the member for York South, speaking to the nominating convention of the new riding of Brant-Norfolk, began his press release this way:

“Last year the New Democratic Party was the lone political voice calling for an income assurance plan as a major means of stabilizing the agricultural industry.”

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): That is not so.

Mr. Lewis: He said: “The provincial Liberals were silent on the issue --”

Mr. Gaunt: That is not so.

Mr. Lewis: “So was the Agriculture Minister, Mr. Stewart. What a difference a year makes.”

Mr. Gaunt: That is not so.

Mr. Lewis: What a difference a year makes. As a matter of fact --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: If it’s a press release from the member for York South --

Mr. Lewis: If it is a press release from him, then it is accurate. It is absolutely accurate.

An hon. member: Right on.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact, it’s overwhelmingly accurate, as you can see --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: So says the member.

Mr. Lewis: So say us all --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Not quite us all.

Mr. Lewis: -- we who know Liberals and sniff Tories.

The “Challenge of Abundance” was what year, 1969?

Mr. MacDonald: It was 1969-1970.

Mr. Lewis: That was when the deputy minister chairing that committee, Biggs, I believe, came out with the proposition of an income security programme -- which from then and to this day, and before, this party and the member for York South in particular, had promoted -- to try to rationalize the agricultural sector. At a death-bed moment, at the 11th hour, on collision course, this government brings in an income security programme for the farmers. Well, so it says. We’ve seen nothing of it. It’s just a promise in the Throne Speech.

But more important, Mr. Speaker, there is still absolutely no programme in Ontario to preserve agricultural land. And again, as one looks over the litany of government neglect in the Province of Ontario, agricultural land emerges as a pretty significant issue. It’s no longer just a backwater subject. It is absolutely central.

Agricultural land is lost every day through the continued appropriation of land for government projects by the Minister of Housing, by the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Rhodes), by the Minister of Energy (Mr. Timbrell) and by the Minister of the Environment. An example is the landfill site at Binbrook in Wentworth that I met with the people on yesterday and talked about today. Even that landfill site is going to take three productive agricultural farms. Wherever you see agriculture in production in this province, the government moves to expropriate it.

Mr. Speaker, the New Democratic Party has said that we don’t care whether it requires zoning. We don’t care whether it requires development controls. If necessary, there will have to be consideration of compensation for expectations unfulfilled. It might not happen, but that is at least a legitimate consideration.

We don’t care whether it’s an agricultural bank that is established by the government. We don’t care whether it’s the kind of freeze which again emerged from British Columbia, although we don’t have to go to that extreme in this province. We would not allow a single further acre of class 1 or class 2 agricultural land to go out of production in Ontario in the mindless and destructive fashion which this government permits.

Do you know, Mr. Speaker, when the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) was faced with the matter of agricultural land at the Oshawa cabinet meeting, what he said? It was reported in the Financial Times and elsewhere. Let me read you the news item:

“Darcy McKeough, provincial Treasurer, has told rural municipal officials, who bear the loss of farmland to urban expansion, they will have to solve their problems without legislation.” Can you imagine that from the Treasurer of Ontario, Mr. Speaker? They will have to solve their problems without legislation.

Do you know what the Treasurer was saying? He was serving notice on the Ministry of Agriculture and Food that agricultural land will continue to go out of production in the future at the rate which characterizes the present. The Treasurer was making it clear that the government will not intervene on behalf of the farmer or on behalf of those consumers who quite normally, on a day-today basis, purchase food. He was saying that as a matter of government policy agricultural land has had it in Ontario.

We repudiate that. In terms of the failure of political leadership, could one possibly have a more vivid example? I think not, and I think the credibility gap therefore grows.

Mr. Speaker, I want then to move to another area where the credibility gap grows. I’m being selective. I want you to know that the most painful part of preparing this Throne Speech was excluding areas of importance which show the failure of leadership. I’ve been terribly, remorselessly selective in extracting those items which are central. There are all kinds of items which are just as important which I cannot deal with. Happily, my colleagues will elaborate on them through the course of the Throne Speech itself.

The matter of education comes to mind. I’m prompted to raise it generally. I intended to, especially in light of some of the comments that were made in this Legislature yesterday by the Leader of the Opposition.

I don’t know where one starts on the matter of education, Mr. Speaker. I listened to the Leader of the Opposition yesterday and I felt that the central point he was making was valid, although I must say, on the reading rather carefully of the research document from the board of education in Toronto which I read last night, I wasn’t as persuaded of what it purported to say or what he said it suggested. However, that is irrelevant.

Throughout Ontario, there is a desperate and growing concern about education in this province, make no mistake about it, Mr. Speaker. My colleague the member for Port Arthur will elaborate somewhat on this theme when he speaks in the Throne debate. I want to speak to two issues where leadership has been terribly wanting.

The first is the whole question of teacher-board negotiations. It is almost beyond belief that the Minister of Education (Mr. Wells) could have the temerity to say today that he was about to bring in a bill on collective bargaining. That teacher demonstration was Dec. 18, 1973. We haven’t had legislation of a substantial kind in the year and three months -- January, February, March -- which has followed that. What is wrong with the people over there?

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): They think slowly.

Mr. Lewis: What is wrong with that government? What is it with them? Why do they allow situations to deteriorate? Why do they never intervene when it is in the public interest to intervene? How is it possible that they sit mute, silent, ineffective and indifferent to all of the crises that harass Ontario month after month?

That’s why they have lost the confidence of the province. That’s why every poll and survey show them a disintegrating rump. That’s why the numbers here this afternoon exceed the numbers who will be re-elected in the next provincial election.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Where are those Tory members? What are they doing? Are they playing euchre?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact, I see no one here who will be re-elected, which is an interesting commentary. Some will lose their deposits, like the member for Timiskaming. Others, Mr. Speaker -- oh, the guru of grunts enters again.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Lewis: Look, it was 171 votes -- and don’t understate it again. Every vote counts when one wins by that margin, my friend. Don’t tell me. I expect on redistribution to get that up to 172 or 173. Don’t make light of it.

Mr. Havrot: Don’t count on it.

Mr. Lewis: I don’t. It could be nip and tuck.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Lewis: The member for St. George (Mrs. Campbell) may be right. Those phrenetic little gremlins in the Tory caucus, those impish gnomes, are probably huddled around a speaker somewhere listening to this debate and working on press releases to be issued in the next hour and 20 minutes to rebut this.

Hon. D. R. Irvine (Minister of Housing): I’ve got mine ready.

Mr. Lewis: Has the minister got his ready? I hope he does have it ready. He can just open any filing cabinet. I am surprised that he can find his way to his desk for the press releases that surround it.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): Wallpaper for the house.

Mr. Lewis: I want to suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that the absence of direction in teacher-board negotiations is one of the most critical deficiencies of the government. It has been demonstrated time and again over the last several months.

I don’t know whether the legislation would have forestalled Windsor, would have forestalled Thunder Bay, would have forestalled Ottawa; but I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, we in this caucus think that the government is responsible directly and personally for the three strikes in those areas. They may never have happened.

