Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL SERVICES

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The House resumed at 8 p.m.

House in committee of supply.

SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL SERVICES

On vote 3102, adults' and children's services program; items 4 and 5, income maintenance and adults' social services:

The Deputy Chairman: The member for Prescott-Russell.

Mr. Boudria: Mr. Chairman, may I conclude that the minister has no statement he wishes to make at this time?

Mr. Nixon: He means, yes, he has no statement.

Mr. Boudria: Yes, he has no statement. I do not intend to be long on these supplementary estimates. I understand we are doing concurrences later this evening. I would like to take a little more time then to speak since, as the minister knows, it has been quite a long time since we passed the estimates of his ministry. Many things have happened since then in various areas, not just relating to general welfare assistance. A variety of other things have occurred this year.

We all know the importance of general welfare assistance at this time in this province. It is not an importance we should be proud of but it is one that is very necessary. It is disheartening to see the number of people who are on general welfare assistance. The size of welfare rolls has increased tremendously, as we know, and the benefits have not nearly kept up to what they were a number of years ago.

I believe there was a report, which I do not have in my hand at this time, that stated the cost of living since 1975 had increased by something like 133 per cent and that general welfare assistance had increased by somewhere in the 50s -- I believe it was 59 per cent -- in the same period of time. This has led to a situation in this province where general welfare recipients are far worse off now than they have ever been in our history. This is notwithstanding the fact they received some increase just prior to Christmas.

There are various ways of measuring the poverty line and, because there are various ways, the minister in the past has stated that, "Somebody's poverty line may not necessarily be realistically what the poverty line is," and so forth. Just for the sake of discussion, perhaps we could talk briefly about what the Statistics Canada poverty line is.

The 1981 Statscan poverty line in a city of 500,000 or more was $16,361 for a family of four and $14,198 for a family of three. In the case of a town of 100,000 to 500,000, Statscan estimated the poverty line for a family of four was $15,549 and $13,455 for a family of three. In small-town Ontario, communities with a population of 30,000 to 99,999, the figures were $14,536 for a family of four and $12,575 for a family of three. I do not know whether we could conclude that in yet smaller towns the poverty line would be reduced a bit once more. Regardless, I am sure all of us would agree that the general welfare assistance rate has to go a very long way before it reaches anyone's poverty line.

I wonder whether the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Drea) has a poverty line which he uses to measure that type of thing. If he does, maybe he could tell us whose it is. With all the ones we have been able to find, it does not seem he has been using any of those, because obviously he is at a far lower rate than anybody else.

It is interesting to note, though, that in the mid-1970s, we were at about the level of the Statscan poverty line at that time. So, presumably, at one time or another the government must have acknowledged that there was some validity to some of those poverty lines; or maybe it was just a coincidence that we happened to use figures that closely resembled theirs. But, for whatever reason, the minister no longer sees fit to use those statistics.

The other aspect of general welfare assistance which should concern us this evening is the impact that welfare has had on municipalities. Perhaps I could refresh the memory of the House about the statement made by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Mr. Bennett) on August 23, 1982. I believe the statement was made at the annual meeting of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. At that time, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing stated the following:

"My present reading of the revenue forecast for the province for the next year suggests that there maybe no increase in the municipal grants over this year's level." He said further, "It would be imprudent for any municipality to plan for next year on the assumption of any increase in grants from the province."

Of course, we realize that municipalities do not choose whether they want to participate in general welfare assistance, and I am not advocating that they should have that choice. Obviously the general welfare assistance has to be provided where there is need. What is very difficult to understand, though, is the following: the province is recognizing that we need $92,572,100 more in income maintenance which has to be matched by municipal dollars to the tune of 20 per cent, and we are being told at the same time by the same government in the announcement made by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing that the municipalities cannot expect any increase in their grants for next year to assist with this increase in welfare.

I invite the minister to tell us -- and I know, of course, that responsibility is not specifically only his but that of his government -- that we should have a threshold point and beyond a certain figure the province would assume a greater proportion of the welfare costs, because paying welfare costs by the acre obviously can be done for only so long.

I will just use the example of the town of Hawkesbury in my own constituency which has seen the property assessment decrease by the closure of the Canadian International Paper plant. The assessment will decrease by roughly 15 per cent. On the other hand, we have increasing welfare, not specifically as a result of the CIP plant closure because, of course, it will take a while before all those people have drawn out their unemployment insurance benefits and become welfare recipients. I hope the economy will pick up before then, and I certainly hope the people of Hawkesbury will be able to find meaningful employment. Nevertheless, the fact remains that at the immediate moment the assessments will go down by something like 15 per cent. Not everyone at CIP is going immediately on welfare, although some of them will, but the welfare rolls in Prescott-Russell were already on the increase.

8:10 p.m.

We have increasing welfare rolls, increasing provincial government expenditures to pay for their share of welfare, a literal freeze announced by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing in grants to the same area to pay for their share of the welfare and assessment going down at the same time. How on earth are municipalities supposed to manage with that kind of situation? There is only one way, of course: they have to increase the mill rate.

When large numbers of people are unemployed, increased mill rates are not very well received, and for a very logical reason: they have not got any money to pay the property taxes. What is happening in Hawkesbury now is not unique, and I am sure some of my colleagues will reinforce that later on tonight.

This afternoon we heard the third party critic asking a question that mentioned something along the same lines, that many municipalities in the province have had massive increases in welfare and are going to experience a lot of difficulty in paying for their share unless the government comes up with a revised formula, which in my view should have some sort of threshold component at which point the assistance changes.

Maybe the minister is going to say, "We cannot pay 100 per cent beyond a certain point." At least it would be better than the present formula if at a certain mathematically calculated point the government were to arrive at greater funding or something so it could assist the municipalities with the very serious burden they are going to experience before things get better.

Even if we are just on the threshold of economic recovery in this province, which is far from being obvious yet, by the time the situation improves significantly there still will be a great number of people whose unemployment insurance benefits will expire, who will not have been able to participate in the new job creation program created jointly by the federal and provincial governments and who, therefore, inevitably will end up on the welfare rolls.

Earlier in this session -- I believe it was in October -- I mentioned in this House some of the increases in welfare we had experienced over the preceding year. At that time -- and again I am talking about October 1982 over October 1981 -- the city of Windsor's welfare costs had increased by 45 per cent over 1981; in Essex county they had increased by 39 per cent; in the St. Catharines region they had increased by something on the order of 17 per cent; in Sudbury they had increased by 27 per cent -- and they have increased drastically since then, of course -- and in Peel they had increased by 86 per cent.

It was very difficult for municipalities to forecast that kind of growth in the welfare rolls. Even the government, I suggest, never expected things would get so bad; otherwise, we would not be doing these supplementary estimates now. Had the government suspected the situation would get better, I am sure they would not have put funds unnecessarily in the income maintenance program of the estimates.

I am looking at the estimates book on page 48. At the bottom of the sheet we see the five-year expenditure trend for the cost of the income maintenance program. We see that in 1978-79 the expenditure trend increased by 14.9 per cent over the previous year; in 1979-80, by 10.1 per cent over the previous year; by 16.4 per cent in 1980-81; and by 10.6 per cent in 1981-82.

The estimated increase in 1982-83 is very interesting. The estimated increase was supposed to be 2.5 per cent. That is certainly not what happened. If that is not correct, the minister can explain what that is.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Chairman, I sympathize with the honourable member when he is talking about the increases in general welfare assistance. On this page we are talking about family benefits, and it is remarkably accurate. If he will turn to the next page, it talks about municipal allowances.

Mr. Boudria: Mr. Chairman, I am reading about municipal allowances and benefits. I am looking at that sheet 48, and I will just read very briefly what it says at the bottom.

"The 1981-82 estimates have been adjusted to include a supplementary estimate of the sum of $3,050,000 in October 1981. This was part of the income support package that covered the introduction of a selective shelter subsidy shared 80-20 with the municipality. This will replace the cost-shared municipal programs, which are now in place in some localities, with a comprehensive province-wide shelter subsidy. The municipalities may still provide a rent supplement under supplementary aid or special assistance.

"The 1981-82 forecast includes the above and also the annualization of case-load increases experienced in 1980-81. During 1981-82, the number of cases increased to 79,000 from 76,000 in 1980-81, an increase of four per cent."

The table is right below that.

Nevertheless, the estimates made by everyone were on the very conservative side, and I do not think there is anybody who forecast -- and I am sure the minister will acknowledge this -- that we would see that kind of increase in welfare rolls. There is nobody who wanted that. It is a very unfortunate thing, but the fact is that we have to live with that now.

Just as the minister has to seek supplementary estimates to provide that assistance, the municipalities that have to pay out their percentage are having to do the same thing, and they are in dire straits. They are in a situation that is not rosy. There are not many municipalities in this province that are going to have a situation whereby their assessments will grow faster than the number of welfare cases. It is certainly not the case with municipalities in my constituency.

I mentioned the fact that my own area had some increases in welfare, but I will just name a few more. In Brockville the number of cases from October to October increased by 43.4 per cent, and in Cornwall the number of cases increased by 27 per cent over the same period. Of course, it is quite correct to say that it has gotten worse since then.

Regardless of the point that the increase in the figures used here may be somewhat on the conservative side, the fact remains that nobody forecast that size of expenditure. It is time that governments came to grips with the fact that they are not the only ones paying welfare; the municipalities also pay but, unlike the province, they are in a very difficult situation when it comes to finding the funds.

Of course, the minister is going to tell us that he is also in a very difficult situation when he is in negotiation with his cabinet colleagues to find funds to run all the various programs that his ministry is running. I understand that and I am very conscious of that. I know that the funds are scarce.

However, for a municipality the situation is a lot worse in the sense that it has only one method of getting those funds. They cannot issue a debenture to get welfare money. They cannot do any of those things. The only thing they can do is increase the mill rate or find somebody who is going to construct a few high-rises in downtown Hawkesbury to increase the assessment. Given the economic situation we have now, not too many people are constructing high-rises in Hawkesbury, Windsor or various other areas where we are in that kind of situation.

8:20 p.m.

The other concern I have in regard to general welfare assistance is that the people on welfare, recognizing the fact that they do not have a very large increase in welfare benefits, are unfortunately still having to pay the cost of inflation more than anybody else, even in the current year. The large increases that some of them are experiencing in rent, in electrical energy consumption and in all kinds of other things were not put under the government wage restraint package. They are, of course, having to pay for those increases while many others in society do not have to pay those costs.

