Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

The House met at 2 o’clock, p.m.

Prayers.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): Mr. Speaker, I would like you and the other members of the assembly to join with me in a warm welcome to 35 students and five adults from St. Anne Separate School in Iroquois Falls who are accompanied by Mr. Bill Vane; and 55 students in grade 8 and five adults from St. Theresa School in Timmins, who are under the direction of Mr. Maurice Lemire, in the east gallery.

Hon. D. R. Irvine (Minister of Housing): Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak on a matter of personal privilege in regard to an article in the Toronto Star this morning -- the two star edition -- which is under the name of Ross Howard. The headline is: “Some Landlords ‘Gouging’ -- Move Under Way at Queen’s Park To Limit Rents.”

I would like to indicate very clearly to all the members of this House what our position is and I would also like to say that this headline is most misleading. I want to assure everyone that I think a considerable amount of damage might be done if all the people of Ontario do not understand fully what we are trying to do in regard to providing accommodation. I don’t want to have a situation whereby we have landlords immediately going out tomorrow raising rents, or tenants being forced out of their accommodation.

Today I want to say that the position of my ministry and of this government is, first of all, to make every effort to have supply, and we will do that if we have the full co-operation of the federal government. We are waiting for my meeting with Mr. Danson to find out from Mr. Danson what they intend to do. If Mr. Danson cannot give me an answer on June 10, we will wait for June 23, when Mr. Turner’s budget will indicate what the federal government will do in regard to inflation, which I believe is the root of the evil of all our problems, not only in regard to rent, but in that income levels are not being increased enough to look after the inflationary factor.

I want to say to you, Mr. Speaker, that in my opinion we have done everything in our ministry to fully analyse -- and this is what we are doing, we are daily analysing -- the situation in Ontario to determine the best alternative, if we have to have an alternative supply. Do we need a rent review board? Do we need some stabilization of the rents? Do we have to have one agency to handle all the complaints and investigate the particular situations in detail? Should we as a government allow ourselves to get in a position that we know has not worked in London, England, and in New York, and in British Columbia?

I want to say the article is not entirely incorrect; it’s correct in some instances. When he talks about rent review, as the writer has in the last paragraph, he is quite correct in saying that as a ministry we have studied the situation in British Columbia and elsewhere in Canada and Great Britain and in the United States.

Although the article itself is very misleading as far as the headlines are concerned, I feel it is of utmost importance that we reassure the people of this province that this government will do everything possible to have adequate accommodation at an affordable price. That’s the aim of my ministry and that’s my aim, and I wish to say to the news media I would appreciate their co-operation in this effort, which must be a combined effort by everyone. Thank you.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): What did all that mean?

Mr. P. G. Givens (York-Forest Hill): Nothing.

Mr. Speaker: The member for High Park.

Mr. M. Shulman (High Park): Sir, I would like to speak on a question of privilege. Yesterday, sir, I was called by Major Halsey of the Salvation Army, who complained that he had received an ad from a local establishment offering for sale .45-calibre semi-automatic guns developed as law-enforcement weapons. They were described as requiring no licence. Yesterday afternoon, with a companion, I went to 639 Queen St. W. where I was told that the .45-calibre was not available, but I was offered similar weapons carrying a .223 cartridge, similar to this one here. My companion asked what was the purpose of such a gun, and the salesman replied, “It really is only good for killing people.”

To illustrate what is available, I purchased a similar weapon of smaller calibre, which I have here.

An hon. member: Right over there! Over there!

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Shulman: No one asked my name, no one asked me for a licence. Surely, Mr. Speaker, there is a responsibility on the part of our Attorney General (Mr. Clement) not to be passing the buck back and forth from Attorney General to Attorney General and down to the federal government.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Shulman: This shouldn’t be allowed. There is something wrong not only with that but with the security of this House. I could finish the members all off right now.

Mr. Lewis: Too bad there aren’t more of them over there.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I fail to see the matter as a point of personal privilege. I would ask the hon. member to please remove that -- what looks like a weapon -- from the chamber. Thank you.

Mr. Lewis: What do you mean it “looks like a weapon”?

Mr. J. A. Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox): What has happened to the security in here?

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

ONTARIO LIQUOR ADVISORY COUNCIL

Hon. S. B. Handleman (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): Mr. Speaker, while that very offensive-looking article is being removed; I would like to announce to the Legislature at this time the formation of the Ontario Liquor Advisory Council and the appointment of its first chairman.

As minister responsible for the Liquor Control Board and the Liquor Licence Board, it is my responsibility to assess the effect of the government’s liquor policies on the population of Ontario, and to bring forward changes in law or regulation where and when the need arises. This, Mr. Speaker, is not an easy task. If I gave it my full and undivided attention, I would not be able to do justice to the other demands on my portfolio.

Thus, in the past, evaluation of the liquor policies has been carried out on an ad hoc basis through consultation with my colleagues, members of the industry and the public, and various representatives of concerned groups. On this basis we have, I believe, succeeded pretty well.

However, it is the feeling of the government that there should be a formalized arrangement for this evaluation process. When I introduced for first reading the Liquor Control Board Act, Bill 44, and the Liquor Licence Act, Bill 45, earlier this year, I informed the House that a permanent advisory body would be established to provide advice on matters pertaining to liquor policy.

Hence, I am announcing today the establishment of the Ontario Liquor Advisory Council as well as a small executive core for that body, the Liquor Advisory Committee. The council will be composed of a chairman, a vice-chairman and approximately 30 members drawn from all walks of life. The advisory committee, on the other hand, will be made up of not more than five members, including the chairman and vice-chairman of the advisory council.

The need for the advisory council and its smaller committee is easily established. This body of concerned citizens will be able to devote its energies to the study of our provincial liquor policies on a continuing basis, and will put forward recommendations regarding the formulation of such policies. The creation of the council removes liquor policy study from its former ad hoc limbo and establishes a forum where these issues can be aired and discussed.

Clearly, Mr. Speaker, the chairman of this advisory council must be a remarkable person, in touch with and sensitive to the currents of public thought and opinion’, and he must not be directly associated with the beverage alcohol industry. For the first chairman of the new advisory council, I believe we have found such an individual.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): This is the 15-millionth new council appointed in the last six months.

Mr. Lewis: Just tell us the per diem.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: I would like to announce today that we have appointed John W. Fisher, OC, to the position of chairman of these liquor advisory bodies.

Mr. Lewis: What is the minister paying him?

Hon. Mr. Handleman: John Fisher, formerly Canada’s centennial commissioner, and known popularly as Mr. Canada, is familiar to all of us here today.

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Canada!

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Judy LaMarsh, now Fisher.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: His curriculum vitae is truly impressive, but suffice it to say that as a result of an --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: -- incredibly diverse career, Mr. Fisher brings to this new post a wealth of experience.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): Let the member for Ottawa East tell us what his new policy is on denticare.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: As well as being a broadcaster, author and lecturer, John Fisher is a former executive director --

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): Tell us the government’s policy on --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Handleman: John Fisher is a former executive director of the Canadian Tourist Association, a position that gained him broad knowledge of the various aspects of this service industry, including accommodations, dining and attractions.

I think John Fisher will make an excellent chairman for these two bodies. I also feel that the creation of this advisory mechanism will be of great benefit to Ontario. Mr. Fisher is in the Speaker’s gallery today and I would like members in the House to welcome him.

Mr. Lewis: What is the per diem?

Mr. P. J. Yakabuski (Renfrew South): Not enough.

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): Is that the announcement of the day?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Minister of Labour.

ASBESTOS LEVELS IN RAYBESTOS-MANHATTAN PLANT

Hon. J. P. MacBeth (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, the member for Scarborough West, the leader of the New Democratic Party, asked me a series of questions on Monday about the Peterborough plant of Raybestos-Manhattan (Canada) Ltd., where asbestos is used in the manufacture of brake linings.

I have not been able to substantiate the dust count figures the leader of the New Democratic Party quoted for February, April and May, 1974. The occupational health protection branch of the Ministry of Health did air samplings on my ministry’s behalf at the plant on March 25, 1974. In all but three of the 14 air samples taken, the count was found to be substantially below the recommended level of two fibres per cubic centimetre. The other three, taken in the area of the briquetting machine, were slightly above the limit, with the highest at 2.5.

Seven personnel samples were taken, with the readings ranging from 0.8 to 5, for an average of 2.3; again the highest readings were near the briquetting machines. It should be emphasized that approved respirators are continually being worn in these areas, and the company installed a new washroom, shower and locker unit late in the year.

The occupational health protection branch went back to the plant in November, 1974, to examine the area of high count. The branch recommended that my ministry issue four directions: improved ventilation; no compressed air to be used; no dry cleaning to be done; and redesigning the cleaning station.

The branch took a new series of dust samples on Dec. 11, 1974, in the area of the briquetting machines where the count had been high in March. Eight samples were taken and the readings ranged from 0.7 to a high of 2.9 with the average at 1.3 which is below the recommended level.

Mr. Lewis: One doesn’t deal with averages.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: The results of the Dec. 11 sampling removed the need for the ventilation direction. An inspection of the plant in March, 1975, found the three remaining directions had been complied with, giving the plant a clean bill of health at that time. However, Mr. Speaker, in view of the concern on this matter, I will ask my hon. colleague, the Minister of Health (Mr. Miller), to arrange for a complete new series of dust samples at Raybestos-Manhattan to be made as soon as the plant reopens.

The air testing is done by experts of the Ministry of Health, who know precisely which areas to test, and no warning is given to the employer in advance. The figures the member for Scarborough West quoted on Monday were taken, in part, at about the same time as an official sampling, and are at considerable variance with figures collected by the Ministry of Health. If the figures came from the company, they have not been revealed by the company to either my ministry or the Ministry of Health. When employers do their own testing, it is normal for them to inform us of their findings.

Mr. Speaker, my ministry’s industrial safety branch, in co-operation with the Ontario Federation of Labour, has drawn up special guidelines for registering complaints on industrial safety. Every complaint made under this procedure is investigated fully and speedily by the branch. During the past 18 months, not one single complaint has come from either union or workers at the Peterborough plant. Unions, too, have a clear responsibility to ensure the safety of their members and this procedure gives them the chance to do so.

Concerning workmen’s compensation claims for asbestosis at the Raybestos-Manhattan plant and its predecessor company, I am advised by the Workmen’s Compensation Board that in the 28 years since the first case was reported in 1947, a total of nine claims has been allowed. In eight cases, death was attributable to asbestosis and the ninth worker is receiving a permanent disability pension.

All of these claims were included in the list of claims allowed which I tabled in the Legislature in January of this year. The most recently allowed claim for asbestosis at the plant was approved in June, 1973.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, the member for Scarborough West also raised some fundamental issues concerning the right of the worker to be told the results of dust testing. If we are to improve industrial safety significantly, which is one of my major concerns, I consider it essential to have both management and labour co-operating closely toward this end, and I will give top priority to any action that will help achieve this. I have been weighing this matter and I am considering proposing an amendment to the Industrial Safety Act giving employers the responsibility of making information on safety inspections and dust testing available to unions and to employees generally. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Oral question. The Leader of the Opposition.

PICKERING AIRPORT

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the Premier if he would comment to the House on a report by CFTO last night in the news, I believe, which indicated that a review of provincial policy regarding the Pickering Airport and the development of the Pickering townsite has been put in the Premier’s hands? Has he got such a review of that policy and is there some impending change in this policy? If so, perhaps he could explain to the Legislature what he has in mind in this regard.

Hon. W. G. Davis (Premier): Mr. Speaker, before answering that question I would like to welcome to the Legislature a number of students from a certain public school in the city of Brampton who, Mr. Speaker, are in your west gallery. A few of them are very familiar to the member for Peel North and we’re very delighted to have them with us on his occasion. In fact, one in particular may now know where his father spends some of his time.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Just some?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Just some.

Mr. Shulman: Not very much.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: As much as the member for High Park.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I was going to say I didn’t want to get into that dialogue.

Mr. Speaker, I must confess I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing CFTO last evening and I just heard very brief comments that there was some story on that particular channel relating to the airport. I don’t want, in any way, to appear to be critical of that news report but I gather what it said perhaps wasn’t totally founded on substance. I don’t know. As I say, I didn’t see it.

The government quite obviously is concerned and interested in the proposals of the federal government. I think it is fair to state that the last involvement or discussion was when the Minister of Transport, Mr. Marchand, was here last week, at which time there was a very, brief discussion as to the plans of the federal government related to the airport. We expect to have further communication from Ottawa within the next very few days. Beyond that, Mr. Speaker, I can’t comment at this point.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary: I hope I’m not being unfair when I say that I really don’t know what the Premier’s answer was. Would it be fair to say that the Premier’s answer indicated that the report, which says there is a review of the policy in the Premier’s hands and he is contemplating some changes in the policy, is incorrect? Are we then to gather that this has to do with the agreement between the government of Canada and the government of Ontario for access or servicing to the airport? Or does it have something to do with the provincial government’s feelings on its location? Does it have something to do with the relationship of the proposed North Pickering town, which was in the news as well today?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I think it’s fair to state that there were no discussions related to the location of the townsite itself. The position of this government has always been that the townsite in some form or other will go ahead, with or without an international airport. I think in terms of this government, what we are interested in is just what the specific plans of the federal government may be and the degree of servicing that would be required by way of transportation and infrastructure as far as the province is concerned.

There has not been any discussion that I know of related to having another site. The position of the government has been that if there is need, if there is to be one -- and this has been stated many times -- our preference was that it should be east of Metro, rather than west. I think it’s fair to state that on all major projects of this kind, we certainly update and review them; but I wouldn’t want to indicate to the House that we were necessarily contemplating, on the basis of the information we have at this moment, shall we say, any suggested change to the federal government.

I’m trying to be as helpful as I can, Mr. Speaker. We are awaiting further information from Ottawa as to exactly what their plans are, and I expect we’ll have that in a few days.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough West.

Mr. Lewis: A supplementary -- I’m not quite sure how the Premier will respond to it. Is he not carefully laying the groundwork for a provincial position which says in effect that there will be no airport, because we will not collaborate with the federal government in the servicing and other arrangements, since they have not defined need in a way sufficient to impress ifs of its merits? Is the Premier not in fact verging on that prospect?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I sense that would be a position that would be received with some enthusiasm by the hon. member who asked that question --

Mr. Lewis: Yes, it would -- it would have been for the last three or four years.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I can sense the spirit with which he asked the question, and I don’t quarrel with that. I don’t think it would be an appropriate statement to say the government is laying the groundwork, but to answer the question that has been asked -- and I make no bones about it -- yes, we have asked Ottawa for more specific information as to just what their plans are for the facilities.

Mr. Lewis: That’s called laying the groundwork; that is what it is called.

Hon. Mr. Davis: No, I wouldn’t want to mislead the House.

Mr. Lewis: Perish the thought. Congratulations.

Mr. Speaker: The member for York Centre.

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): Supplementary: Did the province enter into a firm agreement with the federal government in 1972 for the supply of services and does that agreement give the province some opportunity to examine whether or not there is a need now for that second airport?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I don’t recall the exact terminology. I don’t think there is any written agreement that I know of; I think there were certain documents which outlined potential responsibilities for both levels of government and where the province did indicate that if the airport were to go ahead, if need were to be established and if we knew the extent of the facility, that there was some understanding that the province, naturally so, would be involved in the provision of the servicing, the transportation and the infrastructure.

I am only going by memory and I will check this. My best recollection is that it was not that definitive. The question of cost was not spelled out in the understandings or the discussions that took place. I think it is fair to state that these will be part of any ongoing discussions with the federal government. I am almost sure I am right in that, in terms of allocation of cost and responsibility in that area.

Mr. Lewis: It won’t be another Spadina but it will be important. The Premier is working harder, but he has to.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The Leader of the Opposition.

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION COSTS

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to ask the Minister of Education how long he has had the final report of the committee on education costs in his possession, the committee that was announced by the Premier on April 15, 1971, and when are we going to get a chance to look at that report?

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): Mr. Speaker, I am not aware that I have had their final report. I think I have report No. 7 which in due course will be prepared for publication, and then members will be able to have a chance to look at it. It has to be printed and then it will be tabled.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: And translated and a picture of the minister taken to insert in the front.

Supplementary: Since the minister announced the other day that the committee had been disbanded, is there some thought that it is going to give him a further report without any authorization from the ministry?

Mr. Roy: Sort of off the cuff?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, I think I’ve got report No. 7 and we’ve already tabled four reports. Therefore, there are reports 5 and 6 to come, which, I gather, were approved by the committee before it was disbanded. The executive secretary is editing them and getting them ready for presentation. I haven’t seen those. Then I think there is to be a final wrap-up report that combines the thoughts and recommendations of all seven reports, to give a complete package of eight. That is my understanding.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supplementary, if I may: Since that matter was of such urgency before the last election, wouldn’t the minister agree, if there are now three reports somewhere in limbo -- if not in the minister’s office or that of one of his officials, then gathering dust, I suppose, with the committee on education costs -- and since we are concerned about costs, shouldn’t we at least have the value of getting those reports out in case they might have some effect on the cost of education which concerns all of us?

Mr. Foulds: Just read the first four.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I think, Mr. Speaker, that this government has shown very clearly its concern about the costs of education and has acted with or without that committee.

Mr. Roy: It has talked a lot.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

BRANTFORD SOUTHERN ACCESS ROAD

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I would like to ask the Minister of Transportation and Communications if his officials have consulted with the council of the Six Nations Indians before proposing a right of way for the so-called southern access route for Brantford which goes across Indian lands? Is he aware of the rights that the Indians have, which mean that the properties are not subject to expropriation? Does he not feel, certainly as a minister with his experience, that the first thing that should be done is consultation with the Indian community in this regard?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I anticipated that perhaps that question might be coming from the hon. Leader of the Opposition. I have some information here that I think would be of value.

The southern access road referred to is a two-lane arterial facility that was being constructed by my ministry under an agreement with the city of Brantford. The agreement provides that the cost of construction and land acquisition would be borne on a 75-25 per cent basis -- 75 per cent by the province. It also provides that the city is responsible for all land acquisition and for all necessary road closings. The road closings, with which the city is proceeding, were agreed upon by the technical advisory committee which consisted of representatives of both the city and my ministry.