Before this debate ends, I am going to try to suggest why they need never have happened. But one of the guilty areas was the absence of legislation, because neither side has any sense of what to expect.

As a matter of fact, in Ottawa both sides are sitting breathless wondering what the announcement on ceilings is going to be, since obviously that will affect the pace of negotiations in Ottawa. But nothing comes from the government except the occasional muted rumour.

Now there’s a second question in education which has to be dealt with which flows more from the debate. You know I must say to my colleague, the member for Lakeshore (Mr. Lawlor), my colleague the member for York South, my colleague the member for Riverdale, and the member for Port Arthur and others in the caucus, those of us who have responsibility for dealing with education or university estimates over the last several years in this House; those of us who have been in the House for eight to 12 years, let’s put it that way -- God it’s a long time -- those of us who have been here are not surprised at what is happening in the province right now, because it was predicted, Mr. Speaker. I say that to you. It was predicted in every estimate debate that I participated in and that I can remember sitting and listening to from 1964 to 1972.

Let me talk for a moment about the cracks in the educational system that are emerging and let me stay away from the ceilings, because that’s all we talk about and I want to talk about something else. I want to come at it another way.

All the passion and the feeling now expressed about education derives directly from the failures of the last 15 years. I think that one of the most disheartening experiences which many of us felt in this House while we were here through the sixties and seventies is the inability to talk about anything in education other than numbers, dollars and buildings. That is all we could talk about.

Mr. Laughren: “More scholar for the dollar.”

Mr. Lewis: Yes, and the Minister without Portfolio (Mr. White) coined that Philistine little crack of his: “More scholar for the dollar.” And that’s the only way the government thought: Dollars, numbers, buildings; nothing else.

We could never get them to understand that there was something called the quality of education; that there was something called the transactions which take place in a classroom between kids and teachers; that there was something called, which the Speaker understands a little about, the learning process. We could never engage them on that. Whether it was the Premier (Mr. Davis) to the present Minister of Education, all they wanted to talk about were the bricks and the numbers and the dollars.

Now this research paper, Mr. Speaker, this has a number of interesting things about it. One of the things which is indisputable about the paper, and certainly attests to the argument the leader of the Liberal Party was making yesterday, was that fully 35 per cent of the students in Toronto who did drop out are in the category of what the paper calls “classic dropout” or “cultural isolate.” They’re in the pattern of kids who have been deprived, who come from difficult economic circumstances, whose own levels of literacy and competence at home are not very high, who have very difficult cultural pressures.

These kids, the classic dropouts, are I suppose a repetitive pattern in Toronto and in Ontario which will never change. They’re victims of a perverse system. They’re the real tragedy in this study; that in all the years of education in this province, we’ve never been able to adapt the structure and the content to give some support to these kids.

The comment at the end about these children, which of course is obvious but is worth repeating says that: “Early identification is a necessity, and any meaningful intervention would have had to occur before secondary school.” It wasn’t a product of secondary school at all.

Most of the rest of the kids who dropped out in this study, dropped out for what Gordon Cressy, the chairman of the Toronto board, and others view as positive reasons. They were work-motivated, they were homemaker-motivated; they were, in many instances, glad to drop out and said so. They understood, curiously enough, the value of education. They wanted to return to education later on.

That’s why my colleague the member for Port Arthur raised the question about the barriers that exist to reaccessibility to education later on. Most of these kids had a temporary but defined plan of what they wanted to do with their life. They wanted to drop out now. We’re not talking about pre-pubescents, I want to make that clear. In this report the average age of the dropout is 17, so we’re dealing with kids who can come to those conclusions, I suppose.

But the questions that are raised by all of that, the questions that are raised both by the classic dropouts, for whom it is a tragedy, and those who are well motivated and dropped out, for whom it is difficult to make generalized statements, the question that is posed is what kind of system is it that is so inadaptable, so inelastic, that all of this is now happening?

And, Mr. Speaker, that comes back to what is being felt in the educational system. The pressure on the elementary teachers of this province is indescribable. They cannot cope with the class size in Ontario, Mr. Speaker; we tell you that straight. It is destroying elementary education in this province. They simply can’t cope. There are too many kids with too many problems for a teacher to handle 25, 30, 35 of them.

There’s another argument that my colleague from Port Arthur has made more emphatically than any member of this House, and that’s the absurd disparity in the amount of money we spend on kids in elementary school and the amount of money we spend on kids in secondary school. The disparity is now $515 per pupil. How do you expect kids to maintain themselves in secondary school when they don’t have a sufficient economic and educational investment in primary school and when the classes are so large? And what do you do about a system which doesn’t understand that the emphasis on the earliest grades, whether it’s preschool or kindergarten or grade 1, 2 and 3, that is what education is all about in Ontario. But there is no such emphasis given.

And then what happens to high school? High school becomes a holding operation, that’s what happens -- with all of the hostility of the teacher and the student bristling; with all of the frustration and despair that the teachers feel and the students feel, clear to anybody who visits it.

If, in fact, Mr. Speaker, the teacher alienation was simply a matter of wage disputes, it would have cooled out long ago. Don’t kid yourself, Mr. Speaker, collective bargaining is no sustainer of militancy, not for ever -- and the Tories just don’t understand it. The reasons for the agitated teacher movement in Ontario are because of the way in which the school system is abusing them and their students.

That is what has happened in Ontario, that is what has occurred in the last decade while everybody sat silently by and watched the buildings and the numbers and the dollars, and cared not one whit for what went on inside. And as things fall apart the solutions become desperate, don’t they? A lot of us in the NDP, and I suspect a lot of people everywhere, feel very disheartened about it.

The Minister of Education talks about the three Rs. I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, the three Rs he is talking about are not the three Rs you hear talked about in many places. My wife was at a meeting at the St. Lawrence Centre not very long ago, just a few nights ago, covering it as a journalist for a specific job, when the discussion of the three Rs took place. The parents who wanted the three Rs that night saw the three Rs not as a supplement, not as intelligent learning in a liberal environment, in a progressive environment; they saw the three Rs as a return to the old disciplined, reactionary system, often in conjunction with the strap.

It is called the backlash in education, and it should never have happened. It need not have happened -- the preoccupation that parents are feeling is because they are so frantic, because they don’t understand the disillusion of the kids and they don’t understand the frustration of the teachers; and the government’s system doesn’t involve them. So they return to personal experience; and personal experience was discipline, personal experience was defined; personal experience was at times unbearable -- but it worked, so-called.

Well, it is a hell of a reaction; but it is happening, and it is happening because the government has been so totally delinquent in responding to educational change.

Ironically, I was listening to the Leader of the Opposition yesterday and I share his feelings about core curriculum. Ironically, what the research study shows is that those kids for whom the core curriculum might make most sense are dropping out of school because of their antagonism to authority and inadequate student-centred learning. How much they would want a core curriculum is really questionable; whether it would make any difference to them. That is another disheartening response to what is emerging.