The minister may say the cost of rent is increasing for everybody. But the situation is far different when one has a disposable income one can use to pay for an increase. That is not nearly as hard as when one cannot make ends meet already and one has to rob Peter to pay Paul, so to speak, to pay one's bills.

There are many people in my own constituency, and even here in Toronto, who have come to my office. I am sure that applies to all other honourable members. They sit down in front of us and show us a little budget they have made: heat this much, light this much and rent this much. They mark up the total and it is almost the equivalent of their welfare cheque. When they come to my office, they say: "The welfare administrator is cheating me. He is not giving me everything I deserve." I look at the amount and say: "No. That is exactly the amount you are supposed to be getting." They say: "You're joking, of course. Nobody could live on that."

This is a very difficult situation, because many people who were out in the work force and paying high taxes, as many of us do, formed the impression that many of the people on welfare were there willingly. This, of course, is erroneous. They thought they were receiving huge benefits. The only reason they thought that was that they were paying high taxes and, when one pays high taxes, one automatically thinks all the moneys used in that are going to somebody else who is drawing money out of the system instead of putting some in. One automatically thinks that person is receiving oodles of money. That is not the case.

When those people who were in the work force for a number of years are placed in a situation where they themselves become welfare recipients they are totally disbelieving when they see the size of welfare benefits. Members know that one member of the Legislature attempted to live for one month on a welfare diet and did not do so very successfully. He lost a considerable amount of weight at that time. I think he has regained some of it now, although maybe he should not have; but in any case he did lose a certain amount of weight trying to live on the amount given to somebody on welfare.

I grant that somebody who has been living on welfare for some time perhaps gets to be a thrifty shopper; he gets to be wise; he gains a certain amount of knowledge in doing things that we perhaps do not devote much time to because we have more than he does. But there is no way one can cut out such things as heat, light or rent. There is only so much that anyone can cut out. That is a very difficult situation to live in when there is just not enough to go around.

The other thing is that the new people on welfare are just like us in the sense that they have not been accustomed to living on these types of benefits and, when they become welfare recipients, they are at a loss to understand how anyone in that situation possibly could have managed to make ends meet for an extended period of time.

Mr. Chairman, I will conclude my remarks on the supplementary estimates. We recognize that the funds are needed. We hope that included in the minister's comments or in the remarks of some member of the government there will be an indication to the municipalities of a willingness to assist them by sharing the burden of their contribution, which at present amounts to some 20 per cent of the total cost of welfare. This, it should be noted, is just a little less than this government's share.

Many people are of the opinion that welfare is an 80-20 sharing situation, with the provincial government's share being 80 per cent. However, the federal government contributes 50 per cent to the cost of welfare, the provincial government 30 per cent and the municipal government 20 per cent. This government does not readily point this out to everyone in the province.

I hope the minister will be able to correct some of the inequities and to improve the benefits, which still are not at an acceptable level. I hope he will address these matters in his remarks.

The Deputy Chairman: Does the minister wish to respond?

Hon. Mr. Drea: How would you like it handled, Mr. Chairman?

The Deputy Chairman: However the majority wishes it.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Do you want me to reply to each, or do you want me to wait until afterwards?

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Yes what?

The Deputy Chairman: They would like your reply now.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Chairman, in terms of the impact upon the municipalities, I think the member for Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria) has stated the facts correctly, at least in principle. It is fair to say that some municipalities have been hit much harder than others. In fairness to the honourable member, he was talking on a general average, although he did make references to his own municipality.

In terms of decreases of assessment, if that were to continue, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing obviously has some remedies for that, but that really is in a long-term situation.

Without going too much further, I think I can assure the House on two matters. One, I am looking into the impact on municipalities. I am looking at the most beneficial way to assist the municipalities, particularly the smaller ones such as the united counties of Russell and Prescott. I wish to point out that their burden of the recession began much earlier and has been carried much longer.

Some of the areas one hears about now are relative newcomers to the situation by virtue of the fact they had a very strong employment base in the past, whereas there are many areas of the province, particularly in eastern Ontario, that do not have that. Correspondingly, parts of eastern Ontario, as well as some other areas, do not have the industrial or commercial base to ease the property tax load. Rather, it has been eroding, or has remained stagnant, for many years.

The type of approach I am looking at, and which the government will be looking at very shortly, is aimed at those municipalities in which, even were the recession to end tomorrow, there would remain a long-term impact based upon the historical economic facts.

8:30 p.m.

Second, in terms of the rate increase, when the honourable member was talking tonight about that poverty line -- and there are many, quite frankly -- he was asking about a 70 per cent increase in general welfare assistance for that family of four. I do not think either he or his party envisions a 70 per cent increase at this time.

Mr. Boudria: I did not say that.

Hon. Mr. Drea: The member suggested the Statscan poverty line of $14,000 -- is that not his poverty line?

Mr. Boudria: Yes.

Hon. Mr. Drea: To bring that family of four up to that requires an increase of more than 70 per cent in the general welfare assistance rate.

Mr. Boudria: I ask the minister which poverty line he is using.

Hon. Mr. Drea: The one the member mentioned. That is the only one I have with me tonight.

Mr. Boudria: That is the one the minister is using to derive his benefits.

Hon. Mr. Drea: No, the member used it.

That is one of the difficulties with using one form of poverty line or another. This is not the first time this type of thing has occurred. There are a great many poverty lines. The member mentioned that. They are general yardsticks and they do not measure subsistence but rather reflect community living standards. In essence, they are economists' judgements of required purchasing power. Statscan does have its widely quoted low-income line, but again that varies by family size and by community.

Part of the problem is the fact that a family's annual income may be above the poverty line, but the members of the family are nevertheless in need because they are unemployed. Right now, with a combination of man and wife, perhaps one person in the family is on unemployment insurance that is not exhausted yet. That situation can occur. Quite frankly, that is why we have not recognized one single poverty line.

There are also some other variables the member does take into account. There is very little subsidized housing in his own area. There is an enormous amount of subsidized housing in places like Metropolitan Toronto and other urban areas. On the other hand, the rents in smaller areas tend to be somewhat lower than market rents in other areas.

I think back in the 1970s it was coincidence, because the one factor that has eroded everybody, inflation, was not with us when those two were there. Certainly any and all poverty lines, including the ones where they cook the books, are interesting and do have some value in terms of focusing in on some aspects of the problem, but as accurate measurements I do not think they reflect the reality of today.

The other fact the member mentioned was a threshold figure. I am not altogether sure what he meant by a threshold figure. I presume he was looking at the present one of six per cent. If six per cent of the population is unemployed, certain higher provincial subsidies kick in. I take it that, rather than an actual case load number or something else, was the threshold figure he was referring to.

Mr. Boudria: I said some sort of arithmetical method of changing the subsidy rate at some point.

Hon. Mr. Drea: The member mentioned threshold figure and I just wanted to make sure I understood which one. Actually, I think that is rather an accurate impact measurement. Quite frankly, I think the present six per cent is too high. In terms of a real measure of impact and something that might help the municipalities, I think the member is on the right track, since the minister is on the same track.

I think that is a way of assisting the municipality to meet its long-term obligations without bringing about so substantial or so permanent an increase in the property tax rate as to be counter-productive within that municipality. I think that answers the concerns of the member.

Mr. Boudria: If I can ask for a further explanation, did I hear the minister correctly when he said it would require a 70 per cent increase in benefits to reach the poverty line which he has acknowledged was relatively accurate in 1974 or 1975? I should not say accurate, but coincidental. In other words, in 1974 and 1975 it is roughly at the equivalent of that same Statscan poverty line, which has now increased of course, and now it would require a 70 per cent increase. If that is the case, does that not speak to just how inaccurate the level of benefits is? If that is not the case, maybe the minister could correct it.

Hon. Mr. Drea: If the member thinks he is going to get me to go along with the same story that he or somebody else put out some time ago that inflation has eroded benefits by 75 per cent, he is not. What I am really pointing out is the simple fact that the particular poverty line index he used is a judgemental thing. If he wants to accept it as today may I ask, does he?

Mr. Boudria: The only thing I am asking --

Hon. Mr. Drea: If he does not want to answer me, why did he use it? If he uses it and he says the benefits should be there, right now he is calling for better than a 75 per cent increase. Does the Liberal Party want a 75 per cent increase in general welfare assistance?

Mr. Boudria: What I am asking is, did that scale ever actually reflect what it was used for?

Hon. Mr. Drea: No, I do not think so.

Mr. Boudria: Why was it used at one time?

Hon. Mr. Drea: It was not. That is what I told him. He asked if it was the accurate measurement or was it coincidence and I told him coincidence.

Mr. Boudria: The amount was the same at one time.

Hon. Mr. Drea: We will try again. I told him it was coincidence. It never was a measurement. Does that end the argument? It never was a measurement. In many ways it reflected certain things at that time because inflation was not such a distorter, but it never was a measurement.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Mr. Chairman, I would like to deal with the first part of the supplementary estimates, that is the income maintenance portion and specifically at this point deal with the $87 million additional expenditure for municipal allowances and benefits. Right afterwards, I think I will have some questions on the other amounts in terms of exactly what they reflect because it is never clear in the summaries that are given.

I would like to do this in a fairly broad context, if I might, and try to put my views across in terms of the history of income maintenance at the provincial level specifically as it is applied to general welfare within the range of income maintenance programs which are either administered by or co-sponsored by Ontario.

I think it is fair to say that the history of income maintenance has always been one where there has been a reflection of the powerlessness in political terms of the group that requires assistance. If one looks at any of the estimates back over the last decade or so in this province, in the combined amount of money we give to social assistance of one kind or another for the people of this province we have seldom, if ever, given more than five per cent of our total budget to the poor in an attempt by government to deal in a serious way with poverty.

It is very seldom over five per cent. Even with this supplementary estimate we are getting today, it will still not be over five per cent for this budget year, even with all the supplements, and I am not sure what we are up to, but it must be around $23 billion.

8:40 p.m.

I think that reflects on the question of morality, political morality in the politics of poverty. I guess a lot of us have been thinking a great deal lately about the message by the Catholic bishops in this country and the question of the economy and political morality and the role of government in terms of doing everything government can to protect the ability to work and have meaningful employment.

I would suggest there is an extension of that morality in terms of government's basic responsibility to do what it can to overcome the problems of poverty. We must not just wring our hands and say the poor will be always with us and take that traditional laissez-faire approach. We must not, as government, allow ourselves to slip into the position of saying these people have no power, they have no vote, many of them are unliked by the rest of our society that is paying the way, as it were, so let us not really address ourselves in a serious fashion to the matter of poverty.