There is a 66-ft right of way through the reserve which was the subject of an agreement in 1951 between the city and the federal government. This agreement, in referring to this right of way, stated in part that the city would have the authority:

“ ... to construct and maintain a railroad line and a public highway, also to erect and maintain pole lines, lay cables, as well as any other work required in connection with the establishment of or maintenance of municipal utilities of every nature and kind in, under, over and upon the lands herein described.”

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): On a 66-ft right of way?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I didn’t make the agreement. It was made between the city and the federal government. The various studies of the facility and the intention to construct it were predicated on the understanding that the city had been given authority, in the agreement I referred to, to use this right of way for the southern access road.

The road closure, which I believe is in question, is a closure of Brett St., a municipal road, where it intersects with this 66-ft right of way. I understand the city has passed a bylaw with respect to its closure and that the road has not been physically closed. A physical closing would not occur until an alternative form of access to the reserve is constructed.

That is basically the information us it relates to this particular problem. I have a copy of the letter sent by Mr. Buchanan to the mayor of Brantford. I note in the letter no reference was made at all to this 1951 agreement and I have asked my officials to get me a copy of the agreement which we understood gave the city the ownership of that right of way and, as I quoted to members, the terms of what they could do within that right of way. We will certainly look into whether there are any legalities involved by which Indian rights to that land are being interfered with. We have based it upon that agreement.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: A supplementary: Is the old right of way -- the one the minister referred to, which was agreed on in 1951 -- the same right of way the ministry now wants to use? When the road was at a different level of discussion, it was decided that that right of way wouldn’t be used and the ministry wanted to kind of shift it over a little bit.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: My understanding is the right of way we’re talking about is a right of way being supplied by the city, which is within that 66-ft right of way through the Indian lands which we understand the city owns.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Scarborough West.

RENT CONTROLS

Mr. Lewis: Yes, I have a number of questions.

First to the Minister of Housing, if I may; I’m trying to understand his opening ministerial statement.

Accepting his reference to the wish to increase supply, if I read the Toronto Star article today correctly it says, referring to the ministry, “He has his staff working on rent stabilization plans. He intends that the provincial plan will peg permittable rent increase to an index such as the consumer price index. He is quoted, between quotations marks, as saying: “Proposals are in the works now. I don’t look forward to any controls but they may be necessary on an interim basis.” Does he deny all of that, directly attributed to him, the minister, as some kind of design in the government to establish -- welcomed here let me assure him -- some form of rent control or rent review with teeth, which amounts to about the same thing?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, what I was endeavouring to indicate to the members of the House, in the first instance, was that the writer of this article does not agree with the way it was printed; that was not his interpretation of our interview. I want to have that on the record first of all.

Second, what I have said is we are looking at all the possible alternatives. I did not at any time indicate I am preparing legislation to control rents or otherwise; I am very carefully investigating what are the best measures to take if we do not have the supply, and I don’t want to close any avenues. I have to say at this particular time the quotes the member has mentioned are out of context.

Mr. Lewis: By way of supplementary: The minister has shifted the ground -- there was a hint in the air 10 days or two weeks ago -- from a position of absolute total resistance to the prospect of rent control to an appraisal at least of some kind of rent mechanism if supply does not increase, if the federal government does not come through.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, again I say -- I have always said -- supply is the answer. I have never closed out consideration of any alternatives.

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): Yes, he has.

Mr. Martel: He ruled out any kind of control.

Mr. Lewis: We will quote it back at him, chapter and verse.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: I have always said I was open to something else which will work but I haven’t yet been able to find the alternative which will work. That’s what I am trying to find.

Mr. Lewis: One last supplementary on this: How do I reply to this telegram which I received today?

“Seniors on fixed incomes shocked, frightened. Rents up $40 to $60. Old age security quarterly increase insignificant. Hundreds elderly forced on GIS, GAINS, needing subsidized housing by 1976; 1,600 waiting now. Where can we go? What can we do?

“Helen Fowke,

“President,

“Pensioners Concerned.”

How does one respond to a telegram like that?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: I would respond to the telegram by saying the senior citizens of the Province of Ontario are the best-housed people throughout all Canada.

Mr. Lewis: That will be excellent for the 1,600. That will be fine for them.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: We have provided for the senior citizens of this particular province many units, not only through OHC but in situ. I tell the member right now --

Mr. Martel: Empty.

Mr. Lewis: They will never take him seriously.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: -- we’re going to have --

Mr. Lewis: That is a callous and silly response.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: -- further accommodation. Metropolitan Toronto has a proposal call out for 1,000 units. Maybe the leader of the NDP doesn’t recognize this but it is out. I mentioned in the House a couple of weeks ago we intend to build up to 8,000 senior citizens units across Ontario if we have the funding. There is absolutely no reason to say we are not endeavouring to accommodate those senior citizens who need accommodation. Not every senior citizens does.

Mr. Foulds: People can’t live in a housing statement.

ASBESTOS LEVELS IN RAYBESTOS-MANHATTAN PLANT

Mr. Lewis: Okay. A question, if I may, of the Minister of Labour on his statement, if I can understand it: Did I hear him say there have been eight recorded deaths at Raybestos-Manhattan in Peterborough? Do I understand that he wouldn’t have followed other workers, whom I now know have left the plant, but may have died in the interim? I want to ask if he has followed any of them?

Finally, how does he give any company in the asbestos industry a clean bill of health when there are still readings in excess of two fibres per cubic centimetre, and even the Ministry of Health has indicated that one fibre per cubic centimetre would be the threshold limit it would wish?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I am just trying to find the number of deaths. The statement we filed originally was correct.

Mr. Lewis: That was claims, not deaths: that is claims.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: I think there were nine involved, if I recall it correctly, but two were when the company was under a different name, and this is the successor to it.

Mr. Martel: That makes a big difference.

Mr. Lewis: But I think he said eight deaths from the one company.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: I am just trying to locate it in my statement. Nine claims have been allowed.

Mr. Lewis: Go ahead.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: I said:

“I am advised by the Workmen’s Compensation Board that in 28 years since the first case was reported in 1947, a total of nine claims have been allowed. In eight cases, death was attributable to asbestos and the ninth worker is receiving a permanent disability pension.”

So there were a total of nine claims, eight of them resulting in death.

Mr. Lewis: Nine claims and eight deaths.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: The last one, the most recently allowed claim, was in June, 1973.

Mr. Lewis: Okay. I want to press this, because I don’t understand the sanguine responses. If he’s got a reading anywhere in any plant of over two, how does he allow it a clean bill of health?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I think when we said a clean bill of health that indicated they had come within the requirements the Ministry of Health had laid down according to our inspection. Despite the fact that in one place at one time they might be a little bit over, we are looking at the entire picture. I am satisfied they are doing their best and that this is reasonable.

As the member knows, there is some discussion going on as to whether the two-fibres level should be lowered to something else. Discussion is presently going on between the Ministry of Health and my ministry in regard to that, but at the present time two is the figure. If we are just slightly above that in one test, that, to our minds, is not sufficient for closing the plant.

Mr. Lewis: I am not asking the minister to close the plant.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: It is continued exposure over a period of time that brings about the bad results.

Mr. Lewis: Over a period of time?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Over a period of time, yes.

Mr. Lewis: A long period of time?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: I am not going to say how long a period of time, that is medical. But if they go in and take one test at one time, as I understand it, and they find it slightly above, they are alarmed about it; they ask them to make corrections that will change it. That’s what we have done, but at the same time we don’t feel that is enough to close the firm.

Mr. Lewis: Okay.

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY

Mr. Lewis: I want to ask the minister another very specific question.

Has the Workmen’s Compensation Board yet reported to him -- as I think they should have done instantly -- that for the first time in this province’s history, there is now a claim before them, medically documented, from a woman in her late 30s who has diagnosed mesothelioma, who is the daughter of a worker at an asbestos plant in this province, and who, 20 years ago, worked for 18 months for a catering firm which delivered coffee and sandwiches to Johns-Manville during the day? On the basis of a contact so incidental, or the fact of a relationship in the family, mesothelioma has now been diagnosed and is before the board. Does the minister not understand that what is happening is what Dr. Selikoff always said would happen; that unless the levels were brought below two the incidental emersion of asbestosis and cancer would explode in the late 1970s and 1980s, even in the relatives of the families involved?

Can I ask the minister to go to the board and look at the case and draw from it his own conclusions about levels of occupational safety?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that this particular case to which the member refers has been drawn to my attention. I certainly know that they are concerned with dust going home on clothes and things of that nature. I suppose that is what’s up for decision -- whether this case to which the member refers is, in fact, the result of contact with asbestos.

Mr. Lewis: There is no other cause for mesothelioma except asbestos.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Well, it is not known whether it originated with the source from which the member is suggesting it may have -- just from entering the plant. But I would remind the member that even the case he just referred to is a case that, if it originated at all, originated some years ago. The Ministry of Health and ourselves are doing our best to ensure, within reasonable standards that we can enforce, that the present conditions are good conditions, are reasonably safe for the worker.

Mr. Lewis: I think the minister is wrong.

Mr. Martel: Probably in the minister’s elementary school days.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: The cases the member is referring to are ones that originated years ago.

Mr. Lewis: The minister is always dealing historically. Twenty years from now what will the minister say when people are dying from asbestosis?

Mr. Cassidy: He won’t be here 20 years from now.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Twenty years from now I don’t know what diseases we may be dealing with that are transmitted by contact, even in this House. Twenty years from now could show that we should have had better air in this House. Who can tell what will happen?

Mr. Lewis: Okay, then don’t take chances.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: As I say, with the best of knowledge today, we are acting, we are acting in a way we feel is reasonable and I don’t think the member can ask us to do more than that.

Mr. Lewis: No, and I don’t believe the minister is.

WORKERS’ X-RAYS

Mr. Lewis: A question of the Minister of Health: Here is a direct quote from Dr. Vingilis, a senior official of the Ministry of Health, when asked about the x-rays available for workers from Raybestos-Manhattan in Peterborough. He says, and I would like the minister to comment on it: “If a man has a disease we send a letter to the man’s doctor or the plant doctor; we avoid telling a man directly.”

Can the minister comment on that, from a senior official of his ministry?

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): First of all, Mr. Speaker, I don’t know how senior his position is because I must admit I don’t know his name.

Mr. Roy: Got a lot of guys in that ministry.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, we do, but I thought I knew all the senior officials in the ministry and I think I do.

Mr. Lewis: You may be right.

Hon. Mr. Miller: So with great respect I’d suggest he may well be involved in the process but not necessarily senior.

It has been -- and I think we have stated this a number of times -- policy to inform an employee’s physician if in fact that physician is known to us; only if the physician is not known to us do we contact the employee directly. That is a policy I believe in and I think it is one we should continue.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

COW-CALF PROGRAMME

Mr. Lewis: Yes, just one further question; I guess this has taken enough time. To the Minister of Agriculture and Food, on an unrelated topic: As the minister analyses his proposed funding stabilization scheme for cow-calf operators in the province -- and I think again specifically of those on Manitoulin -- is the minister giving positive consideration to 1974 retrospectively?

Hon. W. A. Stewart (Minister of Agriculture and Food): That is a matter that is under consideration, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lewis: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No further questions.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Huron-Bruce.

SALE OF TAINTED MEAT

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food. In view of the statement of Quebec Agriculture Minister Toupin that he had no knowledge of warnings by the Ontario government about traffic in tainted meat, could the minister indicate to the Legislature who within his ministry initiated those messages to the Quebec government and to whom were they sent within the Quebec Department of Agriculture?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I never at any time suggested that there was a contact between myself and the minister in Quebec or at government levels -- that is at cabinet level or deputy level. The contacts were made between our special investigators, the Quebec Provincial Police, and the Quebec Department of Agriculture people -- inspectors of comparable level in Quebec. They go back six years.

Mr. Gaunt: A supplementary question: Does the minister have at his command any correspondence with respect to those communications; or do the special investigators have any correspondence to back up the claims that have been made that we notified them?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I have one letter going back 10 years, to 1965 --

Mr. Roy: Will the minister table it?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I have other records of minutes kept of meetings between our special investigators with those people I have just mentioned.

Mr. Gaunt: A further supplementary: Does the minister have any communication of a more recent date in this regard; and in view of the fact that I think it’s a fair assumption, if tainted meat is going across the border into Quebec, that it is also coming the other way into Ontario, would the minister inform the House if he has uncovered any such evidence in the last few days?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, in regard to the first part of that question, yes, we have records of meetings that were held between our officials and Quebec officials in 1972. I have indications of those meetings, who attended them and where they were held. We have, I have just been informed by the Minister of Health today, seized some meat in eastern Ontario, I believe, in the last day or so --

Mr. G. Samis (Stormont): Thirteen hundred pounds, wasn’t it?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: -- that was shipped into Ontario with the Quebec department stamp on it. Now that doesn’t say the meat was tainted; it doesn’t say there is anything wrong with it. It simply says that meat inspected at the provincial level in one province cannot be sold in another province.

In the same way, if meat from one of our meat-inspected plants was to be stamped with an Ontario stamp and was to go into Quebec, it would be illegal to sell it there. That doesn’t say there is anything wrong with the meat.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Sudbury.

LAURENTIAN HOSPITAL

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Health with reference to his inquiry into the construction of Laurentian, Hospital in Sudbury: Will he include within the inquiry’s terms of reference the land acquisition for that building, particularly the activities of the chairman of the board of governors, Mr. J.-P, Lebel?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I will be pleased to consider including it, without promising that I will do so. It would seem to be pertinent.

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of Transportation and Communications has a correction, I believe, to an answer he gave earlier.

Mr. Stokes: Would the minister like to correct something?

Mr. Speaker: Does the minister want to correct an answer?

Mr. Stokes: Would he like to apologize?

BRANTFORD SOUTHERN ACCESS ROAD

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I do want to correct what may have been a bit misleading in the reply I gave to the hon. Leader of the Opposition on the question of the land in the Brantford area. I referred to the right of way as going through the Indian reserve. That is not correct. It is actually land that is Indian-owned, inside the corporate boundaries of the city of Brantford. So it is not the reserve itself that was affected by the right of way.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Ottawa East.

MEAT INSPECTION

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food. Is the minister prepared to accept the advice of the local medical officer of health in Ottawa, Dr. Douglas, who states that a change in provincial legislation would make it easier for meat inspectors to find illegal meat? He goes on to say that at present such meats as pepperoni, bologna and salami, prepared in Ontario, don’t have to carry inspection labels, which he says makes it exceedingly difficult for his inspectors to determine where those types of meat come from. Is the minister prepared to amend legislation to provide for stamping of such meats?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: That would have equal application in federally or provincially-inspected plants. To my knowledge, the meat that is prepared in such plants today would carry the Ontario stamp -- that is, on the box; not on the meat itself -- just the same as the same type of meat, if it were prepared in a federally-inspected plant, would carry the same type of federal stamp on the box.

I don’t see how you could stamp that kind of prepared raw meat. How in the world do you stump ground meat? I just don’t know how you stamp that. But when it’s in the container, the container or the box in which it’s contained is stamped; that is the way it had been done in the past. If there is a better way to do it, I would be pleased to hear about it. We will certainly look into those things.

Mr. Roy: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: I think the local medical officer of health was referring not to ground beef, but was referring, as I mentioned, to pepperoni, bologna and salami, which are wrapped, generally speaking. He goes on to state that such meats prepared in Ontario don’t have to carry an inspection label. His point is that if they had an Ontario inspection label then he wouldn’t be chasing around to determine if that meat came in from Quebec in view of the allegations that have been made about the type of product that goes into this prepared meat.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Well, I couldn’t say.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Windsor West.

HOSPITAL STAFF REDUCTION

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A question of the Minister of Health: Is the minister aware of the proposed reduction, at the end of June, of 41 dietary aid persons out of 120, fully one-third, at Victoria Hospital in London as a result of a systems analyst study by an American company, Neuse and Neuland? Is the minister not concerned about the probable deterioration of patient care as a result of a cut this large, not even to mention what it will do to labour relations? Would the minister look into it to see whether his budgetary restrictions should create this large a staff reduction at Victoria?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I think I have to leave the internal management of hospitals to the administrators of hospitals. They have the overall global budgets to work within. If in fact they think through better use of personnel they are able to do with 40 people less, more power to them.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Waterloo North.

POLICE COMMISSION MEMBERSHIP

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): A question of the Solicitor General, acting Solicitor General, Attorney General --

Mr. Roy: Superminister for justice.

Mr. Good: Superminister for justice: In view of the fact the House leader announced it the other day, and legislation has been introduced to abolish the health board in Waterloo region, turning the power over to elected officials -- which I think has a great deal of merit on the basis of accountability -- is the minister now prepared to follow the recommendations of his predecessor, who said that police commissions should be made up in such a manner that the majority of members comprises elected officials and that there be accountability to the people by police commissions, rather than having appointed ones as we now do?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Provincial Secretary for Justice): Mr. Speaker, under the Police Act it is now mandatory that a police commission be made up of the mayor of the municipality, a judge from the area and a representative appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council.

I think the member’s colleague from Downsview (Mr. Singer) brought this matter to the attention of the House some weeks ago in a question referring to the role of the county court judge on police commissions, in that federal legislation has been recently enacted which precludes county court judges from accepting payment in addition to that which they’re being offered as a county court judge. In other words, when that bill becomes effective upon royal assent or proclamation, they cannot accept payment for service on a police commission.

I indicated at that time that we would have to review, and indeed change, the Police Act this year to reflect the federal House of Commons legislation, because we would be asking county court judges to serve without the ability of offering them payment. We’re reviewing this matter right now to see who should be sitting on that commission in the place of a county court judge.

In the meantime, they are still sitting on police commissions. I would hope they would continue to serve on police commissions until such time as our legislation comes forward.

