Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

The House met at 10 o’clock, a.m.

Prayers.

Mr. Speaker: Statements by the ministry.

Oral questions. The hon. member for Kitchener.

PICKERING AIRPORT

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): Mr. Speaker, now that the Minister of Transportation and Communications has arrived, I would ask him a question with respect to a report in yesterday’s issue of the Guardian, the Brampton newspaper, concerning the comments of the Premier (Mr. Davis) that a one-runway airport at Pickering is satisfactory to the government of Ontario. Can the minister advise if, as a result, the structure of roads and other requirements to service that one-runway airport is now accepted as a project for his ministry?

Hon. J. H. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): Mr. Speaker, I am certainly not familiar with any comments the Premier may have made. I have not seen that particular newspaper. However, I don’t think the position has changed at all from the letter I have sent to Mr. Marchand. A meeting now has been arranged to be held between representatives of the federal government and myself and a number of my colleagues in Ottawa on July 29. The position hasn’t changed.

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): A supplementary: Would the reason for the minister’s concern -- maybe a reason he should pass along to the Premier -- be that the province’s obligation in connection with a one-runway airport would be in the order of many hundreds of millions of dollars and therefore, unless the federal government indicates it is serious about the need for a full airport, there is no point in the province going ahead with an expenditure for a one-runway airport?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I think the contents of Mr. Marchand’s letter indicate what the federal government’s position is as it relates to the Pickering airport; and that it is their intention to develop a full facility airport at Pickering. As I indicated at that time to the House, it was the first indication we had as to what their total plans were. Originally, they had only talked about one runway.

As far as I am concerned -- and this will be a matter that will be discussed with Mr. Marchand -- we are looking at what our costs will be as it relates to serving a full airport, which they indicated they intended to develop.

Mr. Breithaupt: Supplementary question: Would the minister not agree that the basic requirements for road and other services to service a one-runway airport, if that is acceptable, will in effect mean that these facilities will be in place and will already be committed whether the airport expands or not?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons why we asked Mr. Marchand and his colleagues to outline what the federal government’s long-range intentions were is that if you are going to develop a transportation system and facilities to serve an airport, you would have to know what the eventual size of the airport is going to be. It certainly wouldn’t make much sense to develop facilities that would serve what would be a one-runway airport, similar to a local municipal airport, and then eventually find that in four or five or six years, whatever the time-frame, you’d have to go back in and develop a whole brand new system. So we want to know the full system that will be required and that’s what we will be discussing with the federal government.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Wentworth with a supplementary.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): Thank you. Assuming that the federal government tells the minister exactly what its plans are, is the Ontario government then prepared to proceed with the provision of services, roads, sewers and the like, in order to develop whatever it is that they want?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I have reported to this Legislature the contents of my letter to Mr. Marchand, that the Ontario government is not prepared to commit itself to the very large expenditure that would be required a this time to service any sort of airport out there.

Mr. Deans: Well, why is the minister going through this exercise then?

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

Mr. Deacon: Any expenditure there would be a waste of public funds.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): As a matter of interest, could the minister explain why it took this government three years to make up its mind anti obtain the information that it obtained recently from the federal government? Why didn’t the Ontario government ask for that information three or four years ago when the airport was originally planned and this government supported it?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I’m sure the hon. member will appreciate that over that time-frame that he’s referring to, that very lengthy and very intricate hearing was held.

Mr. Roy: This government wasn’t held back by that.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: I’m wondering if the hon. member was sitting somewhere and didn’t realize the hearing was going on. I’d be pleased to send him a copy of that.

Mr. Roy: This government wasn’t held back by that. It was a sham anyway.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: The hearing was held by the federal government to determine the need of an airport in Pickering.

Mr. Deacon: This government wouldn’t even take part in it.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: That was the Gibson report. If the member hasn’t read it --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: -- then he is asking questions out of a vacuum.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Kitchener; further questions?

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. This is becoming just a debate. The same question is being rehashed.

Mr. Deacon: I just want to ask one further supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: One more supplementary; the member for York Centre.

Mr. Deacon: Since the statement of the Premier is that the province can cope with a one-runway airport but can’t with a full-scale airport, shouldn’t the minister be sure the Premier’s been fully informed as to the position that he is taking, so they keep together?

Mr. Roy: Yes, get together.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, as I say, I have not seen that report. I have not discussed with the Premier what he has said. And I’ve learned, as I’m sure the hon. members opposite have, that all that appears in the print media is not necessarily accurate.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Kitchener; further questions?

NANTICOKE PARKS

Mr. Breithaupt: A question of the Minister of Housing with respect to the draft approval plan for the city of Nanticoke. Apparently, Mr. Speaker, this refers particularly to condition No. 5 in that agreement, if I may expand upon that.

Is it correct that that condition No. 5, which dealt with the ability to give the five per cent payment in lieu of the granting of certain lands for park purposes, has now been unilaterally removed from the agreement? And is it correct, in accordance with a letter apparently sent to Stelco by a senior planner in the subdivision branch -- a copy of which has now gone to Nanticoke -- that the removal of this condition will in effect allow Stelco to grant certain lands for park purposes within the centre of this industrial park that may not be required, as opposed to the requirement to pay funds for parks which may well be needed in the areas in which the people in this new city are going to live?

Hon. D. R. Irvine (Minister of Housing): Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is saying something I am not aware of. I did meet with the municipality in regard to the same matter he is referring to, but I said exactly the opposite, so I would like to see the correspondence that he is referring to from one of our planners.

Mr. Breithaupt: If I may, Mr. Speaker, just provide some information, I understand that the letter had come from Mrs. L. S. Punter, who is a senior planner in the subdivision branch, and that, I believe, is the source of that particular matter.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions?

SUMMER CONCERT COSTS

Mr. Breithaupt: I would just ask a question which I would put, I suppose, to the Chairman of Management Board with respect to the various concerts which are taking place in Queen’s Park.

I understand there are 12 concerts as well as the Ontario Day programme, costing some $225,000. Can the minister advise us if he is aware of who is monitoring these expenses, which are apparently in the nature of $15,000 to $17,000 per concert, and whether the attendance at these concerts particularly justifies this expenditure in difficult times apparently, according to the Treasurer (Mr. McKeough).

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Is the question directed to me? I am sorry, I didn’t hear the beginning of it. Mr. Speaker, the programme is being administered, if my memory serves me correctly, by the Ministry of Culture and Recreation under a total allocation and they are doing the monitoring.

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

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary; the member for High Park.

Mr. Shulman: Does Mr. Donald Martin have any particular part in these concerts? Is it true that the government gave Mr. Martin $16,000 to run the Strawberry Festival?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I am not sure of that, Mr. Speaker, but I want to assure the hon. member that the Strawberry Festival, or whatever he wants to call it, was a tremendous success. I might say further that I believe, if the figures are correct -- and again I will be very close -- there were some 14,000 people attended or about that figure anyway. One of the great areas of entertainment was the massed pipe band from Grey county, and I am very pleased about that too.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Kitchener.

Mr. Roy: Are those strawberry stains on the minister’s tie?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Do we have a supplementary? The member for High Park?

Mr. Shulman: Yes, I have a further supplementary, if I may. Is it true that the government actually paid $100,000 to the Strawberry Festival, and what particularly merited giving $16,000 of that to Mr. Martin for his services? Is it just because he is a candidate for the Tories?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman’s information is just completely and totally wrong.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: As usual.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I don’t have the arithmetic of the costs with me, but I want to tell the member it was nowhere near the figures he is quoting.

Mr. Shulman: Then why did the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Brunelle) say those were the figures? Would the minister explain that?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, I have never heard him use those figures at all.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): It sounds pretty jammy to me.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Kitchener.

Mr. Breithaupt: If we are looking into costs, perhaps the minister could advise what the necessity was of repainting the stage out here, which was a very fine red colour, into a Tory blue?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: In this year of our Lord, 1975, I think that it is a good thing that it is Tory blue. However, if it will satisfy the hon. gentleman, I might paint the legs red or something of that nature.

Mr. Roy: He should have put yellow stripes on it.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions? The member for Wentworth?

SOUTHERN ONTARIO DEVELOPMENT PLAN

Mr. Deans: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister without Portfolio in charge of municipal affairs, if I could get his chin off his hand.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): One can tell because he is scratching his left ear.

Mr. Deans: Does the minister recall speaking in Port Hope in March and indicating that there would be a new overall plan for development for southern Ontario unveiled in the month of June? Where is it?

Hon. R. B. Beckett (Minister without Portfolio): Mr. Speaker, I did make that statement because I had been informed that it would be ready by June. It is still being worked on and it is hoped that it will be available shortly. I hesitate to say whether it is going to be a month or a week, because I am not that aware of the latest meeting, but there is another meeting scheduled for next week.

Mr. Deans: Supplementary question: Can the minister indicate what methods are being used to coordinate the economic development currently taking place in places like Nanticoke, the Hamilton area and the Metropolitan Toronto area in terms of this overall economic plan that the government is proposing? What will be the effect of the decision that will be made by the Minister of Transport in the federal government regarding the Pickering airport on the overall plan that will emerge somehow or other?

Hon. Mr. Beckett: Mr. Speaker, in answering the first question I attempted to answer the hon. member with regard to a statement I had made in Port Hope. I feel his second question more properly should be directed to the Treasurer, who is actually the one doing the work covered by the question.

Mr. P. Taylor (Carleton East): The Treasurer is one of the 16 ministers who aren’t here today.

Mr. Deans: A final supplementary question: Since the minister made the statement, can he indicate whether this is the same economic plan that was promised five years ago?

Hon. Mr. Becket: Mr. Speaker, I’m not aware of the economic plan that was promised five years ago.

Mr. Speaker: Are there any further questions?

MINOR HOCKEY CONTRACTS

Mr. Deans: I have a question of the Attorney General. Some time ago I asked the Attorney General to review the whole matter of contracts as they affected minors playing hockey. Has the Attorney General reviewed that? Can he indicate whether he thinks it is reasonable that a child should be required to have a social insurance number in order to register to play minor hockey in organized leagues in Ontario?

Hon. J. T. Clement (Provincial Secretary for Justice): I recall the question very clearly, Mr. Speaker. What we have done to date is to communicate in writing with a number of the leagues involved. I asked the hon. member at the time if he would provide me with a copy of one of these contracts and he did. I must say it’s the first time I had ever seen one. I have not had responses back from everyone because of people being away on holidays, but I will complete that and report to the hon. member either by telephone or letter.

Insofar as whether I think it is fair that a child of tender years has a social insurance number, I pass no observation or comment on that because I presume that’s necessary under the federal social insurance legislation. If a person is receiving some type of income --

Mr. Deans: They’re not getting income.

Hon. Mr. Clement: -- I presume they need a number for identification purposes for one reason or another. I don’t know what is offensive in it, therefore I maintain a neutral position. Maybe the member feels it’s offensive. I can’t quarrel with him, but I’m not saying I find it offensive.

Mr. Deans: I find it totally unnecessary.

ONTARIO LOTTERY CORP.

Mr. Deans: I would like to ask the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet whether he has any knowledge of the Wintario corporation’s practice of using outside employment agencies to secure people to fill management positions within the Wintario organization? Doesn’t he feel that the Civil Service Commission is well suited to do that and that that particular cost is a waste of taxpayers’ money and a waste of the money of the Wintario lottery system?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I think the hon. gentleman will know that the corporation acts as an arm’s-length corporation from the government and determines its own policies. I will bring it to the attention of the Minister of Culture and Recreation (Mr. Welch).

Mr. Roy: If it doesn’t, it should now.

Mr. Speaker: Are there any further questions?

FOOD PRICES

Mr. Deans: I would like to ask a question of the Provincial Secretary for Resources Development. I would be happy if he would refer it to the parliamentary assistant, who I think probably knows the answer.

Is it still the practice of the Ontario Food Council to monitor the food basket in the Province of Ontario, as was indicated by the Minister of Agriculture and Food some six or eight months ago? If it is, are there statistics available with regard to the most recent months of this year? If there are, will the minister or the parliamentary assistant make those statistics available to the people of Ontario?

Hon. A. Grossman (Provincial Secretary for Resources Development): Mr. Speaker, in accordance with your ruling, may I direct that question to the parliamentary assistant?

Mr. Speaker: Did the parliamentary assistant hear the question?

Mr. Stokes: Put down the newspaper.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Would the member repeat the question now?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Hey, this is the member for Carleton East’s last day in the Legislature.

Mr. Deans: I could never word it again. Does the Ontario Food Council still monitor the cost of the food basket in the Province of Ontario?

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

Mr. Deans: If they do, are there statistics available for the most recent months? If there are, why aren’t the statistics made available publicly?

Mr. B. G. Eaton (Middlesex South): Yes, they still monitor it; the statistics are available; they may be obtained from the Food Council.

Mr. Deans: Can the minister indicate, then, whether there has been an increase or a decrease, or whether the general pattern of costs for the food basket items in the Province of Ontario has remained the same over the last three or four months?

Mr. L. C. Henderson (Lambton): There would have been an increase, of course.

Mr. Eaton: Over the last four-month period there was a drop for one or two months and then it increased again in the last two months.

Mr. Deans: Could the minister then make available the actual costs involved in the various articles that make up the food basket?

Mr. Eaton: Not in the various articles. We can see that the member is provided with the total figures of the food basket. We’ll see that he gets a copy for the last four months sent to him.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary?

Mr. Breithaupt: No, I have a new question of the minister who has just come in, when the occasion arises.

Mr. Speaker: Of course.

Mr. Breithaupt: The Provincial Secretary for Social Development.

Mr. Speaker: All right, you may ask your question.

PENETANGUISHENE HOSPITAL CONDITIONS

Mr. Breithaupt: With respect to an item which I presume all members have received from certain persons at the Oakridge hospital in Penetanguishene, is the minister aware of the apparent new rulings with respect to the unification of nursing services and the difficulties which are considered to exist concerning the decision not to escort nursing personnel into the wards?

Is the minister also aware of the view that this problem might develop in the same way as the recent unfortunate situation in the British Columbia prison, where staff members were perhaps not kept as secure as they should be? And can the minister advise us if this matter will at least be reviewed so that the concerns of certain of the staff members there will be considered by the Ministry of Health?

Hon. M. Birch (Provincial Secretary for Social Development): Mr. Speaker, this situation is receiving the personal consideration of the Minister of Health (Mr. Miller).

Mr. Speaker: The member for Port Arthur.

HOUSING IN THUNDER BAY

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Housing, if I could get his attention please: Is the minister aware that there has been a 15 per cent increase in the number of people on the waiting list for senior citizen housing in Thunder Bay in a single month, from April to May, and a 21 per cent increase on the waiting list for family housing in Thunder Bay in the same period?

Secondly, does the minister agree with the statement of a Mr. Bill Morgan, I think it was, an alderman in Thunder Bay, that the city would have to provide well over 700 senior citizens’ units per year just to keep up, and 400 family units?

Hon. L. Bernier (Minister of National Resources): That’s the member’s opponent, the next member for Port Arthur.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): What is he talking about?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, as far as the first part of the question is concerned -- and I’ll have to ask the member to repeat the second part -- I just signed an order for the acquisition of land to provide for 140 units for senior citizen accommodations in the Thunder Bay area.

