L022 - Thu 29 May 1986 / Jeu 29 mai 1986
PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS
ACCESS TO LEGISLATIVE BUILDING
STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES
ROMAN CATHOLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS
COUNSELLING PROGRAM FOR WIFE ABUSERS
ROMAN CATHOLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC AFFAIRS
PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS
The House met at 10 a.m.
Prayers.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS
SENIORS' INDEPENDENCE ACT
Mr. Warner moved second reading of Bill 3, An Act for the Provision and Integration of Community Based Services for Seniors.
Mr. Warner: I hope to move third reading of Bill 3 later.
Mr. McClellan: Later today.
Mr. Warner: Perhaps later today.
I wish to thank quite a number of people for the hard work they have done. This bill is not solely the result of my work. It stems from the task force on care for seniors that my party conducted a while ago. The result of the task force was as excellent report called Ageing with Dignity, which was released in June 1984. The task force was headed by the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. D. S. Cooke).
I would like to thank my researcher, Penny Gerriie, for the hard work she has done in helping to prepare this material; the legislative library and, in particular, Robert Gardner, the assistant chief; legislative counsel, who did an excellent job in drafting the legislation; and finally, our head of research, Grant Cassidy, who spent a great deal of time and effort in preparing this legislation.
The question is, why can seniors not live independently? We have done a very curious thing in our country. Over many decades we have found it expedient to institutionalize senior citizens. Canada has, as we all sadly know, one of the highest rates of institutionalization for seniors of any country in the world. The Canadian Medical Association reported that 9.5 per cent of people over 65 in Canada are put into institutions, compared with five per cent in the United Kingdom, 5.3 per cent in the United States and 5.9 per cent in Australia.
"The ageing of the population means that if current trends continue, the system will grind to a halt," warned Dr. Rory Fisher, co-ordinator of geriatrics at the University of Toronto faculty of medicine. "The emphasis has been on maintenance instead of rehabilitation. Too many people get written off too early," said Dr. James Kirkland, chief of geriatrics at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and director of geriatric services at Toronto General Hospital.
It is quite evident even to the former government that institutionalization is a problem and not an answer. "Many of Ontario's elderly are overdrugged and wrongly institutionalized," according to a study done by the Progressive Conservative Party, which urged extensive changes in the care of the aged. The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Grossman) claimed there was a wastage of $855 million a year in the treatment of elderly patients who are placed in inappropriate facilities. The study does not mention that the Conservatives were largely to blame for that inappropriate institutionalization.
None the less, it is quite clear that institutionalization should be the last resort and not the first resort. "Swedish studies indicate that elderly people live longer and in better mental and physical health with so-called health promotion programs," Dr. Gray said. "The evidence from Sweden, where they have done most of the research, is that they are adding years to life and they are adding life to years."
In the research I conducted, I took a look at 26 jurisdictions, most of them in western Europe. The evidence was quite compelling and overwhelming. It is very clear that when senior citizens have the opportunity to remain in familiar surroundings, they live longer and they live better. They have a better quality of life, they enjoy life more, they participate more fully; they feel useful, they feel wanted, they feel loved. The moment we begin institutionalizing is the moment of decline, a decline in emotional health as well as in physical health.
I am not going to dwell today on the horrors of our nursing home system in Ontario. I will save that for another time. However, I think it is quite evident to most members of the assembly that nursing homes in Ontario are in pretty sad shape.
10:10 a.m.
The bill that is before the House today provides a framework for the provision of community-based support services for seniors and the integration of these services with established programs and facilities. It is important to note and for the other members to realize that in this province we do have a variety of good programs available now, but they are not organized very well. There are isolated, good programs, but there is no overall co-ordination.
Until the new government took over, there was no co-ordinated effort for seniors' services. Co-ordination is needed at the top, but it is needed in the community as well. My proposal is that we have a community-based program, that it be integrated and that it provide full services. I like to call it "everything from grass clipping to toe clipping." Whatever type of service is needed by the senior so that he or she can remain in familiar surroundings is what should be provided.
Members will ask how will we do this and how we will accomplish this. I suggest that we take the radical view of reversing the role of responsibility. Here is how it should work, in my view.
I would like to see one telephone number in this province; I suggest the government institute an 800 number, 1-800-SENIORS. The result of a call to that number would be that someone at the other end of the line would do the work. It would be that person's responsibility to find out what the senior needed and how to meet those needs. The senior would make one call.
The member for Grey-Bruce (Mr. Sargent) knows full well that today a lot of seniors, if they want services, end up making umpteen phone calls, perhaps six or 12 phone calls, phoning different departments, trying to find out where they get help to shovel the walk, for visitor services and for transportation.
Under my proposal, the senior would have to make only one phone call and then let the bureaucrats worry about how to deliver the services. What a dramatic change. We are flipping it around, putting the responsibility where it belongs: on the government to provide the services. The senior then has the opportunity to receive the services required so he or she can remain in his or her own home.
There is such a variety of services possible, both to the senior and, in some cases, to the family housing the senior. In some cases, we have elderly people who require some daily attention, some nursing care, who remain in their home with their families, with their sons or daughters. Part of my proposal allows for people to come in to relieve the younger folks once in a while so they can get out of the house.
One of the things that intrigued me in the research was a program I came across that operates in Norway. Let me say first that when one takes the approach that is outlined in the bill, not only is it better care but it is also less expensive. Institutionalizing is the most expensive form of care.
In Norway, there was a remote village with a very small population which was not about to provide a community centre because it was too expensive. They had half a dozen senior couples who required some help to stay in their own homes. The government hired a couple who lived in the village, a couple with whom all the others were familiar and knew and trusted. This couple's job was to visit the homes of those six elderly couples to provide the care needed -- a little help with the housework, with trimming the lawns, with home repairs and so on -- so those couples could stay in their homes. It was simple and inexpensive and was welcomed by the elderly couples because it was someone they knew and trusted.
There are some excellent answers, and they are not expensive. We require some imagination and some political will. It is the last part that troubles me. If we want to provide these kinds of services, there is everything from friendly visiting to homemaking, Meals on Wheels, educational programs, dental care, nutritional counselling, financial counselling, interpretation services, exercise programs, home help services, help with errands, psychological and dental services, preventive medical counselling and so on -- it is a very long list -- all of which are provided for in my bill. If we want to provide these, we have to have the political will to tackle them.
For me, that is not a problem, because first and foremost every person in our society deserves the opportunity to live a life of dignity, and for too many seniors, that has been denied.
There was a very disturbing article in the Globe and Mail of June 18, 1985, which indicated that 42 per cent of seniors live below the poverty level: "Their diverse needs are not being met by federal and provincial governments, the five-year study said." This was a very exhaustive and complete study which indicated that in terms of income, the health care system, housing, transportation and a whole list of other things, senior citizens are not getting the type of care and service they deserve and need.
There is a quote from the article: "We have to call upon the provincial government and the rest of the provinces to do something about the urgent needs of seniors across the country." That is a quote from Reg Screen, past president of the United Senior Citizens of Ontario. "Every senior citizen should have an income that is above the poverty line to live decently." Who can argue with that?
