Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

ESTIMATES

Hon. Mr. McCague: I have a message from the Honourable the Administrator of the province signed by his own hand.

Mr. Speaker: By his own hand, the Honourable W. G. C. Howland, the Administrator of the province of Ontario, transmits estimates of certain sums required for the services of the province for the year ending March 31, 1980 and recommends them to the Legislative Assembly, Toronto, March 15, 1979.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS

Hon. Mr. McCague: I would like to take this opportunity to report to the House on the steps that are being taken to implement the intent of the 11 general recommendations of the standing procedural affairs committee on agencies, boards and commissions.

Members will recall that on December 7, 1978 the House adopted the report of the committee with one amendment. The report included 27 recommendations, of which 11 were of general nature. The other 16 recommendations referred to agencies specifically reviewed by the committee. The responsible ministers will in due course respond to the specific recommendations where necessary.

Before dealing with the 11 general recommendations, I would like to make two preliminary points. In my statement in the House on December 7, 1978 I referred in some detail to the important work that has been undertaken by this government to ensure that its agencies are administered in an effective and an efficient manner. The results of that work have already satisfied some of the concerns of the procedural affairs committee.

Secondly, I should make it clear that the current activities of the agency review committee, chaired by my colleague the Minister without Portfolio (Mr. Wiseman), are also aimed at resolving some of the issues raised by the procedural affairs committee. It is anticipated that the agency review committee will issue its next report in the late spring of this year.

Recommendation one was that Management Board should review agencies in order to rationalize structures and that there should be an explicit policy in agencies. As most members are aware, this is a phony in the government’s manual of administration in which all agencies are allocated to schedules which delineate the applicability of financial and administrative controls. This policy, therefore, meets the committee’s underlying concerns. The agency review committee will, however, review the need for any refinement of the policy and will report on this matter in its next report.

Recommendation two dealt with two issues, the first of which was the number of members that should be appointed to agencies. The agency review committee will review the need for guidelines on the number of members in its next report. The second issue referred to was the remuneration of appointees. As the members are aware, remuneration is already closely controlled by Management Board according to a policy which was tabled in the House in May 1978 by my predecessor, the present Minister of Energy and the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Auld). The policy is presently under review and the amended policy, when approved by Management Board, will also be tabled in this House.

Recommendation three referred to guidelines for the disclosure of interest of members. The committee is looking at that also.

Recommendation four, essentially, was that a written policy statement should be drawn up for each agency. Most agencies do, of course, have clear policy statements in their legislation or order in council, or in terms of reference prepared by the responsible minister. In addition, some agencies are required to prepare memorandum of understanding, each of which includes a detailed statement of the agency’s role and objectives. The government certainly agrees with the intent of recommendation four, and accordingly Management Board will ensure that written terms of reference are prepared in each case where they do not now exist.

Recommendation five, that all memoranda of understanding should be tabled in the House, will be implemented as the memoranda are finalized and approved by cabinet.

Recommendation six suggested that all agencies would table annual reports in the Legislature. In the government’s view it would be inappropriate for all agencies to table reports, given the fact that many bodies have no financial or administrative relationship with the province. In addition, some agencies are so small that preparing several reports would be administratively inefficient.

The government proposes, therefore, to meet the intent of the recommendation by including references in the appropriate ministry’s annual report to all agencies, or groups of agencies, which have a financial or administrative relationship to the government and which do not now table reports. It is not proposed, therefore, to include those agencies, such as the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario, which have no financial or administrative relationship with the province.

Recommendation seven discussed the content of annual reports. The agency review committee will review the need to stipulate minimum information and will report on the matter in its next report.

There are two parts to recommendation eight: firstly, that a standard accounting format should be established for agencies; and secondly, that all expenditures and services provided to an agency by a ministry should be charged back against the accounts of the agency.

As members will appreciate, one standard accounting format is not feasible, in view of the diverse nature of agencies. However, depending on the nature of each agency, its expenditures are required to be accounted for according to either government or commercial, generally accepted accounting principles.

To meet the intent of the second part, the following approach will be taken. All agencies will be listed in the appropriate ministry estimates briefing book provided to members during estimates debates commencing with the 1979-80 estimates. For information purposes only, estimated direct and indirect program-related costs from the consolidated revenue fund will be identified for each agency in the briefing books beginning immediately. In subsequent years, an assessment of actual expenditures for the previous year will also be included. This approach is the most efficient way of ensuring that members are provided with relevant cost information for those agencies receiving provincial support, either in the form of money or services.

Nine referred to the need to improve coordination of federal and provincial interests. The government fully concurs with this sentiment and the recent creation of the Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs, as well as the current deregulation initiatives, are evidence of our concern.

Recommendation 10 was that the expenditures of all agencies should be subject to the review of the public accounts committee of the Legislature. It is accepted that the public accounts committee should review an agency’s expenditures where there is an immediate or potential financial relationship with the province. The committee, of course, already has this mandate and can review all expenditures by agencies from the consolidated revenue fund and the accounts of those self-financed bodies included in volume two of the public accounts committee; therefore, no action is required.

The final recommendation, number 11, requested that all agencies be listed in the estimates book, and this will be done.

AUTO PACT

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, last night the Honourable Jack Horner spoke to the Windsor Chamber of Commerce outlining the federal government’s policy regarding the Canadian automotive products industry. At the same time, the federal government announced its response to the Reisman commission recommendations and to the sector task force on the Canadian automotive industry.

Mr. S. Smith: May we have a copy of that?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I’m sorry, isn’t it over there? It’s coming now. Mr. Speaker, if the opposition wishes, I would be happy to stand down my statement for a few moments until they have it. I’m sorry for the delay.

I’m sure that honourable members would like to know this government’s reaction to Mr. Horner’s address. I also intend to expand upon my preliminary statement on the Reisman report that I made in this Legislature November 24, 1978. Our response to the sector task force on the Canadian automotive industry will be coming forward in the near future as part of our overall response to all industry sector task force studies.

While we agree with some of the recommendations from Ottawa, we differ on other of their approaches.

As we have said before, we agree with the federal government’s decision that the Canada-US Automotive Products Trade Agreement, commonly known as the auto pact, should not be open for renegotiation at this time.

To enhance the investment climate in this industry, we believe all Canadian governments should now support the auto pact. However, we firmly believe that studies should begin immediately to develop more favourable terms and conditions in the operation of the agreement in order to be prepared for discussions with the US government, when opportune.

We are pleased to learn that the federal government will review the automotive industry on an annual basis beginning with the 1979 model year. Ontario has been pressing the federal government to produce such an annual public report. We feel that the provinces and the automotive industry must have the opportunity to participate in the development of its form and content, particularly to establish an agreed upon data base. Assessment of the Canadian industry’s performance in relation to the auto pact has been clouded by lack of accurate and comparative data. An annual report should end this controversy.

We support federal efforts in the area of duty remission programs but feel these efforts need to be intensified for the sake of our auto parts manufacturers. Moreover, every effort should be made to encourage not only increased parts sales but also new investments by foreign vehicle manufacturers. New capital investments in manufacturing facilities will provide more jobs and minimize our sensitivity to changing market conditions.

We feel that the federal government has not gone far enough in developing specific programs to improve the structure of the automotive products industry in this country; nor do we feel they go far enough in ensuring that Canada attains its share of the massive investment in design, development and production of the new generation of automobiles to meet energy conservation, safety and environmental requirements.

We feel that in order for the automotive industry to be able to effectively respond to the challenge, a firmer commitment than that given yesterday is required. We would remind this House that our government has proposed for some time now that an automotive investment incentive assistance program be developed on a one-for-two basis, with the government of Ontario being willing to contribute $50 million.

The federal government’s position in this regard remains vague. Ottawa only states that special federal assistance will be considered when such aid is beyond the financial capability of the province concerned and when existing federal programs do not apply.

The industry, Mr. Speaker, is of course substantially located in Ontario and if the federal government is not prepared to say now whether Ontario qualifies or not, then Mr. Horner’s statement is meaningless. We intend to fulfil our commitment to support the automotive parts industry in Ontario. We must know with certainty to what extent our tax dollars will be complemented with federal tax dollars.

[2:15]

To that end, we will approach Mr. Horner once again seeking more definitive arrangements. We will in any event, proceed to develop measures of assistance for the automotive industry in this province to the maximum of our abilities. We are encouraged by the fact the federal government has identified a need for special measures to increase the level of research and development in the Canadian automotive industry. Lacking more definitive information, we have some reservations as to the effectiveness, however, of some of these proposals.

We would like, for example, to know what steps are going to be taken to assist Canadian-owned firms to obtain foreign technology. We would like to know the extent of assistance to be available under the enterprise development program.

As I said in my statement to this House last fall, we do not disagree with federal funds being administered under the aegis of EDP; we do though, insist that a program be specially tailored for each segment of the industry, that it be developed through federal-provincial consultation and agreement and that the procedures be streamlined. We would like to know how the federal government will decide what type of research and development is most appropriate to Canada and we expect that the federal government will consult us on the types of R and D that will be promoted.

It remains up to the government and the individual firms involved, of course, to seek out and develop programs of maximum benefit, and to decide the specific assistance required for capital investment and R and D; nonetheless, some indication of the level of federal participation is necessary.

With significant restructuring of the auto parts industry due to new materials and new technology, there will undoubtedly be some dislocation of workers. We note that Mr. Horner said special arrangements for dislocated workers are being considered. We feel, however, that now is the time to clearly outline an adjustment assistance program. Consideration should also be given to the provision of financial assistance to companies to promote rationalization and expansion where their financial resources are inadequate.

Mr. Horner said that while Canada now has a deficit under the auto pact, a recovery has been under way since 1976. The fact is Canada has had an automotive trade deficit since 1973. It is important, then, that we move now to reduce the deficit. Some of the measures proposed by Ottawa are encouraging; however, it is not likely that a deficit situation will be corrected until capital investment results in a strengthening and restructuring of the industry.

We will be making further submissions to the federal government on this, and we will, of course, report any new developments to the House.

DISASTER RELIEF ASSISTANCE

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, I would like to briefly confirm to the members of this House that the flooded sections of both the township of Dover and the town of Paris have been declared disaster areas, entitling them to financial assistance from the province under our provincial disaster relief assistance program.

In Dover, the ice blockages in the Thames River caused flooding of about 8,000 acres on March 8 and 9. About 100 homes and 300 farm buildings were damaged and more than 100 cattle drowned. In Paris, about 60 residences and 20 small businesses sustained flood damage on March 5 when ice jams caused the Grand River to overflow.

Staff of my ministry have been in the two areas over the last several days and have been in constant touch with municipal officials to discuss the details of the disaster relief program. I am happy to tell the House that we have now also received from the councils of both Dover and Paris the request to designate the affected areas as disaster areas.

I might also say that even before those requests were made the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon), the area in which the town of Paris is located, and the member for Chatham-Kent (Mr. Watson), the area in which the township of Dover is located, had already spoken to me about these matters and got us alerted to the problem well in advance of receiving requests from the municipal areas.

Mr. S. Smith: Which you would not have noticed from the front page of the newspaper.

Hon. Mr. Wells: We, of course, noticed it from the front pages of the newspapers, but we like to hear everything first hand from the members of this House.

Mr. Nixon: You are not building an ark?

Hon. Mr. Wells: They are discharging their duty in a very excellent manner.

Mr. Samis: Does that apply to Mickey?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Therefore, having officially received the request, the cabinet has designated these areas as disaster areas so that they now can receive the relief program.

A detailed assessment of the flood losses will be made by each of the local disaster relief committees, who will also have the responsibility of dispensing the aid money to the flood victims.

The province’s disaster relief assistance program provides financial aid of one dollar for every dollar raised locally by a committee appointed by municipal council.

COMMUNITY SERVICES CONTRIBUTION PROGRAM

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, this afternoon I would also like to inform the members of the House that the province of Ontario represented by the Minister of Housing (Mr. Bennett), and the federal government, represented by the Honourable Andre Ouellet, minister responsible for Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, today signed a two-year agreement activating the Community Services Contribution Program. Other signatories for Ontario to this agreement included the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Parrott), and myself.

The Community Services Contribution Program as we have designed it for Ontario, replaces the federal funding previously provided under CMHC programs for water and sewage treatment and neighbourhood improvement projects. As well, Ontario is designating a portion of the money it will receive for a new program which will offer incentives for municipal non-profit housing projects. One of the most important features of this arrangement is the significant degree of disentanglement that it achieves between the roles and responsibilities of the two orders of government in this area.

In recognition of the provincial responsibility for municipalities and community services, the agreement provides the province with almost complete flexibility to select the programs that will be included under the agreement and to determine eligible projects, allocation criteria and dollar allocations.

The federal role is thus largely a financial one. The only condition imposed upon the province is that federal funds be allocated on an objective and equitable basis. The criteria that we have set out in the appendix to the agreement are the means by which we shall meet this condition.

With the policy and administrative responsibility now resting clearly with the province, we think duplication of efforts and related inefficiencies will be eliminated. Moreover, the program can be more readily adapted to changing priorities.

While the agreement signed today is for a two-year period only, negotiations will begin before the end of 1979 on a longer-term program.

Maximum funding from the federal government pursuant to the agreement that has just been signed will total $137.55 million: $51.6 million will be made available in 1980-81 in respect of spending on eligible projects initiated or in progress during 1979; and $85.95 million will be made available in 1981-82 in respect of spending on eligible projects initiated or in progress during 1980.

In the first program year the Ontario government has committed to this program area an amount of approximately $90 million. Much of the funding in the first program year will be channelled through the Ministry of the Environment. Thirty-one million dollars in federal contributions and $83 million in provincial funding will be provided for water and sewage projects in an estimated 115 municipalities under the municipal infrastructure part of the program.

The Ministry of Housing will allocate $13.7 million in federal contributions and an additional $6.85 million in provincial grants to some 13 municipalities for neighbourhood improvement area projects. The balance of the first-year federal funds will be used for a new municipal non-profit housing incentive program. Details of the first-year allocation process are available from the two Ontario ministries mentioned, Environment and Housing.

Both the federal and Ontario governments emphasize the need for municipalities to submit their specific projects for approval by May 1, 1979. Submissions by this target date will ensure early construction starts, as well as full use of the funds being made available by the federal government under this new program.

Prior to the end of the current year, the province will decide how to distribute the second-year federal funds of almost $86 million between different ministries, and the criteria for determining eligible projects and municipal allocations.

In order to simplify contracts with the government on the new programs, the Ministries of Housing and the Environment have decided jointly to sponsor a series of six municipal workshops. These will serve to explain the new programs to elected and appointed municipal officials, builders, engineers and architects.

The first of these workshops will be held March 22 in London at the Holiday Inn, City Centre. The others will be held in Toronto, March 27; in Sudbury, April 3; in Thunder Bay, April 10; in Ottawa, April 19; and in Kingston, April 24. Information on the programs and other information about the workshops will in the very near future be placed in the members’ mail boxes.

Finally, I wish to advise members of the House that the Minister of the Environment and the Deputy Minister of Housing, along with myself, will be attending the provincial-municipal liaison committee meeting tomorrow, March 16, to discuss this new agreement and the details concerning it with municipal representatives.

Mr. Martel: On a point of order: The Chairman of Management Board made a statement to the Legislature a while back. We don’t seem to have received copies of that statement on this side of the House. The Liberals have theirs, but we haven’t received one.

Hon. Mr. Henderson: You haven’t read all your mail.

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps the Chairman of Management Board can correct that omission.

FLOOD CLEANUP BY INMATES

Hon. Mr. Walker: Correctional Institution inmate work crews will help western Ontario flood disaster areas. In view of the designation by the cabinet of an area of southwestern Ontario as a disaster area due to flooding and as a result of representations made to me on behalf of the residents by the member for Chatham-Kent (Mr. Watson), I am pleased to announce that this ministry is prepared to provide a 60-man task force of inmate workers to help in cleanup operations after the flooding has receded.

Instructions have already gone out to mobilize a work force of inmates from five institutions to carry out whatever useful work the affected communities require. The inmates will be carefully selected and will include non-violent offenders who are not considered a security risk in the community. Inmate work parties will be drawn from the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre and the Chatham, Sarnia and Windsor jails. In addition, approximately 20 inmates will be transferred from the Burtch Correctional Centre to these four institutions to swell the work force to a total of 60.

Arrangements are being made with the Guelph Correctional Centre and Burtch Correctional Centre for the provision of rubber footwear, safety boots and helmets, and other work for the inmates. Each of the four institutions involved in sending work crews will provide lunches for the inmates and correctional officers to supervise theft activities in the community.

This action is in keeping with the ministry’s philosophy that, wherever possible, inmates should undertake helping tasks that benefit the community.

Mr. S. Smith: If they were not a security risk, why were they in jail? Why would they not be in a community centre before?

