The House resumed at 8 p.m.

LOCAL SERVICES BOARDS ACT

Hon. Mr. Bernier moved second reading of Bill 122, An Act to provide for the Establishment of Local Services Boards.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I rise on second reading of Bill 122, the Local Services Boards Act. Since it was tabled last June, this bill has been distributed across northern Ontario, and I am pleased to report it has been very favourably received. No doubt this welcome reflects the widespread discussion of the local services boards idea early last spring, when my staff held meetings in over 80 small communities prior to drafting the legislation.

When I originally tabled the bill, I knew that it marked an important step for residents of unorganized communities in northern Ontario. I would also stress that it is an important initiative for the provincial government. This legislation offers the option of a formal legal status to communities that are too small or too isolated to become municipalities and which enjoy a level of basic services that most of us in the larger centres or in the south have to take for granted.

Tonight I intend to introduce one minor amendment, if possible, the effect of which is to ensure that the present provincial land tax collection is undisturbed where a local service board chooses to piggyback on the provincial land tax as a way of raising local revenues.

As members are aware, there are three key features to this bill. First, it addresses basic service needs. Residents of the unorganized north have emphasized that their local needs are simple yet fundamental to security and the quality of life -- fire protection, water supplies, sewage disposal, street lighting, garbage collecting and recreation. This legislation would permit the residents and property owners of a northern community to initiate the establishment of a corporate board with powers to provide these services on its own or by contract and to recover some of the costs.

A word on the need for recreation. Many communities have indicated that recreation is a high priority. We expect that some of them wish to enter new areas such as the provision of television and radio entertainment to their local residents. We are prepared to consider such an undertaking by a local services board, subject, of course, to the usual licensing requirements of the CRTC.

Mr. Wildman: Does that include satellite?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, certainly. If they can get the proper licensing from the federal authorities there’s no problem.

This bill does not contain provisions for regulatory powers such as planning, licensing, or policing, nor for responsibilities in social and health fields. Nonetheless, we feel that local services boards can and should serve in advisory and consultative capacities with various ministries and agencies of government. On matters such as planning and development and on local health care, there may well be a role for the board as a representative or contact point for the community.

Local roads will continue to be the responsibility of a local roads board or the statute labour board. This system has been in place for a considerable number of years. It is working well and there seems to be little reason for disturbing it. The boundaries of local services boards would, not in any case, be the same since the emphasis here is on a smaller community and its needs.

The second key aspect of the bill is that it’s permissive legislation, which means it merely puts a mechanism in place. The community will still have to decide whether opting for a services board is to its advantage. Strengthening the self-help spirit that already prevails in many communities and encouraging local initiative is the main objective of this bill.

Third, this is not a proposal from municipal government. A local services board is intended to be a much simpler organizational and funding vehicle. A community that chooses this right will still be unorganized in the legal sense.

In my view, this bill responds to the unique and varied circumstances of unorganized communities. It was developed over many months in consultation with the Unorganized Communities Association of Northern Ontario and with individual residents of unorganized communities. In essence, the people who will be affected by this legislation helped to design it.

The local services board is a simple and straightforward arrangement that provides considerable local choice. A community can decide whether to opt in, which of the services it wishes to provide, how it will provide them, and the method of covering the local share of the cost. To preserve this flexibility, various details on operational matters will be handled through ministerial order and ministerial guidelines; the actual legislation will deal only with the basic policy principles. This is a pragmatic approach and one that can be reviewed in a year or two when we have had some practical experience with local services boards.

One matter not discussed is conflict of interest. This is a conscientious exclusion which recognizes the fact that in small communities --

Mr. Swart: Unconscientious.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I think the local people can decide that; that’s just what I’m going to say here in a minute.

It recognizes the fact that in many small communities where a local services board might be established the people most likely to serve as board members will be the people who have taken the initiative in business and in volunteer activities in that community. It is almost inevitable that a board will meet its needs by buying services from local businesses. As well, in a company community a board may be contracting with a company for certain services even though the board members themselves are employees of that company.

In light of the small scale operation of the board and the intended close participation of the community in its decision-making, it seems unreasonable to impose a need for judicial approval, or the approval of some other body or the ministry over the decision of the board.

For now, we have chosen to let the board deal with the conflicts under its own procedural bylaw, and only in exceptional circumstances where a board is not handling its affairs properly -- and I hope there won’t be any -- the board can be dissolved and a new election held. Of course, if this procedure is not working, a more formal method can be determined.

I might remind you that the boards are subject to annual audit. Ultimately, though, the people of the community will provide the most effective control process.

Under the proposal, local services boards will be able to raise revenues locally in several ways: community events such as dances, socials, user fees for service or a levy under the provincial land tax assessment. They will also have access to a variety of existing government programs, including the Isolated Communities Assistance Fund of the Ministry of Northern Affairs. In addition, local services boards will be eligible for an operating subsidy calculated on a one-for-one matching grant on moneys raised locally for the board’s ongoing purposes.

I would emphasize that there will be no provincial contribution without a matching local share. For now, windfall donations -- such as bequests -- volunteer labour and gifts of materials, will not be considered eligible for a matching grant, although these contributions will, of course, continue to be important to a board’s activities.

Judging whether these funding arrangements are adequate will be easier once we have some working local services boards to study. As yet, we can only guess how many communities will opt for local services boards and what levels of service they will want to provide.

To conclude, Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Unorganized Communities Association of Northern Ontario. We have the directors from the northeast and the northwest in the gallery this evening: Jerry Violette from Gogama and Kathy Davis from Hurkett. As I said in my early remarks, they were part of the process in pulling this legislation this far; it was their input.

I think I can say it was following Bill 102 several years ago that the unorganized communities association really came into being. They rallied together, and this was the first time the unorganized communities had a voice in the northeast and northwest. That organization has stayed together and, as I said, it helped us to draft this piece of legislation that is before you this evening. They have been generous with their help in developing the local services board concept and in designing this legislation.

We know the bill does not provide a solution to all the problems; but I am confident it puts in place a workable mechanism for addressing some important quality-of-life issues in the unorganized areas of northern Ontario.

Mr. Bolan: Mr. Speaker, I suppose that although this bill is entitled Bill 122, the real name of it should be “the illegitimate son of Bill 102.” The minister may remember Bill 102. That was the bill this government tried to introduce back in 1974. It fell flat on its face primarily because the government of the day then, which is the same as the government of the day today, went about its business without consulting the people of northern Ontario.

In 1974, the government did not consult the people of northern Ontario when that infamous Bill 102 was introduced, and as a result it died on the Order Paper, as well it should have done. As a result of that rather nefarious attempt to impose some form of local government on the people of northern Ontario, particularly in the unorganized communities, it is the people of northern Ontario themselves who decided to take the matter into their own hands and to go around northern Ontario to obtain ideas from the people of northern Ontario as to just what is required.

Over the past while I have spoken out, both in this House and in northern Ontario, on how insensitive this government is today, and over the past 10 years, towards some of the basic needs of the people of northern Ontario, particularly in unorganized communities. I have been doing this not with a view to obtaining any kind of sympathy for the people of the north, because they don’t want sympathy at all, but rather to try to instil in the government of the day some sense of decency and responsibility.

[8:15]

Obviously, I’ve failed. I’ve failed because with the introduction of Bill 122 in its present form, in spite of all the good input which was given to the government of the day, the government has demonstrated once again that it intends to pursue the same type of haphazard policy towards northern Ontario.

I think it’s fair to say that over the past much has been said about the problems of northern Ontario, and I certainly have no intention of repeating all of them. However, I do think that one can look at what should be the objectives of governmental policy in northern Ontario, particularly as this applies to unorganized communities.

The first objective is that the level of alienation between northern Ontario and southern Ontario must be reduced. I think the minister himself is aware there is a sense of alienation in northern Ontario. In fact, I read an article written by a Globe and Mail reporter some month and a half or two months ago which depicted the member for Kenora, (Mr. Bernier), standing beside a pot of boiling caribou if I’m not mistaken and saying things to the effect that we really don’t have too much for these people down there and they don’t understand us. This may be right.

Mr. Nixon: Is our minister saying that? He would never win in Rosedale.

Mr. Bolan: The minister should be aware that the Deibel separatist movement, under the guise of the Heritage Party, may be seen by some as --

Mr. Wildman: A Tory front.

Mr. Bolan: -- some ludicrous group of fanatics; the member mentioned that.

Mr. Nixon: It sounds right so far.

Mr. Bolan: Does he know that not too long ago, in at least two of the newspapers, which alluded to a present cabinet minister possibly joining forces with Mr. Deibel?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Is that the best you can come up with?

Mr. Bolan: Surely it is outrageous for the member for Cochrane South (Mr. Pope), who is a Minister without Portfolio, to even think for one moment of joining a separatist party?

Mr. Wildman: Do you mean the member for Treaty 9?

Mr. Bolan: Is that what it is? On that point, for the interest of the House, I raise what appeared in the newspaper at that time. It goes something like this: “There appears to be a communication problem between Alan Pope and Ed Deibel of the Northern Ontario Heritage Party. Deibel quotes Pope: ‘He likes the policy of the Heritage Party and was considering their offer to cross the floor of the Legislature.’

“Pope told him about three weeks ago that he had not forgotten the offer to join the party made two years ago, but wanted to see if he could bring about changes to help northern Ontario from within the cabinet.

“Pope said on Friday, October 5: ‘No, I never told him that. Do you know any cabinet minister who has been able to change policy in three or four months?’

“The Heritage Party is advocating more secondary industry for northern Ontario. Pope said: ‘I do not know how any politician in northern Ontario in his right mind can disagree with that, but on specifics there is disagreement and I just want to have a say where it counts.’”

Basically, what it appears to be is that this alienation, which is manifest in the creation of this new party in northern Ontario, has some support from a cabinet minister of this government, a person who is privy to confidential information and material which goes on in cabinet. I hope that is wrong.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: He just denied it.

Mr. Bolan: Does the minister know what he denied? He denied having said it takes more than three months to change cabinet. That’s basically what he denied. He did not deny the conversation, just the three month period.

Mr. Nixon: Did you get into the cabinet because you polished apples or raised the devil? Which did you do?

Mr. Bolan: In any event, as I indicated, it may seem like a ludicrous group of fanatics, however, it does point to substantial inequities that exist in the north.

Without getting into it, I think it’s only incumbent upon me to refer the House to an excellent discussion on this very point in a paper written by Donald Scott in Donald MacDonald’s book, The Politics of Ontario. I think if everybody would take time to read it they might find it quite edifying.