I urge every member of this assembly to support my bill today and, further, to pledge that this bill will go through our committee system this fall and become law by Christmas.
In case members think this is just another private member's bill and will go the way of most private members' bills, I am serving notice today that I will not rest until my Seniors' Independence Act becomes law so that the senior citizens of this province will be able to live independent, dignified lives. That is the least we can do for the people who have built this country for us.
I will take my place and listen intently to the comments of my colleagues. I urge them to have the same resolve as I have so that we can do something better than we have done so far.
The Deputy Speaker: Is the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere reserving the three minutes and 41 seconds for windup?
Mr. Warner: Yes.
10:20 a.m.
Mr. Morin: I am pleased to rise today to speak on Bill 3, the Seniors' Independence Act. I am sure all members of this legislature share a genuine concern for the elderly in this province. We all wish to help seniors to remain independent in their communities for as long as they can. I am proud to be a member of a government that has set a course to achieve just that: independent living for seniors. It is a government that is committed to providing a system of community-based care responsive to the needs of our ageing society.
Currently in this province approximately one million people are 65 years of age and older. This represents 10 per cent of our population. Within the next two decades our elderly population will increase by 55 per cent, or 500,000. This reality will place an unprecedented pressure on our present system of care.
Our government has responded in two ways to this pending situation. First, we have moved quickly to address a series of short-term concerns related to community support services. Second, to ensure that our system of care will meet the needs of our changing demographics, the government is developing a long-term strategy.
In this past year, the government has placed a high priority on the provision of services for seniors at the community level. To this end, the 1985 Ontario budget provided $13 million to strengthen seniors' support services at the local level. This allocation of funds represented a 200 per cent increase. The money was used to enrich such programs as home help, Meals on Wheels and elderly persons centres. Moreover, other initiatives have included funding for underserviced communities, seniors' talent banks and a day care program for victims of Alzheimer's disease.
Furthermore, our government has reaffirmed its commitment to seniors with the allocation in the recent Ontario budget of an additional $13.5 million; $8 million of that will be spent on enhancing support services, with the remainder on expansion of the regional geriatric assessment units and the creation of a department of geriatrics at an Ontario university.
In addition to strengthening the base of community support services, this government is responsible for implementing the integrated homemakers program. The Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) announced the program would commence with six projects and would eventually be expanded province-wide.
Mr. Cousens: That announcement was made before this government. Do not think it instituted that.
The Deputy Speaker: Order.
Mr. Morin: Services offered through this program are based on need and not on a medical or financial test. The integrated homemakers program provides a full range of in-home services, including light housekeeping, cooking and shopping. These services assist seniors to maintain their independence and self-determination.
Let me remind my colleagues in the Legislature that the previous government promised this program to the seniors of this province for more than four years. Only now, under the Liberal government, has it become a reality.
To aid seniors remain in their communities, new nonprofits senior citizens' housing units will be built as part of a Ministry of Housing initiative, affordable housing for Ontario. In this year alone, 1, 675 units for seniors will be started.
These initiatives serve immediately to assist seniors to remain in their communities. However, this government is cognizant of the fact that in the near future there will be a greater demand on our system of care for the elderly.
This government is not content to react with patchwork programs to address the needs of seniors. Rather, the government has moved boldly to develop a long-term strategy. As a first step, the Premier (Mr. Peterson) appointed a Minister without Portfolio responsible for senior citizens' affairs (Mr. Van Horne), whose mandate is to conduct a review of services for seniors.
In the near future, the minister will table a white paper on this subject. The paper will provide the framework for the future care of the elderly in the province. The system will encompass a comprehensive approach to health and social services, with an emphasis on reforming institutional and community programs. It is our intent to create a continuum of care.
Additionally, it is the aim of the minister to ensure that services are acceptable and meaningful to individual seniors in their home and community. We must ensure that the system is responsive and more attuned to their needs.
As I have stated, the objectives of this bill are ones I am sure we all agree with: to promote independence, to provide a continuum of support services, to ensure that these services allow seniors to participate in the community and to assist those who have assumed the responsibility of care giver.
These are goals to which this government and, I am confident, all members aspire. However, our government has already aggressively pursued these goals during the past year within the context of the various initiatives I have outlined. Bill 3 would only serve to duplicate this government's actions.
More specifically, Bill 3 calls for the establishment of community health and social services centres at the local level to co-ordinate and arrange services geared to promoting independence. However, this function is already performed by our elderly persons centres as well as by the community health centres. EPCs provide a full range of educational, social and recreational programs, while CHCs provide such services as homemaking, counselling, outreach support and specific disease prevention.
Moreover, programs such as chronic home care, public health nursing, homemaking services and home support services provide a solid base to assist seniors with independent living.
Public health nursing provides assessment, counselling and nursing supervision. Homemaker services provide visiting homemaking and nursing services to the elderly in their homes. Outreach programs attached to the homes for the aged provide meal services and day care. Home support services include housekeeping, transportation and home maintenance services for the elderly.
Clearly, the services this bill attempts to establish have been initiated or strengthened by this government during the past year.
Let me reiterate that it is not the principle of the bill I take exception to. I know how committed and dedicated my good friend the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere (Mr. Warner) is to this issue. But I find it difficult to support this bill on the ground that it duplicates many services that already exist.
Moreover, this bill tackles only a very small portion of the system of care for the elderly. If our intention is to encourage the independence of our senior citizens, then we must reform the entire system. Our government is doing just that. The focus of our comprehensive plan is to address not only the many principles contained in this bill but also the many other issues that affect the daily living of our seniors.
Our program will be multifaceted, dealing with such issues as housing, transportation and income security, all of which affect the independence of our seniors. It is our pledge to provide a comprehensive plan that will maximize the independence of the elderly in our community.
In the near future we can look forward to the release of the white paper, which will outline our long-term strategy. I am confident my friends on the other side of the floor will be pleased with its results. Working together, we shall build a first-class system of care for our elderly, a system that is responsive to the demographic changes in this province and attuned to the needs of our senior citizens.
Mr. Cousens: First, I wish to thank the member for Elgin (Mr. McNeil), one of our fellow members, who is the dean of the House and who has asked me to speak this morning in his place. We certainly wanted him to speak to this important bill. I know the member for Grey-Bruce is also a senior. Both of these gentlemen, who continue to serve the people of Ontario, have the spirit of youth and the spirit of rightness for the people of our society. I am honoured to be sharing in this important debate, and I thank --
Mr. Laughren: How about the member for Algoma-Manitoulin (Mr. Lane)?
Mr. Cousens: Is he getting on? I do not believe it. I did not mean to miss him. The way he plays hockey --
Mr. Laughren: Do not forget yourself.
Mr. Cousens: I am not at that point yet.
I thank the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere. Although we might disagree on some of the details, the intent and spirit of Bill 3, which he has presented, manifest the direction in which we as a society should be going at this time, and I thank him for his initiative and leadership.
