Journal des débats 1984-oct-26 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Mr. Conway: Mr. Speaker, I would like on this day to pay tribute to a very fine public servant who has for the past four and a half years served the members of this Legislature with great distinction, Dr. Linda Grayson. She is in the public gallery to your right, Mr. Speaker, with Mr. Brian Land and some others from the library at the Legislature.

Dr. Grayson is leaving us today after four and a half years in her capacity as chief of the legislative research service. I know my friends the member for Armourdale (Mr. McCaffrey), the member for Bellwoods (Mr. McClellan) and all members of the House will want to join with me in wishing Dr. Grayson well in her new responsibilities. My friend the Solicitor General (Mr. G. W. Taylor) will well remember our involvement with Dr. Grayson on very important select committees in far and distant parts of this great Dominion.

Dr. Grayson is leaving us after four and a half years to take up her role as the superintendent of information services with the Toronto Board of Education. We wish her well in that capacity.

Let me repeat that Dr. Grayson has done a difficult job well. She has always been very helpful, very charming and very supportive of the activities of members of the Legislature. She has added a real quality and panache to the legislative library service. I thank her for that and I wish her well in her new responsibility.

Mr. McClellan: Mr. Speaker, my colleagues and I in the New Democratic Party would like to associate ourselves with the remarks of the member for Renfrew North (Mr. Conway).

Dr. Grayson has done a remarkable job in the legislative library in making its research facilities and services available to the ordinary member of the assembly.

When I was first elected in 1975, the library was a relatively passive institution which had an interesting collection of books but very little in the way of services for the ordinary member. We have made tremendous strides in the course of the past nine years, amazing strides I must say, in providing modern library facilities with a complete and very excellent research service that is available to members of this assembly.

We are deeply grateful for the work of the staff and very appreciative of the very fine leadership Dr. Grayson has given to the library research service in the course of the past four and a half years. We will miss her work very much and we wish her every success in her new duties with the Toronto Board of Education.

Hon. G. W. Taylor: Mr. Speaker, I echo and support the words of my two honourable colleagues in paying tribute to Dr. Linda Grayson. I too have had the opportunity of working with her and of seeing the high quality and calibre of her work. It is not easy to work for the 125 masters in this House and to try to keep up with the temperaments of them all.

The work done by her and her staff has been objective and has been put forward with a very high level of research capacity. I have placed great reliance on that research capacity when I have asked for information. It has come back expeditiously and in a fashion one can rely on. I have personally had occasion to use the material to my benefit and, no matter who has ordered it, the research has been objective. It has not been only for a Progressive Conservative or for a member of the opposition parties. She has maintained that level, which is a very difficult task.

I wish her well. I received the letter yesterday informing us she would be leaving the employ of the legislative library. She has given that library and its research program great leadership. As she improves her standard of life, I wish her well and every success. I am sure she has left us with someone who is very ably trained to carry on her work.

I speak on behalf of my colleagues when I say that the Toronto Board of Education will be receiving a very high-level candidate to fill the position she is going to.

Mr. Speaker: I do not know whether it is appropriate, but I would like to take this opportunity to extend my personal thanks, as well as the thanks of all members of the Legislature, to Linda Grayson for the many services she has performed on behalf of all the members. Thank you very much.

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I will miss her very much. She has been most accommodating to every single member. She has 125 solid friends in this Legislature, as well as all the staff with whom she has worked. Thank you very much.

VISITORS

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, may I speak on a point? You can make your own interpretation of what that point is. We have a very distinguished visitor in your gallery today.

Mr. Martel: A point of what?

Mr. Speaker: I was going to mention it.

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I was ahead of you again. The members are all aware of the presence of our esteemed colleague the former member for St. George, Margaret Campbell, who is sitting in the Speaker's gallery today.

I am honoured that she came today. In my view, there is no person who has made a bigger impact on this Legislature and on the public policy process in this province than Margaret Campbell. She has had a myriad of accomplishments in her life -- lawyer, alderman, controller, budget chief, mayoralty candidate, provincial court judge, elected member of this House and dragon-slayer par excellence.

More important, if I may take a moment, I will talk about the areas in which she has pioneered. As the members know, she was one of the leading spokesmen on the question of domestic violence, long before it became fashionable or even a popular issue. She was a trail-blazer in building sensitivities on this issue and in getting the legislative process moving to look at those most important questions. As a result of her efforts, changes were made in the police college curriculum. Police officers were given training to give them greater insight into the question of family violence.

She pressed for the enforcement of family law court orders to protect wives from abuse. She was the first member in this House to table a bill on equal pay for work of equal value. That was on March 14, 1978. In many ways she was ahead of her time. Fortunately, the world is now catching up.

10:10 a.m.

She was the first to table a bill on rent review in this House. That was long before the other parties even thought of this question. She was always leading the fight to remove the inequality that women have faced in the public service and in the private sector as well.

I am very happy to tell members today that a number of her friends and associates have asked that Mrs. Campbell lend her name to a new fund, and a dinner will be held in the very near future to raise money to bring women into politics. The proceeds of that fund-raising dinner will be allotted to nominated Liberal women candidates in the next provincial campaign to assist them in carrying on the fine work she has done in the past.

We are honoured as a Legislature to have her here today. We are honoured that she is continuing to give, as she has always given in the past, and we are honoured that she is continuing to be a trail-blazer, as she has been in the past.

Mr. Speaker: It is always a pleasure to have Mrs. Campbell with us.

I would ask all honourable members to join me in welcoming another distinguished visitor in the Speaker's gallery in the person of the Honourable Lorne McLaren, Minister of Labour of the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan.

MINISTER'S COMMENTS

Mr. Bradley: Mr. Speaker, on a point of privilege: Now that the Minister of Education is in the House --

Hon. Miss Stephenson: You make it sound as though it is rare just because I missed yesterday.

Mr. Bradley: No, I was not making that criticism. The Minister of Education is in the House this morning, as she is usually. The only reason I mentioned it is that I did not want to raise a point of privilege yesterday concerning something related to the minister when she was not in the House, because I think she should have a chance to respond.

Hon. Mr. Welch: It is usually the Speaker who responds.

Mr. Gillies: There is a point in there somewhere.

Mr. Bradley: I do not know about that.

I want to draw to the Speaker's attention a statement that was made by the minister in the House on the evening of Tuesday, October 23, in which she said, "The member for St. Catharines suggested there was no response to the Association of Large School Boards in Ontario communication."

Mr. Speaker, because she was referring to me, my privileges were called into question at least, because the information she provided is not accurate.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. That is hardly a point of privilege. You may correct the record as far as your own statements are concerned but not the statements of other members. I have mentioned that many times. Please resume your seat.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: What I said was the truth. I said there was not a letter.

Mr. Bradley: You said there was a communication eyeball to eyeball.

Mr. Speaker: Order. This is completely out of order.

Mr. Martel: Throw the two of them out.

Mr. Speaker: That is not a bad idea.

ORAL QUESTIONS

ADHERENCE TO MANUAL OF ADMINISTRATION

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Chairman of Management Board with respect to his Manual of Administration.

We have established in the past that he does not understand the manual and, more disturbingly, that the ministers do not understand the manual and the rules contained therein.

He will be aware we had a discussion in this House on the use of crown employees in leadership campaigns of various of his colleagues who are aspiring to lead that party. Is he prepared now to exercise his authority, his interpretation of the Manual of Administration -- and I can refer him specifically to the appropriate section -- to say that Mr. Lou Parsons is a crown employee under the act and must not be allowed to work in a partisan political way, or is he prepared to go on and allow the continuing politicization of civil servants?

Hon. Mr. McCague: Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that Mr. Parsons is not an employee of this government. He is a per diem, part-time chairman of the Toronto Area Transit Operating Authority.

Mr. Epp: Is he not getting paid with public money?

Hon. Mr. McCague: Yes, he is; and so is the member for Waterloo North (Mr. Epp) and he is not an employee.

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, let me tell my friend he is wrong in his interpretation, unless he can prove otherwise. I would invite him to table his legal opinion or that of the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry) or that of whoever is telling him what to do on this issue. I would invite him to table it to prove his point. It is our interpretation that he is very clearly wrong.

I refer him to the Manual of Administration on crown employees. I will read the section for his benefit. "A crown employee is a person employed in the service of the crown or any agency of the crown, not including: the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, the Ontario Northland Transportation System; or other persons excluded from this category by specific legislation." Other than that, employees are people who are under "individual contracts in which the terms of employment are set out." This is clearly the case --

Mr. Speaker: Question, please.

Mr. Peterson: -- in Mr. Parsons's case. Is the minister going to go along and allow the politicization of the civil service? Is this the only case, or is he going to allow this to run throughout the entire civil service? There is a very important principle at stake. The minister is the repository of the values of an independent and separate public service. Does he believe in it? Does he not believe in it? Who is going to enforce it?

Hon. Mr. McCague: Opinions have been received from the Attorney General's department from time to time on political activity, as the honourable member knows. I do not have a recent opinion from the Attorney General on Mr. Parsons per se. Yesterday my colleague the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) referred to some legal opinion I have received. I have not received one on that.

I would be pleased to get a legal opinion on it, but the understanding I have from my staff is that Mr. Parsons is not an employee of this government. He is a part-time, per diem chairman. The simple matter that he is paid out of the funds this government raises does not make him an employee, any more than it does the member. The member gets paid out of the funds, and he is not an employee, nor am I.

Mr. Swart: Mr. Speaker, does the Chairman of Management Board not realize this is much more than just a legal matter? In attempting to get a legal interpretation --

Mr. Speaker: Question, please.

Mr. Swart: There is a moral principle involved. Is the minister not aware that a Mr. St. Onge of Sudbury, in the field office there with the Ministry of Northern Affairs, was fired not long ago because he sought the Conservative nomination? There is a hearing going on now about his reinstatement.

I have two questions. Why does he not give some precedence to the moral obligation he has? Why does he permit this person at the lower level of employees to be fired and then let a person at the high level, getting $90,000 a year, retain his job?

Hon. Mr. McCague: Mr. Speaker, the two items are not related. I do not know what the member is intimating when he mentions a $90,000 figure. Mr. Parsons does not get anything even close to that. The two things are not at all related. Mr. Parsons is not an employee.

Mr. Peterson: The minister must understand the principle at stake. The next leader of his party will be the Premier, with phenomenal power in patronage and dispensation of favours, in hiring people and bestowing financial gain upon a large number of people. Obviously, there are a number of people jockeying for those positions now.

Mr. Speaker: Question, please.

Mr. Peterson: Does the minister believe we should allow public servants, crown employees as defined under the government's -- it is not mine -- Manual of Administration, to take partisan positions now in order to enhance their leadership candidate or their own positions? How widespread is he going to allow this to be? What are the lines? What is a crown employee in his opinion? There are fundamental and important questions here that he has not dealt with.

10:20 a.m.

The minister is the one charged with responsibility for this act. I am asking him to give us his definition of who can and who cannot participate and to table the legal opinion. Surely he owes it not only to his colleagues to prevent them from embarrassing themselves but also, just as important, to the taxpayers of this province who are paying these people while they are involved in partisan political duties. Will he do that?

Hon. Mr. McCague: It all goes back to whether Mr. Parsons is an employee, and he is not an employee. The rules are set down very carefully. I do not have it with me today, but in a July issue of Topical, prior to the federal election, what various people had to do if they were going to be involved in any political activity was all set out very clearly. But that was for employees. It is my understanding Mr. Parsons is not an employee.

Mr. Peterson: We will look forward to the minister tabling that opinion in this House.

COMMUNITY COLLEGE LABOUR DISPUTE

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I have a question to the Minister of Education with respect to the ongoing strike. Will she be good enough to bring this House up to date on what is happening and the prospects for a settlement? I am sure she is aware that the hardship is mounting day by day. The number of young people and students whose courses and training are in jeopardy is increasing on a daily basis. Will she give us her informed opinion of where the talks are now, where they are headed and whether she has any room for optimism about a quick and speedy settlement?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, as I am sure the honourable member is aware, the talks between the two parties resumed this week, with a mediator chosen and agreed to by both sides on Wednesday evening. An encouraging remark was made by Ms. Katie FitzRandolph, representing the union, on Thursday. It is my understanding that they began to meet again this morning at 10 o'clock. There is no evidence that talks are at an impasse or about to break off or anything of that sort. I hope we will all be optimistic about it.

Mr. Peterson: I could have read that in the newspaper. I would have suspected the minister to be closer than that. Let me go back because, as I said, the pressure is starting to mount.

Interjection.

Mr. Peterson: The minister should not be so disagreeable.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: The member should not talk about being disagreeable.

Mr. Speaker: Order. If you two want to have a private conversation, it can be accommodated elsewhere.

Mr. Peterson: She is so disagreeable she should be in the opposition.

We discussed in this House some time ago the minister's plans to salvage the potentially ruined courses of some of the students involved. We discussed that at the beginning of the strike and she said she had secret plans. When we asked her what they were, she said she could not tell us. She went on to say those plans were in the hands of the faculty, but the faculty is now on strike.

Interjection.

Mr. Peterson: That is what the minister said. She can check Hansard.