Mr. Foulds: Does the minister understand that means that when those are completed there will still be over 300 on the waiting list, so he is not even keeping steady? I wonder also if the minister --

Mr. R. K. McNeil (Elgin): It means the member won’t be re-elected. Overnight guest; just an overnight guest.

An hon. member: They have more than their share.

Mr. Foulds: The minister doesn’t believe in housing for senior citizens, does he?

Mr. J. A. Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox): Certainly we believe in housing for senior citizens.

Mr. J. M. Turner (Peterborough): How about the member?

Mr. Foulds: Does the minister agree with the figure stated by an alderman in Thunder Bay, Mr. Morgan, that the city would have to provide over 700 senior citizen units and 400 family units just to keep even?

Can he comment on Mr. Morgan’s comment that he doubted it was the city’s responsibility to initiate each new project “as he was informed the city had a special thing going with OHC whereby the corporation goes ahead and takes action without being requested”? Could he elaborate on that special thing?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Who is Bill Morgan?

Mr. Stokes: He will likely be a Tory candidate next.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, all I want to say is, as I’ve said to the hon. member before, the Thunder Bay area has a really large percentage of senior citizen units, much larger than in many other areas. I think the city of Thunder Bay and the whole area should be very thankful of the number of units they have.

Mr. Stokes: So the minister disagrees with Bill Morgan.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: We will never be able to provide accommodation for every senior citizen in Ontario, and I don’t think it is necessary that we should. But I just told the member what action we are taking to provide some accommodation.

Mr. Renwick: Be thankful for small blessings, I suppose.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: As to the article he is referring to, I really don’t know anything about it. I would like to look at it.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Ottawa East.

Mr. Stokes: Bill Morgan doesn’t think you are doing enough.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Ottawa East with his question.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Morgan will be a Conservative candidate.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The member for Ottawa East.

EYE INJURIES IN MINOR HOCKEY

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Community and Social Services: In view of the minister’s concern about injuries and violence in the area of hockey, as evidenced by the fact he established a commission subsequent to questions by my colleague, the member for Rainy River (Mr. Reid), and the great concern of his leader in relation to violence, I wonder if the minister might --

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Never mind the preamble; ask the question.

Mr. Roy: -- I wonder if the minister might look into the question of eye injuries to young people in hockey? I wonder if the minister is aware of the fact that during the last hockey season, some 35 boys were blinded in one eye from hockey injuries? Of these injuries, the stick was responsible in 18 cases and the puck in 13 cases. I wonder if the minister might look into that in relation to the question of protective equipment, and whether greater enforcement of the rules is necessary in the game of junior hockey?

Hon. R. Brunelle (Minister of Community and Social Services): Mr. Speaker, I certainly would be pleased to look into it. I do think though it relates more to the Minister of Culture and Recreation, who now has the responsibility for sports.

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, as a supplementary, I wonder if the minister might ask his colleague why it is that last winter in Ontario there was some 143 eye injuries, as compared to Quebec with only 12? In other provinces, BC had only 17, and Alberta had 18. There seems to be a great difference between Ontario and the other provinces. The minister might ask his colleague to look into that as well.

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: Certainly, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Cochrane South.

OPERATIONS AT REEVES MINES

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Natural Resources. I wonder if the minister could report on the meeting he had with Canadian Johns-Manville Co. officials about the closing of the Reeves mines?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, this has been a problem before us for some considerable time. I did make a commitment to the United Steelworkers and to the hon. member that we would attempt to meet with executives of Johns-Manville.

We have exchanged correspondence. If I recall correctly, I did send them another letter about 10 days ago demanding that they come to Toronto and explain the various reasons -- be they economic or be they health problems -- with regard to the dosing of the mines. I haven’t had a reply as yet. In the other correspondence we were suggesting they meet with us, but I’ll now take a more positive stand and ask them to come and discuss it with us on a firm basis. As soon as I have more information I’ll be glad to report to the hon. member.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Carleton East.

INQUIRY INTO DUMP TRUCK OPERATIONS

Mr. P. Taylor: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would love to ask the Minister of Transportation and Communications a question on his last day in the Legislature.

Mr. Foulds: Have a good day.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Does the member want his picture taken with me before he leaves?

Mr. P. Taylor: I discussed this matter with the minister yesterday privately, thinking that it was the last day yesterday, but it didn’t seem to work out that way. So I would like to give the minister an opportunity to explain publicly what his responses are to the concerns of the dump truck industry, which is worried about the minister’s implementation of recommendations arising out of the Rapoport study, with particular reference to rates and PCV licences?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, as I said at the time that the report was tabled in the House, the recommendation that we regulate dump trucks would require legislation, the changing of the Act, in order to put this operation back under the regulations. So it will require legislation.

As far as rates are concerned, what I referred to when I spoke to the hon. member yesterday was that the minimum rate established by my ministry and which applies to contracts that involve my ministry is upgraded regularly. We can make changes in those rates and will be doing so before too long in order to adjust those rates.

Now, I know that part of the report recommends the actual control of rates, but that has some very broad implications beyond the dump truck industry. It will take some time to see how it could be applied to the dump trucks, if possible, and possibly the whole trucking industry.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Windsor West.

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): Supplementary question, Mr. Speaker, on that same report: Does the minister see any problems with the recommendations in that report and the regulations he is bringing from that report or any problems with that conflicting with the definition of dependent contractor that has been introduced as an amendment to the Ontario Labour Relations Act?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I think there are some of the recommendations in the Rapoport report that we should be looking at as to how this would affect the dump truck operators as dependent contractors. I have had a discussion with my colleague, the Minister of Labour (Mr. MacBeth), because we have some concerns about that, hoping that perhaps that thing can be held until we get the Rapoport report as it relates to dump trucks into effect and fitted into the scheme as it would affect the operators under the Labour Relations Act.

Mr. Bounsall: Supplementary again on this: How soon then does the minister expect to have his regulations relating to the recommendations of the Rapoport report finished? What sort of time scale are we looking at from the minister’s point of view to see when those difficulties would arise and be solved?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I can’t give a definite time-frame because, as I said, to put some of that report into effect would require legislation. We can do other parts by regulation and we are taking it apart now and we are working with the people who worked on the report to find out how we can implement some of these I things quickly and how rapidly we can develop the legislation. I don’t want to tell the member it is going to take one month or six months. I don’t think that would be fair to the hon. member or to us.

Mr. Laughren: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: In view of the fact that the minister indicated previously that the regulations concerning the covering of loose loads in dump trucks were already prepared and awaiting the publication of this report, is there any reason why those regulations cannot be proclaimed at this time?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: That regulation is in the process of coming forward right now.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Sudbury.

RAILWAY RELOCATION

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of Transportation and Communications. In view of the minister’s already stated position that there would not be one penny of provincial funding going to railway relocation, what purpose is to be served by doing feasibility studies on railway relocation?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Mr. Speaker, I don’t believe I said there would not be one penny of provincial funding going into railway location. What I did say was that we want an opportunity to discuss the terms of the Railway Relocation Act. We are doing that now with the federal government.

I would certainly feel there will be a time when these problems can be resolved and that we will be putting money into that sort of project -- the moving of railroads in the municipalities that so desire. Obviously, if we are going to go into a project of that size and with the effects that it can have on a community, there has to be a very detailed study done. I see nothing wrong with having those studies carried out and having that information available so that when funds are available from the federal and provincial governments -- and the municipalities because they will be participating -- we would be able to get on with the implementation as quickly as possible.

Mr. Germa: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Is it not true that the minister has rejected the terms of the railway relocation bill as it presently exists?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Yes, Mr. Speaker, as far as the funding proposed under the bill goes, we don’t think that the wording of the bill is adequate. I have said in this House on several occasions the three major concerns we have with the bill. There is the availability of the amount of money, to mention only one.

The hon. member, coming from Sudbury, knows full well if one relocates the railroad tracks in Sudbury and has to face the very, very high cost of relocating those businesses and industries now served by that railroad without any financial assistance at all from the federal government, we are going to be in real trouble. That is one of our concerns, because the federal government has said specifically that no money will be available to relocate businesses or industries that are now served by the railroad. That is one of our real concerns.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Essex-Kent.

STUDY OF CN PROJECT

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Minister of the Environment. Does the minister intend to order an environmental impact study of the proposed building of the CNR Malport intermodal terminal in Malton? Is the minister aware of the proposed building of the CNR freight link?

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): Well, Mr. Speaker, as the member well knows from when we discussed the environmental assessment bill, it won’t be proclaimed for some time. When we get it into position, it will not be retroactive. I imagine it would have to meet all of our controls under the Environmental Protection Act and also, I think under the Ontario Water Resources Act.

Mr. Ruston: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker. In his June 26 letter to the vice-president of the CNR, Mr. Hunt, the Premier said that he was very concerned about the environment and this building; doesn’t the minister think he should be, too?

Hon. W. Newman: Mr. Speaker, I’m concerned about every building which goes up in this province. I’m very much concerned about the environment. I think the member’s own environmental critic, thanks to him, said we’re doing a great job here in the Province of Ontario when we wound up the estimates.

Mr. Roy: Well, don’t get carried away.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Sandwich-Riverside.

URBAN HOUSING DEMONSTRATION PROJECTS

Mr. F. A. Burr (Sandwich-Riverside): Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of Housing -- a question to which I should like a simple non-partisan yes or no answer.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: I always give one.

Mr. Renwick: The member will get a simple one.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: He should ask me.

Mr. Burr: It’s a question regarding the urban housing demonstration proposals which have been under consideration by the federal and provincial governments for some time. Do the 14 surviving demonstration projects include the solar-heated senior citizens apartment project in Ontario or is it one of the 200 projects rejected or cancelled by the federal Minister of Urban Affairs on July 3?

Mr. Germa: Yes or no.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, the solar heat project, in my understanding, is a separate project entirely.

Mr. Burr: I’m sorry; I couldn’t catch it.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: It’s a separate project from the ones that were cancelled.

Mr. Burr: It’s going forward?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: That’s my understanding.

Mr. Burr: Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: The member for York Centre.

Mr. Renwick: That was pretty partisan.

PICKERING AIRPORT

Mr. Deacon: A question of the Minister of Housing. He seems to be busy over there this morning. Last January, he wrote me saying he was going to get in touch with the federal government about the compensation for landowners affected by the high noise zone at the proposed airport at Pickering. What reply has he received from the federal government with regard to compensating those who are penalized and have been severely hurt as a result of his ministerial order?

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, as usual, I have no reply from the federal government.

Mr. Deacon: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary: In view of the fact he has had no reply, would he pursue this matter because there are an awful lot of people in that area who have been badly hurt? The order is his order which he has the right to lift and to relieve these people of this problem unless the federal government does compensate them.

Hon. Mr. Irvine: Mr. Speaker, I can’t remove the order because of the fact that the federal government has requested the order to be placed on this particular area. There is no way I can do anything else but leave the order there until such time as the federal government issues instructions otherwise.

Mr. Deacon: Certainly the minister can.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. Deacon: Does the minister not agree that he does have the power to lift the order as the federal government will not compensate the people?

Mr. Speaker: The member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. Deacon: Oh, my God.

Mr. Roy: If it’s politically attractive, he is prepared to give --

UPGRADING OF NORTHERN ROADS

Mr. Stokes: I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources. Is the minister prepared to expend some of his funds from his NORT funding for access roads to upgrade the existing roads into amethyst deposits in view of the fact there was a fatal accident on one of them just last week?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Mr. Speaker, the expenditures for the NORT committee are under constant review. We have looked at a number of proposals. I believe I did look into the money which has already been spent on the amethyst road and I think it is around $16,000 or $26,000; it’s in that particular figure. We’re prepared to look at any road which needs improvement and which will provide an economic stimulus to that part of northern Ontario.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Carleton East.

USE OF FRENCH IN COURTS

Mr. P. Taylor: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for the Attorney General at this terminal moment in his political career. I’d like to ask him if he could give us a feeling as to what his attitude is and what his actions will be over the course of the next few months with respect to bilingual court documents, such as summonses and similar documents.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Mr. Speaker, I have responded to this in answer to a question, directed some weeks ago, by his colleague from Ottawa East. I believe this week the member for Sudbury also brought this matter to the attention of the House.

Mr. Roy: The government has been responding for four years.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Clement: No, never at any time have I said that we have been responding for four years. I will deal with it once again. The matter of bilingualism in the court system is one that is rather involved. Firstly, it is not necessary in every court in this province; I don’t think anybody is suggesting that it be available in every court.

Mr. Roy: We are agreed on that.

Hon. Mr. Clement: I think that the gist of my feelings is that when a person appears before a court for any offence whatsoever, he or she should understand the offence with which he or she is charged. Interpreters’ services are available in just about every court in this province, and that has been the position for some time, so that the accused will know the matter which brings them before the court.

A number of months ago -- 10 or 11 months ago I believe -- the Ministry of the Attorney General undertook to ascertain if it could translate many of the offences into French and have them reduced into a bilingual summons; quite frankly, we have met with great difficulty. I have been told by my people that it is difficult to translate and retain the literal and lawful meaning of certain phraseologies dealing with certain offences. That is the position we are in right now.

In eastern Ontario many of the court officials, the defence counsel, Crown attorneys and members of the bench are indeed bilingual. Now, that is the situation as it is today.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): Isn’t it done in Quebec?

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary. The member for Sudbury.

Mr. Germa: Is the Attorney General not aware that New Brunswick has accomplished this tremendous feat of producing bilingual summonses? Does it not seem strange, if New Brunswick can accomplish this, that the Province of Ontario cannot?

Hon. Mr. Clement: It doesn’t seem strange to me at all. The difficulty, as I understand it from my people, is with the translating of the charges themselves. As far as having a summons warrant goes, there is no difficulty in having that. But if one is instructed in French to appear to answer a charge, and that phraseology is retained in the English language, then you really aren’t accomplishing very much in my assessment.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. P. Taylor: How many charges are there in total?

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Roy: A short supplementary to the Attorney General. He is a pretty good fellow, but he has got to take the brunt of --

Mr. Speaker: Is there a supplementary?

Mr. Roy: Yes, I’ll get to the question. Can he explain to me how it is he has just stated here this morning that his people have been working on this for 10 to 12 months when in fact he promised bilingual services in the courts in the Throne Speech in 1972? Now is it only a hollow promise, or is he really doing anything? Maybe he should look at Quebec, which has been doing it bilingually for 100 years.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Supplementary question.

Mr. P. Taylor: He has no understanding of the problem at all.

Mr. Speaker: The member for High Park.

PAYMENTS TO DONALD MARTIN

Mr. Shulman: A question of the Minister of Community and Social Services. Is the minister satisfied that Mr. Donald Martin did sufficient work to merit receiving the $16,000 pay which he received for the Strawberry Festival?

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: Mr. Speaker, as often happens, the hon. member is away off mark; he is not even close at half that amount.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Shulman: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: The last hurrah.

Mr. Shulman: May I ask the final supplementary of my political career?

Mr. Speaker: Surely.

Mr. Shulman: How much did it cost the ministry? How much did they pay him?

Mr. P. Taylor: That was a terminal question.

Hon. Mr. Brunelle: Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to have that information sent to the hon. member.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. P. Taylor: Foiled again!

Mr. Speaker: The member for Ottawa East.

CRIMINAL CODE AMENDMENTS

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, I have a new question of the Attorney General. In the light of the fact that the federal government has either presented or is in the process of presenting an omnibus bill --

An hon. member: Don’t mention the federal government.