Mr. Good: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Since the minister has missed the impact of my question, is he prepared to amend the Police Act and recommend to the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) that the regional government bills be amended so that the majority of seats on police commissions are held by elected representatives of the local council, in order that there be some accountability to the people for the huge sums of money being spent in that particular service?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I am prepared to consider that alternative.

It brings up a very old question, which was debated on television some two weeks ago Monday night, on channel 5; that is the question of whether the municipality should run the police commission through elected local politicians accountable to the electorate. There are offsetting arguments to that submission.

In the debate on my estimates, the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) came up with an alternative suggestion. We’re taking a look at all of these. I cannot stand here and tell the member for Waterloo North that yes, I’m prepared to make that recommendation today.

Mr. Good: The minister will consider it?

Hon. Mr. Clement: That is one of the alternatives being considered.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary?

Mr. Roy: I have a short supplementary, Mr. Speaker, in line with this. How has the minister responded to Mayor Lorry Greenberg’s letter to him some time ago asking that he give local municipalities control over police commission appointments? He wrote a letter to the minister asking about that. Has the minister responded to him on that?

Hon. Mr. Clement: I have not personally seen the letter. I know that Mayor Greenberg wrote a letter because he was quoted as having said he had forwarded one to me. I have not yet received that letter.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Port Arthur.

SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS’ NEGOTIATIONS

Mr. Foulds: I have a question of the Minister of Education. Can the minister inform the House of the status of the negotiations with the special education teachers who work for his ministry, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Correctional Services? Can he tell us whether the commitment that he gave the House last November that an established procedure between both parties would be worked out has yet been done so?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, yes, my commitment that I gave the House that we would sit down and attempt to work out an established procedure has been carried out. Unfortunately, I have to tell the members of the House that there’s an agreement on what that established procedure should be. Members of the ministry met with those teachers yesterday for about three or four hours. They are taking the position at the present time, and they have so written to me, that they would like to be included under the bill that we have brought into the Legislature, Bill 100. I have received that letter.

My answer to the hon. member last week was that they were not included under Bill 100, and at this point in time they are not. But I’m presently considering the letter they have written to me. It’s my understanding that no negotiations will continue between the government and those teachers until we resolve that problem or in some way work out some procedures for their negotiations.

Mr. Foulds: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker, if I might: Did I understand the minister correctly that he would at least give some consideration to working out provisions similar to Bill 100, if not Bill 100, for those teachers for a negotiations procedure? Would he give that consideration?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Really, what I said, Mr. Speaker, was that I was considering their letter. Naturally in that consideration will be the consideration of various ways that we could negotiate with them to come up with the answer.

Mr. Speaker: The member for York Centre.

NORTH PICKERING DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Deacon: I have a question of the Minister of Housing. Will the minister observe the rules of the Canadian Bill of Rights in according to all former owners in North Pickering the same relief which His Honour Judge Kelly wanted Mr. Grant Burkholder in his judgement of May 21?

Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I’m not aware of the particular judgement the member is referring to.

Mr. Deacon: Maybe I could explain that. Judge Kelly ruled that in his judgement it constitutes a hardship to take possession of an owner’s land and house before the owner has an opportunity to review the province’s plans of development, in order that the owner can determine whether or not the location of the house is compatible with the province’s plans and the owner, therefore, decide whether he wishes to repurchase the property.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, we have indicated to the owners in North Pickering the terms on which they may repurchase or lease a particular home or a farm if they want to. Every person there has been notified some months ago, to my knowledge. I think negotiations are going on quite satisfactorily.

Mr. Deacon: As a supplementary, Mr. Speaker, there is a problem here, and I’m asking on behalf of the owner. In view of the fact that Judge Kelly feels an owner should have the right to see just whether or not the location in which a house is now situated is compatible with the long-term plans of development, will the minister institute that same sort of fair rule for all owners in North Pickering?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I’ll take it under consideration. I’ll have to check with my legal staff to interpret whether or not the member is correct.

Mr. Yakabuski: Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Speaker: Is this a question?

Mr. Yakabuski: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: We’ll get to you in just a moment then. The member for Sandwich-Riverside first of all.

PENICILLIN IN MILK

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): A question of the Minister of Agriculture about penicillin in milk: How much milk was destroyed in Ontario last year because of penicillin contamination?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I don’t have that figure, Mr. Speaker. I’ll check it out and provide it.

Mr. Burr: Would the minister tell us also what he is doing to correct this, when he gets the figure?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I can give that answer. If penicillin or any other inhibitor is found in milk, the milk is destroyed. It is not used for industrial milk or anything else.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Renfrew South.

HELICOPTER LANDING SAFETY

Mr. Yakabuski: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Transportation and Communications.

Mr. Roy: It wouldn’t happen to be about a helicopter, would it?

Mr. Yakabuski: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if it is safe to land a huge super Huey helicopter on the lush farmlands of Brant county?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I sincerely hope so. The Prime Minister of Canada is going to land in one of those at an old-fashioned political picnic. Apparently, there are going to be three of them, according to the Ottawa Citizen, at a cost of about $20,000 to the taxpayer, so I sure hope it’s safe.

Mr. L. A. Braithwaite (Etobicoke): He just happened to have the figure?

Mr. Ferrier: That’s integrity.

Mr. Lewis: Well, well, well.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Martel: That’s called integrity.

Mr. Roy: My leader did a good job. He just woke them up.

Mr. Ruston: Order.

Mr. Lewis: Like dental care -- wait until tomorrow and he’ll dissociate himself.

Mr. Martel: It’s called integrity.

Mr. Lewis: It certainly was integrity in the Liberal Party.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please, we are just about out of time. The member for Welland South.

CANRON LTD. EMPLOYEES UNION REPRESENTATION

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): A question of the Minister of Labour, if I can get his attention.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please; we can’t hear the question.

Mr. Haggerty: Is the minister aware of the labour dispute between the Canadian Workers’ Union and the American Association of iron workers for certification rights to represent employees of Canron? Can the minister assure the Legislature there is no discrimination present under the labour laws of Ontario in the dismissal of three employees for union activities?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I don’t know about the last reference. I would hope there was no discrimination in connection with it.

As far as that application is concerned, it’s a case that the ballot box has been sealed and someone has questioned before the Labour Relations Board the genuineness of one of the applicants, the so-called union involved. That is presently before the Labour Relations Board; the matter of certain evidence bringing before the board has been questioned. The board’s recognition of some of the witnesses has been appealed to the divisional court and now to the Court of Appeal. Really, the whole matter is now before the courts and I’m not prepared to comment on it further than I have to.

Mr. Haggerty: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker, to the minister: I think he has explained why there is a delay in the decision of the hearing before the Labour Relations Board, but why cannot the ballots be counted now? That would tell him who is going to represent the people, the employees.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: The matter questioned is whether or not one of the parties involved is a genuine union. As I say, I’m not prepared to comment on that until the Labour Relations Board has made its decision. There are other facets of the matter which are presently before the courts.

Mr. Roy: One short supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: A short question and a short answer.

Mr. Roy: Would the Minister of Labour speak with his colleague, the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Snow), and ask him what it is in his priorities that would have stopped these workers from delivering a press release to the press gallery when the security staff appears to allow a submachine-gun in the House? Where are his priorities? Where is his system of justice for these people?

An hon. member: And loaded, yet.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Speaker, I don’t think that’s a supplementary in any way.

Mr. Speaker: I didn’t follow that. The oral question period has expired.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, following the question from my hon. friend, perhaps you could describe to the House the instructions given to the security guards which would permit a member to bring a submachine-gun in here, together with ammunition, and would not permit a representative of a union to deliver a press release to the press gallery? What kind of instructions are they given?

Mr. Speaker: I think I can answer both those points. No. 1, I’m having a meeting in my office as soon as I get out of here about that very incident, the first incident. The other incident was brought to my attention by the member of the press gallery and that has been clarified as well.

Mr. Lewis: What does that mean?

Mr. Speaker: In case the member is not aware of what it was, there were certain people outside who wished to deliver a press release to the press gallery, and they were apparently prevented from doing so. The proper instructions have now been issued. Someone did that under a misapprehension. In other words, I mean their action was wrong.

Mr. Lewis: You are saying, Mr. Speaker, that you have indicated to the security staff that they are to allow such press releases --

Mr. Speaker: I see no reason why not.

Mr. Lewis: -- so that the public is not dealt with differently from the way individual members of the Legislature are dealt with?

Mr. Speaker: I’m not quite sure what you mean.

Mr. Lewis: I think the point is well made that --

Mr. Speaker: No, I issued instructions that there was nothing wrong with a person issuing a press release to the press gallery, in so many words.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, but did you also speak to your security staff about the way in which they automatically and gratuitously deal with the public who may have something to say to members of the House and the gallery, but show clear deference to members of the House -- including one in my party -- for whatever purposes we may pursue?

Mr. Speaker: I think that other one was a special incident --

Mr. Lewis: A Saturday night special.

Mr. Speaker: -- which will be dealt with very shortly. I’ll recognize the member for --

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.

Mr. Speaker: Just a moment please; may we finish what we were doing? I’ll recognize, first of all, the member for Algoma-Manitoulin.

Mr. J. Lane (Algoma-Manitoulin): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to welcome to the House today 51 grade 8 students from St. Joseph’s School in Espanola, under the direction of Mr. John Beaudry, along with seven adults. They are in the east gallery, and I would ask all the members to welcome them to the House at this time.

Mr. Gaunt: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Point of order.

Mr. Lewis: The members must all know Winston Baker up there. Watch for him this weekend.

SALE OF TAINTED MEAT

Mr. Gaunt: Because of the importance of the matter, Mr. Speaker, I am wondering whether the Minister of Agriculture and Food is in a position to table the correspondence he has with respect to the meat problem, indicating the meetings between the Quebec and Ontario officials and dates and places?

Mr. Speaker: I fail to see where that is a point of order. There is nothing out of order in this. Does the hon. minister have a statement to make?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I don’t think that’s a prudent thing to do during the present stage of the investigation. We have relayed to the minister’s office in Quebec all of the details, names, places and all the rest of it. He has that information.

I rise, Mr. Speaker, if I may, on a point of privilege, I suppose, just to correct something that appeared in today’s Toronto Star. I thought maybe it might have been raised in the question period. It wasn’t. I just want to correct it. The article is headed: “Stewart Can’t Find Former Inspector.” This refers to Mr. Koegler.

Mr. Koegler was visited yesterday by Constable Way and special investigator Lutes of our office. He refers to having been visited by two officers of the Ontario Provincial Police. One of them, of course, was our officer and he showed him his certificate. Apparently, he didn’t recognize that it was different to the other one. But he was found yesterday. In a two-hour interview, he could provide absolutely no positive evidence, no information whatever on which either our special investigators could proceed or the OPP could lay a charge. I just wanted that cleared up, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Mr. D. W. Ewen from the standing private bills committee presented the committee’s report which was read as follows and adopted:

Your committee recommends that the standing procedural affairs committee consider whether or not the proposed amendment by the city of Toronto to Bill Pr33, An Act respecting the City of Toronto, falls within the scope of the published notice which was reported by the procedural affairs committee.

Mr. Speaker: Motions.

Introduction of bills.

Orders of the day.

MINISTRY OF COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Parrott, on behalf of Hon. Mr. Auld, moves second reading of Bill 78, An Act to amend the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Act, 1971.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Nickel Belt.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Thank you, Mr. Speaker, this bill enshrines in legislation the right of the Ministry of Colleges and Universities to pay the interest on a loan until the government decides that the students should start to repay it. There is nothing wrong with that. I assume that has been done for some time under regulations and it is now being put into the bill. What I suspect, however, is that there is more to this bill than one sees on the surface; that it is, in reality, the tip of an iceberg.

I suspect this for a very real reason -- and it bothers me a great deal -- that is, that there is a trend in the Province of Ontario now for students to pay for an ever-increasing amount of their post-secondary education and that there is a very obvious drift from grants to loans for post-secondary students.

We know, for example, that since 1969, the portion of a post-secondary education that is paid by students, when one compares grants with loans, has risen from 50 per cent to about 60 per cent, which means, of course, that more students are getting loans and the grant part is becoming smaller. I realize that’s partly caused by the rise in the ceiling of loans from $600 to $800. I realize as well that this is going to be even more dramatic in the years to come, with what is known as the Canada Student Loans option under the legislation now, and we in this party are opposed to the students paying an ever-increasing portion of their post-secondary education.

Really, the issue in this bill is not so much the date at which students start to pay back the loan, or how long the Ministry of Colleges and Universities pays the interest on the loan until the student starts to pay it back, but rather who gets the loan in the first place -- who is even eligible for a loan and who is eligible to have the interest paid on the loan until they start to pay it back -- because, plainly and simply, the bill discriminates against part-time students. We know as well that a large portion of part-time students are women, so once again who have discrimination against women who attempt to obtain a post-secondary education.

It is rather sad that at a time when almost everyone concerned with education is talking about it being a life-long process, this government refuses to move in any meaningful kind of way to make it easier for people to continue their post-secondary education throughout their working lives. That is wrong.

We know as well that it doesn’t matter how big they make a loan, it doesn’t matter how many people get loans, it’s still an indisputable fact that some people will graduate from our post-secondary institutions with a debt, while others will not graduate with a debt, and the simple reason for that, of course, is that some people can afford to put their children through a post-secondary institution and absorb the costs that are not met by a grant and others can’t. It’s as simple as that.

I know that even abolishing tuition fees would not mean that we would have equal accessibility, but it would be a move in the right direction and, of course, would make the whole question of loans into a different kind of debate entirely. Then we would really be talking not about the cost of tuition fees but about the cost of maintaining someone at a post-secondary institution, and that’s where the debate should be. We in this party understand very clearly that one does not achieve --

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Equity.

Mr. Laughren: -- equity, that is the word -- one does not achieve equity by starting at the post-secondary level. We realize, Mr. Speaker, that it must start much earlier in someone’s life if we are going to have true equal accessibility to a post-secondary education. But we know as well that this government is not moving in that direction either. That’s why we say to this government, and particularly to this ministry, that the whole question of student loans and grants is not being dealt with in an equitable way by this ministry because of the people that it discriminates against.

There is no doubt that as the years go by, more and more students in this province, as they see tuition fees rising, as they see the loan ceiling being raised, as they see themselves being forced -- not forced but coerced -- into taking a loan rather than a grant because of the total amount of money that is available under the Canada Student Loans Plan, which is now an option under OSAP, more and more students will say, “I just can’t afford to do that.” It will intimidate more and more families who might otherwise encourage the high school graduates in the home to go on to a post-secondary education.

We think that is wrong. Just as 50 years ago there was a debate over whether or not there should be free secondary school education, we say that now that’s what the debate should be concerning post-secondary education. In an industrialized society such as we have here a post-secondary education really is a requirement for those who want to be able to compete in this kind of society. Despite a bill like this which puts into legislation the fact that interest will be paid by the government until repayments are made by the students, it is not really dealing with the problem at all. All they are doing in this legislation is making sure in the years to come, as more and more students take out a loan rather than have a grant, that the ministry will have an increasing number of dollars to pay out on the payment of interest on these loans. I suspect that is the real reason why this bill was introduced at this time.

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

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that the government has moved, through this Act and through previous actions, as a result of the report of the Provincial Auditor, to the position where student loans are being handled through the chartered banks and there is a little more ability to control them, because a lot of the conscientious ones formerly were borrowing money and paying it back and others were just disappearing. As we saw before, there are a lot of loans that were never recovered, but under this system we certainly shall recover them.

Doing the time of the estimates I was also interested to look into the matter of the percentage of the cost of education that is now borne -- and certainly tuition fees -- by the province compared to what is borne by those who are paying the tuition. The percentage of the cost of operation of the university and college that is borne by the province and that borne by the student has changed dramatically in the last 25 to 30 years to where it has now dropped to about 15 per cent from around 50 per cent. As the previous speaker pointed out, it is still quite a load on legitimate students, to get themselves through university. It is gratifying to note that the average hourly wage earned by people today compared to 25 years ago has multiplied a good deal more than the actual cost of tuition has multiplied. The major portion of student loans is required not for the tuition but for living expenses and for those that are having to move to another community or live in a community other than their own home in order to be able to attend the post-secondary institution.

I would hope that there will be a means whereby we can ensure, though well scrutinized loans and whatever setup we have to control this and assist the banks -- almost through a board of review of loans -- that those who are part-time students and need help to come back into this system to get some special training are indeed in a position to get some assistance under this system. I don’t think it’s right for us to feel we are making post-secondary education really available to everyone who can benefit until we do make assistance like this available to the part-time student.

I would think that maybe one of the things that the ministry could think of adding to this is an appeal body so that when students can’t get loans under normal circumstances they can appeal to a student group, primarily students from the college concerned, that could help review the situation and determine whether or not that student has a legitimate need and whether or not the province should, in effect, subsidize and guarantee that loan.

On the whole, the province is moving in the right direction with this Act, in taking care of these interest payments and ensuring that the borrowing rate is at a prime rate; that certainly is justified by the government’s guarantee.

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

Mr. H. C. Parrott (Oxford): Mr. Speaker, I think there might have been one area on which the two previous speakers were not as clear as they might have been. Perhaps I should have made this statement to open the debate. This bill, as far as I am concerned -- and, I think, the ministry -- is to complement the Canada Student Loans Act and the Ontario Student Assistance Plan. The two complaints they had -- that it did not help the pact-time students as much as they would like -- are contrary to the intent of this bill. It is primarily for part-time student assistance.

The Canada Student Loans Act falls short in this regard and loans made under these provisos are for part-time students; for students in courses which do not qualify for Canada Student Loans or OSAP because they are too short; or, in the third instance, for students who do not have grade 12 education and, therefore, under the previous terms of CSL and OSAP, fail to qualify.

I think what we’re trying to do in this bill is to help those disadvantaged people the members drew attention to. We share their concern in this regard and I think it will do a great deal to help those students.

I won’t respond in great detail to the early remarks of the member for Nickel Belt because I think, in fairness, that was done to a fair degree in the estimates. I could repeat that at this time but I think it would not serve a useful purpose. I appreciate the member should choose to put those remarks on the record. I think the debates on our ministry’s estimates will record the minister’s answers to those same questions, which were asked during that time, so I shall not reply in detail at this time.