Is the minister moving to put contingency plans into place to save the training of these young people? For example, the advanced motor vehicle mechanics apprenticeship training program at Conestoga College was supposed to be finished very quickly. Now the training and education of these students is in jeopardy because of this strike. Specifically, what is the minister going to do for these young people and for other students who are in danger of losing their courses?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: I am sure that if the Leader of the Opposition reads Hansard, he will determine that I said the administrations of the various colleges had plans to deal with circumstances they felt were of specific concern to specific groups of students. It is obvious the educational experience of all students is not in jeopardy at this point. There are some areas of study that tend to be more precarious in that direction than others.

I am aware the administration of each of the colleges is attempting to resolve some of those difficulties by keeping, in some circumstances, the areas of education open so the students may proceed with the kinds of programs that have been established for them, following the plans for teaching that the faculty members had laid down for them.

It would be much more appropriate at this point if we were all to encourage the negotiating parties to complete their negotiations successfully so we might have a bilaterally acceptable agreement that would ensure good relationships within the colleges for the future. Attempting to poke, prod and disturb the negotiations going on at present is anything but productive, and I propose not to do so.

Mr. Allen: Mr. Speaker, I was very glad to hear the minister's last words, because I think it is very important that anything needlessly provocative should be avoided in this situation.

Mr. Speaker: Question, please.

Mr. Allen: Did the minister notice an ad from the Council of Regents to the public that appeared in the Globe and Mail and the Sun earlier this week? It was an urgent message to the community stating the unnecessary nature of the strike and reiterating the council's opinion that the faculty is not overworked.

Does the minister not believe that this kind of ad from the council is needlessly provocative and a waste of public dollars? Will she advise Mr. Williams and the council that such public relations, while mediation is under way, is in the very worst possible public interest?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I would agree that there might be some provocation attached to such activities. I would agree as well that some of the activities that have been pursued by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union could be equally provocative. Therefore, I would ask both sides to refrain from indulging in such antics until we can achieve a negotiated settlement in the circumstances.

Mr. Peterson: I know the minister will use her authority and her powers of moral suasion to prevent this thing from being provocative, following her own style in solving these things. Does she not think it is an outrageous waste of money to advertise in a number of local dailies and perhaps others as well when one of the broad issues at stake here is the funding of our post-secondary system? I do not know what the cost is -- $10,000 or $20,000 -- but that is $10,000 or $20,000 that could very well go into training young people for jobs of the future. Does she not think that is an outrageous waste of money? As the minister, she should put her foot down and say, "That is unacceptable."

Hon. Miss Stephenson: The member raises an interesting point that I shall consider seriously, but I would like him to remember that the provincial contribution to the college system last year was getting fairly close to $500 million. That is not a small amount of money, in spite of the member's huge ego and his concept that large amounts of money are relatively insignificant to taxpayers.

It is the responsibility of each person within the college system to ensure that everyone gets the best value for every dollar spent. I would hope that would be the ambition and goal of all those involved in these negotiations, whether they be members of faculty or members of the administration of the college system.

POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS

Mr. Swart: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Industry and Trade. The minister will be aware that the report of the Commission on Election Contributions and Expenses shows that at the end of 1983, the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Timbrell) has $235,319 in his riding war chest for the leadership campaign, the riding of the Treasurer (Mr. Grossman) has $61,205 and the Minister of Industry and Trade has $24,861 in Muskoka.

Mr. Speaker: Now for the question, please.

Mr. Swart: Would the minister not agree that through tax credits, the Ontario Treasury has funded at least $150,000 of that more than $300,000 and that the total cost to the Treasury, depending on expenditures and the number of leadership candidates, could be many hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Recognizing this and the fact that senior officials on the public payroll -- such as Lou Parsons, as inappropriate as that may be -- are being used as campaign managers --

Mr. Speaker: Question, please.

Mr. Swart: -- as the past Treasurer of this province who passes himself off as a fiscal conservative, would the minister not think there should be limits on leadership campaign expenditures and full disclosure of where the funds are obtained?

10:30 a.m.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, I would have thought a question would have been addressed to me about my ministry, not about the leadership campaign. I do not think a minister, member or candidate should be answering that question individually. I will simply say the honourable member has jumped to the conclusion that the moneys in the riding associations are for the leadership campaign. He has assumed that is all there is.

Mr. Swart: Can the minister, who is a former Treasurer, assure this House that none of those funds in the riding associations, including his, will be used in the leadership campaign?

The riding of the Treasurer, St. Andrew-St. Patrick, received better than $12,000 from the nursing home industry in 1982, and the minister's own riding last year received more than half of its contributions of more than $100 from nursing homes and a medical lab.

Mr. Speaker: Question, please.

Mr. Swart: Recognizing the minister received that kind of money from one source, and being conscious of the trend towards freedom of information generally in our society and the accepted principle of disclosure, how can he defend his statement in the Globe and Mail that he will not disclose the source of his funds?

Hon. F. S. Miller: My friend should ask the chairman of the Commission on Election Contributions and Expenses of Ontario to define the rules. No one assumes that any riding expenses or accounts come to a candidate. Indeed, those are specifically excluded unless they are given freely to anyone, just as the member gets his money.

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the minister is aware no one is saying that what he proposes to do is illegal. We are just saying it is improper.

Since this activity he is undertaking is all about leadership, why does he not simply get up and announce that his campaign chairman has taken a leave of absence for the period of the campaign, that he will not accept any funds that were raised for constituency purposes and that he will declare a limit on his campaign which is audited and reportable? Why does he not do that, set a benchmark for the other candidates who come in and try to stay ahead of Darcy McKeough before he even gets into the act?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, the numbers the member for Welland-Thorold (Mr. Swart) read into the record speak volumes. I do not have any money.

Mr. Swart: Even though the Liberals do not set maximums and do not provide for disclosure in their leadership campaigns, and even though the Conservative Party has not in the past, does the minister not recognize that the New Democratic Party in its provincial leadership campaign set a maximum limit of $30,000, which no leadership candidate went over?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Now to the question.

Mr. Swart: By spending that small amount, we got the best leader of any of the three parties.

Mr. Speaker: Question, please.

Mr. Swart: Will the minister not agree that would be a good principle to follow?

Hon. F. S. Miller: I am reminded of the Sears jingle I hear on the radio all the time, "You get your money's worth at Sears, your money's worth and more." That is perhaps what happened with the member's party.

If the three parties in this room looked at their bank accounts, I suspect the only party with money in the bank would be the NDP. That is because its system of collecting is at source in a rather interesting way.

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, on a point of privilege: My sanctimonious friend the member for Welland-Thorold is absolutely wrong in his interpretation of the Ontario Liberal Party.

Mr. Speaker: That is hardly a point of privilege.

Mr. Peterson: Perhaps he wants to stand in his place and correct the record.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Peterson: Mr. Speaker, he is factually incorrect.

Mr. Speaker: I cannot make a judgement on that. I do not know.

Mr. Peterson: I am telling you it is a matter of record and you may want to afford him the opportunity as the honourable gentleman that he is to stand in his place and admit he is wrong. I agree with everything he says about those guys today, and I give him credit for being half right, but he is half wrong --

Mr. Swart: Mr. Speaker, perhaps you will give me --

Mr. Speaker: No, I will not. Order. Please resume your seats.

AMATEUR HOCKEY

Mr. Martel: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Attorney General.

Mr. Speaker: I hope he will address the matters of the ministry.

Mr. Martel: With some difficulty, because the minister I want to address is absent. In the absence of the Minister of Tourism and Recreation (Mr. Baetz), I will ask the Attorney General a question involving violence since he is responsible for that.

Is the minister aware of a double-A bantam game played on October 7 involving two teams of kids, the Toros and the Royals, all under age 14? One young lad, Shane Yeo, was checked into the boards from behind and had a badly bruised shoulder. A second boy, Anthony Scilipoti, suffered a dislocated shoulder in an incident that happened well behind the play. A third boy, Danny Worboys, suffered a broken collarbone on a check from behind into the boards. A fourth boy, Greg Rogers, was hit with a vicious high stick, suffering lacerations and a large bruise. They lent a fifth player, Johnny Jelaca, to another team and, according to the letter I received, he also got nailed in the corner against the boards and suffered a broken collarbone.

That is five young people in one game. How much longer is this government prepared to tolerate that kind of conduct in arenas when it would not tolerate it on the streets of Toronto or anywhere else in this province?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, the incidents to which the honourable member refers are very disturbing. I think the members know of my concern over the years.

I must admit that referring to the Attorney General as the minister responsible for violence caught me off guard a little, because everybody knows that as an athlete many years ago I was somewhat of a pussycat. I am not quite sure where it leads us to characterize me as the minister responsible for violence.

Seriously, I do share the member's concern with respect to this excessive and often mindless violence. I know this is a concern shared by the Minister of Tourism and Recreation. He is very concerned about the overall organization of amateur hockey in this province as it relates to very distressing incidents such as the one the member has just related to the House.

We in this province have always recognized the importance of allowing amateur hockey to govern itself with minimal interference from the government. We have done that on the basis that amateur hockey has always relied on a very large majority of volunteers to field the teams, coach the teams and provide the other services that are necessary.

Personally, and I am not speaking as the Attorney General but as the father of three hockey-playing sons and two hockey-playing daughters, I feel that amateur hockey in this province has not taken its responsibilities seriously enough in this area.

10:40 a.m.

Mr. Martel: In the same letter I received from the general manager and coach of the team, he said one of the boys was injured and they took him to the hospital. Shortly thereafter, a second boy was injured. They did not have stretchers for the second boy. The referee ordered the boy lifted from the ice without the aid of a stretcher and he too was ultimately taken to hospital.

Where is amateur sport's teaching of referees, coaches and trainers that they will allow a youngster to be picked up without a stretcher, not knowing the gravity of his injury, to carry him off the ice so the game can continue? This is the sort of attitude that prevails. I want to know when we will have had enough and we will return the game to the kids so they can learn the skills of hockey and enjoy the game, rather than serving the egos of some of the people who are at the top controlling this game?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I would hope the very disturbing additional incident the honourable member has related to the House would be a very isolated incident. It certainly has been my experience that while I have great concerns about what goes on in many of the arenas throughout this province, the care of the injured has usually been something that has been given very high priority. I have had a good deal to say about this issue over the years, and we are all familiar with some of the distressing situations.

Mr. Foulds: What have you done? Talk is cheap.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Like everything else, we will ask what the member is doing about it because this --

Mr. Foulds: You are the government.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: The members in that party have --

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Martel: I might answer the Attorney General. We have attempted to highlight this before the public. We intend to take it to the teaching organizations within the week to see if we can get them to help.

This incident happened in the first year of bodily contact between these boys. They went from no bodily contact to bodily contact. In a report, of which I sent the Attorney General a copy, we made a recommendation that there should be a transitional year where the skill of bodily contact is actually taught, as opposed to what is happening now. If that recommendation had been accepted by the leagues, this sort of thing would not have occurred. The coach complains in his letter about the number of incidents because there is no transitional year and no training.

When are we going to get down to the nitty-gritty and prevent youngsters from being hurt? Despite all the Attorney General said, this government and this Legislature has a responsibility to those young people. The mayhem is still there and the injuries are still occurring.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I agree that we do have a responsibility. The difficulty is determining the degree of that responsibility. All of us, as members of the Legislature, have specific responsibilities in our own communities. I agree with the honourable member that the playing of hockey is obviously an important and vital part of our social fabric, but I do have a little difficulty with some of his colleagues who believe the government of Ontario should play the role of Big Brother when it comes to amateur sport and when it comes to the involvement of many tens of thousands of people who are giving of their time on a voluntary basis.

I do not doubt, rather I applaud, the sincerity of the member for bringing these issues to our attention. They are very important issues, but I am not convinced they can be solved by the government of Ontario taking over the administration of amateur hockey in this province. I hope, and the member's colleagues certainly have suggested it, that the member's sincerity, which I accept, will be infectious and all of us will be aware of the leadership role we have to play in our own communities with respect to these very real concerns.

COMMUNITY COLLEGE LABOUR DISPUTE

Mr. McGuigan: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Education. Can the minister tell me what she is doing to save the careers of student nurses who are caught in the present college strike? I have the case of Mrs. Minoque of Blenheim. This mother of four children, who is educating herself for a nurse's position, requires 1,645 hours of clinical study, and 525 of those hours must be in the final 14 weeks of the course.

The course ends on July 26, and the national exams are held in the first week of August. The problem here is that it is a national exam over which we have little influence -- or perhaps the province does have influence now -- and the clinical studies cannot be altered because of the time periods in hospitals and so on.

What assurance can the minister give these ladies that their education will not be wasted?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I do not believe there need be total rigidity regarding the scheduling of the clinical experience hours and the academic study portions. We have asked the colleges, the College of Nurses of Ontario and the hospitals that are attached to college faculties of nursing, to try to be as flexible as possible in order to accommodate the requirements of nurses who have to meet national exam date deadlines in order that they will not have their education program jeopardized.

It is my feeling, and certainly my understanding, that there is no desire on the part of any of those bodies to retain or to establish such rigidities as would in fact produce such jeopardy.