10:30 a.m.
I am surprised the speech by the member for Carleton East (Mr. Morin) has broken the spirit that this bill could bring to this House. I have never heard such a bunch of gobbledegook and political mishmash as that which the member for Carleton East has just presented. I am ashamed he would bring this down to that low level. His claiming responsibility for programs he probably does not even understand and his feeling about a report that is to come out in the near future are not what the seniors in the balcony and seniors who are aware of what is going on in this province want to see. They want to see action, and they want to see us as legislators build on the system we already have in this province.
We begin with a sense of pride that we live in the wealthiest province in Canada. Our wealth is in our people and our resources. It is in our seniors who have helped give us this society and this foundation that make this the land it is today. We must always be grateful for the leadership our parents and seniors have given and will continue to give. They are not on a shelf. They are not being put away. The idea behind Bill 3 is to let us keep seniors involved in society as part of it, let us keep listening to them and let us continue to have them near us.
Our society evolves. We do not have revolutions in this democratic state of Ontario. We have built a foundation with the Ontario drug benefit plan, the Ontario health insurance plan and the institutions that serve seniors. Our home care program already is serving in excess of 100,000 seniors and costs more than $73 million. These programs have been instituted over time and can and will continue to evolve to serve our seniors in the future.
I would never for a moment accept that we have reached perfection, but I think the direction in which we are moving through Bill 3 and through the expansion of these services drives home the desires of all of us who, as legislators, should break party boundaries and say we are all 100 per cent committed to the needs and the wellbeing of our seniors. In that sense, we would work together to expand the community-based services.
We all know there are problems. We know the major problem is the lack of funding to do these things. The government sets priorities and says, "We are going to do this or this or this." We have to begin now to plan for the future and, in planning for the future, to provide a context for our seniors to stay at home. We cannot afford the institutionalization of seniors. There is not enough money in any government's budget to keep moving people into institutions. We should recognize there are needs even now. The waiting lists for chronic care spaces are not being addressed. People with legitimate, real needs are lined up for nursing home spaces and they cannot get in. We must begin to invest in serving those needs. In the meantime, the point of this bill is to expand community-based services.
This bill is presented is the same spirit in which our leader, the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Grossman), presented a special task force report, Care for the Elderly: Developing a More Co-ordinated and Community-Based Approach. I am honoured to be chairman of this task force, and I am pleased there are two other members working with me on this important task force, the member for Wentworth (Mr. Dean), who is the critic for seniors, and the member for Lincoln (Mr. Andrewes), who is our critic for Health.
Along with all other members of our caucus, we are working together to see what we can do to develop a policy statement to serve the needs of seniors in the future. We are going to be travelling through the province and meeting with seniors' groups, doctors and different professional agencies to see that we understand and can interpret the needs of our seniors in a responsible and realistic way. We will then be able to enunciate a platform and a policy statement that truly go to the core of the need.
We have a whole section that relates to the terms of reference that are being tied into Bill 3, presented by the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere. It almost appears he has taken some of his points from our paper, and I am honoured and pleased he is doing that. To me, that is the spirit of our democratic system, where we do work together.
One of the points that is implicit in this program is the home care program. This is the only province-wide home care program in this country, and it is available to our seniors in Ontario. It is a program that needs to be expanded. It is working now, but is going to take a greater investment to expand it to meet the demands of the people who need it.
There are other programs as well, such as the homemakers and nurses' services program. There is inadequate financing around this existing program; more money must be pumped into it to help people who have health problems stay in their homes longer. The Meals on Wheels program can and should become an important part of our efforts to accommodate senior citizens who wish to remain in their own homes. Another program is the handyman program.
Has anyone heard of the SAINTS? That is the Student Assistance In North Toronto for Seniors group; some 200 students are helping to care for more than 825 senior citizens. Another organization, called Care-Ring, has 11 offices situated in and around Metro Toronto. There is Respite Care, which provides a much-needed service for people who are caring for seniors in a family situation. When the family wants to get out of the home, some outside source can come in for a limited period, such as an evening, a weekend or a family vacation, to help the family continue to look after their senior.
We need more elderly persons centres. The member for York Mills (Miss Stephenson) has been making the point for years that there is a need for centres for seniors to get together. A number of these centres are developing across the province, but we need more of them. We need more home nursing programs offered by groups such as the Victorian Order of Nurses and public health nurses. They play an important role in assisting families to maintain their elderly in family settings.
The need is today as we build for tomorrow. The need is legitimate as we look at the increasing number of seniors who need to have that support from a government that is able to give it. It is able to give it when it has a sense of priority to say seniors are important. That is the foundation we are working from. We have services now; let us not take them for granted, but let us build upon them and take them further.
I do not think we will be able to afford to go as far as the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere has suggested in his bill, but at least we can move in that direction. One has to be responsible, but let us work towards it. It is a lot better than the political garbage we heard from the Liberal Party this morning. I was shocked and ashamed that its members would start to claim credit for certain things that they did not even understand one year ago. We are at a very important point in our society. I am pleased we are now talking about this in such a serious way, and I thank the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere.
10:40 a.m.
Mr. D. S. Cooke: I want to join with other members of the Legislature in congratulating my colleague the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere for bringing forward this important piece of legislation.
Before I get into the comments I want to make on the legislation, I would like to make reference to the previous speaker, who is from the Conservative Party. I have to say that anyone who begins a discussion on this important bill by saying we have a system of care for the elderly in Ontario that we should be proud of right now demonstrates very clearly why his party was turfed out of office. The fact is that we have a system of care for the elderly in Ontario that we should be ashamed of. Not enough progress has been made in community-based services. There has not been any progress.
A former Minister of Health, the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Grossman), promised for something like six years that legislation was going to be brought in to implement an integrated home support service system. That legislation still has not been introduced. It was never introduced by the Conservative Party.
The member who just spoke on a bill that emphasizes independence for senior citizens tells us we need more chronic care beds, more institutions in Ontario. The lack of understanding of the types of services we need in the health care system for senior citizens demonstrated by the party to my right is so clear. That is why we are in the kind of shape we are in now, and that is why it is so important that we deal with this piece of legislation today.
Ontario's health care system has developed over the years to the point where we in western civilization depend on institutions more than in any other industrialized country. We spend $250 million a year on the private nursing home sector in this province, and there is no system of financial accountability. We have no idea whatsoever how that money is spent.
A few months ago I introduced and had debated here a private member's bill that simply called for financial accountability. Nursing homes were going to have to tell the members of the Legislature and the public where they were spending their money: how much was being spent on staff and how much was being spent on food and on recreation programs.
The only party that went on record as opposing something that I consider to be fiscally responsible was the party to my right, because it wants to protect the private-profit nursing homes in this province. That has been its position for many years. It might have something to do with the fact that in the last financial returns I saw for donations to political parties, the Ontario nursing homes in this province donated nearly $100,000 to the Conservative Party of Ontario. We can see why they defend the institutional system: It is one of their major sources of financial assistance.