Mr. Roy: Now, keep it down, keep it down. I know the members want to get on the record --

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Time is flitting.

Mr. Roy: In view of the fact that the federal government has presented proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, will the Attorney General, as the minister in charge of enforcement of the criminal law system in this province, get in touch with the federal government now and start discussing, for instance, the question of the $200 limit for a jury trial on theft and whether that could be increased?

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Is the member looking for a raise?

Mr. Roy: Would he also discuss the fact that the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada is prepared to change the law pertaining to suspensions and conditional discharges for driving offences, impaired driving and so on?

Hon. Mr. Clement: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I am glad to note that the member for Ottawa East has asked me a new question. I am grateful for that.

Mr. Roy: Gratuitous.

Hon. Mr. Clement: His question indicates that now that we have learned of the introduction of the proposed changes to the criminal legislation we will commence discussions with the federal Minister of Justice. May I point out that both I and my predecessors have had lengthy and numerous discussions with the Minister of Justice over the past number of months, and indeed years, asking certain changes. A number of them were discussed in detail at the meeting of all the Attorneys General in Ottawa with Mr. Lang last March and he gave us certain assurances at that time.

We will, when we have a copy of the bill, examine it very carefully. I can tell the member that some of the matters reflected in the legislation are those that we from the Province of Ontario have requested. I am not taking credit; I am sure other Attorneys General have made similar or identical requests. We will examine it and we will communicate with him. He was kind enough yesterday to send me a telegram, in summary form, as to the gist of the proposed changes that he was going to introduce at 3 p.m. yesterday, so I will give the members that assurance that we will communicate. When I am in Ottawa, I will drop in and see the member from time to time when I am up there, because I know he will be practising law full-time up there this fall.

Mr. Roy: I will give the minister a hand. I will even translate the summonses for him free if he likes.

Hon. Mr. Rhodes: Into what languages?

Mr. Roy: What language does the minister want?

Mr. Speaker: The member for Port Arthur.

WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION ACT AMENDMENTS

Mr. Foulds: A question of the Minister of Labour: Didn’t the recent amendments to the Workmen’s Compensation Act provide for an extension of clothing benefits for people who suffered wear and tear from wearing braces? Did those amendments not receive royal assent on July 3, and if that is so, why did the Workmen’s Compensation Board write to one of my constituents on July 10 -- seven days later, after those received royal assent -- saying:

“To date, the recommendation to the Legislature has not been passed into law. Therefore, action cannot be taken regarding your request for a clothing allowance. Please contact us one year after the legislation to pay for clothing allowance and claims in which there is a permanent disability and a back brace is being worn, has been passed.”

Surely that is the kind of bureaucratic answer the minister himself hoped would not be sent by the Workmen’s Compensation Board, and can he take action on it?

Hon. J. P. MacBeth (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, I must admit that I am not too certain myself whether, when a person gets an allowance for clothing, he has to wait for the end of the year before that allowance is paid or whether it is paid in advance. I don’t know whether that is the point or not, and I am not sure bow that operates, but in any event, if my hon. friend would give me details of the matter involved I will follow it up. It may be that everybody who is writing letters over at the Workmen’s Compensation Board is not as up-to-date as the Legislature.

Mr. Speaker: The time for the oral question period has expired.

Petitions.

Presenting reports.

Motions.

Hon. Mr. Winkler moves that the House continue to sit until the designated business has been completed, and when it adjourns it will stand adjourned to a date to be named by proclamation of the Lieutenant Governor.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Deans: How about that?

Mr. Roy: Anything can happen in between times.

Hon. Mr. Clement: Good luck to the member for Ottawa East in his practice.

Mr. Speaker: Introduction of bills.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Speaker, before the orders of the day, in view of the motion that has been put and accepted by the House, perhaps this might be an opportunity to have all the members of the House -- since we may not all be gathered together again, at least in this form -- thank not only those who are at the table but also the others in the House -- the pages, our security staff, indeed I the press gallery on occasion -- for the courtesy and assistance which they have shown to this Parliament, without which, of course, our work would have been quite impossible.

Mr. Deans: Mr. Speaker, I had intended to make similar remarks at the close of the day. I want to go just a little further, though, in addition to thanking those people who work so diligently on behalf of the assembly, to say to you that while we understand the task you took on was very onerous, we have been well satisfied with the way that you have conducted yourself and that you have looked after the affairs of the House.

I want to say something else too. Three of my colleagues are retiring from politics, two after a long period of time in the Legislature, the member for Hamilton East (Mr. Gisborn) and the member for Hamilton Centre (Mr. Davison), and I want to express, on my own behalf and on behalf of my colleagues who are here, our appreciation to them I for the work they have done on behalf of the people of the Province of Ontario; and in particular on my behalf I would express my thanks to them for the work they have done in assisting me over the last eight years.

While I can’t identify all of the members who may be retiring, I want to say to the members of the Legislature on both sides of the House that the co-operation they have given me personally in helping to make the job of a member of the Legislature easier has been very much appreciated, although occasionally we haven’t agreed. I want to thank certain people -- although I won’t name them, I will talk to them personally -- for the work they did during the select committees I sat on, for the support and guidance they have given me.

I want, in addition to that, to wish that all of those who retire voluntarily will have a happy retirement from the Legislature and that whatever they choose to do will be rewarding and satisfying; and to the others who may retire involuntarily, it certainly has been a pleasure to have worked with them.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I think the words that have been spoken are certainly correct and very sincere. I too would like to express my thanks to all those who have participated.

But the thing that amazes me this morning is there’s some degree of finality to the addresses that have been made.

Mr. MacDonald: The minister means we may be back in September for a little grandstanding.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I would simply like to say -- and I want to add to that list the fine reception you had last evening, Mr. Speaker -- I would stress that members may be sure that this government will certainly be open to calling in the Legislature again if the business requires it.

Mr. MacDonald: That’s what I thought.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I want everyone to know that very surely.

Mr. Roy: Don’t worry; we will call it too.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: And now, Mr. Speaker, we will just put the ball over in the other court and conclude the business of the House.

Mr. Speaker: Orders of the day.

Clerk of the House: The third order, House in committee of the whole.

SCHOOL BOARDS AND TEACHERS COLLECTIVE NEGOTIATIONS ACT (CONTINUED)

House in committee on Bill 100, An Act respecting the Negotiation of Collective Agreements between School Boards and Teachers.

On section 65:

Mr. Chairman: When the committee rose last evening we were dealing with the amendment to section 65 which bad been proposed by the minister, and Mr. Deacon’s amendment that subsection 2 of section 65 be deleted; subsequently we were also debating Mr. Foulds’ amendment to the minister’s amendment. Is there any further debate on these items or shall these be stacked? The hon. member for St. George.

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): Mr. Chairman, I feel I must indeed speak to section 65 and the amendments thereto. The amendment of the minister really has achieved two things. First of all, it has deleted a statement that the principals and the vice-principals are indeed essential.

Secondly, it has given the principals and vice-principals the right to vote but not the right to strike. I suppose in that case really we cannot appropriately deal with the question of essentiality, since now the government itself concedes that they are not essential, but for some other reason, and I think as a compromise, they must stay in the schools in the event of a strike.

I would like to say that this particular section and the amendments proposed really prevent a good bill from being a great bill, in my view. Let us look at what a principal and vice-principal will be up against in this particular situation. The teachers are on strike. The principal and the vice-principal belong to the same affiliate. They will have to cross the line or, of course, they can resign, I suppose, as principals and join the troops.

What is their position on a strike vote? If they were to vote in favour of a strike, what is their position? They are voting to have others go on strike while they stay in the school and presumably are paid. This is one of the faults with this, that you’ve got members of an affiliate in the schools being paid while their fellow members are out taking the risks and the disadvantages. It’s a very schizophrenic situation for these people to be in.

It is true, I suppose, that if this legislation goes forward they can hardly be blamed by their affiliate members for following the law. But by the same token, there is no doubt in my mind that with the best good faith in the good world there has to be a resentment that they have not been out there too.

Mr. P. M. Deacon (York Centre): And they’re being paid.

Mrs. Campbell: I’ve covered that, I think. Surely it is more appropriate to ensure that someone be in that school, concerned with the welfare and safety of any children who may be there, but it should not be the principal and vice-principal necessarily.

When I spoke on 1(h), I pointed out the situation with the clustered schools. I pointed out the fact that a school in the cluster, certainly in one case that was given to us, the distance was 30 miles. There was one principal and no vice-principals. If we are going to be logical at all what are you going to do in a case of that kind? If it is necessary to protect the safety of children, how is one principal going to accomplish that in that clustered situation -- drive around frenetically, trying to see that all is well? What school is he or she going to be in? It just doesn’t make any good sense.

Once the decision has been made that teachers shall have the right to strike, then surely there should not be a compromise position taken if, indeed, we are all concerned about the educational process and ensuring that students have the best educations they can get. One of the reasons why one was concerned about the right to strike at all in this area was because one knew that one cannot make a teacher teach if that teacher doesn’t want to.

If that is the case, then surely we must somehow accept the fact that a teacher is a teacher is a teacher -- whether it is a teacher who is a head of a department, who is a head teacher in a clustered situation, or a vice-principal or a principal -- if we are really going to make this Act work.

I must say, Mr. Chairman, that I have not specifically addressed myself to any of the amendments because, with the greatest respect, I think our procedures here are scandalously bad. We should not be debating, with respect, a sub-amendment to a sub-amendment to an amendment, all at the same time. I think everyone agrees with that. So that in speaking to the principal, I am supporting the position, of course, which was taken by my colleague, and I will reserve my position on the sub-amendment to the sub-amendment to the amendment when that is put. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Stormont.

Mr. G. Samis (Stormont): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will make my remarks rather brief, because I think everyone’s position is rather well known on this.

I support the sub-amendment offered by the member for Port Arthur (Mr. Foulds), and oppose the amendment offered by the minister (Mr. Wells). We, in the NDP, have consistently opposed the idea of excluding principals and vice-principals from the right enjoyed by other employees, namely, teachers in the Province of Ontario. Our education critic spoke on this in his very first speech and made our position clear and we have been consistent on this in committee of the whole and standing committee yesterday and again today. I don’t think there is any need to go into any long dissertation as to the reasons why we have taken that position, why we have upheld it, and will continue to uphold it.

Just in a final comment, Mr. Chairman, our basic objection is on the concept that in effect the principals and vice-principals in this province would be, in a sense, discriminated against, because they will be treated differently from their fellow employees. They, I am sure, in a variety of constituencies in all parts of the province, have made their views known very vociferously and in an articulate manner. They feel they are being discriminated against. They feel this will make their job much more difficult. They feel that this is not in the best interests of education. They feel this will cause them special problems, their school special problems, and the whole educational system special problems.

They’ve never had to cope with these problems before, in effect, and the amendment really only sets them back to what they had prior to the changes made here. It’s an unfair demand being placed upon them. They don’t deserve this, they don’t need this, they don’t want this, and because of those reasons, Mr. Chairman, once again we oppose the amendment offered by the minister. I think the sub-amendment offered by the member for Port Arthur is a reasonable compromise, recognizing the value and validity of some of the arguments on both sides. I would ask that the members give due consideration to the subamendment. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Huron.

Mr. J. Riddell (Huron): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My remarks will be brief. I certainly support the sub-amendment offered by my colleague from York Centre. It is rather unfortunate that the minister has seen fit to go most of the way in his amendment but he has not gone all of the way.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): He hasn’t even gone close to it.

Mr. Riddell: I firmly believe that the minister supports the total rights of the principals and vice-principals but, as the chairman of the committee studying the bill clause by clause indicated in his summary, it’s sometimes a case of doing not what is right but what is required. I think in this particular case the minister is doing what is required of him, but not doing what he knows to be right.

I know of a case where a principal in a school considered himself to be in a separate category from that of his staff, and I know of the lack of harmony that existed in that school because of this particular separation. I know the same thing is going to happen here. If the principals and the vice-principals are going to be denied the right to strike, then they are not going to be looked upon by the staff with the same degree of confidence and respect that would be the case had the principals and vice-principals been given the entire rights of a bargaining unit.

I seriously think the minister should reconsider and do what he knows is right and, in this case, not do what he’s required to do, because his caucus members cannot go back into the community and try to explain the reason for the complete reversal of the government in the first place. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Kent.

Mr. J. P. Spence (Kent): Mr. Chairman, I want to add a word or two to this sub-amendment of my colleague from York Centre. I haven’t taken any part in the debate. I’ve listened with great interest and, of course, not being a school teacher, I’m not as familiar with this situation as I should be. But after the long hearing downstairs, I must say that I’ve received a number of telegrams from principals and vice-principals in this province raising their concerns over principals and vice-principals not being given an opportunity to take part in strikes.

I must say that this is dividing the teaching staff of our schools across the Province of Ontario. I would think, as a layman in this field, that dividing the teaching staff will not be the right approach to take. I would say the remainder of the teaching staff look to the principal and the vice-principal for guidance and they are unable to do so since they are classed as essential employees if a strike takes place.

I want to bring to the attention of the minister that if a strike occurs and principals and vice-principals cross that line, I would say it will divide; it will create resentment. Also, in order to have our schools carry on education as it should be, a resentment or a difference between the principals and the vice-principals and the rest of the teaching staff will cause a loss to those young people who are being educated in that school.

I just want to bring to the minister the concern that has been brought to my attention by telegrams, and by approaches from teachers who teach in the secondary schools of this province if the minister doesn’t permit or give the right to the principal and vice-principal to take part in the strike, if a strike occurs, when this bill gives the right to the teachers to strike across the Province of Ontario. I hope the minister will reconsider his decision. I know he has a difficult decision to make. I know it must have been hard for him to make this decision but when the decision was made to give the teaching staff the right to strike, I think the principals and vice-principals should be included.

With those few remarks I just want to inform you of the feeling that I got from the principals and vice-principals that you should reconsider your decision. I strongly support my colleague on his sub-amendment to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Carleton East.

Mr. P. Taylor (Carleton East): Mr. Chairman, I don’t wish to prolong this process unduly because as a member of the standing committee on social development during this process I heard many arguments. We now know and it is now abundantly clear to us that those arguments have fallen on largely deaf ears at the ministry level. That is proved by the minister’s proposed amendment to section 65 which, as has been described by our critic, the member for York Centre, does nothing but provide the principals and vice-principals with the right to vote on a strike but not to take part in it, which of course is an untenable position to put anybody in in this field of teaching.

We find ourselves in a position of being unable to support the motion for amendment as proposed by the member for Port Arthur, because by its very nature it places the burden on the Education Relations Commission.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): On the board. It doesn’t apply to the commission.

Mr. P. Taylor: I read the member’s amendment to say “or an alternate person designated by the Education Relations Commission.” Let me rephrase my original statement. I would say it places a portion of the burden on the commission. I think that if the member for Port Arthur and all other members, including myself, who have spoken on this bill either in committee or here and who have expressed a real and genuine interest in this commission being as objective and as capable as possible of operating in this very delicate field of labour management relations, if you like, it must not be saddled with that kind of a burden.

I, therefore, look forward with great interest to the moment when our critic will be permitted to move our proposal in this area, because it places the burden on the affiliates to find and designate the people who will full this custodial role and provide information to parents and students alike.