In any event, that’s one of the objectives which we, as members of the Legislature, owe towards the people of northern Ontario. All of this, of course we have to bear in mind, is also aimed predominantly at that vast land in northern Ontario in which the unorganized communities are situated.

Other objectives which we should look at are to increase the economic base, increase the level of service, increase the access and efficiency of governments throughout the area, improve and increase housing and reduce the cut-migration of the young, skilled and capable from the area.

These should be the minimum of our objectives.

The question now is this: How do these objectives of policy, and the problems that precede them, reflect on the municipal and community structure?

Basically, in northern Ontario, there are a few reasonably large municipalities, some medium-sized ones and a host of smaller ones. In addition to the organized municipalities, over 80 per cent of the area consists of unorganized territory. However, less than 10 per cent of the population live in the unorganized territory, frequently in clustered developments either close to a large or medium-sized municipality or many miles in the bush.

The unorganized territory really boils down to two sets of problems; those problems represented by the hamlets, and those problems represented by the largely scattered agricultural, logging or mining developments presently or previously in operation.

The hamlet problem can be adequately solved by designing a fairly tight area to an elected group which essentially has the ability to contract for its needs as it deems appropriate, and its financial base essentially to be a handing over of the land tax by the provincial government, plus an enlargement of grants.

In northeastern Ontario, communities such as Gogama, Foleyet and the area north of the Sault, would not really benefit from this legislation as they really need a more powerful form of general government, a form of government that can set priorities and allocate moneys in response to these priorities. What is needed in these areas instead of a local services board, which would not be large enough to service, is something along the lines of an improvement district. Populations in these areas are anywhere from 600 to 800 people, and a local services board would not have that type of mechanism needed to bring equal and good government to that type of area.

What about the real problem, that is the dispersed areas? In dispersed areas such as Argyle -- perhaps the minister does not know where Argyle is?

Mr. Nixon: I don’t know where Argyle is.

Mr. Eakins: It’s in Victoria county.

Mr. Bolan: Argyle is an unorganized community in the district of Parry Sound. This is going to lead me to a question later as to whether Parry Sound is in northern Ontario.

Mr. Wildman: That’s very hazy.

Mr. Bolan: The minister may recall that when we went through the estimates, back in May or June, I read to him a description of the southerly boundary of northern Ontario as given to me by his ministry. It specifically excluded what is known as Parry Sound. Have there been any changes? Is there anything which has happened, over the past few months, which would finally bring Parry Sound rightfully into the vast domain of northern Ontario?

In any event, in dispersed areas like Argyle, where there is a community but no hamlets, it is obviously too much government for them. There simply is not enough manpower to go around.

What the minister has at this time is essentially a document put together by his government which is too small for the problems of the hamlets, and which provides an additional layer of complexity for the dispersed areas. Once again, really, his government has not thought through the problems in the north and provided a reasonable recourse.

If the government is, shall we say misguided enough to pursue this single-minded response to the problems of the unorganized communities of northern Ontario, it might at least have had the decency to do it well. It didn’t do this. I suggest to the minister that what he and his fellow ministers should have done was to consider the following.

They should, in spite of what his cabinet colleague in the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) says, include the roads boards; and for several reasons. They have experience; they know about these things and they have the manpower. One of the things that one runs into in some of these dispersed areas is that there simply is not enough time or talent or manpower to staff this plethora of government agencies in the unorganized areas.

The reason the roads boards have not been included, of course, is that they work very well. The government doesn’t want to clutter them up with anything else. I think this has been made adequately clear by some of the ministry officials to whom I have spoken about this. Also, it’s a known fact that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications does not want to have the roads boards, which work very well, cluttered up with the Ministry of Northern Affairs. What they complain of right now is that they’re cluttered up enough with the Ministry of Northern Affairs without having more added to it.

That is one step which the minister should take, he should include the local roads boards under this legislation. He should simplify, and make fair, the taxation system for unorganized communities. If this bit of poor judgement --

Mr. Nixon: I wouldn’t mind if he did it for organized communities, too.

Mr. Bolan: -- were to go to the average home, the householder would pay separately, this: the education tax, one bill; the local roads board tax, another bill; the land tax piggybacked with the local service board tax -- bang, that’s what they’re going to get.

What you should do, just to simplify it, for that poor taxpayer, is to piggyback them all on the land tax bill, so that when the householder gets the bill, he sees “Land tax: so many dollars. Education tax: so many dollars. Local service board: so many dollars.” He can see there what he has to pay.

I’m quite certain that if the Minister of Revenue can accommodate your ministry, for the piggybacking of the local service board tax, it is also adequately equipped to put onto the land tax bill, the education tax as well as the roads tax.

[8:30]

The other thing the minister might want to consider is limitation of the spending of the local services boards. This should be done not according to some policy the ministry may create and vary from day to day, but it should be clearly set out; for example, it should state that no more than a certain percentage of the equalization assessment, let’s say seven or eight per cent.

The people in these unorganized communities are entitled to see exactly what they are facing. If they see they can’t go above seven or eight per cent of the equalization assessment and they know that, rather than be turned down by the Ministry of Northern Affairs, or rather than be in the very delicate position of being required to cater to the Ministry of Northern Affairs -- I don’t think anybody should be required to do that -- there should be some limit of spending which is statutory and it should not be left to the whimsical demands of some policy-maker in the ministry. It should be written in law so that everybody can see.

The bill itself certainly presents some questions. What about the unorganized townships which are not in northern Ontario? Are they going to be covered by the bill? I don’t know; there is no indication they are. Perhaps between now and the time we get into clause-by-clause the minister will have some kind of answer. Are they going to be served by the bill?

I am told there are three unorganized townships in the district of Muskoka, in the Kearney area. Clearly the minister has not included Muskoka, at least for licence-plate purposes, in northern Ontario yet.

Mr. Kerrio: We should have a minister for southern Ontario.

Mr. Bolan: We can have a minister for Muskoka. Perhaps you might want to look at that.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I think that is a good idea.

Mr. Bolan: In other words, I want some assurance from the minister and from the government that all unorganized townships, be they in or out of northern Ontario, regardless of how he defines northern Ontario, are to be included and serviced according to this bill.

In preparing the people to accept this concept of local services boards it appears the minister has misled the people. It appears his government misled the people in the unorganized communities to whom he tried to sell the concept of the bill.

In the paper which came out, at page six, he was quite explicit. The basic proposal was that Northern Affairs would match iocally raised revenues on a dollar-for-dollar basis within agreed guidelines. That was very specific. The idea of government people going out and explaining proposed legislation to the public is one fine thing. It should be done that way more often. Had this been done a long time ago perhaps much more would be in place. I agree with the way that was handled. I think it is sound. They sold this bill on the basis of one-for-one.

I attended two meetings, my assistant attended three. At all meetings this was drummed into the heads of the people: “Don’t worry about it. You put in a dollar, the government will put in a dollar.”

Again when he introduced the bill in the House on June 7, at the bottom of page 11; “Under the local services boards proposal, the province through the Ministry of Northern Affairs will also assist communities with the operating and maintenance expenses of their activities on a $1-to-$1 basis.” That is one definitely clear ministerial statement, and another one which comes out from this ministry in the form of a white paper or whatever you want to call it.

Then we get the bill. Let’s examine the one-for-one in the bill and see where it is. Payment section is under section 24. I want to read this into the record. I want all of the province of Ontario to see how the government, this ministry, deceived the people of unorganized communities in northern Ontario into thinking that for every dollar they raised and for every dollar they put up the minister himself, or the government of Ontario, was going to provide equal funding. I want to read the funding section.

“The minister shall pay” -- obligatory -- “The minister shall pay to the board . . such amounts as he considers appropriate.”

Now under what rule of law, be it in existence now or be it contemplated by him, does he consider something appropriate? What ministerial guidance does he obtain in order to arrive at what is appropriate? Nowhere does it say in this section that he is going to give one-for-one funding. Rather, what you propose to do --

Mr. Foulds: Try paragraph two.

Mr. Bolan: Well if the honourable member doesn’t understand sub two then perhaps his colleague behind him will explain it to him.

Then the minister comes out with a policy statement and he says: “Oh well, don’t worry boys, we’re going to take care of you, we’re great people. For every dollar that you raise we’ll give you a dollar too.”

Why doesn’t he incorporate his policy into law, why doesn’t he do that? Because if that is the clear intention of the government of the day, to provide one-for-one funding, then why don’t they say so? Instead, he leaves it up to some minister, whether it be the Minister of Northern Affairs today or the Minister without Portfolio (Mr. Pope) tomorrow.

Mr. Wildman: Heaven forbid.

Mr. Bolan: Leaving it up to some minister --

Mr. Swart: Either one.

Mr. Bolan: -- to decide what is appropriate.

Mr. Foulds: Leo will still be minister when both you and Alan are members of the Ontario heritage fund.

Mr. Bolan: He’ll be minister of something. Has Ed called the honourable member yet?

In any event, I think that is very inappropriate.

Mr. Wildman: That’s enough pontificating tonight.

Mr. Bolan: The minister has an opportunity in this House tonight, or sometime in the very near future, of testing his courage. He would be a very courageous minister if he were to get onto -- I’m sorry, if he were to get up; he’d be more courageous if he was to get out. However, he would be extremely courageous if he was to get up in this House and say: “This is the way it is going to be. It’s going to be one-for-one; and it’s going to be one dollar to equal the aggregate sum of moneys raised; either through bake sales or whatever, or through setting a tax rate for a certain service.”

Mr. Foulds: Twenty cents; and it will help get him enshrined in legislation.

Mr. Bolan: But why doesn’t the minister put into legislation what he preaches?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I’m working on it, my word is good.

Mr. Bolan: I would be the last one to suggest --

Mr. Foulds: I can hear, but he doesn’t hear what he has been saying.

Mr. Bolan: -- to suggest for one moment that this is pork-barrel legislation, I would never say that.

Mr. Foulds: Good, good.

Mr. Bolan: But what we must consider is not what is there but how it appears; and this has all of the appearance, and all of the semblance, of pork-barrel legislation. I am not saying that was the intention of the government, I would never say that.

Mr. Nixon: Very hard to support it.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I love that statement.

Mr. Bolan: But I am saying to the minister that is the appearance it has.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: I’ll remember that statement next year.

Mr. Bolan: It has the appearance of pork-barrel legislation. In order to clear himself, and in order to get rid of this cloak which hovers over him -- this innuendo, the shadow -- all he has to do is stand up and say, “Yes, we shall incorporate it in the act. It will be one for one.”