Ontario's current health care system is inhumane to senior citizens. It forces the frail and the sick, who happen to be older, to lose their independence and their dignity. Further, the system is very costly and very inefficient. When families are confronted with a mother or father needing care, they often have only one alternative. The alternative they are presented with is nursing homes or chronic care beds. This forced loss of independence is inhumane and unacceptable to the New Democratic Party.
I had great-grandparents who lived in the town of Stratford. They were married for 75 years. When they were in their 90s, my great-grandmother had to go into a nursing home. Because of the condition of my great-grandfather, for the last four years that he lived he was unable even to see his wife, after having been married to her for 75 years.
Because there was no transportation and because of the lack of community-based services, they were separated and, after having lived together for 75 years, they were not even able to see one another for the last four years of their lives. That this could happen in Ontario in the 1980s is something this province should be absolutely ashamed of.
The attitude towards aged people in this province is that with age comes loss of independence and that is just something we have to accept. We in this party say it is something we do not have to accept and it is something we are not going to tolerate any longer. The bill presented by my colleague the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere sets out a framework of principles that, if implemented, would be very efficient, cost-effective and very humane.
I point to section 4 of the bill, which says what the functions of these community health and social service centres would be:
"(a) to provide support services;
"(b) to co-ordinate the community programs available in the municipality in order to eliminate gaps and duplication in the provision of community programs and support services;
"(c) to assist seniors in gaining access to community programs and support services."
That is an absolutely essential aspect that is missing in the system right now. In the system right now, if one is younger and disabled, there is the adult protective service worker program. The job of these workers is to plug in every possible community support service to avoid institutionalization. We have no such program in Ontario for seniors.
One of the real difficulties is that the few programs that do exist are not well publicized and are not available or accessible to seniors in this province. If people do not know about them or if people are not there to advocate on their behalf to get them plugged into these services, then those programs might as well not be there. This is a key provision of this legislation:
"(d) to serve as a base from which home help programs are carried out;
"(e) to provide office space and administrative support to non-profit organizations that provide community programs;
"(f) to advocate the interests of seniors as a group within the community;
"(g) to develop programs to facilitate the deinstitutionalization of seniors; and
"(h) to carry out such programs as may be prescribed by or under this or any other act."
One can see from this legislation that community-based social and health centres will be the focal point of services for senior citizens for co-ordination, planning and implementation. The one area of the province where they have already tried a bit of this is the region of Niagara. The regional municipality has a department of senior citizens under the leadership of Mr. Applegee. In that community there is coordination. They have even gone to the extent, because they have put community-based services in place, of having been able to close one of their homes for the aged. They got to the point where they actually were able to close a home for the aged because of the de-emphasis of institutionalized services.
In some communities, or in some people's minds, the closing of a home for the aged would be seen as a major step backward. Obviously, those of us who are supporting this legislation and those of us who believe in community-based services would see the closing of an institution or its conversion to a community-based facility for community services as a major step forward.
When I met with Mr. Applegee, I found it remarkable that they actually have a program such that if you go into a home for the aged and if your condition improves, they will guarantee you your bed at that home for the aged but they will help you try the community again. If it does not work in the community, you are guaranteed a bed back in the home for the aged; so there is none of that insecurity. They actually discharge people from homes for the aged in the Niagara region, which is something that does not happen on a wide basis across this province.
The regional municipality's department of senior citizens has day care programs; it also has a day hospital program, senior citizens' drop-in centres, social programs and group homes. They were looking at a night care program specifically aimed at Alzheimer's victims because, as anyone who knows about that disease understands, the difficulty is at night. During the day, the individual goes home and spends time with his family; at night he comes into the residence to receive the ample care. There is a mix in that circumstance, but the community is still used to its ultimate in providing the kind of humane services that are necessary.
Ten minutes goes by very quickly, but I want to say that the suggestions my colleague makes in this piece of legislation are not particularly revolutionary; in most other civilized countries in the world they have been implemented for many years. Community-based services are what is emphasized. We know from our experience in dealing with the nursing homes of this province that to try to regulate patient care and to try to regulate dignity into the system is impossible as long as we continue to rely on private-profit institutions.
The economic, efficient and humane way to go has to be community-based services. I hope we as members of the Legislature will make a clear statement of endorsement for this principle today and pass this legislation, and I hope the government will seize this opportunity and implement these kinds of principles.
10:50 a.m.
Mr. Henderson: I am very pleased to have an opportunity to comment on Bill 3, introduced by my friend the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere, entitled An Act for the Provision and Integration of Community Based Services for Seniors.
I have long believed that services for seniors must be as community-based as is feasible, given the requirements we have for technical and specialized competence. I believe that services for seniors especially need to be in the home and the neighbourhood of the senior. That is where friends and family are most likely to be familiar, and familiarity is very important for seniors. Also important are familiar neighbourhoods, shops and recreational facilities, churches, physicians and, perhaps of at least a little importance, political representatives. I shall therefore be speaking generally in support of this bill.
I want to say that there is no truth at all to the rumour that I am supporting this bill put forward by the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere in return for his agreement to support my amendments to Bill 94. I seem to recall having put such a proposal to him only a few weeks ago, and I would be hard pressed to cite his reply in language that would be considered parliamentary.
Of course, as a member of another party, I must find some aspects of this bill to be a little critical about. To that end, I am happy the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere was kind enough to send me a copy of his news release on Bill 3, proudly proclaiming its identification with the New Democrats on its letterhead.
In perusing the news release, I noticed the member made the statement, "We want to bring community services under a single roof so that seniors can have a complete range of services in one place and with one phone call -- perhaps 1-800-SENIORS." I must say to my friend that phone number does not sound very imaginative to me.
To give credit where it is due, I commend the member for a flash of modesty not often encountered among those of his party in restraining himself from proposing that the phone number be 1-800-WARNER. On reflection, however, the reason for that apparent modesty becomes quickly obvious, because the name "Warner" contains but six letters and a phone number requires seven.
My imagination took me to an alternative possibility, that the phone number could be 1-800-SWEENEY, noting the outstanding contributions of the minister with whom I work in this whole area of health for seniors. However, I suspect the minister might feel that to be a little self-aggrandizing, and I shall restrain the impulse to introduce such an amendment. It would be foreign to our naturally modest nature as Liberals to elevate ourselves in that fashion.
In a similar vein, I considered 1-800-VANHORNE, a proposal that suffers from the same defects as the previous one and carries the additional difficulty that there are too many letters in the name. I confess it crossed by mind to suggest 1-800-HUMBER, but there are too few letters in that.
After casting my mind about in this fashion for several minutes, I hit upon an obvious solution. Seniors who are seeking to locate the very fine array of community services that is under a single roof and with one phone call, seniors who are looking for openness and responsiveness in their care providers, should call 1-800-LIBERAL. The right ambience and the right number of letters are there in the same word.
I know the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere put this bill forward because it dovetails so nicely with the nature and spirit of the activities of the present government in the provision of services to seniors. Several months ago -- is my time up, Mr. Speaker?
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Morin): No.