I go back to something that has been said here frequently yesterday, and I’m sure it has been said here this morning, about the lack of a Hansard official record of the proceedings of the standing committee in dealing with this bill. We are still debating this bill largely because certain members feel compelled to put on the record of this House essentially what they said at various stages of the committee’s proceedings. This bill would have proceeded much more quickly through this House had there been a record of the proceedings of the committee.

For the same reason, I’m compelled to repeat one point that I made in that committee. We have heard all the teacher presentations and all the trustee presentations. We have listened to the presentations and comments of hon. members on that committee to the effect that this is a good bill. After three years of effort by trustees, by teachers and by the Ministry of Education and the minister himself, a bill has come forward to this House which everybody agrees will go a very long way toward bringing order to the educational system in its labour-management context.

So I have to ask, out loud and for the record: Why is section 65 in this bill in the first place, particularly the section dealing with the right to strike? I came to the conclusion in the committee -- and nothing has happened since then to alter my feeling -- that because the minister faced such tremendous difficulty in getting his caucus to go along with the business of allowing the teachers the right to strike, he had to provide the caucus with a quid pro quo. Section 65 which imposes a restrictive clause on principals and vice-principals, is that quid pro quo. That is all it is. It’s a political move, designed to win introduction of the rest of the bill into this House. But I am afraid I must say that because of the existence of section 65 in its original form, or in the amended form as we now see it, will do serious damage to the original intent of the bill.

For that reason I feel we cannot support the amendment as proposed by the member for Port Arthur, but we are prepared subsequently to make our own proposals which we feel will achieve the original objectives of the entire bill.

Mr. Chairman: Is there any further discussion? The hon. member for Windsor-Walkerville.

Mr. B. Newman (Windsor-Walkerville): Mr. Chairman, I wanted to make a few comments on section 65. The bill before us is a good bill, but could be by far a better bill were section 65 left out completely -- if we didn’t attempt to make our principals and vice-principals second class citizens, second class federation members, second class individuals with regard to the right to strike.

Essentially the bill is to resolve teacher-school board negotiations, but behind it all our prime concern is quality education -- better educational opportunities for our students. Now you are going to drive a wedge between principals, vice-principals and the teachers. You will do this by denying to principals and vice-principals the full rights and responsibilities of membership in the federation; denying them the right to join with their colleagues in a strike. You do that by sort of creating strike-breakers out of them, by having them remain in the educational facility rather than joining their own colleagues. I think you are creating a divisive attitude or a divisive situation between teachers and principals. When I say principals, I also refer to vice-principals.

Good rapport, quality education, better attitudes in the school, depends on harmonious relationships between staff and the principal. I have already seen this situation change as a result of recent strikes. There was the creation of a bitter feeling, a distrust one for the other, a discontent between one and the other, a disharmony, a disunity. This was a result of one being in the school and the colleague being on the picket line, or outside of the school and attempting to express to the public their great dissatisfaction and concern over the negotiations between the board and the teachers.

Mr. Chairman, the creation of this rift doesn’t have to take place. By allowing the principal and vice-principal the same rights as are given to the teacher, you could resolve the problem. You wouldn’t have that hard feeling between members of the staff. In the course of a strike there are a lot of things said that probably should never be said, but memories are long, and as a result some of the comments made one to the other, some of the positions, some of the attitudes, some of the actions, have long-standing repercussions. I am afraid by not deleting section 65 from the bill, the minister is going to find that it’s the student who, in the long run, is going to suffer, because you are going to have school teachers and principals at odds with one another; or you may have it. I hope it wouldn’t happen, but from experience it has happened; and I hope it would never happen again.

I would hope that the minister would reconsider and simply delete section 65, so that principals and vice-principals would become first-class citizens, the same as teachers are, when it comes to being given the right to strike. In my local area, of 24 principals and vice-principals 23 said that they wanted to remain full-fledged members of the federation and thought that they should go out on strike, the same as their colleagues, in an attempt to bring the issue of the strike to a head and achieve a quicker settlement.

Mr. Chairman, I do hope the minister reconsiders and sees that principals and vice-principals have the same opportunities to strike.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Cochrane South.

Mr. W. Ferrier (Cochrane South): Yes, I want to say a few words on this, Mr. Chairman. Like previous speakers, I feel that this section 65 should be deleted. I think that by requiring principals and vice-principals to cross a picket line and to report for work when a strike does develop -- and we hope there won’t be many of them -- is bad legislation. Particularly in the union towns of this province where crossing of a picket line is anathema and it just isn’t done, to put in an Act to force the principals and the vice-principals to do this is the most unfair kind of legislation. it is not only going to drive a wedge between principal, vice-principal and the teaching staff, but it’s going to put them in a very difficult position as far as many of the citizens of those communities are concerned.

The minister’s amendment to allow them to vote on the strike and then not to go on strike just doesn’t seem to be going far enough at all. The representations I have received from my riding show that the principals and the vice-principals are very disturbed by this section, and in fact would like to have it deleted entirely. I feel that I am speaking on their behalf as a last-ditch-effort to persuade the minister, although I know he has had many speakers trying to get this through to him. I suspect that probably the minister himself, left to his own resources and his own judgement, would probably go along with the requests that have been coming to him, but I am sure his cabinet colleagues and his caucus colleagues have laid a heavy hand on him and said don’t budge.

I feel that is very unfortunate; but as others have said, this is a good bill in many respects and will result in a great improvement, I think, in the relations between teachers and school boards in the province. I think that it’s very unfortunate the minister would include one bad section which will put a few people in a very precarious position with their colleagues and with residents in the communities of this province by forcing them to cross the picket line. I think that you’ve done a great disservice to the principals and the vice-principals of this province.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Wentworth.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): Mr. Chairman, I don’t intend to be long. I didn’t take part in the debate that was carried on in the committee over a number of days but I have expressed on more than one occasion in the Legislature my concern about exactly what is occurring in this piece of legislation. I don’t think the minister fully appreciates the problems. Maybe he does and maybe he is locked in, as my colleague says, by the views of his cabinet colleagues. But I’m not at all sure that any of them then, if that be the case, fully appreciates the problems that will confront principals and vice-principals with the legislation as it now stands.

I would have opted to have given them full rights to participate. I don’t think there was any question in anyone’s mind that that’s the case, but if I were deciding to take the measure that the minister has decided to take, to follow that course of action and to grant them certain powers but to remove from principals and vice-principals, the ultimate right to take part in whatever final decision is made with regard to strike, I think I would have tried to understand the implications of it a little more. It’s not only the problems that confront the principals and the vice-principals in the school in the event there has been a strike, in the event there has been a resolution of a strike and in the event they then have to get together with their colleagues in order to set up once again a harmonious working relationship; what worries me is that, in spite of the content of the Act which claims to give principals and vice-principals full participation in the union they belong to, they are not able to participate to the degree that they should be able to participate.

We’re going to be faced with a situation where principals and vice-principals will not be able to vote on whether or not a strike should take place because there are certain economic consequences that flow from a strike and it would be entirely wrong for an individual to vote in favour of a strike when he or she was in fact voting for another person to suffer some economic consequences. What you’ve really done is you’ve created a situation where, on the one hand you’re saying they can take part in all aspects and participate in all aspects of this union or their association, but in actual fact they can’t, There would be more animosity created if one or other or both principals and vice-principals were to go and to vote in favour of or in opposition to a strike knowing full well, and their colleagues knowing full well, that they can’t participate in it. So, therefore, they are in fact then removed from taking part in that aspect of the operation.

Once you get to that point, the difficulties that they would then have would be far greater than just simply resolving the differences of opinion within the school itself. They won’t be able to take part fully in the discussion, fully in the debate, or participate as equals in all the things which occur within their own branch of their own union. They won’t be able to do that because they will alienate their colleagues along the way. They must alienate their colleagues because ultimately, when faced with the decision of strike or not, those people cannot take part by law.

I think my colleague from Port Arthur has put forward a very reasonable suggestion in this regard. I can appreciate that the Minister of Education wants to have a person in the school who is responsive and responsible and sensitive to the educational issues. Yet I don’t think we should decide here who that individual should be; I think that’s reasonable. It may turn out that in the final analysis, on the vote of the membership, it is decided it will be the principal or the vice-principal. I think the membership could probably make the choice of ensuring that the individual who is in the school is capable of fulfilling his or her obligations to the system and, in addition to that, fulfilling his or her obligations to the membership of the union. You would eliminate what is potentially a very dangerous situation.

As I thought it through over the weeks I couldn’t quite understand why you needed somebody in the school anyway. If the school is closed, I don’t know what that person in that school is going to do. If the school board, for example, were to move to lock out the teachers, I can only assume that the school board would close the doors of the school and would not permit the pupils to enter either. I can only assume they would do that because you can’t close the place up and be selective in who you are going to permit in.

One of the responsibilities of the school board would be to make a decision on whether or not they were going to close the system down. That’s what a lockout is all about. You close the system down until you resolve your dispute. Having once decided to lock out the teachers, you are then going to turn to the teacher’s colleague and say: “In spite of the fact that we are not letting anybody else in, you must come in and sit in this school.”

What are they going to do there? Maybe they are going to scrape the desks -- or maybe that would be in violation of the caretakers’ agreement -- maybe they are going to sweep the floors; maybe they are going to clean the windows. I don’t know what they are going to do. What are they going to do? Obviously, they can’t take on the job of educating the kids, so what are they going to do there? Go in and sit.

In order to have them sitting in the school you are going to run the risk of creating this tremendous animosity which will undoubtedly develop between teacher and principal. I don’t understand why you made the decision you made. I don’t understand why the government made the decision it made, even if you didn’t. I think you would have served the public better had you granted the same rights to principals and vice-principals as you have to the remainder of the teaching staff and tried it; tried it out to see how it works. Let it stand the test of time and if there are problems which emerge, you can bring in amendments to the bill which would permit some other way of dealing with it.

I would suggest that would have been much more sensible. At the moment you will alienate groups of people without there being any need for it. There is no strike situation at the moment. There may not be one for some considerable period of time, yet the animosity and alienation begins the moment the bill passes. Why wouldn’t you simply have gone ahead, passed the bill granting the same rights to all and, if history recorded that there were problems, you could come back to the Legislature and make whatever amendments you deem necessary in the face of the situation which had arisen.

I think that would’ve made a great deal more sense than what you have done. It would certainly have watered down, if you will, tempered to some extent, the degree of debate that has taken place around that one issue. It would have said to the teaching profession and to the public that we do, in fact, have some confidence in them; that we do, in fact, have confidence in their capacity to make decisions, not only in their own best interest but in the best interest of the pupils and of the taxpayers when it comes to decisions of whether or not to withdraw services. I think that would have been a much more enlightened approach and I frankly think that it would have met with a great deal more support. On balance, I believe we would have ended up with a better system and I don’t think you would have had the difficulties that you undoubtedly are going to have if and when a conflict arises which results in a strike.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. J. F. Stokes (Thunder Bay): I am going to be very brief, Mr. Chairman. I have received communication from several principals and vice-principals in my riding who asked me to do everything possible, in concert with those who are responsible for education policy, to impress upon the minister that they feel very, very strongly that they should have full rights as union members and that they should not be required to come into the schools under circumstances outlined in this bill.

I have had letters from Manitouwadge, Marathon, Schreiber, Terrace Bay, Nipigon, Red Rock and Geraldton. I am not going to reiterate what has been said in this debate. I think that you are treating them as second-class citizens as long as section 65 of this bill reads as it does. I just want to lend my voice to those who have already spoken to plead with the minister to reconsider his position and give them the kind of status they feel they have a right to, and that I agree with.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Ottawa East.

Mr. A. J. Roy (Ottawa East): Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a comment on section 65 and on the proposed amendment by the minister.

First of all, the inclusion of clause 65, of course, went against what we considered to be the general principle of the bill originally. It seems to me that when you are enacting legislation you should try to be consistent throughout. The minister has received an awful lot of praise about the bill generally. I think it is praise that we have given to him in good faith from the opposition because we realize the difficulty he had personally in proposing this type of legislation and having this type of legislation itself accepted by his caucus.

But, having embarked upon this type of bill and having embarked on a principle, he should have attempted to be consistent. Mr. Chairman, he became inconsistent when he said in section 65 that principals and vice-principals should be considered essential employees and shall not take part in a strike-vote or strike. Then he said, notwithstanding this, principals and vice-principals shall be members of a branch affiliate -- and that is where the inconsistency lies. The inconsistency is carried on in your amendment, because you just go a step further. The minister says they shall be members of the branch affiliate, there is no problem now about participating in a strike vote, but then they have to stay in the schools. I say to the minister, for God’s sake, why did you not go a step further? Why doesn’t the minister just do away with section 65 completely? Then he will have a consistent bill; then he will have one of the main thorns removed.

I think all members have received correspondence from principals asking: “Why are we in this situation?” In fact, what is going to happen -- and this has been repeated more times than I can mention -- what this bill will do, or what this section will do, and what the minister’s amendment will do is, when you say principals and vice-principals shall be members of a branch affiliate you are going to drive them out of it; because in a tough situation you are going to create a gap between the two, when in fact we should try, consistently and continually, to have the principals and vice-principals work along with, in cohesion with and co-operatively with their colleagues who are teachers.

Mr. Chairman, even though one repeats himself after the number of speakers who have talked about this section 65, he must emphasize throughout -- in fact, there is inconsistency within this section itself -- that the section itself, compared with the rest of the bill, is inconsistent. Even in subsection 2 of your proposed amendment you have just taken half a step there. Why don’t you go all the way and just take section 65 out of there?

As has been mentioned by some of our colleagues, if in fact it becomes a problem, surely we can be convinced by the evidence.

We are talking about this new type of legislation in sort of a vacuum. We don’t have sufficient evidence to say: “Mr. Minister, you are absolutely right on this. We, the opposition, are wrong”; or vice versa.

Mr. Chairman, I say to the minister, I think he should reconsider this. I know he won’t. We have discussed it at length in committee, but I say to him -- I want to put this on the record -- that having embarked on a bill and having gone through the turmoil that he probably did, why didn’t he go one step further?

Mr. Chairman: Does the hon. minister wish to comment on the amendment before us at this time?

Hon. T. L. Wells (Minister of Education): Yes, Mr. Chairman, the amendment -- and I am not exactly sure where we are --

Mr. Deacon: We are considering an amendment to your amendment.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Let me put it this way to put it very clearly: If we are talking about the amendment to the amendment, or the amendment to my amendment, or the amendment that someone has indicated the official opposition might like to bring in if they can find a legal way to do it --

Mr. Deacon: We have.

Hon. Mr. Wells: If I am talking on any of those, I cannot accept any of those amendments. I believe that the amendment I have presented is the one that should stay in the bill.

Let me just say, in order to understand why I say this, that I think we must consider the original section 65 and why this amended one is in this bill. I would suggest to you that the amended section 65 in fact is just different wording for the intent of the original section 65. The only difference is that the members of the bargaining unit can vote if they wish. In fact, what we are saying here is that it’s up to the members of the bargaining unit to decide themselves whether they wish these people to vote or not. There is precedent for that, and I will get to that in a minute.

The intent of section 65, as amended, is this: It is that there be someone in the school to provide certain services, certainly not the same kind of services that are carried on when the school is in full operation with all the teachers and students there, but someone to provide liaison between that school and the public and the teachers who are not there; to provide a certain custodial function; to provide an information function; to provide a number of functions in the public interest, which I submit are essential.