I would suggest that not just in this jurisdiction -- I am not pointing the finger at this particular minister and I am not pointing it at this particular government -- but in all governments in this country, I do not think we have ever really seriously looked at the question of poverty and the seriousness it should assume in terms of public policy.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, when we were a more affluent nation, there was perhaps a move towards an acceptance of the notion of universality and the idea that we might address the problems of poverty in a serious way; we did it in terms of royal commissions and suggestions that we should be giving more to the Third World and to our own native people and seeking the elimination of poverty in our urban settings. But as the crunch of money came back and the salad days, if you will, went by, we quickly moved back to the notion of this question of the lack of political power and the divide-and-conquer kind of approach to poverty.

Rather than really trying to meet the needs, we decided to establish good guys and bad guys; those that would be more acceptable in terms of receiving increases, those that maybe should even receive vesting and those that were less acceptable in a political sense, and any minister or any government in going to bat for those people might actually risk their political necks in so doing because of the lack of acceptability in our society for protection of those individuals.

I would suggest that what we have done in this province has been to do just that. Instead of the notion of having all our income maintenance systems totally divided between the provincial government and the federal government, the notion of universality of standards that would be applied across the province or across the country, we divided off a group from that kind of notion of income maintenance because they were too unsavory, they would only cause political problems rather than bring political benefit.

As a result, provinces across this country decided they would give responsibility for a major portion of the income maintenance of that group of people to the creatures of the provinces, the municipalities. The municipalities would be used to control the costs, to deflect away from provincial attention and provincial policy initiative the problems of that particular group. That group I am talking about, of course, are welfare recipients.

That was done right across this country and the notion that these people should be separated out from family benefits recipients, from old age people, from people who were disabled, and be put off in their own category and handled by the municipalities, was one that was accepted for a long period of time.

The reasons for doing that are rather sinister, if we look at them. It allowed a greater discretion of interpretation by municipalities. If we look at our General Welfare Assistance Act and the manuals that various municipalities have developed -- not many as thick as this one from the Metropolitan Toronto area -- I assure you the amount of discretion that has been given to municipalities to decide who is worthy of receiving income maintenance and the category of the welfare recipient has been extreme. So much so that people actually move from one municipality to another because one municipality will not give them assistance which is their right under the General Welfare Assistance Act and the other municipality five miles away is willing to do so.

Part of the reason for doing that is not just a meanness of spirit by one municipality in comparison to another, it reflects what the minister was speaking about just a few minutes ago to the member for Prescott-Russell and that is the reality of the economic viability of the municipalities to be able to provide the kinds of services that we have available for people under general welfare.

If one has a very low tax base and very little commercial or industrial assessment, one does not want to see all the money going off and paying welfare and the kinds of discretionary programs that can go along with welfare, which will cost money at the municipal level. So one plays it tough. That has had an effect, not just from municipality to municipality, it has had an effect on keeping the rates of welfare recipients down and their average increases down below that of any other group in our income maintenance structure across the province.

What that has meant is that those people at the local municipalities are being used as pawns by the provincial government here in this province. It has been done in other provinces as well. When it comes time, on an annualized basis generally speaking, to try to look at increases, the government of the day will say to the municipalities and their organizations: "Do you want us to raise the welfare rates this year? We are going to be raising the family benefit rates, there are a number of other things we will be doing for people on total provincial programs and do you want us to raise your rates?"

The municipalities will say, "What kind of a transfer payment are you going to give us this year?" The government will say, in the extreme case of this year: "Somewhere between zero and five per cent. We do not want you to raise your taxes any more than five per cent." The municipality says: "If you are going to do that in this kind of time, then we do not want you to increase the rates because that will be too hard on our budgets. We will have to cut back on other kinds of things that our middle-class property taxpayers will have to pay."

Then the minister gets up here in the House and he will announce an increase of seven per cent for the family benefits recipients; an increase of eight per cent, nine per cent for family benefits recipients on the guaranteed annual income system for the disabled, for instance, and he will say: "I am sorry but this year there will be no increase on general welfare because the municipalities do not want me to raise that. I, therefore, do not think this is the time to do it.

Hon. Mr. Drea: I never said that.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I would suggest that in 1981 that was virtually what took place. It might not have been said in those terms but I am saying that is, in effect, what this government has done in the past. The minister has used in speeches -- I would be glad to get one out -- the whole question of municipalities saying: "Do not raise the rates on me." He has said that in estimates before.

Not only do we have the amounts played off, but the whole notion of universality has not been accepted for these people. The whole question of a uniform rate that those people should receive, whether they live in Kapuskasing or whether they live in Toronto, has never been accepted, whereas we do accept it for other programs.

What has happened is that those general welfare recipients over the last 10 years have lost more and more against inflation than any of the other groups. Senior citizens became positively popular during the mid-1970s. The federal government even indexed them. "That is a great idea. These are the people who built our country. They are more acceptable politically and, therefore, we should index them." That has been advocated here at the provincial level as well.

Mr. Martel: The province was the one that fought the battle in Ottawa to get this group indexed.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: The member for Sudbury East is just giving credit to the provincial government for advocating that very move in Ottawa. That was a positive thing until this July when that indexing was taken away from senior citizens, when the crunch came down and their contribution to our society and the building of our society no longer became enough to warrant giving them the quarterly indexing they had received.

8:50 p.m.

Let us say that at least in general terms they became popular. Their increases rose higher than most other groups. At the tail-end of the 1970s, we could see the same thing happening with the disabled. Although even with the last increases given by the minister a permanently unemployable person is still behind, there have been major increases given to that group because they are now popular, they are now acceptable.

All of a sudden it is a group to which in the last little while we can find our way to give a maximum increase of 24 per cent, according to the minister's figures. Why were they not worthy of that in the past? I would suggest it was because they were not politically strong, they were not politically viable and they were not seen as one of the good guys. But they are now.

We have in family benefits the single mothers who, next to welfare recipients, have received the lowest increases over the last number of years. But they are more acceptable because of the kids. People do not think about welfare recipients as people who have children, although if we look at any of the statistics coming out of this ministry we will see that 40-odd per cent of the beneficiaries of the welfare assistance program are children. That may be out of whack this year because of the number of single employables coming into the numbers, but traditionally that has been the case.

We have seen in the past year a move by this government to move the mother from family benefits into the general welfare category in terms of the delivery of that service at the municipal level. One has to be fairly blind not to see the writing on the wall, that in the long run, as employables, they are also part of the responsibility of the municipalities financially, as a new deal is worked out for whatever it may be instead of a 20 per cent cost to the municipalities. "We will give you FBA employables, plus the GWA, employables and unemployables. We will wrap that all up and we will just charge you nine per cent fur that."

This is a figure -- I do not know where it has come from, just out of the blue or something that is roaring around the buildings in the last number of months -- which is a possibility. They have now joined the group of unacceptables in the black-and-white categorization that I am establishing for the minister to make my position absolutely clear on this.

I would suggest that all of this, the role of the employable welfare recipient as the bottom rung of all the recipients in terms of the amount of money received and the fickle way they are dealt with in government policy, is part of this government's and the federal government's whole approach to the politics of unemployment.

This brings us back to the bishops' approach to the morality of the idea that high unemployment is acceptable at a cost. One of the most cost-efficient ways of having unemployment is to have people on welfare, because of what it costs the federal and the provincial governments. What it costs the federal government, of course, is approximately 50 per cent of what it would be putting in for unemployment insurance payments.

What has happened over the last number of years, as the general welfare levels have slipped against inflation, is that the real costs of food and housing have been moving higher and higher while the amounts to welfare recipients have remained stagnant, with no increases at all. Instead of going to universality and the notion that government should pick up this kind of money for basic needs, we have gone to the point where the voluntary sector all of a sudden is expected to pick up basic needs.

The voluntary sector is expected to pick up housing needs. The missions in Toronto are expected to provide emergency housing for people, not for a day or for two weeks, but for nine months or maybe a year, which is now the case in Toronto. Places like the Scott Mission in Toronto are even asked to pick up the food costs for people. That is what has happened over the last number of years.

Who is that for? It is for the general welfare recipient who has been dumped, essentially, and who is without adequate resources and without political clout. I would suggest it is all part of a general government morality and political philosophy about the acceptability of putting human beings through that.

My little experiment in September was a stunt, a very artificial exercise, but it brought me --

Mr. Bradley: Lots of ink.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Lots of ink, yes. It also brought me a reawakening, I hope. I remember that the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon) thought I had lost my sense of humour during that period as we had one or two nights of argument or of interplay in here, but it really made me very aware of how callously we can treat people in this province: that it can be acceptable for months and months, until somebody goes out and makes it an issue, to allow people to sleep on the streets; that it can be politically and morally acceptable to have people eating their one meal a day in a mission in Toronto in 1981, 1982, 1983.

By God, it was a major reawakening for me in my politics and my priorities as a critic, because in Community and Social Services one can spend one's time running after issues everywhere: the closing of White Oaks, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally retarded. Issues arise all the time; it is just a pot-pourri of things that go on. I have decided I am going to focus on this issue because it is so basic and because of the morality involved.

I think it is really important to talk about how far people fell behind. Since February 1981, a single welfare recipient has been expected to get by on $266 a month maximum. Very few receive the maximum. The basic rate was $216 plus a maximum of $50 in supplementary accommodation assistance. That is $3,000 a year or slightly less on which a person was expected to get by in 1982 in a major metropolitan area like Toronto. They had had no increase in the fall of 1981 when the rates were increased for other groups; they were expected to subsist even longer. When other groups got seven per cent, they got nothing.

What does it mean when one is getting by on that much money? It means essentially that if you are lucky and you get cheap accommodation of $150 a month you have $50 to eat with; and if you are not lucky and you are paying the going rate in Toronto of $50 a week for accommodation, then you do not have any money at all for your food -- maybe $15 -- so you have no choice but to take a march from wherever your lodgings are up to some mission to grab a meal every day. That is what we have allowed it to come to. They have lost something like 47 per cent against inflation in a five-year period, and there was no rush by this government to jump in for those people.

Family benefits recipients, women and single mothers in general, lost 27 to 30-odd per cent against inflation during that period. They were the next worse off.

Let me read some of the rates, Mr. Chairman, just so you can see how inane it is. A single senior citizen before this latest increase could receive $529 a month in Ontario with the combined assistance that they would receive; a single disabled person could receive up to $414; a single employable could receive $266; a single unemployable -- that is something like a former psychiatric patient -- could receive $288 a month. Why that extreme range with respect to what are basic needs for people to get by on? Even if you accept the notion that a senior citizen has a long-term pension that you are trying to commit and he has been paying into it, what is the rationale for that person receiving $115 a month more than somebody who is going to be disabled for the rest of his life? It is incomprehensible.