Mr. Henderson: Several months ago, my colleague the Minister without Portfolio responsible for senior citizens' affairs (Mr. Van Horne) announced on behalf of our government an $11-million allocation of new funds for community support services to expand such services as Meals on Wheels, home help, elderly persons centres, assisted transportation and services in northern Ontario.
Planned for later this year are further services targeted for francophone seniors, native seniors and underserviced communities; day care for Alzheimer's victims; relief and support services to families caring for frail, elderly persons; and counselling, training and education services for family care givers.
Concurrently, the Minister of Community and Social Services announced the beginning of a new integrated homemakers program. Six pilot projects will be operational by the end of June at a total cost of $8 million. This program provides community support for frail seniors and physically handicapped adults to assist them to remain in their own homes. These services will be provided on the basis of need, with no medical or financial test involved.
An especially important development to help seniors remain in the community has been the creation of the Ministry of Housing's nonprofit housing program under the supervision of my colleague the Minister of Housing (Mr. Curling). Under this program, nonprofit subsidized seniors' housing units will be built. Nearly 1,700 units are to be started this year alone, almost 600 of them in Metropolitan Toronto.
My colleague the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon) announced in his budget a further $13.5 million for the enrichment of services for senior citizens.
I am happy to support this bill, because it carries on so much in the direction we have taken as a government. I am pleased to see that the bill hopes to encourage the independence of seniors, because society benefits as well as the seniors when we maximize the contributions they can bring to the quality of life in our communities.
Some of the most momentous contributions of human civilization have been made by senior citizens. I am thinking of the contributions of such people as Albert Schweitzer, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, A. Y. Jackson and, in my own field, Wilder Penfield, Sigmund Freud and, more recently, Erich Fromm, whom I heard speak a few years ago. In entertainment, do not forget Jimmy Durante, Maurice Chevalier, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Milton Berle, Bob Hope and a host of others.
Mr. Haggerty: George Burns.
Mr. Henderson: George Burns indeed. In the realm of politics are Konrad Adenauer and, dare I say, Ronald Reagan, of whom the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere is doubtless a great admirer.
It is not only an act of altruism when we care about services for seniors, because seniors have made and continue to make some of society's most outstanding contributions.
I am pleased to see the detailing of support services for seniors in this bill. Counselling programs, social, recreational and exercise programs, medical programs, educational programs, home help services, transportation services and programs of social and rehabilitative care are all mentioned and are all relevant.
There are costs to be considered, and this kind of program would be phased in with due attention to considerations of cost and with every regard to what has been popularized over the past year or so as the framework of fiscal responsibility.
I am therefore happy to speak in support of this bill and to indicate that I am very much in favour of doing more to help senior citizens, for their sake and so that we in society can continue to receive the great benefits they provide to us.
Mr. Dean: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I understood we were to have an opportunity for a second speaker. What is the problem?
The Acting Speaker: Time is running out.
Mr. Dean: How can that be?
The Acting Speaker: We have until 11:02 a.m. for the debate. The last one to speak will be the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere.
11 a.m.
Mr. Warner: In the past couple of weeks I have received the support of a variety of municipalities, including the townships of Alberton, Bessborough, Brooke, Carnavon, Emily, Front of Escott, Front of Yonge, Georgina, Hilton, Manvers, Nairn and New Liskeard, the villages of Neustadt and Bobcaygeon and the towns of Hanover, Richmond Hill and Walkerton. I have received their support within the past couple of weeks, and many more probably will be coming from the more than 800 municipalities.
I have also received several hundred letters of support. I would like to read a couple of excerpts.
One person writes: "Like many others, I have tried to find community support services to help my grandmother and my aunt remain in their homes as long as they wanted. It is difficult, frustrating and time-consuming, and anything you achieve by way of this legislative pressure will be much appreciated by all ages."
Here is another quote: "The Victorian Order of Nurses have been trying to get a day care centre for seniors in the area but are very frustrated by the city council, who are more interested in supplying a second ice hockey arena for the youth of the city.
This is another quote: "This is a concern that has faced us for many years and does not seem to be diminishing. Our best wishes for your work in this area."
Here is another quote from a senior: "A copy of this correspondence will be forwarded to our MPP, Mr. Bob McKessock, seeking his support also. A program such as this is long overdue. Good luck."
There are many more comments, and the hundreds I have received so far have all been extremely supportive.
I want to close with a quote from the task force report, entitled Ageing with Dignity, which was published by my party:
"Thousands of Ontario seniors who are in institutions want to and could live independently. Loneliness, despair and related health problems are needlessly widespread. Families who want to help preserve their parents' independence often give up because they cannot find their way through the Ontario government's bureaucratic maze to find the aid they need."
Finally, I appreciate the attendance this morning of so many seniors and health care workers. I am sure that at 12 noon they will take careful note of those members who are so mean as not to support my bill.
WETLANDS POLICY
Mr. Knight moved resolution 35: That in the opinion of this House, recognizing that Ontario's wetlands are necessary to protect our vital and delicate ecosystem, are important for flood control programs and are a potentially important component of waste treatment systems, the government of Ontario should introduce a comprehensive wetlands strategy that will protect existing wetlands and promote the creation of new wetlands where environmentally advisable, recognizing that incentives for the agricultural community are necessary.
Mr. Knight: I am pleased to have this opportunity to present my resolution to the House. I probably will not use all of my allotted time in presenting the resolution, and I would like to reserve the unused time for my cleanup remarks.
The subject of my resolution and speech today is Ontario wetlands. For those members who are not familiar with this term, wetlands are lands that are seasonally or permanently covered by shallow water as well as lands where the water table is close to or at the surface. In either case, the presence of abundant water has caused the formation of hydric soils and has favoured the dominance of either hydrophytic or water-tolerant plants.
Wetlands take many forms and have a variety of names. In Alberta, for instance, they have the unlikely name of pothole complexes. In Ontario, however, we group our wetlands into four categories: swamps, marshes, bogs and fens. I am sure all members have seen many wetlands in their time. They may have seen swamps in the middle of a forest, marshes alongside Highway 401 or even what looked like giant puddles in farmers' fields. However, the members may not be aware of how extremely important each and every wetland is to Ontario and North America.
There are four main ways by which wetlands directly benefit this province. The first is economic. Fish, wood and wild rice are some of the resource products of wetlands, which add more than $300 million to our economy each year. More significant still is the $800 million put into our economy through the tourism and recreation opportunities wetlands provide. Even if members are not active in fishing, hunting or birdwatching, no doubt they will be aware of Ontario's fine reputation in these areas. As well, wetlands increase the opportunities for camping, cottaging and tourism. All in all, wetlands create more than 53 million user-days a year in Ontario.
The second way in which Ontario benefits from wetlands is ecological. They play an essential role in maintaining wildlife populations, often offering the only environment for certain unique or endangered plants, animals and internationally important migratory birds. To give members an idea of their significance in this regard, wetlands provide 70 per cent of the nesting habitat for all Canadian waterfowl and are the main spawning grounds for many varieties of fish and fish food.