The most significant part of this whole study, Mr. Speaker, I put to you, lies in two simple percentage statistics. For the kids who dropped out, only 39 per cent of the parents actively opposed their dropping out. For the kids of equal learning calibre who stayed in, 90 per cent of the parents supported their remaining in school. It all comes down to the question of parental support as it supplements the learning environment.

I think the NDP would say to the minister -- and I am cautious about this; I defer to many of my colleagues; I defer especially to the member for Port Arthur, but I think we are at one on this -- if the NDP wanted to change this perverse educational system there are a number of things we would do and do very quickly:

We would shift the emphasis of the system to the earliest primary grades. We would shift in to such early primary grades that all of the identification of things that might go wrong would be picked up instantly.

We would give so much more support to teacher training that it would be experienced as a qualitative shift in the minds of the teachers.

We would recognize that only smaller classes at elementary school can solve the problems in the educational system. There is no other way.

We would recognize that what the province needs is a vast network of alternative school situations. We’ve got parents and kids; they want compulsion; they want core subjects; they want discipline; they want the strap. They should have their school. It’s not my cup of tea. They want it; they should have their school.

We have a group of parents and kids who want especially high academic concentrated schools. They should have their school. There is a school where they embrace academic and other problems. I think at Eastdale in Toronto. That should be available. There is a school where parents and children want the performing arts, as is true in Jesse Ketchum in downtown Toronto. That kind of school should be available.

Mr. Speaker, you set up in the province alternative schooling, for parents and for children, combining with teachers and students and working it out, of a kind that satisfies people so that there is an adaptability, so that there’s flexibility and so that all of the things that are now going wrong don’t go wrong forever with so many damaging results.

You decentralize to the community, not just to the board; that’s where we part company. We go even further; we go beyond the boards. One of the most important things about schools is to allow the parents to enter the schools at the community level. I mean the smallest cluster at schools in any given community, in conjunction with kids and teachers in those communities, should design the kind of educational framework that they want. Bring back into the school system, or at least introduce to the school system from which parents are now largely rejected -- for a whole complex of reasons that aren’t appropriate to this debate -- and to recognize that this is what’s happening within the system, is really tragic at this point in time.

Mr. Speaker, I couldn’t help but laugh, or smile ironically, that yesterday afternoon, sitting up in the gallery, was Ivan Illich. I don’t agree with everything that Ivan Illich says, but what a pleasure it would be were an occasional word or two to penetrate the dogged interstices of the Ministry of Education. What a pleasure it would be to have a few of the alternatives which are provided by Illich and others here. It doesn’t happen.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: “Dogged interstices?”

Mr. Lewis: Yes; doggedly closed. It doesn’t happen in this province.

Mr. Martel: What does?

Mr. Lewis: If you’re looking for a failure of leadership, if you’re looking for the place where the government is breaking down, then education is emerging as an issue in this province, Mr. Speaker, and it’s emerging as an issue in a way which we feel very comfortable about. It’s no longer just ceilings and it’s no longer just buildings. It’s now a matter of substance and content.

I look over at the government’s educated elite and I know that not all has been perfection in the past, and it may perhaps account for the absurdity of the present, but many of us feel that unless it is altered the pattern will be irreversible.

Mr. Speaker, the loss of faith in the school system as an area of political leadership now extends, if I can take my remarks just a couple of points further, to the question of energy.

I don’t want to discuss Syncrude and I don’t want to discuss prices at the pump; I want to say something about Ontario Hydro, which we have raised a number of times in this Legislature, and what is happening in the province, because it is really, in its own way, quite frightening.

I don’t know how it all happened and I don’t know how it gets out of control, except when one has no political leadership, when no one over there on the government’s side is watching, thinking or curious, then these things occur. If there ever was an abdication in Ontario, it’s in the energy field.

Ontario Hydro is allowed to go its own way. The Energy Board becomes the final arbiter. In fact the province should he making the decisions, but the government is not making the decisions at all. Leadership, Mr. Speaker, is nowhere to be found. After 1983, we’ll have a public inquiry; from 1974 to 1982 we’ll have no inquiry at all.

Let me put quickly on the record what the figures are and what the growth rates are. I think some members of the House, I hope some members of my own caucus, will find it interesting.

Just listen to what has happened. In 1973, Mr. Speaker, George Gathercole, then chairman of Hydro, indicated that the cost from 1974 to 1982 would be $10 billion; that was in 1973. In January, 1974, that estimate had jumped to $15 billion. In April, 1974, the estimate had jumped to $16 billion; and in March, 1975, it now stands at $23 billion. That’s a move from September, 1973, to March, 1975 -- what is that, a year and a half? -- of $13 billion.

Mr. Stokes: It sounds like Syncrude.

Mr. Lewis: Those people over there who sit so sanguine and comfortable in their pews have to understand they are heading toward the bankrupting of the Province of Ontario. I want to read from a memo which was prepared for me by our research group -- I don’t pretend to have mastered these things myself -- just to show what should be happening and what would be happening with a New Democratic approach. “All of Hydro’s proposals of $23 billion are based on a growth assumption slightly in excess of seven per cent. They call for an addition of 14,000 megawatts to the system by 1982 for a total system size of 32,443 megawatts.” The Ontario Energy Board asked Ontario Hydro to reduce its reserve requirements from 28 per cent to 23 per cent. Ontario Hydro has said no.

That in itself is insufferable. That in itself should give the government the right to move in on Ontario Hydro and do something about it. “Simply reducing the growth assumption to seven per cent and adopting the Ontario Energy Board’s reserve recommendations, [that is from 28 to 23 per cent] would reduce the system expansion by 1,676 megawatts or 12 per cent.” If Hydro planned on an assumed growth rate of 6.4 per cent instead of seven or more, [and 6.4 has been the actual average growth] and held its reserves to the level of the board, the system expansion would be reduced by 3,195 megawatts or 22.7 per cent.

“If Hydro and the government abandoned their passive posture and adopted a conservation programme over the next eight years to reduce the growth rate, the savings become quite dramatic. A programme to reduce growth by 0.2 percentage points a year to five per cent by 1982 would reduce the required expansion by 4,704 megawatts or 33.4 per cent.”

If, in fact, they brought it down to a four per cent growth rate, where we think it should be, which would still allow for an increase in individual consumption each year the saving would be 6,041 megawatts or 42.9 per cent. Do you know what that means in millions of dollars, Mr. Speaker.

In the first instance, just reducing the growth rate to seven per cent, it means $2.7 billion saved. In the second, by bringing it down to 6.4 per cent, it means $5.2 billion saved. In the third, reducing it to five per cent with the normal reserve capacity suggested by the Ontario Energy Board, it means a saving of $7.6 billion; and if they brought it down to four per cent, it would be $9.8 billion, a saving of $10 billion on borrowings for the Province of Ontario underwriting the notes of Hydro in the next seven to eight years.

Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that if we simply held the growth rate to the present level and didn’t allow Hydro its present expansion we would save $500 million a year in interest charges by 1982.