But to expect a couple with two children on general welfare to get by on $7,380 a year, which is what we were expecting, with no increase dating back about 18 months at the time that I started that month, is as close to politically criminal as I can imagine and is certainly immoral.

9 p.m.

We have had increases. I will come to those in a minute. In my welfare experiment, my attempt to draw attention to the issue, one thing I learned was that in effect I focused on the wrong thing. It is not a question of how much food somebody has; it is a question of the cost of housing and the lack of available, affordable housing. That is the real issue in terms of people at the bottom of the income maintenance scene.

I was told tonight there is a lot of housing in Toronto compared with Prescott-Russell. However, I would suggest there is not a lot of public housing and affordable housing available to people on welfare in Metropolitan Toronto. I do not think the minister will disagree with that.

I learned that the reality of our approach to welfare assistance is that we deliberately do not give people enough money for accommodation. By deliberately not giving them enough money for accommodation we guarantee they have to take money from their food or clothing budgets such as they are, a basic amount, and use that. I think that struck me the most.

It was almost amusing, if it was not so tragic, but in late September a woman called me who had just run through her unemployment insurance. She had gone to the welfare office in Scarborough and asked how much she would receive. She was told she could get $266. She went out and looked for housing. She phoned my office again and said: "I have looked everywhere and I cannot find an apartment for $266. They are all around $300."

My assistant had to say to her that the $266 was not just for the apartment. That was the total amount she would get to eat and for accommodation. There was a mixture of laughing and crying on the other end of the phone. It was just so ludicrous, so totally out of touch with reality in Metropolitan Toronto. It is not just Metro Toronto; it is the same in Thunder Bay, Ottawa, Hamilton and --

Mr. Haggerty: The Niagara region.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: The Niagara region. I am reminded. That is the real problem.

Now there is a brilliant little move by the government, deflecting attention away from the dismal failure to provide enough affordable housing in the province and make it accessible to these people, which is another matter. We are now talking about providing emergency housing, giving a little extra money to make sure there is enough emergency housing over the winter for these people.

That is not the issue. It is good we are providing something for those people who last winter were sleeping on the street. I am delighted about that. I would never again want to experience walking down those garage stairwells at city hall and seeing people sleeping there. It was a disheartening thing to experience.

I am glad we got the emergency housing, but to make it seem that is now dealing with the housing issue, which is what we are getting, and that somehow the programs of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing for assisted housing around the province are doing anything at all in Metropolitan Toronto to help us with our waiting list for the Ontario Housing Corp. is lust ludicrous.

We need an immediate move to create many more houses for people on welfare in Metropolitan Toronto. I am sure the minister will confirm that a person who is single and employable on welfare in Toronto is not even eligible for public housing. Is that true?

Hon. Mr. Drea: You are asking the wrong minister.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: The minister says I am asking the wrong minister. I guess this is where I come back to the morality of the question. One can divide it up and compartmentalize the responsibilities, but I say it is a governmental and a legislative responsibility. We have allowed this crisis to come about where there is a situation where a member like myself, who could help somebody get into OHC a year and a half ago, now finds it totally impossible.

People have been doubling up and tripling up with other people for nine months, four or five kids in a two-bedroom apartment waiting to get into Ontario Housing. I cannot do a darned thing for them because one cannot move it. There are just no spaces and the waiting list is so long.

It used to be that you would argue one really difficult case, get that one through and hold back on some of the others that were not quite so desperate. But my God, I am now just swamped with desperate people and people who have been in that situation for six and nine months, and these families are just busting up because of it.

It may not be specifically the responsibility of the Minister of Community and Social Services, but it surely is his to advocate some change. If he does not advocate the change then he is failing the people he is supposedly responsible for, to whom he is supposedly giving the basic needs income for housing and food. He cannot do his job; he is failing those people unless he provides that kind of housing.

Let me deal with some of the increases that have been brought forward. There has been a five per cent increase on the basic rate for somebody on general welfare. I remind members again that February 1981 was the last time those people saw an increase. This newest increase was November 1981. That is a lot of months.

During that time the consumer price index went up something like 26 per cent. The cost of a quart of milk went up 30 per cent. We have said that for their basics, for the food component, let us give them five per cent. For some reason or other we give $11 a month more to those employables -- not all of them: I will make that clear in a moment; they do not all get that -- who are living in profit housing, and we are adding $25 more for shelter subsidy.

So the minister can say he is increasing a maximum of 17 per cent, a major increase for that group, and that is true for those who can receive the maximum shelter subsidy. If you happen to be a person who is living with family or living in nonprofit housing and who is not declaring that essentially as income for taxation purposes you will not be eligible for anything except the five per cent increase.

The increase was more like four per cent this year in some of the estimates I have done for people who live outside the Metropolitan Toronto area. When one factors in their overall costs and where they already were in terms of the existing shelter subsidy -- which I will come to in a minute -- the actual increase in terms of their average housing cost was more like four per cent in places like Kitchener and perhaps London. It is not the most generous of gifts by this government.

I just cannot stop myself from comparing the $52 million increase we gave more than 100,000 people -- I presume --

Interjection.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: It is more than that. It includes all the Family Benefits Act ones as well, so it would be a couple of hundred thousand people. We gave them $52 million in a year when we were giving about $200 million to 14,000 and some doctors out of the public purse.

I do not think we can look at this just on the basis of who has the power in this system. We have to look at it as political morality, and that, in my view, verges on being immoral. I am not attacking for a second the worth of the doctor. I am just talking about the comparison between what we are doing about poverty and people's right to feel that they have equal status in our country, that they have dignity, that they have self-worth and the average we have given the doctors.

I do not think many members in this House understand how the rent subsidy works. The rent subsidy sounds like a great idea. Now people can receive up to $75 as a single employable, a $75 subsidy on top of the normal allowance to go towards housing costs.

9:10 p.m.

But do most members know -- I do not believe they do -- how the system is set up? These are people who have no other money. Let us understand that. One cannot get general welfare unless one has no other money. That is one of the basic things one finds in the General Welfare Assistance Act and the manuals that deal with this matter in the various municipalities. This money is needed for basic food, clothing and shelter.

The system is set up in such a way as to guarantee that one can never have the full housing cost picked up unless those complete housing costs are $75. If a person pays $75 a month rent he then gets 100 per cent of his rent picked up. There is no subsidy required. It is part of the basic allotment. If he pays less than $75 in rent, it is subtracted from the basic amount. It is outrageous but they do.

Can members believe that? As if the basic rate is not low enough they actually subtract it if one is not paying out that much in basic rent. Between a rent of $75 and $100, one does not get a cent more. One is not then eligible for subsidy. Immediately, there is $25 that has to be taken out. If a person is paying $100 a month in rent, he is going to have to take $25 out of his food budget and put it against housing.

After it gets to $100 this rule comes into effect -- this is a memo from a social services administrator in Toronto: "The calculation for these new rent subsidies will be the same as in the past. That is, the amount of shelter subsidy entitlement will be either 75 per cent of the excess of actual shelter over the threshold amount," that is the $75 I was talking about, "or the shelter subsidy maximum, whichever is the smaller amount."

It means they give those people 75 cents on every real dollar they have to pay for rent. So if a person is paying $150 a month rent he or she will get the basic $75 then nothing for the $25 to $100. On the $100 to $150 the person will get $37.50 for that $50. So if the person is paying $150 he or she has to reach into the food amount again for another $12.50 and put it back against accommodation.

Mr. Martel: They are all heart.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: This new $25 that has been added just goes on top of that and the same 75 per cent thing just perpetuates itself, so that the more shelter subsidy one gets the more he is actually digging into his food costs, It is ridiculous, it is ludicrous.

Mr. Laughren: It is meant to be.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: As the member for Nickel Belt says, "It is meant to be," because this has been raised before. I think if every member in this House knew this was the case surely it would be a question of basic justice where we would say there has to be a better way.

If a person lives in Toronto and is paying $200 rent he is eligible for the total of $75 on top of the $75 for rent. He is getting $150 to go towards his total rent which means he is taking $50 out of the rest of his money to go towards the rent.

Surely we have to find a better way of dealing with that or people will still be going to soup kitchens no matter how we raise this amount in the future. It is an approach to funding these people that is just totally backwards and perverse.

Perhaps the minister would comment as to whether he feels his policy of not giving subsidies and not allowing eligibility for subsidy to people who are living in nonprofit housing, especially for those living in a family situation, conflicts with the Ontario Human Rights Code. At the end of this I would ask the minister whether or not he has had a legal opinion on that. I would really be interested to hear it.

There are anomalies in this system. There are anomalies in which the regulations are thick for a place like Metro Toronto. There are such ridiculous gaps. We give education assistance. A person can be eligible for general welfare -- I will mention an exact case but I will change the town.

A kid who went against the law was put in jail, he went out on parole and was put in a halfway house. While there he was eligible for general welfare assistance while he was sitting there trying to make sure he did not abrogate his parole. He then decided what he would like to do while he was on parole would be to upgrade his education. He wanted to take grade 11 and grade 12 courses. He went to the local community college and registered in one of the courses for upgrading to grade 11 or grade 12. That was a big mistake.

If he had gone to a high school and taken a grade 11 or grade 12 course he would be covered under general welfare assistance. But because he went to a community college to take a course to upgrade himself, which is accepted by the Ontario Ministry of Education --

Mr. Laughren: Or Osgoode Hall.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: -- or Osgoode Hall, he was not eligible for general welfare. He was told by the local welfare administrator he had better quit and wait until next year to take the course. The ironic thing in this is, if he had just done this for three months and got his course -- which he probably would have done -- he would then have been eligible for a Canada Manpower program that would have taken him right off welfare and would not have cost the municipality or the province a cent.

I see the minister shaking his head. I hope that regulation has been changed -- it has been a major problem. The member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) has a few cases he would like to raise about hairdressing and other things.

Hon. Mr. Drea: They are not going to be changed.

Mr. Martel: No help at all.

Hon. Mr. Drea: They cannot be. They are on a student loan.

Mr. Martel: It is better to have them unemployed forever.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: We will deal with eligibility for student loans when they come in mid-year and what the possibilities are.