The third benefit is hydrological. By taking up pollutants from runoff before they enter other water systems, wetlands perform an important pollution abatement function. They also store excess runoff; this moderates the impacts of drought and flooding while regularly replenishing aquifers and the ground-water supplies needed to sustain natural vegetation, crops and wildlife.
The final benefit we in Ontario derive from wetlands is aesthetic, since they make the landscapes so much more interesting and pleasant to look at. They provide a variety of recreational opportunities and make ideal outdoor laboratories for educational and scientific research.
As I mentioned previously, some people are not aware of the important economic, ecological and aesthetic advantages of wetlands. Our ancestors certainly were not. To them, wetlands were mosquito-infested, impenetrable wastelands that posed formidable barriers to settlement. This view resulted in the huge quantities of valuable wetlands disappearing through shoreline disturbance, drainage, filling and improvement, and land clearing, all primarily for agricultural use.
On the eastern shores of Lake St. Clair, for example, where many of Ontario's best wetlands are located, there has been a 30 per cent decrease in wetlands since 1965. Of that land, 90 per cent went to agriculture and the other 10 per cent went to marine and cottage uses. Across southern Ontario, only 20 per cent of the original two million hectares of wetlands remain, and even these continue to diminish at a rate of one to two per cent annually.
One of the most frustrating things about this conversion is that wetlands which are changed to agricultural land are especially vulnerable to both wind erosion and oxidization or burning. The land oxidizes at a rate of one inch a year, which means a four-foot depth of organic soil will disappear in 50 years. On the other hand, if properly managed, wetlands can continue indefinitely to provide the benefits I have listed.
I have now outlined the considerable advantages of wetlands as well as what historically caused them to disappear so dramatically. I would now like to set out the reasons they continue to diminish despite their obviously considerable value and what we can do to reverse this trend.
In my view, the major reason we continue to lose our wetlands is that we lack a comprehensive wetlands strategy. There has never been, nor is there now, a concerted and co-ordinated approach for protecting all Ontario wetlands, backed by a strong guiding policy and the necessary financial resources. I should like to state, however, that Ontario governments have demonstrated a commitment to identify and protect our remaining natural features, including wetlands.
I would like to relate some of the government initiatives in the past few years. In 1981, an interministerial committee of resource ministries presented a discussion paper called Towards a Wetlands Policy for Ontario. More than 520 letters and briefs were received in response to the discussion paper, but not until April 1984, three years after the discussion paper, was Guidelines for Wetlands Management in Ontario released.
These guidelines were designed to be incorporated by municipalities into the municipal planning process. The municipalities were asked to comment on the guidelines, and the responses showed a clear awareness of the value of wetlands as well as some of their concerns about the guidelines.
Some of the concerns expressed were: the guidelines lacked a clear indication of the respective roles of government; municipalities had no legislative base with which to restrict the land owner from draining or filling a wetland; there needed to be a clarification regarding the application of the guidelines in northern Ontario. Most important, however, the municipalities said the guidelines were flawed in not developing a land owner compensation program.
Unfortunately, rather than providing the strong provincially co-ordinated approach that was needed, the guidelines placed the onus for implementing management practices for wetlands, other than provincially significant ones, on local municipalities, many of which are limited both financially and legislatively. The guidelines were only that: guidelines. What was and still is needed is a clear statement of government policy.
11:10 a.m.
As a result of the municipalities' input, the Ministry of Natural Resources started a comprehensive wetlands evaluation, using the procedures and classifications set forth in a document entitled An Evaluation System For Wetlands of Ontario, South of the Precambrian Shield. This system divided wetlands into seven different classifications. Classes 1 and 2, generally the larger ones, will be provincially significant, and the balance will be regionally or locally significant.
Most recently, in 1985 an interministerial committee was set up to identify and develop corporate wetland strategies. It included representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. The Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of the Environment were to be consulted as required. The time frame for this mandate was expected to be another one to one and a half years. A policy statement suitable for public review was expected at that time.
It is at this strategic time of the reshaping of wetlands policy that I feel we, the legislators of this province, can voice our concern about the lack of a strategy to adequately protect and develop our vital wetlands. The provincial government must take responsibility for all wetlands in Ontario, since every one, and not just those in classes 1 and 2, is provincially significant. We are being naïve and are shirking our responsibilities if we continue to ask the municipalities to do tasks for which they are not equipped financially or legislatively. I also feel the time frame for the policy statements is too generous, and I would much prefer to see such a statement by fall 1986.
Some things are being done to preserve wetlands, of course. The evaluation process currently being undertaken is important. We have evaluated 1,100 wetlands for a total of 225,000 hectares. In 1983, the Ontario government signed a general five-year agreement with Ducks Unlimited Canada, a private organization that has been doing remarkable conservation work in Ontario since 1974. By 1987, mostly on crown land, Ducks Unlimited will have spent $15 million and the Ontario government $1 million to maintain, restore and create waterfowl habitat in 16,000 hectares of land, divided equally between northern and southern Ontario. Progress is reported each year and is reported to be satisfactory. Their work may be one of the main reasons Ontario did not lower its bag limit this year while the prairie provinces and the United States did.
I recognize there are conflicts between conservationists and the agricultural community with respect to wetlands. However, I do not feel these conflicts are as wide as they might seem to be on the surface, nor do I see them as insurmountable. I believe a comprehensive wetlands strategy enshrined in the Planning Act, one that addresses the concerns of the agricultural community while protecting our wetlands, is achievable.
If we can somehow assure the farm community it will not be unreasonably prevented from draining adjacent lands into wetlands and find some way to compensate adjacent land owners for wildlife damage and introduce a distinction between productive farm land and wetlands in the property tax system, we will have gone a long way to creating a co-operative climate for wetlands conservation between farmers, conservationists and the government.
However, I believe such a climate will require an overhaul of the Drainage Act. The Drainage Act is inherently indifferent to ecological considerations. Because proper drainage is essential to agriculture, no one should be opposed to drainage. The present drainage programs lack sufficient safeguards against long-term ecological damage that may outweigh hoped-for benefits.
It is my suggestion that a class environmental assessment be developed; this definitely should be done for drainage projects that impact on provincial or regional significant wetlands, and consideration should be given to other wetlands. The costs of these assessments, however, should be funded.
Bluntly speaking, a land owner can receive an incentive to drain a wetland for agricultural use and a further 60 per cent property tax rebate once it is farmed. However, there are no corresponding incentives to maintain a significant natural wetland in the public interest.
It has been said that if wetlands are worth saving, they are worth paying for. I believe they are worth saving, and I suggest we should seriously consider (1) a tax rebate program to encourage private stewardship of wetlands by those who will maintain and preserve them, (2) funding joint agreements with groups such as Ducks Unlimited to acquire and maintain wetlands, (3) creating a conservation class for certain lands, including wetlands, within the property tax structure to avoid the present highest-potential-use classification system and (4) investigating a method of recognizing voluntary easements under the Income Tax Act.