I want to say about the government, Mr. Speaker; that if it joins and approves Hydro’s growth ethic they are all nuts. They are all collectively demented and something has to happen to bring Ontario Hydro to heel. The province can’t accept from that corporation a jump in cost from $10 billion in 1973 to $23 billion in 1975; that legitimizes a review of Ontario Hydro. The province cannot tolerate it, the economy will not be able to cope with it, and our borrowing capacity will be clobbered because of it.

But it is more important than that. I say to all those people on the government side who occasionally have some influence with their cabinet colleagues: The rates are going to go up. Every time Hydro goes before the Ontario Energy Board for another rate in- crease -- this time for capital requirements as well as operating requirements -- who do they think is going to be singled out in the public mind as the villain? The government of Ontario. And those rate reviews, I may say, are going to occur very neatly, just in advance of the next provincial election. They are occurring in the next very few weeks and months.

For its own sake, the Province of Ontario, the government, should not be so foolhardy as to let Hydro run amok, which is precisely what is happening. Again, unless the leadership is exercised, obviously nothing will happen.

I have only two more areas I want to deal with, Mr. Speaker, and then I shall bring my remarks to a close and read the amendment -- have I an amendment? -- to the amendment of the Speech from the Throne, which has been prepared for me in inspired fashion.

I want to move down the row to the absent, but I am sure energetic, Minister of Transportation and Communications. He’s an amiable fellow, a Calamity John of the first order. It seems a pity that this man should have had to bear so much in his short tenure. He is the man who has to make retreat look dignified. He retreats in weekly instalments from one policy position after another. He is the only man who is required to disembowel himself publicly with elegance month after month. The government should do something to rescue this man. He is not going to be back, if what the government is heaping upon him continues.

Mr. Laughren: And voluntarily.

Mr. Lewis: He tries very hard. He talks about seatbelts and then gives us an advertising programme, and he does it without choking. His adam’s apple barely bobbed. He’s a most extraordinary politician in handling the ingratitudes heaped upon him by his cabinet colleagues.

He talks about lowering the speed limit and then retreats. He is the man who had to deal with Krauss-Maffei in his little stagecoach to Munich -- and where is it now, where is it now? When will we hear? When are the 130 days over -- or whatever it was -- during which time it was all being appraised?

He’s the man who reversed Spadina; we’ll have a first-rate party statement on that shortly too, Mr. Speaker. He’s the man who has now allowed the increase in fares to the TTC --

Mr. V. M. Singer (Downsview): The member for Yorkview (Mr. Young) can hardly wait for that.

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): The minister’s out planting the trees at the CNE right now.

Mr. Lewis: He may be out planting trees. This is the man who went to Ottawa -- the Minister of Transportation and Communications -- on Dec. 11, 1974, and said that the government was subsidizing transit deficits; and then said, and I quote:

“The only proviso in this new subsidy was that fare structures be frozen at 1973 levels. We recognized that fare increases will only drive away riders, that transit operations no longer can be funded from the fare box alone, and we recognized that local tax burdens should not be increased.”

That’s Dec. 11, 1974. On March 11, 1975, the entire policy is down the drain.

You know what that is? That’s called duplicity; that’s called political duplicity; that’s called no candour; that’s called evasion; that’s called playing false with the public; that’s called the absence of political leadership.

All the things that haunt this government around the landscape of Ontario are fashioned here in the Legislature and outside. They don’t know what leadership is anymore? They don’t know what forthright means anymore. The speeches vary from day to day as their moods vary from the hour. Clutching at the political instincts which elude them, the government careens from error to error. I’ll tell all of them that it catches up, because what is particularly true of all of this is the whole TTC fare increase. That’s just beyond the pale. Hell; cities are for people. What is it about them that they possess such a death wish?

Don’t they think that the public of Ontario understands the hypocrisy in asserting a position and then retreating from it? At least the Liberals have no position from which to retreat; or to be more kind such an infinite variety of positions that retreat can be construed as forward progress, backward progress or linear movement. It matters not; it matters not.

Mr. Gaunt: We are just totally responsive.

Mr. Givens: He envies us our flexibility.

Mr. Lewis: I envy the Liberals their flexibility. It is the first time anarchy has been called flexibility.

Mr. Gaunt: Totally responsive.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I think one calls that dog dancing.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): How did the NDP arrive at their policies?

Mr. Lewis: As a matter of fact, I will satisfy the member’s interest and deal with that in a moment. I won’t be at a loss. The only thing that has varied more than the Spadina policy is the 45-ft height bylaw.

I want to tell the Liberal Party in the presence of all of the Tories who are here, that I really found Andy Szende’s article in the Star -- and recalling from memory -- quite pleasing in terms of the Liberal’s capacity to be flexible -- their essential indecision.

I notice that the member for Downsview said he was quite opposed to the 45-ft bylaw, he would have nothing to do with it. I notice that the member for St. George (Mrs. Campbell) said that she thought it was a first rate move and that the city of Toronto had no alternative. Neither of them are a match for the member for York-Forest Hill. Neither of them. It takes the former mayor of Toronto to say what he said.

Mr. Laughren: A 60-ft bylaw.

Mr. Lewis: He said -- I’ve got to make sure I’m getting it right.

Mr. Givens: I’ll correct the member.

Mr. Lewis: I’m sure he will. The member for York-Forest Hill said either that the 45-ft height bylaw was bad, but he would approve it anyway; or he said that it was good, but he would disapprove it anyway. I can’t remember which it was. I’m not sure he can either. I’m not sure whether he said it in the morning or the afternoon.

Mr. Givens: I said the council should have the right to vote on it.

Mr. Lewis: Oh, he was opposed to it, but he would give the OMB the right to uphold it. Sorry, okay.

Mr. Givens: Local autonomy.

Mr. Lewis: Oh, local autonomy.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): Street by street.

Mr. Lewis: I suppose that none of them --

Mr. Givens: Where does the member stand?

Mr. Lewis: Right on top of it.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Lewis: I don’t like the OMB decision at all. We said right away, without any equivocation, that the OMB decision was wrong, that there should be a 45-ft height limit. But then we don’t understand the way politics works as the member for Carleton East (Mr. P. Taylor) understands it. Power is the name of the game, baby. They all know that, eh? That is the succulent difference between Tories and Liberals. The Tories say, “Power is the name of the game,” and they stop. Liberals say, “Power is the name of the game, baby.”

I was saying to the council meeting of the NDP, it shows how ideologically chic they are, how trendy they are, this travesty over here. Oh, boy. I must say that the polls will change. I have to tell them that. I have insights. I have clairvoyance --

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): Which way?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: I needed a minor diversion. I thank the Liberal members for providing it. They are an excellent bunch of fellows. May they languish in opposition forever.

I want to come back to this missing figure over here, the Minister of Transportation and Communications. What should have been done by the government to repair a little of the credibility, almost none of which it has left, was to have provided an operating subsidy of up to 75 per cent on the deficits, which simply would have meant $17 million more for the TTC than would be paid by government anyway, maintaining the fares at their present level, not penalizing those who use the TTC, who are normally low-income earners -- that’s the pattern of rider usage -- not encouraging councils of necessity to raise property taxes, but to take it from the public revenue by a graduated income tax, a fair tax, and apply it appropriately.