Mr. Roy: We are only off for one week. Why all the statements?

THAMES RIVER FLOODING

Hon. Mr. Auld: Before bringing members up to date on the flooding situation in Dover township, I would like to begin by praising the actions and the many hours of hard work of not only the Ontario Provincial Police, but the staff of the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority. I’m sure every one of us is familiar with the excellent rescue work carried out by the OPP. It has been fully documented by the media, as well as in the comments of township people affected by the flooding.

Mr. Foulds: Your heart’s not in this.

Hon. Mr. Auld: I would also like to commend the staff of the authority who have been monitoring the river conditions, issuing warnings and spending long hours patrolling the flood area.

Mr. Nixon: I thought your member called for an investigation into that.

Hon. Mr. Auld: All through the flooding, staff were working round the clock to stay on top of the situation. I believe that in a number of instances their judgement calls during the height of the flooding were extremely astute.

Mr. Nixon: What happened there will happen on the Grand too.

Hon. Mr. Auld: It is still difficult to assess the full damage in Dover township. Much of the area is still inundated. On the basis of several meetings between local people, Ontario government agencies and the authority and ongoing surveys, the ministry estimates that a total of 8,100 acres of agricultural land have been flooded, 100 beef cattle lost and 100 homes affected. The acreage affected includes 1,000 acres of winter wheat which, presumably, is covered by crop insurance.

It is still hard to estimate the damage to private homes. Many people have not been able to return yet and make practical damage estimates. We know that some of these dwellings -- not many -- are seasonal homes and were not occupied at the time of the flooding. A rough estimate of the damage to all homes and personal contents is $900,000. However, we must remember that these are rough estimates only.

[2:30]

The estimated damage to farm buildings and equipment in Dover township is about $300,000 and, to stored crops, another $300,000; damage to roads has been roughly estimated at $750,000, bringing the subtotal to $2.25 million. The cost of repairing the dikes, we estimate, may amount to $1.25 million.

I am sure that these figures will change. The township of Dover will be meeting with the Ontario Provincial Police, my ministry and the authority to continue assessing the damage as I believe the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs (Mr. Wells) has indicated. These organizations have also begun to meet to decide on the courses of action that need to be taken at the present time and will be considering the types of assistance available to the area. This will be the basis for an appeal for assistance to the Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs, the agency which administers disaster relief funds.

I have established a review committee to go over the events and actions that were taken before and during the Dover township flooding. This committee, as yet unnamed, will examine the events and file a report with recommendations to me on how flood action systems can be improved, if indeed there is need for improvement. I would like to wait for that report before making any final judgements; but, before that, I would like to comment on several points that were raised -- some of them here in the Legislature -- in the days immediately following the height of the flooding.

First, the question of dredging at the mouth of the Thames River where it flows into Lake St. Clair: It is the opinion of the authority, and of other technical staff, that dredging would have to be a continuous operation because of the continuous deposition of silt in that area. This could be classified as a delta, a dumping ground for any silt in the river as it is slowed down on entering the lake. As I said before, technical staff, both local to the area and from Toronto, are of the opinion that the effects of dredging could he wiped out in a short time.

Second, there was the question of why an ice-breaking vessel was not called in to assist in clearing the mouth of the Thames. As you may know, the staff of the conservation authority continually monitored the river, beginning Monday, March 4. Both Chatham and Thamesville were notified on Monday and Wednesday that the river was flowing without interruption and that the flood would peak some time on Thursday. On Wednesday, conservation authority staff noted again that the river was still flowing strongly. Authority staff flew over the river on Thursday and identified an ice jam at the mouth of Jeannette’s Creek, about three quarters of a mile up from the mouth of the Thames.

The decision to dynamite this jam was carefully considered but rejected, and we believe with good reason. Ice from the upstream jam could have moved to the mouth of the river causing another jam. That would have created even worse flooding in the Lighthouse Point area, a residential section that was flooded in 1968 when an ice jam formed at that same place. In addition, it would also have caused serious flooding throughout the townships of Tilbury East, Tilbury North and Raleigh.

The authority had already contacted the officials aboard the United States Coast Guard ice-cutter and had been told that, because of the ice conditions in the lake, there was no guarantee that they could reach the mouth. If they could, it would have taken a minimum of three days. Without the ice-breaker it was impossible for a local tugboat to get into the river mouth area to move the ice around.

I think you will agree that the conservation authority and the ministry made the right decision. A jam at the Thames mouth would have not only flooded the builtup residential area but also caused extensive flooding in the area on the south side of the Thames, as I have already mentioned.

Third, there was the question of the gauge at Prairie Siding, just one of the gauges the authority has installed along the Thames. Actually, I shouldn’t say the gauge at Prairie Siding has been installed; physically, it is there, but it has never been operational. The gauge was put in place late last fall but, because of mechanical problems, it has never been used for water measurement readings. We must remember that these devices are hooked up to a telephone line and a hydro line. Because of difficulties in the telephone hookup, which were being worked on at the time, the gauge was not in use. Until these hookups can be made, of course, the gauge cannot be calibrated. Without the proper calibration, any information from the device is useless.

I really don’t think the Prairie Siding gauge was an important factor here. It was not malfunctioning, it was simply in the process of being installed and made operational.

I think I would be loath to agree with the statements that the conservation authority was ill-prepared for the flooding. As I said before, lower Thames staff monitored this situation from the very beginning and indeed throughout the entire crisis. They are still out along the river helping local residents, gathering information, helping repair damage to the dikes, and also monitoring for future flood crests if they should begin to materialize.

SALES TAX REBATES FOR VISITORS

Hon. Mr. Maeck: Mr. Speaker, the honourable members will recall that last November I announced a new vendor information program to help small businesses deal more easily with retail sales tax. This was part of a broader program established in my ministry to support the Premier’s (Mr. Davis) commitment to improved customer services.

Mrs. Campbell: Oh, boy.

Hon. Mr. Maeck: I am surprised at the member for St. George saying, “Oh, boy.” She was one of the people who thanked me for that information kit.

This initiative is a new pamphlet expressly designed to inform visitors to Ontario how they may obtain exemptions or refunds of retail sales tax on purchases made in Ontario.

This fully bilingual pamphlet, entitled Provincial Sales Tax Rebates for Visitors to Ontario, explains in simple language how visitors may obtain either immediate exemptions at the point of purchase when they choose to have the goods shipped home by retailers, or how they can subsequently apply for refunds when they return home. At the same time the pamphlet will clearly inform more Ontario businessmen of these benefits available to their tourist customers, so that they may more effectively promote their sales to tourists.

Each pamphlet contains a simple form for claiming retail sales tax rebates. To provide greater visibility to the program, a display stand containing supplies of the pamphlet will be distributed for placement in suitable prominent locations.

In anticipation of an increase in the volume of claims, we have taken steps in the Ministry of Revenue to streamline operations further to ensure that tourists receive their rebates promptly.

In announcing this improved service, I am particularly pleased to acknowledge the enthusiastic co-operation of the Ministry of Industry and Tourism. The pamphlet has been designed, by using the “We treat you royally” slogan, to be directly included in the 1979 advertising campaign to be launched shortly by my colleague, the Minister of Industry and Tourism (Mr. Grossman).

Because of this co-operation, the pamphlet will be widely distributed through Ontario, Canada, the United States and abroad. I am informed that preliminary discussions have already resulted in many requests for supplies of the pamphlet. The first printing run will be 400,000 pamphlets, of which 100,000 will be made available immediately to retailers by my ministry. The remainder will be distributed by the Ministry of Industry and Tourism. Plans have been made to supply airlines, the hospitality industry, chambers of commerce, Canadian and Ontario tourist information centres and the media.

In summary, copies will be widely available, with particular emphasis on servicing tourist entry points, airports, vacation areas and tourist attractions.

In conclusion, I believe this improved information service will reinforce the government’s other successful programs for promoting our tourist industry. The pamphlet demonstrates our recognition and understanding of the immense contribution made by this industry to the economic strength of Ontario generally, and in generating employment in all parts of the province.

BYPRODUCT POWER PROJECT

Hon. Mr. Auld: Mr. Speaker, I should like to bring members up to date on developments in regard to the byproduct power greenhouse project co-ordinated by the Ontario Energy Corporation.

Honourable members will recall that this project is designed to utilize the thermal energy of reject warm waters available at nuclear power stations. Last December I announced that in co-operation with my colleagues the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. W. Newman) and the Minister of Industry and Tourism (Mr. Grossman) we were working on the establishment of two greenhouse productivity tests, one in Bruce county, the other at Pickering. At that time I emphasized that in addition to ensuring that our project is designed to meet the needs of a family-size greenhouse operation, we were looking to the private sector for substantial financial and management resources.

I am delighted to confirm today that these expectations are being fulfilled.

First, I’m pleased to announce that a small test facility at Pickering, based on a conventional heating source, has been built and is now being operated by a farmer. We expect the first crop of tomatoes will be harvested in the near future. Following a successful demonstration of the productivity at Pickering, an eight-acre commercial project is proposed for that site, heated by the rejected warm water from the Pickering nuclear plant.

Second, I am equally pleased to report that a meeting organized by the Ontario Energy Corporation on February 7, 1979, for potential investors in our Bruce County AgriPark project has also proved to be most successful. At that meeting we invited a broad spectrum of business interests to participate in a joint venture research, design and development program to be undertaken in Bruce county.

As a result of that invitation we have received offers of participation exceeding $600,000 in value --

Mr. Mancini: That’s peanuts, and you know it.

Hon. Mr. Auld: -- from a widely varying group of companies and individuals, including George Weston Limited, TransCanada PipeLines, Jarmain Holdings Limited, Snobelen Farms Limited, and Huron Ridge Limited.

Mr. J. Reed: George Weston is a small family unit?

An hon. member: Absolutely. A family farm.

Hon. Mr. Auld: As this offered contribution satisfies the requirements of the productivity test component of the proposed program, the Ontario Energy Corporation will proceed now to enter into detailed negotiations with the potential participants.

I may say that I did not indicate all those people who are inquiring because some of them wish to continue negotiations and reach some conclusion before they have their names made public.

Mr. McClellan: Package this as a cure for insomnia.

Hon. Mr. Auld: It’s my hope that these discussions will proceed quickly so that the construction of the test facility can be achieved by the next growing season. At the same time I expect the joint venture will also begin --

Mr. Cassidy: What about the condominium fish farms that are in that statement?

Hon. Mr. Auld: -- to direct its efforts towards planning for the design work required for the full commercial development of a large-scale agripark --

Mr. Cassidy: Has Frank Drea got legislation to govern them?

Hon. Mr. Auld: -- in co-operation with the municipal authorities of Bruce county.

Mr. Kerrio: On a point of order: Mr. Speaker, when it becomes difficult from time to time to get copies of ministerial statements across to the opposition, I wonder -- if they’re going to continue the practice of printing half of the statement or giving it to the media -- why wouldn’t they print the whole thing in the media and save us the time of listening to it?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: The speech was not given to the media.

Mr. Kerrio: Just half of it.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Not half, or a quarter, or any of it.

Mr. Cassidy: This whole thing is an abuse of the Legislature.

Mr. Foulds: This is the only important statement today.

HOCKEY VIOLENCE

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Recently concern has once again been expressed both in this House and outside about violence in amateur hockey. Obviously my ministry, which is responsible for amateur sport, including hockey, shares this concern. I am now in a position to inform the members of the Legislature about our most recent decisions to further look into and ultimately to eradicate violence in amateur hockey.

Mr. Nixon: Lots of luck.

Mr. Foulds: Why are you splitting your infinitives?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Before outlining our next steps, it may be useful to recall some developments during recent years.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Do you want me to continue?

Mr. Speaker: Order. I would like to hear this statement.

Mr. Makarchuk: You’re the only one.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: You’re not interested in violence in hockey or you’d be listening to this.

Mr. Martel : Your statement is so full of baloney I can’t help but be that way.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Yeah? Let me hear about it later on, okay?

Before outlining our next steps it may be useful to recall some developments during recent years. The William McMurtry report on violence in hockey in 1974 led directly to the establishment of the Ontario Hockey Council, an advisory board in my ministry.

The members of that council under the chairmanship of Lloyd Davidson are drawn from leaders in organized minor hockey as well as several individual citizens interested in hockey but with no affiliation to the minor leagues. It is well to recall also some of the major functions assigned to the Ontario Hockey Council:

1. To define the purposes and objectives of amateur hockey;

2. To design a rule structure consistent with the purposes and structure;

3. To act as a final appeal tribunal from various hockey associations;

4. To ensure that coaches’ and referees’ clinics are operated in accord with the proper philosophy for amateur hockey;

5. To recommend the allocation of government funds in support of amateur hockey;

6. To assist in educating the public as to the role of amateur hockey.

[2:45]

Mr. T. P. Reid: They haven’t done much of a job.

Mr. S. Smith: They should get a delay-of-game penalty.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Since its inception, the Ontario Hockey Council has been successful in a number of areas in collaborating with organized minor hockey authorities to minimize roughness and violence.

Clinics for referees and the eventual mandatory requirement for certification of referees have already improved control of games by referees. Body contact in the youngest age group leagues is increasingly being disallowed. Through educational programs for fans and parents carried out by publications such as “You and Your Child in Hockey” --

Mr. Warner: Name names.

Mr. Martel: Did you leave some out?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: -- and a film called “Hockey Is”, the objectives of amateur hockey have been widely disseminated.

Mr. Cassidy: You skipped a page.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: There is tangible evidence to indicate that all of these measures are having a desirable effect. For example, injuries to the eyes sustained in hockey -- some, no doubt, through acts of violence -- have been reduced from 253 in 1974-75 to 27 in 1977-78.

Mr. Martel: Nonsense.

Mr. Kerrio: It’s not because of less violence, it’s because they wear helmets now.

Hon. Ms. Baetz: In spite of success to date in attempting to eliminate violence --

Mr. Martel: You haven’t the statement we’ve got.

Mr. McClellan: Which statement are you reading?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: -- it is obvious that we must not only continue our efforts through the Ontario Hockey Council but substantially increase them.

Mr. Foulds: You split your infinitives again.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: As part of our expanded program, the Ontario Hockey Council has agreed to send a questionnaire to parents of almost 100,000 players in Ontario --

Mr. Kerrio: It says 200,000 in the paper.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: -- asking them to assess the quality of hockey experience available to their children.

Mr. Kerrio: You’ve got the numbers wrong.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: We believe that in ascertaining the viewpoint of the parents we are reaching that sector of our population which has the greatest direct interest in hockey and the well-being of the players. The 17 questions seek to find out what parents think about hockey as it is taught, played and organized in Ontario.

Mr. Bradley: Are we getting the results?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Respondents are asked not to name any specific team or individual, nor to identify themselves.

Mr. T. P. Reid: Will Alan Eagleson get one?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Responses to the questionnaires will be tabulated and analysed. The resultant information will then serve as a basis for further discussion at some 25 to 35 open forums to be held throughout Ontario.

We are planning to hold most of these during the month of May while memories of the current hockey season are still vivid. Forums will be open to all and we hope they will help shed further light on some of the concerns of the general public, referees, coaches and others about amateur hockey. By midsummer we should have not only a clear indication as to the major concerns but also be in a position to take whatever specific steps are required to deal with them.

In this exercise I should like to stress that my ministry, as heretofore, will be working through the Ontario Hockey Council and will be providing increased resources where necessary. This council, by its structure, is able to work in close collaboration with organized amateur hockey leaders, parents, players, coaches and referees.

We believe that this arm’s-length approach, stressing self-regulation and self-government, will in the long run be far more effective in eliminating violence from amateur hockey than direct legislative intervention. We continue to believe that neither the provincial government, and certainly not the federal government, should become directly involved in regulating amateur hockey at the minor league level.

Mr. Bradley: How many games did you see?

Mr. Martel: On a point of order, the most significant part of the Minister of Culture and Recreation’s prepared statement was left out of the statement that he read to the Legislature. In fact, he left that portion out which says: “For example, fighting now results in an automatic game misconduct penalty.” That is just not the case, and he ignored putting that in the statement to the Legislature because it is erroneous.

SIGNATURE OF MINISTER

Mr. Roy: Mr. Speaker, I have a point of privilege. It involves my privileges as a member in correspondence with the Minister of Transportation and Communications, the Honourable Jacques Neige.

Mr. Van Horne: That went over his head.

Mr. Roy: Some time ago, I had correspondence with the minister in one of the official languages, French, and the minister graciously answered in the same language, French. It was a very nice letter, very well written and all.

In the spirit of the letter the minister signed, instead of “James Snow”, “Jacques Naige.” I want to tell the minister that the humour was not missed but I want to bring to his attention that “neige” is not spelled n-a-i-g-e.