Mr. Wildman: Come on, we all repent.

Mr. Bolan: I have introduced an amendment -- which is clearly out of order, I know that it is out of order -- but I have introduced it because I want the people in this House, and I want the people of Ontario to know there is an alternative to what the minister proposes, and that if he were really sincere, if he were really sincere in trying to help out the unorganized communities, then he is going to phrase his legislation in such a way so that everybody who creates, or every community which creates a local services board, knows exactly what they are going to get if they raise so many dollars.

With the greatest respect to what his intentions may be -- and his intentions are honourable, of course they are -- but with the greatest respect to his honourable intentions, it still must be made plain to the people exactly what they are facing. This way they don’t know what they are facing.

And then if the minister wants to get into subsection 2 of that section, that is even worse. What it says is this: “The minister may pay” -- may. Again according to how he sees things.

Surely that is not the intention of this supposedly great government of Ontario, certainly that is not the intention at all; to introduce this kind of legislation for all of the province of Ontario to see and to point the finger at the government and to say, “What’s going on here?”

Can the minister name me any other act passed by this House which has ministerial discretion and ministerial power like that? Where a minister actually has the power to go to every unorganized community in the province of Ontario and say to them, “Look, I don’t like what you are doing. You are only going to get 50 cents on the dollar”; or to go to the other one -- we won’t mention what party he may belong to -- or to go to the other one and to say, “Buddy, you are doing a great job. Here is $1.50 per dollar”?

Surely that is not fair and that is not reasonable, and certainly it is something which should not be expected to come from this government.

Mr. Kerrio: They do that in South America.

Mr. Bolan: Because this government prides itself on the fact that it treats all of the people of Ontario, equally.

Mr. Mancini: Not true.

Mr. Bolan: I am saying to the minister right now, that unless he amends that section to make it mandatory to pay equal funding, and unless it is very clear and explicit for everybody to see, the perception which is left in the people’s minds, the perception which is left in the minds of the people of the unorganized communities, is that they don’t know where they stand.

There is enough ministerial discretion right now and here to do just about whatever the minister wants to do. Just look at section 4. Again, “Where the minister receives the recommendations made under section 3, the minister may, by order ,..” He may, by order. What does he take into consideration then? There is no right of appeal or anything like that.

The minister is like a feudal baron, really. For a person to have all of this power -- he really is like one of these feudal barons who has power to tax and power to distribute the money as he sees fit. It doesn’t matter to whom, he is the one who will determine the priorities, and who has the power to determine whether or not a particular board should be entitled to form some form of government for its people.

I say that the powers the minister has under this act are wide enough without really usurping it any further by the wording which he has in section 24. What I propose in my amendment -- and I will be the first to admit I know that it is out of order, because I know we are dealing with the money issue, but why not two-for-one?

Mr. Mancini: Too much money.

Mr. Bolan: Oh, come on. The roads boys have it two-for-one. What’s wrong? The government is trying to help out the people of northern Ontario, so why doesn’t it give them something significant? Or, more significant, deduct from its land tax what they collect for the local services board operation. Give them a bonus. Make them want government, and make it work.

[8:45]

In any event, I feel that if the minister really wants to bring credit to this bill he should amend section 24 for the reasons I have outlined. I reserve the right to introduce whatever other amendments may seem fit at some later date.

Mr. Nixon: Hear, hear; a tremendous contribution to this debate.

Mr. Wildman: Mr. Speaker, I rise to participate in this debate on Bill 122, in support of the legislation in principle on second reading. This is especially so since the ministry has, as my friend from Nipissing mentioned, travelled across the north along with the UCANO and met with representatives of people living in the unorganized communities, right in their own communities. It has discussed the proposed legislation with them and UCANO participated directly in the early drafting of the legislation.

However, I want to point out that there are a number of things in the bill, as it’s presented here, which I don’t think really took into account some of the objections raised at the meetings that were held. Hopefully, during the committee stage of this bill we’ll be able to deal with some of the proposals made by various people during those meetings, who will be able to respond to them to make the bill more responsive to the concerns raised -- many of them really housekeeping, not major changes -- in the bill.

Although I want to congratulate UCANO West, UCANO East and the representatives this evening for the work in the preparation of this bill, I want to point out and emphasize that one of the main reasons that we have to support this bill is that it’s something we’ve been advocating for a long time. Obviously it’s needed. Something was needed in the unorganized areas.

We have a tremendous number of people who live across northern Ontario in areas that have no organization. They have no official structure. As the minister knows, and I hope other members of this House understand -- even those from southern Ontario -- without any kind of official structure these communities were unable to apply for and accept most types of assistance from the provincial and federal levels of government, simply because there was no responsibility or accountability. If the provincial government were to make a grant to a community for a specific purpose, first off it is questionable as to whom it should be given and how that group could be held accountable for its use.

So, without some kind of mechanism to give representation to the people in a community and to ensure accountability it was impossible for many of those people living in unorganized communities to obtain the funds needed to provide basic services which are really taken for granted in the rest of this province -- for that matter even taken for granted in the organized communities of northern Ontario in many cases. Those of us here from the north know that even in the organized communities we often did not have the kinds of services and facilities available in many of the organized communities of the south.

It would be difficult for us in this caucus to oppose this legislation in principle. Really the introduction of this bill is a tribute to the work of UCANO and to the NDP caucus.

Mr. Bolan: Did you invent the helicopter too?

Mr. Foulds: The minister’s a late convert.

Mr. Wildman: Both of these organizations have been raising the problems of the unorganized communities --

Mr. Foulds: Especially the Speaker of the House.

Mr. Wildman: I was going to get to that.

We have talked about the lack of services for many, many years. One just has to look at the list at the end of the bill, the schedule on page 11, to understand the kinds of basic services that are lacking in the unorganized communities in northern Ontario and to appreciate the necessity of this kind of legislation.

Look at water supply, fire protection, Mr. Speaker -- they’re really basic services which most people in the province take for granted. We have situations in northern Ontario, as the minister knows full well, where the Ministry of Natural Resources has been responsible for fire protection and has done as good a job as they can do. They have worked very hard trying to respond to the calls of the people when there are structural fires. But as the minister knows, they are not really equipped to handle structural fires; their equipment and training is aimed at fighting forest fires.

I’ll get into fire protection and what the ministry has been doing in a few moments. There are other things, such as garbage collection, and sewage which relates in many cases to the provision of adequate water supply, recreation and so on, even things as ordinary as street lighting which, in some unorganized areas where you have urban development, is really necessary.

The members of this caucus have been raising these issues in the House for many years, going back to way before the introduction of Bill 102, as mentioned by my colleague, and the efforts by UCANO to come up with the workable compromise we see here today.

Mr. Bolan: You know, Leo, this is the 15th attempt. It goes back to 1882. Yes, Sir Oliver Mowat.

Mr. Wildman: Is the minister going to be made Sir?

Mr. Kerrio: Governor?

Mr. Wildman: Perhaps he’ll be given a title like “governor of the north.”

At any rate, most of the services I have listed are basic hard services. Our caucus has been involved with these in a very important and significant way for some time. One just has to look at that great proponent of the needs of the unorganized communities who, though diminutive in stature, speaks so loudly, forcefully and with such clarity of the needs of communities such as Shining Tree and Gogama.

Who ever heard of Shining Tree before the present member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren) was elected to this Legislature? Who ever heard of it down here? For that matter, how often were the water problems of the community of Gogama, which Mr. Violette knows very well, raised in this Legislature before the present member for Nickel Belt began advocating that the government take concerted action to resolve those problems?

Why weren’t the water problems in Gogama rectified by this government without the hard work and anguish suffered by that member in trying to get this moribund and unfeeling government to move?

Mr. Swart: Good work.

Mr. Wildman: Why did it take the herculean efforts he had to bring forward to force the government to move? Can the minister tell me that?

Mr. Bolan: That’s better. Good line.

Mr. Eakins: You say it with conviction.

Mr. Bolan: Once more with feeling.

Mr. Wildman: I’ve never been convicted.

Mr. Bolan: That’ll make great reading.

Mr. Wildman: Quite seriously, the thing that really bothers me is what happened in response to the request for assistance made by the member for Nickel Belt. All this government did was erect a monument to the former Minister of the Environment, now also the former Minister of Agriculture and Food --

Mr. Bolan: Oh, Bill.

Mr. Wildman: -- in the town of Gogama. Sometimes I’ve been given to understand that monument is actually a statue in the likeness of the member for Durham-York (Mr. W. Newman) I don’t really think that’s the case, but you know what I’m talking about, Mr. Speaker. I’m talking about the communal tap. Why is it that, in 1979 in Ontario, all we can do for a community with serious water pollution problems is to provide a communal tap?

Mr. Bolan: Turn it off.

Mr. Wildman: The real question arises as to whether or not this bill will resolve those kinds of problems. At least it will make the community eligible for the Ministry of the Environment’s new 75 per cent-25 per cent program for upgrading private communal water and sewer systems or private wells and septic systems. In that sense, this is a step forward.

I suppose the bill will also make possible the building and operation of recreation facilities such as meeting halls, hockey rinks and other sports facilities that have really been fought for for so long by that well known sportsman, that Rocket Richard of the Legislature. I suppose if the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) is the Rocket, that makes the member for Nickel Belt the Pocket Rocket. It will make them eligible for the Wintario and recreation centre grants.

Mr. Mancini: I don’t know if Rocket Richard would like that.

Mr. Bolan: Did you check that out with Rocket Richard?

Mr. Wildman: I spoke in Dubreuilville once with the Pocket Rocket. That’s not an unorganized community so it really doesn’t fit into this debate. We did participate with the Pocket Rocket in the opening of a community centre there, and he had heard of the member for Sudbury East.

Mr. Bolan: That’s really good. I’m glad to hear it.

Mr. Foulds: Richard said it was okay; Martel had his doubts.

Mr. Wildman: As I said, it will make the communities eligible for obtaining Wintario grants and recreation centre grants.

One thing that should be pointed out is that in the past, communities in many of the unorganized areas have been eligible for some assistance under these programs through their boards of education. The board of education would set up a recreation committee, that committee would apply for grants through the board, and the board would be the organization responsible and accountable for how those grants were used.

I understand -- and I hope the minister can make this clear when he responds -- there was some difference between the boards of education in the northwest, as opposed to the northeast, as to whether or not they would like local services boards to take over the operation of the recreation committees. I understand some of the large boards in the northwest would like to divest themselves of this responsibility in the unorganized areas, whereas I don’t think that’s the case in the northeast. Perhaps the minister will be able to clarify that for us when he replies.