And $17 million doesn’t sound like a hell of a lot when matched against the $1 billion-plus that the government was prepared to lavish on a monument called Krauss-Maffei. But they forgot all of that. They forgot all of the factors of public transit when they came to their decision.

Now that I have been provoked and taunted into it, I want to say something about the Ministry of Labour.

Mr. Givens: Who provoked the member?

Mr. Lewis: The member for Ottawa East provoked me.

If one is looking for failures of political leadership, if one is looking in the government for the places where that lies most evidently, the conjunction of the Minister of Labour, the Chairman of Management Board and the Minister of Education is really where it lies.

I want to say to the Chairman of Management Board, since we have agreed upon some aspects of it before, and I am going to put it to him as strongly as I can: The public sector strikes which are occurring need not occur and should not occur and can be avoided. Whether he is allowing them to occur deliberately or whether he is simply incapable of dealing with them is something I have never entirely understood.

The public inconvenience, the public harassment and the public anxiety have to be responded to by collective leadership. But the Premier doesn’t orchestrate or co-ordinate it. The Chairman of Management Board sits quietly by and engages in absurd 11th-hour gymnastics to prevent the civil service from going out, the Minister of Labour watches one public sector strike after another, and the Minister of Education audits them from day to day. They have got no policy at all. It remains for the opposition parties to put the policy to them. If ever there was a classic example of where leadership is simply nowhere to be found in government, it’s the question of public sector disputes. It’s ironic, it’s paradoxical that the NDP, the Liberals and everybody else has to show the government the way out of its own dilemma. We are willing to do it, but the public understands as well. The public very quickly understands that it doesn’t have to put up with so much of what all of us would prefer to avoid.

The Liberals have come at it a hundred different ways, from compulsory arbitration, with which we disagree, right through to final-offer selection, which we think can be used, I suppose, but is a very limited way of looking at it.

We’ve now offered the Conservatives, as a government, three explicit directions which, as I stand here, I say to the Chairman of the Management Board would mean that strikes in the public sector would be so rare the public would have to scratch their heads to remember them. We’ve told the government first that it should develop a skilled group of conciliators and mediators within the Ministry of Labour whose sole responsibility it is to engage in public sector mediation. They will be people who are sensitive and who understand that there are no profits in the public sector to fight over and that what is required is recognition of the give and take of the parties, that we don’t need the adversary confrontation system of General Motors and the UAW.

Secondly, we’ve said the government should enact a piece of legislation somewhere which gives legal force to good faith bargaining, which gives to the Minister of Labour acting on the advice of impartial advisers -- or gives to conciliators or arbitrators acting on good advice -- the right to take an offending party before the Ontario Labour Relations Board, the right for that board to find the party guilty of bad faith bargaining and to order the party back to the bargaining table.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: It doesn’t have to exist.

Mr. Lewis: But it should have to exist.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Bad faith bargaining does not have to exist.

Mr. Lewis: But if there is no way of enforcing good faith bargaining then it exists.

Mr. Deans: Nothing has to --

Mr. Lewis: The minister knows there was bad faith bargaining on the part of the Toronto Transit Commission before the strike took place. He’s a fair enough man to recognize that. What does the government do when two million people are inconvenienced by bad faith bargaining for which there is no legislative response in the Province of Ontario? What the hell does it do? The Province of Ontario abdicates. It keeps completely acquiescent.

Mr. Stokes: It didn’t even recognize it.

Mr. Lewis: It watched an entire metropolitan area grind to a halt for no reason whatsoever. Why? For Karl Mallette? For Paul Godfrey?

Third, because apparently the government is unwilling to support good faith because apparently it is unwilling to develop the group of skilled mediators, we’ve taken it a step further. I have admitted, and I do again, that we have plagiarized some of it from people like Ed Finn, who writes in “Canadian Labour,” and from many of those who preceded him. The idea is not new. I discussed it carefully with people whom I know intimately and who know something about labour relations. The idea we put forward was an essential services settlement board.

What a pleasure it would be in the Province of Ontario, and why can’t the members opposite adopt it? Why can’t we have an essential services settlement board? I’ll set it out and then anybody in the world can tell me where it’s inconsistent.

It would be chaired by an absolutely first-rate person whose credentials are beyond dispute. It would have to be somebody of the Goldenberg calibre. All right? And then one appoints to such a board a number of men and women of the quality of Owen Shime, Harry Arthurs, Sylvia Ostry, you name them. They are people who know something about collective bargaining in the public sector; who have intervened; who have been arbitrators; who are known to be fair and impartial with impeccable reputations.

Then we give to that essential services settlement board all kinds of financial support to allow them to do pay research in the public sector field. The appointments are long term, let’s say for life, so there can be no political interference at all. In addition to that, they report only through the Legislature, rather than through a cabinet minister. So that, too, is scrupulously separated.

This board, Mr. Speaker, does pay research on pay; comparable data on wages, on pensions, on fringe benefits, on working conditions in the public sector, in the private sector, collecting the data and making it available to both parties to assist them in the negotiation of a voluntary settlement.

Has the Chairman of the Management Board or any of the Tories seen the federation “Update”, as it’s called, of the OSSTF in its recent issue which deals with the Ottawa teachers’ strike. On the back page of the “Update” it says, “What is a teacher worth?” and they draw comparisons with everything from a Loblaw’s cashier-clerk to a registered nurse’s assistant to a bus driver because no one does know what a teacher is worth in contemporary terms. Shouldn’t the public know? Shouldn’t the public have a way of measuring the fairness and reasonableness of the offers and the demands? Doesn’t the public, which is ultimately going to be inconvenienced, have a right to have a benchmark against which equity can be established? Shouldn’t all of us know what is fair in the minds of an independent body in the Ottawa teachers’ dispute? Shouldn’t all of us have known whether 21½ per cent or 23 per cent or 24 per cent or maybe 19 per cent was fair in the CSAO case? Shouldn’t all of us have some sense of whether the Windsor settlement for teachers is fair and adequate or excessive or otherwise?

Why is it not possible to establish a body of such public integrity and such high research quality that we could measure it, and then the negotiations continue with all kinds of voluntary assistance from the settlement board? But suppose -- and even here I don’t think there is any departure -- we saw that negotiations were breaking down, suppose we saw that negotiations were destined to collapse? What does the government do then? Then I think it says to the settlement board, in advance of the breakdown or negotiations: “You provide a kind of model settlement, or a kind of model suggestion for certain proposals; not all of them, just the key proposals.” It is not binding on the parties; no compulsory element about it at all. Just provide it in a model way for the parties and then the public has a sense of what is fair.

If the parties break down and the workers go on strike, they go on strike, that is their democratic right. Who in the world would take it away? But it does give a tremendous moral authority to the public in giving pressure for settlement. So we know it is fair; we have an independent body; it obviously can’t be binding.