Mr. T. P. Reid: You can’t spell in French, either.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I never could spell.

An hon. member: You’re illiterate in both languages.

Mr. Roy: You see, I ran to my dictionary; I didn’t know what it meant. It’s spelled n-e-i-g-e.

PCB SPILL AT DOWLING

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, I have a point of privilege dealing with a press release put out by the Minister of the Environment.

In a release dated March 14, the minister indicated he would be making an important statement concerning a PCB spill at Dowling, Ontario, at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 19, at Dowling.

My point of privilege is, in view of the fact this is one of the biggest polychlorinated biphenol spills that has ever occurred in Canada, and in view of the fact it has been raised in this chamber on a number of occasions, I believe our privileges have been abused by his failure to make his statement here in the chamber where there will be an opportunity to question him on the entire matter.

Hon. Mr. Parrott: I think it is only appropriate that since the spill did occur in Dowling, it is about time the opposition recognized that we are more than prepared to deal with the problems in Ontario where they exist.

Mr. Martel: After three and a half years.

Mr. Warner: Five years later.

Mr. Laughren: When the House is not in session.

Hon. Mr. Parrott: I think it is a good thing that we are prepared to go to the communities all over Ontario and present our case first-hand to the people who are most seriously affected. I don’t think I have short-changed the members’ privileges. I will be glad to answer those questions when we return to the House.

Mr. S. Smith: Presumably we will hear about the dump at Upper Ottawa Street after the House has risen as usual.

ORAL QUESTIONS

PHYSICIANS OPTING OUT OF OHIP

Mr. S. Smith: I would like to ask a question of the Minister of Health: Since all the anaesthetists at Toronto Western Hospital appear to have opted out of OHIP, as perhaps so have those at other hospitals as well, can the minister tell us what plans he has to ensure that people in Ontario and particularly people at that hospital will be able to have an operation at a public hospital in this province without having to pay a surcharge to an anaesthetist?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: These are the kinds of situations that we are looking for to work on with the medical association, to take them up on their offer to assist in seeing people do have that option.

While I am on my feet I didn’t want to rise on a point of privilege --

Mr. T. P. Reid: Answer that question first.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Very simply, where those situations arise, and we are checking our records to see if there are others --

Mr. S. Smith: You didn’t know about them?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: No, I wasn’t aware of that particular one, no. We will go to the particular medical staff though the medical association which has offered to be of assistance in that regard to ensure that people do in fact have the option available to them.

Mr. Makarchuk: Does that mean they can have their operation without the anaesthetic?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I might point out the change in regulations recently to ensure that in all hospitals, in all clinical departments of all hospitals where there are billing groups, we will be able with their assistance to bring this about.

While I am on my feet, sir, I wanted to raise a concern. In this morning’s Globe and Mail it seems the question of whom I consult for medical advice is more important even than the possibility of a settlement between Israel and Egypt.

Mr. Speaker: That wasn’t part of the question.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: On a point of privilege, then; I will make it a clear point of privilege.

Mr. Foulds: Don’t deny it during question period.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I take some exception inasmuch as when I was asked about my medical services yesterday I pointed out that I have two doctors, one of whom has apparently opted out and the other of whom has opted in. I haven’t seen the one who has opted out for about three years.

Mr. Conway: We thought you were a healthy young man.

Mr. T. P. Reid: Lakeshore Psychiatric?

Hon. Mr. Davis: We get our psychiatric assistance from over there.

Mr. T. P. Reid: He doesn’t allow for a surcharge.

Hon. Mr. Davis: You get a caucus rate. I will tell the honourable members, his treatment is becoming obvious.

Mr. S. Smith: By way of supplementary, is the minister prepared to encourage the immediate establishment of capitation medical groups or other kinds of health service organizations, especially in communities where patients are unable to obtain medical services at the OHIP rate? The minister has known this would happen for some time. Is he ready to move and introduce those kinds of operations in those communities?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: As the member knows, for a number of years, I think it is now six or seven years, we have had a variety of forms of health service organizations in various parts of the province. In fact, we now have 29.

Mr. Cassidy: You’ve constantly dragged your feet in funding them.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: We have recently, over the last year or more, been working on revising the budget system for the HSOs and revising the goals and objectives. When that updated policy has been approved by the cabinet I will be announcing it publicly, but in the meantime we have been approached recently by two groups in Peterborough; one a group of physicians, the other a group representing, I think, the largest union in the city. They are expressing an interest in establishing an HSO and we are quite prepared to meet with representatives of either or both groups to explore the possibility of establishing a financially-viable health service organization.

Mr. Cassidy: Is the minister not aware that the regulation that was adopted by cabinet in December and published in the Ontario Gazette in January, which permits opted-out physicians to continue to bill under OHIP for services they deliver in the hospital, is a means of encouraging doctors to opt out of OHIP? It allows them to have a certain amount of income from OHIP and to refer patients of whom they have doubts about their capacity to pay to outpatient clinics in the hospital. Will the minister take action slow to rescind that regulation rather than encouraging doctors to get out of the plan?

Mr. Warner: You’re helping the doctors opt out.

Mr. S. Smith: I said that at the time.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: What I would do is encourage the honourable member to go back to the level --

Mr. Warner: You drew the regulations.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: -- and the quality of research his party had when the former leader was there. It’s clear that it’s gone straight down hill. If he will check, he will find that that regulation has brought to the clinical departments of non-teaching hospitals what has applied in all departments of all teaching hospitals and in the emergency departments of all non-teaching hospitals for years.

Mr. Foulds: It is still a bad regulation.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: It is an assistance to the public.

Mr. Cassidy: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker: The minister has once again tried to accuse me of distortions in this Legislature. I would point out to him that that regulation extended that privilege to doctors in 200 hospitals across the province. He should stop twisting facts in this Legislature.

Mr. Yakabuski: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Does the minister feel that the whole matter of medical people opting out here in Ontario and Canada could quite possibly change drastically if a national medicare plan comes into effect in the United States of America? Couldn’t that trend be reversed, where the slogan will be “Go north young man”?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: It is worth noting that in the last couple of years we have had in Ontario visits from such personages as I the Honourable Joseph Califano, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare of the United States, who was advised to come and look at the Ontario health plan as a model --

Mr. Warner: What’s left of it.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: -- one of the best in the world; the Honourable Edward Kennedy, senior senator from the state of Massachusetts; delegations from a variety of state legislatures, all of whom came here based on their research to find one of the best health plans anywhere in the world.

Mr. Warner: They wouldn’t be impressed now.

Mr. Kerrio: I know what they were doing here. They really like the nurses; they were signing applications.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I think at this point it is difficult to predict exactly what will happen in the United States. As honourable members know, some members of Congress have their own ideas about what they’d like to introduce; the White House and executive branch have some of their own ideas. They are determined, clearly, to have a universal medicare plan. The form of it is difficult to predict, and therefore the effect of it on this country is even more difficult to predict.

PLANT LOCATION INCENTIVES

Mr. S. Smith: I’ll ask a question of the Minister of Industry and Tourism. Has the minister received a request from the highly successful Tridon Limited of Burlington for a straight cash incentive in the order of about $1.5 million to expand its operations in Burlington? Without it the company apparently has said it will do its expansion in Tennessee, where a recent calculation leads them to believe they could expand more cheaply.

[3:00]

Hon. Mr. Grossman: There are a number of firms that have written us in anticipation of the program --

Mr. Martel: Las Vegas in Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Davis: You are opposed to it, are you?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: -- and Tridon is one of them; that’s all I can report at this stage.

Mr. Makarchuk: It is better than roulette.

Mr. Martel: More and more like Las Vegas every day.

Mr. S. Smith: Is the minister aware now that he has, with the Hayes-Dana move, created a situation where no manager worth his salt will even dream of expanding any kind of plant in Ontario without at least pretending to look at the southern United States --

Hon. Mr. Davis: They are doing it all over the place.

Mr. S. Smith: -- and coming back to the minister and saying that he needs an extra million or million and a half to make up the difference?

Mr. Bolan: Just plain blackmail, that is all it is.

Mr. S. Smith: Doesn’t the minister think the time has come to say no to these kinds of straight grant demands based on the southern United States and to set up proper criteria for an intelligent industrial strategy in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Well firstly, I would point out, lest the Leader of the Opposition is unaware, we of course had a discussion in this assembly last fall about the possibility of this government giving another incentive grant to the Ford Motor Company to locate another plant, in this case the casting plant, in Windsor. At that time the same sort of cry was coming out of the opposition side that we might be subject to this blackmail in each and every case that came along. The members should know by now, and I am sure the member for Windsor-Walkerville (Mr. B. Newman) has told them, Ford located a casting plant there, which was a further $150 million worth of investment in the great city of Windsor without a nickel from this government. There was no money offered by this government; and I think it’s important to note, in fairness to that --

Mr. Mancini: That is the way it should be.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Of course it should be, but without the engine plant you never would have had it.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: -- multinational, that they did not ask for any more money from this government.

So I think it’s important to note that the multinationals are not automatically coming in here, nor is any firm automatically coming in here saying if you don’t give us money, we are going to go somewhere else. I think there is one other important thing to note.

Mr. S. Smith: Where there are multinationals on the local scene, nobody is going to expand.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Oh, you are against growth.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: There is one other thing to note, and that is that in that case and in the earlier case, we carefully analysed the situation in anticipation of a request and determined that particular plant was likely to locate in Windsor for other good, business-like reasons. We do make that very careful assessment.

An hon. member: Why don’t you write Peter Lougheed for a handout?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I would only add to the Leader of the Opposition that if he has been following some of the remarks made by both the Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) and myself over the last few weeks and months, then he will know that there are criteria being developed. They are very clear and straightforward and I know the Leader of the Opposition is aware of them because he is now adopting them in all of his speeches. After the budget you will see them formulated in strategies developed by my ministry for applications to that fund. In simple terms, in the next few weeks members will see an industrial strategy developed by this ministry and made quite clear to the opposition and everyone else.

An hon. member: In the next few weeks, I like that.

An hon. member: In the fullness of time, right.

Mr. McClellan: Going to sell lottery tickets.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Are you looking for a grant?

Mr. Peterson: Would the minister please relate his comments in the context of this quotation: “Mr. Prime Minister, while I support much of what has happened since February, an industrial strategy which relies heavily on widespread giveaways will only come back to haunt us.” I am quoting the Premier; November 27, at the first ministers’ meeting.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Why don’t you ask me? I will expand on that.

An hon. member: Was that in Ottawa or

Brampton?

An hon. member: Was that at a press conference?

An hon. member: Better watch that.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: As we have made quite clear in all of what we have been saying, there are many components to an industrial strategy quite apart from the financial assistance that this or any government can provide. Among them are some of the things members have heard us talking about -- apprenticeship training, exporting, research and development, global product mandating, mergers where appropriate, and duty remission schemes where appropriate. All of those things, together with better purchasing practices, procurement policies by government and import replacements are components.

Mr. Peterson: We have seen nothing but words on that.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Well with respect, the member might have noticed, for example, the very successful Trade Horizons meeting we had last week in Toronto at the Harbour Castle. We were expecting 500 people to attend to find out how better to deal in the export market without government assistance. We had 1,400 people attend that very successful conference. The following day the federal government had a similar project at OISE. The Hon. Jack Horner attended. He did have 37 people turn up for a little analysis on how to do some exporting technology. That is a lot more than words.

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The 1,400 people who attended our Trade Horizons conference have now backed up the numbers of applications to us to assist them, not financially but in making contacts in the United States. That’s what industrial strategy is all about, taking people who aren’t exporting and showing them how to export.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. When the standing committee on procedural affairs is reconstituted and begins to meet, perhaps they can take under advisement bringing in some kind of provision in standing orders for a delay-of-game penalty.

A new question from the honourable member for Ottawa Centre.

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, your reference is an excellent idea, because we’re certainly not going to get --

Mr. Speaker: Off-sides and asides.

Mr. Cassidy: -- any particularly useful advice the way the Minister of Culture and Recreation (Mr. Baetz) has handled the question of violence in hockey.

Mr. Hennessy: Here we go again.

Mr. Speaker: A new question, please.

Mr. Hennessy: Misconduct.

Mr. Peterson: Is this an attempt at parliamentary humour?

Mr. T. P. Reid: That is the funniest thing you’ve said in five years.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: The member would legislate it into the grave.

Mr. Cassidy: The minister should listen to what the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) is suggesting. He made some excellent recommendations and I’m sorry they’re being ignored by the ministry.

LAKESHORE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

Mr. Cassidy: I have a question of the Minister of Health, Mr. Speaker, arising out of his foreclosure of Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital.

Hon. Mr. Davis: As long as there is no penalty.

Mr. Cassidy: In view of the McKinsey report; and in view of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union brief this week, which has systematically documented the need for Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital to remain open; and in view of the strung community demand to keep the hospital open; can the minister explain why his ministry has rejected the OPSEU request for an inquiry which would allow the community, the workers and the patients to learn the rationale for the closing of the hospital and to participate in finding alternatives to the closure?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, I think I outlined the rationale fairly clearly in my statement on January 22. I met that day with the advisory board for the hospital. Recently, I met with a delegation representing the council of the borough of Etobicoke and the board of health of the borough of Etobicoke. I have a meeting coming up with representatives of various groups, including the advisory group. I have received copies of the lobbying brief distributed by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union to rate-payers groups and the like; I’ll be responding to that.

Mr. Speaker, I will acknowledge that I am going to be a little bit longer in my answer, but it will take some time. I’m sure you’ll want me to answer the question intelligently.

There are four or five main points in the lobbying brief that I would like to respond to. First of all, the allegation is made that 296 patients will be transferred to Queen Street Mental Health Centre from Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital, 14 to Hamilton and eight to Whitby.

The average in-patient population at Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital over the last six months has been about 280. Out of this total, members must subtract 46 beds which are presently in use for the alcohol unit and 26 beds which are being used for the mentally retarded unit. None of these will be moving to Queen Street Mental Health Centre, therefore the maximum number of patients who will be moved is 208. Transfers to Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital total six, transfers to the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital two; not 14 and eight respectively as reported by the union.

The second allegation is that the beds available at the Queen Street Mental Health Centre would be somewhere between 125 to 150. The facts are that the beds presently available at the Queen Street Mental Health Centre, with the relocation of some services to different areas of the hospital, comes to 292. This figure does not include the 68 beds which have been allocated to the med force unit.

The allegation is made that the closure of Lakeshore will further reduce the beds and force hospitals to resort to early discharge of uncured patients into the community and the establishment of more group homes and boarding homes. I think that if members follow the figures I’ve just given them we have shown that the Queen Street Mental Health Centre has sufficient beds to handle the in-patients, and therefore there is no need to resort to early discharge into the community.

Finally there is the allegation --

Mr. Makarchuk: That is very questionable, Dennis.

Mr. Turner: It is not.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: -- again revolving around the bed capacity at the Queen Street Mental Health Centre. I think I’ve already covered that, Mr. Speaker. So we will be answering OPSEU, and maybe they will give us their mailing list. I have a rough idea of the range and the distribution of their lobbying kit. We’ll send out as many copies of the answers as we can.

Mr. Warner: The minister is just trying to fight a bad decision.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Basically, the factors which contributed to my decision not to retain Lakeshore, which I recommended to cabinet and which it supported, were the antiquated facilities there compared to the modern up-to-date facilities and programs available at Queen Street. I haven’t even mentioned today the beds available at Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital nor beds being built up in some of the community hospitals.

Mr. Makarchuk: What beds? In the corridors?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: In addition, there is the lack of available capital to rebuild both Whitby and Lakeshore, as well as my concern for the safety of the patients and the staff, given the antiquated facilities. None of the factors which contributed to the decision has changed. Therefore, I think it would create undue expectations on the part of some of the staff, many of whom are already in the process of interviews for vacancies which have been identified elsewhere in the government and outside of government, and it would be misleading to the public at this point even to suggest that an inquiry was possible.

Mr. Cassidy: Supplementary: Since the minister is saying in his statement that he is so set in this decision that no facts emerging from an inquiry would lead him to change his mind, can he then explain to this House why he said on January 22 that services, such as the excellent alcoholism program, would continue in the community they service when, in fact, the alcohol services unit is dependent on 28-day inpatient and partial hospitalization therapy and, since it will not be transferred to Queen Street, it is not going to be continuing to provide the kind of service that it has provided for many years at the Lakeshore location?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: My staff have asked the director of the alcohol services unit to outline what will be needed to maintain the alcohol services program in the community. To my knowledge, that has not yet been received. For all of the outpatient and community services programs, the work is under way to identify where in the community they will be located. But we do not intend to pull into Queen Street all of the community and outpatient services; rather, we will be taking to Queen Street the inpatient services.