There are other gaps and anomalies in the system that are just outrageous. With the new increases received, one would think these increases would be across the board, but I notice that, for mothers of babies, all of a sudden we are giving less money out for formulas. The instructions are that a lot of the formulas that used to be given out in the past are now not even on the list. One cannot get anything for them at all, and the ones that are on the list are actually given less money than was given before for formulas. I guess this is being done as an incentive to breast-feeding. I do not know.

Breast-feeding is great. We cut down on the amount of money we give people on welfare and expect the voluntary sector to pick it up in terms of food and housing, and now we are saying we will cut back again and allow the women to subsidize by breast-feeding. As we all know, it is not possible for all women to breast-feed for the duration of the time a child needs that kind of sustenance. I know this matter was raised by the member for Beaches-Woodbine (Ms. Bryden) in estimates and the minister's response was that he should get back to her almost immediately on it, because he was not aware of the situation. All I know is this is still the case in the city of Toronto today.

I do not want to take forever on this so I will move on. One thing the minister said was that some municipalities are hurt more than others. I agree with that in general terms. The Treasurer (Mr. F. S. Miller) today made it sound as if it was really not a large problem in percentage terms across the province. There were just a few isolated areas. I have not had my researchers do a complete provincial analysis. It is hard getting the information with our resources. I am sure it is easier with provincial computers and provincial staff. If I could just go through some of the statistics around this province, December over December, and not just selecting one area, I am sure I could show they are really in trouble with regard to the numbers of people and the increases.

Sault Ste. Marie is a case where the statistics I have here are slightly distorted. Taking December over December there was an enormous increase because Algoma hired back in December 1981 and as a result that figure seems much higher. But if we take the figure for November over November in Sault Ste. Marie we will see there still was a 53 per cent increase year over year. So even the enormous 222 per cent increase, December over December, which is distorted, does not diminish the fact that before that recall occurred in Algoma the numbers were incredibly dramatic.

9:20 p.m.

Even more important for our own planning now and for the needs of these municipalities is the fact that in the last month, November 1982 to December 1982, there was a 10 per cent increase in that one month and there was already a dramatic increase in November over October. If we extrapolate that over the next three months, when we know welfare is going to be a major cost to a lot of municipalities that have been hit by unemployment, that is a dangerous figure.

In London, the figure for December-over-December increase is 51 per cent. That is an increase of 287 cases in the last month or 8.49 per cent month over month. The difficulty for any municipality, no matter what its tax base, is that if it is having that kind of an overall increase -- a month-to-month increase and an escalation over the next couple of months -- it is going to be fairly dramatic.

In Sudbury they are nowhere near the peak they will reach and it is already at 43.75 per cent. All the projections out of the regional municipality there are that the numbers in the next three months will go crazy because of the layoffs. That is before Inco does its callback -- if it does its callback, said he, touching wood.

The minister talked about the difficulties of eastern Ontario with its long-term unemployment. Last year, Windsor thought it had reached the absolute peak and it would never get any higher. It had never been that high. The Windsor figures, December over December, show a 24 per cent increase over last year and they were already at the highest levels they had ever been in December of last year. There was a 5.5 per cent increase month to month. For Windsor, that has very dramatic effects.

I noticed a newspaper column from Essex County. The headline is in the Windsor Star of December 16, "Welfare Load Sinks County into Deficit." It says the spilloff into the county has been very dramatic and the effects on the county have been quite extreme. The only thing assisting them is the fact that they have had some savings in other areas in their budget. They are quick to say in the newspaper report that it was not because of cutbacks in those other areas, just a lack of requests for them. I certainly hope that is the case.

Ottawa believes itself very protected from this whole thing. If you look at some of the commentary in the Ottawa papers, they talk about themselves as being blessed in comparison with other areas. Their increase was 20 per cent over this time last year. In the last month they had about a six per cent increase, month over month.

Thunder Bay had a 31 per cent increase.

Hamilton seems low with an 18.9 per cent increase year over year, but that is 1,310 new cases in that year and an 8.84 increase month to month. That indicates the Stelco spinoffs will start to hit very heavily there in the next little while.

Peterborough is another example of an area that has had a lot of trouble for a long time in terms of income maintenance and the economy in general. It has shown a 27 per cent increase approximately, and in this last month, month over month, the highest increase of any place in the province, 13 per cent.

Oshawa had a 34 per cent increase, a seven per cent increase month over month; Cornwall, 27.5 per cent, 12 per cent month over month; Kingston, 31 per cent year over year, 11 per cent month over month; Toronto, 36 per cent, five per cent month over month. That is 8,410 more recipients as we are all aware from other stories already. In Kitchener, it is up 45 per cent year over year and nine per cent month over month.

I am not just picking hard-hit communities. Those are some of our major communities around Ontario, the ones we could get to in the past few days. I would not suggest, as the minister did, it is a problem for some selected municipalities that may decide to go in and bail out smaller communities like Prescott-Russell if things get hard. If the minister has not made that suggestion then at least the Treasurer has. I would be glad to quote him as saying he is willing to look at that.

I suggest it has some implications in general policy in terms of the effects during a depression or a major recession of this shared responsibility, the property tax base for this part of income maintenance. This provides the minister with the time and the opportunity to have a look at changing our present mode of dealing with that section of income maintenance, and I encourage him to pick it up. I am desperately worried, not, as was raised one day, that municipalities will go bankrupt at all: that is not my difficulty, it is not that kind of money we are talking about.

Hon. Mr. Drea: I never said that.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: No. I know it was not the minister. I want to be absolutely clear about that. I am suggesting that with the diminished amounts of transfer that the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Mr. Bennett) is talking about, zero to five per cent, with the increased spinoff costs that come up for other discretionary programs, we are going to see large and small municipalities faced with decisions about what other kinds of support programs they are going to maintain in their communities. That is my real concern.

In the projections of Mr. Kruger in Metropolitan Toronto he said there would be a difficulty in starting new discretionary programs and in the voluntary sector. He said there may be a difficulty maintaining the level of municipal funding to old programs because of a 36 to 40 per cent potential increase in his budget which he was not anticipating prior to that. We have had the Ontario children's aid society saying it is starting to see the effects of the recession in its impact on families. It needs increased funding, more than it has received.

Even Ottawa has said in a headline in the Ottawa Citizen on December 3, "Region Leaves $31-Million Social Services Budget Intact for Now," and is indicating it will have to review that if it starts to get impacted upon as these other areas have been. Another headline reads, "Stratford Agencies to Cut Back as Appeal Falls Short of Goal." That appeal, of course, was the United Appeal and the voluntary raising of money, and it is not so everywhere. Some areas have been very successful with their United Appeal this year. But that combination for some municipalities puts the question of the voluntary sector very much in jeopardy.

I suggest it is really time now for the minister to look at ways in which we can protect municipalities from these welfare costs as we change our whole approach to how we fund welfare in the next couple of years. I hope that at least we can allow these people sufficient money to be able to provide the other kinds of services a recession demands, and that this recession absolutely requires.

I know the minister understands it is not just a matter of income for people because he has instituted programs, and this government has started programs to assist people to get back into the work force, and to provide them with other kinds of support, education and that kind of thing. He understands a network of services is required besides just income maintenance. I suggest we are at the stage where that sector of things may be in jeopardy if we do not look seriously at changing our present approach.

As the minister knows, my approach on this is that we should split it up in two terms, one for short-term assistance immediately to municipalities. My suggestion -- and I am not ready for this, it is just one I have recommended as one approach that could be taken -- is that the level of responsibility for the municipalities be left at the September 1 rolls and that anything above that be assumed by the province in 50-50 sharing with the federal government.

There are other approaches that could be taken to this on a short-term basis to help the municipalities, but I would like to see more of an across-the-board approach than a selective approach to municipalities.

9:30 p.m.

I have written to municipalities across Ontario suggesting one approach and suggesting that this should be the time to review the question as to whether welfare should remain on the property tax rolls. I have also asked for support, which is probably away out of line, for my notion of having a major public review of the entire income maintenance structure in Ontario: we should have either an all-party task force or a major commission that would look publicly into the question of income maintenance in Ontario.

As the minister knows, most municipalities are not NDP-controlled for the meantime.

Mr. Piché: May the Lord forgive us.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: These things may change. I am sure there was a great deal of suspicion about my letter in terms of our partisan structure versus their closet partisan structure, if I can put it that way.

Mr. Boudria: The member for Fort William (Mr. Hennessy) sent us a covering letter.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Yes, but he made copies available to people.

I have been really pleased with the response to date and just in terms of it being put on the agendas and being discussed either at council or by social services committees.

I have had positive responses from such places as Sarnia, Guelph, Timmins, St. Catharines and Sault Ste. Marie. Durham region had already taken the initiative, actually almost coincidentally of what I was suggesting, in terms of lobbying the Association of Municipalities of Ontario to do more.

I have had responses from Etobicoke and East York. I have the motion from Etobicoke here. They supported the motion and added an amendment, which is not a bad amendment in my terms. I will go through these for the minister in case he has not received them at this point.

Most of them have responded, and I really am pleased that they did. Belleville and North Bay responded. London has done it really nicely. I really like that one. They said: "We agree with the basic concept involved, and AMO agrees with the basic concept involved, but we don't go around supporting individual positions on things; so we will not support you specifically, but we support the content of what you are saying." I like that one a great deal.

At any rate, the responses have shown a variety of approaches, and one might say, just from a self-serving base to this, that the municipalities might automatically say yes to the approach. I do not think that is the case, however, and I really disagree with what the Treasurer was saying that way today, because they have been in discussion through AMO and directly with ministers of the crown for years and years about income maintenance and about welfare. I think many of them have expected to maintain a role in the administration of it and have expected that there would be no change in terms of property tax base. I know even some of our NDP candidates, when I suggested they take this on in the last election, suggested there would be no point in it because they would not get anywhere in doing it.

But the Etobicoke council, for instance, which supported the motion that the province "assume 100 per cent across for all employable welfare recipients on the rolls as of September 1," added an amendment, which was: "And, further, that the province be advised that this request is made with the understanding that general assistance grants and any other conditional grants will not be reduced or abandoned." That is the amendment they put to it, which makes some sense from their perspective, I am sure.

Mr. Cooke: Which is just a commentary on past performance.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Exactly. They are afraid of a little quid pro quo bargaining, I am sure.

Brantford made a very interesting and detailed response. I do not think the minister has had this one; I will be pleased to send it to him if he has not had it.

They basically took my suggestions just as a benchmark to start discussion, by the look of it, and then raised a number of other things. One, they passed a motion: "The position is as follows: The province assume 100 per cent funding for costs beyond the previous five-year average." That is the way they wanted to do it. Then they showed why that was so beneficial to them. "In our case, this is 708 cases versus the September I case load, which was 1,440."