We are socialists in this party. We don’t believe in compulsory arbitration, but we do believe that the public should be better convenienced than the government is now prepared to undertake and we do believe that the public sector strikes need not happen. How do we remove strikes? Not by legislating against them; not by imposing compulsory arbitration. We remove strikes by making them unnecessary, that’s how we do it, and that is something that has never occurred to the government benches, and so we will have one public sector fracas after another, more and more public anxiety.

It isn’t going to redound to the government’s credit. They can’t manipulate it any more. They can’t orchestrate it any more, but they could change it. We think it can be changed in that fashion, and we think that is the quality of leadership, and we think that that is what the province wants to hear from its politicians and its parties, some alternatives, some solutions. They won’t always be right; they won’t always work, but they are real in response to the problem.

lf I was to deal with all the other cabinet ministers I would be here a very long time -- and I have spoken a very long time already -- but I wish that the Treasurer and the Premier had been here, because I must say that together they form a kind of chink, they form the Achilles heel. They are the greatest single chink in the armour. The Treasurer in particular, or the Treasury, has created such problems for Ontario, such failure of leadership, that to enumerate them is to illuminate them. I wrote them down:

Regional government; no plan for Ontario; no question of how to distribute growth to northern Ontario or eastern Ontario by way of incentives or disincentives -- we will have more to say about that shortly; no response to any of the inflationary pressures; complete indifference to the problems of the auto pact and what it means in simple terms for the economy of this province and the creation of jobs. No recognition, in other words, of all the things that matter in Ontario where leadership is concerned. Whenever the Treasury Board takes an initiative it creates troubles which continue to harass it forever.

The case is surely made. The things that this province wants, we believe, are the basic ingredient of political leadership, the basic ingredient of talking straight to the public, not waffling, not evading, not creating circumlocutions in every answer but speaking straight even when it hurts. That’s the nature of the political process unless the government is falling so quickly from power that it can no longer grasp any of that. Those are the things the province wants.

We think the province would like something else in the months that lead to an election. We think the province would appreciate political parties emphasizing that which is human in Ontario. They seem to forget, as a government, the human consequences of every government act. There is absolutely no response, Mr. Speaker, on the part of this government to the things which most violate people. They deal in generalities. They deal in abstractions. They play at politics in a fashion which satisfies their cravings, their own lusts for politics, but doesn’t respond to human needs at all.

The Minister without Portfolio talks -- the Leader of the Opposition talked about it yesterday -- this silly infantile stuff to Norm Webster. I would be embarrassed to talk to a journalist that way. “Well, the Throne Speech is thematic,” he said. There is a new announcement each day, from the Minister of Culture and Recreation one day, the Minister of Colleges and Universities (Mr. Auld) the next day, the Premier the next day, and then somebody else. It’s pathetic. It’s so adolescent. It’s so silly. It sees the game of politics as a fine manipulative device that has no flesh, has no blood, has no soul and has nothing. That’s why the government is never aware of all the political violations of people which it creates. Mr. Speaker, you never hear the government aware of what it’s doing to Workmen’s Compensation Board recipients around the territory. They never do -- never. I haven’t heard the government respond to that group of men from the Injured Workmen’s Consultants who parade around the legislature foyer from time to time, amputated, with braces. God knows the position they’re in. They never respond to that. It doesn’t have to happen.

My colleague from High Park (Mr. Shulman) and my colleague from Windsor West say to the Minister of Labour the other day: “Isn’t it possible that people who have worked X years in an asbestos plant and who have lung cancer should automatically be seen as having a related compensable disease?” Do members know why they say that? Because families like the Days and the Syphers and the others are agonized. Some of them have no money. Some of them are living on $260 a month. Why should they be subject to the final, the ultimate humiliation of crawling before a board in government to demand what insensitive politicians will not provide? Why is it impossible for government people to respond in human terms to human realities? Why is it impossible for government people on a question of social allowances to allow women who maintain single-parent families who want to go out and earn money through a job, to become independent of the allowance? Why do they penalize them? Why do they brutalize them?

I have two cases from my own riding in the last few weeks where women on mother’s allowance wanted to go out to work. The daycare arrangements they had to make cost more ultimately than they could afford, because when they made the daycare arrangements they were left with so little money that they were better off on a mother’s allowance. So they returned to state dependency. That’s no way to behave. That’s not a civilized government. What’s wrong with the government?

The government expropriates land out in Pickering for an airport. It never measured the human consequences for the people it is expropriating. It doesn’t respond to it in public meetings. It doesn’t respond to it in personal ways. It talks only about acreage. It talks only about noise corridors or cones. I don’t understand all of it.

We talk about day care in this Legislature. We talk about women’s rights and what the government does to them. But the problems of finding daycare places in Ontario are legion. We still have only 43,000 places for a need of around 300,000. Nobody thinks of going out and chronicling the consequences. We know in this caucus from inside the precious Ministry of Community and Social Services that they’re cutting $10 million from their budget.

Mr. Martel: And $2.5 million is in day care.

Mr. Lewis: And $2.5 million of that is in day care. What the ministry is doing in 1975-1976 is using the money left over from the programme announced in June, 1974. They will have spent $3.5 million by March 31, 1975. That leaves about $11.5 million, I guess, of the $15 million to be spent and they’re not adding anything more to 1975-1976. They are actually cutting back on day care.

Mr. Martel: Watch it, though; it’s an election year. Remember 1971; it was $10 million.

Mr. Lewis: Why penalize people who are already most vulnerable? What special and exquisite pleasure does it give to government to deal always in abstracts and large sums? If it can throw away $100 million on Syncrude, $150 million on properties in North Pickering, and approve the expenditure of $204 million on the part of the federal government for the airport, it does so with pleasure. If it can whistle away in 24 hours 450 million of public money which we need for human priorities, it will do it every time. But respond to things human? -- no, that’s no longer true of this government.

So there is no political leadership. There is no candour. There is no human response any more to the things that are most telling and most pressing in this province.

Does the government know what it has lost completely? It has lost both its preservatism and the one-time sense of optimism which the Tory party had about changing the human condition. We have it; others have it. We don’t see these things as unsolvable. We see them as matters that can be changed and altered. But we are damned if we can get the government to come along with us.

It has never even been able to admit a mistake. I think that the greatest single error in the Premier’s last four years, certainly the last two years -- if I may be permitted one gratuitous personal comment -- is his inability to stand before the people of Ontario and say, “Mea culpa. We’ve made errors. I’ve made errors. We are going to try to change it around.” But there is none of that in the government of Ontario any more. There is just posturing and rhetoric.

The psychological corner in Ontario I think has been turned. We think collectively that it’s probably beyond the point of retrieval for this government. It’s going. For the Liberals? Who knows? I daren’t predict. For the NDP? Who knows? I daren’t predict.

I know what we want to do, Mr. Speaker. What we want to do is to set out the alternatives on issue after issue over the next several months. What we want to do is provide solutions in an uncomplicated way -- I think as we’ve been doing, and if I may say, as the official opposition has not been doing, as a matter, I guess, of strategy.

What we want to do, Mr. Speaker, is not deal in silly complexities, not deal in areas which cost so much money they can’t be handled or which are incomprehensible to those who hear them. We simply feel that when the province asks for political leadership in a collective sense it should be provided. That’s what this party will attempt.