It is not the intention of this section in this bill to create any barrier or division or to make any difference between these people who are principal teachers and the teachers in that school until the very unlikely event that a strike occurs in some school jurisdiction. Until that time, they have all the same rights and privileges and can function as part of a bargaining unit.

I want to make it very clear that there is no intent on the part of this minister or this government to suggest that principals and vice-principals should be out of the federations and have their own bargaining unit or association. That is not our intent. I have said many times to the headmasters’ and principals’ associations that I think they should stay in their federation. That’s my personal view. I think they add a lot to the federations and I don’t want to see them out of the federations. They are needed in there and I think they should stay. There’s no ulterior motive in this legislation to suggest that principals and vice-principals should not be a part of their particular affiliate of the Ontario Teachers’ Federation.

Now I want to say this, Mr. Chairman, that the reason we chose the principal and the vice-principal, and particularly the principal as the one to carry out these duties in the unlikely event that a strike occurs, is because in the public’s mind the principal is the boss in their local school. They would want him to be there. He would be the one they would look to for information. He’s the one that they want to be sure is still in charge of that school if a strike occurs in their area.

I guess one of the things that bothered me in the very excellent debate that we had for about three days in the committee was the attempt, at certain times, to rather play down the role of the principal, because I just don’t agree with that. The principal is not just one of the boys in the school. The principal is the principal teacher; he’s also the manager and administrator of that school -- and he’s an important person. The attempt to just play him down as another one of the boys is not right. He’s an important person in that school.

Mr. Roy: It might be a girl.

Hon. Mr. Wells: I said an important person.

Mrs. Campbell: You said he.

Hon. Mr. Wells: As my friend from St. George knows, in the legal legislative sense “he” means “he and she”. Let me say very emphatically at this time, whenever I use the word “he” in educational terms concerning the school, I mean “he and she.” I fully agree with the member from St. George that we don’t have enough members of the female sex who are principals in our schools. I hope that will be corrected in the near future.

I just want to say, Mr. Chairman, that it is not the intent of this section in this legislation to separate, to build a barrier, to force out the federation, to destroy the collegial model, or to change the educational climate in a school. That’s not the intent of this section. This section is there for the intent that I just indicated.

I’d like to say, Mr. Chairman, that last night during the debate the member for Rainy River -- who, I think, perhaps got carried away a little in his exaggeration -- said: “Show me some other piece of legislation. Show me someplace else where this occurs in Canada -- or, as the Premier is fond of saying, in any other jurisdiction.”

I’ll show him. Get out the Public Service Staff Relations Act passed by some of your friends and colleagues in Ottawa and read it. You’ll Bud this very same principle embodied in that Act. There is the principle of designated employees who remain full members of the bargaining unit; who have the right of the strike vote; and who, when a strike occurs, if it does occur, then remain on the job. And who, incidentally, also get paid while they remain on the job. Don’t make the exaggerated claims like that.

Mr. Ferrier: He was grandstanding.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Read that kind of legislation and tell your friend from Rainy River (Mr. Reid) that he was exaggerating a little last night.

Mr. Roy: No, no.

Mr. Samis: He knows it.

Mr. F. Drea (Scarborough Centre): That’s not all he was doing.

Mr. Roy: The member for Rainy River wouldn’t exaggerate.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Look in Hansard and you’ll see that he’s --

Mr. Ferrier: He did a packet of research for that speech.

Hon. Mr. Wells: If you would like me to do some research for your party, we’ll be glad to do it for a fee.

Mr. Deacon: Is it causing trouble for the federal government?

Mr. Roy: After the next election that might be the only job you can get.

Mr. Deacon: Is it causing trouble for the federal government?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please. The hon. minister has the floor.

Hon. Mr. Wells: The member for York Centre wants to know if it’s causing trouble for the federal government.

Mr. Deacon: That’s where you’re determined to cause trouble.

Hon. Mr. Wells: He’d better go down and ask the federal government about that.

Mr. Roy: You mean you haven’t done any research on that?

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Chairman, on that particular point, according to the federal Act that the minister has indicated, the designation is different. It is not done the way his legislation does it, directly to the principals and the vice-principals. It does it more along the lines of my suggested amendment.

Hon. Mr. Wells: It suggests either the parties can agree or the board can designate. It is a different technique but the general principle is there. Let me again emphasize that we are talking about innovative legislation in the public sector. We are not talking about the type of straight labour-management legislation in the private sector. We are talking about the public sector where we are going to look for innovative legislation. If there is anything I have heard a million times in the last two years we have been studying this legislation, it is go back and find some innovative ways and don’t look for the old methods and the old techniques. What we are looking for are innovative ways, and this bill has those ways in it.

I just want to close, Mr. Chairman, by saying that this section in this bill, as it has been amended, which pots the principals on duty in their school if a strike occurs among their affiliate in a school jurisdiction and yet gives them full powers to stay as members of the bargaining unit and their affiliate and interferes in no way with their membership in that group, will only separate, will only be divisive, will only create animosity, will only build a barrier, will only interfere with collegiality and will only harm the educational programme in any school, if all the people in the various federations want that to happen.

I submit to you, Mr. Chairman, that with the goodwill that we expect will be exercised by all under this bill being exercised by the members of the federation they can accept these different roles that may occur in the very odd time when a strike might occur and they can make this legislation work, realizing that the public expects this kind of an arrangement in public service collective bargaining legislation.

Mr. Chairman: Hon. Mr. Wells moves that section 65 of the bill, as amended by the social development committee be deleted and the following substituted therefor:

“65 -- (1) A principal and a vice-principal shall be members of a branch affiliate.

“(2) Notwithstanding subsection 1, in the event of a strike by the members of a branch affiliate, each principal and vice-principal who is a member of the branch affiliate shall remain on duty during the strike or any related lockout or state of lockout or closing of a school or schools.”

Subject to the possibility of future amendment shall the minister’s amendment carry?

Mr. Deacon: No.

Mr. Chairman: All those in favour will please say “aye.”

All those opposed will please say “nay.”

In my opinion, the “ayes” have it.

Shall this be stacked? This will have to be stacked with the other amendments that are before us. Perhaps I should read them.

Mr. Deacon moves that subsection 2 of section 6 of the minister’s proposed amendment be deleted.

Perhaps we should stack these because we have to ascertain the final outcome of that before we can deal with it. Mr. Foulds also has an amendment to be stacked. I will read that:

Mr. Foulds moves that in section 65, subsection 2, as moved by the minister, the words “or an alternate person designated by the Education Relations Commission” be added in line 4 of section 65(2) after the word “vice-principal” and before the word “who.”

This also shall be stacked and dealt with at that time.

On section 66:

Mr. Deacon: I would like to move a new section 66, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Deacon moves that a new section 66 be added which reads as follows:

“(1) On the first day of the five-day period referred to in 64(1)(f), the branch affiliate shall register with the Education Commission a list of affiliate members, one per school, who will act as liaison officers among the teachers, parents and students for the duration of the strike;

“(2) Each affiliate member who will be named must,

“(a) hold a permanent contract with the board,

“(b) possess a permanent teaching certificate,

“(c) have served on the staff of the school for which she or he is named for at least one year;

“(3)(a) It is the duty of the liaison officer to be in the school during normal school hours to act in her or his capacity as a liaison officer;

“(b) It is the duty of the liaison officer to perform such other liaison duties as determined by the Education Commission.

“4(a) The liaison officer shall not be paid by the board.

“(b) The board may assign its own supervisory officer or officers in lieu of one or more of the liaison officers.”

And that subsequent sections be renumbered accordingly, if necessary.

Mr. Deacon: Mr. Chairman, in moving this new clause 66, I refer to the remarks made by the minister who said he wanted to have someone in the school to provide certain services; a liaison with the public and the teachers; certain custodial functions; information services to some extent; and to do anything else considered essential in the public interest. This amendment provides for such a person in the school.

It provides for somebody who is not being paid; who is not going to be causing a division between the teachers who are out and people who are in. It’s a public service. It’s covering the essentials the minister has referred to. I feel this sort of proposal does what the minister is seeking to do and with which we agree but it doesn’t cause the division we referred to.

We cannot see efforts being made to carry on activities which would further delay resolution of the dispute which caused the walkout in the first place. We urge the minister to consider this new clause 66 and to give it his support.

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

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Chairman, I think I have three sentences to say on this. We’ve made the arguments on this whole matter. This is just another variation of the debate we’ve had on clause 65. I think that if the legitimate amendment I put forward to clause 85 will pass, this new section will not be necessary.

Mr. Chairman: Does the hon. minister wish to comment on the amendment?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I think all I said about 65 and the intent and necessity for it still stands. Therefore, there is no necessity for these new sections which the hon. member has suggested.

Mr. Chairman: Will we take the amendment as read?

Mr. Deacon: Yes.

Agreed.

Mr. Chairman: All those in favour of Mr. Deacon’s amendment will please say “aye.”

All those opposed will please say “nay.”

In my opinion the “nays” have it. Shall the amendment be stacked?

Agreed.

Mr. Chairman: Are there any further comments before section 69((c) to which the minister has an amendment?

Mr. Deacon: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment to section 69(1).

Sections 67 and 68 agreed to.

On section 69:

Mr. Deacon moves that subsection 1 of section 69 be amended by the deletion of the words, “other than principals or vice-principals” in the third and fourth line.

Mr. Deacon: I do this for the reasons outlined in connection with the principle of 65.

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

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Chairman, I have a similar amendment proposed. It’s exactly the same. We’ll support it. It just makes it consistent with our previous amendments on clause 65(1)(h).

Hon. Mr. Wells: In keeping with my position, I reject it, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: All those in favour of Mr. Deacon’s amendment will please say “aye.”

All those opposed will please say “nay.”

In my humble opinion the “nays” have it.

Shall this be stacked?

Agreed.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. minister has an amendment to clause (c) of section 69, subsection 5. Is there any discussion before that? The hon. minister.

Hon. Mr. Wells moves that clause (c) of subsection 5 of section 69 of the bill as amended by the social development committee be deleted and the following be substituted therefor:

“(c) The school in which he is employed is closed pursuant to subsection 4.”

Hon. Mr. Wells: The reason, Mr. Chairman, is that it may be that some schools are closed by a board and others are not. It would only be if that particular school where the person is employed is closed that any teacher in that school would not be paid. But if those other schools weren’t closed, it wouldn’t apply to them.

Mr. Chairman: Shall this amendment carry? Has the hon. member for Port Arthur spoken to it?

Mr. Foulds: I haven’t spoken to it, but we agree.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Are there any further comments, questions or amendments to any other section of the bill?

Some hon. members: Carried.

Mr. Chairman: We will stack the divisions.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Chairman, I just want to say that we have had in this House nearly six or eight weeks of debate on this bill with what I thought was a very productive and good committee session. I’d like to thank everyone for their presence and their presentations. We may not have all agreed on everything, but I think that we have a piece of legislation --

Mr. Deacon: It was a good start.

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- that will prove to be very effective and through good-faith bargaining we can bring order to this particular field.

I am particularly heartened in this to find that even the Globe and Mail, in an editorial this morning, after saying this is probably a piece of legislation that will lead this province to destruction, something I don’t think anyone except the Globe and Mail would agree with -- finally concedes, very grudgingly, that “we are not convinced that the legislation will produce a rash of strikes...” Then they say something which I guess all of us have known for a long time but which the Globe and Mail seems to have ignored for a long time: “Teachers are basically responsible people.” Of course, in their traditional fashion, they fail to even mention the school trustees of this province, who I believe also are responsible people and will work to their utmost to make this work.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Carleton East.

Mr. P. Taylor: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to make a personal observation. I appreciate what the minister said about the conduct of the committee hearings, but I think I would be remiss if I were not to put on the record what I said to a member privately last night. I believe that the work of a committee and the atmosphere of a committee is largely established and maintained by its chairman, and I would like to publicly recognize the work of the member for Victoria-Haliburton (Mr. R. G. Hodgson) in that respect.

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

Mr. Foulds: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was going to make a brief statement on third reading, but so as not to try the patience of the members and since it fits in with what the member has said, I would like to make a brief statement now.

I think it’s fair to say that the experience those of us have had in dealing with this bill, certainly for me, has been amongst the most educative experience I’ve had in legislative terms. We in this party feel the bill remains flawed because of the definition of work to rule as a full strike; we felt we would have preferred that to have been allowed as an intermediate sanction, and defined as such, to be used only after a contract expired.

The second flaw is the exclusion of the principals from the right to strike. It is a great pity that the minister could not bring the government to agree to the compromise suggested at the last minute by the OTF, which would have allowed the ERC to designate some or all principals or other persons for the custodian liaison functions the government felt necessary in the event of a strike, on application from the board concerned.

However, these flaws are not insurmountable. The bill remains a good bill, and it is a very hopeful sign that all the parties concerned, including the trustees and teachers, gave the standing social development committee and the public of Ontario, through that committee, the commitment that they would do everything possible to make the legislation work.

I feel that the work of the standing committee on this bill was first-rate. A good deal of that credit, as has already been mentioned, must go to the chairman, the member for Victoria-Haliburton. I might add that I think he established his credentials with the public and with the committee because the only time he lost his temper was with the minister, and that at least showed his fairness. I do have one quibble which I would like to put as moderately as possible, Mr. Chairman, and it is indeed unfortunate that the standing committee did not see fit to record its debate after the House had given it permission to do so. This was undoubtedly one of the most seminal legislative debates on education and collective bargaining in the history of the province. If the debate had been recorded in standing committee we could have avoided at least several hours of the subsequent debate here in committee of the whole House.

The standing committee, as I say, had the most useful and productive debate to be given any piece of legislation in my experience during the life of this parliament. I think democracy and the people of Ontario would have been better served if they now had access to the records of those standing committee debates. Unfortunately they are lost for all time. This bill has indeed been a bill of special interest not only to the educational community but to the entire public at large -- lo, to the editorial boardrooms of the Globe and Mad even.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, if I may, I want to pay tribute to the contribution not only of the members of the Legislature who participated, but to the contribution of the minister and his staff, for their patience and perseverance. I was saying privately to the minister last night and I would like to say it publicly now -- the arguments we’ve heard in public over the last several months he has listened to for several years before it even got to the legislative terms. He deserves credit for his patience and perseverance.

I would hope the minister could announce the composition of the Education Relations Commission if not on third reading, certainly in the immediate future so that the commission can get the Act working smoothly for the fall round of negotiations.

Mr. Chairman, we in the New Democratic Party wish the commission well in its very heavy responsibilities. We hope and we think that this bill will bring an orderly calmness to teacher-board negotiations in the future. We in this party will do everything in our power to help make the bill work for the betterment of education in Ontario. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Scarborough Centre.

Mr. R. G. Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton): Mr. Chairman, might I ask your indulgence for one moment?

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

Mr. R. G. Hodgson: As the chairman of that committee, one really has to think that when everybody speaks good of your name you know there is another connotation. However, I want to say that the members who sat through most of that entire time made the process work. Those who were there as our guests, our witnesses and our assistants, from the general public and from the associations and federations which were represented along with the trustees, certainly have to be commended for doing everything they could to co-operate and to work together.

I think I would be remiss if I didn’t repeat what I said at the end of one of the expressions by the OTF and that is what Churchill said, “It isn’t good enough to do always what is best but it’s sometimes best to do what is required.”