Mr. McGuigan: On a related issue, I have a chap who is just two weeks away from getting his mechanic's licence. The college workers have said they will not release his standings so that he might be given his licence lacking those two weeks. What hope can the minister give a person in this situation?

Hon. Miss Stephenson: If he has completed his course and if the assessment carried out during that course is in fact part of the college records, there is no reason at all that this information cannot be gleaned. It would seem to me that his licence, however, depends on the final examination, which is not necessarily a college examination. If the member will give me the details of that circumstance, I will certainly look into it.

EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr. Wildman: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of the Solicitor General. Is he aware of the comments made by his colleague the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ramsay) in this House on Monday, October 22, in which he said: "Mr. Speaker, I am not going to waffle. I made the statement earlier that I recommend mandatory inquests. I have made a commitment in this House in that respect. I have made a commitment to the media in that respect. Why keep bringing it up with me? Why does the honourable member not take it up with the Solicitor General?"

I am taking it up with the Solicitor General now. Will he explain why he has publicly taken a position in opposition to his colleague who is responsible for the occupational health and safety of workers in this province? When can we expect him to change government policy and bring in mandatory inquests as requested by the labour movement in this province?

Hon. G. W. Taylor: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Labour has stated that he would like to see mandatory inquests. He has made that position known to this House and to the public.

I have reviewed the matter with the chief coroner of this province, who reviews all mandatory inquests. The legislation states that there are certain situations in which there are mandatory inquests, and they are held.

I am not yet convinced it is necessary or totally worth while to have an inquest in each and every situation. The coroner can call one. I can call one and direct the coroner to have one. Indeed, were any of the opposition members to say in a particular situation that they thought there should be an inquest, I am sure I would accommodate that request, as would the coroner.

But there are certain situations in which the coroner makes a preliminary investigation and concludes that there would be nothing worth while or no recommendations flowing out of that death to serve the purpose of having a full inquest.

10:50 a.m.

Those decisions are left to the discretion of the coroner. When one looks at the statistics and at the background, very few inquests are held in deaths where, if one were to have those inquests, they would serve no useful purpose.

Mr. Wildman: Does the minister not understand that when it is left to the discretion of the coroner, in too many cases the representatives of the workers or their families have to fight publicly, often in the press, to persuade the coroner to hold an inquest?

If he does not understand that and if he tries to argue that in most cases inquests are already held, then why on earth is he opposed to making them mandatory?

Finally, if he believes there are many cases in which it would be redundant or not useful to hold an inquest, because there have already been similar inquests, why on earth is it the law that we have mandatory inquests in mining deaths? Surely if we treat workers in the mining industry one way, that is correct and useful, then we should be treating all workers in a similar manner.

Hon. G. W. Taylor: I would submit that it is not necessary -- nor has it been in the past, nor will it be in the future -- to have an argument or a fight by the family to have inquests by any of the coroners or by me. Indeed, I think the opposite is the case; inquests are held very expeditiously.

I would like to bring to the honourable member's attention that if we were looking at just some of the examples -- and I do not say this in a light way -- when one calls for mandatory inquests for all workers, one could then have inquests out of each and every automobile accident in which workers were involved.

Mr. Wildman: Oh, come off it.

Hon. G. W. Taylor: That is one example that people put forward of where we would have automatic inquests.

Mr. Wildman: What a ridiculous argument.

Hon. G. W. Taylor: I hear the interjections of the opposition there, and they are nattering away. But does it change the fact when they call for mandatory inquests? That is where they have not looked at the total picture.

Mr. Wildman: We are talking about work place deaths.

Hon. G. W. Taylor: We have a few cases, and I can give examples, in which inquests were not called. We have had a number of inquests into deaths this year, and there are very few instances out of all the deaths -- I think 13 -- in which inquests were not held. In some of them it is very obvious why those deaths occurred, and I am advised that an inquest would not have revealed any more information.

Although I understand this request and acknowledge it, I have not yet come to the conclusion that the public or the workers would be served by making an inquest mandatory in each and every instance.

LABOUR DISPUTES

Mr. Haggerty: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Labour. Is the minister aware of the difficult circumstances that the community of Fort Erie is encountering in relation to labour disputes in local industries that are seriously affecting the economy of the area?

Can the minister inform the Legislature today what steps his ministry is taking to resolve the labour disputes: that is, the strike between Horton CBI and the United Steelworkers, which is in its ninth month, and also the present strike between Fleet Aerospace and Frontier Lodge 171, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, involving 529 employees, which is now entering its third week?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, taking the second dispute and discussing it first, I can say that our mediation efforts there are ongoing. I understand they are not meeting at the present time, but our people are available and ready to move in. In fact, I understand they have attempted to do so, but both parties have to be prepared to talk.

I agree with the honourable member that when 599 persons are involved, it is a very serious matter, particularly in an area such as Fort Erie. I want to assure him that our people are prepared and anxious to be of assistance and have been attempting to assist. I want to emphasize that.

Horton CBI is a completely different matter. The member is right: it is in its ninth month. It is a very serious, bad situation, but I am afraid the parties are entrenched. It is very difficult to get them together. There are a lot of complexities involved in that dispute. It is more complex than most and one with which our people have been wrestling, but obviously without much success to date.

Mr. Haggerty: Is the minister aware the agreement between the federal and Ontario governments will contribute $39.9 million in support of Canada's aerospace industry for partners with MBB of West Germany to invest a total of $76 million towards the development and manufacture of light twin-engine helicopters?

MBB and Fleet Aerospace will invest $37.7 million in the venture, creating 700 possible new jobs. The involvement of the provincial government as a partner in this is around $14 million.

What steps is the Ontario government taking to dispel rumours that have appeared in local newspapers that MBB of West Germany is considering other alternatives, such as pulling out of the agreement, if the labour dispute at Fleet Aerospace is allowed to continue?

Hon. Mr. Ramsay: I am aware of the original circumstances of the commitment by the provincial government because I am a member of the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development and was in attendance at the two or three meetings in which that was actively discussed. I was quite excited about that project. It would be a brand-new industry for Ontario, and particularly for the area of the member for Erie (Mr. Haggerty) which, as I said earlier, has been particularly hurt by unemployment.

I am not aware of the speculation the member reports has been in the local media. That has not been brought to my attention by anyone. It has not been a matter for discussion at the BILD meetings. I will be pleased to look into it for the member.

IDEA CORP. PRESIDENCY

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Speaker, does the Minister of Industry and Trade not think it is his responsibility to give this House a clear statement of the reasons it was necessary to terminate the presidency of Brian St. John of the Innovation Development for Employment Advancement Corp. at a cost of $115,000 to the taxpayers of Ontario?

What were the "irreconcilable differences" between the minister and Mr. St. John? Does he think Mr. Ian Macdonald can run the corporation that is supposed to be the cornerstone of BILD on a part-time basis? What the devil is going on there: anything?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, first, I think it should be understood that I did not terminate Mr. St. John. The assumption I did is wrong. I simply said, and I repeat here for the record, that when one has two strong-willed people who I would hope are intelligent, such as he and I, one sometimes has differences of opinion. There were differences of opinion.

Mr. St. John chose to review the contract he signed knowing he was taking on a job that was new and to some degree perilous since his ability to maintain it would be dependent upon his ability to perform. He had a clause in the contract, which I am told is quite standard in that type of executive contract, saying that if his contract was terminated in advance of a certain number of years, then the following settlement would be made on termination.

I am told that is what happened. As far as irreconcilable differences, I could not define them as "irreconcilable" at all. Perhaps they were differences of style.

I do want to say one thing. If there is a criticism of crown corporations made in parliaments around this world, it is generally that politicians do not pay attention to them. In this case, if there was any cause for Mr. St. John's leaving, it is because this minister was paying attention to it. That, in turn, caused some friction.

Mr. Foulds: Will the minister be good enough to tell us what the friction was? Where does he think the IDEA Corp. should go? What does he think its mandate is? Why has it been such a monumental failure?

Hon. F. S. Miller: First, it has not been a monumental failure.

Mr. Foulds: Why did the minister terminate him?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. F. S. Miller: It the honourable member would wait just a second, it has not been a smashing success either. Let us get in the middle.

Mr. McClellan: It was a moderate failure.

11 a.m.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Its mandate was set by the BILD committee about two years ago in response to a proposal made by the chairman and president of the IDEA Corp., who said it should be a venture capital organization.

It went through two years and made certain investments. It was time for us to review the business plan of the company. It was also time to approve the 1984-85 budget. We then asked for a routine review of the mandate. The company and the board of directors reviewed it, said they believed the venture capital mandate was still appropriate, suggested there were other things it could do and presented them to the Board of Industrial Leadership and Development.

BILD reviewed them and accepted the proposal for the completion option, as it was called, which meant that it should continue to be a venture capital entity while it determined whether the market was really there for venture capital. In other words, we were making progress, which did not tell us whether it should be continued as a venture capital organization or not, but at least it was successful enough to justify going on. That is what happened.

I then asked for a business plan. The business plan was not forthcoming. I put on some pressure for a business plan. At that point, there was a bit of friction, but it is the kind of friction that very often happens in a person's home. It was not yelling or screaming. It was the kind of thing that happens which causes a person to say, "I disagree with you."

Mr. Conway: Mr. Speaker, my friend the member for Bellwoods (Mr. McClellan) is not right. I think IDEA Corp. was defined a few years ago as a centrepiece of BILD. If the member for Bellwoods is not right in suggesting that IDEA Corp. has been a moderate failure, what can the Minister of Industry and Trade tell the people of Bracebridge about the two or three principal achievements of BILD over the past two or three years, given the millions of dollars we have made available to that centrepiece of the BILD program?

Hon. F. S. Miller: I want to reaffirm one thing. BILD and I have confidence in the current mandate of IDEA Corp. and feel that it will succeed with it. I do not want to leave any wrong impression in my colleagues' minds through not saying we have approved the mandate. We feel it is still an appropriate mandate and we feel it is making progress.

In terms of what BILD did, that is an interesting question. All I heard from the members over there --

Mr. Conway: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: I said to name specifically two or three of the achievements of IDEA Corp.

Mr. Speaker: Order. We heard your question quite clearly.

Hon. F. S. Miller: He should come to my riding and pose the question. I do not suppose the people of Huntsville --

Mr. Conway: I said of IDEA Corp.

Hon. F. S. Miller: The member asked me about BILD. Go back to the record.

[Later]

Mr. Conway: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: I have not had a chance to look at the record, but I have had the opportunity to do something equally as good, if not better, in that I have talked to the member for Bellwoods and the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) who tell me that I did misspeak myself in my supplementary question to the Minister of Industry and Trade.

I inadvertently said Board of Industrial Leadership and Development and not the Innovation Development for Employment Advancement Corp., and I regret that. The minister was right, I was wrong and I apologize. It must be a Friday morning error.

PAYROLL DEDUCTIONS AT ONTARIO HYDRO

Mr. Elston: Mr. Speaker, I want to address my question to the Minister of Energy. It concerns a problem that is of concern in my area and that I think is a concern for people all across the province with respect to a decision by Ontario Hydro to refuse to make automatic deductions for payroll contributions to the Canada savings bonds program.

I think the minister as a good citizen of the nation of Canada would like to see participation by public corporation employees in the future of the Canadian nation, and I ask what he intends to do to reverse the decision by Ontario Hydro that it will not make deductions for Canada savings bonds purchases through payroll deductions.

Hon. Mr. Andrewes: Mr. Speaker, I respect the honourable member's enthusiasm about good citizenship. I want to tell him that Ontario Hydro, its board and its employees are probably setting an example for the rest of Canada in that regard.

Hydro cancelled the payroll deduction plan for Canada savings bonds as a cost-saving measure. It was costing the corporation some $70,000 a year, of which it was getting back about $8,000 from the Bank of Canada in return for performing that service.

At the time they took these steps, they felt reasonably confident, because of a low level of participation in the payroll deduction plan, that it would not cause any problems with their employees. Subsequently, after some urging from members of the Hydro employee groups, Hydro did make an arrangement with the Bank of Canada whereby the Hydro Electrical Power Credit Union of Ontario Employees, HEPCOE, is now able to make payroll deductions and employees are able to avail themselves of a program through that credit union. That is a one-year arrangement for next year, subject to approval by the Bank of Canada. It probably goes some measure towards addressing the concern of these employees.

Mr. Elston: I appreciate the arrangements that have been made by the minister's offices in allowing the load to be taken off Ontario Hydro and placing it on the shoulders of the members of the credit union. The minister might remember and perhaps understand that not all employees of that great corporation are members of the credit union and, therefore, they would still not be able to participate in the automatic payroll deduction purchase of Canada savings bonds.

Would the minister intervene with Ontario Hydro directly, concluding from his own analysis of the expenditures made by Ontario Hydro that there are other areas in which the great corporation might well save itself money that would match the savings it is making by refusing to allow its workers to invest directly in the purchase of Canada savings bonds? Perhaps he could relate to the Legislative Assembly what deductions, or at least which programs, he feels Ontario Hydro may very well be able to substitute for its decision on the Canada savings bond question.