That is not a bad approach to it as well, and I am sure most municipalities would like it. I was just looking for something that might not be seen to be unrealistic. Most September amounts were higher than the last year's totals. As a result of that, it would seem a logical time to start it.

"That the province provide assistance at their cost in the form of manpower during peak periods of GWA claims. That the province would provide proper cash flow or alternatively recognize carrying charges for subsidization. Fourth, that the province subsidize all costs associated with the administration of the GWA Act." I know they have had a long, ongoing discussion with the minister in terms of some of the carrying charges, etc.

Some of the others were very straightforward in terms of their support. Some did not get involved in the question of whether there should be an all-party task force or an all-party committee, feeling that was not in their jurisdiction and they had no right to comment on it. But the vast majority have received it in amicable terms and, as I have said, the municipalities I have mentioned to this point have agreed with it.

Many of them -- Toronto, for instance -- are still studying the matter. The region of Niagara had a number of questions for me, as did Haldimand-Norfolk. The chairman of Metropolitan Toronto in his response to me basically said he was open to discussion but did not go much further, except that he said in paragraph 3 of his letter, and I think it is an interesting point in terms of a philosophical discussion of the long-term question, "I agree that real property taxes may well be an inappropriate mechanism for funding to any extent a scheme for the redistribution of income." That was more than I had expected from the chairman of Metropolitan Toronto.

The response of AMO in a letter to me was essentially that its health and social services committee will be reviewing the entire question of municipalities' contribution to general welfare assistance and your suggested courses of action will certainly be brought to the committee's attention." As we know, that is a slightly longer process, but I was pleased with the general response.

The mayor of Ottawa indicated support and the matter is still under discussion. Places like Guelph, Sault Ste. Marie and Sarnia automatically adopted the resolution -- after discussion, I must say. I was pleased it was the result of debate. There also has been some editorial support in a couple of areas which I do not think requires going on about at this time.

The reason it is important for us to look seriously at subsidization of the municipalities in immediate terms is one I have already spoken about, which is concern about full services over this winter and next year in terms of their budgeting process. That kind of money -- which could be $15 million spread across the province, or maybe a little more, depending on how high these rates jump over the next little while -- would be a useful thing for the minister to endorse, with whatever variations he would want, but with some acceptance of the principle that they deserve assistance and are not the level of government that should be bearing this burden. It is not appropriate for them to bear this burden. It is something I would hope he would accept.

The need to cut off the property tax is something I have already spoken about at length. It does not make sense in my view for this one group to be left on a regressive property tax base for income maintenance. It plays them off and makes them victims of different political aspirations at different levels of government. It is something I would hope the minister would move to.

We would not be breaking new ground. We would not be the great pioneers in this area. There are already seven provinces that have moved in one form or another to a more equitable system of funding welfare. Some have done it on an absolute 50-50 basis in terms of the federal government. Some have done it on a quota basis, as Saskatchewan has. It still works out to about a five per cent request rather than the 20 per cent, because there is a low ceiling on it.

I suggest it is time for Ontario to look at this change as well. If British Columbia under Bill Bennett could look at this last April and make a major switch away from its old funding process on this, it is time for the government of Ontario to do so too. As the minister knows, the government of Manitoba is at present undertaking a review of its policy, Manitoba being one of the three provinces that have not moved towards this in the past. They have opened up.

9:40 p.m.

The reason my suggestion for this kind of a process is important is that there are so many groups affected by this in terms of the municipalities and the different kinds of capacity to pay into organized extra services, in terms of the voluntary sector and the kind of burden that falls on them and what this would mean in terms of our taxation changes, that I think it needs to be done, not as a decision by the minister and his deputy and somebody else in the ministry who then passes it to cabinet, but in an open forum around the province before it takes place.

I think it is important that it be done as the task force on social assistance has been done in Manitoba. That task force was established last summer. It held hearings last fall and looked into the whole question of the costs of meeting basic needs. Their review will examine the present two-tiered social assistance structure in Manitoba in which municipalities provide assistance to persons who are ineligible for provincial assistance.

In this context, the task force will examine municipal inconsistencies related to availability levels in terms of social assistance -- some of the principles I have raised tonight -- and the discretionary authority to consider the granting of municipal assistance as a debt owing to the municipality.

There are other elements they are looking at in terms of the definition of the physically disabled, in terms of getting away from some of the other kinds of discriminations, such as on the basis of sex, that are in some elements of our income maintenance programs. That review is taking place in public, with hearings held around the province of Manitoba.

I suggest that is exactly the style of format we should use in Ontario. We should open this debate to a broader discussion than just our own private debating club that we have here. We should involve all those people who will be affected by any change in a debate as to whether the kinds of changes I am talking about, or those that have been done elsewhere, are the sorts of things that should be introduced in Ontario.

I will come back, if I might, to the question of the morality of this. There should be some major public concern in this province, and I believe there is, about our levels of support to people and about where our present system has brought us in terms of inconsistencies and the kinds of humiliations and pressures imposed upon people who are in the lowest level of income maintenance that we have in this province.

It behooves us all to move at this time to assist those people. "These are tough times. There are limited amounts of money." We hear that on a regular basis. We have to set priorities in how we help people.

In my view, now is exactly the time in terms of the public political morality for us to move in this area and make this one of our major concentrations. It is not just a question of finding some work on a four- or five-month basis with federal assistance for these individuals for six months, or whatever the temporary help program undertakes, while jobs are created later on. It is not just a question of getting those people back into the work force, although that is the long-term solution. If all these people were working -- or the vast majority of them, those who can work, the employables -- obviously we would not have the kind of crisis we have today.

There is also the very human tragedy that is going on from day to day in this province. There is the pressure and the terrible anxiety felt by people who are trying to exist in our province on the present dismal amounts of money they receive. That needs to be addressed now, and in a serious fashion. We have not done that in this province, and I think it is time we did. No matter which of the scales one wants to look at, there is no excuse for our being in the second half, the lower tier, with regard to levels of assistance to groups on general welfare, among the provinces of this country. There is absolutely no excuse for that and it is time we acted on it.

I do not believe I accomplished a great deal during my welfare month besides perhaps some resuscitation of my own beliefs. I do not believe the response that came through with the ministry's changes in the amounts of money reflected a major change -- some change but not a major change. But I did detect one thing I am very pleased about, and I hope that by working together in this House we can maintain it and push it forward. I noticed a change in people's attitudes to people on welfare. I am not taking the credit for that change.

In part, I might have had something to do with sparking it a bit, but I think it has more to do with the fact that people know people who are unemployed; people know people who are going to run out of their unemployment insurance; people know people who are not layabouts, who do not want to rip off society, who are about to go or have just gone on welfare. Their attitudes towards people on welfare have changed dramatically.

Most of us do questionnaires in our riding reports. I asked a question about people living below the poverty line. The riding report came out in October, almost at the same time as the minister's announcement of increased money came out, and the responses came back mostly in November. The question essentially was, "Should the government be doing more to help the poor?" If I had asked that question in August, given some of the other questions in the questionnaire, I would have had a very low response saying yes; there probably would have been a majority, but only a very slight majority, of people who would have said yes to that kind of question. But in this response, out of 466 respondents 324 said yes, we should be doing more, 103 said no and 39 said they did not know.

This is not, as members know, anything like the kind of figure you should base public policy on; I would never suggest that. I only use it anecdotally and I would like to attach it to another one, if I might. That is, if I had bet any of the members in August that I could go on a radio show and a TV talk show in Hamilton in the course of a couple of days and over approximately an hour and a half to two hours of radio and TV time, one during the day and one at night, knowing how they try to cull the calls to get some confrontations going, I would have had only two people who said there should be no increases -- because the question was essentially, "Should there be increases to the general welfare rate?" -- I do not think any member would have failed to bet me at least a bottle of Scotch, and perhaps more, that that would not be the case.

Members might have expected a majority of people to say yes, but we all know the huge backlash there has always been against people on welfare. If there has been one change, I think it has been to an attitude that is much more open-minded about seeing major changes in the system.

I do not think the minister needs to feel constrained by a five per cent portion of the provincial budget to assist individuals. I think he needs to look very seriously at a major expansion of assistance done, I hope, in the public fashion that I am asking for. I would very much like to hear his response to those requests tonight.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out to the honourable member that I do not know where he gets the five per cent or the less than five per cent, because my total budget is now well over $2 billion, and I think that reflects, when you take into account the fact that much of it is in the non-income-maintenance area -- nondirect-cheque area, let us say; and he drew attention to the fact that all kinds of support networks were needed in addition to that -- we are above the five per cent. I do not know what preoccupies him with that, but let us just correct it.

For quite a while tonight we have heard an Engelsian approach to poverty. That is okay.

Mr. Cassidy: Who?

Hon. Mr. Drea: The other half of the combination.

I do not necessarily adopt some of those approaches, but I would like to point out that there is a lot of morality in this government. I could take some pokes at lack of morality in certain of the approaches from across the floor. Of course, we are talking philosophical morality. I never make remarks about people in terms of morality, even though, for some peculiar reason, there are those associated with that organization over there who think this minister is fair game.

9:50 p.m.

I want to put on the record the question of raising the permanently unemployables to the full disabled rate, and I think the honourable member will be agreeable. I did that as a matter of fundamental morality. The member knows why I did it. His partner the member for Bellwoods (Mr. McClellan) knows why I did it. I explained it quite carefully in my estimates, that if I ever became the minister of this portfolio, the spread between the PUE and the disability rate would end. I did it. To me that is a matter of fundamental morality. So that member is not the only holder of morality.

Mr. McClellan: That is the first and last thing he has done as the minister.

Hon. Mr. Drea: I think long after the member is a departed political person they will remember many of the things that I did, and he knows he will soon be departed.

Mr. Bradley: He is an overnight guest.

Hon. Mr. Drea: He is not an overnight guest but he is soon to be an overnight case.

When talking about the morality of certain programs, I wonder how many municipalities, if they were advised in that congratulatory letter that went to every councillor saying, "Congratulations on getting elected, and by the way, here is a little program you may be interested in" -- I think that is a summary, in addition to what the member has given -- how they would feel if on the record that party stands for 100 per cent of municipal welfare being paid by the province and the federal government. It did long before this, and essentially, this thing being put out in a letter is a suggestion that now is the time to look at what is a rather significant, if temporary, retreat from that position. I really wonder how many would be pushing it on that basis.