Mr. Conway: Supplementary: The director of the alcohol services division at Lakeshore has indicated to me as recently as this morning that the optimal condition is to maintain that unit at Lakeshore, since the Ministry of Community and Social Services presumably will be maintaining its responsibilities on that campus and since the vocational training building -- and I may stand corrected and I would appreciate the minister’s comments -- which was built, I believe, in 1973 and which is in excellent condition -- a really fine facility

-- is still on the site --

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Mr. Conway: -- is the minister indicating that it is still his intention to close the door on the entire campus as far as his ministry is concerned?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: We haven’t even had the report yet from the group which has been set up to review what would be the most appropriate locations for the community service program.

Mr. Cassidy: The minister will have closed the hospital before he gets the report.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I am not sure that any one building on the site could sustain itself in terms of the services as compared to everything else. My intention at this point would be to vacate the entire site, but I will await --

Mr. Martel: You are completely unresponsive to facts.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: -- the reports which are being prepared with very extensive community involvement. Dr. Maharaj, who is the director of the unit, has specifically been asked to put down on paper his thoughts as to what is most appropriate there. Then the committee will report on what is in the best interests of the patients’ programs.

Mr. Lawlor: I don’t know if it is supplementary; it may be almost a point of personal privilege. The minister is not wearing the button with “Save Lakeshore Hospital” I sent across to him a few moments ago. No, that’s not the question. The question has to do with two other units.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Speaking to the point of privilege, I would say that my motivation is that of the interests of the patients and the staff of that hospital and I think what we are doing is in their best interests.

Mr. Warner: Then save the hospital instead of closing it.

Mr. Martel: Save the hospital.

Mr. Lawlor: I would like to ask the minister about two other units. One is the dialysis unit which has been switched to Whitby with all the patients in that unit located in Lakeshore. I think there are 18 of them. The second unit is with respect to special observation, which is people under Lieutenant Governor’s warrants. I believe there are 16 of them, and they are somewhat dangerous individuals. The minister is closing the unit immediately. Can he explain that?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I am sorry, I didn’t quite get the last part. The dialysis unit is going to Whitby. Those are mainly people, I am told, who commute and the patients have been advised. That’s the advice I’ve had on that. What had the second part to do with?

[3:15]

Mr. Lawlor: It has to do with Lieutenant Governor’s warrants, to people referred from the courts, very often very dangerous individuals. There is a special unit at the hospital which is being closed immediately, so I hear. Has the minister an explanation for that?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I will check, Mr. Speaker, rather than hazarding a guess. My recollection is that that unit is to go to Queen Street in its entirety, but I will confirm that.

Mr. Swart: You are closing the hospital and you don’t know these things?

Mr. Warner: You are just closing it and you don’t know why; you don’t know what you’re going to do.

HERITAGE LANGUAGE PROGRAMS

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Provincial Secretary for Social Development in the absence of the Minister of Education (Miss Stephenson). In view of the speech by the Premier to the Metropolitan Catholic principals in February, which stated that the government firmly believes in and will fight for the right of individuals and groups to retain and develop their cultural heritage and language, can the minister explain why the government intends to pay fewer actual dollars and in fact has cut its share of the cost of heritage language programs in the schools by just about half in 1979, and how does that represent an implementation of any genuine commitment to multiculturalism or help language groups to maintain their linguistic heritage?

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Education, I will take that under advisement and make sure the honourable member receives the answer.

Mr. Lawlor: Not again.

Mr. Cassidy: You are supposed to be responsible for social policy.

Mr. McClellan: You should resign. Your policy secretariat is useless.

Mr. Speaker: Order. If I understand the limited response, the provincial secretary is taking the question as notice on behalf of the Minister of Education.

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Yes.

Mr. Lawlor: Not again.

Mr. Cassidy: Supplementary --

Mr. Speaker: No. It has been taken as notice and there will be an opportunity for supplementaries --

Mr. McClellan: I would like to know why this minister doesn’t know what the Minister of Education is doing with respect to her own policies.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s what the policy secretariat is for.

Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: No.

Mr. Cassidy: Can I ask the minister to advise on further questions when she comes back with an answer after consulting the Minister of Education?

Mr. Speaker: No. She has taken it as notice and she can answer it either directly or refer it to the Minister of Education for a response.

Mr. Cassidy: As a supplementary, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Speaker: No. It has been taken as notice.

Hon. W. Newman: You were trying to sneak in a double question and it didn’t work, did it?

CHILDREN’S SERVICES

Mr. Blundy: To the Minister of Community and Social Services, Mr. Speaker: Is it his intention to commemorate the International Year of the Child by reducing funding of the children’s mental health program when at the same time his government can find an easy $100 million for the delinquent pulp and paper industry?

Hon. Mr. Norton: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what the source of the information or the quality of the research of the honourable member happens to be.

Mr. Roy: He is always right on.

Hon. Mr. Norton: I would suggest that one not jump to simple conclusions on the basis of what might be a misinterpretation of a particular letter. I know the letter that is being referred to. I will be meeting within the next week and a half with the representative agencies of all of the children’s services in the province that we fund, at which time I will be outlining to them I the full and complete picture of the funding provisions for this fiscal year for the children’s services division. I don’t wish to comment on any speculation at this point with respect to specific items within the budget until I have had an opportunity to carry out that process with those agencies.

Mrs. Campbell: You will have to tell the public before you tell the House.

Mr. Blundy: Mr. Speaker, in this letter from the deputy minister in rather basic English -- and I would ask the minister if this does not convey the same to him as it does to me -- a number of children’s mental health centres, along with other parts of the ministry, will be asked to reduce certain services. That would appear to me, Mr. Speaker -- does it not to the minister? -- that there would be some further cuts there.

Hon. Mr. Norton: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the honourable member to read that also in the context of a possible attempt to invite certain agencies, within their budgets, to shift priorities to, for example, non-institutional as opposed to institutional alternatives. There is that interpretation open. It does not suggest the interpretation he is placing upon it is the only one that is open.

Mr. McClellan: I have the memo too. When the memo from the deputy minister says that children’s mental health centres will be asked to reduce certain services, I want to ask the minister if he will give us at least an assurance that there will be no reduction in the number of beds in children’s mental health centres in this province. I would like that assurance now.

Hon. Mr. Norton: As I said earlier, I am not prepared to discuss specific details of the planning until I have had an opportunity to communicate with the agencies. Certainly, I will make this commitment to the honourable members opposite that there will be a very generous increase in funding to children’s services as a total. I will not discuss at this point specific details within that.

HOSPITAL BED ALLOCATIONS

Mr. Cooke: I have a question for the Minister of Health. I would like to ask the minister if he is aware of an incident that took place in Windsor on February 27 where a Mr. Turski went to Metropolitan Hospital complaining of weakness and difficulty in breathing. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance. He was there for three hours, underwent tests and was released. According to Dr. Yomjinda, the emergency doctor, he would have been kept at Metropolitan Hospital for observation if a bed had been available. Four hours after Mr. Turski was released he was dead from a massive heart attack.

I would like to ask the minister if he now agrees that the bed reductions are affecting the quality of care in Ontario hospitals and if he will please change his policy.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I will be glad to look at that particular situation. It seems to me that the member has to accept one thing first and foremost, that is that no doctor, if he thinks a patient is in danger, will release him from the hospital. No doctor will do that knowingly. Having gone through a situation myself when my own father passed away four days after being cleared of any illness, I think I have some personal experience in that regard. I can tell the member that the ethics of the profession are such that no doctor will do that.

I will look at that particular situation.

Mr. Warner: Patients will be in the hallways.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I do not agree that the policies are encouraging this. I wish the member would start to realize that his community is a good example of where, while active treatment beds are being reduced, chronic care beds are being increased significantly to take care of the chronic bed needs of the community --

Mr. Foulds: Where?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: -- as identified by the hospitals in that community and his own peers and his health council.

Mr. Cassidy: In Ottawa, we had to drag you kicking and screaming for four years before anything happened.

Mr. Cooke: Supplementary: I would like to ask the minister, since he knows that in Windsor there will be further cuts in the number of active treatment beds as of April 1 and more the following year, how he expects a community like Windsor to cope when we need the active treatment beds. I agree we need the chronic care beds but people are dying because of his policies. When is he going to change them?

Mr. Turner: Nonsense.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I think that member does not only the Ministry of Health but all of the health professions in this province a tremendous slur by making that kind of statement. It is absolutely unfounded.

Mr. Warner: You’re destroying the system and you know it.

Hon. Mr. Davis: The member should be embarrassed.

Mr. McCaffrey: Resign.

Hon. Mr. Norton: What kind of talk is that from a social worker? That’s totally irresponsible.

Mr. Cooke: On a point of privilege: The Premier says I should be embarrassed. I should point out to the Premier that the information presented in this Legislature today was --

Mr. Speaker: That’s not a point of privilege.

Mr. Riddell: Supplementary: In connection with the bed closures, would the minister disagree with the comment that was made by the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Drea) at the annual meeting of the Huron-Middlesex Conservative Association just a few days ago that if the quality of service was going to be affected in hospitals in places such as Goderich, Wingham, et cetera, this type of thing would be open to negotiation by his ministry?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I am not sure what the honourable minister had to say. I am sure what he probably said was this --

Mr. S. Smith: You are sure of what he probably said!

Mr. Roy: You are playing with your odometer. Quit playing with your odometer.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: -- that in every part of Ontario, as we move to de-emphasize institutional care, with greater emphasis on things like day surgery, day hospitals and care in the community, where the need for additional chronic or extended care facilities is identified we are prepared to approve more. Windsor is an example where we have approved more chronic beds. In Ottawa, we have approved the conversion of the Ottawa General for 200 chronic beds.

Mr. Foulds: But you are not opening them first.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Just yesterday we approved, in a couple more areas of the province where chronic bed needs have been identified, conversion of active treatment beds to chronic to meet the actual needs.

Mr. Warner: Tell us about Scarborough. Two hospitals are full in Scarborough.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: So we are prepared -- working with the local planners, the local health councils or, where they don’t exist, the local hospital planning councils -- to ensure that needs in the chronic and extended care fields are in fact met.

BEAN CROP DISPUTE

Mr. Riddell: A question to the Minister of

Agriculture and Food in connection with the ongoing dispute between the Ontario Bean Producers’ Marketing Board and the dealers regarding the 1977 bean crop contract. Is the minister aware that the solicitor for the dealers has constantly and persistently postponed examination for discovery, and as the minister representing the interests of producers, does he not feel obliged to solicit the assistance of his colleague, the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry), to bring some pressure on the dealers’ solicitor to have the examination for discovery so that the matter in dispute can be brought to a head and so that the farmers can be paid for their 1977 bean crop?

Hon. W. Newman: Well, Mr. Speaker, as I’ve often said to the member’s former leader over there -- and I have many things we could agree on about solicitors --

Mr. Kerrio: Let’s blame it on the feds.

Hon. W. Newman: -- but anyway -- no, I realize that it’s a very serious situation. I realize there are five lawsuits involved and certainly I will be glad to bring it to the attention of our very able Attorney General, or if he’s here I would refer the question to him, because it would be more appropriate. But I do realize the seriousness of the delays that have been going on.

Mr. Foulds: I have a question for the Minister of Health.

Mr. Kerrio: Hey, Bill, that’s a first.

Mr. Speaker: Would the member for Niagara Falls just cool it?

HOSPITAL BED ALLOCATIONS

Mr. Foulds: I would like the Minister of Health to let this House know what reply he is giving to the over 300 letters that he has received from residents in Thunder Bay asking him to stop his devastating cutbacks in active treatment beds in Thunder Bay and northwestern Ontario. I would like to know especially what response he has made to the point that Thunder Bay is a regional service centre for most of northwestern Ontario and will he please accept the very sensible suggestion that has been made by a number of writers of these letters that the Ministry of Health allot temporary funding to provide the necessary additional long-stay patient care accommodation in existing vacant beds, so that the enormous strain on active treatment beds resulting in extensive waiting lists will be substantially reduced?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: As the honourable member knows, within a matter of a couple of months -- in fact it should have happened months before now -- St. Joseph’s Villa, I think I’m using the right name, will open. It’s a 100-bed extended care facility which will provide a tremendous reprieve to the situation in the Thunder Bay area. That, as you know, Mr. Speaker, was supposed to have opened as long ago as October, or maybe earlier than that, but due to labour problems, it was delayed to December and then to May.

I will answer these form letters, probably with a form letter, pointing out the policies of the government; that as we have over the last number of years developed many alternatives -- in fact, Thunder Bay is one of those communities in which the alternatives have been developed and experimented with first. We have had a chronic home-care program in Thunder Bay since October 1975. We have had an assessment and placement agency in Thunder Bay for, I think, it’s now three or four years perhaps. We have the St. Joseph’s Villa opening up.

Mr. Foulds: It’s not open now.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: We have the new cancer clinic in Thunder Bay, which I was honoured to open last year. We have the new CAT scanner at the McKellar Hospital in Thunder Bay.

There are a number of new services that have been developed in that community and I will tell them about all of these developments and that we are prepared to add more in the extended care and long-term fields in the future as the needs are identified.

Mr. Foulds: Supplementary: Why has the ministry failed to take the suggestion that was made, as long ago I believe as 1976, by the district health council that the temporary funding be provided to relieve the chronic-care strain on the active treatment beds? Why has that not taken place?

[3:30]

Second, would the minister not agree that there is an additional strain on Thunder Bay because of the regional nature of its work? Does he not think it is time that the magic formula bed ratio system for the small hospitals in the region, particularly in communities such as Nipigon, must be replaced by a custom-designed system when we get the situation where three of the five doctors in a small community like that are saying they may leave simply because they cannot professionally and adequately provide services? As the reeve said, “How do you cut back on an x-ray technician when you only have one, and how do you close a wing of a hospital when there is only one wing to the whole hospital?”

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: First of all, the regional nature of Thunder Bay is already taken account of inasmuch as the referral population for that hospital centre does take account of the people who actually use it. Whether they be from the city of Thunder Bay or from the northwestern region, the people who have actually used the hospital are taken into account in calculating the referral population and therefore calculating the beds.

It is interesting that the honourable member raised the question of Nipigon; and, Mr. Speaker, I know, that is a hospital that is near and dear to your heart. I was looking at the figures for that hospital this morning. We did build in several factors in the budget formula for the very small hospitals, and in the case of the hospital at Nipigon the restraint, if you want to call it that, resulting from the application of the bed formula is one bed -- one bed -- this current year.

I would point out that in fact we have asked the Ontario Hospital Association and the Ontario Council of Administrators of Teaching Hospitals, which are representative of all the hospitals in the province, to sit down with us and develop a whole new budget formula. There are a number of things we have tried to do in the last couple of years --

Mr. Foulds: Why don’t you do that first?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, if he likes, I will take the honourable member through the steps that we have gone through over the last couple of years to take connizance in the budget formula of things like the small hospitals: the fact that the very small hospitals have had higher increases in the last couple of years than the average for all the other hospitals; the fact that we built in a 10-bed cushion in the bed allocation formula for the very small hospitals, which resulted in that factor of one bed in the Nipigon hospital.

Also, instead of using the actual cost per bed, we used the average incremental cost per bed in the formula so as to cushion the impact. We have also indicated that the move is in transition in the active treatment bed area over three years, not in one year, which would have too great an impact on the system.

We want to develop a totally new formula, and one of the priorities on our table is the problem of the very small hospitals. In the meantime, we have put these cushions into the current formulae to cushion the impact on them until such time as we can develop a totally new budgeting system.

Mr. T. P. Reid: Mr. Speaker, in regard to the Thunder Bay hospitals, does the ministry’s formula take into account the referral population from the Kenora and Rainy River areas which is going to be there, because the minister seems to be intent on destroying the secondary treatment facilities in places like LaVerendyre at Fort Frances, which will happen if he continues with this program the way it is.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, I would point out that in the formula for LaVerendyre hospital in Fort Frances there is an allowance for 39 or 38 new chronic beds, and their overall funding compared to last year is up 16 per cent. That is the bottom line after taking all these things into account. In addition to the 16 per cent increase and the 39 chronic beds, I believe there has also been a recent special grant from the Ministry of Northern Affairs to that hospital for the space they are going to provide at annual cost to the health unit. So I think that hospital has been reasonably well done by. I met recently with the mayor of Fort Frances, and staff of my ministry will be visiting with Mr. White, the administrator, and representatives of the staff.

The referral population for the Thunder Bay hospital centre includes the calculations for the number of people or percentage of the population in those various communities who have used the hospital.

Mr. T. P. Reid: Not the future use?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: No. We can only go on what we know have been the patterns. If we try to project the future, I think the member could see that could militate against the interests of the small, far-flung hospitals if we overestimated on those projections. It’s better to use retrospective information, which is absolute.