Again, I would like to emphasize the intent of this bill is to help those disadvantaged people whom we recognize were not under the umbrella of the Canada Student Loans Act, and it will be of great benefit to part-time students. I personally think it’s a step in the right direction and a rather major one.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, would the parliamentary assistant permit a question, rather than going into committee?

Mr. Parrott: Yes.

Mr. Speaker: He indicates he will.

Mr. Laughren: When will the part-time students who obtain the loan in any one semester have to start paying back that loan?

Mr. Parrott: That’s covered in the section dealing with regulations. We recognize that’s a very difficult question to answer except in specifics for a given student. We will establish the regulations which will indicate when he must start repayment of that loan.

One of the problems the member for York Centre mentioned is those who drop out of the education programme. We’re not sure when that student has finished and we’ll have to give almost individual consideration, if you will, of when the loan is to be repaid. We hope to draw those regulations to guide the students but we’re prepared to accept that might be quite a different consideration from that under OSAP, where it’s much easier to judge when the student has finished his course.

Therefore, when we publish our regulations, we will detail those considerations and it will depend entirely upon the student’s own progress. It will vary from one student to the other. If he decides to come back into the system his payment will be extended beyond that. We want to encourage the part-time student.

Mr. Laughren: Why does the minister not put it into the bill that if a student misses two or more semesters in which courses are offered in the programme that student is undertaking, repayment starts? I don’t trust leaving something like this to regulations.

Mr. Parrots: On the part-time students, things are so difficult to lay down that I think, as a matter of fact, the member would agree with me that there is a fair departure from the norm in listing so many things in the bill that will be covered by regulations.

I think that’s perhaps -- I wouldn’t say the first time, I am not that much of an expert in legislation, but certainly relative to other bills there is far greater indication of what we are going to cover in our regulations in this bill than previously and --

Mr. Laughren: As long as the government leaves them in the regulations, it doesn’t matter.

Mr. Parrott: No, but I think we have indicated to the member the kinds of things that will be required. The point that the member has raised is indeed one of those things that will be prescribed in the regulations.

Mr. Speaker: The motion is for second reading of Bill 78. Shall the motion carry?

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: Shall this bill be ordered for third reading?

Agreed.

The following bill was given third reading upon motion:

Bill 78, An Act to amend the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Act, 1971.

HORTICULTURAL SOCIETIES AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Stewart moves second reading of Bill 88, An Act to amend the Horticultural Societies Act.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Huron-Bruce.

Mr. Gaunt: Mr. Speaker, my comments on this bill are going to be very brief. We support the bill. It provides for a number of things which we consider to be quite worthwhile and we lend our support to it.

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

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I have learned more about horticultural societies in the last few minutes than I think I knew before.

This bill, if I may say it to the Minister of Agriculture and Food, seems to me to be neither fish nor fowl. I would be interested in some comments from him on what the government now sees as the role of horticultural societies, because that is what is involved right here.

I would imagine that the Horticultural Societies Act probably has an honourable and rather hoary history in the Ontario statutes going back to the 19th century. This is one of those bodies of legislation which is an anachronism -- whose time may have come full circle, and therefore may not now be a desirable object of public expenditure.

It struck me, looking through the bill and thinking about it, why, for example, should Ontario subsidize horticultural societies and not, say, subsidize associations of cat lovers or of breeding associations for dogs, or chess clubs or any other kinds of groups like that. Isn’t it a bit unusual that the government picks out horticultural societies?

Now the reason that that is done, of course, is partly because it has been done for a long time and it’s difficult for governments to stop doing things that they have traditionally done. However, it is also the case that societies have a number of public purposes. In the original list of purposes from the 1970 consolidation of the Act, they are there to encourage “the improvement of home and public grounds” and to interest “juveniles” -- I am not sure whether the government means young people by that, or whether it means delinquent young people -- “and others in the study of horticulture” by “holding exhibitions and awarding premiums for the production of vegetables, plants, flowers, fruits, trees and shrubs;” and by distributing “seeds, plants, bulbs, flowers, trees and shrubs in ways calculated to create an interest in horticulture ... ”

Now the problem is that many of those purposes would be very similar to the purposes of a society that existed, say, for the furtherance of Shetland ponies or of Siamese cats or of other things which are not subsidized by the government. I have to say that as far as the large urban centres are concerned, that the horticultural societies don’t, I would suggest, have a great amount of impact these days.

They have a show, the Royal Winter Fair, here in Toronto every year which is quite spectacular and lots of fun to go down and see, and they have similar kinds of shows in the exhibition grounds in Ottawa and in other places across the province. Those shows are held once a year, and one rather suspects that the people who come out to them are people who already have an interest in horticulture and are avid horticulturists themselves, and that they are quite capable of sustaining that interest without an extra dollar or two per member to be paid from the provincial government.

On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, when we look at the revised set of purposes, we realize that horticultural societies could in fact have quite an impact as voluntary groups in improving the urban environment and encouraging private individuals and, I suppose, companies and stores and the like, to make the streets more interesting places. That is in line, of course, with an interest in horticulture which, as the minister must know, is upon us almost like the plague these days

I can recall travelling through Germany in the 1950s and being astonished by the number of plants that were there, and I recall buying a house in this country 10 years ago and being astonished by the number of plants that there were in the house, and thinking, well, that’s something that the former owner, who had been there for 40 years, had gotten into in her youth and never quite got out of. Now I find that young people, in particular young adults, are buying plants like crazy. The most active emporiums you would find in this city are the green plant shops, and there is obviously a tremendous interest in horticulture, both indoors and outdoors.

So the question I raise when I say that this is neither fish nor fowl, is whether as far as our urban areas are concerned, this is a very meaningful kind of undertaking or support as far as the government is concerned. Toronto now, if we could take an example in the Legislature, is installing large planters on both sides of Wellesley St., between Yonge St. and Jarvis, I think, and it is investing thousands and thousands of dollars in improving the environment of that street with horticultural purchases.

The people in my city, up in Ottawa, have taken a tremendous interest in the garden plots which are now being offered to them for a few dollars a year by the National Capital Commission. If the government wished to show more of an interest in horticulture than this bill displays, then it would seem to me that there shall be a good deal more assistance available to horticultural societies or to municipalities, perhaps on a categorical basis, to support specific programmes that would increase public interest in horticulture and increase public access to the practice of horticulture.

What if people in Brantford wanted to use their society in order to get garden plots going, but found that they needed $8,000 or $10,000 in order to bring in an adequate water supply to the garden plots and another few hundred dollars to pay for the initial rototilling or ploughing of the land to make it suitable for gardening? Should there possibly be some encouragement from the province for a period of two or three years until that’s well established and could be passed back to the municipal level?

Mr. Speaker: I would draw to the hon. member’s attention that the Chair feels that he is varying from the principle of the bill. Would you kindly return to the actual principle?

Mr. Cassidy: I don’t think so, Mr. Speaker, I don’t want to clash with the Chair, but it says here that clause (b) is repealed and the following is substituted therefor -- as a purpose of the societies:

“(b) by encouraging the improvement of private and public grounds, including highways and streets, by the planting of trees, shrubs and flowers, and by otherwise promoting outdoor art, public beautification, balcony gardening, therapeutic use of horticulture, community gardens and plot gardening.”

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): He has been fairly circumspect in his comments in view of that.

Mr. Cassidy: There is room, Mr. Speaker, for an hour-and-a-half disposition in the House.

Mr. MacDonald: On outdoor art, shall we have abstracts or the moderns?

Mr. Cassidy: It’s an interesting area of legislation, and that’s the way in which I am engaging the minister on this. I am just suggesting that possibly, if he wanted to get into it at all, instead of simply updating an anachronistic piece of legislation, he might have looked seriously into that kind of public --

An hon. member: The minister is an anachronism.

Mr. Cassidy: I see the minister is happy with the bill for the first time as well, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. MacDonald: New perceptions.

Mr. Cassidy: That restatement of purpose is a very interesting one because it does cover most of the bases. I suppose one might argue it doesn’t refer to indoor gardening, which has become just as big an activity in many places as outdoor gardening. That was possibly an omission on the part of the ministry.

As a consequence we are going to support the bill. We wish the horticultural societies luck in their endeavours and I would put on the record, for the minister and his officials to consider, that there is tremendous interest. It is now growing in particular in urban areas and those are the areas where the horticultural societies tend to have the least impact.

As the minister knows, the horticultural society in a police village -- if there are any left -- or in a small municipality, can have a large impact. If a garden show is held in the rectory garden or in some other place of gathering in a village or small town, that is the talk of the town for the whole month.

In Toronto, on the other hand, where the people have less and less green space of their own, there is a different kind of problem. It needs to be approached differently. I think that to encourage an interest in horticulture is valuable but this on its own is probably not enough for the large urban areas.

Mr. Speaker: The member for York Centre.

Mr. MacDonald: South.

Mr. Speaker: My apologies; South.

Mr. MacDonald: I was out of the House, unfortunately, when the bill first came before us, but I understand the minister did not make any initial statement. I therefore ask him, when he replies, if he will give it --

Hon. W. A. Stewart (Minister of Agriculture and Food): Yes, I did.

Mr. MacDonald: I am sorry; I was misinformed.

I was curious to know what is really the purpose of this bill. Is it merely an updating of the legislation, because it is a complete rewriting rather than a series of amendments? Again I apologize if the minister has already spoken to that.

The other point I wanted to make in general terms with regard to this and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, is that I sometimes wonder whether the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, in some respects, isn’t one ministry where long-term commitments for the expenditure of money don’t get examined with the same degree of vigour as they perhaps do elsewhere.

This government, indeed any government, is always preoccupied with the problem of priorities -- new priorities -- and, therefore, examining past expenditures. I remember a few years ago -- if you will permit a 30-second digression, Mr. Speaker -- being rather intrigued to discover that one of the grants made by this ministry was for $500 to some particular organization or society in the agricultural field. When I inquired, I discovered the whole thing was used to buy a box at the Royal Winter Fair. It was some hundreds of dollars -- not a great deal of money -- and their friends were invited to come to this box for the Royal Winter Fair.

I am not certain, if I may use that as an illustration, that that’s the kind of thing for which the government should continue to make grants. I suspect it may have started in the year 1908 or maybe in the year 1888 and it has gone on every year since.

It is in that context that I wonder whether the government has come up with any firm conclusions as to whether the money spent in the horticultural societies is wholly justified. Or whether or not, to pick up a comment of my colleague the member for Ottawa Centre, we are perhaps not getting the kind of orientation which will capture the great and growing interest of the majority of people in the Province of Ontario who happen to live in the cities; namely, the new urban interest in horticulture rather than the rural interest which is really a peripheral concern of the agricultural industry.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): I have one comment. As my colleague from Ottawa Centre said, there has been quite a tremendous resurgence, I suppose, of interest in horticultural societies. This has gone on in many of the small northern communities where there’s no real agricultural base. They are taking an interest in beautifying their own homes and their own towns. We have one individual who is retired, and who is a sort of a regional or district representative, who has been going around trying to instill some kind of interest in people for the sole purpose of beautifying northern communities. One of the things he felt was an inhibiting factor in many small communities, particularly in the north, was the fact that unless you had a minimum of 50 people in a society, you couldn’t qualify for the grants. Now, if section 4(2) means what I think it means, it will be a welcome amendment to the existing Act. It reads:

“The number of persons signing the agreement shall be, in the case of a society in a territorial district or provisional county at least 25, and elsewhere in Ontario at least 50.”

If I am right, I think it used to be 50 right across the province, and that was almost impossible to achieve in many small northern communities. If this is reduced to 25 and does qualify them for per capita grants in the same way as anybody else in the province, it’s welcome news and I want to commend the minister for it. If he will just confirm that for me, I’d appreciate it very much.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. minister.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the indication of support from the members opposite.

With regard to the comments of the member for Ottawa Centre, perhaps the bill should go further. I suppose any bill that is brought forward could always go further. We thought we had covered most of the things in item 6(b).

Certainly there is a tremendous interest in gardening today, and of course this bill does cover gardening. The use of garden plots by urbanites outside the city limits is a tremendous thing -- or even within the city limits where there is vacant land available. We see them all over Ontario; there is great enthusiasm for them.

I have talked to several of the garden centre outlets, where tomato plants, cabbage plants, flower plants and all these kinds of things are available, and they tell me that the demand this year has been greater than ever before. They can never remember a year like it.

Of course, I suppose some of it is associated with the fact that people are growing their own vegetables. Certainly it is a delightful pastime, and nothing tastes quite so wonderful as a vegetable brought right in out of your own garden and used; nothing can beat freshness. I suppose all of those things really have added up to the enthusiasm we see today.

The member for York South, I think, raises some justifiable questions in asking whether the money spent here is justifiable. We think it is. I suppose it’s a matter of opinion. The horticultural societies, in our opinion, have been a great catalyst to bring together people from all segments of the community; all levels of the community come together with a common bond, a common interest. They have really performed wonders in some of the communities that don’t have the same degree of assessment backup or organizational administration as some of the large urban communities may have to do the type of beautification we see down here on University Ave., which is absolutely magnificent. That display of tulips we all looked at as we walked University Ave. this spring was absolutely fantastic, just a scene of beauty.

When one sees things of a similar nature happening in other parts of the city, one has to say: “Wouldn’t it be great if we had more of that scattered throughout the Province of Ontario?” And really, that is what the horticultural societies have done. Frankly, I know of no group of people who, voluntarily and without any recompense to themselves, have contributed so much to the beauty of the Province of Ontario as the horticultural societies.

I was pleased to hear the comments from the member for Thunder Bay. Yes, the membership requirement has been reduced. Because of the interest we have found, we had to appoint a special man up there just to look after horticultural societies on a part-time basis, because it was too far removed from our head office to supply the kind of service they were demanding. To have to sign up 50 members in a smaller community where there is real enthusiasm, just seemed to me to be out of the question. So we just cut it in two. It’s 25 now. I think that will be a more realistic figure; I think it should work all right.

Mr. Stokes: Most welcome.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I can tell the member for York South that with the Chairman of Management Board (Mr. Winkler) here in his seat, every dollar is scrutinized very carefully, believe me, insofar as our ministry is concerned, and I am sure that applies to others, to justify the continuance of grants. There have been some withdrawn in the past; I am still answering for the withdrawal of some of those grants in other areas. This is one, however, that I think was long overdue, quite frankly, Mr. Speaker.

We have had a number of meetings with the horticultural societies’ executive, for the benefit of my friend from York South, I would explain that the purpose of the bill is actually to double the grants and to make it easier for some societies to form in the north. It provides a little bit of help in setting sip administration and the method by which they go about electing their executive and making their returns. It has made it a little more flexible and easier to work with in every respect.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the endorsement of the members of the House on this bill. I think it’s a major step forward in providing people in the province with the opportunity to make the province even more beautiful.

Mr. Cassidy: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker, seldom has it been my good fortune to be rewarded so directly for a speech in the Legislature. This note was sent to me after I spoke.

Mr. Speaker: The motion is for second reading of Bill 88. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: Shall this bill be ordered for third reading?

Agreed.

The following bill was given third reading upon motion:

Bill 88, An Act to amend the Horticultural Societies Act.

MUNICIPAL TAX ASSISTANCE AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Beckett, on behalf of Hon. Mr. McKeough, moves second reading of Bill 83, An Act to amend the Municipal Tax Assistance Act.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Waterloo North.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): There are about four or five principles in this bill dealing with amendments to the Municipal Tax Assistance Act. As you are aware, Mr. Speaker, this is the bill which gives the province authority to pay grants in lieu of taxes to the municipalities for land held by the Crown in the right of Ontario in the various respective municipalities. Since I have been in the Legislature over the past number of years, there has been a slow movement by government in trying to pay this grant in lieu of taxes on more and more property held by the Crown and also to put money in the hands of a municipality in other ways, such as in areas where there are universities, detention centres and hospital training schools, in order to give those municipalities some assistance in lieu of paying taxes.

This bill does not allow the municipality to levy a tax rate, but the province does pay the general rate to that municipality. I think it must be made clear that while they pay the full levy for the general rate in lieu of taxes, there are no educational taxes paid by the province on land held by the Crown in the right of the Province of Ontario.

The first matter dealt with here is the fact that since the Assessment Act now requires that all properties be assessed in the Province of Ontario, those held by the Crown as well as private property, it is no longer necessary for the province to go through the procedures as spelled out, I think in subsections 1 to 5 of section 4 of the Act. Those sections dealing with the procedure for valuation of Crown properties are now deleted because the province does in fact assess these properties through the assessment department. The deletions are under section 3. The exemptions thrown under section 6 have been somewhat narrowed over the years in that the Parks Assistance Act has taken over payments under provincial parks and wilderness areas. Universities now make payments to the municipalities, $50 for each student, as do some other institutions. But this bill further amends that exemption section and allows the province to pay grants for properties held by both the Ministry of Housing and the Ontario Land Corp.

Now, my understanding is that the amount of money involved is approximately $150,000 that the Ministry of Housing will be paying to the various municipalities, and about an additional $30,000 by the Ontario Land Corp. as the general portion of the tax that would normally be levied on that land.

There is another matter which it is hoped will be cleared up by these amendments. The municipalities have always received local improvement payments from Crown property. I understand there was a recent court decision regarding a hospital very close to Queen’s Park here. The judge allowed that the surcharge for sewer charges on the water rates was considered a tax, and since the hospital is an exempt property, the sewage charge could not be paid by the hospital or the province to that municipality. Well this corrects that situation and allows that the sewer and water charges may now be paid on exempt property and would not be considered a tax as had been set forth in that court decision.

The first of the last two matters deals with the ambiguity in the amendments, which we put through the Municipal Act very recently, as to whether or not the telephone company run by the Ontario Northland Railway was required to pay the new schedule of tax. That bill, in section 304(a) of the Municipal Act says, “any telephone or telegraph company doing business in Ontario.” I suppose the fact that this telephone branch is a subsidiary of the Ontario Northland Railway did make a certain amount of ambiguity. We certainly go along with this idea that they should pay their share of taxes to the municipalities in which they are doing business, even though it is a subsidiary of the Ontario Northland Railway.