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Scarborough Centre.

Mr. Drea: Mr. Chairman, I don’t want to prolong this terribly long but in view of some of the statements which have been made today and some of the previous press statements which would give the illusion that for the past couple of years it has been the minister against the entire Conservative caucus, that simply isn’t true. It is very difficult when you are on the government side, because of the rules, the practices and the traditions to reveal just how legislation evolves. I can truthfully say that over the past 2½ years -- this was indeed an evolvement of legislation which met the evolvement of social attitudes in this province -- the minister hasn’t been someone hanging from the cross. This has been a collective party decision.

In no way do I mean to diminish the enormous contribution he has made because at all times -- and some of those times were extremely controversial either in public, which is known, or in private which will never be known -- the minister retained his composure, his intellectual ability and his determination that he was going to produce the kind of innovative legislation which really would be the hallmark of the economic side of education in this province for years to come.

I think the final production of the legislation is a tribute to a remarkable Minister of Education who probably has been the Minister of Education in the most trying economic times for everyone concerned with education -- the children, the trustees, the parents, the teachers and the taxpayers -- in the history of this province. To be able to not only override those tremendous economic challenges and the ideologies and the biases and the particular points of view which go with them, and still be able to produce this kind of legislation -- which I am very confident will be with us for a great many years to come; will prove its worth; will make an enormous contribution to the stability and the enhancement and the future progress of education in this province -- I think is the product of our most remarkable Minister of Education.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

LABOUR RELATIONS AMENDMENT ACT

House in committee on Bill 111, An Act to amend the Labour Relations Act.

Mr. Chairman: Before starting debate on this bill I note that the minister does have an amendment to section 33. Are there any comments, questions or amendments to any section of the bill prior to section 33 and, if so, to which section?

Mr. T. P. Reid (Rainy River): Section 1, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): I have one on section 1 as well.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Rainy River.

On section 1:

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman. I want to put a couple of things on the record in view of the fact there seems to have been a slight problem with some of the people who wanted to appear before the committee and a misunderstanding as to the function of the committee and what the committee was supposed to do.

I would like to put on the record, very briefly, and I won’t take more than two or three minutes, the submission by Mr. Sack of Sack, Dunn and Paisley in regard to his request to amend the bill so that the section dealing with certification -- in his particular case, the certification of community college teachers -- would not be held up by the wording of the Labour Relations Act.

Mr. Sack’s point is simply that the bill as it now reads provides that an association cannot be considered a trade union under the Act if it was formed either by management or for purposes other than being a part of a collective bargaining unit. Obviously many of the associations of faculty in the community colleges were formed primarily as social clubs or clubs of interested people or faculty clubs rather than as bargaining units. It is a fear of the community college teachers that the Labour Relations Board may take the strict and literal interpretation of the Act in regard to certification and not allow them to be certified under the Act. I say that to put it on the record and I hope the minister will consider it,

The other point is raised by the Committee for Justice and Liberty, the CJL Foundation. Their point simply is that they feel the section dealing with religious beliefs and exemptions thereto under the Act should be the same in the Labour Relations Act as it is under the Crown Employees’ Collective Bargaining Act. They feel the provision for exemption or opting out under the Crown Employees’ Act is much broader than under the Labour Relations Act and they would like to see it broadened to conform to the same provision in the Crown Employees’ Collective Bargaining Act.

Other than that, we spent three or four days in committee on this matter and I don’t see any point in rehashing the matter all over again. I would like to commend some of the minister’s staff, particularly the lawyer who handled the bill on behalf of the Ministry of Labour. I thought he was a most impressive young man and certainly knew what he was talking about, which is sometimes a refreshing change around here.

I would also like to commend the minister for bringing the bill in. It goes some way to resolving some of the problems that have caused hardships in the union-management bargaining field. I might add, we would still like to see the section dealing with the certification be 50 per cent plus one, but we’ve been over that thoroughly.

Mr. Chairman: Does the minister wish to reply? Any further comments? The member for Windsor West.

Mr. Bounsall: I have some comments with respect to section 1, Mr. Chairman. I have an amendment.

Mr. Bounsall moves that section 1 be amended by adding a new subsection 2 as follows:

“Subsection 1(n) of section 1 of the Labour Relations Act be deleted and the following substituted therefor: trade union means any organization of employees or any branch or local thereof, the purposes of which include the regulation of relations between employees and employers and includes a provincial, national or international trade union and a certified council of trade unions.”

Mr. Bounsall: The reason for the amendment I’ll cover very shortly.

This Act was given a lot of scrutiny in the committee. I have no intention in my remarks to try to prolong any debate on it. The problem in section 1(n) in the definition of trade union in the present Act is that it reads, “trade union means an organization of employees formed for the purposes that include regulation” and so on.

The wording I have proposed here takes out any connotation of the word “formed” and in essence is the wording to be found in the Canada Labour Code with respect to the definition “formed” of a trade union. This says it’s there for the purposes which include the regulation of relations and gets away from the historical use of the word “formed.” The reason for this is the same as we heard in committee as far as we could, because this wasn’t a section in the bill and the chairman rightly ruled that the presentation of the person presenting from the floor, Mr. Sack of Sack, Dunn and Paisley, on behalf of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, was out of order. It is a problem which bothers the university faculties across this province as they are now in the process of forming -- some of them -- collective bargaining units for the purpose of bargaining collectively. If there is a literal interpretation of the word “formed,” virtually all of these faculty associations in the past have had a large degree of management participation, not only in the formation but in the memberships. At my own University of Windsor, everybody including the vice-presidents belong and participate in the faculty association, even though from time to time the faculty association passes a resolution which the executive of the faculty association must therefore take and discuss with the very vice-president who was present during the discussions within the faculty association on that particular matter.

Various faculty associations have indeed gone to some pains over the past year -- the University of Windsor is one of them -- to revise their constitutions making exclusions. That can be done, surely; then when one applies to the board for certification, one is applying on that new basis. However, the recent past experience on this has been that when the teaching assistants at York University decided to organize, York University put the objection forward on the basis that there had been employer participation in the formation and administration of that particular teaching assistant group at York University.

Mr. Chairman: I wonder if I could call the member to order. I believe the member’s amendment is out of order in that there is nothing in the bill as approved by the House that deals with the definition of a trade union.

Mr. Bounsall: Yes, I imagine that the --

Mr. Chairman: I think the member would have to bring in a private member’s bill to deal with this aspect of it. Therefore, I must regretfully rule that his amendment is out of order.

Mr. Bounsall: Surely, Mr. Chairman, one can add an entirely new section to the bill that deals with another matter, as in the way of an amendment at this time?

Mr. Chairman: Not if it changes the intent of the bill -- I don’t believe.

Hon. J. P. MacBeth (Minister of Labour): Mr. Chairman, if I might just speak to the matter for a minute. I just sent a note along to my legal help here asking whether he saw any problems with the amendment. I am not suggesting that it would be adopted now; but I don’t really see any problem with the amendment. However, I think you are right, Mr. Chairman, and I want time to consider it. I am appreciative of the fact that the member for Rainy River and the member for Windsor West have raised this problem that Mr. Sack brought to us. I undertook, at the committee, to examine it. We don’t want to exempt these people.

The history so far with the board is that in one application they were admitted and recognized. In the other application, I think the point was raised and withdrawn. If it proves to be a problem, and I don’t think it will, but if it does, then we will certainly look to amend the Act, because it is not our intent to exclude these people. I like the amendment that the member for Windsor West proposed. At least, that’s my off-the-top-of-my-head opinion of it. I kind of like it, and will take it under advisement to see whether we can’t do it next time around.

Mr. Bounsall: Mr. Chairman, given that commitment from the minister to consider it thoroughly, and under the circumstances that it puts all some 90,000 faculty under it, I accept that and would welcome the minister’s consideration and, probably, subsequent amendment in the future.

Section 1 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Are there any other members who would like to discuss any section before section 33?

Mr. Bounsall: Section 10, Mr. Chairman.

Sections 2 to 9, inclusive, agreed to.

On section 10:

Mr. Chairman: The member for Windsor West.

Mr. Bounsall: Mr. Chairman, on section 10, I would very much like to see this section restored to the bill. This was the section of the bill which was deleted by the committee and deals with the matter of arbitration and arbitration boards -- decisions being final and conclusive for all purposes. Mr. Chairman, I would move that the exact wording of the bill, which came before the House and was approved on second reading but removed by the resources development committee, be returned to the Act.

Mr. Bounsall moves that section 10 be amended by adding to section 37 of the said Act the following subsections:

“(12) An arbitrator or arbitration board has exclusive jurisdiction to determine all questions of fact and law that arise in any matter before the arbitrator or arbitration board, and the decision of the arbitrator or arbitration board thereon is final and conclusive for all purposes:

“(13) No decision, order, direction, declaration or ruling of an arbitrator or arbitration board shall be questioned or reviewed in any court and no proceedings shall be taken in any court by way of injunction, declaratory judgement, certiorari, mandamus, prohibition, application for judicial review, quo warranto, or otherwise, to question, review, prohibit, or restrain the arbitrator or arbitration board or any of his or its decisions.”

Mr. Chairman: The member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, I rise not to support the amendment as put by the member for Windsor West. We had a fairly lengthy go at this in the committee, and the committee voted on my amendment to delete sections 12 and 13 from the bill. The committee, in its wisdom, deleted those two sections on the basis that the committee felt that judicial review in fact should be an avenue that is open to those people appearing before the Labour Relations Board.

We did have an argument in committee, but basically I think its decision hinged on the fact that this avenue of appeal should be open to people appearing before the board. In other cases dealing with law, the defendant or the person involved in a suit has the option and the ability and the avenue to go to the courts on the basis of having the decision that has been rendered looked at again by a higher court or another court on the basis of an error in law.

While we sympathize with the idea of those who would put these two sections back in the bill, that we don’t want labour relations to be hung up in the courts, we got the information from the minister that in the last two to three years, if I recall correctly, there was only something like 51 cases out of the literally thousands of cases that have come before the Labour Relations Board had been appealed. Of those 51 cases, again if I recall correctly, nine were overturned in favour of the union and seven were overturned in favour of management. We do not feel that this appeal to the courts is being abused. We feel, in fact, that in approximately a third of the cases the court has seen fit to overturn the judgement of the board or the arbitrator, and therefore this avenue should still be available to people as it is in other cases not related to labour relations.

For those reasons, Mr. Chairman, we cannot support the amendment.

Mr. Bounsall: Mr. Chairman, there are very good reasons for these sections being in the original bill and for my amendment to put them back in the bill.

The problem with arbitration is twofold. One is the great delays which take place in arbitration, and the other is the cost of that arbitration. The delays that have been encountered in arbitration are well known. There has even been a booklet published by the Labour Council of Metropolitan Toronto, “Justice Delayed,” which talks about the arbitration process in Ontario and is very factual with respect to those delays. It is written by Howard Goldblatt, and there is a comment on it by Chris Trower, them of the United Steelworkers and now of the CSAO. The problem is that the average time to get to arbitration is four months. I know of one union applying for arbitration -- which just yesterday had Dec. 11, 1975, set as the date for the commencement of that arbitration.

In addition to the delay, there is the cost. The average cost of an arbitration now is $700 per day. The average cost for the total grievance is about $1,000 per day. If by not including these sections in the Act, you continue to allow appeals from the decisions of the arbitration board to go before the courts, you are simply adding a lot more delay and one heck of a lot more cost to this whole system of arbitration.

I might point out that the arbitration system as we have it -- grievance arbitration -- was initially put in as a trade-off against the right to strike during the lifetime of a contract. With the delays and the cost ever mounting and, because of the costs, the reluctance of many individual local unions at least to go to arbitration on grievances, if the decisions we find there are neither final nor binding and can be appealed what we are encouraging, I am afraid, is frustration on the part of trade unions particularly at the local level about the whole arbitration procedure. The arbitration procedure on grievances will fall into a little bit of disfavour -- if it hasn’t already -- on behalf of trade unions and there will be an increased tendency to or an increased danger of wildcat strikes during the lifetime of the contract as frustrations with the cost and the delay of the grievance procedures mount.

In its presentation the board indicated some figures. Sure, over the last 2½ years, I think it was, only 57 cases, which is slightly over one per cent, found their way to the courts. Of those, seven were resolved in favour of the management and nine in favour of the unions. This clause was preventive legislation in the sense that the board is predicting an ever-increasing number of these cases finding their way to the courts. They can still, I might point out, clearly find their way to the courts for a denial of natural justice or if the arbitrator exceeded his jurisdiction or there was bias.

What this amendment does is not let it go to the courts on a matter of law. In so many cases there may be an error in law involved in passing, which does not have anything to do with the merits or demerits of the case. It’s for this reason there is fear on the board’s part and there should be fear on everyone’s part in Ontario in labour relations that matters which are not at the heart of the matter of the grievance will be able to find their way to a court because of an error in law made in passing which does not go to the very heart of it. This is an amendment which would ensure that matters of that type do not end up in the courts and cause great delay.

One other final point I would like to make here is you might say if the decision, according to this amendment, is to be final and binding what do the parties do about their feeling that they have been quite unjustly dealt with if there is no way they can appeal on the basis of natural justice, jurisdiction exceeded or bias? The point is that most contracts do not go beyond two years. If, on a matter of principle, either side feels the decision has gone badly against them that becomes a matter for collective bargaining when that time arises. They can talk about it in reference to their collective agreement.

In terms of one party feeling grossly affected by a decision of an arbitration board -- a decision which cannot be appealed on natural justice, jurisdiction or bias -- they have an opportunity to sort that out across the bargaining table for the next contract, so a similar situation will not arise. That is a healthy situation. I can see that being a healthy situation, much better than an appeal to the courts on a passing matter of law which may have no point and really no application to the very heart of the matter coming before the grievance procedure.

I feel very strongly on this, Mr. Chairman, and there was an amendment put in -- the amendment was there in the original bill -- by the minister. It was clear in the discussions before committee that the staff of the ministry, particularly those associated with the Ontario Labour Relations Board, were very concerned, seeing their day-to-day work and the decisions which they must, of course, take, that this stay in the bill. On the matter of the Ontario Labour Relations Board, in that committee we had suggestions before us of mistrust -- I think you could go that far -- of the Ontario Labour Relations Board and its decisions, let me say, and let me make it very clear that certainly, as an individual, I myself would not agree with all of the decisions made by the Ontario Labour Relations Board. But it’s a fairly-set-up board; it’s a fair-minded board and it comes to its decisions in an honest way. Anything we can do to strengthen the Ontario Labour Relations Board and help to make its work faster, help to make the decisions better from that board, this Legislature should be endeavouring to do so.

Mr. Minister, I know you don’t feel very strongly one way or the other on this section, as you finally stated in the committee. I appeal to you, if you don’t feel very strongly one way or the other, for heaven’s sake, let it back in the bill.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): Mr. Chairman, I have comments in two areas. I’m not going to repeat the comments that have been made, particularly by my colleague from Windsor West, with regard to the substance of the amendment, except to say this: As I understand it, in general terms the purpose of these original clauses was to bring the arbitration procedures more or less into the same context as the Labour Relations Act itself -- namely, that its decisions would be final and binding, except for legitimate appeals on natural justice and exceeding jurisdiction.