THUNDER BAY HEALTH STUDY

Mr. Hennessy: Mr. Speaker, I’m concerned that the member for Port Arthur has presented a petition. I have a similar petition myself; his is only a duplicate of the petition I have. I think the Minister of Northern Affairs (Mr. Bernier) had the same type.

The petition is with regard to the shortage of hospital beds, and I am concerned, as is the member for that riding. I’d like to know if there is a study going to be prepared by the Thunder Bay district health council for the ministry to take some action with regard to chronic care patients.

Mr. Foulds: The beds are going to close in 10 days.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I’m sorry, I missed the early part, but I take it the question was meant for me.

Mr. Philip: The earlier part was a ministerial statement.

Mr. Speaker: The question was, is the district health council going to undertake a study?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I’m not sure, Mr. Speaker, if they have launched a study on chronic care at this time. Most of the health councils have got studies under way on chronic and long-term care needs. We have a few of those reports in now. Submissions are being prepared, in line with the commitment in the speech from the throne, to the Management Board and cabinet for approvals of some more chronic and extended care beds in various parts of the province. I’ll have more to say as each of those reports has been prepared and analysis of local needs is considered by cabinet.

I will check for the member as to whether there is a study currently under way by that particular health council. Members can anticipate this is going to be an ongoing process. As the population continues to become much older, our needs in that area are going to become much greater. Even if a study were completed today they could expect it would be updated from time to time every few years.

RESOURCE EQUALIZATION GRANTS

Mr. Bradley: My question is to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. It relates to two questions asked in the House previously of other ministers.

In light of the fact municipalities across the province are striking their budgets and are looking for the precise amount the minister would be providing in terms of interim payments related to those municipalities adversely affected by the resources equalization grant, could the minister assure the House he will present those figures before the recess for the winter break so that municipalities would be aware of them? In presenting them, would he assure the House that the figures and information provided by the former provincial Treasurer to municipalities indicating those who would be eligible will be the figures that will be used to calculate this interim payment?

Hon. Mr. Wells: The answer to that question is, I will be introducing a bill to give us the authority to make those payments; no, I will not be introducing the figures before we adjourn for the Easter break; and no, I am not using the list of cities and municipalities with figures that the former Treasurer tabled. We are using a new formula, and the eligible areas -- those that perceive themselves to be adversely affected -- will be notified probably sometime in the next week.

Mr. Bradley: Supplementary: Could the minister indicate why he is not using the figures and information provided by the former Treasurer, in light of the fact a lot of municipalities were anticipating those would be the figures used, and that they were accurate?

Hon. Mr. Wells: Yes. I can indicate to the House very precisely. The figures used by the former Treasurer constituted a list of municipalities with amounts associated with the adoption of the total property tax reform market value assessment package. We are looking at something different. We’re looking at those municipalities that would be very adversely affected because of the use of the present equalization factors for the computation of the resource equalization grant -- something quite different from what the former Treasurer was using at the time he put his list in. So the list will be different from the one the former Treasurer had.

I might just say I already have a meeting lined up with the mayor and council of St. Catharines, I think for a week tomorrow, to chat with them about this and other matters.

LUMBER PRICES

Mr. Swart: I have a question for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. Is he aware that the tremendous escalation that took place in the price of lumber last year has continued apace into this year? For instance, the wholesale price of a four-foot by eight-foot sheet of spruce plywood, five-sixteenths of an inch thick, has increased from $7.25 to $8.20 from January 1 to this time. As a result, is the minister prepared to abandon his provincial hands-off policy, which he explained to me in a letter, and at least monitor and publicize the unreasonableness of the price escalation in lumber?

Hon. Mr. Drea: Never having been a man to duplicate activity under way, I draw to the attention of the honourable member that for some weeks my federal counterpart. Honourable Warren Allmand, has had an active investigation into these prices under the auspices of the Combines Act.

I should add that his attention was drawn to the Ontario prices by me, not by the honourable member.

Mr. Swart: By way of supplementary, doesn’t the minister realize his government has the constitutional responsibility for retail prices and that when it puts a restraint program on wages and all forms of government assistance it has to do something about holding prices? Doesn’t he think his government, as part of its $100-million gift to the forest industry, should require those companies to sell lumber here at the Canadian dollar level instead of at the United States dollar level?

Mr. Worton: He is putting the minister against the boards.

Hon. Mr. Drea: I would just say that while retail prices may or may not be a provincial responsibility --

Mr. Foulds: They are.

Hon. Mr. Drea: -- the unusual activity in retail or wholesale prices is quite clearly a federal responsibility under the criminal code.

Mr. Swart: You’ve got enough clout to do something if you want to.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Furthermore, in terms of the development of resources, particularly in the lumber field, I thought the name of the game was to stimulate exports so that we could ease the balance of payments deficit.

Mr. Swart: Of course. We’re not talking about combines; we’re talking about Canadian prices.

Hon. Mr. Drea: I am very pleased to see the professional socialist from Welland-Thorold now wants to cut off exports so that indeed there will be even harder times in this country.

Mr. Swart: I never said any such thing.

Mr. Gregory: Pick on somebody your own size.

Mr. Mackenzie: Why don’t you try to put 100 per cent of them out of business? It’s your tactic.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Are they your friends?

Mr. Mackenzie: Some of them are. I didn’t say all of them.

COURT REPORTERS DISPUTE

Mrs. Campbell: My question is to the Attorney General. Has the Attorney General no statement to make at this time with reference to the study of Mendel Green into the problems of the reporters in special examiners’ offices, and will he table that report which I’m informed he now has?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I will be tabling the report in the very near future. At that time I will make what I consider to be an appropriate statement. I’m still reviewing the report. I’m waiting for reports from some members of the ministry who are interested in this area of special examiners. I expect to be reporting to the Legislature within the next two or three weeks.

Mrs. Campbell: Supplementary: Does the Attorney General not agree that these reporters have suffered for a considerable length of time, and for us to rise without any kind of a statement for them is at least thoughtless, if nothing else?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I think the member for St. George has really raised another related issue, namely, a dispute between certain reporters and the special examiners. With all due respect to Mr. Green and his very interesting and useful report, I don’t think either his report or my statement will resolve that dispute.

ALUMINUM WIRING

Mr. M. N. Davison: I’d like to ask a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations about the inquiry on aluminum wiring in the hope that he’ll give up his role as the Artful Dodger and answer questions without his characteristic vagueness and evasion. --

Interjections.

Mr. M. N. Davison: On March 2, this minister said at the hearing that the cost of repair or replacing faulty connections and equipment will “be borne in a very fair way.” Does that mean the minister will agree with me and the members of the New Democratic Party that it would be extremely unfair to expect any home owner in Ontario to pay for necessary repairs when the fault lies with the contractor, Ontario Hydro or the minister’s government?

Hon. Mr. Drea: On March 2, when I tabled the report of the commission of inquiry into aluminum wiring, the question was raised about who would be responsible if defects and so forth were found in individual homes because of the inspection service being offered. At that time -- and the member who asked the question wasn’t present, he didn’t show up, he only saw it later or something --

Mr. McClellan: You should talk about showing up.

Mr. M. N. Davidson: You haven’t been in the House for the last three days.

Mr. Philip: Where have you been this week, Frank?

Hon. Mr. Drea: -- we pointed out that it was premature to try to attempt to give a firm answer to that question because it would depend upon what the inspections found. At that time I gave a commitment, not only on behalf of my ministry but on behalf of the government, that when all the diagnoses were in from all of the free inspections -- and they are not in yet -- the solution for the individual home owner would be fair. I still say that.

Mr. M. N. Davison: Does the minister contend that the rather shabby treatment meted out to one Mr. John Wright, of 1 Juliette Square, Bramalea, who earlier this month -- as a matter of fact within 24 hours of the minister’s statement -- had a fire in his aluminum-wired home, was fair?

Hon. Mr. Drea: Don’t ask me, please don’t ask that one.

Hon. M. N. Davison: I am asking that because the ministry has refused to pay compensation, even though research has clearly shown that a fire in a fuse box is much more likely to happen with aluminum wiring than with copper wiring.

Hon. Mr. Drea: The insurance will pay for whatever damage was in that fuse box.

Mr. M. N. Davison: You are inadequate.

Mr. Swart: Paper tiger.

Mr. J. Reed: Supplementary: I would like to ask the minister, if it is not very clear under the terms of the Power Corporation Act where the responsibility lies for the inspection and approval of all electrical installations in Ontario and that it does indeed lie with Ontario Hydro, and since in this case it is obvious that through certain incompatibilities of wiring and connectors and so on there have been problems, would it not be incumbent then upon Ontario Hydro, which is the approver and the inspector of these things, to make those corrections?

Hon. Mr. Drea: It is not quite that simple. In some cases people wired their own houses and received no approval. That is why we are waiting until all the --

Mr. J. Reed: They are not inspected?

Hon. Mr. Drea: If you don’t take out a permit to wire your house, obviously it won’t be inspected. What I am saying is, quite simply, when the diagnoses are in -- those inspections are being made -- we will take a look at who is responsible for the particular faults in the particular home, and at that particular time when we have all the specifics, the responsibilities will be assigned in a very fair manner. There is no general approach that can be taken at this time until all of those are in.

Mr. M. N. Davison: Was your treatment of Mr. Wright fair?

Mr. Warner: You didn’t treat Mr. Wright fairly.

FAMILY BENEFITS

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Community and Social Services, or perhaps his youthful assistant there; we might get a better answer from him.

I wrote the minister on January 29 -- he is usually very diligent in his responses -- but I have never heard from him with respect to the case of Mr. Terry Pembleton from London, Ontario, asking to qualify for so-called mother’s allowance as he has three dependent sons. Would the minister please tell me his response to my letter? Is he prepared to assist him to get mother’s allowance under the Family Benefits Act?

Hon. Mr. Norton: I apologize to the honourable member. I thought I could recall having signed a response to him fairly recently. That may be erroneous. I am aware of the case to which he refers.

I would advise the honourable member that to the best of my recollection on that particular case the answer is no; the circumstances that Mr. Pembleton faces are not such as to justify, in my judgement, an order in council in order to provide special assistance.

Mr. Peterson: Surely, as a reasonably fair-minded chap at times, would the minister not consider changes to the Family Benefits Act so we don’t have to go through this ridiculous procedure of order in council and come begging to the cabinet every time to bring justice and equity under that act and prevent sexual discrimination that’s there? Is the minister prepared to bring something to change that law, or failing that, at least support my private member’s bill on April 6 on this matter?

Hon. Mr. Norton: I wouldn’t wish to prejudge my position on the honourable member’s private bill, but I would point out to the honourable member, first of all, the procedure that is at present being used by way of order in council does, I admit, leave something to be desired. I would also point out that the majority -- a rather substantial majority -- of the male single parents who apply do apply under circumstances which render them eligible for assistance. There are cases where it’s just obviously in the interests of the family or the children to provide that assistance.

Mr. Peterson: What about the three little children?

Hon. Mr. Norton: We could get into a lengthy debate on this. The circumstances, the needs of the family, have to be viewed if the appeal is on the basis of special assistance or special circumstances.

Mr. S. Smith: Treat men and women equally. It’s not debatable.

Hon. Mr. Norton: I am not at this time prepared to bring in amendments to the Family Benefits Act in order to make the present provisions as they apply to women, apply to men.

Mr. S. Smith: Why not?

Hon. Mr. Norton: For one thing that presupposes that the current circumstances as they apply to women are the optimum circumstances.

Interjections.

Mr. Peterson: Just because of one part of your act, it does not justify sex discrimination.

Hon. Mr. Norton: As I have told the House, on numerous occasions, I am currently engaged --

Mr. Warner: You want to balance out the inequities.

Hon. Mr. Norton: -- in discussions with the federal government seeking flexibility --

Mr. McClellan: It’s been going on since 1973.

Hon. Mr. Norton: I wasn’t around in 1973, but I’ll tell you --

Mr. McClellan: You won’t be around very much longer, either.

Hon. Mr. Norton: -- we have made substantial headway in those negotiations in the last six months, and I’m hoping that if we are not interrupted by a federal election --

Mr. MacDonald: You’ve got your excuse all ready, Keith.

Hon. Mr. Norton: -- the matter might be resolved satisfactorily, which would then allow me to proceed to make --

Mr. Warner: You move like a runaway glacier.

Hon. Mr. Norton: -- significant changes in terms of employment incentives and so on to that program, which then might be appropriate for general application to both men and women. I do not wish to deal with this on a piecemeal basis; there are other glaring examples of discrimination in that act on the basis of gender.

Ms. Gigantes: It’s because it’s women.

Hon. Mr. Norton: Sometimes they’re against women, sometimes against men.

Ms. Gigantes: Only against women.

Mr. Speaker: Time for oral questions expired two minutes ago.

Hon. Mr. Norton: I do wish to approach it when I am able in a comprehensive way and not in a piecemeal way.

MOTIONS

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BALLOT

Hon. Mr. Welch moved that notwithstanding the orders of the House, the order of preference for private members’ public business be changed so that Mr. MacBeth’s ballot item be listed and called for debate April 12, and Mr. Johnson’s ballot item be listed and called for debate April 19.

Motion agreed to.

WCB REPORT

Hon. Mr. Welch moved that in compliance with section 81 of the Workmen’s Compensation Amendment Act, 1973, the annual report of the Workmen’s Compensation Board for 1977 be referred to the standing resources development committee for consideration starting the evening of Tuesday, March 27, and concluding Friday, March 30, the proceedings of which shall be transcribed by Hansard and appended to the Hansard proceedings of the House.

Motion agreed to.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

MINISTRY OF TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATIONS AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Snow moved first reading of Bill 13, An Act to amend the Ministry of Transportation and Communications Act, 1971.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, this bill will replace the present cumbersome and largely unworkable provisions for delegation of ministerial authority by order in council in my ministry’s act with provisions that are identical to those in other ministry acts passed by this House in the last session.

STATUTE LABOUR AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Snow moved first reading of Bill 14, An Act to amend the Statute Labour Act.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, this housekeeping bill simply removes the $50 maximum limitation on the annual salary which may be paid to the secretary-treasurer out of the fund of an area under the Statute Labour Act.

LOCAL ROADS BOARDS AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Snow moved first reading of Bill 15, An Act to amend the Local Roads Boards Act.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, this bill is part of a response to a concern expressed by the ombudsman. A procedure is being established which will ensure that residents who feel they should be removed from a local roads board area are entitled to have the question considered at the annual meeting, and that the minister has the final discretion in changing the boundaries of the local roads area, as I have always had when the boundaries are being initially defined.

The bill will also permit a board to vary the minimum tax from the statutory $10 for property with the approval of the landowners.

AIRPORTS AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Snow moved first reading of Bill 16, An Act to amend the Airports Act.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, in furtherance of the government’s objective of eliminating unnecessary red tape, this housekeeping bill will remove the requirement that an order in council be obtained for each grant to each municipality towards its airport construction or maintenance cost. The total of such grants are, of course, established annually in the ministry’s estimates.

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.

Mr. Cassidy: This is a plot to keep the House going until 6 o’clock.

Mr. Kerrio: Thank heaven for small mercies.

Mr. Cassidy: They are trying to eliminate the debate.

LINE FENCES ACT

Hon. Mr. Wells moved first reading of Bill 17, An Act to revise the Line Fences Act.

Motion agreed to.

[4:00]

Hon. Mr. Wells: This bill is very similar to the one which was introduced on December 8, 1978, but which died on the order paper. There are several minor changes in it --

Mr. Cassidy: Your government may fall on this one.

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- which will be outlined at the beginning of second reading and I hope that we will be able to pass the bill in this session, Mr. Speaker.

ONTARIO UNCONDITIONAL GRANTS AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Wells moved first reading of Bill 18, An Act to amend the Ontario Unconditional Grants Act, 1975.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, this bill allows for the payment in 1979 of special one-time grants to municipalities which have been adversely affected in the calculation of their resource equalization grants because of the equalization factors which, of course, have been unchanged since 1970.

The bill also clarifies the levying procedures of those area municipalities within regional municipalities which have been recently re-assessed under section 86 of the Assessment Act, such as the municipalities within the regions of Waterloo and Durham. This section merely ensures that a single set of mill rates is struck across the local municipality, rather than separate rates for each of its merged areas.

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION ACT

Hon. Mrs. Birch, on behalf of Hon. Miss Stephenson, moved first reading of Bill 19, An Act to Amalgamate the Ministry of Colleges and Universities and the Ministry of Education.

Motion agreed to.