If the members really want the property tax removed as the 20 per cent share of municipal welfare, then why not say so? They said it in here often enough before that letter was ever sent. Now they are pointing out, why not have a benchmark in September? We will take it off here and gradually go towards 100 per cent as the second point. In the meantime, let us have a royal commission, a task force, an all-party thing.

The only original thing I thought they had in there -- other than a complete retreat from what they stood for before -- was the fact about the all-party task force or the select committee, or whatever. Now I find it is a direct copy of what has been going on in Manitoba for some time. Believe me, that may be the final disillusionment of the season.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I am sorry.

Hon. Mr. Drea: I would appreciate not being interrupted. I did not interrupt the member. He gave a great paean about the need for a more moralistic approach to poverty. I listened to him. There were some things I found interesting. There were other things I did not find so interesting, and I think that is a fair approach.

The Liberal Party critic put forward a far more objective, meaningful and practical approach towards dealing with the municipal problem both in the short term and in the long term. I said that to him some time ago. The minister has been looking at the problems of the municipalities for many months, long before the impact of social assistance, both direct and indirect. He made a good point about the indirect clause.

I do not want support programs or other programs dropped because of the income maintenance cheques. Indeed, we have been looking at things we might be able to do, and I am still looking at them, but not in terms of a September benchmark; a September benchmark would not be much assistance to many of the hardest-hit municipalities in this province, because it would perpetuate the levels that were going on before that. In short, I regard the September benchmark as a rather trendy thing, and we reject it.

With regard to an overall look at social assistance, I think we have been doing that. I think the priority need at the moment is to look ahead, but not necessarily at the next two or three months. I think I have looked very much ahead going into January and February. There was even a reluctant admission from the member about the emergency housing and certain other things we have been doing this winter.

I think the crucial time for a look is some time in the spring. Some time in March and April there has to be a very objective look at where we are going as a country with respect to the entire economic situation, where we are going as a province and, indeed, what the impact is on the municipalities.

There is job creation out there. How successful job creation will be in two areas, I know not, but I think I will have a pretty good idea in a month or two. Those two areas are: How many exhaustees has it prevented from going on to the local rolls? And has it removed anybody already on the local rolls, including those who have disappeared from the Unemployment Insurance Commission combination of potential exhaustees, exhaustees looking for work or whatever? I think the member will agree that those are things that have to be really looked at in the foreseeable future.

One of the things the member did not mention in so many words was the fact that we also have to look at certain areas of the province, because right now they are being sustained about 95 to 98 per cent by unemployment insurance. I am thinking particularly not only of the Sudbury basin but also of Cornwall and a couple of other areas where the list of exhaustees, or at least the utilization of unemployment insurance as a major cushion, is going to have to be decided somehow or other.

Now, if some of the things I was concerned about last September when I talked to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario about the exhaustees come anywhere near to reality, then I think we are going to have to look in a very significant manner at a number of very large municipalities, particularly in eastern Ontario and in the resource industries of the north. If that does not come to be, then I am hopeful that through a combination not only of other benefits but indeed of recovery, or at least a very good start towards recovery, that puts the matter in another perspective.

Again, one of the problems in all this is that the category of the single employable is skyrocketing on the rolls far more than any other. The family is not; the female is relatively static. If that situation continues, then obviously there are certain other courses that are going to be somewhat incumbent upon us at that time.

I really think the months of March and April in this country, in this province, in all the municipalities and in all our economic life are probably going to be the most significant since the war. I think there can be a true measurement taken out of that, or at least enough of an indication to see where we are going.

One other area the member raised, and I would like to set the record straight on it, certainly is not the broad-stroke area we have been discussing tonight but is the question of someone who is enrolled in a community college program asking for social assistance.

As the member knows, the rules are that where you are in receipt of or eligible for receipt of one government allowance, which is the student loan or whatever, at the community college and the university level you are precluded from general welfare assistance. As he knows, you are not precluded from Family Benefits Act assistance, provided certain conditions are met, but I do not really think he is talking about that.

That may be a disparity in the system, but it is something that has not been designed by this part of the system. From time to time, on the basis of emergency or something else, as he knows, things can be done; but short of changing the present system of funding, I think the member would agree that at the university level he would not want to change that in terms of the loan.

It may very well be that in the future, on the basis of the fact that community colleges more and more are used for training rather than for occupational training -- I am talking about the pure types of upgrading training that the member is alluding to -- that may well be an area we would want to look at or at least set up some new parameters, because the entire role of the community college and the people who are in it, or in its programs at least, has been constantly changing.

10 p.m.

Maybe the member does have a point that it may be too rigid right now. I will take a look at it, but I want everybody in the House to know that this is not something that is between two government ministries but it is, indeed, a very fundamental policy. I do not think it is negotiable at the university level, but because of the great mix at the community college and the fact that in the future there will be an even greater mix with upgrading, retraining and all kinds of other things, I think it might, indeed, be very much worth looking at.

Mr. Haggerty: Mr. Chairman, I want to address myself to the minister's supplementary estimates. I want to commend the minister for his concern for those persons who are receiving some form of social assistance.

In looking at the estimates here I see he has picked up an additional $97 million. I will say that it has taken a lot of courage to go to cabinet and ask for that amount of money, $97 million, for community and social services. I think the minister should be commended on that.

I know of his deep concern for those persons on social assistance. t know that almost every time I have had a problem he has looked after it for me.

I was concerned about a letter that I had received from the St. Catharines Association for the Mentally Retarded. I was concerned about the additional funding for adult social services. I am sure it relates to the handicapped adults. It reads:

"Since our meeting of October 21, 1981, we have been busy on behalf of the mentally retarded, as we are sure you have been. We have not accomplished as much as we would like and so we appeal to you again for assistance and direction in resolving our problem of finding suitable residential accommodation for severely retarded adults.

"As stated at the October 1981 meeting, there are a number of severely retarded adults in need of a community residence providing a high degree of supervision. These core-type residences do not exist at present so the Niagara district working group conducted a needs survey and the Niagara region published the results in April 1982. These results indicated that presently 31 adults residing in the region require replacement in an adult core residence, and that by 1984 the number will rise to 47. So the district working group reviewed these findings throughout the summer of 1982 at the request of the Hamilton area office of the Ministry of Community and Social Services.

"When we requested information regarding the status of the St. Catharines Association for the Mentally Retarded proposals for the establishment of an adult core residence we were told no decision would be forthcoming until the district working group completed the work. It is now 1983, and the district working group is unable to state when they will have completed their work. We realize that the mental retardation co-ordinator has left his position recently but hope this will not cause a great delay.

"In a statement to parliament in October 1982 the Honourable Mr. Drea clearly states that while a large number of residential alternatives have been created, few have been geared to the needs of the more severely handicapped. This, clearly, is the case in the Niagara region with respect to the adult retarded population. It appears the ministry is reluctant to give a written statement of their intentions with regard to an adult core residence.

"If you can encourage the minister, let us know if and when he plans to act on the core residence proposal. It would help our anguished in one way or another. If we only knew what the ministry would go along with, we could get on with the job of looking after these retarded people. Many of the parents are getting on in age, and it would be a blessing for the parents to know how, where and when these children will be settled in a residence. We believe every retarded person deserves a proper residence, and a residence is needed for every retarded person so they may have an appropriate home."

This was from the director of residential services, St. Catharines Association of the Mentally Retarded.

During the past week I received a number of little notes of inquiry to my office concerning the other retarded residences in the province. In some cases they may be phased out. I am thinking in particular of one called the Bluewater Centre. I wonder if we are not going to have the same problem in the Niagara region. The government is decentralizing the larger institutions and putting them back on to local residents. I am concerned about the cost sharing formula that may be involved if the region has to become more involved in this, and that additional 20 per cent would be charged to local taxpayers.

Hon. Mr. Drea: A 100 per cent funding.

Mr. Haggerty: A 100 per cent funding. I appreciate that 100 per cent funding. Perhaps the other members should not have been so critical about the minister when he can come up with a 100 per cent funding. I suggest to him this is a problem in the Niagara Peninsula and also in other areas.

I know that other members want to ask the minister questions related to his supplementary estimates. I do have other comments, but I will leave it at that and hope the minister can respond to that letter.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Chairman, as that is not really part of the estimates tonight, perhaps at the end of my concurrences I can deliver a report to the honourable member that he could take back with the Hansard, and it will save him writing them a letter. If the member is tied up in another committee or something else, I will do it before the end of my concurrences, which should be tomorrow, and then he will have something to take back showing the matter was raised here, if that is acceptable. It should be more proper there than here.

Mr. Martel: Mr. Chairman, as I listened to my colleagues talk tonight about this ministry, it was as though I was reliving 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 all over again when I was critic of this ministry. In fact, very little has changed. I always found it amusing that --

Interjection.

Mr. Martel: I have a couple more I am going to ask the minister tonight.

In those days, his predecessor, the Honourable René Brunelle, went off to Ottawa and argued with the federal government that we in Ontario insisted that the federal government introduce a plan of indexing. The government of Ontario, led by René Brunelle, went to Ottawa and argued for indexing in the Canada pension and the old age pension. I saw the arguments. I was given them and the positions taken by the government of Ontario.

For four years I asked: "You want Ottawa to do this. Why won't you?" We could never get a response, although the federal government, in its wisdom, saw the light and introduced indexing. This government, having led the fight for it, then would not introduce it itself. I have always found that a mystery.

The other thing, going back to those years, was housing rental. Go back and read some of the statements I made then. If one province had any foresight in this whole field, it was British Columbia, which in those days gave subsidies far higher than Ontario did to meet the cost of housing to its residents on welfare. I recall some of the limits being at $180 then, and we implored this ministry to break away from its silliness.

We have to go back to understand that when the ministry brought in all this assistance it did not do a study of any description that determined what the factors would be leading to a budget for a family; it just grabbed a figure out of the air that had absolutely nothing to do with cost, and nothing has gone on over the past 10 or 15 years to change that one jot.

All that has been done is to add a percentage here and there as time went on. Ontario did not figure out a budget for families on which it based family benefits and general welfare assistance. It did not and it has not. We have implored one minister after another over the years to do that at least, but they know it would cost a lot of money and therefore they do silly things.

10:10 p.m.

For example, one of this minister's predecessors lumped it all together. I remember the days when they were separate. The amount allowed for housing became so embarrassing that they lumped it all together. They said, "We cannot treat our recipients differently from the rest of the public." That was not it at all. It was because they were so embarrassed by the rental amounts they were paying that there was no way out but to lump everything together.