Hon. Mr. Andrewes: I would be delighted to take the advice of the member and take up the subject with Ontario Hydro to ask them to give further consideration to the decision.

REPORT ON RENT REVIEW

Mr. McClellan: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations with respect to the Commission of Inquiry into Residential Tenancies.

Yesterday the Toronto Star ran a story, allegedly full of details about the Thom commission report. Today in the Toronto Sun the minister repudiates the Star's story that there will be permanent controls and suggests that is not what is in the commission report either. How much longer are we going to have a dribbling out of the details of the commission report in the daily press? When will the minister do us the courtesy of tabling the commission report in the assembly, so we can all see what is in it?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Speaker, I mean this with a great deal of respect. I have no knowledge of how that purported leak occurred through an Ottawa correspondent. I have made inquiries and I am continuing to have my deputy make inquiries. The message I gave yesterday to that reporter, and I think he reported it accurately, is that there is no question of whether rent review and rent controls are going to remain in place. That was not part of the commissioner's mandate. That was taken for granted.

He chose to divide his mandate into two phases. Phase 1 was to come back with some recommendations for the government's consideration regarding ways in which the present act might be amended to adjust it to create a greater degree of equity with respect to landlords and tenants. To suggest that tenants or anyone should be awaiting news of whether rent reviews or rent controls are going to stay in place is not the issue. Mr. Thom was not given that mandate. He was specifically told that was not an issue before him.

I repeat that I will be tabling the report in this House before the end of the month.

11:10 a.m.

Mr. McClellan: I assume we will have it next week. We have had promises before, but somehow I believe this one. I think we will have it next week, and we look forward to receiving it -- not that I did not believe the other promises; I was simply disappointed.

Is the minister currently drafting legislation based upon the recommendations of the commission of inquiry? If he is not doing it now, what will the process be for producing legislation based on the commission of inquiry report? When will we see a draft of the government's proposals with respect to a new model rent review program?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: An interministerial committee is already in place and at work reviewing the material in the report. It will move expeditiously and go through those recommendations and proposals flowing from the Thom report. The comments the government will receive with respect to the report will be dealt with as expeditiously as possible. That is all I can tell the honourable member at this time.

Mr. Elston: Mr. Speaker, bearing in mind this report will be full of very long and exhaustive readings of opinions expressed to the commission, does the minister not feel it would be appropriate to allow the opposition parties at least to have a lengthy time for reviewing the recommendations? Then the opposition parties can be prepared for the time when his ministry wants to bring in his legislative response to that commission. We can be prepared to speak to him directly on the issues that are being developed in that report. Can the minister tell us when he will allow us to participate in the review of this material?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Speaker, when a report such as that of the commission of inquiry is tabled, copies are distributed to all members and distributed widely to the public. All members will have an opportunity to review it. When the government responds to the report in whatever method it determines is appropriate, then the opposition will have an opportunity to criticize or commend whatever steps the government chooses to take.

WOMEN'S DETOX CENTRE

Mr. Bradley: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Provincial Secretary for Social Development and will roll my supplementary right into the original question, so that he will be aware of all this and be able to answer it.

In view of the alleged concern of the government for the welfare of women in Ontario and the government's supposed desire to deliver social and health services in as efficient a manner as possible; in view of the fact that the nearest Canadian women's detoxification centre for Niagara Peninsula residents is in Kitchener; since women alcoholics who are treated in hospital beds incur a cost of $265 a day, compared to $27.50 a day in a detox centre; and since inquiries are made at the men's detox centre several times a week for a facility for women, is the government prepared to give approval for funding for a five-bed women's detox centre at Hotel Dieu Hospital in St. Catharines? Because this proposal contemplates co-ordination with the men's detox centre, it will mean an allocation of $130,000 rather than the normal $300,000.

I ask this in view of the fact the Minister of Health (Mr. Norton) is not here to answer it. I know the provincial secretary will be very familiar with this issue and I ask that he give us an immediate assurance that will be done.

Hon. Mr. Dean: Mr. Speaker, as the member for St. Catharines knows, the Provincial Secretariat for Social Development does not have funds at its disposal for this sort of thing and, therefore, the provincial secretary cannot answer yes or no to that question. I know it is under active consideration and the Minister of Health will be pleased to respond to it on another day.

INTRODUCTION OF BILL

UNITED JEWISH WELFARE FUND ACT

Mr. Cousens moved, seconded by Mr. Robinson, first reading of Bill Pr31, An Act respecting the United Jewish Welfare Fund.

Motion agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF TREASURY AND ECONOMICS

The Deputy Chairman: We are considering the estimates of the Ministry of Treasury and Economics, page G-92. The Treasurer would like to begin with a few opening words.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to present the estimates of the Ministry of Treasury and Economics for the second time.

I would like to introduce to the members of the committee of supply my new deputy, Brock Smith, who is sitting under the gallery. He will be joining me, perhaps after the opening round of remarks.

Mr. Conway: I think you would look better with Duncan Allan.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Many of us have prospered with Duncan. Indeed, I would be happy to have him back working for me as well, with Brock.

Mr. Conway: He is Darcy's man.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Brock worked for Darcy too.

Mr. Nixon: Would you say a word or two about the deputy?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I will.

I worked with Brock Smith at the then Ministry of Industry and Tourism, when my assistant deputy ministers were Brock Smith, and before him Duncan Allan. Having worked with Brock in Industry and Tourism, where he served me well, I can attest to the members of the committee, who, I know, will be anxious to get to know him even more over time, that Brock is an intelligent, well-respected and dedicated public servant who brings a great deal of ingenuity and skill to his job at Treasury.

Mr. Conway: You mean he will make a good campaign manager.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: We have enough.

Brock was also my assistant deputy minister at Treasury and he served my predecessor in that capacity. He went on to become Deputy Minister of the Environment. Then the Premier (Mr. Davis) selected him, at a relatively early point in his career, to assume the responsibilities of Deputy Treasurer. I think he is a fine choice to lead our excellent team of talented professionals. I feel particularly fortunate to have Brock join me as deputy.

11:20 a.m.

To set the context for our discussions, I want to begin by providing the committee with an overview of the performance of the economy since our budget. I will discuss some of our major budget initiatives and how they have gone. I will then turn to some federal-provincial issues to review some of the key issues both governments should now be addressing.

Ontario's overall economic growth is indeed strong. Current indicators show that the Ontario economy is outperforming that of the rest of Canada and even our own budget projections.

Mr. Haggerty: It is a good thing we have the automobile industry in Ontario. That is the only thing that is saving us.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: They count for something.

We now believe that real GPP growth for 1984 will be five per cent, compared with the 4.7 per cent expected at budget time. The projected Ontario level surpasses the 4.2 per cent growth rate widely forecast for Canada as a whole. Here in Ontario retail sales have risen by 9.9 per cent for the first eight months of 1984, compared with the same period in 1983. Manufacturing shipments in the first seven months are up by 20.8 per cent. Canadian steel production, largely centred in Ontario, is up by 16.8 per cent and new car sales in the province are up by 21.6 per cent.

Employment, of course, is our bottom line. The indicators I have just listed translate into more jobs for our people. Since May, 42,000 jobs have been created in this province, continuing the upward trend that has prevailed since the recovery began. Ontario employment has increased by 282,000 since the recession low in November 1982. Our employment is now higher than it has ever been.

Job creation has been strong almost across the board, with the manufacturing trade, finance and service sectors all recording solid employment gains. The recovery has contributed to a reduction of youth unemployment from 17.5 per cent in September 1982 to 14.9 per cent in September 1984. We have a firm commitment to expansion of youth employment opportunities, and this will continue to rank as the top economic priority.

There are two major reasons our projected economic growth rate has increased since the budget: new investment spending by business and higher than expected growth in the US economy. The confidence of the business community in Ontario is most heartening. New nonresidential business investment spending will likely increase by 9.4 per cent this year, compared with the budget forecast of 4.7 per cent.

The automotive industry, for example, has recently committed more than $2 billion to new investments in Ontario. General Motors has announced it will spend more than $1 billion to expand its operations in Ottawa and St. Catharines, American Motors has allocated $746 million to build an assembly plant in Brampton and Honda has decided to construct a $100-million plant in the Alliston area. These initiatives will stimulate our economy, not only in 1985 in a major way but also in future years.

These positive developments outweigh the impact, particularly on the housing market, of the rise in interest rates earlier this year; however, housing market prospects are improving following recent mortgage rate decreases.

Mr. Nixon: The Treasurer is certainly commanding a lot of attention on his own side. They are good, loyal supporters.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: At least we have back-bench people --

Mr. Nixon: One out of two.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: One out of two is not bad. That is all it takes. We will canvass the chairman later.

Mr. Foulds: I think he is a McKeough or Miller man myself.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Does my friend think so?

Mr. Robinson: No, no.

The Deputy Chairman: Order. We are slipping off topic.

Mr. Robinson: To correct the record --

Hon. Mr. Grossman: If he promises his support, I will sit down now.

The economic outlook for Ontario for the rest of 1984 is favourable. I believe the economy's growth will continue through 1985. Our export markets will strengthen further next year, largely because of the sustained US growth.

Mr. Haggerty: Which crystal ball are you looking at?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: The same one I used in May, which we can tell was not optimistic enough.

At home, consumer spending will continue to rise as higher employment generates gains in real income. Should interest rates increase significantly again, prospects for 1985 could be adversely affected. I am confident, however, that those responsible for monetary policy in the United States and Canada now realize the extraordinarily severe economic costs of such action.

The bright prognosis I have outlined for the Ontario economy contrasts sharply with the usually pessimistic scenario predicted by the Conference Board of Canada.

Mr. Nixon: The Treasurer read this speech once already.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I did not read it.

Mr. Nixon: I am going to read mine again. Maybe we should just quit.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Carried. Dispense.

The Conference Board does recognize that Ontario will be the fastest-growing province in 1984. But the board's forecast for 1985 is based on the premise that Canada is on the brink of an economic slowdown caused mainly by rising interest rates. In fact, there is no evidence that an economic downturn is impending, and I do not consider the board's forecast plausible. As far as I can determine, the Conference Board is the only major forecaster predicting imminent economic recession. Indeed, it predicted one for just this past summer.

One of the most encouraging trends, and a further sign of our economy's strength, is the reduction of the inflation rate. In Canada, the latest reported rate for September shows a rise of only 3.8 per cent. Private sector wage settlements in Canada have also been tempered to an increase of only 2.1 per cent.

This transition to a lower-inflation environment has been smoothed by public sector restraint. All levels of government must continue to practise restraint to preserve the foundations for a sustained economic expansion based on a revitalized private sector.

It is important to remember it was 10 years ago that we embarked on a very deliberate restraint agenda, the first government in Canada to do so. Compared with other jurisdictions we have been highly successful in containing the growth of the public sector.

Through efficient management we have maintained high levels of service while holding spending per resident to a level that is now the lowest of any province. We also have the fewest civil servants per 1,000 people and the lowest deficit per capita of all the provinces.

Our public service has become leaner. The number of executive positions in government ministries has dropped by 15 per cent since 1976, and the public service as a whole has been reduced by 6,700 positions since the restraint program began in 1975.

In Ontario, we have our provincial deficit under control. The budget projected net cash requirements this year of $2,039,000,000, down from $2,289,000,000 required last year and significantly down from the expected $2.7 billion for last year. Our first-quarter financial report for the current fiscal year already revised our deficit estimate downward to $2,028,000,000, and the second-quarter update on those numbers will be released some time next week.

In the past year, strong financial management has allowed us to reduce Ontario government and Ontario Hydro borrowing by about $1 billion, or 20 per cent. By preserving our attractiveness to the financial markets we secure lower interest rates, which keep our borrowing, and therefore taxes and deficits, down.

As part of our restraint strategy, we have encouraged public sector efficiency at the local level as well as at the provincial level. This year's public sector restraint program is on target. Compensation increases for more than 40 per cent of public sector employees have now been reported, and the weighted average increase is consistent with the guidelines. This transition to an environment of low inflation and moderate wage settlements must be matched by the public sector.

Over the past decade, Ontario has been a leader in designing and implementing restraint measures that have gradually contained public sector growth and saved us from having to institute drastic restraint measures seen elsewhere in recent years. It is also worthy of note that Ontario is leading the way in public sector restraint programs that are fair and equitable to public sector employees and to taxpayers, who ultimately pay the bills.

I believe we must continue to impose fiscal restraint on the public sector and we must do so with a clear understanding that we cannot afford wage settlements in the public sector that outpace those of the private sector.

11:30 a.m.

This brings me to the key role that the arbitration process plays in public sector wage settlements. More than 40 per cent of unionized employees have arbitration as their final dispute resolution mechanism in lieu of the right to strike. To be fair to all parties, arbitrators have the responsibility to provide an award that would approximate a free market process. That, of course, requires taking into account the availability of persons qualified for the job.

In my view, it also requires, during the current restraint program, that the arbitrator take into account the taxpayers' ability to pay. Taxpayers should not be required to finance excessive wage increases, nor should the public purse insulate public sector employees from the realities of the marketplace that those in the private sector must accept.