If we go back to the board of education situation with recreation committees, they’ve been able to apply for grants and receive grants through their boards of education and the boards are responsible and accountable for how those grants are used. Basically my concern is that at one of the meetings of UCANO East I attended in Sudbury, there was a representative from UCANO West. She indicated at that time that there seemed to be some difference of opinion among the boards of education between the northwest and the northeast as to whether or not they would prefer to have the local services boards handle recreation committees and have the recreation committees become subcommittees of local services boards, or whether they could continue as they are now constituted under the aegis of the boards of education. The northwest seemed to want to divest itself of it. The northeast was sort of equivocal; it didn’t really matter, Perhaps that could be clarified.

[9:00]

In preparing for this debate, in looking at the bill and attending the meetings as I did, I must say I am a little disappointed -- and the minister repeated this in his opening statement -- that these boards are constituted rather narrowly -- I understand why the minister’s doing it -- in that they deal with the kinds of services I’ve been mentioning, as well as fire protection, but they don’t make it possible for them to deal with other services that have been raised by members of this caucus, especially by that Titan of the north who has spoken so often in the past with such eloquence and empathy for the problems of the unorganized communities of the northwest.

Mr. Bolan: Elmer Sopha.

Mr. Wildman: No, I wasn’t speaking of the former member for Sudbury. I was speaking, rather, if that member for the riding of Lake Nipigon (Mr. Stokes) --

Mr. Bolan: Fine member.

Mr. Wildman: -- whose words were so important in trying to wake up this government to the needs of the small communities of the northwest.

Mr. Bolan: Stop trying to get around the points.

Mr. Wildman: He represents one of the --

Mr. Bolan: When you are looking for a ruling, you are going to get it.

Mr. Wildman: -- largest ridings, the largest riding in the province of Ontario, a riding that includes many unorganized communities, and he understands better than any of us the problems faced by those communities. His words have been somewhat silenced because of the onerous task we charged him with in this House, but I want to assure the minister that the member’s spirit lives on in the NDP ranks and will come to haunt him if he doesn’t reply to the concerns and needs of the north.

What I’m referring to is that there is no mention in this bill of the needs of health care in the small unorganized communities in northern Ontario. It doesn’t make it possible for a local services board if, after it has developed and got some experience and can raise enough funds, to try to become involved with providing better health-care services, perhaps through bringing in doctors on a rotating basis in co-operation with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Northern Affairs or in trying to provide temporary facilities, if that’s necessary, for doctors, dentists, ophthalmologists and others. I know there are the vans that travel around, the dental vans and ophthalmologists vans and so on, but I think even the Ministry of Health has some reservations sometimes about the operation of those facilities. They provide a very important and needed service, but there have been some problems with them.

In the past, I believe a dentist went into one of the communities in my riding in a dental van. I guess he wasn’t prepared for what he was headed for. He was supposed to be there for a month but he only stayed a couple of weeks. He then applied to the Ministry of Health, saying he wanted to move on. He wanted to leave because he wasn’t ready for the heavy work load and the isolation that was involved, even for a short period of time. Perhaps there might be ways that these service boards could try to make it more attractive to the professionals we’re trying to get into the communities to serve them and to work with them.

Of course, it may not be possible. It may be just pie in the sky for us to just think about the possibility of these boards providing such facilities as clinics or community health centres. Maybe that’s too far out of reach, but I think that should have been looked at. I’m concerned that isn’t mentioned in the bill and that kind of soft service isn’t provided as well as the hard services that are mentioned along with recreation.

Those members of our caucus have been supported by that voice from the depths of Frood Mine that has long railed against the cavalier treatment of packsack miners across the north. He understands unorganized communities are really just packsack communities in many cases, or at least are treated that way both by the companies that operate in them and by the government.

In the past, many of these small communities -- especially if they were mining communities -- were in a situation where the company went in to work the ore out. The government benefits to the extent we tax the mining company, although that hasn’t been a great revenue generator for the government of this province because of the philosophy of this government.

We took the wealth out of those communities and in many cases we returned very little in the form of amenities and services. We worked the ore until the ore ran out. The company then packed up and left, leaving the miners and their families to their own devices to find new jobs elsewhere or just pack their bags and leave and dispose of their homes, if they had built homes in the area.

Of course, we know this isn’t just a problem in the unorganized communities. It’s a problem throughout the north in that many communities of the north are one-industry towns based on a resource. If that resource runs out, the company leaves. If there hasn’t been development of any kind of secondary manufacturing, the community is doomed.

They’ve also been supported by that urbane member of our caucus from the north, the Tyrone Guthrie of Thunder Bay, who began his literary and theatrical career living and teaching in one of the small communities of the northwest.

Mr. Bolan: He’s still active.

Mr. Foulds: I used to like you.

Mr. Mancini: I can see why he didn’t make a living acting.

Mr. Wildman: He understands very well the problems of isolated communities and the people living in them and the problems they face in providing the kinds of amenities in terms of educational facilities and cultural and recreational facilities for their children and adults.

As I said, with this kind of background and dedication towards the need of unorganized communities it would be very difficult for us to oppose the principle of this bill. We’ve been fighting for too long and making pleas for better fire protection, for clean water, for sewage facilities, for health-care facilities and recreational programs and facilities to stand in the way of any bill that will make it possible if a community wishes to try to obtain those kinds of facilities.

In response to those pleas, the government in the past has really not come up with anything that was workable. The last time they tried to bring about something they tried to impose Bill 102 on the unorganized communities, making compulsory community councils. The minister mentioned this in his opening remarks, but it really shouldn’t have been surprising that concept was rejected by the people of the small unorganized communities in northern Ontario when one observed the way the couple of civil servants flitted across the north to try to get the opinion of people and persuade them this was what they needed and what was good for them.

These people, who perhaps had some experience with unorganized communities -- I don’t really know what their backgrounds were -- came in and didn’t give the people in the area the impression they really understood the problems. It produced a reaction against them. They met with such concerted opposition and found the problems were so enormous and the costs to rectify them would be so high they advised the minister to forget about it. The former minister let the matter die on the Order Paper, as my friend from Nipissing mentioned.

This bill is better than that attempt by the government because at least it is, as the minister says, permissive. It isn’t forced on the communities. The communities may take advantage of this legislation in forming a local services board to provide a specific service or a number of services, if they wish. If they don’t wish to, they don’t have to. For that reason, again we support the bill in principle.

This party has continued to point out the realities of this area with respect to the lack of services and to press the government for action. But in the past, and even today I heard the minister make this comment, the government has been wont to accuse us of something they call gloom and doom. We are always accused of being the gloom and doom boys. With this kind of attitude from government, we tend to get rather limited results.

Every time we raise a problem that is a problem, the government says, “You guys are always looking at the bad side of things. You don’t look at the bright side. You are not positive about our great resources in the north,” which, of course, isn’t true. We know we have a wealth of human and natural resources in the north. We have a beautiful area that really is the envy of most people from southern Ontario, especially this time of year when we travel through the north and see the colours and so on.

Every time something happens in the north, when there is a problem in a community and we raise it with the government, they say we are just looking at the bad side of things.

Mr. Lawlor: Pollyanna Bernier, he smiles at everyone.

Mr. Wildman: One just has to look at the example of fire protection, a pretty basic matter. It isn’t complex. Everyone understands the need for fire protection. I am just giving you an example, Mr. Speaker, of where we are at in this province and what has developed in terms of fire protection in the unorganized communities. I think the minister knows where the small community of Oba is. It is on the Canadian National line east of Hornepayne. It is a very small community at the function of the Algoma Central Railway. Most of the people who live there work for either the CN or the ACR. There are a number, of course, who also work in the bush and people come down from Hearst to work there during the week.

By the way, what is the minister going to do to try to persuade his colleague in Ottawa, the new Minister of Transport, to change this stupid order of the Canadian Transport Commission that is going to take away the service for communities like Oba and put it on a three-day-a-week basis? Is he going to represent the needs of the north and try to persuade him to change that decision?

Mr. Makarchuk: A bunch of incompetents.

Mr. Wildman: He has already accepted his decision. He says it is rationalization of service. I just thought I would throw that in since it relates to the unorganized communities. Many of them are dependent on the railroad; there are no roads to get in or out and they really have to depend on the railway for service. Since the services don’t exist in the community, they have to travel out to get them. If they don’t have the service to travel out, how on earth are they going to get the services?

I just hope the minister will approach Mr. Mazankowski and say this is folly, he cannot accept this recommendation of the Canadian Transport Commission to take away one of the few services the northern communities have now. I have already approached him myself.

To get back to fire protection, the community of Oba had five major fires in two years, one of which burned down the largest building in the community, the general store, which was the centre of the whole community.

Mr. Kerrio: The firehall.

Mr. Wildman: It didn’t have a firehall. That’s how much the member knows or understands about the communities in northern Ontario.

Mr. Kerrio: That’s why it burned down.

Mr. Wildman: There was no firehall. There was no fire equipment. There wasn’t anything to put out the fires. When a fire took place, all the people could do is get out alive with whatever they could carry out of the building and stand and watch it burn down. It is a rail community and dependent on the railway, unless one takes a long, circuitous route from Hearst to highway 11 to get down into it, a distance of 70 miles or so. There is no way MNR could get in there to protect them. Imagine if someone called that there was a fire starting and MNR said, “Fine, we’ll be right there,” and had to drive 70 miles to get in there and put out the fire. The people could just watch.

[9:15]

I approached this government. I approached this minister when he was in the role of Minister of Natural Resources. I said surely the ministry has some old equipment that MNR no longer uses that could be given to the people of Oba so they would be able to put out a fire, at least fight a fire and prevent it from spreading, when one occurs.

Mr. Roy: What did Leo do about it? What did Leo do?

Mr. Wildman: Well, he said, “We don’t have any old equipment. We always use it until it is worn out and then we throw it out.”

Mr. Roy: He should have sent you half the cabinet.

Mr. Wildman: They’re worn out.

Mr. Makarchuk: That is old equipment. There is no quibbling on that.

Mr. Wildman: So I said, okay, we’re not going to get anywhere that way. So the community organized a fire protection committee and bought some equipment. They bought it on their own.

Mr. Bolan: So what?

Mr. Wildman: Nothing, it was very good. But then the Minister of Revenue had the gall to charge them sales tax on the equipment they purchased --

Mr. Bolan: That’s terrible.

Mr. Wildman: -- to protect themselves against fires.