RESIDENTIAL PREMISES BENT REVIEW AMENDMENT ACT (SECOND SESSION)

Hon. Mr. Drea moved first reading of Bill 20, An Act to amend the Residential Premises Rent Review Act, 1975, second session.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, this extends the current Rent Review Act for 90 days so that proper notices can go out in the case of proposed increases by landlords, covering the period from June 30 through to September 30. By the end of June, Mr. Speaker, presumably the new Residential Tenancies Act will have been passed.

Mr. M. N. Davison: This is the third time.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, I just heard that from over there. There was a commitment from the people in that party, and once again they weren’t there, that this would be the last and it would also involve sufficient time for the bill to be passed.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, there was no commitment made by members of this party sitting on that committee.

ONTARIO HUMAN RIGHTS CODE AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. B. Newman moved first reading of Bill 21, An Act to amend the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. B. Newman: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the bill is to prevent discrimination on the basis of a physical handicap where that handicap does not reasonably preclude the performance of the particular employment. Physical handicap means a physical disability, infirmity, malformation, or disfigurement which is caused by bodily injury, birth defect or illness. It includes epilepsy, diabetes and any degree of paralysis, amputation, lack of physical co-ordination, blindness or visual impediment, deafness or hearing impediment muteness or speech impediment, or physical reliance on a seeing-eye dog, wheelchair, or other remedial appliance or device.

An hon. member: That covers all of us.

MINISTRY OF CONSUMER AND COMMERCIAL RELATIONS AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Drea moved first reading of Bill 22, An Act to amend the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations Act.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Speaker, this is really a housekeeping amendment. It will allow other ministries of the crown to use the appeal proceedings of the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations, the commercial relations appeal tribunals, in the spirit of the Wiseman report which urged consolidation of appeal boards.

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Swart moved first reading of Bill 23, An Act to amend the Legislative Assembly Act.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Swart: The purpose of this bill is to declare that the designation “Member of the Legislative Assembly” and “MLA” are the official designations of persons who are elected to the Legislative Assembly. The bill provides that only members of the Legislative Assembly are entitled to use either of the official designations in association with themselves while sitting as elected members of the assembly and during the succeeding election periods. The designation “MLA” will conform with all other provinces in Canada except Quebec. It eliminates the confusion of the designations MPP and MP, and it will correctly designate the position of the members.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to standing order 13 may I take this opportunity simply and briefly to indicate the order of business on our return from the school break?

The House resumes, following adjournment today, on Tuesday, March 27. As it will be a Tuesday, we will consider legislation in the House, doing the following bills in this order as time permits: Bills 74, 75, 2, 7, 8, 18, and 20.

On Tuesday when we return, the standing committee on general government will continue its review of Bill 163, and the standing committee on resources development will take into consideration the report of the Workmen’s Compensation Board as indicated earlier by motion.

Mr. Nixon: Fifteen hours.

Hon. Mr. Welch: On Wednesday, the House will not be in the assembly, but committees will continue, as indicated.

Thursday, on our return, in the afternoon we will do private members’ ballot items one and two. On Thursday evening, the House will be asked to take into consideration a motion for interim supply which will be put on the order paper on the Tuesday we come back. Following that, and as time permits, we will take into consideration some supplementary estimates which will be tabled on Tuesday when we return. That will continue on Friday morning.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

THRONE SPEECH DEBATE (CONTINUED)

Resumption of the adjourned debate on the motion for an address in reply to the speech of the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor at the opening of the session.

Mr. Cassidy: You know, Mr. Speaker, if I can say this to the two ministers who are still present: One would almost think there was a conspiracy to impose silence on the New Democratic Party in this debate when you count the 10 statements of total inconsequence that we had between two o’clock and 3 o’clock today and the 10 bills of equal inconsequence which were put forward by the government between five minutes to four and 10 minutes past four today --

Hon. Mr. Norton: Listen, don’t start off being provocative. Build up to it.

Mr. Cassidy: -- and the fact that having heard their own voices at such length, the cabinet has now decamped. I presume its members are over on Bay Street supping and deciding on the future of the province.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Waste more time.

Hon. Mr. Norton: I was looking after constituency problems for your members.

Mr. M. N. Davison: They are watching Smith and Davis play tennis.

Mr. McClellan: It’s a great show of courtesy by the government.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right.

I want to begin by paying my respects to you, Mr. Speaker. In the 21 months since the 1977 election, you have filled your role with distinction and I am confident that you will continue to act in that way.

Some hon. members: Hear, hear.

Hon. Mr. Norton: Now, why don’t you say that every day? You have to control that guy to your right.

Mr. Cassidy: But I find it difficult, Mr. Speaker, to be positive about the present government and about the throne speech with which they have launched the 1979 session.

The problems that Ontario faces continue to be serious. The fundamental weaknesses of our economy remain to be addressed by this government and now we have added to that an attack on social services of unprecedented proportions, particularly in the area of health. Working people will be the victims of that attack.

The response we have from the government is a desperate search for old remedies and a refusal to look at anything new, a failure of will which has cost this province dearly and which will cost us even more for each further month that the Progressive Conservatives are in power, and a set of priorities in government which we believe are totally upside down.

We are faced with a weak economy, with high unemployment, with a colonized industrial structure, and with a resource sector which is operating as though there was no tomorrow. The response of the Conservatives to every one of these problems is that the province needs more restraints. Their policies -- this government’s policies -- are both as skillful and as useful as those medieval surgeons whose response to every medical illness was to let more blood.

There is only one exception: corporation profits have risen sharply in the past year -- those of the pulp and paper industry by 94 per cent -- at a time when the real wages of workers are falling steadily by as much as four or five per cent a year.

Hospitals are being closed, and services are being cut across the province. Daycare centres are closing, and special programs in our schools are being squeezed. Municipalities are being pushed against the wall to provide services because of the cutbacks in provincial support. With all this going on, Ontario in its wisdom has decided that the corporate sector alone should get priority.

It is promises like the ones made in this year’s throne speech that make people cynical about politicians. The government mouths concern about important problems, and then hopes that they go away. It has set up yet another advisory commission about women’s rights, but won’t change Ontario’s laws to bring in equal pay for work of equal value.

The government is moving forward in providing special transportation services for the disabled, but what disabled people really want, and what the bill that the member for Downsview (Mr. di Santo) moved last year would have given them, is the right to work, and that we don’t have from the government of Ontario.

The government’s commitment to improve labour relations is pretty hollow when it comes from a government that sent the OPP to try to stop Fleck workers from getting a contract, that has placed a four per cent ceiling on Civil Service negotiations and that refuses to give workers the right to a first contract or to outlaw strikebreaking in the province of Ontario.

[4:15]

The commitment to multiculturalism also rings hollow, Mr. Speaker, when Ontario’s heritage language program is being cut in half because of cutbacks in provincial funding. L’impegno preso in favore del Multiculturalismo non ha sostanza poiche’ ii programma provinciale del “Heritage Language” sara’ ridotto a meta a causa della diminuzione dei fondi provinciali.

A promise to give citizens easier access to government isn’t worth much, Mr. Speaker, unless the government is also prepared to pass a freedom of information law. A celebration of the Year of the Child by opening provincial parks is hypocritical when basic services that are vital to Ontario’s children are being cut to the bone.

The monitoring of food prices proposed by the government is of no use to consumers unless the government is prepared to create a food prices review board which will roll back unjustified price increases now being imposed on the people of the province.

Interjections.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right, the government won’t do anything at all.

Mr. Speaker, I intend today to concentrate on cutbacks in health services because this is the most serious example of how the government is getting out of providing services to people. The NDP is also concerned about the cutbacks in education, concerned about the property tax increases that are being created because of the cutbacks to municipalities and concerned with what is happening with local social services. We are concerned with what’s happening to services to children and as we have already shown, Mr. Speaker, in the no-confidence motion we had in this Legislature on Tuesday night, we’re concerned about what’s happening to our cities with the government’s determination to cut back on transit. We’ve said clearly that we will draw the line and we’ll fight the government, not just in the health cutbacks but in all of the areas where it’s trying to cut back on services that are essential to the working people of the province of Ontario.

In the last two weeks in particular, since we’ve had a chance to join with the government or lock horns with the government over the health issue, it has become apparent that the Conservatives have decided to dismantle the universal health care system which has been created in this province.

Mr. Martel: They opposed it right from the beginning.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It is immoral to make a statement like that.

Mr. Lane: Every day you get more ridiculous.

Mr. Cassidy: The New Democrats are proud of the part that we have played in bringing the security of universal health care to the people of this province. In my opinion, Mr. Speaker, it is the single greatest achievement of the New Democratic Party and of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation to have brought health care to Canada and health care to the province of Ontario and we will fight to stop this government from taking away that security.

Mr. Martel: Do you remember the “Machiavellian scheme”?

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right.

Mr. Martel: I remember it well.

Mr. Cassidy: The references to health in this year’s throne speech conceal far more than they reveal. The government talks and the minister talks as well of reshaping health care delivery to ensure both excellence of service and effective management. The throne speech says and I quote: “The social value to Ontario is too great to allow any diminution in the quality or quantity of such significant social advances as our health care system.”

This is a gross distortion of what is happening in the province today and it is time that the Minister of Health (Mr. Timbrell) started to set the record straight on just what is happening in health care in Ontario and what is happening in his ministry.

Last April 14 we were told by the minister that the Ministry of Health was monitoring opted-out physicians on a very detailed basis. We got a commitment from the minister at that time: “The universal, accessible medical health care plan that we developed in this province over the last number of years will be maintained.” In fact, Mr. Speaker, that promise is not being kept by the government of Ontario.

In just 10 months, the proportion of opted-out physicians has jumped from just under 10 per cent to almost 18 per cent, yet this week in the House the minister denied that the current rate of opting out is a threat to universality. I would like to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that the financial consequences for Ontario residents are that people are now having to pay heavily out of their own pockets for medical care, in addition to paying the highest health premiums in Canada.

We have been told that the Ontario Medical Association schedule, which opted-out physicians now are charging, is 30 per cent higher than the Ontario Health Insurance Plan schedule. In fact, the difference amounts to a surcharge of about 43 per cent and in some cases is even higher.

For example, a 74-year-old pensioner in Toronto who was diabetic found late last month, when she went in for a regular examination, that her doctor had opted out. She had to pay $20 -- in fact, they asked for it right away -- and she will get only $13.25 back from OHIP. The surcharge on that office visit for this pensioner was 53 per cent over the OHIP rate and the only way to avoid it was for her to beg for charity medicine to the doctor or to his secretary. The doctor’s rationale for the surcharge is that OHIP fee adjustments have not been adequate. I do not know what the doctor is talking about, when the OHIP fee schedule has risen by 13 per cent since last May but that pensioner’s income has risen by only nine per cent.

To put things into perspective, when last year’s select committee established that doctors in Ontario averaged $55,000 in net income per year, let us reflect on the fact that the net income of a pensioner receiving a guaranteed annual income supplement and old age security -- like the pensioner I just mentioned -- is $4,116 per year, or less than one eleventh of the average income of a physician in the province.

I do not understand how the minister can stay so calm when his own staff acknowledges that almost 70 per cent of the doctors in the cities of Peterborough and Orillia have opted out. I do not understand his complacency when we learn that every doctor in Amherstburg, in Essex county, has opted out, and the people who cannot afford the OMA surcharges either I have to beg the doctor for a break or have to find a way to get medical care in Windsor, 17 miles away.

In Metropolitan Toronto, the figures that the minister filed this week show that 25 per cent of physicians have opted out; that is, one doctor in four. If you look just at full time practising physicians, the proportion will be higher. If you look at specialists, it will be higher still. And we have yet to learn from the minister how many additional doctors have closed their lists or are not accepting patients who are trying to transfer from opted-out doctors.

When the ministry’s own figures show that 30 per cent of the doctors in Halton, Perth and Wellington counties have opted out, that 41 per cent have opted out in York county, and that opting-out exceeds 24 per cent in Waterloo county, Simcoe and Metropolitan Toronto itself, it is obvious that there is a crisis. Even the Minister of National Health and Welfare has moved in, threatening to cut off federal funding if the exodus of doctors undermines universal access to medical care.

I want to say, as plainly as I can, that medicare in this province is in grave jeopardy. This government has not fulfilled its responsibility to make sure that every Ontario citizen continues to have access to universal medical care. This government, whose Treasurer said a year or two ago that it would not impose a deterrent fee on medical patients in Ontario, has moved aside and is allowing doctors to do the same thing through the back door.

I want to suggest a number of steps that the government should be taking now to preserve public health care.

The province must clearly indicate to our doctors that, while we value their services highly, Ontario will not allow its physicians to destroy OHIP or our medicare plan. Ontario must be prepared to use moral suasion, to use publicity, to use regulation and, if necessary, to use legislation to keep universal medicare in place.

Since the member for Don Mills has been the Minister of Health for two years, why has he not cleaned up the OHIP administration and the delays in payment which have caused such aggravation among doctors as well as patients and are one of the factors leading doctors to get out of OHIP? Why has he not examined the fee structure in response to doctors’ grievances as well as examining alternatives to the fee-for-service payment system, which causes such problems for general practitioners who are penalized for spending time with patients? And why has the minister not already established and fully supported health service organizations for all citizens of Ontario, rather than keeping them on such a tight leash that they have not even been able to plan from one year to the next? The commitments he makes now about health service organizations are hollow, when you look at the treatment of health service organizations in the province over the past five years.

Mr. Martel: You beggars are responsible.

Mr. Cassidy: The minister told reporters outside the House this week that he thought “consumer control” offered the best protection of the system.

Ms. Gigantes: Shop around.

Mr. Cassidy: But the only effective consumer is an informed consumer. And we’ve had our problems getting information.

How about the people of the province of Ontario? What’s the minister doing to inform the consumer of health care about where to get an OHIP physician; and about what is happening with health care costs in Ontario? What’s he doing to ensure that patients will know where to find care under OHIP and what it costs to go to an opted-out physician?

While he is considering his responsibility on these questions, the minister has some other problems to come to grips with. One is the practice, adopted by more and more doctors, of charging for services which were formerly provided free. A telephone call to a physician costs from $4 to $12. Even a medical slip required by an employer will cost $3, unless the patient is prepared to pay what amounts to a private premium of $40 per family per year. That’s the rate being charged by the Queensway Clinic in Toronto; but in some practices and in some clinics, the annual rate is even more.

This minister should make it clear that this is not acceptable. He should make it clear that Ontario will never accept doctors’ demands for what they call “balanced billing,” a system which looks to us like having your cake and eating it, too.

If I can go back to the pensioner I mentioned. The idea is that rather than billing the lady $20 and hoping that she can pay, the doctor can bill OHIP for the $13 in their fee schedule and then charge the patient the additional $7. Imagine paying such high premiums in this province and then having to turn around and pay a fee that is equal to half the fee in the OHIP schedule, if you want to get medical services in the province of Ontario.

We also believe that the minister should tell doctors that the practice they call “patient streaming” is unacceptable. He should stop actively encouraging it. Last December 13 the cabinet approved a regulation to change the Health Insurance Act to allow doctors who have opted out to bill through OHIP for medical services that are provided in hospitals. In effect -- and despite his denials today -- the Minister of Health was telling doctors to go ahead and opt out, because if a patient looks a bit shaky financially the doctor can treat him at the hospital and be paid through OHIP. It’s amazing to me, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister of Health is adding fuel to the fire with this regulation at a time when opting out is already at crucial proportions.

His response in the House today is pure distortion. In one swoop he has expanded a regulation covering 20 teaching hospitals to apply to more than 200 hospitals across the province of Ontario. If that is not inciting doctors to get out of the OHIP scheme, then I don’t know what is.

Mr. Martel: Some of you fellows in the cabinet should question that boy.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right. Where is the Minister of Health when he says he will protect the system? In fact, he is an active conspirator in tearing it down.

So far this afternoon, I have concentrated on OHIP. But I want this House to know as well that the Minister of Health’s announcement about hospital funding on January 19 poses a threat to our health care system which is every bit as grave as doctors opting out.

In the past two months, I have talked to a lot of people who are deeply affected by the ministry’s new budget guidelines. They are very concerned. As the phone calls mount and mail pours in, it’s becoming apparent that this attack on the hospitals is even more devastating than the former minister’s cutbacks of three years ago.

What is at issue is not just the budgets that were announced by the minister back in January. What is at stake is the provision of hospital services across Ontario. The 4.2 per cent budget increase announced in January means a cut in real terms of at least four per cent in hospital services across this province. And that comes on top of a system which has been systematically squeezed by the ministry for the past four years.

What is worse, however, is the sudden and arbitrary decision by the ministry that, between now and 1981, Ontario will cut active treatment hospital beds in this province to the level of 3.5 beds per thousand population in the south, and four beds per thousand in the north.

Interjection.

Mr. Cassidy: The member has a comment? Let’s hear it.

An hon. member: Tell us what the socialist countries --

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The honourable member isn’t in his seat.