I believe we should be governed by a clear set of principles for responsible action. In this regard, government should be guided by certain principles in setting compensation levels for public sector employees. In particular, no automatic allowance should be given for missed gains because of the restraint program. Public sector increases should not, as a rule, exceed those in the private sector. Compensation increases should take into account the taxpayers ability to pay. Pay increases should be related to explicit performance criteria, and emphasis should be placed on providing the public with better value for money.

The budget maintained our commitment to productivity and efficiency. This approach frees resources for major new investments in our economic transformation and especially in the long-term future prospects for our young people.

In developing our plans to expand youth opportunities, we chose to adopt a strategic long-term approach that goes to the heart of the problem. Our initiatives are designed to provide more effective support to those young people with little education and less experience, those who lack the skills and confidence they need to find or hold a job. That target group is 20 per cent of the young unemployed and accounts for almost half the time spent out of work by youth.

We have now consolidated and co-ordinated all our programs that address the employment and training problems of young people. Our hotline has been in operation since June. So far, 7,000 calls have been received and more than 3,000 job vacancies for young people have been identified.

Most of our budget training and employment measures are now operating. I thought the members might be interested in a progress report.

1. Ken Dryden is working with local leaders to organize youth trusts in 15 communities. This network will mobilize the private sector to help the hard-to-employ. Business firms will be approached to provide funding, training positions, counselling and jobs.

2. The Ontario Youth Corps program is designed to put disadvantaged young people to work performing useful community services. We have committed $15 million to the municipal component, which has approved 720 projects creating 2,000 opportunities in 260 municipalities. A further $10 million has been allocated to create 3,100 jobs under the second component, run through provincial ministries and community agencies.

3. The residential centres program gives our most disadvantaged youth a chance to live in a stable environment and obtain intensive training in basic life, work and educational skills. Two centres are now functioning in Toronto, more will be opening next month and 325 young people are expected to participate this year.

4. The Ontario youth start program is operated by community colleges through off-campus sites and targeted to youth unable to deal with the traditional school setting. It combines instruction in basic work skills with on-the-job training and counselling. Several thousand young people are expected to participate this year.

5. The Ontario youth tourism program, with 2,500 young people to be trained and employed over the next two years, combines two weeks of intensive training at a community college with on-the-job experience in a tourist operation.

6. The budget committed $80 million to a new youth works subsidy program. We have combined all our existing subsidy programs while creating an emphasis through them on the hard-to-employ.

Mr. Nixon: These things worked better when the member for Brantford (Mr. Gillies) was running them.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: They worked superbly under his guidance and they owe their success to --

Mr. Nixon: There were a lot more jobs for the bucks and not nearly so much political flim-flam.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: We learned a great deal from his experience.

This past summer, some 53,000 young people were employed through wage subsidies to private sector employers. Summer Experience generated more than 9,000 jobs, and the wage subsidy program for post-secondary graduates created a further 4,000 opportunities. More recently, we have focused on young people whose employment problems are most severe. Through the youth works subsidy program, $11.5 million has been channelled to youth employment counselling centres to create opportunities for more than 3,000 young people.

7. Our year-round venture capital incentive program is now ready for startup. This will build on the student venture capital program, which generated 850 small businesses and 2,000 jobs this summer. Further details on this program will be available next week.

8. The number of our youth employment counselling centres will be increased to 100. By the end of next month, eight new centres will be opened. Already the network has assisted some 20,000 young people.

9. We announced that a wage subsidy would be paid to employers who provided part-time jobs for students in financial need. We have decided to implement this concept by creating a part-time component of youth works --

Mr. Haggerty: The minister is saying that with a smile.

Mr. Nixon: This is the Bette Stephenson program.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: This is the one the member's leader thought was cancelled -- with a subsidy of $4 an hour.

Finally, regarding the Ontario career action program, we had 16,000 training positions this year, as pledged in the budget.

Our new long-term initiatives, together with our short-term initiatives, will create valuable and meaningful opportunities for more than 100,000 young people this year. During this transition year, we are shifting our focus to a long-term attack on the root of the problem.

One cannot expect immediate results when trying to solve long-term problems. Our new initiatives were not designed to make the unemployment numbers look good for a few weeks or months following the budget.

Mr. Haggerty: It is the same old story. The government has been saying that for the last 10 years.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Yes, just like my friend's party has been trying to do better for 41 years. His party should try long-term solutions; they might work.

Mr. Haggerty: I have a solution to one.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: So do we. There were 900 people at the Progressive Conservative nomination in Erie riding two weeks ago. We are going to have to solve that problem.

Mr. Haggerty: Not 900; there were 600.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I was there with them.

Mr. Haggerty: That is right. There were 300 Liberals there.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: If I were the member, I would be in Erie this morning.

The Deputy Chairman: Order. We are reviewing the estimates of the Ministry of Treasury and Economics.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Our initiatives were designed to provide genuine opportunities for young people to do more than get out and paint fences for a few weeks, but rather to acquire the skills and experience they need to build the lives they want.

I also want to mention that our community economic transformation agreements are tailoring financial aid to the unique needs of each community. We have signed agreements with Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie and the great city of Brantford, thanks to the excellent work and efforts of my colleague the member for Brantford.

Mr. Gillies: Diligent work; I do not know how we manage it at all.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: That is work.

I want to talk about federal-provincial relations for a moment, because they have such a profound impact on our economic circumstances.

We now have in place a new national government anxious to co-ordinate activities and to co-operate with the provinces. This is the time to setup a new framework with that government, to fashion what I have described as a new economic constitution for our country.

In fashioning that economic constitution, I believe we should try to reach agreement in five general areas; they are deficit management, economic development, industrial restructuring, reduction of waste and duplication and the very important question of the financing of social services.

I have pledged our agreement to be willing to discuss all aspects of changing relationships and changing responsibilities, to try to introduce some predictability and co-ordination. In this area I should like to mention that I hope we will take a major step towards better economic co-operation by signing an economic regional development agreement with the new federal government very shortly. We are in the final stages of negotiations, and this agreement will provide a co-operative framework within which both governments can address major economic regional development priority issues for the next 10 years.

Mr. Conway: Long-term pain for long-term gain.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Long-term sense.

Mr. Conway: The Treasurer will have to speak to it a lot sooner than I will.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: My friend would not understand it, though, so let us get on to the simple stuff.

Mr. Conway: That is the attitude that costs delegates. The minister has to stop doing that.

Hon. Miss Stephenson: Listen to the Delphic oracle.

11:40 a.m.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Low risk today.

The other area I would like to mention this morning is that of pension reforms. In tandem with the federal government, we have moved to reinforce the basic social safety net for elderly people. Through increases under the federal guaranteed income supplement and Ontario guaranteed annual income system, we are raising the guaranteed annual income for the single elderly to 60 per cent of the income provided for couples.

We have proposed significant improvements in the Canada pension plan, including more generous survivor and disability benefits, provisions for early and late retirement, automatic pension splitting between spouses and a shorter contributory period for maximum benefits. These recommendations, together with proposals to secure the financing of the CPP, are now under discussion with Ottawa and with the other provinces.

We have taken a lead in working to build a comprehensive and uniform private pension system across Canada. More than 90 per cent of the country's 15,000-plus pension plans are under provincial jurisdiction. We have now reached a broad consensus on major private pension issues, including vesting, membership criteria, survivor benefits and minimum employer contributions.

Mr. Conway: Sounds like you did not write this.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I did.

Inflation protection remains the one outstanding issue. On December 3, provincial ministers will meet to consider the terms of a detailed consensus being prepared by officials. We will also reconsider the inflation protection question. We intend to bring forward new private pension legislation in 1985 that will reflect the provincial consensus and ensure national uniformity. Setting an example for the private sector, the province has extended pension coverage to more than 8,000 part-time Ontario government employees.

The overriding goal in pension reform is to reduce the number of elderly dependent on government transfer programs without introducing a major extension of government control over how Canadians prepare for retirement. We are working towards a balanced, flexible pension system which complements rather than frustrates people's actual desire to save for their later years.

After a decade of debate, I believe the national will now exists to redesign our pension system for the rest of this century and beyond. I also believe the goodwill exists to seize the opportunity we now have to fashion a renewed and stable working relationship between Ottawa and the provinces, spanning the gamut of national economic issues. We are committed to work together with our federal and provincial partners to build a new era of co-operative federalism in economic and pension matters.

Finally, as is always the case in presenting my estimates, and these must be the eighth or ninth set of estimates I have brought to the House, on none of those occasions have I failed to be educated and to learn something from my colleagues and critics on the other side of the House. I am always learning things from my colleagues on this side of the House. I look forward to the next six hours and 32 minutes, during which I am sure there will be much advice and guidance, some of which, no doubt, we will follow and find quite useful in the months and perhaps days to come.

The Deputy Chairman: Is there someone from the opposition party who would like to respond first?

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order: we have discussed this previously. The member for Port Arthur (Mr. Foulds), my honourable friend and budget critic for the New Democratic Party, has to attend an important function in Thunder Bay in the next few hours. I am looking forward to hearing his comments, so I can deliver mine at the end of this debate.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Chairman, first of all, let me thank my colleague the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon) for letting me do my leadoff first. I have a fairly tight schedule and I hope to be able to stay here until one o'clock to hear his remarks, but I do have engagements in Thunder Bay both this afternoon and on Monday. I appreciate the courtesy of the member.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish the Treasurer well in whatever future activities he undertakes in the next week, 10 days or so.

However, in listening to him this morning, both inside the House and on the speaker while I was munching my lunch outside, I have to say I was reminded a bit of the expression of Eliza Dolittle in that marvellous musical My Fair Lady, when she comes out almost screaming the words, "Words, words, words."

We have heard it all before. The Treasurer should do something. We who sit across the aisle from him are accustomed to hyperbole from him; we are accustomed to empty rhetoric; we are accustomed to half-hearted expressions of concern for ordinary Ontarians. We are also accustomed periodically to the borrowing of ideas and phrases from our program proposals.

When the Treasurer produced his so-called economic transformation last spring, we acted privately with some sense of hilarity and some sense of ironic déjà vu; we had seen it all before. Ironically, we had seen it all before in terms of some of our own proposals.

We are used to seeing our ideas taken over, gutted and then touted by Ontario Treasurers as new initiatives and new ideas. However, we had not counted on the audacity of the Treasurer. Not only did he shamelessly steal opposition party programs, but he also shamelessly talked about long-term job creation.

There was not one thing in the budget, except words, that would lead substantially to long-term job creation, either for unemployed youth or for unemployed workers generally in this province. All the programs he so brazenly trotted out in May and so brazenly trotted out this morning are all short-term programs.

One example should do to establish the context of what I want to talk about this morning. It seems to me to be a very good point on which to do an evaluation of the Treasurer's progress and of his budget. As I said, it may be the last time we debate with this Treasurer.

For years, we in the New Democratic Party called on successive Treasurers to introduce fiscal measures that would bring about economic transformation. Sometimes, for example, we emphasized the importance of import replacement. At other times, we spoke of building-block industries.

Almost a year and a half ago, we decided that the "do nothing, leave it to the feds and the Americans" approach of this government, which remains the approach of this government, had to be confronted directly, especially since Ontarians were in danger of becoming convinced that the government could do nothing but pass the buck.

We put out a document called Ontario Can Work. In it, as in countless other documents we have prepared and released over the past 10 years, we made the very simple point that long-term initiatives and structural changes had to be the backdrop for the government's fiscal policymaking. We emphasized that initiatives for the short and medium terms would simply be cynical exercises in headline-grabbing without consideration of long-term solutions.

Through it all, what has been the response of the government? The government in its hard-nosed realism took great pride in the fact that what it was about was immediate responses to immediate problems. The government said: "We do not have the luxury of theorizing. We, the government, must act." They did, erecting dozens of short-term policy monuments to myopia.

We have what is called in the press a "new-style" Treasurer: a new man; a man given to slick, thoughtful, measured and, of course, staged reform. Above all, he is a man who is not afraid to gaze into the future. The trouble is that when he gazes into the future, it turns out to be his rear-view mirror he sees and not the road at which he should be looking.

11:50 a.m.

What does he do? He gives us the same old programs, the same old things. Dozens of cute-as-can-be programs, short-term in nature, catchy in their acronyms, offering the same combination of ad hoc planning and cynical manipulation of the public and the media.

What makes this Treasurer so different? That is easy. He claims we in the opposition and in this party are the ones who want short-term and opportunistic responses, but he, the Treasurer, being the brave warrior that he is, will not be swayed, no way. It is the long-term initiatives for him.

When we look at them, what do we find? We find 20-week jobs; 32-week jobs; even, goodness knows, long-term -- even some jobs that last a full six months. What else do we get? We get minimum-wage jobs and up-to-minimum-wage subsidy programs. Yes sir, that is structural reform all the way. That is the new wave in Conservative Treasurers. That is why with this particular Treasurer the future looks so much like the past.

What I want to discuss today is three things. I want to discuss security and insecurity in our economy. I want to deal with these themes in three areas: youth unemployment, the low-wage economy and the Treasurer's obsessive commitment to the symbol of Ontario's triple-A credit rating. In all three areas, the Treasurer, as the minister responsible for the fiscal policy of Ontario, has a good deal to explain if he can.