Mr. Mancini: You should be embarrassed about this, Leo.

Mr. Makarchuk: It’s known as double taxation.

Mr. Bolan: Did they get a rebate?

Mr. Wildman: So I asked the Minister of Revenue for a rebate. He said, “Oh, well, we sympathize. We really sympathize with you on this, but gee, there’s nothing we can do. It’s just the regulation.”

Mr. Bolan: They wouldn’t know how to treat you.

Mr. Wildman: He said, “Perhaps though, if you could persuade” --

Mr. Makarchuk: Except when it comes to Toronto, they have a special rate in Toronto.

Mr. Wildman: -- “the Ministry of Education” --

Mr. M. N. Davison: Education?

Mr. Wildman: -- “to treat this fire protection equipment as recreational equipment and as part of their recreation committee” --

Mr. Mancini: Now that’s government in action.

Mr. Wildman: -- “then we could exempt it because we could treat it as educational equipment.”

Mr. Roy: Sure, only at the racetrack it’s a little harder.

Mr. Wildman: Fine, so I went to the Ministry of Education in Sudbury. In the north, the schools in these small communities in the northern core are administered out of Sudbury in the northeast and Thunder Bay in the northwest. I went to the people in the Ministry of Education in Sudbury and they couldn’t do that. They really didn’t believe it was recreational equipment. I pointed out that they might be able to flood the rink with it so they could treat it as educational equipment that way. But to be frank, I wasn’t really surprised when they decided it wasn’t educational equipment.

That was when, thankfully, the government started to realize that their attitude towards fire protection in small unorganized communities was rather ridiculous. It finally led to the point where the former Treasurer Darcy McKeough introduced the isolated communities assistance fund. When he got up in the House and proposed this program he said it would assist the unorganized communities to provide fire protection and water and sewer facilities where they were needed. The interesting thing about it, of course, was that he just announced it. There were no guidelines as to how the program was to operate. It was at that time under the aegis of the Ministry of Northern Affairs. That ministry started handing out money. They received a lot of applications, of course. They started handing out money -- at first it was money, later on it was fire protection equipment -- almost helter-skelter.

Mr. Foulds: Those are the guidelines they needed.

Mr. Wildman: They had no guidelines, so they didn’t know who should get it and who shouldn’t. They had so many applications it was almost a first come, first serve basis. I suppose that is fine but when there is only a certain amount of money, how can the real needs be provided for if some communities are perhaps closer to organized communities and don’t need it? I don’t know.

That was what was said later on. They started to back up and they said, “Wait a minute, we shouldn’t give it to communities that are right beside organized communities because maybe they can get protection from the organized communities.”

That wasn’t right either. If you are in an unorganized community in most cases the fire department in the organized community will not come unless a school or something like that is burning. If it is a home they leave it up to the Ministry of Natural Resources.

There was at that time no provision made for training. There was only a very vague idea of how they were going to deal with liability insurance or workmen’s compensation for the volunteer firefighters, especially since there weren’t getting any training. It was very vague as to how they would be protected under these programs.

Some communities, as I said, got equipment even though they had shown little desire to develop on their own the initiative to provide themselves with fire protection. Some others -- I think of the example in my riding of the community of Searchmount -- worked very hard and even bought a second-hand pumper truck on their own. When they applied, they only got a small portion of what they were asking for apparently because they had already bought a fire truck themselves, even though it was inadequate for their needs. The attitude was: “You have already got a pumper truck. We are going to give the pumper truck to another community that doesn’t have one.” In a way, they were penalized for their own initiative. If they had waited and done nothing, they might have got what they asked for.

At any rate, I raised a number of concerns about this whole backwards process of starting a program without any guidelines and without knowing how it was going to operate, I was invited for a long discussion by a couple of people, two officials from TEIGA. You remember that ministry before it was split up, Mr. Speaker. Finally, they came up with some guidelines as to how it was to operate. By that time, of course, the Ministry of Northern Affairs was in operation and they had the responsibility for it.

The worst result of the lack of planning at the beginning of the institution of this fire protection program was the fact nobody thought of making provision for funds for the continuing operating expenses of these volunteer fire departments once they had obtained the equipment. There weren’t any funds made available for the construction of firehalls.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, there were.

Mr. Wildman: The minister says there were. In some of the communities in my riding they had to go to the federal government and make application under the Canada Works program and so on, to try and get assistance to build their firehall. There was no provision made, for instance, for shared cost funding on the continuing operation of those firehalls once they were built, for the heating of the firehall, which you have to keep heated or the pumper truck will freeze up and it won’t be any good to you in the wintertime, and the whole question of the maintenance of the equipment itself.

The advantage of this bill is it does give that opportunity. If the community is going to raise funds, then the government will provide some funds to assist. For that reason we support the principle of this bill.

The one thing that really bothers me about this bill is that because there were so many demands on the isolated communities assistance fund program, in a way this really appears to be a backing off on what was stated at the time Mr. McKeough introduced the program. He didn’t just say fire protection. He said water and sewers.

When you think about it, Mr. Speaker, the total funding for the ICAF program in the first year and a half was, I believe, $750,000. When you consider it is going to cover all of northern Ontario, all the unorganized communities in northern Ontario, many of which have water problems and sewage problems $750,000 was just inadequate, completely ludicrous, especially when you are taking money out of it to provide for fire protection, as well. The money that was left wouldn’t have bought 100 feet of pipe, or laid it, in most of the communities.

Really ICAF was underfunded. Apparently, one of the purposes of the bill -- maybe I am being too cynical -- is to raise more money for the continuing operation of the ICAF program, or at least to ease the demands on that program by requiring the local communities to provide a greater share of the costs by having to have a matching funding program.

That really concerns me. It bothers me that although this bill is very similar to the innovative proposal made by that northern spokesman from Sudbury East two years ago when this ministry was created, in which he moved an amendment -- I will refer back to that amendment. If the minister thinks back to July 1977 he will recall the member for Sudbury East moved an amendment in this House which stated:

“The minister shall provide for the establishment of democratically elected community councils, to plan and administer the provision of local services in unorganized communities and, in conjunction with community councils, provide local services at a cost to the residents of unorganized communities in northern Ontario comparable to the cost to residents in southern Ontario.”

The second provision proposed in that amendment by the member for Sudbury East is the clincher. It’s the most important one: “ ... provide local services at a cost to the residents of unorganized communities in northern Ontario comparable to the cost to residents in southern Ontario.”

What was the minister’s reaction to that proposal at the time? When the member for Sudbury East was describing the proposal and the reasons for it he said he wanted to set up community councils to which there would be representatives elected from unorganized communities. This was done in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. These were democratically elected people, not appointed.

The minister interrupted him and said, “Turned down, turned down.” That’s a quote

Mr. Foulds: Do you remember that?

Mr. Wildman: It’s on page 489 of Hansard, July 6, 1977. Mr. Martel then said, “You’ll probably turn it down. I have no doubt you’ll turn it down.” And the Honourable Mr. Bernier said, “It was turned down in 120.” He meant 102.

“Mr. Martel: I didn’t say we’d incorporate the towns. They were unorganized. It was your government that withdrew the bill and let it die on the order paper. It was a former minister.

“We are going to move an amendment to create, in unorganized communities, community councils democratically elected who will be able to receive grants and funding to provide the amenities which the unorganized communities presently don’t enjoy.”

I ask the Minister of Northern Affairs: Whose idea was this? Two years ago the member for Sudbury East proposed this to him and the Minister for Northern Affairs played it down and put it down. It’s taking him two years to understand and to change his mind.

Mr. Swart: For them that’s fast.

Mr. Wildman: I wonder why it took so long.

Mr. Swart: It could have taken 20 or 30 years.

Mr. Wildman: Maybe they’re slow learners, I don’t know. The minister has brought it forward with the same kind of community council which the member for Sudbury has proposed but he hasn’t provided the funds he talked about. This bill is almost a carbon copy of that proposal, but it doesn’t provide the same kind of funds.

Really, Mr. Speaker, when you consider what the minister is proposing in this bill in section 24 when he talks about a one-for-one sharing formula, I sympathize with the member for Nipissing in his comments. How are these communities going to make the necessary money? Many of them are so small, have very few residents and a very low tax base. When one talks about the other proposals in terms of bingo and dances and bake sales and so on I’m sure they’ll be able to raise the money that way. But will it be adequate to meet the real needs of those communities in terms of water and sewers?

Mr. Bolan: That’s left to Leo’s discretion.

Mr. Wildman: The Speaker of the House, the member for Lake Nipigon, participated in that debate. He said, “If we’re really serious about helping those 50,000 people who live in unorganized communities in northern Ontario we must be serious about providing them with the funding so that they will be in a position to help themselves,” And I don’t think one for one is adequate especially when the minister says here in his statement that the one-for-one matching grant is not going to include donated materials. I wonder if it is going to include labour.

[9:30]

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No.

Mr. Wildman: No. Volunteer labour?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: No.

Mr. Wildman: Why is it that the Ministry of Culture and Recreation can work out a formula under the Wintario program --

Mr. Kerrio: Easy come, easy go.

Mr. Wildman: -- whereby it can figure out the value of volunteer labour and the value of donated material and use that as part of its matching funds formula, but this minister can’t do it? If they can do it, surely he can.

Mr. Swart: That’s not easy come, easy go, is it?

Mr. Kerrio: They ought to have a northern lottery.

Mr. Wildman: On Monday afternoon I attended a meeting in the community of Missanabie, an unorganized community in my riding, with representatives of the Ministry of Northern Affairs and the Ministry of the Environment. In that community, they have a water problem and they have the problem of how they are going to maintain their roads. As a matter of fact, they also have a fire that has been smouldering for some time in the shavings pile where the mill was before it burned down last February.

We talked about how they are going to organize a committee to deal with those problems and how the Ministry of Transportation and Communications is ready to put up some money to help them on a one-for-one matching basis because they don’t have a local roads board.

However, there is a problem there. MTC has a problem because the roads are all on Canadian Pacific land, and the CPR is very concerned about who is going to operate the roads and how they will be maintained. There is a problem with the local roads boards but MTC is doing what it can. They are saying they will match the funds on a one-for-one basis because there is no local roads board.

Finally, after a lot of prodding, the Ministry of the Environment is going in there, saying it will do a number of things to deal with the immediate problem of water, provision of water for the winter, and that then it will come in on a 75-25 basis next spring for the upgrading of water systems. Where are they going to get that 25 per cent? We don’t know how much the bill is going to be right now for that community.