I just draw those comments to my friend's attention. He has inherited that mess, and it is going to take someone very powerful in that cabinet to change it and base it on real budgetary needs, not some willy-nilly figure to which percentages have been added over the years.

I make the point with respect to indexing. It was this province that fought very hard in Ottawa to get the federal government to index. Then it will not index the pensions and incomes it itself is responsible for indexing, whether it be workers' compensation, family benefits assistance or general welfare assistance.

I want to go back to a topic my colleague raised with respect to funding for students. I have had three cases and my friend knows about it because I have written to him. I appealed one of these decisions to the Social Assistance Review Board and they ruled in my favour, except that Mr. Schaak in Sudbury would not pay.

These are very simple cases of young ladies, 19 and 20 years old, and all three cases were exactly the same. They were from families where the father was not working and there was no income. They got a student loan and went off to a hairdressing course. They needed about $65 to $70 a month in assistance. I tried to get it via special assistance because there was no other avenue, just so they would have enough to live on and be able to finish and become self-sufficient.

I was the first to talk about helping women get off the welfare rolls by some imaginative program. Here were three young women who struggled, who needed about $65 or $70 a month to assist them to become self-sufficient for the rest of their lives and the local welfare said no.

I took it to the Social Assistance Review Board and won the first case. Schaak refused to pay. I have subsequently taken two more cases, and lost both of them on the argument that the minister presented under a section of the act. But that is crazy.

On one hand, the ministry is talking about encouraging women who have been on welfare for a while to retrain and get back into the work force. Here were three fine examples. The Ministry of Colleges and Universities had given them grants and loans, but they were insufficient to carry them for a year without some help from home and none was available. They needed a few bucks and were turned down. To the credit of all three young women, they struggled and they are working today.

I have it on my desk to draft a private member's bill on this, because it is crazy. It is not only crazy, it is stupid. It defeats what this ministry says it wants to do. They cannot all be lawyers, doctors and professionals, who are going to get all kinds of assistance to go to university and do post-graduate work. This is pretty basic stuff. So help me, it is so silly.

I want to turn to my friend in Sudbury for three more cases and I am asking the minister to help. I have had two young women come to me within the week. One of them had throat surgery last January and she is still coming to Toronto for treatment. She is on welfare and living at home. She gets $94.10 every two weeks. She is over 21. She comes to Toronto and for that they give her a flat $60. Do you know what the bus fare is? It is $60.80. She gets on the bus at midnight and spends all night on the bus. She has to find her way around Toronto, but she is not given one cent more for transportation down here and nothing for meals all day and she goes back home that night on the bus at 5:30 p.m.

I went to them last week and I said: "For God's sake, the $60 is used up in transportation. What about her food?" Do you know what they told me? Out of the $94.10 biweekly that she gets, she has to take her food allowance for three meals here and her transportation in Toronto. The second one is even worse. He has never cleaned out that pack of rats in Sudbury.

When I talk about Paul Schaak, I make it abundantly clear who I am talking about. He is the man I asked be dismissed 10 years ago and he is still there.

Hon. Mr. Drea: The honourable member is asking me to go into uncharted waters because these are not mandatory cases. He expects me to get what I already know he could not get or he would not be here dealing with this tonight. It might make my role just a little easier and save what is left of my ulcer and a few other things if the language regarding the local authority was somewhat more temperate. I leave it up to the member.

Mr. Martel: I will tell the minister without being intemperate what has bothered me.

I have watched for 10 years. His predecessors sent some of their top people to Sudbury over and over again. When a man will watch a nine-year-old child suffer in absolute agony with dental problems and his way of forcing the old man back to work is not to get dental care for a child of nine years old -- René Brunelle sent a number of people including Dominic Alfieri and, before him, Dr. Williams who went to Sudbury and ended up there for a while. We had some of the God-awfulest battles. Every time it comes to this sort of problem, one cannot abstract it.

Let me tell the minister about the other young girl. She is 23 years old with chronic bowel problems. Her bowels have been removed and she cannot work. She comes to Toronto. For the last trip they would not give her any money. She was leaving last night to come again. She receives $87 at home.

This is the same sort of problem. There is nothing humane about it. There is nothing humane that puts a very ill young woman on a bus all night, has her in Toronto where none of her -- I come from out of Toronto and when I first came here it was difficult for me to get around, but this is somebody who is ill who is supposed to find her way around to a hospital, is supposed to eat and is supposed to do it out of the $87 budget for two weeks -- use that budget.

I deliberately raise it tonight because I advised two board members who are friends of mine that I was raising it, hoping they would get at this fellow because it is totally inhumane. I will give the minister the names of both these young women. If he wants, I can phone them to his office tomorrow, but surely something has to be done to prevent that sort of thing from going on.

That is the anger I feel. For all my years in this Legislature, that man has been in charge of welfare up there. It has been an ongoing problem. The minister knows it and his predecessors knew it. I will not ask him to comment because I suspect it will get him in hot water, but I have commented because I know someone will send a copy of what I said. He loves me, as the minister can tell.

Hon. Mr. Drea: You are not going to get me in hot water.

Mr. Martel: I am not going to get him in hot water. That is why I asked him not to comment.

Hon. Mr. Drea: You will not get me in hot water, but you will never get another winner.

Mr. Martel: I tell my friend that I have been fighting this man for 15 years because he has never shown any capacity for anything that was humane. I will send those.

Finally, might I ask the minister one question? Someone on general welfare is forced to move and he goes to another establishment. He does not have a residence per se. He is leaving a house, going to take up a room in a lodging situation until he gets his new address. They will not provide any assistance. What is he supposed to do -- sleep on the street until he gets a new residence number?

Again I went to them and they said, "Have the man phone us." The field workers accepted the idea of giving him a week's emergency, but when it went to the upper Pooh-Bah it was out the window.

10:20 p.m.

Again I ask the minister, what do we do with people like that? I appreciate the minister's help. He has given me a lot of help in many of these case loads, and I appreciate that. What I am trying to struggle with is how to change the system to make it somewhat more humane. That is all.

Hon. Mr. Drea: Mr. Chairman, under the particular circumstances, I might like to give an opinion at some other time. However, I would draw to the member's attention that quite often when things are brought to the knowledge of the authorities it is in an objective, friendly manner that so aptly describes the approach of the minister. Upon occasion, there is a remarkable meeting of the minds. I may correspond with the member concerning -- is it two cases or three?

Mr. Martel: Three.

Hon. Mr. Drea: If he would give those to my deputy minister or my staff, when I have those matters in hand, I may correspond with the member.

Mr. McGuigan: Mr. Chairman, I would like to spend the last few minutes talking about a program about which I have had a running correspondence with the minister, that is, the handicapped children's benefits program. The problem seems to be an old problem, using as a base in calculating benefits under the handicapped children's benefits the gross income that shows on the income tax form. I do not know the particular reasons for that, although the minister has given me some in his letters. I am not debating that particular aspect of it, because he may have counterbalancing formulas in deciding the eligibility for benefits on the other side of it that may to some extent counteract that base.

But it does get us into a lot of trouble using the gross income situation when we deal with small businessmen or farmers who might have a situation where their gross income would show $35,000 and their actual net income from the year's operation could be down around $5,000 or $6,000. In fact, I have a case where one chap had a minus amount of $17,000 for his income, yet he is kept out of the program when other people with an income as high as $26,000 merit support for a handicapped child at home.

The minister wrote me a letter in November 1981 that was rather sympathetic, and I think he outlined that he understood the problem. He says: "Nevertheless, I can readily understand the particular problems faced by people in the examples you have cited and in respect to farmers in general. Consequently, I am referring your letter to the director of family benefits and asking him to review the situation you have raised, with a view to adjusting allowances on a case-by-case basis more in line with the real income levels."

I notice in the most recent guidelines the minister does mention farmers and small businessmen. I rather like to think that perhaps this was brought in as a result of our correspondence. But it does not seem to help any, because it says: "If the income received by the parent is derived from farming, business or self-employment, the income liable to be used in the calculation of the net entitlement should be total income as recorded on page 1 of the income tax return." He also used the same words when talking about people who are employed. It says in the paragraph above, "The calculation of total income appears on page I of the income tax return." So we do not seem to have made any progress.

I went back a couple of months ago to contact one of the individuals and asked what success they had with this correspondence exchange. I have a letter dated December 5, 1982, from a constituent who says: "I met with Mr. Morrow out at the Chatham branch. He still could not get past my gross farm income. I had suffered a loss of $1,562. I explained to him that $13,000 was spent for tiling. I made about $12,000 net income but my total gross was $34,000 with my family division of crops. I was very upset because I was going through this humiliating experience again. I have told my story several times already and feel very much like a beggar. He told me to leave him copies of my income and that a specialist in their field would look at them."

He was told that the last time. He left really not caring whether or not he got any more support because he was so fed up with having to go through this sort of beggar system.

I have also been talking to the member for Essex North (Mr. Ruston). He tells me that he has a farmer situation -- I cannot give you the details but it is basically the same problem that the gross is too large when, in fact, the net income is very small.

I would ask the minister if those changes in the manual are supposed to remedy the situation or are they really standing pat and do we still have this case by case. However, I would hope that the manual could be adjusted so that people working in the field would realize that there has been a change in your attitude.

I sense there has been a change in your attitude but it does not seem to be coming through in the manual. Not all people stay there, bang the table and demand things. Some just get disgusted and say "I am not going to be a beggar" and off they go. But they do have these very large costs for these children. I hope the minister could comment for a minute or two.

Hon. Mr. Drea: I think we have had a fair amount of discussion, not necessarily with myself but with my area people in the past couple of years on this matter. It is a bit of a complex problem that only affects a certain type of agricultural producer. It is not even common on the forms. However, I think the honourable member makes some very good points because in reality we are looking at what is really the net, although there are some reasons we do not like to call it that.

I wonder if one of the approaches might be that some time in the next couple of weeks he and another member I respect very much, the honourable member for Essex North, might like to sit down with one of my senior people, take a look at the manual and how that manual might be interpreted.

We are now a decentralized ministry where the western Ontario and London office particularly is making decisions putting out a manual. I think that might be the approach. Let us see if we can get it solved that way. I will be in contact with the member and the member for Essex North, and indeed any other rural member of the Legislature who might have similar difficulties. I think it is particularly germane to western Ontario.

The Acting Chairman (Mr. Piché): Are you ready for the question?

Items 4 and 5 agreed to.

Vote 3102 agreed to.

On the motion by Hon. Mr. Gregory, the committee of supply reported certain resolutions.

The House adjourned at 10:30 p.m.