Let us start with youth unemployment. In spite of his manipulation of statistics, in spite of the percentages, the fact of the matter is that 156,000 young people were actively seeking work in September 1983. The fact of the matter is that 156,000 young people between the ages of 15 and 24 were still actively and desperately looking for work in September 1984.

There has been no improvement. The Treasurer announced his 10-point program last May and has not had one iota of effect on creating short-term or long-term jobs for those people actively seeking work.

What we have had over the summer is a staged program of announcements. He announces the programs in May; he begins to announce them singly over the summer; he reannounces them today. The result is 102,000 fewer young people are employed in Ontario today than were employed in May or in June. Ironically, it was in June when he made the commitment that there would be 100,000 more young people working in the province by September 1. In fact, his do-nothing budget approach has had exactly the opposite effect.

The Treasurer's record is not a good one. He has not been Treasurer long enough for us to get a good estimate of whether he will be a good Treasurer. Perhaps that decision will be taken out of our hands, certainly out of his hands, but in fact it is a major weakness that this Treasurer has been in his position for only a few months and is already seeking greener pastures.

If we are going to tackle youth unemployment, we have to tackle the problem of unemployment. We cannot just tackle the problem of youth unemployment in isolation. We cannot just tackle the problem with short-term programs. I emphasize that all the Treasurer has given us is short-term programs while giving us the words and the rhetoric of long-term programs.

I would suggest the following three-point strategy if we really want to tackle the problem of unemployed youth in Ontario. I want to start at the other end of the scale. I want to suggest that the programs for voluntary early retirement and the shorter work week that we in this party have suggested could go a long way towards solving the problem of youth unemployment.

If, for example, only half the workers between the ages of 60 and 65 took up the kinds of programs we have offered for full pensions, bridging pensions and voluntary early retirement, we could create 100,000 jobs in this province. Those jobs would be freed up, permanent, real, lifetime jobs for young people entering the work force at the other end of the scale.

As well, if we aim to reduce the average work week in Ontario by just one hour we can create another 100,000 jobs in this province, and those would be fundamentally honest and lifetime jobs. They would not be make-work jobs; they would be jobs that are part of our economy today.

With those two steps alone, we could cut the unemployment rate in this province by 40 per cent, and a large proportion of that would be to cut the unemployment rate for our youth.

We have talked about import replacement in this province, and I want to talk about just three areas. If in a hard-nosed, realistic and aggressive way we went about building manufacturing industries in this province to supply all our hospitals, clinics, etc., with medical supplies; if in a hard-nosed way we went after a program of supplying mining machinery for the mining industry of this country; and if we used the IDEA Corp. in creative and innovative ways for what it should have been used for -- that is, investment capital in areas where we know there is a market, where we know there is potential to develop a strong domestic industry -- and if we used it as a basis for a domestic and an export industry in the forestry-machinery manufacturing sector and in the food processing sector, we could create another 20,000 to 35,000 jobs.

Finally, if in the short term we tackled the monumental problem of housing in this province and provided the necessary social housing for seniors in the nonprofit and co-operative sectors and the renovation and repair of existing housing stock, we could create 45,000 real, albeit short-term, jobs in construction.

If we took those four steps to tackle the structural problems of the economy and the chronic problems we have with unemployment, we could halve the unemployment rate in this province. I suggested to the Treasurer in my response to the budget that the six and five program he should be aiming for is one that reduces unemployment in the province to five per cent as an immediate goal. He has not even begun to address that problem or come to terms with it.

With regard to employment, and specifically youth unemployment, the kind of program that this party would certainly look at as a government would be one that dovetails short-term job creation with long-term job creation.

12 noon

Let me give members two examples. We have suggested that we could develop jobs very badly needed in the reforestation and silviculture area of our resources. We know there is a desperate problem in reforestation in this province. It is vitally important and crucial that we maintain our forests to protect the jobs that are already there in our economy.

One of the ways we can protect those jobs over the next 30 to 60 years is to ensure that there is a mature forest to harvest. We will not do that unless we get into the proper silvicultural methods. Even after the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Pope) has planted most of his trees upside down, instead of green side up, we need to have a proper tending of the forest.

We are suggesting that programs be developed so that our young people can get not only on-the-job training but also in-the-classroom training in community colleges or in university forestry faculties. They can do these short-term jobs. Having had the experience, they would then have the encouragement and the ambition to seek them as long-term jobs. We need more long-term forest technicians and unit foresters on the ground throughout the north. It is that kind of program, where we give a young person immediate, short-term experience on the job combined with training that leads to an opening for a similar job in that industry, which is absolutely crucial.

The same could be said of the programs we have put forward in energy conservation. People could be trained in looking at homes and businesses to see where steps could be taken to improve the insulation or energy conservation in those homes. They could be trained in the construction arts and the skills necessary for retrofitting and given in-the-classroom training at the same time. It is not fly-by-night work; it is not temporary work; it is work that is supervised and well done, so the consumer benefits and the young person engaged in the job gets training and experience.

We believe that in this area alone many thousands of jobs could be created, not merely in the short term but also in the long term, because there is so much housing stock and there is so much of our small business community with business stock that could benefit enormously by those steps.

I want to turn now from the problem of youth unemployment, which we consider to be one of the most crucial problems facing our society today, to an increasing problem in the last part of the 20th century in our society with regard to our economy. Scarcely a day goes by when we do not hear someone on the government side or someone in the corporate sector talking about the need to usher in a new era of labour-management relations. They talk about the need to create a new partnership among labour, business and government. The Treasurer is fond of the concept. He made that point at the recent economic conference.

In spite of the overwhelming attendance this morning and the way the press, the members and the public are riveted on this important debate, I want to get behind the pat phrases of the new partnership and talk about what the real agenda is when those phrases are mouthed by government spokesmen and by management.

First, let me emphasize one point. I support a new era in labour-management relations. In Ontario we genuinely and desperately need a new partnership. What we do not need is 19th-century management practices masquerading as the 21st new era in order to be competitive with the Third World. What we do not need is a return to an era when corporations and governments rely on coercion, anti-labour laws, fear and insecurity to secure the subordination of workers.

That is precisely what we are getting in this province. When management and this government talk about a new partnership, it usually ends up meaning more for management and less for workers. When governments talk about a new labour-management consensus, it usually means takeaways from labour and giveaways to the corporations.

What is the new partnership on pensions, for example? In Ontario one out of every two workers does not have a company pension. Those who do can expect a retirement income that will be less than half their pre-retirement earnings. Only half of the workers in this province have private company pensions and, of those who do, their income will be half or less of their pre-retirement earnings. That is an average; of course there will be some above that, some who will get better pensions than that.

Mr. Chairman, because you follow these events so closely and with such alertness, I am sure you are aware of the ripoff of workers' pensions at CCM Inc. in Toronto, for example. CCM went bankrupt. However, it was later found that CCM had not been making its contributions to the company pension plan. Workers who were counting on their pensions were left with benefits 60 per cent less than they expected.

There was a step in pension reform and pension protection that this government knew about. It knew about that loophole in the law for more than 10 years. This Treasurer had been the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. There is no pension protection in situations like that even today. Very simply, that is robbery. In that case, we have allowed a corporate steal or corporate thievery of workers' pensions to take place and there is no retribution in law. There is absolutely no justification for it morally or financially.

Then there is the other half of that equation, management pensions. When Charles Bronfman of Seagram retires, he will get $720,000 a year in pension.

Mr. Nixon: He will not have to buy booze either.

Mr. Foulds: That is right.

When the head of Northern Telecom retires, he will get $774,000 a year in pension. That is more than $2,000 every day. That is a pretty tidy sum. It is a very nice expense account. He will be able to spend his sunset years in some comfort and luxury.

Mr. Rotenberg: Think of all the income tax.

Mr. Foulds: How can we deal seriously with the clamouring I hear from the voices of angels on my left?

Mr. Rotenberg: I am not on your left.

Mr. Foulds: He is on my left only geographically. Ideologically, he is so far to my right that even on a clear day I would not be able to see him.

Mr. Rotenberg: That is because you are so far left.

Mr. Foulds: I take that as an absolute compliment in this society. That is the only tribute I have ever received from the member for Armourdale; I believe it is.

The Acting Chairman (Mr. Robinson): Wilson Heights.

Mr. Foulds: I am sorry, it was the member for Wilson Heights. How could I forget which seat the Tories were able to obtain from the Liberals for the member for Wilson Heights?

Mr. Rotenberg: Watch how you say that. One of your former members --

Mr. Foulds: I watched very carefully how he did it.

How can we deal seriously with the clamouring about a new era in labour-management relations when there are so clearly two Ontarios and two Canadas, one in which workers live and another quite different world in which management lives?

12:10 p.m.

Mr. Chairman, I know you will be aware of this because you are such an astute student of these things. One only has to go to any company town in northern Ontario to see the difference between the style management lives in and the style the workers live in. It is not as great as the disparity one often sees in Third World countries, but there is a clearly defined management row of housing and the rest of the townsite.

What is this new partnership on job security? We all know the corporate buzzwords so frequently used and relied on by the Treasurer and his colleagues -- "consolidation," "rationalization," "international competitiveness." The thing that worries me is whenever we hear them, layoffs are not far behind. In the cities and across Ontario, these buzzwords have left thousands of workers on the street. In the last month in Ontario alone, more than 3,000 workers have been dumped from the payrolls of corporations.

It is interesting that today the Treasurer made the statement that 42,000 jobs had been created in Ontario since June. First, that is a far cry from the 100,000 jobs for youth unemployment alone he promised on June 22; nor does it deal with the simple, fatal statistic that a number of jobs, plant shutdowns and layoffs have occurred in the meantime.

What is the new partnership on wages? In a word, on the one side the new partnership means concessions from the workers. On the other side, it means executive bonuses. In recent years workers have been asked to give back benefits and take pay cuts. At the same time, within the last year executive compensation has hit the stratosphere. For example, at General Motors Roger Smith was paid $1.5 million for his efforts last year and Lee Iacocca at Chrysler pulled in the tidy sum of $2.6 million.

As the companies tell us, the pay levels reflect the economy's robust recovery from recession and rewards for executives for a job well done. That is a comfort to the tens of thousands of laid-off workers in our economy. If we accept management terms for a new partnership and if we accept the Treasurer's terms for a new partnership in Ontario today, we are heading down the road to a low-wage economy.

The signs are very clear and disturbing. More and more people are without and will be without jobs. In Canada and the United States every recession since the late 1960s has increased the level of unemployment. In other words, every recovery has fallen behind the last in terms of job recovery. Unemployment does not follow the ebb and flow of the business cycle. Instead, unemployment is steadily notching its way higher and higher.

Second, Canadian business is waging a multipronged assault on the incomes and living standards of ordinary Canadians. I know that is a strong statement, but in the past three years, concessions, wage freezes and cuts, legislated wage controls, walkouts, two-tier agreements and contracting-out have all served to reduce real wages.

In the second quarter of this year, the annual average wage gain had dropped to 3.2 per cent below the rate of inflation and was the lowest increase since the federal Department of Labour started keeping records in 1967. According to Statistics Canada, the workers' share of the national income is now the smallest it has been in a decade.

Let me just turn south for a moment. A recent study out of the United States has indicated that between 1978 and 1983 the American middle class shrank by 13 per cent. In a short space of five years that represents a dramatic and enormous shift to a low-wage economy. Part of the explanation of that shift, both in the United States and Canada, lies in the changing nature of jobs. The United States Census Bureau has indicated that while the economy is creating a number of high-income jobs in high technology, for example, the bulk of available jobs is in the lower-paid service sector, such as custodians in buildings, guards and restaurant workers. It is the McDonald's syndrome.

In Canada a federal government report, entitled The Rocky Road to 1990, estimated that up to half of the existing manufacturing jobs in Canada may be lost by the turn of the decade. These jobs are being replaced with service sector jobs and service sector jobs are paying much less than manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing jobs average about $450 a week; service sector jobs average about $268 a week.

Furthermore, a lot of what were previously full-time jobs, in the service sector in particular, are being replaced by part-time jobs. When we add to those trends the impact of technology, wage concessions and the shift of jobs overseas, it all adds up to a very dangerous trend towards a low-wage economy. That is what is behind pat phrases about the new partnership we hear so much about and the new era of labour-management relations governments want to see.

In the inaugural budget of the Davis government way back in 1971, Ontario framed its fiscal policy in the following way: "The new government of Ontario has promised the people of this province that it will combat the current intolerable levels of unemployment with every means at its command." Do members know what the intolerable level of unemployment was that the Davis government spoke about in 1971? It was 4.3 per cent, compared to today's rate of 8.7 per cent.

In the intervening years Ontario's fiscal policy has changed dramatically. I remember, Mr. Chairman, as you will not, since you were not in the House at the time, that in 1972 the province continued to emphasize that job creation and unemployment were the number one priority and the major concern. Although unemployment is now much higher, Ontario no longer makes commitments to reduce unemployment. The Treasurer's own budget makes that case.