The act governing local roads boards, after which this legislation is patterned by the minister, provides two for one. We talked about this before. If the government can provide two for one for a local roads board to provide roads and maintenance of roads in unorganized communities, surely it can provide two-for-one services such as water and sewers. The member for Nipissing, who was very concerned about that, had a point in dealing with section 24. It really should be at least two for one.

The minister will admit that last spring’s floods proved in northern Ontario that one-for-one matching is just inadequate to deal with a major undertaking for a small community. In that case, the government agreed to come across with four for one. I realize that was a unique situation; it was a disaster. But the fact is that the cost of construction and equipment in northern Ontario is greater than it is in southern Ontario. If the government is going to operate on a one-for-one basis, I just don’t think it will work.

There are a number of other things in this bill that I have reservations about. Look at section 28, where it says that these boards will not be able to borrow from any agency other than the crown for more than one year. I ask once again how is Missanabie or, for that matter, Hurkett or Gogama or Havilland going to come up with the 25 per cent share in the 75 to 25 matching program of the government. Even one for one isn’t going to operate in that case. They are going to have to finance it, and they’re going to have to go into long-term financing. If you don’t allow them to do it, except in dealing with the crown, I think you’re circumscribing too much their options.

There are a number of other things I am concerned about. I said I sympathized with the member for Nipissing’s comments with regard to the two-for-one formula, especially in regard to the funding. I didn’t, however, agree with his comments with regard to the roads boards. I don’t think the UCANO wants to have roads boards and roads included under this legislation. If they don’t want it, why should we tell them they have to have it? As we’ve seen, the local roads boards generally are operating well. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications has a good operating relationship with them. One thing I’m really worried about is if we did bring the roads boards under this bill maybe they would be stuck with one for one, instead of two for one.

Mr. Foulds: That’s right.

Mr. Wildman: As I said, the roads boards legislation does work. But I see one major flaw in it and it’s been raised by a number of people who live in the local roads boards areas. That is, if you’re a shift worker you’re effectively disenfranchised at the annual meeting from electing your executive or your board if you happen to be working when the meeting is scheduled. If you’re on a 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift, for instance and the meeting is scheduled for 8 p.m., you don’t get a vote.

I think it would be much better if we changed section 19 of this bill to make it possible to have an all-day election, much like the way the unorganized communities elect their trustees to school boards on an all-day basis. I would like to see that change in the local roads boards legislation as well.

I also think the term of office is inadequate. I think in many cases these boards, especially at the beginning, will just be learning the job when they suddenly may be changed. I’ve discussed this with UCANO and I know they have some reservations about the situation. But I really think it should be changed to two years.

I understand we must have an audit under section 29 of the act. There has to be accountability. As I said at the beginning, this is one of the reasons we want to have this legislation. But I can see a problem with just the cost of the audit for some of these local services boards, especially if they’re just organized to provide a very small area with one specific service. The cost of the audit may be too much. Also, it may be rather difficult to get an auditor in some of the communities, unless you’re dealing by mail. And that may not be satisfactory, I think the ministry should be responsible for the audit.

I support the legislation in principle. I want to propose a number of amendments at the time of second reading.

There are a couple of other comments I want to make before I quit, however, in relation first to a comment made by the member for Nipissing with regard to an area of my riding, Sault Ste. Marie north. He suggested it might be a better idea to have an improvement district organized for Sault Ste. Marie north. But there is one thing in this province that should be eliminated and that’s improvement districts. Surely in this House, in this day and age, we believe in democracy. If there’s anything that is undemocratic, it’s an improvement district.

Mr. Speaker: Is that in this bill?

Mr. Wildman: That was suggested, Mr. Speaker, by the member for Nipissing when he was discussing the principle of the bill earlier in the debate. I just wanted to make it clear, as the representative of the people from Sault Ste. Marie north, there’s no way we want an improvement district organized in that area.

Mr. Speaker: You won’t get it in this bill.

Mr. Wildman: What I want, Mr. Speaker, is for this minister and his colleague, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, to agree that the people in Sault Ste. Marie north will be able, if they wish, to organize local services boards in their area. We are talking about local services boards and I wish they could be organized in Sault Ste. Marie north, and not have the people told they can’t organize a local services board in that area because the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs is carrying on a study about municipal organization. Surely, in the interim, whatever happens, if they wish to provide a service they should be able to organize local services boards.

As the minister knows, a number of communities are already providing fire protection in that area and have received assistance from the minister. Hopefully they’ll be allowed to organize local services boards. The ministry did organize meetings within that area to discuss the possibility. Again, I want to emphasize we believe in electing representatives for the people and not appointing them and certainly not appointing here in Queen’s Park people who are going to represent and govern people in northern Ontario.

The other thing I want to mention is the minister’s amendment which he provided for me today. It is the amendment that will ensure the provincial land tax will not be lowered if there is a surcharge put on it by a local services board.

I want to ask the minister if he doesn’t believe that if the local services board is organized in a particular area and decides it wants to improve garbage collection -- which is one of the things he lists in his schedule -- and in order to do that they decide they want to establish a landfill site. So they have a landfill site in the area; they’re maintaining it and collecting money from the people whether it be through a surcharge as a tax or through an user fee, whatever method they choose, and are no longer dependent on the Ministry of Natural Resources to maintain a garbage dump in the area. Does the minister really believe they should continue paying at the same rate as the provincial land tax? I’m not certain about that.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: It is a low tax.

Mr. Wildman: It is a low tax, I’ll admit that, but what really do we get in unorganized communities for that tax? I know the ministry always says we get welfare services, health inspections, and so on. That’s true; I agree with that. But they also point to fire protection which the minister knows full well they don’t get. They also point to highways, which we all get even if we live in organized communities and don’t pay the provincial land tax. We pay for that through our other taxes.

He also mentioned police protection where, if you live in an organized township which uses the OPP protection, you pay for that through other types of taxation. You don’t pay for it through the provincial land tax.

The question is, other than welfare services, things like children’s aid, mothers’ allowance, that kind of thing, what do you really get for the provincial land tax in an unorganized community?

Mr. Germa: Some of them don’t even get that.

Mr. Wildman: Yes, some of them such as farmers don’t even get that, I wonder whether we are getting our money’s worth for that tax, I don’t think we are.

I wonder if the local services board can provide some of the services which are supposedly now provided by the Ministry of Northern Affairs, the Ministry of Natural Resources, or the Ministry of Community and Social Services, or whatever, and whether that provincial land tax should be lowered. I don’t think we should treat it simply as a little revenue for the provincial government. I’m not suggesting they not pay any taxes, but if they’re paying a surcharge on that tax for a service previously supposedly provided by the provincial government and they’re providing it themselves and paying for it themselves, shouldn’t that be taken into account? I’ll have to look very carefully at the minister’s amendment.

As I said at the beginning, Mr. Speaker, this is a step forward. This caucus has been fighting for this kind of permissive legislation for some time, I have a number of amendments which I hope we will deal with on second reading at committee stage. I hope this bill will pass and those amendments will be taken into account.

[9:45]

Mr. Germa: Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to rise to say a few words on Bill 122, the bill to establish local service boards.

I’m sure, from the attendance, many member of the Legislature are not interested in this bill, That’s the first observation I’d like to make. Even if many of them were in attendance they probably wouldn’t know what the minister and I are talking about. They don’t know what an unorganized community is because must of the members of this Legislature come from the southern part of the province where they have layer after layer after layer of organization. They’ve had it for these past 100 years and it probably escapes them to understand the disorganization. An unorganized community is not only unorganized, it’s totally disorganized. This bill is going to try to bring some semblance of sanity to a really stupid system.

I would not have done it in the same fashion the minister did, but he’s had trouble over the last couple of years. He laboured long and hard and he produced a mouse. Nonetheless, I know the bill is needed.

I hope the people who live in the unorganized and disorganized communities of northern Ontario don’t get their spirits up too high, because I don’t think there’s so much in the bill they should all go out and have a party and celebrate a big breakthrough. We know the funding mechanism in here is not such that the services are going to come up to anything in comparison with what we have in southern Ontario.

If I go right to the heart of the system, I guess the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto gobbles up more of the provincial budget than any other part of the province. A disproportionate share of the provincial budget is put into this capital city. We in northern Ontario understand that it is our capital city, that it has to be funded, it has to be rich and it has to have shiny subways and Ontario Places and museums and science centres and all of these things. We don’t complain too loudly up north, do we, Mr. Speaker? We say, “Yes, we’ll send all our money down to Toronto and they can build all these fancy things, these buildings and streets and lights.”

It’s not going to come in this bill. The trend is not going to be reversed. The wealth is not going to suddenly be reversed from flowing south and come up north. We’re not going to get a subway in Gogama or Shining Tree or anything like that. I know we’re not. It’s not in the bill here. It’s not in the schedule.

I think the greatest benefit of this bill is going to accrue to the minister. I’m sure the Speaker is aware of this. I’ve seen pictures of the minister going across the moose pasture in northern Ontario with his largesse. For the program of bringing fire-fighting equipment into the communities, the minister would put one of these fire packs on his back and send a runner ahead. He would be going like a town crier. “Leo is coming. Leo is coming.” The minister would be hiding in the bush with his blue hard hat on with the fire pack on his back and he’d come charging into the community with the fire pack. All the people would come out and say, “Here’s Leo with the fire pack.” He picked up a few votes, and it was great fun.

I’ve seen pictures of this. I’ve never seen it personally, but I understand it’s quite a sight when the minister brings a fire truck or a fire pack into one of the communities.

Mr. Wildman: Driving in with the siren going and the whole thing?

Mr. Germa: Yes, with the hard hat on. It’s nice.

Mr. Wildman: Have you still got your gold hat from Hawk junction? I got a plaque, you got a gold hat.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: He was glad to be there. He wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Mr. Germa: What’s going to happen now is the minister’s going to have to deliver a lot of cheques. I can just see the boondoggle going on now. When the minister has to bring his cheque into Shining Tree for $3,000 or whatever, there is going to be the biggest boondoggle you ever saw. He's going to come tearing out of the bush like a wounded moose with his big cheque in his hand. He’s going to give it to the chairman of the local services board.

All well and good. It’s all good games up there. The Tories are fighting hard up there and this is part of the fight. It’s fair, it’s politics, but we should recognize it as such. We know this minister. We know what he’s up to.

Mr. Mancini: We even know him in southern Ontario, I want you to know.

Mr. Germa: It’s more dramatic up north because we don’t see dignitaries as often up there.

Mr. Mancini: We’re glad we got rid of him in southern Ontario.

Mr. Germa: Leo’s a big part of a small problem.