The last section simply allows the subsidies branch of the Ministry of Treasury, Economics and Intergovernmental Affairs to make payments for the various ministries within the province. To simplify the matter provision is made for this. I believe the Minister of Housing wants to continue to make his own payments, for one reason or another, so the subsidies branch will not be making payments for that particular branch. We would approve of all of these amendments, Mr. Speaker.

In closing, I would like the parliamentary assistant to thank the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) for forwarding to me, with his opening statements, his remarks when he took this bill to cabinet on March 17, 1975. I don’t know if that was by intention or not, but if this became a general practice in this Legislature I’m sure we could have a more meaningful and more intelligent discussion of the bills that are brought before the Legislature.

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

Mr. Cassidy: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would point out in reference to the previous debate that the Central Experiment Farm is in my riding and I think is the most valuable piece of farmland, probably, in the country.

I just want to comment briefly on the bill, Mr. Speaker. The various sections of it are not controversial, and we don’t particularly disagree with them. However, what we do disagree with is the fact that the opportunity for amendments through the bill was not used to deal fairly with those municipalities which have a large amount of provincial property within their boundaries. There has been a kind of piecemeal programme of tax reform as regards payments in lieu of taxes by the provincial government on its agencies and its institutions. I would suggest that is not adequate and that something more meaningful should have been done.

Two things I would bring to the attention of the parliamentary assistant to the minister, Mr. Speaker. The first is that the Act perpetuates the language which says that an agency or the Grown may pay to a municipality grants in lieu of municipal taxes and there is no obligation. The fact that this is the senior level of government and that the municipalities do not have the right to tax provincial property is not disturbed if the word “shall” is substituted for “may”. If the government of the day decided, in its wisdom, that it no longer wished to pay grants in lieu, then it could simply come in and amend the bill once more. But it seems to me the municipalities are entitled to be given assurance in legislation that these payments in lieu of taxes on provincial property will be paid, just as they expect any other property owner within their borders to pay taxes on an annual basis.

The second thing is that the only exemption from these grants in lieu that is deleted in this bill is the exemption that had applied to land which was used for the purposes of a housing project. Presumably this applied to holdings of the Ontario Housing Corp., for example.

We don’t disagree with that one either. We think it is reasonable that if the province is holding land over the short or long term for the purposes of housing, the municipalities should not be made to suffer because that holding happened to be in public hands rather than in private hands. But the fact that amendment is here, Mr. Speaker, suggests that subsection 6 of section 3, the exemption section, was examined and that the government deliberately decided it would go no further than to allow the payment of grants in lieu of taxes on lands held for housing. It therefore continued the exemption from tax, or grants in lieu of tax, which now applies to unpatented land, public lands in a wilderness area, provincial property use for park purposes, including the buildings and the parks, hospitals, penal institutions, reform institutions, educational institutions, museums, libraries, highways, correctional institutions, cemeteries, institutional farms, weigh scales and inspection stations, fish hatcheries, provincial forests and any other provincial property for which, in the opinion of the minister in charge of municipal affairs, municipal services are not available.

That’s a very long list of exemptions, Mr. Speaker. In other bills there is now the payment of say $50 a student for registered students at a university or postsecondary college, and I believe there is now a certain similar payment for inmates in a correctional institution. This bill also provides for the first time that local improvement charges may be levied against provincial property and that those charges may be paid by the Crown if it wants to do so. Once again, there is no guarantee.

We would suggest that educational property, universities and colleges, should certainly be valued on the same basis as other commercial or institutional properties. In the city of Kingston, which I think is the most hard hit, which happens to be in eastern Ontario and which has traditionally been ignored by the government, they have everything. They have not only a large federal presence in such institutions as the Royal Military College, but they have Queen’s University, they have McArthur, they have St. Lawrence College, a community college, and they have God knows how many jails, prisons, reformatories, and other such type of correctional institutions. As a consequence, if I recall correctly, the Kingston people estimated they have a loss on an annual basis, of something more than $2 million in tax revenues or in revenues in lieu of taxes from the provincial government. Those funds have to come from other sources, Mr. Speaker. Those funds have to come from the residential taxpayers, the commercial taxpayers and what industrial ratepayers there are in the city of Kingston. That just isn’t fair.

The major industries of Kingston are government industries and higher education, but those industries do not pay taxes on any reasonable kind of basis. In other cities, in the city of Brantford, for example, I am sure there is no similar kind of exemption for Massey Ferguson, which probably provides as many jobs in Brantford as education and penal institutions provide in the city of Kingston.

We would suggest that the $50 concessions which have been made, while they are better than nothing, are now an acknowledgement of the fact that grants should be paid in lieu of local taxes on these provincially owned properties. We suggest the full amount should be paid rather than continue the mistreatment of certain cities and towns across the province which happen to have an exceptionally high proportion of provincial property.

Mr. Speaker: Does any other member with to take part in this debate? The member for Brantford.

Mr. R. B. Beckett (Brantford): Mr. Speaker, the member for Waterloo North, I think, has given a very excellent explanation of the Act. I am glad he has given the Treasurer credit for his information and his obvious great knowledge, an example of our co-operation.

Mr. MacDonald: Don’t spoil it.

Mr. Beckett: I am not going to. The member for Ottawa Centre made some suggestions which I believe will be considered. This is merely the start of the government programme in this particular field. I think the only restriction is our financial ability to grant all of the things being requested and suggested. I believe that’s all I have to say at this time, Mr. Speaker.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: Shall this bill be ordered for third reading?

Agreed.

The following bill was given third reading upon motion:

Bill 83, An Act to amend the Municipal Tax Assistance Act.

ONTARIO MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES RETIREMENT SYSTEM AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Beckett, on behalf of Hon. Mr. McKeough, moves second reading of Bill 84, An Act to amend the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System Act.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Waterloo North.

Mr. Good: Mr. Speaker, there is just one thing involved here and I think, to put it in context, it is a matter that section 14 of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System Act states that the employer must pass bylaws or resolutions to participate in or change any conditions of involvement in the OMERS Act pension fund.

The legislation as it now stands says any bylaw or resolution so passed must have the approval of the ministry before it becomes effective. Since all pension plans in the province are scrutinized and must come before the pension commission of Ontario, it is now felt, I presume, that the approval of the ministry is no longer required. The pension board does scrutinize very closely all pensions which are proposed and contracted for in the province.

We agree with this amendment and we see no reason why the ministry should look at all these bylaws and resolutions because they are being closely scrutinized by another branch of the government, the pension board.

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

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, this bill is a very short bill. It has only 74 words and I shall be equally brief. The proposals are acceptable to the New Democratic caucus and we will support the bill.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Brantford.

Mr. Beckett: Mr. Speaker, I believe that that brevity should be carried on. Obviously there is support from both sides of the House.

Mr. Cassidy: This is the parliamentary assistant’s baptism.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: Shall this bill be ordered for third reading?

Agreed.

The following bill was given third reading upon motion:

Bill 84, An Act to amend the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System Act.

MUNICIPAL ELDERLY RESIDENT’S ASSISTANCE AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Beckett, on behalf of Hon. Mr. McKeough, moves second reading of Bill 85,

An Act to amend the Municipal Elderly Resident’s Assistance Act, 1973.

Mr. Good: Mr. Speaker, for some time various municipalities across the province had been bringing in private legislation to permit that municipality to assist elderly people who, under certain circumstances, found it difficult to pay their property taxes. Then a few years ago -- in 1973 I think it was -- the province repealed all that private legislation and brought in a bill of its own which allowed any municipality to pass a bylaw which would enable the Treasurer to make tax concessions to elderly persons under certain conditions.

From the way that bill read, some of the conditions were, first, that the owner of the property must be 65 years of age or over, that it must be a single-family residence and that the owner must have been assessed for at least one year within that municipality. The reasoning behind that, I presume, is that a person could not move into a municipality and expect to get assistance right away that first year. A person had to be on the tax rolls and assessed for at least one year prior to this concession by the municipality.

The amendments here change those conditions in two areas which I think are correct and beneficial, and we will support these amendments. The first one, Mr. Speaker, now makes it possible for an elderly person to receive assistance under this Act, if he or she or they own a condominium. The way the bill was read previously it did not apply to condominiums, only to single-family residences. That is the first amendment and we agree with that.

The second amendment recognizes that under certain circumstances this one-year requirement for assessment would become a hardship. If the one spouse passed away and the house happened to be in the name of that person, it would mean that the spouse of the deceased could not collect the tax assistance the following year, because the house was not in the name of the person who would be eligible or should have been eligible for the assistance.

The bill is now amended to allow that the surviving spouse of a former recipient may now collect the assistance. The Treasurer is authorized to allow the assistance to that person provided the spouse had been eligible previously. The one-year requirement is now waived under those special circumstances. We agree with that principle.

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

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, my comments will be fairly brief on this bill as well. I think the minister and the government should be aware that among senior citizens now there is increasing concern about the tax burden of local property taxes. In particular, something which I think the government may have forgotten is that older people really resent having to pay education taxes when they’re long past the age when they either have children in school or other reasons for wanting to support the school system.

The reason for that resentment, I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, is that municipal tax reform has not been a success. It is not clear to senior citizens and elderly people that they are being dealt with fairly in the local property tax system and these amendments will not make it any more clear or any more justifiable to them. They feel, I think rightly, that the property tax is quixotic; it’s degressive and it particularly hurts people on small incomes. For that matter, it particularly hurts older people because often they have a house as their one major asset. They intend to live in it for as long as they can, until they have to be trucked away or until they have to move and can no longer take care of it. Therefore, the costs of the taxation on the house loom much larger in their smaller incomes than they did at the time they were in their productive years and bringing home a regular salary.

This particular Elderly Resident’s Assistance Act doesn’t really strike at that problem. It strikes at it tangentially by allowing municipalities to give certain tax concessions to senior citizens living within their boundaries but that’s all. It doesn’t amount to a genuine form of tax reform.

I’d like to ask the minister as well about another question which I think is pretty important. A larger and larger number of senior citizens are tenants and not homeowners, and it’s been traditional in Ontario law that we discriminate -- or the government discriminates -- against tenants on behalf of people who are owners. If they’re old people, if they’re senior citizens, then more power to them. I have no particular quarrel with the fact that we give this concession in this Act to senior citizens. We should do more.

However, Mr. Speaker, the way the Act is drawn up, if I recall correctly, there is no comparable concession paid to people who are elderly and who are tenants, and for whom the economic costs of shelter are much heavier and even more difficult to bear than if they happen to own a home.

If one owns a home and is in one’s 60s or 70s, there’s a good chance the mortgage is either very modest in cost every month or one has burned the mortgage. It’s paid off, and one only has to meet the operating cost and taxes.

If one rents, on the other hand, rents are going up every year -- as we heard in question period by $40 or $50 a month. There is no protection from the government for older people or anybody else who is a tenant. One pays the full cost of the accommodation on a current basis and has no benefit of having been able to save money in the past or get rid of the mortgage.

The consequence is that old people who are tenants and who don’t qualify or who can’t get into senior citizen housing are in a very difficult situation. They simply can’t make ends meet. It seems to me there should have been an amendment in this Act in order to permit having benefits comparable to those given to old people who are owners of homes or of condominiums.

Mr. Speaker: Does any other member wish to take part in this debate? The member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Mr. Speaker, I wanted to make a suggestion to the minister, now that mobile homes are going to be taxable starting next year, that he consider an amendment to this legislation for the coming year, and that mobile homes be included just as condominiums are at this time.

Mr. Good: Excellent suggestion.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Brantford.

Mr. Beckett: Mr. Speaker, this particular amendment clarifies a problem which was of particular concern to the city of Hamilton whose representations have requested that the amendment should cover the words “in classification of “condominium”.

The other problem presented by the member for Ottawa Centre was on assistance to tenants. This has been considered, but as members are aware, the fact that tenants are not assessed as owners presents a difficult problem. Credits, if given, would go to the landlord and we would then have the difficulty of policing to make sure this credit is passed on to the tenant themselves.

The question raised by the member for Windsor-Walkerville is under consideration.

Mr. Speaker: The motion is for second reading of Bill 85.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

The following bill was given third reading upon motion:

Bill 85, An Act to amend the Municipal Elderly Resident’s Assistance Act, 1973.

Mr. Cassidy: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, there is no quorum in the House.

Mr. H. Worton (Wellington South): I don’t see a quorum.

Clerk of the House: Mr. Speaker, there is no quorum.

Mr. Speaker ordered that the bells be rung for four minutes.

Clerk of the House: Mr. Speaker, we now have a quorum.

Clerk of the House: The 26th order, House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF HEALTH (CONTINUED)

Mr. Chairman: When the committee rose the other evening the minister was in the process of responding to the critics. Would he like to continue at this time?

Hon. F. S. Miller (Minister of Health): Mr. Chairman, I have completed my response.

On vote 2901:

Mr. Chairman: I assume we will deal with these votes item by item. On vote 2901, item 1, the hon. member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Mr. Chairman, I want to get into a little discussion with the minister concerning the proposals set out by his ministry for my own community. I am sure it would come under the policy of the ministry and that’s why I bring it up in the first vote.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Chairman, I am told it would be under vote 2901, item 3.

Mr. Chairman: Perhaps we could deal with that item --

Mr. B. Newman: Under health services in the first vote?

Mr. Chairman: Yes.

Mr. B. Newman: That’s quite all right. I’ll do that then, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: Is there any further comment on item 1?

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): Just a second, Mr. Chairman. We just got here --

Hon. Mr. Miller: Some of us just got here!

Mr. Roy: And the minister too.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I didn’t exclude myself; I just said some of us.

Mr. Roy: I think I have some comments on item 1.

I want to discuss with the minister a little problem; to some it might appear insignificant, but I think it has to do with policy. It deals with -- well, maybe I should reserve it for OHIP; I think there is a special item for OHIP payments. I think I’ll reserve this point for OHIP, but I want to put the minister on notice -- and I think he has had some discussions on this -- that I intend to question why, in today’s world, married women who want to keep their maiden names cannot do so with OHIP, but have to use the names of their husbands.

Another area of policy I want to discuss with the minister is the question of his approach or feeling about seatbelt legislation. I think that certainly should be in the area of policy. I want to bring to the minister’s --

Hon. Mr. Miller: Again, Mr. Chairman, I think there will be a specific vote under which that comes. Vote 2901, item 1, is the ministry office.

Mr. Roy: Well, let the minister tell me where I am going to be discussing with him the programme of --

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am quite glad to argue it at any point in time. Last year, if the member recalls, we had a very short time and we talked about all health topics without any particular organization of them. This year, because I am under no pressure for time, and I trust the member is not, I wonder if we couldn’t deal with the specific items in the specific votes, so that we can talk about the same topic once only. That’s all I wanted to say.

Mr. Roy: Yes, and that is why I referred my first problem back to the OHIP item. But I don’t know where else I am going to discuss this type of policy --

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am told vote 2902, item 1, specifically is where it can be discussed, if the member would like to make that note on it.

Mr. Roy: Vote 2902, item 1, health protection. Okay. Then I have no other matters on vote 2901, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: Shall item 1 carry? The hon. member for Parkdale.

Mr. J. Dukszta (Parkdale): No, no, no; I just wanted to ask a question. I wanted to know where we discuss community health centres generally, and then to ask for some very specific information. Shall I wait for 2902(2) or discuss it now?

Hon. Mr. Miller: If I am reading my sheet properly, it is under 2901(1).

Mr. Dukszta: As far as I can determine, Mr. Minister, you have never established an explicit definition of a community health centre. A group practice, a hospital, a community board of directors or, in fact, any agency which so desires can call its medical service operation a community health centre. This has, in fact, happened. St. Michael’s Hospital is negotiating at the moment to set up a community health centre under its global budget. The St. James Town community health centre and the Commerce Court health centre are both hospital operated.

Moreover, apart from a distinction in the manner of transfer of funds, there appears to be no definitive difference between a private practice and a community health centre. Both are paid by OHIP funds. One is on a fee-for-service basis and one on a global budget basis, but both are supported by public funds. Nevertheless, the ministry has taken the position, as evidenced by the agreements that are being presented to the community health centres for renewal of their funds, that it can have a measure of control over the operations, records and activities of community health centres which far exceeds the controls it exercises over physicians in private practice.

What, if any, is the legal basis for this distinction? There are a number of questions I want to ask you at this time. Could we try to deal with this first?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I would be quite quick to admit that I don’t know of a definition that distinguishes a health service organization, which is our current terminology for a community health clinic, from other forms of delivery of health services. It is differentiated more by its payment mechanism than by any other means right now. It was our hope that we would be stimulating the delivery of health services on a slightly different organizational basis, allowing the use of paramedical personnel, such as nurse practitioners, to do those procedures they are legally entitled to do within a health delivery setting, that they mightn’t be able to do as easily in a fee-for-service setting.

That was one of the objectives -- better use of lesser-skilled personnel. The reason for that, as I understand it, is our agreements with the federal government that relate to payment. As far as I know, there is no way for us to collect a nurse practitioner’s fee from the federal government on a fee-for-service basis, and so we have not been allowing a doctor to bill for services rendered by a nurse practitioner on a fee-for-service basis.

The mechanism we developed then was a global budget in some instances, or maybe a capitation budget in others, that permits greater freedom of operation for the individuals in the particular organization. We are currently, as you know, just beginning the study into exploration of ways of delivering health services in this area. You could go as far as Dr. Hastings’ concepts or you could limit it to a one- or a two-physician practice in a small town that can scarcely be differentiated from a present fee-for-service business. I believe the legal base for the payment mechanisms all rests within the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act of the federal government, which sets certain parameters and certain restrictions on us for payment. I find it a bit disconcerting to think that we have to create health service organizations in order to use paramedical personnel to their fullest extent.