We will be on occasion wrong, I have no doubt -- maybe many times wrong. But it will be done in good faith and it will always be straight. We will not equivocate, not as we go toward the election, no more than we have ever done before.

In the process, I say to the Chairman of the Management Board, we shall participate in the defeat of this government as sure as I am standing here, and every one in the government benches -- the few who are in this House now -- know deep in their viscera that the end is nigh, that it’s all over for the Tories --

Mr. L. M. Reilly (Eglinton): No.

Mr. Lewis: -- even if the member for Eglinton is back to provide his felicitous annual prayer breakfasts.

But beyond that I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that it is all over and now the flux in the electorate, the extraordinary fluidity, is beginning to look at other options and other issues and maybe even at other people.

Mr. Givens: They’re looking this way.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: What the member is saying is, he won’t win. Is that what he is saying?

Mr. Lewis: No, as a matter of fact, I am not sure who will win. I want to tell the minister something, now that he has put it to me, that as I’ve moved around I am not sure who will win, but I can tell him who will lose, and that’s the government.

To that end, as an amendment to the amendment to the inglorious Speech to the Throne --

Mr. Stokes: Elections aren’t really won; they’re lost.

Mr. Lewis: -- the most hapless document of its kind --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: The member for Thunder Bay should know; he should know.

Mr. Lewis: -- I move, seconded by Mr. Deans, this resplendent amendment. It positively trips down the tongue, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lewis moves that the amendment to the motion be amended by adding thereto the following:

“That this House regrets the failure of the government to provide political leadership; in particular, that this House regrets the failure of the ministries of Health, Labour, Natural Resources and Environment to establish and enforce adequate standards for occupational safety and health; that this House regrets the failure of the Chairman of the Management Board and the Ministries of Labour and Education to develop labour laws and collective bargaining procedures in the public and private sectors to prevent the continuing breakdown of negotiations and subsequent strikes; the failure of the Ministry of Housing to pursue policies which would combat the drastic decline in house building now occurring, to provide housing for low and low-middle income groups within their income capacities, to control rents in rental accommodation and to prevent the conversion of rental accommodation to condominiums; the failure of the Ministry of Energy to control the expansionary policies of Ontario Hydro; and, further, the failure of the Premier to provide the leadership required to combat the social and economic hardships which are affecting the citizens of Ontario.”

Mr. Speaker: I’ll recognize the hon. member for Yorkview. Is he supposed to continue or move the adjournment, as the case may be?

Mr. Lewis: The member for Huron-Bruce.

Mr. Gaunt: Mr. Speaker, as I understand it, the member for Yorkview doesn’t feel he can complete in the remaining time and I think I can. So if the House wishes to accede to that particular accommodation --

Mr. Roy: You bet!

Mr. Gaunt: -- I will be pleased to go on.

Mr. Speaker: Is it agreed that the member for Yorkview will be given his opportunity later then?

Agreed.

The hon. member for Huron-Bruce.

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am pleased to participate once again in this debate. My first words, of course, should be words of commendation for you, sir, even though you did happen to cut me off in the question period today. I know it’s a rather difficult job. It so happened that, with respect, sir, I think your watch skipped a couple of beats. I thought there were still two minutes remaining in the question period, but in any case I know you have a difficult job and I appreciate that. I’ll get my question on in due course, I am sure.

Mr. H. Worton (Wellington South): We’re going to buy him a stopwatch.

Mr. Gaunt: May I say that I was quite taken with the windup comments of my friend from Scarborough East --

Mr. Lewis: West.

Mr. Gaunt: West, I am sorry.

Mr. Foulds: The member for Scarborough East (Mrs. Birch) is incapable of making comments today.

Mr. Gaunt: Yes, I certainly agree with him entirely when he says that the result of the next election is somewhat in question, in that he is not too sure who is going to win. I know who is going to win, I think. I think it’s going to be us in the Liberal Party. But I would agree with him entirely, without any qualms or doubts, on one thing: The Tories are going to get defeated. I think all of us on this side agree with that.

Mr. O. F. Villeneuve (Glengarry): We’ll be here for a long while.

Mr. Gaunt: You know, the government has progressed steadily along the way. At one point they were afflicted with senility, but they’ve really progressed away beyond that.

Mr. J. M. Turner (Peterborough): He shouldn’t count his chickens before they hatch.

Mr. Gaunt: I think what we’re seeing in progress here today is the final death rattle of this government.

Mr. Roy: Right. And it hurts us, because some of the Tories aren’t bad.

Mr. Gaunt: I’m sure that the people of the province will effect that change, given the next opportunity.

Mr. Turner: That’s pretty weak.

Mr. A. Carruthers (Durham): Let’s get down to facts.

Mr. Gaunt: When I come to the matter of the Throne Speech, with which I am supposed to deal during these few minutes, it’s rather difficult because I really can’t find anything in the Throne Speech with any substance, other than the fact --

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): That speech was well read.

Mr. Gaunt: -- that the idea of my friend and colleague from Downsview has been accepted by the government in the ombudsman bill. That’s really the only item of substance in the entire speech with the exception of the matter related to the farmers, wherein they’re going to be guaranteed some sort of income programme. That is going to be interesting, but we’ll wait with baited breath to see what that will be. Other than those two items, the speech is totally devoid of any substance.

You know, we’re used to hearing Throne Speeches with quite a bit of froth and very little substance, but this year there wasn’t even very much froth, so it’s very difficult to talk on the Throne Speech and the programme set out by the government. So I’m not going to deal with that, I’m going to deal with a couple of other items which interest me and which I want to draw to the attention of the appropriate ministries.

I had discussed with and written to the ministry about a problem that I feel needs some attention on the part of government. The member for Yorkview touched on it in a peripheral way yesterday, and may I say to him that I certainly agree with a lot of his comments with respect to the problems having to do with the relationship between the major oil companies and the retail service station operators in this province.

I have service station operators who come to me from time to time with their problems, and I know that if there is a system that can be described as a serfdom system in the Province of Ontario, that has to be it. The service station operators don’t own their own facility. All they are in the system is serfs. They jump when the major oil company says “Jump,” and they have to pay when the oil company says pay. They really have no freedom at all in the operation of their particular facility.

I know of one case where a service station operator was operating in the facility of a major oil company, and all of a sudden one of the reps came in and said to him, “Look, you’re doing very well here. We want 50 per cent of your gross mechanical take” -- the take in reference to repairs, oil changes, tires, labour and so on.

He had a good business. He was a good mechanic and obviously the oil company wanted to cut in on it. So they said: “We want 50 per cent of your take in those areas.” And he simply said to them: “I am sorry. There is no way you are going to get it from me.” He was out within three weeks. They just simply said to him: “If you are not prepared to go along with that, then I am sorry, we will have to get a new person in that service station.”

As it turned out, he is a good mechanic and he had no difficulty in getting another job. But, to be perfectly frank, I think that’s a terrible way for any company to operate within the Province of Ontario. I would hope that this government -- and this matter isn’t new, as it has been raised here a number of times -- will do something about this sort of system.