Mr. Roy: That’s right, Leo’s a big shot down here.

Mr. Germa: When he’s in town, they know he’s in town, because this fellow runs ahead with the moccasins on yelling, “Leo’s coming.” Away she goes.

It’s going to be a lot of fun up there. It’ll liven things up. Some of those towns are pretty quiet. We don’t see a stranger for months on end. By the end of February, you get a little cabin fever. If the minister is coming at the end of February with some bucks -- and it might even be Saturday night --

Mr. Roy: It’s a great time. You make it look as though it is your own personal money you are giving out.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Yes, a personal cheque.

Mr. Germa: He does it well because he does it often.

Mr. Bolan: Just like spreading confetti.

Mr. Germa: He earns his keep. I don’t begrudge it to the minister. Have fun. It is going to get bigger and better all the time.

To get serious on this bill, I know it is necessary to correct some of the problems for those people who through no choice of their own live in an isolated community. Those people need help and with that I have agreement. There is no disagreement anyway.

What I am wondering about is those people who by choice and for no reason, other than for the evasion of municipal tax, are living in that condition. I think the minister knows what I am talking about. I am talking about an unorganized, disorganized township of maybe 2,000 to 3,000 people living adjacent to an organized community. They refuse to organize, they petition against organizing and they get away with it for 20 years. They don’t carry their fair share and they are hitchhiking on the organized municipality.

As a long-time alderman in the city of Sudbury I know we were subject to that kind of abuse by those townships on the borders of the city of Sudbury which had no fire equipment and had nothing. When there was a disaster in that unorganized community, when a couple of kids would get burned to death in their beds because we had instructed our fire chief not to take our fire truck out there, the pressure of public opinion would force us to send our fire truck out to an unorganized community. The people who had bought that fire truck were in fact cross-subsidizing people who by their own choice moved out of the community to avoid paying a fair share of municipal tax.

I don’t see in the bill any protection against that happening. It is unthinkable when I know there were townships of 4,000 people, a big enough group of people to organize, but they didn’t do it. The way we solved that was the government of Ontario annexed these things to the organized communities. That is the only way a semblance of order came about in that unorganized area.

That is a different proposition than the isolated mining camp which I think the minister is talking about here, where people go into an isolated area without any services to work in a sawmill or a mining camp, or a small railroad town. And I don’t see any other reason why those people should be living there. Those people need more than what is in the bill, but I don’t want the minister to encourage those people, tax dodgers as I call them. I don’t know how he is going to separate those two groups.

I also think there should be a sunset provision in this bill so that at a certain point in time, by population, by assessment or by some other means, the local services board is disbanded and the community is constructed into a municipality. Some of these communities are going to grow. At some point in time they are going to be big enough to maintain a municipal structure. By that time, I think the ministry might have difficulty getting them into that position and the trend I described earlier is going to start all over again, where people to evade taxation will choose to go without a municipal structure.

I wish the minister would think of some way of automatically escalating this small bit of organization into a complete municipal structure. It should be a gradual process. It should be phased in and become automatic.

Another weakness I see in the bill is the method of electing people. It refers to an election meeting. I think the minister is not being fair to these citizens, even if there are only 100 of them. Some of them might not be available, some of them might be at work, some of them might be out of town. To say that on one o’clock on Sunday afternoon they are going to elect a board and a person has to be someplace else at one o’clock that afternoon means he would be disenfranchised and he might himself want to run for office.

I wonder if the minister would consider changing it to say that there shall be an election day; at least leave eight hours available for people to cast a ballot, one way or the other. I don’t think we need the rigid situation of making up voters’ lists. I am not asking for access to the ballot box over a longer period of time than this arbitrary date of meeting. Some funny guy might hold the meeting at one o’clock in the morning or something. There is no control here whatsoever.

Another thing I am wondering about is that a meeting has to be called in order to make a levy on top of the land tax. It is not normal for elected people to have to call a referendum to levy a tax. I can see some great conflicts here. Because we have, in some of our unorganized areas, the same sort of conflict we have in Muskoka where we have these non-resident property owners known as the “cottagers,” as opposed to the “natives.” I can see the same conflict coming up. We have the same situation. We have non-resident campers who could impose their will upon the permanent residents of the community, even though their need is very great because they are there all year round. There has to be some way to get oneself out of that problem.

That is about all I have to contribute to the bill. I intend to support the bill and we have been waiting for it for a long time. I certainly hope that it is the answer to a very difficult problem. I recognize the problem the minister has had in getting agreement and in getting something down on paper. It is a good first step, we know from experience. Lots of luck with it.

Mr. Foulds: I rise with a good deal of enthusiasm to support the bill. I don’t think it is perfect, but I think it takes a number of steps in the right direction.

Frankly, I’d like to take an exception to the remarks made by the member for Nipissing because I don’t think this bill is anything like Bill 102. I don’t think it is an illegitimate son of Bill 102 at all. I think it is an entirely different approach and an entirely different piece of legislation.

Although, as I have said, it’s not perfect, I think it approaches the problem in the right way. Obviously, the bill will need revision in the next year or two as we work out the mechanisms that are proposed within the bill.

But there are three basic principles in the bill that are very, very much worth supporting, as they affect unorganized communities. I would just like to touch on those very quickly.

First of all, I prefer to use the term “optional” rather than “permissive.” Basically it means the same thing, but it is an optional piece of legislation for the people in the community to use if they wish, or if they don’t wish. That is categorically different from the old nefarious Bill 102. I think that just using that basic approach put the minister and the ministry on the right track.

Second, and this is just a bit of an aside, I think the minister actually deserves a bit of congratulation because I think this is the first piece of legislation introduced for which his ministry is directly responsible. That takes a while in a new ministry, to actually work out a piece of legislation. I think they deserve some kudos for that.

[10:00]

The second principle embodied in the bill is that the services board established is clearly not a form of municipal government. That is made very clear. That does give us some problems later on in terms of what we do with the assets should they give up the minimal organization they have generated. But I think that is extremely important and I want to second the comments of my colleague from Algoma in that it is also preferable to and much different from the old improvement district.

The old improvement district was devised many, many years ago in an attempt to try and solve some of the same problems. It didn’t work for a whole host of reasons and I am glad to see we are phasing out the improvement district throughout northern Ontario. This is a form of organization -- I think that is the key -- and it is a form of organization that has a good deal of flexibility in the legislation.

The third thing I appreciate about the bill is that the government does admit there are problems in the unorganized territories. And while the bill admits that, it tries to address itself to, and come to grips with those problems. The six areas outlined in the schedule hit the main areas about which unorganized communities have been concerned. What I like about the listing is that individual communities have the choice of deciding which of those areas have priority.

I would like to add that under the definition of recreation, I hope we include the broad definition of cultural activity, including not only sports and recreation as we normally think of it, but in some cases minimal library services, art shows and things like that.

In a few minutes I’m going to talk a bit about my experience living for a year in an unorganized community. Some of the services provided from outside at that time were well received, certainly by the children in the community. We and the minister should look positively in considering funding for things we don’t usually associate with the narrow sense of recreation, but in the broad sense.

The fourth thing I think is commendable is the process by which the bill developed. For all his faults -- and the minister and I are probably going to clash from time to time in the future as we have clashed in the past -- I like to give a man his due when he does something constructive; in this case the minister and the ministry consulted with people across the north and with both of the organizations that represent the unorganized communities in the northwest and the northeast. That is one of the key reasons why the bill is basically acceptable to all parties in the Legislature and to most of us who are concerned about these things.

It may be because the minister himself comes from an unorganized community that he has some genuine feeling and understanding of the problems. Because until one has lived in, or been associated with, an unorganized community, one can’t really understand those problems at all.

And before I get to some more substantive matters, I do want to pay tribute to the member for Lake Nipigon who I think did more between 1967 and the acceptance of his present onerous duties to bring to this Legislature the problems of unorganized communities than any other member of this Legislature. I am greatly indebted, as I am sure the people of those communities are greatly indebted, to the member for Lake Nipigon. Time and time again he brought forward concerns of those communities, both in individual cases where the community was suffering and in terms of principle where it was a matter that in justice should be redressed, not merely for that community but in principle, about how services were or were not delivered to the north.

I think he certainly contributed a great deal to my own education in understanding those problems. I think he contributed a good deal to the understanding of the members of this caucus about those problems. Certainly when he first came down between 1967 and 1971 there were relatively few members of this caucus or of this House who had the understanding of the problems of unorganized communities that he did.

I want to speak for a moment about the problem raised by my colleague from Sudbury. There are in fact two different kinds of unorganized communities. There are the isolated communities that deserve, if you like, special consideration. Then there are the bedroom communities that my colleague from Sudbury talks about.

Let’s honestly face that problem in this Legislature. We all know instances of what we used to call strip development in some cases. People deliberately moved out of organized communities to escape taxation. Often they were relatively wealthy people who could afford to move out to escape taxation. Then they came crying to the municipality right next door for service when it was needed. They often used all the services of the major community -- cultural facilities such as libraries. They put pressure on the municipalities regarding fire protection, and so on. I think that’s a problem we have to address. I don’t honestly have an easy solution to that.

That’s one of the reasons why at this moment I’m happy to support this bill. I think it does meet the very real problems of the isolated community. It can be judiciously used to meet the problems of those near-organized communities.

If think we have to treat those so-called bedroom communities in two subcategories too. There are those that were historically established in the first place, years and yearns ago; 50 or 60 years ago in the case of some of those around Thunder Bay, for example, where transportation is not what it is now. Those were isolated communities then. A number of the residents still have those historic pioneer roots. I think they deserve more consideration than merely what I call the carpetbaggers, who moved out and, in fact, set up a community.

I think one of the reasons why I feel so strongly about getting a fair deal for unorganized communities is the year I spent in Armstrong, which is not in the Speaker’s riding. It was a real education for me. I was a young man in my early 20s at the time, I was out of work at the height of the Diefenbaker depression. I had arrived back from travelling in Europe with a smashed leg. I needed to find some kind of a job. There was a teaching job going in Armstrong. As it happened, it was also the principal’s job of a small three-room school.

Hon. Mr. Bernier: You’re a better person.

Mr. Foulds: The minister is quite right. I learned a number of things from that year’s experience. I learned a lot about the self-reliance of people in those unorganized communities.

Although I had lived all my life in the north, I had lived in an urban centre in the north. I learned a good deal about organization. Strangely enough, when you’re thrown into a community that is basically not organized, you have to develop -- if you like and if the minister will forgive me -- some kind of cell organization in order to survive and in order to carry out your own tasks.