These suggestions are clearly of importance not only to the preservation of Ontario's wetlands but also for environmentally significant areas and natural heritage sites such as river valleys, lakes and significant land forms such as the Niagara Escarpment. I suggest also that the Ministry of Natural Resources should take a lead role in co-ordinating wetland conservation, establish a formal consultation process with all interested parties and assign specific staff the responsibility of policy development and implementation.
The government should finalize revised guidelines by fall 1986 and issue a wetlands policy statement with the eventual intent that it be incorporated into the Planning Act as a matter of provincial interest.
As well, it is important that we increase public awareness of wetlands preservation. The Ministry of Education could play a significant role in this respect, and the Ministry of Natural Resources could target educational programs for local municipalities, planning committees, land owners and developers.
At this time, I would like to give my thanks to the Federation of Ontario Naturalists for the long and meritorious work it has been performing over the years to try to ensure that there is a stronger government interest in wetlands preservation.
I hope members will join me in supporting this resolution, which will urge the government to introduce a much-needed, comprehensive wetlands strategy and thus stop the senseless and steady disappearance of Ontario wetlands, but in a meaningful way. I am looking forward to hearing comments on their proposals, and I thank all members for their consideration of this resolution.
I want to reserve the time I have left for my closing remarks.
Mr. Stevenson: I am pleased to have the opportunity to join in the debate on wetlands policy and on the motion put forward by the member for Halton-Burlington.
I would like to comment on some of the last words he said, "the senseless disappearance of wetlands." I am not at all sure those are the proper words to use. I suppose as individuals who are not closely involved in this issue, we can use the word "senseless," but I am sure the people who actually own the property or are very closely involved in each individual piece of land as it has been used in the past do not view it as senseless at all.
However, I do not want to minimize the concern. It is a major concern. It is a concern of provincial interest. The actions of past governments and of this one and the actions of various conservationist groups, naturalist groups and so on clearly indicate the broad-scale nature of this issue.
I will not go on at great length, because the member for Halton-Burlington has already talked about the importance of the wildlife habitat, the plant habitat and the very important water storage aspect of wetlands, which act as a sort of sponge in our environment. They are being used and will be used more in the future, I suspect, as environmental filters. We see that going on in some municipal waste disposal systems, or at least on trial in that area. Generally, indications are that they are working very well.
11:20 a.m.
While nobody doubts the importance of wetlands, the issue very often is pictured as owners versus environmental needs or sometimes as owners versus environmentalists. More often, one sees it written in the media as farmers versus environmentalists. I suppose, to a degree, that sort of focuses the issue, but it is a much broader issue than that.
In defence of the farm community, it is very strongly my opinion that the farmers were the original environmentalists. They own property. They have a piece property, and they want to maintain its value for their families for generations. They want to do nothing to that property that will affect their ability to feed and clothe their families on those farms. They will go to any extent to preserve that property, and they will not knowingly damage it to any significant degree. It must be a renewable resource, and farmers will do anything to keep it that way.
Let us talk about farmers in particular but land owners in general. They own the land, and when we restrict it to farmers, many times it is cheaper to drain a piece of property than it is to buy the same amount of land somewhere else. It is usually cheaper to drain some of their own property than to sell that farm and move to another farm that has somewhat better drainage or a bigger acreage of workable land.
Economically, in almost every case, it is cheaper for the individual farmer to look at drainage as the first choice. When we look at how property owners, and farmers in particular, look at their land, we always have to keep that in mind.
On the environmental side, we look at it as a much broader issue than just the environmentalists and the conservationists. The farming community is very much aware of the importance of wetlands to the Ontario economy. The government is aware of it, much of the population in general is aware of it, and the tourism industry and all sorts of aspects of our natural resource industries are very much aware of its significance in our economy.
Many times the property owners do not benefit directly from that impact. Quite often, wetland property is almost a liability for a property owner; he is paying taxes on it and quite often gets little or no return for owning that property.
We see the same sort of thing when we are talking about flood plains. Many times a person buys a piece of property, thinking he is going to build a home on it. It is put into flood plain land and, all of a sudden, he cannot do anything with it. He is left holding a piece of property that he cannot use for his original intention.
That property may still be very valuable to the province, and if we are going to deem these properties in flood plains or in wetlands, then somehow or other, if it is important to the province, there must be some compensation arrangement for designating these properties of significant environmental worth. If it is worth while to do so for the society of this province, then it is worth while to have society pay something to the property owners, some of whom may be significantly affected by such decisions.
How do we go about it? First, it is absolutely vital that the decisions be made on solid, scientific evidence of the classification. I strongly support, as does the farming community and almost everybody else, I believe, the sort of effort that is going into trying to classify and catalogue our wetlands. I trust they will go ahead with policy formulation. I hope it is done in a very sincere way.
What we do not need is the situation we have seen recently involving Highway 89. I see the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Fulton) sitting in the Legislature now. I will share with him that the local councils met with the minister and none of them, not even the Liberals on the council, came away from that meeting very impressed with the minister responsible for highways of Ontario.
Studies have been going on since 1980 relating to the Keswick Marsh; they are costing the province hundreds of thousands of dollars. The highway construction was cancelled. Was that cancellation as a result of solid environmental evidence, or was it done for political opportunism? That is very much open to question. Everybody in that area knows very well that the health of Lake Simcoe is absolutely paramount in making that decision. Lake Simcoe is the single most important economic factor in that area. The lake must survive, and everybody knows it. The highway must come a very significant second.
In the environmental review of that highway, I think I have my numbers right in saying that 13 of 14 agencies approved the building of that road. They said there would be environmental damage, but they felt it would not be of major significance. However, we have seen the road cancelled very quickly. Let us say the local people are not impressed with the way it was handled.
First, let us have the decisions made on good, scientific information and not political expediency. Second, regarding compensation, I believe the people in this area should have tax-free land. Wetlands should be tax-free. If society or the province needs this land -- and in many cases, it obviously does because of its absolutely vital environmental and economic importance to us -- then the province must pay; not the property owner, not the local municipality, but the area that is going to benefit the most, which is the province. It is a provincial interest, and therefore the province should make the major contribution.
Mr. Laughren: I shall restrain myself in my response to the member for Durham-York (Mr. Stevenson). The Minister of Transportation and Communications does not want me to restrain myself. I would like to commend the minister for his decision on the Keswick Marsh. That we do not have an appropriate wetlands policy now is because of the foot-dragging of the Conservative government that was turfed out about a year ago. There is no excuse for that decision to have been left for the present government to make. The former Minister of Agriculture and Food knows full well that the alternative routes, which did not go through that marsh, were never explored appropriately. It was most appropriate that highway was cancelled.
The member for Durham-York wants to talk out of both sides of his mouth and wants to have it both ways on an issue like wetlands. He cannot have it both ways when he is talking about wetlands. One cannot build roads through them, one cannot have development over them and they cannot be drained for agricultural purposes while at the same time preserving them as legitimate wetlands. The member knows that.
11:30 a.m.
Mr. Stevenson: You should ask John Rogers what he thinks. He is a good member of the New Democratic Party.