Mr. Dukszta: The minister has said that one of the reasons why he hasn’t been funding some of the places -- if I am correct in extrapolating from what he said -- is because the federal government is not prepared to subsidize, unless it’s on a fee-for-service basis. Is that the reason the minister is giving as to why some of the health services, which have no physician, have been denied the support.

Hon. Mr. Miller: They have no physician?

Mr. Dukszta: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I honestly would have to have examples of those. I would think the delivery of health services is generally supervised by a physician. I guess only in those rare areas where we can’t get a physician to attend at all, do we make exceptions. I would think of some places along the shores of Hudson Bay where the physician may well be in Moosonee and the nurses are out in an outpost hospital as places where these exceptions have been made. I guess it bothers my sense of fair play that we allow nurses under very remote conditions to do things we wouldn’t let them do in a hospital surrounded by competent people.

Mr. Dukszta: I’m not interested in getting into an argument about this. Obviously, the minister knows my opinion differs on a number of points from what he has just said. But what I want to establish is whether it is a policy from the ministry not to fund any health group which would not have a physician in charge or in consultation?

Hon. Mr. Miller: In charge.

Mr. Dukszta: Yes. Then can we come back to the minister’s operative definition of a community health centre? I’ll tell the minister the reason why I am again asking this. I think his predecessor (Mr. Potter) once very loosely said there were hundreds of community health centres in Ontario, as an answer to my criticism that he was not doing anything about it. Of course, he sometimes counted two physicians talking to each other in one building as a community health centre.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I recall my predecessor talking about this very often. I would say that he has a much greater detailed knowledge of this than I have. I think one of the reasons we got away from the term “community health centre” is that to most people it conjures up the thought of a building and services within that building. The previous minister would rather think of an organization of services in a community, not necessarily in one physical location. That was his difference and perhaps the reason why we changed the terminology within our ministry.

It’s a health service organization that we talk about today, not a community health centre. The distinction is important, particularly when one looks at the Mustard report and realizes that the strengthening of primary care must come from reorganization of those people delivering primary services in the community, not necessarily physical reorganization, but probably relationships among each other.

Mr. Dukszta: The community health centre concept has very specific connotations, as the minister knows, so when one changes the definition or uses a different definition or a different term, it means something else. I think the minister is consciously using the different term, which allows not so much for the reorganization of existing services or a change in the conceptual approach, as merely for naming something which already exists. That’s what the Mustard report has suggested -- a functional grouping. For the sake of all of us and for the sake of future discussion on the approach to community health centres, would the minister define much more clearly the components of his definition of the new health facility that he is talking about?

Hon. Mr. Miller: No, I can’t, Mr. Chairman. When we paused two months ago to consider the pros and cons of creating more of these non-fee-for-service groups, I asked a number of questions. Some of the answers I received resulted in disagreement among those responding to me. That was why I took approximately a five-week pause in signing or agreeing to sign any further agreements with doctors in any part of Ontario until I knew what we were doing.

I learned then that it is very difficult to measure the cost of the delivery of health care and get two people to agree upon the result. I learned it was even more difficult to measure the quality of health care delivered for the seine dollars, and get any response.

We then charged the Ontario Council of Health, my senior advisory body, with the duty of reviewing the methods of assessing the effectiveness of health service organizations. We have given them a letter with fairly specific guidelines within it, and we are asking them to help us in the assessment of the 30 or 40 groups that are currently called health service organizations in the province.

I agree with you they vary greatly in terms of organization and the term has been used too loosely. I intend to tighten it up and tighten up the assessment procedures so that before we spend much more money this way we have agreed basically on the means of assessing the results.

Mr. Dukszta: But in a community health centre -- and I will try to give the definition later on -- most of the staff is on salary. The type of service provided is broader and more different and it becomes difficult to itemize it according to the system used by OHIP. Also, as the minister knows, many of the community health centres have to account for the money they spend in terms of items of service, or items of patients seen, it is often inapplicable for them to explain their function and their work. It involves not only physicians but all sorts of other services which do not come in under the strict umbrella of OHIP.

Is the minister telling me that this particular approach is now under revision and that he is moving toward another one? If so, can he tell me in which direction he is going to go?

Hon. Mr. Miller: No, I can’t yet. I can only say that is one of the reasons for a slowdown in the signing of contracts.

If the member recalls, and I am sure he does, two months ago when I asked that certain contracts be withheld there was quite a repercussion in the Toronto community. A number of groups came to see me at the House. I checked with staff. I awaited what was hopefully a resolution of the problem of assessment. It became evident it would not be easily resolved but we had given our word to certain groups that we would go to global funding for them. The contracts were ready to sign.

While I sometimes have reservations about expanding a programme like this when I am not sure of the parameters, I felt it was more important to honour the ministry’s word and sign those to whom an obligation had been made; so we did it. At the same time we issued a request to the Ontario Council of Health to come forward with a better means of assessing the existing organizations, and those being created.

Mr. Dukszta: Mr. Chairman, maybe I could ask a question here as easily as on any other item. Is the minister now going to support any new proposals, or is he limiting himself to the existing ones in which he already has expressed support?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am not going to tie my hands by saying there will be no more contracts considered. There may be very justifiable reasons for more contracts to be signed. It may be that in the town of Dryden -- if that is a good example, and it may not be -- all the physicians in that community who want to change from one method of payment to another and come together in one place of business have been talking about it. It may be that it will serve geographic needs in our planning process because I need geographic distribution; I need size distribution; I need type-of-function distribution -- so that we can get a handle on what is happening in these groups.

I would only say any contracts we sign, until the Ontario Council of Health reports back to me, will be those we can see a very real reason for signing. We have, if I’m not wrong, some 70 groups in Ontario -- apart from the ones we felt we’d made commitments to -- who are actively interested in talking to our ministry about HSO funding.

Mr. Dukszta: These are the 70 groups which are not in existence yet?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, that’s right.

Mr. Dukszta: The 70 groups which have applied for funding?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Not necessarily applied, talked.

Mr. Dukszta: Talked about it. They are all over the province?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes.

Mr. Dukszta: Would it be possible for you to give us the list of those things?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Do you want it read to you?

Mr. Dukszta: I’m not sure.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Let me put it this way -- it will take a good deal of time in this House. The information, as far as I am concerned, is not secret. It’s available. I can either show it to you as an individual member or I can read it into the record. I suggest, for the balance of the members present, I’m not convinced that reading it into the record would necessarily help a great deal.

Mr. Dukszta: No, I agree with you that it is not essential for you to read all the applications as long as you can tell me how many community health applications there have been approved by the ministry and how many are still applying. It is not essential for you to read it if you will just give me the promise that you can do that.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes. I can tell you that the current number of HSOs existing or in active development and negotiation, as of the date of the printing of this April 10, 1975, was 36. I think 18 or 19 of them had signed contracts and 17 or 18 were in the process of signing contracts. Not all of those will end up signing, for one reason or another, not necessarily related to the ministry itself.

Mr. Dukszta: Am I clear then, although the task itself overwhelms me, that if I wanted to get this type of information you would be prepared to give it to me, if I came over and looked for some time?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am prepared to do that.

Mr. Dukszta: Okay. Can I ask you some more questions on the same subject? You said 36 projects have been approved? I didn’t quite get that point.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I said 36 were either in existence or we felt the ministry had made definite commitments to them. It was about a half and half mixture; half were signed, half were in the process of being signed or close to it, so close the ministry was not going to renege on the discussions going on unless some technical problem came up.

I believe there were three or four of those, if I am not wrong, which, for one reason or another, have dropped out of the negotiations. I don’t know whether or not that is accurate but it seems to me I recall that from some discussion earlier in the game. They are in all four parts of the province -- north, south, east and west -- and not necessarily in one physical location. For example, the member for Rainy River (Mr. Reid) isn’t here but --

Mr. Roy: Give it to me anyway. I will phone him up. He is on a fishing trip.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Like Atikokan; Ignace; Parry Sound; Dryden; Garson; Sudbury; Terrace Bay.

Mr. Dukszta: Can I ask the minister some of his rationale -- why he has, on the whole, been saying we were not going to change the approach and to move decisively into the community health centre approach? I understand there has been a study done of the cost efficiency of at least two major so-called community health centres, the one in the Soo and the one in St. Catharines. I wonder if he could comment first on the reason, and secondly, whether this study has been done and what was the result of it? Could he discuss it with me a little bit?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I don’t know that I have the statistics on the Soo here. I have seen them. The problem I had wasn’t whether or not a study had been done but whether or not the study was done with the proper methodology and whether the results were of any use. I can only assure you that is what precipitated the pause.

I listened to experts arguing with equal vigour from opposite sides that the methodology and the interpretation just didn’t have any relationship to the true problem of better health at lower cost or whatever it may be, then I decided we needed better agreed-upon means of assessing these things before we created them helter-skelter around the province.

They have great philosophies behind them. A doctor once had the time to talk to you. He was not rushed into whistling you through in 1½ minutes per office visit, or whatever the time clock permits him in a well-organized office. He had time to think about your non-medical problems influencing your health, to do a little bit of psychotherapy, if that is the right word, or use a psychological approach. That is the kind of thing we used to think of as being inherent in a doctor-patient relationship but which, they tell me, has been disappearing as doctors have had to become more and more aware of the costs of running an office. At least, the critics of fee-for-service say it has. So that was the basis for that.

It is going to be some time, obviously, before we have those results available. I’ve seen interim studies, from December, 1975, the Soo and St. Catharines.

Mr. Dukszta: Are you talking about a new study or the one which has been done already?

Hon. Mr. Miller: The interim study was the one I saw, and we are talking about the final study. The U of T study was the one I saw.

Mr. Dukszta: Is that study available or is it still secret?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I think it is still confidential at this point.

Mr. Dukszta: I notice you have not been taking any decisions on it because of this methodological question.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I have been reluctant to take any decisions on it because of the disagreement it sparked. I think you’d agree with me, as a person interested in setting up pilot studies, or whatever you want to call them, that before you created too many, you would at least agree upon the means of appraisal.

Mr. Dukszta: No, that’s not quite what I meant, really. I thought we were talking about the cost efficiency type.

Hon. Mr. Miller: That’s inherent in it. I can say that each patient in the Soo clinic cost $692 a month for services. Then somebody will come along and argue, are those the people who turned up or is that the total capitation group, the ones who weren’t seen as well as the ones who were seen. How much did it cost for hospital expenses in addition to this? How did that compare to fee-for-service practitioners in the same area? All these questions start popping up and you begin to realize the complexity of analyzing the total true cost of service delivered that way.

Mr. Dukszta: I have not seen the actual study, but from what I have been told of it, it’s not a study that can be used to prove anything at all. I am glad that you have had some contra-evidence within your ministry to suggest, methodologically at least, that that particular study was a hopeless botch-up. You obviously need a much better way of looking at it.

I think you do need a new way of assessing what kind of services are provided by a community health centre and what kind of services are provided by more traditional methods. But I still don’t really hear -- and I would like to hear -- some sense of differentiation in terms of definition between what you call health service organization and what is now generally, in literature and everywhere else, accepted as a community health centre in the social services approach. Would you make a stab at defining it for my edification and the edification of the members and for possible ammunition in future discussions?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I don’t know, I can see that the leader of your party, by the way, has a copy of the U of T study officially in his hands and a covering letter by the deputy minister, so that obviously you can get that report if you want to.

Mr. Dukszta: But some information about the methodology obviously came from that source.

Hon. Mr. Miller: For a change it was official.

Mr. Dukszta: That was an answer to a previous question. I have asked you a question more of definition. If I present you with a series of alternatives and you can say yes or no, will that he one way of arriving at a definition of the health centre?

Hon. Mr. Miller: That’s how I passed my engineering exams.

Mr. Dukszta: Good. Let me ask what the health service organization involves.

Mr. Stokes: That is why you are not practising now.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I had too many “nos” where there were “yeses.”

Mr. Dukszta: Would the health service organization always mean a functional co-operation rather than integrated unit, either geographically situated in one place or related in terms of organizations?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I would say that up to date it has been. I could be corrected by the staff in front of me. I don’t know of any groups we have funded that weren’t in a unique position or unique geographic location. We haven’t up to now been funding functional organizations such as Dr. Mustard mentioned in his report. I wouldn’t want to preclude them as being beyond the terms of reference we might consider. I don’t know of any that wouldn’t meet the geographic requirement -- well there’s one, yes.

Mr. Dukszta: One of the reasons for not being able to fund something like that is because they are, of course, non-existent except on a piece of paper which Dr. Mustard has produced. It would probably be impossible to do it this way but, would you agree a community health centre, or a health service organization, which approaches the model of a community health centre, should have some definite community input, either an elected board from everyone who lives in the area, or everyone who uses it, or everyone who pays a dollar to be a member?

Hon. Mr. Miller: At this moment I wouldn’t say that is a prerequisite in all cases. It is a desirable state in some. I believe, in the Springhurst clinic in your riding, you have a board of people from the community. Have you not?

Mr. Dukszta: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I believe in the town of New Hamburg the chamber of commerce has created a board that operates the community health centre. It’s an HSO by definition. I would think, in other cases, we are funding two or four physicians without any community board directing them. We use both mechanisms because we are responding to requests from both the community as a whole needing services, and from specific physicians wanting to try this method of delivery of health services.

Mr. Dukszta: The other part of the definition which you already specified over and over again, is the usage of non-medical staff such as nurse practitioners and others. Surely it demands more than just a voluntary agreement inside the centre for a nurse practitioner to carry out certain of the functions which a physician often carries out. Does this not demand, in fact, a change in the professional law and are you proposing any such change?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I think you will find the Health Disciplines Act and the regulations under it, and the agreements between the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons and the College of Nurses, have allowed nurses and nurse practitioners to perform a certain number of procedures normally reserved for physicians. These, I understand, would be the ones permitted by nurse practitioners working in an HSO. They would not be allowed to do things the law otherwise precludes.

Mr. Dukszta: In that sense, they wouldn’t really be doing anything they are not doing right now.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Except this, that under the law now -- and I have been talking to a number of doctors lately who have dropped their nurse practitioners simply because of the economics of the situation -- if you have a nurse practitioner and you are a fee-for-service physician, she’s really doing work that you can’t claim on your OHIP cards. That’s the problem, and the HSO gets around it.

Mr. Dukszta: You have, in fact, given the clearest indication for moving toward a more general approach in terms of community health centre, or health service organization. Unless you move towards changes you will never be able to use, in spite of the number of statements you have made, non-medical people or non-physicians in an expanded capacity. You must change and move decisively toward it.

I think you have answered that question. Maybe what you said could be supported further if you can tell me whether you have included, in your health estimates for the upcoming years, enough money to expand, if people apply the present programme of the health services organization, from its over 30 to much more than that?

Hon. Mr. Miller: That’s not a problem at all. My financial people here are always subject to being rapped on the knuckles and told they were wrong. OHIP has an estimation of the amount that will be billed to the province in the coming year by the practitioners who are allowed to charge it. If, in fact, we change a group of practitioners from fee-for-service to an HSO payment mechanism, I don’t have a budgetary problem.

Mr. Dukszta: So that if you made an ideological decision, a conceptual decision, to go ahead with it, it could in fact be easily implemented?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Right.

Mr. Dukszta: What I have gathered over and over again, from what you’ve said, is that you haven’t quite made that decision.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am by nature cautious.

Mr. Dukszta: Yes. You don’t really have a definition of the Health Service Organization. Does your ministry have a working definition of it?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Let me say that within our ministry, the minister and the ministry are one and the same.

Mr. Dukszta: Oh, good. Will you provide me with it then. I assume that the ministry, to operate well, will have a working definition.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I think the last part is that we’re a blessed trinity. Carry on.

Mr. Dukszta: So can I have it? Even if you are not one and the same.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Sometimes the god is not in direct communication with some of the other parts.

Mr. Dukszta: I’ll give you 15 seconds to be in complete communication.

Mr. R. S. Smith (Nipissing): There are a lot of phoney gods around, too, you know.

Mr. Dukszta: Take your time.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Thank you. I have in front of me some of our policies that would help you.

Mr. Dukszta: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Miller: It may help you to understand that while we haven’t strictly defined it and limited it, we have certain parameters within which we’re trying to work. The HSA must, in addition to the standard OHIP benefits, create availability of medical care and easier access to it. Okay? Also, preventive services to help maintain health, including education and fitness programmes, health related social services, improved continuity of personal health care over time and during an illness episode.

Mr. Dukszta: The definition doesn’t really include anything about organization and relationship among the staff. The working definition doesn’t include this at all?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Allow me to find page 13. It says here that the ministry will encourage an evolutionary approach to programmes and programme planning. No ideal models will be forced on any HSO, providing the HSO incorporates the type of programmes that are appropriate to a community and implied in the statement I made earlier.

Mr. Dukszta: But the community has been defined in so many ways. Recently, as you know, the ministry has been reacting very negatively to the more community-oriented or community-governed -- the organizations with a very strong community board. In fact, I think that on the whole it prefers health service organizations which are organized around the professionals and not around the community, with the community defining them.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I think the professionals I are the essential part, or the nucleus, of the system. We have, however, reacted to community requests from people who were not in the health business at all and then tried to find the deliverers of those services. So I don’t think it’s quite fair to say we only react to two or three different sources -- the physicians themselves, the community that may feel a lack of service, the public in a community, and sometimes to special groups within that community like a municipal council.

Mr. Dukszta: I don’t want to give you names and things, but I know that if the group has a very strong community base, there has been a strong reaction from the ministry. It is somewhat negative toward that idea, almost as if the ministry was distrustful of a less-medical approach -- always excepting the minister who, of course, is committed to this global approach, fortunately. I am talking now of the extension of you. Some of them have been negative toward it, to the point that if you have too strong a community involvement, you probably wouldn’t get funding.

Let me ask a question. In what respect, other than the differences between fee-for-service billing and global budgeting, does a community health centre differ in legal terms from group practice according to the operations of your ministry?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I suppose the legal difference is that a contract is signed with the principals who are assuming responsibility for the operation of the HSO. It is, as far as I know, a legal and binding contract, something we do not normally do with individual practitioners.