[4:30]

Mr. Cassidy: Let’s look at the rest of the country and at what the select committee had to find, a committee whose findings in the section I’m about to read were endorsed by the Conservative members unanimously.

As the select committee noted last year, in Ontario the number of beds per capita is already lower than in any other province but Newfoundland and has been declining at a faster rate than in the rest of Canada for the past eight years. In fact, we are now moving towards a standard of 3.5 hospital beds per thousand at a time when the average for the rest of Canada is closer to 5.5 beds per thousand.

Mr. Watson: What is it in England?

Mr. Cassidy: Let’s talk about Alberta. It’s just about six in the province of Alberta, where Peter Lougheed is the Premier.

Mr. Foulds: He’s a Tory too.

Mr. Warner: Worst medical record in Canada.

Mr. Cassidy: He’s a Tory, that’s right. There is absolutely no medical rationale which has been offered by the minister to explain this sudden move, only budget constraints.

Mr. Foulds: The magic formula pulled out of a hat like a rabbit. It means nothing.

Mr. Cassidy: That’s right. The minister estimates that 1,200 beds will be cut this coming year, and that’s bad enough. But to move from a ratio of four beds per thousand to 3.5 beds per thousand will mean cutting a further 4,000 hospital beds in Ontario over the next two years, and I don’t see how our health care system is going to take it.

Mr. Warner: It’s being destroyed.

Mr. Cassidy: It’s not just beds that are being cut, but jobs too. As many as 4,500 hospital care workers could lose their jobs between now and 1981 at a time when we already face near-record unemployment in the province. The consequence, in other words, of this new round of cutbacks is deeply disturbing.

I have talked to a lot of people about this. The people at the Civic Hospital in my riding of Ottawa Centre tell me that all the fat has been removed over the past four years and these cuts are biting into muscle. When I met with the administrator of the Welland General Hospital last month, he complained that his hospital had no special consideration despite the fact its per diem bed rate is far below the level of most comparable hospitals in Ontario. He told me that even if the Welland General closes all the 16 beds ordered closed by the ministry it will still make no saving. It will have to close a full ward of 29 beds, and even then it will still be $210,000 short of the savings imposed by the ministry.

In other words, the minister’s figure of 1,200 beds to be cut is a sham. Hospitals are going to have to cut more and the patients, people who are sick, are going to be the victims.

Mr. Foulds: Scandalous.

Mr. Cassidy: In Brantford, the supposed autonomy and responsibility of hospitals in responding to the Ministry of Health has been revealed as a total shambles. Without even allowing community consultation, a select group from the local health council has delivered an edict with the approval of Queen’s Park that St. Joseph’s Hospital should become a chronic care facility. That entire community is up in arms because of the way this decision is being forced upon them, rammed down their throats.

These cuts threaten to close hospitals in many smaller communities and that is where the damage is going to be the greatest. Small hospitals have fewer special programs and equipment to be cut back, and because they need a minimum number of staff to carry out many duties these hospitals cannot be cut at the rate the minister decrees without going under.

I want to read a letter which came to my office this week from Dr. R. E. Laine, a physician in Geraldton in northern Ontario. I don’t know this gentleman, but Dr. Laine outlined what will happen in the Geraldton hospital over the next three years as the number of beds will be cut from 45 to 20. The story is so vivid that I want to quote his entire letter.

“You may know,” he writes, “that this hospital is central to a number of relatively isolated communities, including Beardmore, Jellicoe, Longlac with two Indian reserves, Caramat, Nakina, Aroland and Indian settlements further north like Ogoki Post. Approximately 10,000 people, augmented by a transient and tourist population, are served. An active woods industry utilizes the hospital for acute trauma and physiotherapy. These factors assume some importance if you appreciate that the nearest medical referral centre is Thunder Bay, a distance of some 300 kilometres by road.”

That’s not universal access if you have to go that far, Mr. Speaker.

“Geraldton District Hospital is the only medical facility in a very vast area and it provides very basic medical services, no frills. There aren’t any duplicated services. One can’t close down a nursing floor of the hospital because there is only one. One can’t fire an x-ray technician because there is only one. Statistical manipulations and criteria used to justify reductions in Toronto are not necessarily valid here.

“Years of community effort have transformed Geraldton District Hospital into an institution with competent medical and ancillary services peculiar to the needs of this area. Now the Ontario government proposes ‘pulling the plug’ which will result in underutilization of an established facility and which will force local residents to seek medical assistance 300 kilometres away from home, where beds are already in short supply.” In fact in Thunder Bay my colleague from Port Arthur has shown me press clippings which show the waiting list for certain hospitals has as many as 1,000 patients.

Mr. Warner: Do you support the cuts up north, Leo? Do you support the cuts in Geraldton? Good idea, are they?

Mr. Cassidy: Dr. Laine is afraid that his hospital will be “reduced to the status of a first-aid post.”

Mr. Warner: They’ll run the ministers out of the north.

Mr. Cassidy: What is happening in Geraldton is happening across the north. The Minister of Health has tried to soften the blow for small hospitals this year by allowing them to keep up to 10 beds more than would otherwise be allowed under his rigid guidelines.

But that just postpones the reckoning. We believe that those hospital beds should not be cut back until the minister can tell us how the quality of the health care system in northern Ontario will not only be maintained, but improved.

We believe these hospital beds should not be cut back until alternative services are in place and the evidence that I had in travelling across northern Ontario, even in communities as well developed as Sudbury, is that their standard of services consistently falls below what is available in the south.

There are nine hospitals throughout the north that will not get a nickel more in budget this year. Once this year’s 10-bed cushion is taken away, the hospital in Fort Frances is going to face a 29 per cent cut in beds. The cut is to be 32 per cent in Red Lake, 54 per cent in Manitouwadge, 33 per cent in Nipigon, 25 per cent in Blind River, 53 per cent in the Hornepayne Community Hospital, 38 per cent in the Little Current hospital, 35 per cent in Englehart, 49 per cent in the Mattawa General Hospital, 63 per cent in St. Joseph’s Hospital in Parry Sound, and as much as 85 per cent of the beds will be cut in the hospital in Chapleau. That’s the government’s commitment to health in northern Ontario.

Mr. Martel: When the minister flies in next week he might check some of that.

Mr. Warner: Leo supports the cut. You do support the cut? How could you? Shame.

Mr. Cassidy: The same kinds of cuts are now being imposed on southwestern Ontario. One third or more of the beds are at risk in the hospitals in Clinton, in Listowel, in Seaforth, in St. Mary’s, in Newbury, in Durham -- where the member for Muskoka (Mr. F.S. Miller) already tried to close the hospital -- in Chesley, in Hanover, in Walkerton and in Shelburne. In Palmerston they could lose 23 out of their 37 beds, according to the standards now decreed by the ministry. I have not even mentioned the threat that the entire 65-bed hospital in Penetanguishene may be compelled to close because of the minister’s cutbacks.

In God’s name, Mr. Speaker, what is going to happen to those communities when their hospitals are cut back like that? What will happen to the nurses and the other skilled professionals who will no longer have jobs in those communities? Why does the Minister of Health think he can impose the same arbitrary standards on Goderich as on Toronto, on Geraldton as on Sault Ste. Marie?

I say, we say, the minister must be flexible enough to make allowances for the nature of the communities that these hospitals serve. The minister has an obligation to ensure that small communities in the north, small communities in the south, every city and town in all of this province and not just our major cities, can and will have a decent standard of hospital care.

Let me raise just one more specific case. The decision to close the entire Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital makes absolutely no sense at all, and that is why I am wearing my button today. The consultants who were hired for $116,000 by the Ministry of Health, McKinsey and Company, recommended that the Lakeshore hospital be fully renovated or rebuilt. They did so because -- the minister doesn’t understand that -- the Queen Street Mental Health Centre cannot take care of Lakeshore’s patients and because the expanding population of the area west of Toronto will make a new hospital essential in five to seven years if Lakeshore is closed. It doesn’t make sense to “save,” so-called, $22 million today if we are going to have to spend $100 million on a new hospital just five or seven years down the line.

The community is totally opposed to the closing of the hospital. The workers have been looking for alternatives. Why is the minister so inflexible that he must bring this hospital to the ground rather than looking at alternatives that have already been proposed?

On Tuesday, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union challenged the minister to a full inquiry into the rationale for the closing and the alternatives. We in the New Democratic Party demand that such an inquiry be held at once and we are confident that it will show that Lakeshore should not be closed.

If the minister is so confident of his ground he will agree. But his refusal to have such an inquiry shows that he is on shaky ground because he bows what the inquiry would show: it would show that Lakeshore hospital should be kept in operation providing vital services, not just to one community but to more than a million people in North York, in Halton, in Peel, in Etobicoke, and in the counties to the west of Toronto.

Finally, I wish to comment on the outrageous proposals by the ministry to charge a deterrent fee for chronic care. The Provincial Secretary for Social Development (Mrs. Birch) recently said Ontario is considering even wider use of deterrent fees such as the payments that will soon be required from chronic care patients. We’re glad to hear the Minister of Health has withdrawn his proposal to charge deterrent fees for psychiatric patients. But it makes no more sense, in our view, to impose deterrent fees on people who are chronically ill than to impose them on people in psychiatric beds.

Chronic patients are being forced to remain in active treatment hospital beds in Ontario because of the failure of this government to provide enough beds in nursing homes, homes for the aged, and to provide alternatives such as chronic home care. There are still only seven chronic home care pro- grams in the 49 counties and districts of Ontario. How can the minister say that those patients should go home and wait for chronic treatment at home when in 42 of the districts and counties of the province, there is no such service yet available?

All members of last year’s select committee, including the Conservative members, warned that deterrent charges would inhibit legitimate use of the health care system. The committee noted that when deterrent fees were tried in Saskatchewan under a Liberal government, it was poor people who stopped going to doctors.

The Ontario Nurses’ Association has not been so gentle. It says the proposal to make chronic care patients pay is despicable and irresponsible and proves the complete failure of this government to design and operate an efficient health care system in this province.

When I began talking about health I took the liberty of trying to take the words of the throne speech at face value.

Mr. Watson: Want us to run up the Union Jack?

Ms. Gigantes: They know what they’re talking about.

Mr. Cassidy: I want to repeat those words from the throne speech: “The social value of Ontario’s health care program is too great to allow any diminution in the quality or quantity of such significant social advances.”

Everybody in the New Democratic Party agrees with that sentiment. We believe we should not diminish the quality or quantity of the health care system. The reason we are so outraged is that whether one looks at doctors leaving OHIP, whether one looks at the minister’s failure to uphold the universality of our medicare system, whether one looks at what’s happening to our hospitals in the south or to communities in the north whose health services are being devastated, whether one looks at the Lakeshore situation or whether one looks at what’s being done to chronic care patients, the picture is the same. The Conservatives are hypocrites when they mouth those noble words -- that they want to preserve the quality or quantity of the health care system.

I want to turn now to the economy and to suggest the cornerstone of social policy in the province should be a policy of full employment. A situation where unemployment is running at more than six per cent among men, at more than eight per cent among women, and at 13 per cent among workers under 25 is absolutely intolerable. The cost of unemployment to all of us is not just a human cost to people who feel that somehow they have failed society when it is society that has failed them, but is also the sheer economic cost of billions of dollars of lost production and of enormous sums in tax revenues which would help keep this province on the rails and help ensure the viability of the social services of Ontario.

[4:45]

Last month the NDP caucus spent two days meeting with the people of Sudbury and looking at its economic prospects as well as its continuing needs in the area of social services. We found a community suffering from high unemployment, from cutbacks in social services, from the export of capital and not just from the prolonged labour dispute at Inco. We found a community suffering as well from yet another closure by a profitable multinational mining company, National Steel, in the town of Capreol. And we had the case put to us by Sudbury residents who see their community going the path of so many one-industry towns of northern Ontario. Either Ontario peddles our resources and we integrate ourselves further into the American economy, or we start now to shake ourselves free of our dependence on multinational corporations.

Sudbury is crying out for secondary industry that is based on its resources. Even a community as large as Sudbury will be threatened with extinction unless we make the right decisions to build its economy and to build its future. In its way, Sudbury is a microcosm of our province. To the people in New York, to the financiers in London and Dusseldorf, this whole province is like a one-industry town. When the industry dries up -- that is, when our resources dry up -- as far as they are concerned we will suffer the same fate that might now face Sudbury and is now facing the town of Atikokan in northwestern Ontario. Ontario is also threatened with industrial disaster unless we make the right decisions.

But those decisions require political will and we see no evidence that the Conservatives have the political will to plan for this province’s future. Despite the promises of the throne speech, we are still waiting on the government for a commitment to create jobs now for the people who are unemployed in this province. Last year I proposed specific plans to create 45,000 jobs in the province through government action. We will be looking to the government’s budget this year to see whether, having failed last year to create more than 142 jobs, they are prepared this year to come up to the challenge and create jobs now.

Not only that, but Ontario needs an industrial strategy. It needs to adopt long-term strategies to build our industry and to reverse the tide of deindustrialization. In its submission last year to the federal government on the effects of the GATT negotiations, the Ontario government itself admitted the erosion of the technological strength of our manufacturing sector. The government admitted the desperate immaturity of our research and development, particularly in industry. And it finally admitted what we have been saying for a long time: that government must play a positive role in the restructuring of our industry in Ontario.

But it’s one thing to admit that problems exist and another thing to resolve them. So far as the economy goes, the people of Ontario deserve a great deal more.

There is still a great deal to learn about the employment development fund proposal in the throne speech, but so far it raises far more questions than it answers.

The state of our industry today provides ample evidence that the old system of corporate handouts wasn’t working, so now the government is taking a new tack. The first step was that outrageous interest-free loan of $300 million to Rio Algom and Denison mines last year, two companies that had just signed a uranium contract. It was like having $2 billion in the bank. Once that precedent was set, Ontario then lavished $28 million on the Ford Motor Company whose worldwide profits in 1978 were $1.8 billion. This January it was the pulp and paper industry’s turn. With their profits up 94 per cent last year, they got $100 million from the Treasurer. The contrast between this generosity for corporations and the cutbacks in social services says everything about this government’s priorities.

New Democrats say that public money should only be invested in the context of a long-term industrial strategy; in other words under the economic planning that we have been calling for year after year after year, in this Legislature, across Ontario and in the federal parliament.

Ms. Gigantes: Use your common sense.

Mr. Cassidy: There must be priority to job guarantees, to research commitments by industry and to the training of Canadian workers. Canadian industry should have priority in any incentive scheme, and so should small business. If there are times when government should act like a business, Mr. Speaker, that time is surely when the taxpayers of Ontario are being asked to use hard-earned tax dollars to pour into private corporations. The only equitable way to handle these kinds of incentives is for the people of the province of Ontario to get shares or equity in return for their grants to industry.

Surely it’s obvious that one ad hoc scheme of incentives, with $200 million a year, does not amount to an industrial strategy. To achieve full employment and break the shackles of dependence that tie this economy to foreign multinationals requires an act, a will and a planning such as Ontario has never seen in peace time. It also requires a sense of responsibility and determination for our future and our resources which I despair of seeing from a Conservative government. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have had the courage to plan this economy when it meant standing up to corporate power.

I want to outline the way the New Democrats believe that our industry can be planned and that we can build a strong industrial base for the province of Ontario.

First, the keystone of Ontario’s economy from now to the end of the century has got to be the development of manufacturing. We have an enormous amount of ground to catch up in research and development, in training skilled manpower, in curbing the abuse of foreign control and in winning back those Canadian markets which have been neglected, or in some cases never even exploited, by Canadian companies.

There is so much we can do in a province which has the natural resources and the human talents of Ontario. It’s a challenge which many people are prepared to rise to if the leadership were only shown to them by the government; but as its performance shows this week in response to the threatened loss of 700 jobs at Westinghouse in Hamilton, this government has no leadership to offer.

Alongside manufacturing, and this is my second point, we must make our resources into a tool for economic development and that will not occur as long as they are controlled by irresponsible multinational corporations. This government didn’t care when International Nickel exported $250 million of profit earned in Canada to buy manufacturing subsidiaries in the United States and Europe, or when Inco got Canadian funding to pour more than a billion dollars into new nickel mines in Guatemala and Indonesia that would compete with our Canadian workers.

We believe that the secondary manufacturing that flows from the resources of northern Ontario and that supplies the resource industry of the north should be carried out in this province rather than being carried out abroad. That’s why we keep saying that the resources of this province belong to the people of Ontario and must be developed in the public sector rather than being squandered under private ownership. They’re our resources and we want them back.

Mr. Martel: We’ll run them here instead of in New York. Remember our friends during the elections, “You don’t want the bureaucrats in Toronto running it. We want them in New York running it.”