I think the argument, for example, that was put forward by my friend from Rainy River ignores the fact that you can always go back and question the final powers of the Labour Relations Board. We seem to have got to a stage, even the lawyers before that committee, of forsaking that argument. But it’s a relic, it’s still around. They’re arguing vis-à-vis the proposition of having final and binding decisions with regard to arbitration.

It seems to me that the suggestion that they should be final and binding, except for natural justice and exceeding jurisdiction, is even more valid when we recognize that, in our system, arbitration is the alternative to a strike during the term of the contract. Therefore, why you should have this old, legalistic approach rather than the new approach upon which the Labour Relations Board has been built and our arbitration procedures have been sort of out of step, I just can’t understand.

Particularly because of what I have said, I must say to the minister that I was very disappointed in his actions in this particular connection. I could put it even more bluntly than maybe I am going to, because -- and I don’t know why -- he provokes from me sort of the milk of human kindness, or whatever I have of that.

When the minister brings in a bill, presumably he has thought through the bill rather carefully. When it is clear that his staff, and the board who have to live with this kind of thing, wanted these sections in, the minister copped out when he said he was impressed by the arguments of the lawyers -- his friends in the legal fraternity -- that there was some basis in this appeal and, therefore, he was going to let the committee decide. I submit to the minister he was copping out. He should have stuck with his staff and with everybody else who felt this was necessary, and not left it to the committee.

Then when he left it to the committee, my friend from Rainy River said the committee in its wisdom deleted the sections. I don’t know whether the committee in its wisdom deleted the sections; I think the committee in its neglect deleted the sections. The vote was 4-4. What is the membership of the resources development committee? Is it 17? The vote was 4-4.

The chairman had an option, and I submit the chairman took the wrong option. The chairman had the option of casting a vote, which he did, to delete the sections, or he could have said that since the vote hadn’t passed, it fell. I submit that’s what the chairman should have done -- particularly the chairman in question, because, quite frankly, what he knows about labour relations and arbitration could be put into a very small thimble. Therefore, he was just arbitrarily making a decision that it was going to be opted out, presumably because the minister didn’t want to stand firm on it.

I want to come back to the concluding comments of my friend from Windsor West. If the minister brought this bill in, I think the minister should stand by the bill with those clauses in. His deputy wants them in; the lawyer on behalf of the ministry who spoke to them clearly wants them in; those who were there to speak on behalf of the Ontario Labour Relations Board want them in. It seems to me that if the minister is the Minister of Labour, those are the people he should stick with and not people who come in on behalf of the manufacturers’ association and the board of trade and others who are taking the traditional approach of lawyers. It’s only yesterday, if not this morning, that they have quit arguing that the Labour Relations Board is on the wrong basis at all, that the privative clause should: go out the window. They quit that because it’s almost a bit disgraceful to continue to add it and claim that you are in favour of fair relationships between management and labour.

I repeat, having put it in rather blunt and perhaps excessively personal terms to the minister, I think it is time for the minister to take a stand with regard to those people who understand the Labour Relations Act and its operations and who understand the arbitration procedures and the difficulties in it. It is clear that his deputy and the legal adviser and the people in the Ontario Labour Relations Board are all in that group and they want those things in there. If the minister is serving the interest of labour relations, he should see that the sections which were struck out are restored to the bill.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. minister.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Yes, Mr. Chairman. The member for Windsor West does obviously put me in a difficult position of arguing at this point against legislation that I and my ministry have proposed. I don’t intend to disagree with the points that he has made.

I would like to deal for a just a moment with the points that the member for York South has raised in regard to action that I took at the committee level. It seems to me there is one purpose in going to committee and that is to hear the views of the public and let the committee have some influence on the decisions that are arrived at.

As I said the other day, at committee it is difficult perhaps for a lawyer because he himself comes in with certain prejudices. It is the argument between the McRuer school, those who feel that the individual’s rights should be protected eventually through the courts, and those who are interested in the efficiency of the operation, in this case of the arbitrators. There is no question but that the member for York South is right, that my advisers, the ministry, the labour board and the arbitrators, would like to see the privative clause there. They speak quite strongly for it.

The figures we have had are some 51 cases appealed since 1972. They are not astounding figures, at least not great figures, but at the same time each of those cases represents a long history before the courts. I think probably the length of time has been more detrimental than if an earlier decision had been made and stuck with. However, I am from time to time left with the job of appointing these arbitrators.

The parties in the first instance have the option of choosing and settling upon an arbitrator by agreement. But if they can’t, or occasionally if they decide to let the ministry do it -- not from lack of coming to an agreement themselves but just as perhaps the easiest course out -- I do appoint arbitrators. The argument that impressed me was the argument that it might be that one of these arbitrators I appoint has in some cases; not the experience of others, and a very important wrong decision might be made which would not be appealable.

That was the McRuer argument that got to me, rather than the efficiency argument and the speed argument -- that these things should have a quick and final decision in the best interests of labour relations. As I say, I’m agreeing with what the member for Windsor West said and in good part with what the member for York South said. But I had myself at that hearing decided that the rules of McRuer, to my mind, should be kept.

I said I would be happy to abide by the committee’s decision and I don’t think this point is the place for me to change that. In other words, the public have gone away from that committee thinking that something is going to happen. I know this House has the right to change that but I’m not going to be the one who suggests we change it at this point.

I will keep an eye on the figures. I hope you’ll have an opportunity and that I’ll have an opportunity to look at this again. Certainly the staff will. It’s not so much the number of the cases involved -- 51 is not an astounding figure -- but it’s the fact that any cases at all can drag on the way the Douglas Aircraft case has dragged, which I said the other day was a travesty. We will keep an eye on the figures and, if things are continuing to go that way, I hope we’ll be back again with this privative section. If, however, there is a falling off of cases, then I think we can leave it there.

There are some arbitrators who are not as experienced as others. Sometimes it’s the minister who has to appoint them. As I say, that was the argument that got to me. I left it with the committee. The committee has made its decision, and that’s the position I’m taking today with the situation.

Mr. MacDonald: Half the committee made the decision.

Mr. Bounsall: Just very briefly, Mr. Chairman, on the one point on McRuer and one point prior to that. It has been my experience in this House that lawyers tend to dislike privative sections, sections which would not allow something to go to the courts. This is because they are very court-oriented, legal system oriented.

Mr. Minister, I have not got personal in any of this -- but at this point let me just make one comment. With that being the natural inclination of lawyers, you, as a lawyer, were showing your personal tendencies in that committee by so stating your view on that particular section. You should have been very careful, very careful, that that tendency that you have did not come forward.

Secondly, on McRuer; this is quite clearly stated in the McRuer report on civil rights. In his opinion, decisions of boards should not be final and binding, and should always be appealed to the courts.

I want to make one point. Some two years ago, and I forget over which bill, the member for Downsview (Mr. Singer), a very eminent lawyer in the Liberal caucus, and the member for Riverdale in our caucus, agreed one evening on this very point that this was probably the one area in the McRuer report where McRuer showed his bias, having come from the legal profession. I heard the member for Downsview and the member for Riverdale agree on that point. I can’t quote their words, of course, but they said it was one thing in the McRuer report where they, themselves, would not place all that much weight.

Mr. J. E. Bullbrook (Sarnia): May I have a moment?

Mr. Chairman: The member for Sarnia.

Mr. Bullbrook: I might say that would be unique. My recollection isn’t such. I don’t recall them ever agreeing, during my eight years here, on anything at all. I wanted to rise for a moment because, frankly, one’s blood does begin to boil when the legal profession is constantly attacked in connection with labour matters. The member for York South has always had the great facility, when he discusses lawyers, of making my blood boil because of that very attractive accent that he has that makes one think that he’s dropping the “aw” from the word “lawyers.” It always seems to come out “liars.”

Mr. Bounsall: If you’re sensitive on the topic steer clear of it.

Mr. Bullbrook: I want to voice this if I may. I wasn’t a member of the committee.

Mr. MacDonald: That is a very revealing statement. Put the mirror away.

Mr. Bullbrook: I want to say this, if I may. I’m not a member of the committee, as the member for York South knows and the minister might recall, but I just happened into the committee when this very thing was being digested. I want to say to you, Mr. Chairman, that my initial reaction was to support the inclusion of the sections in the legislation, after hearing a very fine presentation by a lawyer. But the fact of the matter is, when the member for Windsor West says that the lawyers have prejudices, I don’t think it’s difficult to disagree with him.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): So do professors.

Mr. Bullbrook: So do other people have prejudices.

Mr. Bounsall: So you are careful in the area in which you have them.

Mr. Bullbrook: I want to say this, if I may, and personalize myself. I do think the legal profession has made a very significant contribution toward the arbitration process, which is not a substitution for the strike. The member for Youth South -- if he reads his history of labour relations -- will find that arbitrations are not a substitution for strikes. Arbitration became a substitution for recourse to the courts. That’s what arbitration was. It was understood by both sides as to what it was.

Mr. MacDonald: It’s interesting.

Mr. Bullbrook: I don’t think we can put it in that context, but some of us have had some experience in this respect. I want to say to you, Mr. Chairman, that I’m very prideful of the fact that I spent at one time many, many weeks on an arbitration case before a lawyer whose name was Bora Laskin. He sat as chairman up there. Another lawyer was a representative of the company, he is now Mr. Justice Arthur Jessup. Another one wasn’t a lawyer; he was probably one of the most brilliant trade unionists I’ve ever met or heard. His name was Harry Waisglass and he was research director for the United Steelworkers. But the fact of the matter is, I don’t think we should regard the two lawyers on the board as being any less objective in their attempt to do justice to both trade unionism and management in the arbitration field than Mr. Waisglass was.

Mr. Bounsall: That’s not my point.

Mr. MacDonald: You have missed the whole point.

Mr. Bullbrook: One of my problems over the last eight years is, I just can’t seem to get these points sometimes.

Mr. MacDonald: That’s right.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): We have noticed that too.

Mr. Bullbrook: But you will have to bear with me. I don’t have that alacrity of mind that seems to be over there on the left, so bear with me for the moment. I want to say my initial reaction was to leave it in. I found, frankly, the possibility of an error should not deprive any citizen, be it a corporation, an individual or a trade union, of recourse to the fundamental final chapter in justice, and that is the courts.

Mr. Chairman: Shall Mr. Bounsall’s amendment to section 10 carry?

All those in favour will please say “aye.”

All those opposed will say “nay.”

In my opinion the “nays” have it.

Will we agree to stack this vote?

Mr. MacDonald: It is funny how blindness is associated with the Chair.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: He’s just deaf in the left ear.

Mr. Chairman: Are there any other comments on any section prior to section 33? I believe the minister has an amendment to section 33.

Sections 11 to 32, inclusive, agreed to.

On section 33:

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: I do sir, and it is again with some regret, Mr. Chairman, that I have an amendment to put forward. I’ll put the amendment first and then speak to it.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth moves that section 33 of the bill as amended by the resources development committee he deleted and the following substituted therefor:

“33(1) This Act, except subsection 1 of section 1, subsection 4 of section 3, and sections 6, 12 and 31, comes into force on the day it receives royal assent.

“(2) subsection 1 of section 1, subsection 4 of section 3, and sections 6, 12 and 31 come into force on a day to be named by proclamation of the Lieutenant Governor.”

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Two days ago in the standing committee, sections 23 to 34 of Bill 111 were passed with no debate and on one motion. There was some confusion at that time as to the procedure that was followed. We had dealt very carefully, section by section, and at that point all of what the committee thought to be controversial sections had been passed. The hour was getting on and the chairman of the committee asked if there were any further questions on the balance of the bill. I guess the members of the committee were satisfied and very quickly the bill was moved for reporting in this House.

Very quickly, the committee members dispersed. Some people subsequently came to me and suggested they had wanted to speak on some of the subsequent sections, and although I’m sceptical of the merits -- I suppose I shouldn’t say I’m sceptical at this point, because the purpose of this amendment is to give them the opportunity of making further presentations to me -- I think if we had stayed and not rushed the last two sections through, probably they could have been satisfied in the committee and the bill could have come forward without an amendment.

But I was urged to delay, for a short period of time, bringing into force those provisions dealing with dependent contractors; namely, subsection 1 of section 1 of the bill and subsection 4 of section 3 of the bill. The interested parties believe this change will require careful explanation and communication to their constituent members, for example, in the trucking industry.

In addition, during the hearings in the standing committee, I was urged to review the report concerning dump truck operators recently filed with the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Rhodes) by Mr. Rapoport. At the moment I have only had time to glance briefly at the summations made by Mr. Rapoport and do not believe they will in any way affect the provisions of the bill. I do believe, however, that I should take a little more time to examine fully the report in conjunction with my colleague, the Minister of Transportation and Communications.

You will recall that this morning in a question to me from the member for Windsor West, he in his mind thought there might be some conflict. It is therefore my desire to postpone for not more than two or three months the bringing into force of those sections dealing with dependent contractors and that is the purpose of this motion.

I am sorry that has developed because this section on dependent contractors is to my mind one of the important sections of the bill. It was not aimed at truckers as such. It was aimed mainly at people in what we call the jug milk business and that type of operation but it is all-inclusive. We do want to cover these people who, by technicalities of the law, have been ruled as independent but in view of today’s arrangements are what anyone else would consider as dependent. We do want to give them the provisions of collective bargaining.

An amendment was made to allay, I think, the fears of most of the people there that they might, as the phrase developed, be swept in; that people who did consider themselves independent contractors by this definition might be swept in with part of another bargaining unit. We have made an amendment, which the committee adopted, to make sure that wouldn’t happen; that they would be considered as a separate unit and would have the right to decide, first of all, whether they wanted collective bargaining and then whether they would or would not be included in a larger unit.

I think we have the main concerns looked after and I don’t have any fear that we can’t, in due course, bring in the dependent contractor definition as provided in the bill. These people were not, in fairness, given time to make their representations. I put the problem to the cabinet. The cabinet thought this was the best and proper way to settle the situation and that is the purpose of the amendment I have made this morning, sir.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Rainy River.

Mr. Reid: Mr. Chairman, I find the minister’s remarks somewhat specious but I don’t think it makes all that much difference one way or the other, particularly if the minister can give us some estimate of the time frame he is talking about. The one that always occurs to me is the Insurance Act; I believe there has been a clause in the Act since 1934 --

Mr. MacDonald: He said two or three months.

Mr. Reid: Yes, well -- do we have a commitment from you that it will be within two to three months at the latest?

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: I would like that. I suggested at one point that I put that in the bill but the answer to that was that if I am impressed in any way by the representations they make and it’s in the bill, I can’t do anything about it. When you say two or three months I think it’s reasonable that if we don’t put this into effect in two or three months I should make a public statement, or give a statement, as to why I have decided or the cabinet has decided not to do this. To say it will happen in two or three months is coming to a verdict before I have heard the representations these people want to make.

The two- to three-month period was originally put in there for certain sections having to do with discrimination on age and sex because that will require notices to go out from the board that these terms in various collective agreements across the province must be changed. I understand they are going to do that and the chairman of the board thought a two-month period was reasonable for that purpose. I’m trying to put them all together in two or three months. On this part I can give a commitment that I will make some public statement as to the findings if it is not proclaimed in three months’ time.

Mr. Chairman: The member for York South.