I remember that year very well. That year, also in Armstrong, I remember two men who became close friends of mine. One was a businessman, Jack Cameron, who ran a general store and later moved to Thunder Bay and has a very successful business there, and the other was a Jesuit priest, Father Bill Maurice. If I may be so presumptuous, with me very much the junior partner, the three of us that particular year got a number of activities going in the town including a hockey rink. Bill Maurice sort of spearheaded the idea. Jack Cameron and a number of his friends carried out the bull work, if you like, and got the supplies together, the flooding equipment and so on. Then they saddled me with the job of coaching the hockey team.

That was an experience. In a small community like that, you couldn’t have a midget or a bantam or a juvenile team. I had kids from ages six to 16 on the same team; that was all we could get together to make up a team. We used to go on road trips to the metropolises of Nakina and Hornepayne. Those were great trips for the kids because they learned a lot on those trips. If I dare say it, some of the boys on the team travelled at half fare. That was one of the privileges of living in the north, that kind of thing happening.

I remember, because there was this disparity in ages, when we went to the other towns we used to play the midget team usually; they would be boys from 12 to 14. I had one good line of older boys I used to put on with a set of younger boys on defence, and vice versa. Then I would mix them up to try to balance them off.

There was one exciting game in Armstrong, a home game, where we were really close; we used to lose all the games, but we were really close, within one goal. One of the excited, committed people in the town came up to me and said; “Throw on so-and-so line with the other defence.” In other words, put my big line on with my big defence. I did that for about three or five minutes, but after a while the boys got winded and I had to change them.

The guy came up and said, “What are you doing? Put on the Parker line again, you fool.” I said, “I can’t do that.” He said, “You do it or meet me behind the hotel after the game.” So I said, “Okay, I’ll meet you behind the hotel after the game.”

Mr. Wildman: He called you a fool? Are you sure that’s the word he used?

Mr. Foulds: That’s the parliamentary word he used. What it indicated to me was the kind of commitment that person had to the team, and the commitment he had to his town and how the team was representing his town. I’ll tell you the sequel. After the game he came up to me and said, “Don’t meet me behind the hotel. Let’s meet in the hotel and have a beer.” It was during the heat of the excitement --

There were very few symbols in the unorganized towns for people to coalesce around. I think we need more of those, and I think this bill sort of establishes that, so communities that would not otherwise be able to establish a rink and a small hockey team will be able to do it with some assistance from the government.

[10:15]

I have only a few more remarks. I want to talk very briefly about the unorganized communities in my own riding. In a peculiar kind of way I think they sort of span the spectrum of what we actually meet in the north. People don’t believe this, but I actually have a township in my riding that has five permanent residents, that’s all. All the rest are cottagers. This bill actually doesn’t affect them because I don’t think they will ever organize, and that’s good. They have a roads board, and it’s quite an effective roads board, and basically that’s all the organization they need. That’s Jacques township. I think it has seven permanent residents now. There have been a few more within the last year.

I have a community called Kaministikwia that is farther out and it’s really in two townships. Kaministikwia combines parts of Gorham and Ware townships, both of which are unorganized. Gorham and Ware are interesting because in a sense they are growing at a fairly fast rate and population in those two unorganized townships, particularly in Ware, is higher than in Conmee township, which is organized. That’s where some of the peculiarities and apparent injustices take place.

Why I think this bill will be successful is it will be easier for townships like that -- certain areas of them -- to go to this kind of organization and then see the benefits of that as they grow in size. This happens to be a growth area. It will be easier for them, if they wish, to go to an organized status. I think it will do something in terms of training people in some municipal responsibility.

The other advantage is that where there is a static community -- and a number of them are static -- or one where there is some decrease in population you can still establish the organization.

I have one community called Pass Lake. It’s in an unusual position in that half of Pass Lake is in an organized township and half of it is in an unorganized township and the Lakehead planning board jurisdiction runs right down the middle of it. They have a very strong sense of community in Pass Lake. It was originally a farming community and Danish settlers there have contributed a lot to it.

I suppose in that sense there really won’t be a solution for them because part of the community is already in an organized territory. The part that’s in the unorganized territory probably could set up the organization but some of the key people in the Pass Lake community would be excluded from it. I don’t suppose there’s any real solution to that. It’s something that has always troubled me ever since I was elected, and something I wouldn’t mind talking to the minister about at some point after the legislation comes into effect.

There’s a community called Lappe in my riding which is about 15 miles from the centre of downtown Thunder Bay. That’s an old community, in the sense that it was a pioneering Finnish community at the turn of the century when people actually thought they could farm the land there. It turned out not to be rich agricultural land. There are a number of Finnish settlers who continue to live there and their sons and daughters continue to live there. It is part of Gorham and Ware townships.

Because they’re next to Thunder Bay there’s a lot of pressure on them coming from the city of Thunder Bay, the natural urban pressure of growth that comes on them. I think they’re becoming very much a mixed community. There are a lot of mobile-home parks there that are a real problem. There's some conflict between the people who moved out there many years ago and the newer people, and it’s sad to see the conflicts there.

I think this legislation will give them a good opportunity to organize as a community services board. I think you’ll have some pretty lively elections in a community like that which will be healthy and good. That way you’ll get a good representation on the board.

I have two or three problems with the legislation, I’m sure the minister has as well. I’d like to mention them very quickly.

I would like to emphasize the importance of the minister and the ministry giving some consideration to a day-long election of some kind. I quite agree with my colleague from Sudbury, we don’t need a full-fledged, municipal election with returning officers, polling stations and so on, but some kind of mechanism where someone who is working shift work could (a) stand, if he can’t get off shift, and sometimes you can’t, and (b) at least cast a ballot.

In unorganized communities, it is sometimes hard for the spouse of the working person to get a baby-sitter so the family can be represented at the meeting. It is sometimes hard, particularly when you have a community meeting like this. I would like that to be given some serious thought. Maybe it only needs to be eight hours, from 10 to six in the evening. Maybe there could be some kind of relatively simple supervision and the provision somewhat like the Election Act where someone from the rural area can be sworn in or recognized as a resident in the geographic area. I think that deserves some thought. I don’t have the mechanism detailed at all but I think it’s worth considering.

Like some of the previous speakers, I would like the minister to give some thought for either a two-for-one funding or making the one-for-one funding mandatory by changing the “may” to “shall.” There are some areas where it may be justifiable -- and I probably shouldn’t say this if it’s going out to the whole province -- where there is a good argument for saying, “That service, because of its nature, deserves two-to-one funding or more, and this other service, because of its nature, deserves a one-for-one funding.” Maybe that’s something that can be looked at after experience as you work through the next year or two years. It may be interesting to see what kind of bylaws get passed. It might be kind of interesting for the ministry to follow up on what bylaws get considered and rejected because of the limitation in the funding procedure at the present time.

I’m very curious about the fiscal year. It’s not a big question. I’m wondering why it isn’t the standard one with municipalities or with the provincial budget. I would like to be informed on that.

When I was looking at the funding provisions, I happened to take a look at section 9 of the original act which indicates the minister can enter into agreements with federal authorities, for example. I think there should be every reason why this government, and this minister in particular, should put some pressure on the feds for some funding for unorganized communities, particularly when it comes to things like transportation services.

It seems to me, if the feds are going to pull the stupid move I think they’re doing right now in withdrawing the northern daily service across the north, the line of the CNR, that there should be, at the very minimum, some commitment on the part of the federal authorities to supply some additional funding for either a bus service, other connecting links or even, if I may say so, for roads so that the people have egress from and ingress to their communities.

I remember when I lived in Armstrong there wasn’t a complete road there. There was a connection of bush roads that eventually connected to the road that came out at Hurkett. During the spring thaw there was a two- to three-week period where it was very dangerous to travel that road.

I remember once actually going through a washout at nine o’clock on a Friday night in late April or May -- probably May. The car stalled just when we got to the other side. I happened to be with two American servicemen who were sitting by the side of the road waiting for the next car to come along. I told them there wasn’t going to be any next car. Luckily I walked back to Gull Bay and we got some help from Ministry of Natural Resources people.

The train was important in that community. It was important in terms of goods as well as people.

I think we really should see what kind of agreements can be made. I think the mechanism of the northern affairs ministers’ conferences that have been developed would be one through which this should be approached.

I’d like also very briefly to speak about materials. I can understand some of the problems that might arise because of the accounting and auditing procedures. I think one of my colleagues suggested looking at the Wintario guidelines. I know they’re having problems with Wintario guidelines.

You might also look at the Election Expenses Act, where certain services that are contributed to an election have to be declared as a donation and given the monetary value. It’s a long time since I looked at that legislation. I know that my CFO looks at it very closely. There are mechanisms in there for evaluating it that might be worth looking at in terms of developing sound legal guidelines that can be audited and monitored. I know they are audited and monitored very closely in the Election Expenses Act. That applies, I believe, in the federal act as well as in the provincial act. Donations, in kind and in services, have to be declared as donations.

I make that suggestion in a positive light because I think it might give us the lead that we need in developing further improvements in the legislation.

The other area I’d like to discuss is this: I think the drafting is good in the legislation, but I think there are some problems in terms of the area that comprises a community. I think the ministry will have to be alert that there is perhaps a kind of arbitrary decision in some cases to make it too narrow. I think this might apply particularly in the not-so-isolated unorganized communities where a small grouping might want to look after just its corner and forget about other people. I think that would only lead to conflict, because eventually you’d have to make the bigger services board anyway.

On the other hand, and I want to conclude on this point, I don’t think we should force, or even be seen to attempt to force, anyone into a services board who doesn’t want to belong to it. I think that’s one of the key principles in the bill. It’s one of the key principles that make the bill acceptable to most of the northerners I know in this House, and it’s one of the key principles that make it acceptable to the organizations that represent the unorganized communities at the present time.

In summing up, I feel pretty good about this legislation. I think it has been a good run at a piece of legislation. There are improvements that need to be made. Of course we will be going over it clause by clause in some detail. The minister and his staff should positively consider some of the amendments that will be proposed during the clause-by-clause.

One final suggestion: I think the minister should have his legal people look at his own amendment, as I have seen it. It may in fact need a companion bill, rather than an amendment to this act, because it tries to amend a different act. That should be checked with the rules of the House.

We in this party would be most agreeable to supporting the amendment, if it has to be brought in as a separate bill amending a different act, and just consider it a companion piece of legislation.

On motion by Mr. Swart, the debate was adjourned.

The House adjourned at 10:30 p.m.