Mr. Stokes: That’s the free enterprise system.

Mr. Gaunt: Surely to goodness, it’s possible in this province to have some sort of bill of rights -- I think it has been referred to as that on numerous occasions -- for these service station operators so that they are not subjected to this kind of strong-arm tactic on the part of the major oil companies. Surely we can do something about that because instead of getting better, Mr. Speaker, it is getting worse.

However, I really didn’t intend to get on to that one today. I did want to pursue a matter which is of concern to me in relation to the pricing of heating oil across the province. I think perhaps the best procedure in this regard would be for me to read parts of a letter I wrote to Hon. Arthur A. Wishart, QC, when he was Minister of Financial and Commercial Affairs. The letter is dated Sept. 13, 1971, and I think it sets out the problem as I see it. I said:

“Dear Arthur:

“As a follow-up to our telephone conversation a few days ago, I am writing to you to lodge a formal complaint with respect to the way in which all of the major oil companies, with the exception of two, have raised their prices, particularly on heating oil by simply altering their zone boundaries.

“By way of explanation on that point, the major oil companies have various zones that they draw on their own and within the zone there is a certain price for heating oil. In the next zone, it may or may not be different and so they have this policy that actually works to their benefit, I find, throughout the province.

“In my view, this rezoning procedure undertaken by all of the major oil companies, except Texaco and Fina, is a method used to increase prices, hence profits. Instead of announcing an overall price increase, thereby running the risk of incurring government and public wrath, as they did last year, they have accomplished the same thing by rezoning and keeping quiet.”

Then I sent Mr. Wishart a map, showing the areas where the zoning took place.

“It so happened that the part of the province from which I come is in zone 5 for these purposes. This is one of the lower-income areas in the province and yet people in zone 5 are paying the highest price for heating oil in the province, with the exception of northern Ontario where the price varies from town to town.

“The prices indicated on the margin of the map are the prices charged by Esso, but all of the other major company prices coincide, as do the zoning areas with the exception of the two companies I mentioned above. This seems to be more than coincidental and perhaps the federal anti-combines people should be looking into this aspect as well.

“However, at the moment, I am disturbed about the fact that one of the lowest income areas in the province is paying the highest price for heating oil and, conversely, the highest-income area is paying the lowest price.

“In my view prices should be equalized across the province so that everyone pays the same price. This is the way it is for beer, and I feel it should be the same way for heating oil as well.

“The company argument is, of course, based on the fact that the further an area is from the refinery the more expensive becomes the product because of distance, transportation and so on. However, I see no reason why this cannot be overcome. It’s been done with beer; it is done in the transportation of milk and I would hope the Ontario government would see fit to insist on it being done with respect to heating oil.

“Whether or not you have the constitutional authority to insist on this is something I leave to your judgement and to the judgement of your cabinet colleagues. However, I would appreciate it if you could undertake a study with respect to this matter and hopefully take action along the lines I’ve outlined above.”

That matter has gone on for four years. At least it will be four years this September and really nothing has happened as far as I can determine.

Mr. Stokes: It’s got worse.

Mr. Gaunt: It’s got worse, if anything, that’s true. I asked the Treasurer about this matter when he was in the Ministry of Energy and he said that while he found the proposition interesting and had had preliminary discussions with some of the oil companies, he felt it was going to be very difficult for this to be done. Indeed, the oil companies rejected the suggestion out of hand and while it may have some merit, in his view he really wasn’t prepared to do anything about it.

I really don’t think that’s good enough and I think the Minister of Energy should have another look at this matter. I’m sure he’ll welcome the fact that I’m not pounding away about Ontario Hydro today; I’ve switched my topics. Perhaps as a sign of relief on that score, Mr. Speaker, I would appreciate it if he could give some indication as to what he’s prepared to do concerning this matter. It’s of vital interest to the people whom I represent in this province because they are paying the highest prices for heating oil, aside from northern Ontario, of any place in the province. I know, as far as I am concerned, they feel the excuses and the reasons given by the companies are not valid with respect to their pricing system.

I’ve only got four minutes left, Mr. Speaker, and I have another topic with which I want to deal and this concerns registered retirement savings plans. There are a lot of companies involved in this. They sell a lot of registered retirement savings plans in this province for one reason or the other. Sometimes they are bought by people who want to have some assurance that they’re going to get a guaranteed income when they retire. Others do it for tax reasons and so on. Regardless of the reasons, I think it’s important that the superintendent of insurance in the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations take a long look at what is going on right now with respect to the selling of retirement savings plans in this province.

I’ll give one example. I had a constituent who bought a retirement savings plan from a company and I won’t name the company here --

Mr. Stokes: Go ahead.

Mr. Gaunt: It was in 1973. He paid $2,000 and whether the person representing the company wasn’t familiar with the plan or whether my constituent didn’t ask the proper questions I’m not sure. But this is what happened. He decided after he had purchased it that he had made a mistake. It was sold to him on the basis that it was going to be advantageous for him because he had sold his farm and he was going to incur some income tax. It was sold to him on the basis that if he paid into a retirement savings plan so much money that would give him some tax relief.

He bought it on that supposition and then he found out that he really didn’t have as much taxable income as he anticipated and so he wanted to withdraw. He asked the company what it would do by way of cancelling it out and paying him back his money and the company said, “All right, we will do that, but it is going to cost you a lot of money.” And so, under a letter dated Feb. 18, 1975, his $2,000 suddenly disappeared and became $942.53. That was the payout under the plan which he had bought a number of months before.

What had happened was that the life insurance company involved had actually put the funds, the $2,000, into mutual funds and, of course, the mutual funds market has really taken a rap this last number of months. So his money, in the amount of $1,057.47, went down the drain and he wasn’t able to do anything about it.

Mr. Roy: That’s a good point; that’s terrible.

Mr. Gaunt: In my view, the superintendent of insurance should make absolutely certain -- and apply it to all sales of these retirement savings plans -- that the moneys be put into guaranteed investments, so that if the person wants to cancel out at any point in time at least he is assured of getting his money back plus minimum interest. I think that is only reasonable, I think it is only fair, and I think in view of the multiplicity of companies involved in this now -- it is a very popular thing and has become so in the last several years -- that this is vitally important for the protection of the public.

Many people don’t ask the proper questions with respect to these plans because they don’t understand them. They depend on the advice of the person who is selling the plan. They expect the expertise to be there and when it isn’t there they get hurt. So I would strongly urge, Mr. Speaker that this be done. I have had some communication with the superintendent of insurance office over this matter and they have indicated to me that they are studying it and I would certainly urge the minister of that ministry to support the action I have suggested.

Mr. Young moves the adjournment of the debate.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, before I move the adjournment of the House I would like to say that there is some agreement that we would sit on Thursday evening next and the following Monday and Tuesday in order to accommodate those who wish to participate in this debate. If there is any change we can announce it in the House, but at the moment that’s our agreement.

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

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 6 o’clock, p.m.