Mr. Dukszta: I am not clear on whether having a contract is the major difference. I thought the group practices had contracts too.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I don’t think group practices on fee-for-service have one, do they?

Mr. Dukszta: I think I’m getting the message that there are no basic legal distinctions in a sense. Am I right?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I would have to get some legal opinion on that, because I honestly can’t answer that off the top of my head. I know that in the case of New Hamburg. I believe, our contract is signed with the board of that particular community, is it not -- the board of trade -- and their executive who have formed and take the responsibility for the direction and management of that particular health service organization? I don’t believe it is signed by the physicians, is it? No. So in this case we are not dealing with the physicians at all.

Incidentally, I don’t agree that we have been less sympathetic to community-based groups. There are sometimes dangers in any community-based group not having the professional knowledge, but I think we listen very carefully to those that are sincere in their approach. One of our major considerations would be: Are they able to run the business? Is the need there?

Mr. Dukszta: The minister does seem to have taken a position that there should be a greater degree of control over community health centres than over general practitioners. As you say, you have to ask about this, but if there is no real legal distinction between group practices and community health centres, why are only community health centres subject to contracts which require them to open all records, including patient records without individual approval by patients, to ministerial inspection on demand?

Hon. Mr. Miller: I think there is a good business reason for that, above all else. I am not particularly anxious to fund a bunch of golf players. In fact, if we are paying a salary to a bunch of physicians providing a service, or there are other people in their organization, I have every right to make sure that they are delivering services to the community. A fee-for-service practitioner has to bill and we have some kind of an audit trail. These groups don’t have to hill, but we need to make sure they are providing services.

Secondly, for the interim period while we are trying to assess them, we may even have to have detailed information -- very similar to the regular OHIP card -- to allow an appraisal.

Mr. Dukszta: You are talking of some audit going on for fee-for-service physicians, but this is more than just “some” audit -- this is very intensive auditing, including opening the patient records without individual approval.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Frankly, until I am satisfied that we’ve got them on to a payment mechanism that doesn’t invite swinging the lead I am not about to back off that.

Mr. Dukszta: Obviously you have been burned by physicians in general practice who have been known -- heaven protect us and prohibit it that I should imply anything else -- to swing the lead a hit. But must you go to such an extreme for community health centres which are only a small segment of your large financial empire?

Hon. Mr. Miller: It is only $4 million. I would say to you, apart from what appears to you to be an invasion of privacy or a requirement for knowledge, let me tell you that it is not unusual. When I am inspected by government inspectors in my little old motel they come in and go through everything I have done -- when I’ve used the gasoline in my motor boats, when I’ve used it in my car, when I’ve used it in my truck. I don’t find that a great difference, and that’s a free enterprise business not supported by government.

In this case, apart from the need for information, I’d point out to you, we are at a research stage. I found, for example, the Springdale, or is it Springhurst -- ?

Mr. Dukszta: Springhurst.

Hon. Mr. Miller: -- the Springhurst clinic group has been anxious to co-operate in the fullest way, to help us by keeping whatever records we deemed necessary to assist in analysing their efficiency compared to other groups. In fact, when we’re relying on some appraisals of general levels of health care, we may need more information than traditionally is kept.

Mr. Dukszta: I think comparing private enterprise and the private records of a patient are not quite the same. I don’t see how you can use that analogy. What you do about your private business is accepted generally, and there should be more of it. More private business should be inspected. We are talking about private patient records being used. If you are going to apply this to community health centres, I feel it should be applied generally across the board in an attempt to provide some kind of a quality control over what goes on in the minds of physicians. So far, except for the computer patterns, there hasn’t really been provision of any type of quality control over the services provided, and paid for, by OHIP to physicians in general practice.

Hon. Mr. Miller: First of all, the physician in general practice produces at least a detailed record of every service he or she renders. An OHIP card is made out, either for one or a series of services.

Secondly, if there is any reason to suspect the quality of health care delivered by a specific practitioner, we have the College of Physicians and Surgeons standing by quite willing to look at that aspect of the individual fee-for-service practitioner. I think in this province we’ve done a lot of work in that area in the last three years. I’m pretty proud of some of it.

Mr. Dukszta: All I understand from your statement is references to computer patterns of a particular billing. Could you amplify your statement.

Hon. Mr. Miller: As you know, that’s a symptom. As a physician, you’d recognize when a temperature goes up. We recognize it when the pattern goes up on the computer. Sometimes we only need to look at the digits on the cheque. That’s one symptom. A doctor can be working very hard earning a lot of money, and still be producing high-quality service. Our ministry has never restricted the amount of money a physician may earn on fee-for-service, provided the services were properly rendered.

The college has had some misgivings about volume of service. They were the ones to impose suggested maximum numbers of services per week -- not us -- a couple of years ago. These were broadly misinterpreted by the medical profession as government-instigated. They were not. The college is only interested in one thing, the quality of service rendered. It looks at the same symptoms we look at -- dollars earned -- and relates them to ability to deliver services.

When a physician, and I believe we had one, rendered 250 services per day, one begins to wonder if, in fact, it was quality health care. So we go from there. We then check out the records to see (a) were the services rendered at all, (b) were they rendered properly, (c) were they billed under the appropriate fee schedule code?

Mr. Dukszta: Since we haven’t got a way of estimating type of service delivered by the health service organizations, and you say you probably won’t have this for some time, are you prepared to be somewhat lenient with the accounting the community health centres do to you. Would you promise not to use, if possible, the systems which apply to people who are on fee-for-service?

I see you don’t follow what I’m saying. Let me put it this way: You have not to my satisfaction, assured me that the way you judge efficiency of service is by number of items of service performed or number of patients seen. Before the minister establishes a new system, which is much more appropriate to a community health centre, is he prepared at least not to use that approach which is, I think, basically inimical and the wrong system to judge the performance of a community health centre?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, that is underlying our reason for seeking more assistance from the Ontario Council of Health.

One of the reasons for going to capitation is to relieve the pressure on a physician from seeing a patient unnecessarily to earn a living. The number of times a person is seen is not, to my mind, a measure of quality health care at all. I am anxious to find alternative ways of rewarding a person fairly, which don’t involve over-servicing the people he or she is charged with.

Mr. Dukszta: In community health centre it is not so much over-servicing as there is an attempt, I think as you know, to develop newer services which often do not come under the definition as it is now practised by OHIP and the physicians.

It is because, as you say, the physicians have found themselves busier and busier that they do not deliver the total service which as general practitioners or family doctors they are supposed to do.

In a community health centre this sort of proper service -- psychological, social or otherwise, it doesn’t really matter -- is delivered much more. More time is spent on interaction, on social services and yet this cannot be shown to be of value because there is no standard to measure it by except in terms of items of service performed or number of patients they have serviced. That is not an adequate way of doing it.

If you accept that this happens, local community health centres are penalized because the ministry demands “How many patients have you seen? You have to do 500 per month -- ”

Hon. Mr. Miller: No -- “How many did you service?” Not “How many did you see?” I am not worried about how many they see in a month. I am worried about how many they keep well, that’s all, and if the patient can stay away from that community health centre or HSO and be well, I couldn’t care less. I am happy because we have achieved our goal of health care. I don’t want any artificial means of servicing patients too quickly or too rapidly to be developed because this would be just a fraud in a sense.

We are anxious to make sure how many people are cared for by HSO, whether they are seen or not, and we compare that to the number of people who are cared for by a fee-for-service physician. That is not an easy measurement, up to date.

Mr. Dukszta: Yes, that is a very good point you’re making because it is moving toward sort of a preventive method. But most of the general practitioners or fee-for-service physicians limit themselves very strictly to a response to illness on demand. The whole idea of this pilot project is that you move toward the other part -- the health part which you stress -- instead of the illness part which tends to be stressed by fee-for-service physicians.

Is the ministry actually, when it comes to accounting, really still operating on the other system? Okay -- you’re shaking your head; that means they are not. I think they are and you may not be fully aware of it. Will you look into it to make sure it happens? If I bring you a case next time of a telephone call from the ministry which says “How many patients have been serviced?” etc., you can react and say this is an inappropriate way for them to do it.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Okay, I have a very open mind right now and until I have some more information from the Ontario Council of Health, I am going to try to keep it open.

I would only say to you the HSO or the community health concept deals in the ideal. It assumes that physicians want to do these things. It assumes they will do those things. It assumes that once they have a guaranteed income they will retain their desire to service people with all the vim and vigour they did when they collected a dollar for every service rendered.

I have never lost my cynical attitude toward my fellow human beings.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): You’re the least cynical minister over there.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I simply say human beings being what they are don’t always perform in ideal ways.

I learned as an engineer there was a kino-cycle for the internal combustion engine and that told us how much energy we could get out of it. We used to plot the actual cycle for an engine against it and we found how much we really got out of it.

The health service organization is a concept which deals in ideals. We are dealing with human beings and I have to meld the two together so that I am satisfied that once I remove certain incentives, which although imperfect have been pretty effective, I’ll have a better or at least equal system.

Mr. Dukszta: That is probably a major problem, your assumption that those incentives, the way you have specified them, stay. You exhibit a very interesting example of what I always thought you were, a truly conservative mind, with a deeply pessimistic nature. You think one has to be bound very closely and watched with extremely particularity so that no one breaks the line. But that’s an aside to everything else; I think this is not essential and surely not true. It’s only ideology on your part of the thing that people will not deliver a service in a community health centre without --

Mr. Stokes: This would be an excellent time for you to make an assessment of his mental process.

Mr. Dukszta: I just made it; a true Conservative.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Thank you. Those are the kindest words you could say about me.

Mr. Foulds: The greatest condemnation in 1975.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. Stokes: I have listened with a great deal of interest to what the minister has said in answer to questions posed by my colleague from Parkdale. I want to get in on this vote simply because I think that what has happened with regard to the delivery of health services in the northern part of the province is that you have treated the northern part as something somewhat different from the rest of the province, notwithstanding the fact the people have the same needs; notwithstanding the fact they pay the same OHIP premiums; and having no regard for the fact that a good many of the services taken for granted down here are non-existent in the more remote areas of the province.

A former Minister of Health has stated before that people in the province generally could aspire to a reasonable level of health services. You would have to be able to justify ii on the basis of a population of 35,000. Unless you had that kind of population base it was very doubtful that you could aspire to anything even closely resembling a health service delivery system and it was going to be necessary for people to commute and travel relatively large distances in order to avail themselves of the various services which fall within the purview of this ministry.

It seems to me the people in the north of this province have sat quietly by for far too long. As I travel through the north, I find people are becoming much more vocal; they are becoming much more demanding of a reasonable level of health care than they ever were before. Now you have gone the route of the district health councils and they see they are going to act only in an advisory capacity, any new ideas or new concepts people in the northern part of the province have, everything they aspire to -- any changes, any recommendations, any new ideas they may have -- have to be channelled through the district health council. I see this as just another buffer, another level of bureaucracy the people I represent and the people who are living in the north generally are going to have to wade through before they can get the kind of attention for which they have waited for too long.

I want to give you and the House some idea of the lack of any health delivery system in many areas that I represent. I would try to indicate to you the frustration that is being felt, not only by practitioners, the few that we do have in the north, but also those public-spirited people who are trying to devise ways and means and come up with ideas and recommendations how we might establish health services where they are nonexistent, or improve on the limited ones we have.

We have a rotating doctor service in Armstrong. You have enlisted the assistance of the College of Physicians and Surgeons and they are rotating, I think, on a hi-weekly basis. There is no idea of continuity between the doctor and the patient, yet this is something the doctors always said was absolutely essential -- a good, healthy, meaningful doctor-patient relationship. It is impossible with this rotating service you have in Armstrong.

Compare that with a doctor who visits the town of Nakina once a week. We have a little health clinic in Nakina that is staffed by a very dedicated nurse, with minimal resources, but with a whole lot of dedication and a whole lot of enthusiasm. That’s the kind of service the people in Nakina have at the present time, yet Nakina is one of the north’s fastest-growing communities -- its population is going to increase by 186 per rent over the next two years. They get a visit from a doctor once a week.

Compare that to Savant Lake where we have a small clinic that is not staffed by anybody. A public health nurse visits every second week, and they try to assist the people in the community who come to visit them. It is strictly an immunization sort of thing, delivering a few pills, putting a bandage on, something of that nature.

Compare that with no facilities at all provided in Pickle Lake, which too is one of the fastest-growing communities in the northwest by virtue of some mining activity. You have made a commitment that you are going to co-ordinate your efforts with the mining company and you will contribute toward the operating costs of a facility, assuming the mining company provides the facility and some form of accommodation for any practitioner who may be willing to come in.

Compare that with yet another concept. We have a little clinic in the town of Beardmore, where the little health committee is desperately trying to enlist the aid of a nurse who can be sent down here to be trained as a nurse practitioner. If they are able to pull that off, and to convince you people that that is indeed worthwhile, she will practise under the supervision of three or four doctors who are located about 50 miles away.

It’s all right to be flexible, Mr. Minister, it’s all right to be innovative; but I suggest to you the mishmash of programmes that we’ve got, all which are totally inadequate at the present time, is just not good enough. Let me remind you again that the people in the northern part of this province pay the same OHIP premiums as you and I do, or anybody else who is five or ten minutes away from one of these facilities, whether it be a doctor’s office, a dentist’s office or a community health centre. The people I represent travel as much as 350 miles for the same kind of service people in Metropolitan Toronto and other urban centres take as a matter of right, they demand it in fact.

Mr. Minister, we are demanding that we be treated the same way as other people in the province. I thought you were being a little facetious when you used as an illustration the nurse practitioner who was practising along the west shore of James Bay, you said, I believe, you had a practitioner up at Attawapiskat. I’m not sure you’ve got a nurse practitioner in Attawapiskat.

Hon. Mr. Miller: No, I didn’t say she was a nurse practitioner.

Mr. Stokes: That was the illustration you used.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I said nurses.

Mr. Stokes: You said the only exception I can see, or the only example I can see, might be if we had a nurse practitioner operating in Attawapiskat. You don’t pay one red cent for any health delivery system north of the 51st parallel in this province. The total cost is underwritten by the Department of National Health and Welfare. I will even go so far as to say that people who pay OHIP premiums in the far north get better service from the Department of National Health and Welfare than you provide through your Ministry of Health.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Who pays them? You are wrong on that by 50 per cent.

Mr. Stokes: I don’t know whether I am wrong or not, but let me tell you I don’t know of anybody in this ministry, unless you are up there on a fishing trip, who cares a darn about the delivery of health services to at least nine remote communities in my riding, which stretches up to the shores of Hudson Bay at Fort Severn.

Let me tell you what happens in Pickle Lake at the present time. Pickle Lake and Central Patricia have no health system whatsoever. Now 20 miles down the road is a clinic staffed by two very dedicated nurses who have some degree of competence in midwifery. They can do some diagnosing and are in constant communication by radio telephone with their base hospital in Sioux Lookout.

I visited that clinic two weeks ago. I found, on a typical weekend, they had 48 patients. Nine of those patients were from the Indian Reserve or the community the clinic was designed to serve. The other 38 were from the non-Indian community at Pickle Lake.

If it weren’t for the dedication of those two young nurses and their provision of emergency service and treatment, they too would have to go at least 240 miles to Dryden, or 347 miles to the city of Thunder Bay, to get routine treatment.

When is this going to change? This is discrimination in the reverse. We often hear about lack of services and lack of amenities to native people. In this case, it’s the non-native people who are being discriminated against. I’d like to see you make a survey of the cost of providing health services, say to the community of Savant Lake -- it’s got a population of about 300 people -- or to the combined communities of Pickle Lake and Central Patricia.

I would like you to make an assessment of the cost to OHIP of serving the medical needs of people living in those communities. In fact, I challenge you to send somebody up there and make an assessment. I’ll bet the cost of the OHIP system would be a pittance, simply because the treatment service isn’t available; if somebody has a pain or an ache they go to bed for a few days and when it clears up they go back to work. If that happens down here they’re on the phone, making an appointment with their doctor, and they’re in visiting their doctor, at a cost to OHIP.

I would challenge you to find out what it costs the OHIP scheme and this Ministry of Health to provide that service to the community of Savant Lake or to the combined communities of Pickle Lake and Central Patricia.

You’re going to say: “We have the northern Ontario health services.” Sure, you have a Dr. Baldwin, who is the co-ordinator for northern Ontario health services. You’ve got a Dr. Copeman, who is in charge of recruitment of medical practitioners. I understand Dr. Copeman has pre-empted some of the functions to Dr. Baldwin and he’s going to have direct control over what happens in these small communities which are attempting to set up little clinics so that at least they have some place to go for pills or for an immunization programme.

I’m just as frustrated as the people I represent, because I like to keep apace of what’s going on with this government and with this ministry. Frankly, when I see the indifference with which most northern communities are treated -- not only by this ministry -- and the indifference with which the medical profession and the dental profession view or ignore or choose not to see the needs of people in northern Ontario.

Mr. Foulds: Choose not to serve.

Mr. Stokes: I wonder just how serious the medical profession and the dental profession are in carrying out -- what is it? -- the Hippocratic oath --

Hon. Mr. Miller: Hyprocritic.

Mr. Stokes: Whatever you call it.

Mr. Foulds: You pronounce it your way and we’ll pronounce it ours.

Mr. Stokes: I think they do have a responsibility to society.

Mr. Dukszta: It’s cynicism.

Mr. Stokes: I don’t know what it costs to produce a doctor or a dentist. The last time I saw a figure was maybe seven or eight years ago and somebody told me, who may have known, that it cost society $75,000 to produce a doctor.

Mr. Dukszta: A quarter of a million.

Mr. Stokes: You say $250,000? That’s a direct cost to society. We in northern Ontario are a part of this society and we are contributing to this society in a very real sense by the contribution of our tax dollars. If you went to get into the argument of dollars or population density, I want to tell you that when we pay sales tax -- which is based on the cost of an article which is maybe 50 per cent or 100 per cent more than I it is down here -- the five per cent we’re paying is 10 per cent in terms of you people living down here in Toronto. In a very real sense we’re making our contribution and more. And we just don’t like the kind of indifference, the kind of neglect, with which we’ve been treated with regard to the lack of adequate health, medical and dental services in the northern part of this province.