Mr. Cassidy: I say now, Mr. Speaker, to the two ministers remaining in the House, my third point is this: Steel, the most successful single industry in this province, has maintained its position and has developed export markets because it made sure it secured the home market first. We must apply that lesson to every industry in this province.

I have said for two years that there was an enormous opportunity in replacing the $20 billion of foreign-manufactured goods which were sold into Ontario every year, there was work for Canadians if we could win back those markets; but there was disaster ahead if you considered that between 1966 and 1976 the proportion of the Canadian market served by imported high-technology manufactured goods rose from a third to a half of our market. This trend is still against us.

How do you give the home market priority, Mr. Speaker? You give it priority by planning for those sectors that are now heavily invaded by imports but which any credible industrial country ought to command, such as machinery and electrical products. You give the home market priority by identifying industries where we ought to establish a presence and by finding companies to do the job, or even by entering into partnership with Canadian firms to get these needs met. You give the home market priority by accelerating the Buy Canadian program -- which is still lumbering to a start; by insisting on the labelling of Canadian content; and by providing assistance for market development within Canada as well as abroad. You give the home market priority by planning for the future of our industry, rather than leaving that planning to the industrial sector to decide whatever it is they wish to give the province of Ontario.

Fourth, this province needs to make a commitment to small business, and to Canadian- owned business, such as we have never seen before. Over the past decade, small business has been creating jobs in manufacturing while big corporations have actually shown an overall job loss. The figures are dramatic. Small business in manufacturing has created more than 300,000 jobs in a decade, while big corporations have destroyed 125,000 jobs or more in that same period.

We should be looking for the winners in the small business sector. Our industrial strategy must recognize the crucial role of smaller firms. It must provide for adequate financing and for management advice; it must recognize that small firms are often the most innovative in research; it must ensure that they have access to those crucial orders for parts and components from large corporations and for business from government, which together are often the difference between their merely surviving and their turning into a success.

Fifth, the record of research and development in Canadian industry can only be described as depressing. Even the most recent efforts to bribe industry into doing more research are falling far short of their targets. The federal government has now set a target to have industry spend one and a half per cent of the gross national budget on research by 1983. Ontario has endorsed that objective. But when you look at how we are doing, we are falling so far short of that target it is to despair.

To take just one example: Our automobile manufacturers are sending an estimated $230 million dollars a year to Detroit for research and development to be carried out in the United States, with all the spinoff that entails in jobs and technology in the US. Here in Canada, despite all the supposed benefits of the auto pact, they are spending only $12 million dollars a year on research. No policy of incentives, on its own, will be enough to change that outrageous kind of behaviour.

It is time, we believe, to insist that a certain proportion of every sales dollar earned by corporations in this province be ploughed back into research and development. It is time to insist, if larger companies will not comply with that rule, that they be required to contribute to an industry-wide research fund to be directed in conjunction with government.

We have skills and know-how in abundance in Ontario, but we have failed to match our human resources to our industrial needs, because that has not been a priority, either for industry or for the government. If industry will not volunteer to do the research, then I suggest it is about time we made industry do the research which is crucial to the future of our economy in Ontario.

Sixth, the record in research is matched by our failure to train the skilled workers that Ontario needs. That failure is scandalously unfair to Canadians who have a right to expect that their sons and daughters can find their way into skilled opportunities. But it is also such a handicap for our economy that even with eight per cent of the work force unemployed, we are today finding firms that have had to hold back or cut back on production because they cannot get enough skilled manpower.

Recent studies have indicated that 70 per cent or more of our skilled workers were trained outside Canada. They also indicated that our skilled work force is ageing so rapidly that the situation we face in the 1980s will be disastrous unless we start to train skilled workers now. I want to suggest that Ontario stop its cap-in-hand approach to industries which have proved they are not prepared on their own to take on the responsibility of training for skills.

We think apprenticeship and training should be a three-way partnership. The worker studies hard; he gives up time; and he or she forgoes income in order to learn a skill. The government provides facilities and training and, through the federal manpower authority, assistance with trainees’ living costs. The corporations of this province should also be partners in the essential job of training Ontarians for the skills we need in the future. Those corporations not prepared to bear their share by accepting apprentices and trainees should be required to contribute to those companies and corporations that will make such a contribution.

[5:00]

Finally, we need a very strong and very deliberate campaign to make foreign-owned companies act in the best interests of Canadians and over the long run to reduce the degree of foreign ownership in our economy. To talk of an industrial strategy that ignores the fact that 60 per cent of our manufacturing is foreign-owned is like talking about animal life without once mentioning the fact that there is an elephant sitting in the middle of the drawing-room.

This winter I toured the very efficient CGE plant in Guelph, which makes heavy electrical equipment and transformers. It is a world-scale plant that exports around the world with but one exception. Management told me there were very clear orders from CGE not to seek business in the United States for the transformers and other equipment that are commonly used by utilities down there. That business, of course, is being left to the American parent company.

We need to come to grips with that kind of behaviour. What we need goes far beyond anyone’s code of conduct. This is not a gentleman’s game. New Democrats would require a share of corporate funds generated in Ontario to be reinvested in creating jobs in Canada. I’ll repeat that. New Democrats would require that corporations which generate profits in Ontario should reinvest a share of those profits in creating jobs in Canada.

We would insist that subsidiaries in Ontario break free of the export restraints that now exist and actively seek export markets in places like the United States. To ensure that Canada gets the maximum benefit from subsidiaries operating here, New Democrats would require every multinational to negotiate an economic development agreement that would spell out the timetable for putting our goals, the goals of Ontario, into effect.

The task before us in the area of industrial strategy is basically political. We must develop the political will to win back control of our economy. We have got to change the priorities of government so that we can build a self-reliant economy on the basis of our human and natural resources. That too is a challenge to which many Canadians can and will respond.

Before leaving the subject of the economy, I want to express my party’s grave concern at the pitiful excuse for an energy policy that was put forward by the government in the throne speech. Through both the throne speech and a carefully executed series of addresses by senior ministers, the government has effectively told Ontario Hydro to go full steam ahead with its nuclear electric expansion program. It has dismissed as prophets’ of doom those sane voices that have questioned this irresponsible approach.

We’re not talking about pennies a day, as the Treasurer has blithely suggested. On Hydro’s own figures, we are talking about overcapacity which last year cost about $12 for every man, woman and child in Ontario. Our own calculations suggest that if Hydro played the figures straight, it would be more like $40 for every man, woman and child in Ontario that we are overspending because of Hydro. This cost to the citizens of Ontario will be many times higher in a few years if Hydro keeps building new generating stations.

We are talking about the wasteful expenditure of billions of dollars that have been borrowed on the credit of the province. We’re talking about Ontario Hydro’s grossly inadequate forecasting methods, methods which could lead to the needless expenditure of additional billions of dollars. Just to give one example, the planned Darlington nuclear generating station alone will cost more than $5 billion and that is considerably more than the cost of Canada’s latest fleet of new jet fighter planes. That’s two and a half times what it would cost to acquire every share in Inco for the people of Ontario. We are seeing an enormous loss of opportunity to develop our economy because the investment capital that might be raised by Ontario to implement an intelligent industrial strategy is going to Hydro instead.

Ontario Hydro suggests itself in a submission to the Porter Commission on Electric Power Planning that it might have to have access to general tax revenues if its continued overbuilding means a shortfall in capital. Surely we don’t need any more proof of the destructive effects of overbuilding the Ontario Hydro generating system.

The government’s argument that the $3.5 billion worth of excess capacity that is now built into the system is just a nice little cushion, or that it can be justified on the grounds that electricity can substitute for natural gas or for expensive imported oil, is nonsense.

The technological and economic obstacles to such substitution are overwhelming. The Ministry of Energy’s own projections show very clearly that, even with a determined effort to substitute electricity for oil and natural gas, and in the face of rapidly increasing fossil fuel prices, the growth in electricity demand over the rest of the century would not even come near the growth that is projected by Ontario Hydro.

On the other hand, a strong program of energy conservation could effectively, and immediately, reduce Ontario’s dependence on oil and gas far faster than any conceivable substitution of electricity.

It is about time that we had an energy policy in which Ontario decided at what rate energy demand needs to grow and then took the policy steps that are required to see those goals achieved, rather than just planning on the basis of Hydro’s inaccurate forecasts and regardless of cost. Such an energy policy would take full account of the potential for renewable energy sources that the Ministry of Energy has obstinately ignored. Such a policy would acknowledge the potential of energy conservation as an untapped source of inexpensive energy.

Surely there is something drastically wrong with a set of priorities which saw the government spend only $5.4 million on conservation last year and only $2.5 million on renewable energy sources at the same time that it guaranteed Hydro’s borrowing -- on the credit of all of us in Ontario -- to the tune of $1.8 billion in 1978 alone.

Surely we must take account of the mounting evidence that even the long-term primary energy growth rate of 2.3 per cent a year, which is projected by the Ministry of Energy, far exceeds the amount of energy that Ontarians really need to maintain and improve their standard of living.

If we would just go back to the amount of oil, electricity and natural gas that we consumed on a per capita basis 10 years ago in this province, that would be a 25 or 30 per cent cut in energy demands almost overnight. I do not think anybody could maintain that we were somehow starving or freezing in the dark 10 years ago because of our level of energy consumption at that time.

Ontario now depends on sources outside the province for 80 per cent of its energy needs. Starting immediately, we believe Ontario must adopt a policy of becoming more and more self-sustaining in meeting our energy needs. But the direction that is taken cannot be one of building more and more ruinously expensive nuclear generating stations. It is already clear that solar energy and other renewable energy sources are cost-competitive with nuclear power for most uses when one looks at all the costs of nuclear electricity, and study after study is showing that, dollar for dollar, energy conservation is a many times better investment.

The government has known this for many years but it has ignored its own best advice. In 1972, the government’s advisory committee on energy observed that “much of our attention has been centred on supply but there is an equally effective approach to the matter of energy, and that is to improve the efficiency with which energy is applied and to promote the ‘conservation of its’ use.” That came before 1973, before the sheikhs of Arabia and of Alberta had exacted their toll.

In 1976, the all-party select committee on Ontario Hydro recommended a wide range of programs for residential, industrial and commercial energy conservation. The government implemented almost none of those recommendations.

In 1977, the Ministry of Energy’s document on Ontario’s energy future concluded: “Investments and measures to increase efficiency and reduce energy demands are likely to be more productive over the long run than the supply investments that are displaced.” To quote just one more of that document’s conclusions: “The acceleration of planning and the related investments and incentives that will advance the transition to renewable energy sources must be considered to be very urgent.” That is what the Minister of Energy says, but that is not what the Minister of Energy does.

We can only applaud the analysis, but at the same time we condemn the government in the strongest possible terms for its total failure to design an energy policy on this urgent basis. Let me make some specific proposals.

Mr. Breithaupt: For the few Tories who are there.

Mr. Cassidy: First, as part of an overall review of Ontario’s energy future the government must make a clear commitment to reducing Ontario Hydro’s rate of system expansion sharply, based on realistic assessments of future energy needs. The assessment of energy requirements must take into account the need to reduce primary energy demand to a sustainable rate of growth. This is clearly feasible without any cost to Ontarians in terms of their comfort, their convenience, their standard of living, or of their jobs.

Second, the government must make a commitment that the capital that is made available for other purposes by this policy will be used to implement a serious industrial strategy for the province of Ontario. As part of that strategy it must guarantee the creation of at least as many jobs in construction and in industry as would have resulted from Hydro’s continued expansion.

Third, as part of its energy expansion program the government must begin a major initiative to reinsulate every home in Ontario to the best practicable standard over the next 10 years. The results of a study by Dr. David Brooks for the Economic Council of Canada show that this measure alone, at a cost of $1,300 per house, would quickly create 8,000 jobs in our province and that it is cost- effective now. The program would involve a combination of loans to consumers at the same interest rates that Hydro now enjoys, of incentive grants and the provision of information and technical assistance.

Ms. Gigantes: Recycling money.

Mr. Cassidy: It would lower consumers’ heating bills, it would rapidly lower our dependence on imported oil and on natural gas, and it would be a far better investment in terms of energy per dollar investment than another nuclear generating station.

This should be part of a broad-ranging conservation initiative that will include programs like energy efficiency standards for all new homes and commercial buildings and financial incentives for energy conservation in the commercial sector. We need a capital pool which could be available to industry for energy-saving projects. We need rapidly expanding industrial co-generation as a source of electricity. The policy should include improved load management by Ontario Hydro to reduce the disparity between average and peak demand.

All these five programs were recommended by the 1976 report of the select committee on Ontario Hydro. Not one has been implemented, because the priorities of this government are upside down.

It’s time, as well, to get serious about alternative sources of energy. Ontario was prepared: to invest $100 million in Syncrude. We should be prepared to make the same kind of commitment to projects like a pilot methanol plant to use wood waste that cannot be utilized by the forest industry. Ontario should make the rapid spread of solar heating for both new and existing structures the highest priority.

This is particularly true in view of recent studies for Energy, Mines and Resources Canada, which identified in the rapid implementation of solar energy use a tremendous job-creating potential in construction, in design and in manufacturing. The study concluded that if solar heating makes sense on the grounds of energy supply it makes even more sense as part of a full employment strategy for Canada and for its regions, including Ontario.

There’s nothing in the least bit new or radical or surprising in all of this. What is surprising is simply that the government has systematically ignored the realities of energy supply and demand for the future. It has systematically ignored its own advisers and its own pronouncements. It’s been a captive of the folk down at Ontario Hydro.

The throne speech is just the latest example of this total unwillingness to get serious about energy policy. Except for a single-minded determination to let Ontario Hydro go its own way, this government just doesn’t have an energy policy, and Ontario needs one desperately.

What troubles me most of all about the present government is that sense of defeatism, that sense of failure, which is coming through from so many quarters. One after another we’ve had ministers making speeches which tell us that we must pay more and get less. What effrontery. Of course, the people who will get hurt will be the working people of Ontario, and we reject that kind of strategy from the government. This is still a rich province.

Mr. Grande: The Titanic hitting the iceberg.

[5:15]

Mr. Cassidy: Our gross provincial product per capita was worth about $10,059 per annum back in 1977 and that is more than Sweden, it’s more than West Germany and it’s more than the United States. We can’t afford things in this province? That’s bunkum. We have enormous natural resources and enormously talented human resources. Our population is as large as most nations in the world and we’re located in the midst of the most affluent continent in the world.

The New Democratic Party believes that if Ontario only had the political will, we have the resources, we have the imagination, we have the creativity to control our future and to create a decent life for every citizen of this province. Our goal should be nothing less.

We must maintain and enhance our universal health care and all those other public services which play such an important role in creating the quality of life in Ontario, and we can do it. We must maintain and enhance the manufacturing industry which is the cornerstone of our economic strength and, therefore, of our ability to maintain a good life, and we can do that too.

We, in this Legislature, have a responsibility not just to meet today’s needs but to provide for tomorrow’s needs as well. We must ensure that there will be farm land enough to feed the people of this province in the 21st century and we can do that. We must ensure that our forests will be maintained as the base of the north’s economy in the next century, and we can do that. We must ensure that our mining resources are used prudently to create the strongest possible industrial base, and we can do that. We must put in place an energy policy which allows this province to look after more and more of its own needs without bankrupting ourselves in the process. All this we can do if only we have the political will, which the Conservative government of this province so obviously lacks.

It’s time we moved towards more self-reliance in the way we run this province and that we set priorities that are designed to benefit the working people of Ontario and not just the corporations. We need to regain a sense of direction in Ontario, a sense of control over our lives, over our economy and over our province, and that will only happen when the rule of the Conservative Party in Ontario is brought to an end. For that reason, I wish to move an amendment to the motion.

Mr. Riddell: Get your running shoes on.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Cassidy moves that the motion for an address in reply to the speech of the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor now before the House be amended by adding thereto the following words:

“That this House deplores the government’s policy of damaging cutbacks in services to people and its failure to manage adequately Ontario’s economy and, in particular, regrets the government’s failure to maintain a universal and accessible health care system in Ontario as exemplified by the severe cutbacks in active treatment hospital beds and the failure to deal with the problems of doctors opting out of OHIP; its failure to use the power of government to make multinational corporations in this province act in the best interest of Canadians; its failure to create job opportunities and to build a healthy industrial base that will make Ontario’s economy self-reliant; its failure to protect consumers against unjustified increases in food prices; its failure to put into place a balanced energy strategy reflecting Ontario’s need for conservation and for energy sources additional to electricity and imported fuels; and that for all of these reasons this government no longer has the confidence of this House.”

Mr. Laughren: Put the question.

Mr. Cassidy: Question.

On motion by Hon. Mr. Norton, the debate was adjourned.

On motion by Hon. Mr. Norton, the House adjourned at 5:21 p.m.