When all is said and done, the Treasurer admits his budget will allow unemployment to remain at over nine per cent. The emphasis of government policy has shifted from a full employment aim for the economy to fiscal restraint, from combatting what in 1971 was called the "intolerable level of unemployment" and in 1972 was called the "unconscionable level of unemployment" to maintaining the province's triple-A credit rating. To maintain the triple-A credit rating has become the symbolic obsession of the Treasurer.

The story in the Toronto Star, I think it was yesterday, which outlined the sacrifices the people of Ontario have to make in order to preserve that triple-A rating, is a clear testament to the failure of this government and its policies. I have already made the point that we are heading towards a low-wage economy. Exacerbating this trend is the attack on the living standards of ordinary Canadians that we are now seeing.

In the past few weeks I have been reading with growing alarm what corporate executives and leading business organizations are advising this government's federal colleagues. The Royal Bank, the Business Council on National Issues, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Manufacturers' Association all have paraded their way to Ottawa to tell the federal colleagues of this party to cut social spending and to end universality in social programs. They also have talked about eliminating minimum wages, child labour laws and health and safety laws. Can members believe that in 1984?

In Ontario the Premier and Treasurer go to Standard and Poor's in New York to hear the same thing. Standard and Poor's tells the province its triple-A credit rating is a bit tipsy and the Treasurer and the Premier come back and put the squeeze on Ontario families. What a way to run a province. Standard and Poor's says "triple-A" and the Ontario government makes it clear that hospitals, universities, schools and municipalities will feel the pinch and its new social programs will not be developed.

12:20 p.m.

We are told a three per cent raise is the most any ministry can expect and we are told the Premier himself, who has appeared in this House only once since he announced his retirement, tells his cabinet not to initiate any new programs for the people of Ontario. The reports say he can take the heat because he will not have to run for public office again. That is a shameful way to run a province and a shameful way for the Premier to go out of office.

Indeed, the package of goods and services we call the social wage is being undermined. In other words, while the private sector takes us down the road to a low-wage economy, the province at the same time begins to lower the social wage. Such a course of action just does not make sense. What is worse, it is really unnecessary.

The Treasurer protests that there is no relationship between Ontario's social programs and the galloping debt of Ontario Hydro and that there is no relationship between Hydro's borrowing and the venerable triple-A credit rating. However, past Treasurers, and indeed a future rival to the minister, disagree. In 1976, Darcy McKeough, the then Ontario Treasurer, stated in his budget:

"Ontario Hydro's financial requirements in support of its capital spending program have an important impact on the government's finances. Borrowing by Hydro in the world's capital markets directly affects the province's own borrowing capacity and financial standing in the investment community. The province borrows on behalf of Hydro in the US capital market and guarantees the corporation's debenture issues in Canada and other international markets. Provincial borrowing restraint must therefore be matched by restraint on the part of Ontario Hydro."

What we have, I admit, is restraint on behalf of the Treasurer on the social programs that he can cut and affect directly, but we have no restraint on the part of Ontario Hydro. We see it pushing ahead with capital development that is senseless and unnecessary in this province.

Treasurer Darcy McKeough, in the Ontario budget in 1976, said: "If we expand the electrical system in a manner which takes risks with our financial standing, we shall be contributing to inflation and we shall also be prejudicing our medium-term capacity to finance the provision of public services at the provincial and local levels."

Indeed, that is precisely what is happening today because of Hydro's overexpansion. Because of its imperialistic attitude towards its nuclear development, we are threatening and hampering our capacity to finance the provision of public services and social services at the provincial and local levels.

Even the current Treasurer, in his prebudget statement in the autumn of 1983, said, "In examining provincial borrowing requirements, it is necessary to take into account borrowing by Ontario Hydro." This Treasurer himself said that. "This is an important factor in the determination of capital availability, in the assessment of our credit rating and in the long-term interest costs borne in total by our citizens."

How in the world could he have stood here in this House yesterday and denied that this has a direct effect on our ability to provide social and educational services? The fact is that because Ontario Hydro is out of control, Ontario families are paying for it in hydro rates, in taxes and in social service cutbacks. I would suggest that Ontario's triple-A credit rating could be kept intact and that Ontario families and social wages could be maintained if the Treasurer had the courage, either as Treasurer or as Premier in the future, to take Ontario Hydro under control.

I think it is important to look for alternatives, and I want to outline a few of them very briefly before I sit down. I do not want to compete with our international competitors by bringing Third World conditions to this province and insisting that Third World working conditions are the wave of the future or by having 19th-century working conditions masquerade as the working conditions we have to endure in the last part of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st century.

I do not want to restore the corporate balance sheet by accepting low wages, fewer workers' rights and high unemployment. I do not want to deal with government deficits by scrapping universal social programs and by impoverishing more people while ignoring the issue of tax privilege among the wealthy and in the corporate sector.

Therefore, what are some alternatives? One alternative is to build a new era on the basis of full employment, social solidarity and new industrial democracy. That means job creation must be the first priority of governments. Job creation must be the sole preoccupation, or the major preoccupation if not the sole preoccupation, of this government and of this Treasury. It cannot be left to the feds any more. It cannot be left to the reactivation of the American economy, hoping that change will take us along like a little boy being taken by the hand by his parent.

It means government must improve social services, rather than cutting them back; it must expand universality, not undermine it. It means the economy must serve the needs of the people and not the other way around. It means the labour principle has to have priority over the principle of capital. It means corporate priorities cannot take precedence over social needs.

We in this party have laid out an alternative economic agenda. I have tried to sketch that this morning. I have tried to sketch that in response to the budget. I have tried to sketch that on the hustings of this province on behalf of this party.

Our alternative economic agenda differs substantially from that of the Treasurer's. It is based on protecting our existing jobs. It is based on creating new jobs by rebuilding our manufacturing base. It means replacing imports instead of workers. It means providing jobs in socially useful public sector areas. It means introducing a fair taxation system. It means extending workers' rights and introducing new tough but fair rules for multinationals.

We have a clear choice. We can continue to drift to a low-wage economy and a return to 19th-century industrial relations, or we can talk and work with our neighbours, our co-workers and the people of this province from every region, from Kenora to Kingston, from Windsor to Ottawa, from Kapuskasing to Niagara Falls. We can build the type of society in this province that most of us want for ourselves and for our children.

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Chairman, we are considering a $4-billion budget in the ministry over the next few hours. It is up by $419 million because of additional interest costs, because the total interest provided for in this budget to service the provincial debt is $2,953,000,000.

It is interesting to look at those figures and compare them with previous budgets. My friend the member for Port Arthur (Mr. Foulds), who just took his seat, was referring to budgetary statements made by Darcy McKeough in 1976. I intend to refer to a budget of Mr. McKeough's in 1975, which was another watershed year.

In the Treasurer's remarks earlier this morning he indicated the restraint program of this government was initiated in 1975, although I just sent a copy of the 1975 budget back to the library in which a substantial segment of Mr. McKeough's remarks at that time extolled the restraint the government of Ontario had undertaken during his years of Treasury management.

12:30 p.m.

It is interesting to note that one of the reasons references to restraint beginning in 1975 are valid is that that particular budget was such an outrageous vote-buying vehicle. Since you have been interested in politics for a long time, Mr. Chairman, you may recall that particular budget, just before the 1975 election, reduced the sales tax across the board by two per cent, removing it entirely from manufacturing material and certain other categories. It also provided substantial increases in provincial guaranteed annual income system payments, it gave free drugs to all pensioners, it cut provincial income tax substantially and, as a cherry on top, it gave $1,500 cash to every first-time home owner in Ontario.

It is interesting to note also that what the then Treasurer described as a program of restraint culminated in a deficit of $1.7 billion in Ontario on a budget of $8 billion.

I thought I would put these figures before you, Mr. Chairman, and the Treasurer in case, as a footnote in any of his election stuff, the Treasurer might want to remind some of the careful burghers in southwestern Ontario that restraint in 1975 involved this attractive package of pre-election giveaways, all of which were earmarked to last only to the end, not of the fiscal year, but of the calendar year.

It was nicely timed. My friend the whip of our party was standing valiantly with me in those days as he is this morning, and as we went through the province we were subject to the kind of strain in which people would say: "It is pretty hard to vote against Santa Claus."

Actually, it was somewhat irritating to me to hear the Treasurer in his opening remarks -- some of which I had heard before and I warn him he is going to hear some of my remarks more than once on this subject since he and I presumably will be appearing on these occasions for a little while -- because while he is extremely plausible when he talks in glowing terms about the prospects of the economy of Ontario during the next few months, I should tell him, however, that I believe he is selective in putting before us certain factual data and quotes from other sources which indicate that all is well in this province. He heard me mention at the time of the interim supply discussion a few days ago that it is quite possible to collect other, let us say, significant quotes that would indicate the future does not look that good.

He mentions the Conference Board of Canada. I understand we fund them to the extent of $100,000 a year, buying their services. There is no indication that he is cutting that off, as far as I know, but --

Interjection.

Mr. Nixon: Oh, you do. You mean you didn't know that you did?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I wondered how much.

Mr. Nixon: I see. It is interesting. He probably gives them the money so they can stay in business and he can then criticize them. In speech after speech, that is his total utilization of the stand taken by the Conference Board and the figures they have worked out. The taxpayers through the Treasurer's largess are sending them $100,000 every year, and yet the Treasurer obviously has no confidence in their predictions. He is always indicating they are far too pessimistic.

I do not want to spend a lot of time on that, however. I simply want to say, to balance in part what the Treasurer used in his opening remarks, that Brantford, which is one of our major urban centres, three weeks ago experienced the layoff of 2,500 Massey-Ferguson workers for an indefinite period, at least until February. In Kitchener, a significant growth centre in Ontario, the Burns Meat Ltd. meatpacking division has been closed, not laid off, with the loss of approximately 700 jobs. Black and Decker in Barrie has relocated; maybe it is a scam to evade its union responsibilities or its collective agreement responsibilities, but it has closed down and those people in that area are simply out in the cold.

As a farmer, right now I hope the combines are working in our corn field and we hope we are going to get a good yield. We have worked hard to have a reasonable crop, although the Treasurer will be interested to know that we do have some root worm.

Mr. Foulds: He does not even know what that is.

Mr. Nixon: He has it too.

The grain that is coming out of the field, I can sell immediately for $3.22 a bushel minus trucking, combining, drawing charges and so on; so it will be around $2.90 a bushel by the time we get all the stuff knocked off it. Last year, when things were tough and the minister's budget was designed to put us on the road to economic improvement, the price out of the field was more like $3.80, and by judicious storage, care and husbandry, I was able to sell a good part of the crop for about $4.15.

For the minister to say to the farmers that things look good and are improving or to the employees in Brantford -- my friend the member for Brantford (Mr. Gillies) is here reading the Toronto Sun again --

Mr. Foulds: Which page?

Mr. Nixon: He likes to read that article about the member for Don Mills (Mr. Timbrell).

It is very difficult for those people to take seriously the prognostications of the Treasurer this morning or last week when we were discussing interim supply. It is certainly not my purpose to be a gloom-and-doom Treasury critic. I hope that the Treasurer is right and that he is still shooting low on the mark, as he indicated earlier this year. Frankly, I have my doubts that is going to be so. When this House reconvenes for the winter or spring session, we may find ourselves facing problems even more severe than those we foresee. It will be interesting to see what the Treasurer is doing when we return to this House.

There have been cases in the past when the Premier of Ontario was his own Treasurer. That is a very interesting combination of duties. One of my great heroes, the Honourable Mitchell F. Hepburn, was always Treasurer at the same time as being Premier. It is interesting to read his budgetary statements, which probably had less political infusion than those of the present Treasurer. They were very businesslike, and even in hard times he was able to report the kind of management of our provincial affairs that gave rise to his repeated re-election -- one time.

I do not know whether we should involve ourselves in the leadership campaign during these estimates, but one of the points raised by my friend the member for Port Arthur, who is the budgetary critic for the New Democratic Party, is one I want to raise as well. I will do it now rather than later, because it is fresh in our minds.

The NDP has talked about the pressure on our credit rating brought about by the large expenditures for Ontario Hydro and the views of past Treasurers in this regard. I want to mention two publications that I found very interesting in this connection. One is Power at What Cost? by Lawrence Solomon, who I think is working on behalf of Ontario Energy Probe, which is a well-known organization. The other one is Electric Empire: The Inside Story of Ontario Hydro, by an author whose name I will mention when I come to it in my notes; it is also an excellent book.

I noticed a couple of quotations in the Solomon publication, of which the Treasurer is no doubt aware. This one is from W. Darcy McKeough, Treasurer of Ontario, on June 26, 1972. "I can't resign myself, as Treasurer of the province, nor could my advisers, to say that the solution to our problems is for Ontario to say, 'We will not borrow,' and just leave the market free for Ontario Hydro."

Is that not interesting? This was in 1972. Now, in 1984 and in the years immediately previous, we have done precisely that. The Treasurer and his immediate predecessor have tried to make something valuable out of the fact that the province has stayed out of the public borrowing market. They said: "Is this not fine? We can finance our programs without going into the market to increase the debt to improve our provincial programs." However, at the same time, they have said, "We will leave this market free and available to Ontario Hydro."