It seems that every time I get involved with a small community and they’re trying to do something, pull themselves up by the bootstraps and get involved and get some kind of mechanism whereby they too can participate, they’re thwarted at every turn. It seems to me that we have people within this ministry who look for reasons and for excuses why they can’t do something, rather than cutting through the bureaucracy and the red tape and saying: “Regardless of what our programmes are, regardless of what our criteria, there is a need so let’s do whatever we have to do to meet that need.”

I had this argument with a former Minister of Community and Social Services several years ago when I was dealing with some very unique and specific problems of residents living in northern communities. There was an obvious need. I asked him if he wouldn’t look over all of his programmes and come up with some kind of programme to meet that need. He sat down with his deputy minister and all of his branch heads and everyone else and he said, “I’m sorry, I looked and we just don’t have a programme.” That’s so indicative of the way this government plans. Instead of sitting down here in your ivory tower and saying: “Here’s our programme, now we’ll go out and see if we can find people to fit it,” I suggest you get your Dr. Baldwins and your Dr. Copemans and whoever else is charged with the responsibility of designing programmes and let them visit places like Pickle Lake, Savant Lake, Armstrong, Nakina --

Mr. Foulds: Even Thunder Bay.

Mr. Stokes: -- Beardmore. Let them go out and see what the needs of the people are.

Hon. Mr. Miller: You had better find out where he has been before you say too much.

Mr. Stokes: If he was there, he didn’t see the problems.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Pickle Lake is all agreed upon.

Mr. Stokes: I know what is agreed on for Pickle Lake. I got the memo. It was I who raised it with you several weeks ago. If you think a periodic visit from a neurosurgeon from the Toronto Sick Children’s Hospital or the University of Toronto medical faculty -- a once a month visit, one time by a neurologist, another time an eye, ear and nose specialist and the next month something else -- if you think that is the proper kind of service I don’t. As a matter of fact, I was up in Pickle Lake two weeks ago and I met a psychiatrist.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Was that by appointment?

Mr. Stokes: No, I didn’t. It was not by appointment at all. It was strictly by accident.

Mr. Foulds: Mind you, the psychiatrist billed him on his OHIP.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I can understand, but carry on.

Mr. Stokes: I don’t think you are really very funny, because I’m trying to be serious about this. When you start to take me seriously, I’ll sit down and listen to some of your answers, because I have made this plea to a succession of Ministers of Health for far too long in this House.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): For eight years.

Mr. Stokes: I’m going to continue to make it and I’m going to stand here until somebody takes me seriously. As I travel around my riding and through parts of northwestern Ontario, I find that people are just fed up with the indifference with which you people treat our need for medical and dental services.

I don’t know how much more forceful I can be. Believe me, I am reflecting the views of everybody in northwestern Ontario who doesn’t have adequate medical, dental and general health facilities.

It may be that we’re going to have to be satisfied with nurse practitioners in certain areas where you’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible and allow them to do things that doctors down here wouldn’t permit them to do. If that’s the only alternative, all right, that’s what we want. But we want a medical presence in all of the communities that need services so badly and have a perfect right to have them.

I realize you have to be innovative and that you have to be flexible. Because of the great distances there are between settlements and because of our inability to get a doctor or a dentist into every one of them, you are going to have to be much more flexible. But you haven’t demonstrated to me and the people I represent that you are even aware of our problems.

Let me tell you something, Mr. Minister just to illustrate this: I was going by the community of Upsala last Friday morning on my way from Pickle Lake, and I saw a green sign reading: “Please contribute toward our ambulance service. The life you save may be your own.” Now there is the Upsala Save-Your-Life Ambulance Services. They have a legitimate draw; the prize is $500 and the tickets are $1 a piece, and they even have a lottery licence, No. 178631. I’ve got some tickets here that I’d like to sell to you and the members of your staff. This is what the people in northwestern Ontario are doing to get an ambulance, selling lottery tickets. And you sit over there and snicker.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Jack, it reads well in the record, but you know darned well I --

Mr. Stokes: It takes a lot to burn me up, but I just get a little bit incensed when I see a fellow -- and you know, basically I like you, but this is something I feel very, very strongly about.

Hon. Mr. Miller: But today you don’t.

Mr. Stokes: I don’t dislike you, but I am a little bit disturbed at the way you are reacting to what I have to say; I am trying to be serious about this.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I am listening seriously.

Mr. Stokes: When I see an unorganized community, 90 miles from an ambulance, having to sell lottery tickets because you won’t provide them with an ambulance, I say it is just symptomatic of the kind of treatment we have been getting in northern communities for far too long.

I am going to try to sell those tickets. I have $25 worth of lottery tickets; I am going to try to sell them and send them back there. I want to know what your contribution is and what the contribution of your ministry is going to be to the delivery of health services in northern Ontario.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. minister.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Mr. Chairman, I think the member has forcefully and properly put forward the feelings of his constituents, and I suppose there is no one in Ontario who has a more difficult riding to face in terms of geography than he has. But the assumption that we are unaware of that, of course, is wrong. The assumption that we are doing nothing about it is wrong. Our ministry is doing its best to service the north.

The facts of geography will continue to exist. I don’t know of any other province that has the amount of space to cover and the low density of population that we face in northwestern Ontario; it’s a very real problem. Obviously, as you have said, we cannot put doctors and dentists in every community, but we are doing our best.

The assumption that a health planning council or a health council is another layer of bureaucracy is wrong. It is an attempt to do exactly what you keep telling us to do; to use local people to help us get the input we need to solve local problems. I get advice from all kinds of sources. Surely the best advice is from the people living in and facing the problems in a given area, and that’s what health councils are about. Given a chance, they will help us resolve some of these problems.

Dr. Mustard, in his report, went into the discussion of the need for services and organization in the underpopulated areas of the province. He did mention, and we agree, that not every area can be serviced by physicians and you will be using nurse practitioners or other people; you will see us doing more and more of that.

Mr. Stokes: When?

Hon. Mr. Miller: We are coming along. Look, we vent into Pickle Lake -- and I think the attempt to imply that Dr. Baldwin, for whom I have a great respect, is not travelling the north, is wrong. He is doing more miles than any other staff member in my ministry, I am sure, by a long, long number. He visits most of the communities in the north and does his best to help us resolve the problems, as does Dr. Copeman. Ontario led the way in trying to resolve the problem of physicians for underserviced areas. Pickle Lake, I am told, will have full-time medical care --

Mr. Stokes: What does that mean?

Hon. Mr. Miller: A full-time physician on duty there. Not necessarily the same one, I admit; because up to date we have had trouble getting physicians to locate in places like Armstrong on a permanent basis. You know that. But surely in the alternative it is better to have someone servicing it.

Attawapiskat has the same problem. I talked to the nurses there and they are fed up with new physicians every time the physician comes in. If I had ways and means of making sure a physician would stay there. I can assure you a physician would stay there. But we are not yet to that point that we can insist on this.

I can only point to my policy on immigration. It was talked about a while ago. That policy was aimed at making it very difficult to locate in areas where we already had enough physicians. It is aimed at making people say: “Yes, I will go to Armstrong because it is underserviced and take up my practice there.” Hopefully, it will succeed in that.

Policies can be agreed upon, but they don’t occur overnight, that much I have learned. I am not a patient person. I have learned, though, to know that it takes quite a time between my staff and I coming to an agreement, say with the federal government, and it being implemented.

Now the statements that the federal government pays the money past the 51st boundary, I would be very interested in seeing documented. My feeling is just the opposite. Attawapiskat is certainly above the 51st -- I think you would agree?

Mr. Stokes: Yes, it is. What do you do there?

Hon. Mr. Miller: That hospital, as I understand it, is totally funded by us. Did you not know that?

Mr. Stokes: If it is, it is the only one in the north.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Oh no. I think you will find they all are, up the coast, every one of them. Look, Moose Factory hospital, for example, is a federal hospital. Do you realize we pay a very high percentage of the cost of operating that hospital on a per diem?

Mr. Stokes: That is the exception rather than the rule.

Hon. Mr. Miller: No, it isn’t, not by any means. We even supply and pay for the services to the native people in many parts of the province. The assumption that the feds are paying for this is totally wrong. We have been trying to get them out of the delivery of health services because they bill us for delivering them in a less efficient way than we think we can do it.

You have two hospitals in the north -- Sioux Lookout and Moose Factory -- that are operated by the federal government. I don’t know of any others, unless there are some outpost locations,

Sioux Lookout, in our opinion, duplicates the provincially-operated hospital, and according to the mayor of that community adds to an already exciting racial tension in the community.

Now I am repeating his words, rather than saying they are correct or not correct. I have been there and I have heard his arguments. He has repeated them very recently to us via his member. He feels ft is time we stopped putting the Indian in one hospital and the white man in the other. I think you would agree with that; that we don’t want to distinguish between them; although an essential ingredient to that is the Indian likes that system.

We have made one agreement with the feds. We will not change the system without the agreement of the native peoples in those areas where this problem exists, because we recognize their rights.

Well, the assumption that OHIP premiums are for insurance, of course, is one of those myths, as you know. I don’t know what percentage of my budget comes in from OHIP premiums, but I would guess that it is between 16 and 20 per cent. The balance comes in from general tax dollars. I look upon OHIP premiums as a tax upon those of us who, in fact, can afford to pay it. That excludes everybody over 65, it excludes everybody who has no taxable income.

I am sure the hon. member knows that in the north we have a good number of both, because we have more elderly people stay in some of the smaller communities, at least in my area they do. I know I am not in the north by the member’s standards, but the percentage of over 65’s in Muskoka has to be 15 per cent versus a provincial average of about 8.5 per cent.

I think this is typical of rural Ontario, so that when we look at what happens in the north we probably collect from fewer people in terms of direct payment methods than anywhere else in the province. I am happy for that rather than unhappy for it, let’s understand that fact.

The cost of services in the north, in spite of their paucity, is, in fact, higher per capita than anywhere else in this province, not less. You may find specific communities where this is not so. I don’t know about the one the member is talking about. I only know that we have more beds per person in the north; they use them more often; they stay, longer -- naturally, because they have problems of transportation -- and we have to allow for these things. You can’t send a person home 150 miles the 12th day after a gall bladder operation as easily as you can transport a person two miles in the city of Toronto. So we design the facilities and have a higher allowance for that sort of thing.

I was intrigued to find we use physicians more per person in the north than we do in the south; that we actually, therefore, have a higher cost. I would have thought it was the opposite. The statistics I have seen, and I don’t know that they are all-inclusive, show this to be a fact.

I can only tell you, really, I share your concern for the North. I think of myself emotionally as being in the north, because albeit much more compact, my riding does suffer from a lot of the problems you suffer from. I have communities that are 35, 40, 50 miles from a hospital and that far in some raises from physicians. I know the feelings people have in those areas. I don’t have a solution to it that you and I can afford yet, but we are working on it. I think the nurse practitioner will be one of those solutions to the problem.

Mr. Stokes: I just want to react to that. You disagreed with my assessment of the health councils, you said that you wanted to get some kind of input from people on the scene. Well Dr. Baldwin asked the people of Beardmore -- Beardmore is a small community --

Hon. Mr. Miller: Yes, I saw their presentation.

Mr. Stokes: He asked them to form themselves into a community health committee so they could speak for the community and coordinate whatever local effort and input was required. Dr. Baldwin was very sincere about this, and I have a fairly high regard for Dr. Baldwin and his activity in trying to get some kind of health delivery system in the north. He went in there and told them specifically to set up that committee.

The last communication that committee got from your ministry -- I can’t recall who it was signed by, it was signed by somebody over on Overlea Blvd -- said that for all practical purposes they might as yell disband the committee. It said Dr. Copeland from this point forward would be co-ordinating any efforts by the Ministry of Health, and it as much as told that health committee they were no longer needed.

They had even gone to the trouble of getting an LIP grant from the federal government to upgrade their existing facility, and just as they were in the process of doing that and had the sense they were doing something worthwhile they were told they were no longer needed.

As far as I know, any time I ever had anything to do with Dr. Copeland, he was charged with the responsibility for doctor recruitment for underserviced areas. Yet all of a sudden he is going to take over and perform the function of the very people from whom you said you needed assistance, advice and co-operation. If that is the case, it sort of throws your argument that you are really sincere about getting some kind of local input, some kind of co-operation into a cocked hat.

The other thing I want to mention is, you have referred twice to the funding by the provincial government at Attawapiskat. You can always see exceptions to rules. I didn’t know you funded anything at Attawapiskat. I had a fair idea that you were acting on a co-operative basis at Moosonee. I know there are certain services you provide over at Sioux Lookout. You would think that was next door. Take a look at the map of the Province of Ontario and see how far it is from Moosonee over to Sioux Lookout. One of them is in Cochrane North riding and the other is in Kenora riding.

Hon. Mr. Miller: I wasn’t saying they are together.

Mr. Stokes: I want to ask what you are doing for the people at the most northerly community in the province of Ontario on the shore of Hudson Bay?

Hon. Mr. Miller: Winisk?

Mr. Stokes: No.

Hon. Mr. Miller: Which is that?

Mr. Stokes: Fort Severn. What are you doing for Fort Severn? What are you doing for Big Trout Lake? What are you doing for Angling Lake? What are you doing for Kasabonika? What are you doing for Kingfisher? What are you doing for Wannaman? Webequie? Lansdowne? Fort Hope? Those are the nine communities I was talking about north of the 51st parallel, that happen to be in my riding. You aren’t doing a blessed thing for those people. What are you doing for Savant Lake? What are you doing for Beardmore? Precious little.

I don’t want to be overly dramatic about this thing, but as I travel throughout my riding I sense a frustration I have never sensed before. Now that you say you know what our problems are, if Dr. Baldwin has been around to the extent you say and if he has listened and has the same message that I have got, for heaven’s sake start listening to Dr. Baldwin. If Dr. Copeland has been getting the same message that I have, start listening to him. You’ve got enough people there, sitting in front of you and over in the gallery, with enough ingenuity that they can design a programme that will suit the specific and unique needs of the people I represent. That is all I am going to say about it.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Ottawa Centre, on item 1?

Mr. M. Cassidy (Ottawa Centre): On item 1, Mr. Chairman, I want to talk about smoking and I want to talk about it here, because I cannot be here this evening when it might come up under another item. I am sorry that at five to six it will be given only five minutes. I suggest that the item is, therefore, getting the attention the ministry gives to it and not the attention it actually deserves.

As far as I can establish, there is simply no priority within the Ministry of Health on finding means of helping people in the Province of Ontario to stop smoking and of discouraging smoking as a means of preventive health.

Mr. Haggerty: When did you stop?

Mr. Cassidy: I am a convert. I had my experience on the road to Damascus a year or so ago and I am much the better for it.

Mr. Chairman: I would draw to the hon. member’s attention that I don’t think this comes under item 1, or this vote in general.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Chairman, I was told that it would come under item 1 of the promotion and protection programme, but in fact there is no money involved under item 1 for smoking.

Mr. Chairman: Would it come under health protection and disease prevention services, vote 2902, item 1?

Mr. Cassidy: It is not there, Mr. Chairman. I would also ask the indulgence of the House. I cannot be here when that will come up, and I just want to speak about it for a minute or two.

I have had a series of correspondence with the minister, and the minister said in a letter in August of 1974 that a ministry task force was being established to reassess the role of the Ontario government with reference to smoking. He invited me to meet with the task force. I replied to him a couple of months later saying I would be delighted to and I have heard nothing from that task force yet.

I would like the minister to report on what is being done with that task force. I would also appreciate it if the minister could say -- since he hasn’t replied to my written question on the order paper -- what programmes the ministry has directed toward the prevention, discouragement or reduction of smoking among the people of Ontario.

I came to this through an anti-smoking group called Smokers Anonymous, that had actually been established here as a result of a public meeting in Toronto, and was having a good deal of success. They were having success rates of 35 to 50 per cent, which is very high in the field.

They also had a technique which has been used against other similar problems by Alcoholics Anonymous and things like that It had not been used against smoking, but it was proving to be successful. It was a group therapy kind of technique. They sought funds from the ministry. They were told by the ministry they were, “awfully sorry but we have run out of dough and we can’t look at you until the following year.” The consequence was that the group, which was doing effective work, has come to an end and the ministry has simply said, “Look, here’s what the Adventists are doing, here’s what the TB and RD people are doing.”

For the record, Mr. Chairman, I would like to suggest that the government take the question of the health hazards of tobacco smoking very seriously and that it provide a very large increase in funding, both for education and also for anti-smoking clinics.

I would point out that tax revenues from smoking are $100 million a year and the health costs of smoking-related diseases are probably much greater than $100 million per year. I would suggest to the minister that he stop being a prisoner, either of his bureaucrats or else of back-benchers from the tobacco ridings of southwestern Ontario. Perhaps you need to produce a comic hook for people who want to quit; perhaps you need to get together some really good literature, in conjunction with the TB and RD people, and then put it out as a means to get to the people. You have posters you are using with teenagers and alcohol. They’re good posters. That approach can be used for smoking.

You have GAINS cheques that go to many people across the province. You can probably piggy-back on the federal family allowance cheques. There are assessment forms and other things which we get in every home in the province.

You should consider further restrictions on advertising about smoking. You should have a tougher provincial attitude towards smoking in public and semi-public places.

There should be, across the province, Mr. Chairman, anti-smoking clinics available to those addicts who want some support when they quit. I say, “who want some support when they quit,” because as the minister probably knows, at least half of the success of anybody quitting is the desire to quit. But it’s a lifestyle thing, and lifestyles are changing. There is much more interest these days, in physical fitness, recreation and that kind of thing. There is a great receptiveness there.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Chairman: Order.

Mr. Cassidy: There is receptiveness if the minister and ministry would get involved.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please.

Mr. Cassidy: You must help people in a positive way.

Mr. Chairman: Order. I would draw to the hon. member’s attention that it is 6 of the clock. I will now leave the chair and we will return at 8.

It being 6 o’clock, p.m., the House took recess.