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Chairman, having listened to the minister, I am increasingly puzzled as to when he feels he legitimately should bow to pressure and when he shouldn’t bow to pressure. A moment ago his argument was that since many people went away from that committee thinking that what the committee had decided was sort of final and binding, he wasn’t going to change it. The minister listened to all the arguments by people who went before that committee, that that section should be thrown out of the bill because he hadn’t had time to consider the Rapoport report and things of that nature. They came to you afterward and you have gone to the cabinet and agreed, not to throw it out of the bill but not to proclaim it and to give yourself two or three months.

Everything that they are going to say to you they said before the committee, and they said it with the purpose of having the sections thrown out of the bill. They are fighting a last-ditch battle. Now why do you bow at this stage? I ask my original question: Why do you bow to pressure sometimes and not at other times? I just don’t understand it.

However, the minister himself having said he was unhappy at bringing it in -- and he should be unhappy about bringing it in -- I would say to the minister that within two or three months he blessed well should make a decision on this and not stall. Do not let them say to you what they said before the committee and what the committee wouldn’t accept. In other words, if the purpose of the bill is going to be frustrated by this behind-the-scenes, back-door, belated, after-the-committee operation, I think it is in violation of our procedures.

Hon. Mr. MacBeth: Mr. Chairman, I agree with the last part of what the member for York South is saying. I want to say that I think I am completely consistent. I said earlier that I was impressed by the McRuer argument. I was impressed by the McRuer position in connection with these people who had waited for a number of days, particularly a woman who said the only reason she was there was to request us to put the definition of dependent contractor in section 33. That was the only purpose of her waiting.

When we talked about fair hearings and all the other things, and realizing what Mr. McRuer said about fair hearings -- and I take as much responsibility as anyone else for the committee terminating its procedures as quickly as it did -- I couldn’t say we had given her a fair hearing.

I am inclined to agree with the member’s latter remarks that it may be a last-ditch fight, but in the McRuer principle, wherein I say I am being consistent, I feel that we should accept this amendment. I hope that we will be able to accept it today and put the bill on for third reading with the consent of the House.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Windsor West.

Mr. Bounsall: Just one last remark, Mr. Chairman. I understand what happened in the committee in terms of members of the trucking groups and haulers’ groups waiting around to request the committee to make this change. Because of the fact that 5 o’clock was the agreed closing time for the Wednesday sitting, our mood was, “There is nothing much left; let’s pass the last eight clauses.” That’s what we did, and they didn’t get a chance to speak to that.

I understand the minister’s situation, and I wish the committee had resumed sitting yesterday morning so that this amendment need not have come before us today, the committee clearly having spoken on it. I appreciate that. That’s why we will not oppose this amendment that you have brought in today. I feel that the committee acted a little bit quickly, and unnecessarily so, when another couple of hours yesterday morning in that committee would have solved the situation and we would not have had this before us.

We won’t vote against it, but I feel rather strongly that this is a last-ditch attempt. Clause (ga) and section 1 of the bill carried, and now they simply want to delay the implementation of that clause. Anything that was presented to us in the committee by those people was presented, we as a committee spoke on it, and clause (ga) remained in the bill.

To speak very briefly to their representation, they are worried about the Rapoport report not being carried through, which I understand sets up all of the haulers as an association where they can work together. Certainly I am not in any way opposing that sort of action. If all the haulers can be organized into a given unit that can speak with a common voice on a very legitimate problem which they have in this province, that’s fine. But under this bill, with some of them being probably eligible for the designation of dependent contractor, I think they do not have a legitimate worry if they feel that an association is working well, and they claim it does, encouraged by the Rapoport report. They do not have a legitimate worry when they worry that that small group which would be classified dependent contractors would organize themselves into some other separate union. The right is there; but if they have a good association, it’s not going to happen; only a small proportion of their numbers would so qualify anyway.

That was the argument that we responded to in, committee. I suggest that the minister’s innate reaction is correct, that they probably cannot say any more than what they have said and that their worries really are illegitimate.

Mr. Chairman: Shall the minister’s amendment carry?

Motion agreed to.

Section 33, as amended, agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: It would seem that we have come to the end of our deliberations on the three bills in question. Inasmuch as we have agreed to stack the deliberations, I would suggest that we call in the members.

COLLEGES COLLECTIVE BARGAINING ACT (CONCLUDED)

House in committee on Bill 108, an Act respecting Collective Bargaining for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology.

Mr. Chairman: Dealing first with Hon. Mr. Auld’s motion to section 24, subsection 1.

Hon. Mr. Auld moved that subsection 1 of section 24 be deleted and the following substituted therefor:

“Where the parties agree to refer all matters remaining in dispute between them that may be provided for in an agreement to an arbitrator or a board of arbitration the parties shall jointly give written notice to the commission that they have so agreed and the notice shall state.”

The committee divided on Hon. Mr. Auld’s amendment to section 24 which was approved on the following vote:

Clerk of the House: Mr. Chairman, the “ayes” are 44, the nays” are 20.

Section 24, as amended, agreed to.

Mr. J. R. Breithaupt (Kitchener): There are no other government amendments, as I understand it, to this bill. We are prepared to have the other amendments put in a group at this time with the same vote reversed acceptable.

Mr. Chairman: Is this the agreement of the committee?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Yes, Mr. Chairman, it’s very agreeable.

Agreed.

Mr. Chairman: I therefore declare the other amendments lost.

Bill 108, as amended, reported.

LABOUR RELATIONS AMENDMENT ACT (CONCLUDED)

House in committee on Bill 111, an Act to amend the Labour Relations Act.

Mr. Chairman: We will deal with Mr. Bounsall’s amendment.

Mr. Breithaupt: Mr. Chairman, are there amendments which the minister has to place with respect to this bill? I believe not.

Mr. Chairman: No, the amendment moved by the minister was carried in committee.

Mr. Breithaupt: There are no amendments from the minister which will require the vote at this time?

Mr. Chairman: No.

Mr. Bounsall moved that section 10 be amended by adding to section 37 of the said Act the following subsection:

“(12) An arbitrator or arbitration board has exclusive jurisdiction to determine all the questions of fact and law that arise in any matter before the arbitrator or arbitration board and the decision of the arbitrator or arbitration board thereon is final and conclusive for all purposes.

“(13) No decision, order, direction, declaration or ruling of an arbitrator or arbitration board shall be questioned or reviewed in any court and no proceedings shall be taken in any court by way of an injunction, declaratory judgement, certiorari, mandamus, prohibition, application for a judicial review, quo warranto, or otherwise to question review, prohibit or restrain the arbitrator or arbitration board or any of his or its decisions.”

The committee divided on Mr. Bounsall’s amendment to section 37, which was negatived on the following vote:

Clerk of the House: Mr. Chairman, the “ayes” are 10, the “nays” are 54.

Mr. Chairman: I declare the amendment lost.

Section 37 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: Shall the bill, as amended, be reported?

Bill 111, as amended, reported.

SCHOOL BOARDS AND TEACHERS COLLECTIVE NEGOTIATIONS ACT (CONCLUDED)

House in committee on Bill 100, an Act respecting the Negotiation of Collective Agreements between School Boards and Teachers.

Mr. Chairman: We will deal first with Mr. Wells’ amendment to Bill 100.

Hon. Mr. Wells moved that section 65 of the bill as amended by the social development committee be deleted and the following substituted therefor:

“65(1) A principal and a vice-principal shall be members of a branch affiliate.

“(2) Notwithstanding subsection 1, in the event of a strike by the members of a branch affiliate, each principal and vice-principal who is a member of the branch affiliate shall remain on duty during the strike or any related lock-out or state of lock-outs or closing of a school or schools.

The committee divided on Hon. Mr. Wells amendment to section 65, which was approved on the following vote:

Clerk of the House: Mr. Chairman, the “ayes” are 42, the “nays” are 20.

Mr. Chairman: I declare the amendment carried.

Section 65, as amended, agreed to.

Mr. Deans: Mr. Chairman, with the exception of one amendment on section 60 moved by Mr. Deacon, as I recall, we would be prepared to have the reverse vote on all of the other amendments.

Hon. Mr. Wells: We might not.

Mr. Deans: I say we would be prepared. I am not talking for you. I would never talk for you.

Mr. B. Newman: We do not support you on section 51; and we have to vote on 60.

Mr. Chairman: Do you wish to take the vote, or do you wish to just record it in Hansard, as the House leader has indicated?

Mr. Deans: Might as well take the vote; it takes just as long to take the vote.

Mr. Chairman: All right.

Mr. Chairman: Which section was it that you were referring to?

Mr. Foulds: Sections 51 and 60.

The committee divided on Mr. Foulds’ amendments to section 51, which were negatived on the following vote:

Clerk of the House: Mr. Chairman, the “ayes” are 10, the “nays” are 54.

Mr. Chairman: I declare the amendment lost.

Section 51 agreed to.

The committee divided on Mr. Deacon’s amendment to section 60, which was negatived on the following vote:

Clerk of the House: Mr. Chairman, the “ayes” are 10, the “nays” are 54.

Mr. Chairman: I declare the amendment lost.

Mr. Deans: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order --

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Chairman, could we agree to the same vote on the subsequent clause in 60?

Mr. Chairman: Section 60, subsection 2?

Mr. Foulds: Section 60, subsection 2, yes.

Mr. Chairman: On section 60, subsection 2. Is the committee in agreement?

Mr. Foulds: Same vote.

Mr. Deans: Same vote.

Mr. Chairman: All right, I declare it lost.

Section 60, as amended, agreed to.

Mr. Deans: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, it is my understanding that the doors were tyled during the time the votes were being taken.

An hon. member: Tyled?

An hon. member: Locked.

Mr. Deans: Locked is the same term, if you wish. The member for Elgin (Mr. McNeil) and the member for Ottawa West (Mr. Morrow) failed to vote on one of the votes that were taken. The ruling is, that if you are in the chamber you must vote. I would ask that you consult the votes and determine the tallies; and if the votes do not tally up the same number of members present, that the votes be retaken.

Mr. Chairman: I confirm the count as it was reported to me. I was not aware that any members who were here at the time were not voting.

Mr. Ruston: If you had 40 for the vote before and 42 the next time, you might know.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): Somebody voted twice.

Mr. Foulds: That’s how you stay in power!

Mr. Chairman: Order please.

Mr. Stokes: There can’t be a difference in the votes.

Mr. Chairman: Order please. If there are members in the committee who did not vote on each amendment, I would ask them to declare themselves as to how they would vote.

Mr. L. C. Henderson (Lambton): They are opposition members.

Mr. Deans: No, they are on your side.

Mr. Bullbrook: No, in another four months they will be opposition members.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please. I think the Chairman has gone as far as he can at this time, because I am not aware of who did not vote or who did vote. I just took the count from the clerk’s table.

Mr. Deans: On a point of order, allow me to tell you that the member for Elgin and the member for Ottawa West did not vote. Now you are aware.

Mr. Chairman: I would have to ask the two hon. members then to declare their votes.

Mr. D. H. Morrow (Ottawa West): Mr. Chairman, there is a ruling here that if you don’t care to vote on a particular amendment you are considered as having voted against it.

Mr. Deans: Not so.

Mr. Morrow: That’s always been the ruling the House. If that satisfies the hon. member for Wentworth, why, record it that way. I am opposed to the amendment as it has been redrawn, I was in favour of the section of the bill as it stood.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Elgin.

Mr. R. K. McNeil (Elgin): I think the hon. member for Ottawa West has expressed my feelings quite well.

Mr. Deans: May I ask that they be added to the votes?

Mr. Morrow: Is the hon. member for Wentworth happy?

Mr. McNeil: If the hon. member for Wentworth is happy, why, I --

Mr. Stokes: Then you are happy.

Mr. Deans: I didn’t realize that my happiness was any concern of yours.

Bill 100, as amended, reported.

Mr. Chairman: This disposes of the business before the committee.

Hon. Mr. Winkler moves that the committee rise and report.

Motion agreed to.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Mr. Chairman: Mr. Speaker, the committee of the whole House begs to report three bills with certain amendments and asks for leave to sit again.

Report agreed to.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): But not the “to sit again” part.

THIRD READINGS

The following bills were given third reading upon motion:

Bill 109, An Act to amend the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Act, 1971.

Bill 100, An Act respecting the Negotiation of Collective Agreement between School Boards and Teachers.

Bill 108, An Act respecting Collective Bargaining for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology.

Bill 111, An Act to amend the Labour Relations Act.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, Her Honour awaits to give assent to certain bills.

The Honourable the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario entered the chamber of the legislative assembly and took her seat upon the throne.

ROYAL ASSENT

Hon. Pauline M. McGibbon (Lieutenant Governor): Pray be seated.

Mr. Speaker: May it please Your Honour, the legislative assembly of the province has, at its present sitting thereof, passed certain bills to which, in the name of and on behalf of the said legislative assembly, I respectfully request Your Honour’s assent.

Clerk of the House: The following are the titles of the bills to which Your Honour’s assent is prayed:

Bill 14, the Environmental Assessment Act, 1975.

Bill 15, An Act to amend the Environmental Protection Act, 1971.

Bill 16, An Act to amend the Ontario Water Resources Act.

Bill 100, An Act respecting the Negotiation of Collective Agreements between School Boards and Teachers.

Bill 103, An Act to amend the Public Service Superannuation Act.

Bill 108, An Act respecting Collective Bargaining for Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology.

Bill 109, An Act to amend the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Act, 1971.

Bill 111, An Act to amend the Labour Relations Act.

Bill 118, An Act to amend the Education Act, 1974.

Bill 129, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act.

Bill 130, the Drainage Act, 1975.

Bill 131, An Act to amend the Tile Drainage Act, 1971.

Bill 132, An Act respecting the Negotiation of Collective Agreements between the Provincial Schools Authority and Teachers.

Bill 136, An Act to provide Superannuation Adjustment Benefits to persons in receipt of Pensions payable out of Pension Funds to which Contributions are paid directly or indirectly out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

Bill 137, An Act to amend the Election Finances Reform Act, 1975.

Bill 138, An Act to amend the Ambulance Act.

Bill 139, An Act to amend the Teachers’ Superannuation Act.

Bill 142, An Act to amend the Dog Licensing and Live Stock and Poultry Protection Act.

Bill 143, An Act to amend the Ontario Heritage Act, 1974.

Bill 144, An Act to amend the Insurance Act.

Bill 146, An Act to amend the Legislative Assembly Retirement Allowances Act, 1973.

Bill Pr33, An Act respecting the City of Toronto.

Clerk of the House: In Her Majesty’s name, the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor doth assent to these bills.

The Honourable the Lieutenant Governor was pleased to retire from the chamber.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, before I move the adjournment I have just been handed the answers to some questions which I would like to table: Nos. 1, 4, 13, 18, 19, 30, 33 and 35.

I would also like to say, Mr. Speaker, that the members of the Legislature have a pressing invitation from the press gallery for a brief refreshing interview in the gallery.

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

Mr. Speaker: Just before I place the motion, perhaps I might ask the indulgence of the House very briefly to express my thanks to the members of the House for their co-operation with the Chair over the past session. While it’s true that the present session is not being prorogued today, I have detected a feeling which seems to be prevalent in the House that perhaps the curtain might possibly be falling on the 29th Parliament of Ontario and, of course, some who are in the chambers today may not be passing this way again in the same capacity. We wish all these people well.

However, be that as it may, I do hope all the hon. members will have a very restful and well-earned vacation period and so on.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned then in accordance with the motion passed earlier today.

The House adjourned at 2:20 o’clock, p.m.