The next step in that was the beginning of the transference of our access to Canada pension plan funds, which have always been used in this province for the building of schools, hospitals and social capital of that type. We have now begun to transfer those dollars to Ontario Hydro as well. The criticisms that have been levelled at the supervision of our budget and our general economic approach in that regard are extremely important.

12:40 p.m.

When one thinks that McKeough said in 1972, more than a decade ago, "I and my advisers cannot consider vacating the loan field entirely to Hydro," it is a warning that has come to pass in a very damaging and deleterious way. Ontario Hydro now owes $20 billion. The weight of the interest on this debt and its effect on our credit rating in the markets are matters of serious concern.

The Treasurer has said -- and his comments are picked up by the press; I heard them on the CBC this morning -- our triple-A rating is not in danger. I am glad to hear that. I do not believe it should be in danger.

I also believe the Treasurer is quite justified in his explanation of his trip with the Premier to New York. We borrow a lot of money down there and our principal corporate officers, if we can think of them in that regard, and we must when we talk about borrowing money, have every right and responsibility to go down to the lenders, meet them personally and answer questions in respect to what must be a matter of grave concern in the money markets of New York when they see what is happening to Ontario Hydro.

The argument is always put to us, "If you think we are bad, you should see what is happening in Oregon or Utah or Louisiana," or somewhere, where things are worse. The various power companies, most of them private corporations, have really got into a mess that is absolutely unbelievable. Huge establishments for the production and delivery of electricity from atomic sources have simply had to be stopped because there did not seem to be enough money in any kind of a market, any extension of a market, to complete them. Obviously we are not in so bad a situation.

In my view, however, one of the main problems that must be faced by Treasurer Grossman or Premier Grossman -- that does not sound too bad -- is what to do with Ontario Hydro.

The second thing I am going to be talking about is what to do with Ontario's post-secondary education system, but I will let that go until one of the major players in that game leaves.

I want to speak briefly about Hydro. Treasurer Grossman and/or Premier Grossman has within his grasp one of the most effective measures to deal with Ontario Hydro in the person of Alan Schwartz, who is probably a QC by now. I heard that Alan Schwartz was now employed by one of the Treasurer's governmental emanations. Not true; the Treasurer is shaking his head. His association with Alan Schwartz is at another level, a political level. I understand -- and I hope this is true -- Mr. Schwartz has a prominent role to play in the organization of the leadership campaign.

I am very high on Mr. Schwartz. The only thing that blighted our relationship, which was always a very professional one, left over from select committee on Hydro days, is the fact that I felt the bills rendered by Mr. Schwartz and his colleagues were absolutely unconscionable highway robbery, and I said so at the time. I am not at all sure we could have hired a better person, but when he came to our select committee he did not know any more about Ontario Hydro than I did. When we left, we were both very conversant, but he was $400,000 richer.

Just so he will not enter an action in this connection, the $400,000 was a gross sum -- in more ways than one -- and there may possibly have been certain small items of cost that had to be deducted from that. I was absolutely appalled, however, when I actually saw what this sort of professional advice entailed. I suppose if our relationship is permanently blighted, it is the same blight I have in my relationships with almost everybody who makes more than I do. That is a psychological problem I need help with.

Mr. Foulds: Think of what Hydro pays.

Mr. Nixon: I am a good friend of Pierre Genest's too. Maybe we should look into that matter. Alan Schwartz, in my view, has the basic intelligence to have an arm's-length review without getting shortness of breath in the presence of the sacred cow, Hydro. If the Treasurer continues in this job, which I believe he will, one of his main responsibilities should be to do what Treasurers in the past have eventually been forced to do and whip Hydro into shape.

I have said already that Premiers in the past have been their own Treasurers. It must be a great temptation. The only thing wrong with it is that these throngs of supporters in the back row, diligently sitting in their places even though everybody else is gone, are going to expect some sort of recognition. I understand the Correctional Services portfolio will be available, however, since that minister has jumped the wrong way, and perhaps the member for Brantford -- I will let that go.

By saying the Treasurer will continue to be Treasurer, I am not making a judgement on the possibility or probability of his success in this January 27 clambake. I wish him well. I have a very high regard for him and the way he works in the Legislature. I felt the same way about his sainted father in spite of the fact that we kick him all the time. His father used to be present in the Legislature and taking part in the debates in a way that has not happened around here for a long time.

With the advent of John Robarts, who after the first year of his prime ministership, as he liked to call it, soon learned he did not have to be here, his cabinet ministers all learned the same thing. This was the beginning of the irrelevancy of this place. Allan Grossman, however, did not take that lead; he was here and did respond with probably some of the best interjections that have ever been given here. He also handled his estimates pretty well, although he could have been given a lot more responsibility than he was given.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Chairman, may I rise on a point of something or other to indicate that in the light of the various opportunities the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk has taken to comment on my father's post-elective activities, my father will be most encouraged to read these kind remarks. My father has only one post-political-retirement shortcoming; he reads Hansard diligently every day. On his behalf, I should like to thank the member for those kind remarks.

Mr. Nixon: I would suggest Valium might do the same thing for him. If the Treasurer is listening and his father is reading, I want to say that I do not recall ever singling out an individual who is what we choose to call a double-dipper, because once one starts singling them out, they are found on all sides of the political spectrum. That does not make it right, but it is a fact.

I want to say something more about Hydro. My principal recommendation is that at some time or other the Treasurer should sit down with Alan Schwartz and maybe a couple of other people who were associated with that select committee and spend some time and say, "Suppose we ruled the universe," which they may very well do, "what could we do to set this mess straight?" Somebody is going to have to do that.

Mr. Foulds: Fisher was pretty good, too.

Mr. Nixon: Fisher was excellent, although his politics are suspect. I do not know whether I would let him into the room.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I see him often.

Mr. Nixon: Do you? He is a good fellow.

On Ontario Hydro, I would mention the awarding of the head office contract without tender in 1971. I would also mention the commitment of Ontario Hydro to a policy that resulted in the kind of overbuilding that is completely unconscionable and cannot be justified on the basis of "How are we to know?" and "We had to build so that the lights would not go out."

Hydro has overbuilt by 50 per cent. Even being generous and saying 25 per cent of that overbuild is acceptable, it still leaves a huge amount of committed public dollars borrowed at high interest rates under the supervision of Salomon Brothers and others. This borrowing has been an albatross around the neck of the economy of Ontario.

12:50 p.m.

Ontario Hydro has undertaken contracts for coal involving buying the whole production of a coal field -- 12 million tons per year. The best research indicates that on the average we are consuming less than nine million tons per year, even though with our Pickering breakdowns and so on the coal utilization is up.

We have a huge surfeit of coal that is bought and paid for. In oil, we have bought contracts that involve accepting deliveries of 22,000 barrels a day until 1992, and we are accepting no oil at all. After 1977, we began paying Petrosar a $50-million-a-year penalty for our shortfalls on those contracts.

I do not want to spend a lot of time on this. I am talking about the head office, the overbuilding, the coal, the oil and the uranium. Under our agreement with Mr. Roman of Denison Mines and his colleagues of Rio Algom, we have enough uranium to fuel Darlington and 12 additional plants the size of the Pickering reactor for 30 years and have 23,000 tons left over. By the end of the century, the value of the 23,000 tons left over will be $2.7 billion. We have a lot of coal, a lot of oil and a lot of uranium we do not need.

Ontario Hydro is fond of saying, "Yes, we owe $20 billion, but our assets are $23 billion or $24 billion." By the time they count all the assets, that may be true, but what is the real value of an oil-fired installation at Wesleyville? What is the value of a coal-fired installation that simply cannot be fired up, that has no control of its sulphur dioxide emissions in an urban centre?

They have mothballed $2.5 billion -- that is the capital cost -- in installations over the last decade and still have a 50 per cent surplus in production. If anybody at Hydro reads that, I am prepared to grant, reluctantly, the need for a 25 per cent cushion, although I think it is too much in a properly organized electrical system.

The next thing is transmission. We are two decades late in building the transmission lines to take the power out of the great world-class Bruce atomic installation. We are behind square one in building the transmission lines that take the power out of Bruce B. We have this huge commitment to build that thing.

It is a modern miracle, I say that most sincerely, and we are not going to be able to get the power out because of this transmission difficulty. A dollar figure could be assigned to that, but I do not have a dollar figure. If we have to replace the electricity that should be coming from that source with coal-fired, particularly from SO₂ emitting sources, the dollar figure is almost impossible to establish.

We have talked about heavy water before. The select committee reviewed that. I was on the select committee and Alan Schwartz was our counsel. We built four units. It was supposed to cost $1 billion, back in the days when that was real money. It went $720 million over, even in those days. In 1977, an employee of Lummus Canada, which supervised the construction, finally went public, quit his job and said, "I am immersed in a fiasco in which we have entirely lost control of this multimillion-dollar development for Ontario Hydro." It was McKeough who, in 1976, with a stroke of the pen, actually cancelled unit C of the heavy water installation.

The idea that the Treasurer does not have the power to do this is absurd. The Treasurer does not have in the statute any day-to-day responsibility for the control of Hydro. He is simply responsible for every dollar it borrows. Any time he raises his eyebrow or crooks his finger having to do with borrowed money, then Hydro had better respond, and I assure the Treasurer it will.

It is estimated now, by one of these recent publications, that doing business with Babcock and Wilcox, besides the billions of dollars we have paid them for their work, has cost us $850 million in losses attributed to their bad workmanship. The contracts we worked out with Babcock and Wilcox were what we call soft contracts. There was no fault attributed to Babcock and Wilcox under the contract. No tenders were let, except on one occasion in 1965. In spite of the fact that other Canadian corporations -- admittedly, one of them in Quebec, which obviously gave the Premier of the day here some difficulty -- could have done this work, there were no tenders except one time in 1965.

There were no performance guarantees. There was full inflation protection for Babcock and Wilcox. There was no United States liability for this, their totally owned subsidiary, and they received payment before delivery for everything they did for us. Yet they built scores of boilers. Defying the direction of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and Ontario Hydro in the heat annealing process, they were cemented into place at Pickering and had to be removed and reconstructed.

Members may recall that Babcock and Wilcox said at the time, "If you make us pay for this, we will have to go out of business." I remember the then chairman of Hydro coming to our committee and saying, "We cannot force these 1,600 people out of work." The ratepayers of Hydro took it on at an additional expense of $850 million.

During that whole time the parent company in the United States was sitting back worrying about this because the reputation of Babcock and Wilcox is a good one, particularly that of its English firm, which is no longer associated with it; that is, it is fully separated.

There have been only three years in the past 50 or 60 when Babcock and Wilcox Canada has not returned a good profit. In my view, there was no way it was going to show up, and we were simply soft in our dealings with it.

Another point I want to mention in this connection is decommissioning, something that, if the Treasurer's political career goes on for 20 years, will be much more of a worry to him than acid rain or youth unemployment. The decommissioning of our atomic facilities is going to cause us such a strain around here that we cannot imagine it.

Do members know that we expect by the end of the century to have 30,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste that has to be got rid of? We had a royal commission on Ontario's power prospects. The royal commissioner was Dr. Porter from the University of Toronto, and at one stage he said Ontario should not undertake the commissioning of any more reactors until the disposition of radioactive wastes had been settled.

The idea is that we are going to find places with hard granite rock -- plutons, they are called -- dig holes down half a mile or so, put the stuff down there, fully ventilate it and undertake some kind of sacerdotal protection that over the centuries and millennia ahead will make it a religious commitment that those storage areas be protected.

I will predict now that any government, headed even by the Treasurer, with all his well-known persuasive capabilities, will never be able to negotiate the long-term storage of this high-level radioactive waste anywhere in this jurisdiction.

I was talking yesterday to my colleague our Environment critic, and it is his view that the final solution will be to take it down to Cape Canaveral, put it in a big tin can and shoot it to Pluto. That sounds wild, but it is about the only thing that is ever going to work.

The costs of decommissioning are unbelievable. If one looks at the facts and figures associated with cleaning up that reactor at Three Mile Island -- which, by the way, is still sealed; I think they finally lowered a television camera down through a hole in the roof to see what is going on down there -- the costs are simply going to be astronomical.

While I am personally confident that such an accident will not happen here -- not that it cannot, that it will not -- when the time comes after 40 years of utilization -- Pickering has been going since when, 1967 or 1969? I am not sure of the year -- it will come around to us. Forty years is not long. I used to think so when I was 35, but now that I am 56, 40 years is the blink of an eye.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I agree. Forty-one years is the blink of an eye.

Mr. Nixon: It is a long time. But you notice you cannot trust anybody under 40? That is another matter.

The Deputy Chairman: Perhaps this would be a good time --

Mr. Nixon: Oh, it is one o'clock. I have not quite completed my comments, but I will sit down at the behest of the Chairman.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Chairman, having discovered this morning that 41 years is hardly any time at all, I move the committee rise and report.

On motion by Hon. Mr. Grossman, the committee of supply reported progress.

The House adjourned at 1 p.m.

26 octobre 1984