Mr. Laughren: I am telling the member the position of our party.
I commend the member for Halton-Burlington on bringing in this resolution. I think it is an appropriate one. I hope he will keep up the pressure on the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Kerrio), because the minister is not yet known as a crusading conservationist. The member for Halton-Burlington will need to keep the heat on him. Any man who would turn a wilderness park into a beehive of commercial activity has a long way to go before he can be known as a genuine environmentalist. I encourage the member for Halton-Burlington to keep up the good work on the wetlands issue.
It is now 1986. It has been about seven years since the process started with the Ministry of Natural Resources. We still do not have a wetlands policy incorporated into the province's Planning Act. As far as I know, we are still losing one per cent to two per cent of our wetlands every year and time is of the essence. I gather the present interministerial committee is still ruminating on the matter and will circulate its position when it is completed. I urge the government to move with dispatch in getting that study by the interministerial committee completed and circulated among interested groups.
Most of us have learned about wetlands, not from the Ministry of Natural Resources but from people with groups such as the Federation of Ontario Naturalists and Ducks Unlimited. I still keep the 1979 edition of the Ontario naturalists' Why Wetlands? on my desk as a constant reminder. It is the best summary I have seen as a wetlands primer. In fact, there is a section in it called "The Wetlands Primer." It is too bad it was not the Ministry of Natural Resources that put together that presentation; it was the interest groups that were required to do it.
A couple of years ago, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters put together a brief but no-nonsense letter to all members dealing with the wetlands issue. By doing it that way, it laid to rest some of the attitudes a lot of people have towards anglers and hunters. It said the following about wetlands:
"I am sure we do not need to remind you that wetlands: (1) offer water control by absorbing huge amounts of water like a giant sponge and slowly releasing it over a period of time; (2) slow down and moderate flood waters; (3) augment low summer flows and replenish ground waters; (4) act as an effective pollution fighter by filtering and cleansing the water at no extra charge; (5) are an essential part of our natural heritage by allowing hunters, anglers and naturalists to catch a glimpse of nature at its best; (6) are nature's nurseries for most fish and wildlife species at some point in their lives; and (7) are not wastelands."
I feel very good about the role the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters has played in supporting the whole concept of protecting our wetlands.
If wetlands are such a great thing, what is the problem? It can be summarized in a few ways. First, wetlands can be drained and used for agricultural purposes. Second, there is the question of the Keswick Marsh that is being used for road building. Third, of course, is residential and commercial development. What are needed, and all the speakers have touched on it, are tax incentives. If there is an incentive to drain, why is there no incentive to retain? There could be a rallying cry for people across the province, "Don't drain them, retain them," so that we could preserve these valuable wetlands.
Government has a role to play. It will not happen without government leadership. In a weird kind of way, to have no policy is to have a policy; namely, to allow wetlands to be drained.
I would like to see a number of things. The first is incentives to retain wetlands. The second is to have environmental assessment on the drainage of wetlands. I would break it in two. For class 1 and 2 wetlands, the most significant wetlands, there should be individual environmental assessments. For classes 3 to 7, there should be a class environmental assessment. Third, I believe there should be a major educational program by the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of the Environment and possibly even the Ministry of Municipal Affairs because of the municipal role. That is something this government should be working on.
Fourth, we need to address the problem of wetlands in northern Ontario, because the model used to evaluate wetlands was a southern Ontario model. The whole question of the development of the peat lands in northern Ontario will not be addressed under the present evaluative model. There needs to be a separate look at the wetlands in northern Ontario. Currently, there are no guidelines at all.
I do not believe the problem is insurmountable. As the member for Durham-York said, farmers are not really the villains. During the last couple of months, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the Federation of Ontario Naturalists sat down to try to work out a common policy. Perhaps they have already done it. Farmers should not be painted as the villains of the piece.
One farmer said, "People construed us as being anti-wetlands, but all we were anti was a policy that would save wetlands for the public good and make us bear the cost." I agree with the farmers who say that if wetlands are so valuable for the public at large, then the public at large should help to pay the cost of preserving them.
Everyone seems to be on side in protecting wetlands, but at this point, wetlands do not enjoy the status of, for example, our parks. They are still second-class citizens in conservation in the minds of most people when they think about conservation. I believe the Minister of Natural Resources could win a certain level or status of legitimacy that currently he does not enjoy among conservationists if we had that interministerial committee move more quickly to distribute that report for discussion, to bring in a policy and incorporate it into the Planning Act and to do so without delay.
Finally, I remind members that in 1987 there is going to be an international conference on wetlands in Canada. I believe it will be in Saskatchewan, although I am not sure of that. I could not help but think what a delight it would be for us in Ontario to attend that international wetlands conference in Saskatchewan with a policy in our pockets that we could show to the other people there, indicating that Ontario does have a good and appropriate wetlands policy.
I urge members to support the resolution of the member for Halton-Burlington.
Mr. McGuigan: I apologize for not being here to listen to all the speakers, but I was at a very important meeting.
Mr. Laughren: The member for Kent-Elgin was not out draining the wetlands, was he?
Mr. McGuigan: No, we were talking about free trade. I know the member for Nickel Belt is very interested in that and I am sure he will forgive me.
Mr. Laughren: That is a swamp.
Mr. McGuigan: If it is a swamp; it is a swamp of despair.
I am very pleased to have this opportunity to speak to this resolution. Preservation of this province's wetlands has been a topic of interest to me for many years. I and my family and my family before me grew up next to Rondeau Bay and the wetlands that surround Rondeau Bay and Rondeau Park. It has been very much a part of our recreational life and also part of our appreciation of the nature of this wonderful province in which we live. I recognize its value to wildlife, to water quality, to tourism and to soil conservation.
I have been critical of the lack of concern for the preservation of Ontario wetlands and I join the member for Halton-Burlington in calling for an expedited process for action by the legislators of Ontario and for a more clear and comprehensive wetlands strategy.
11:40 a.m.
In April 1984, I released a statement congratulating the then Minister of Natural Resources for a long-overdue statement outlining the seven classifications of wetlands referred to by the member for Halton-Burlington and other members. My statement at that time, however, criticized the then minister for not addressing the issue of incentives to individual land owners for the preservation of wetlands. As members have illustrated, there are many ways this could be encouraged by the ministries of the Ontario government.
For the purpose of illustrating to this House the type of disincentive there is at present, for the purpose of the preservation of wetlands, I have prepared an example that compares the assessment and the net tax payable on various classifications of land in one township in southwestern Ontario.
Dover township, which borders Lake St. Clair, is in the riding of the member for Chatham-Kent (Mr. Bossy). It is an area that has been drained for many years, at least 80 per cent of it. Using the present market value figure for class 1 and class 2 farm land in Dover township -- and even today, at reduced farm land values, it is still valid for that area -- $4,000 for farm land and $3,535 per acre for class 2 land, and using the percentage factor of 2.1 per cent applied to agricultural land under the Assessment Act, it equals an assessed value of $84 per acre for class 1 and $74.24 for class 2 farm land.
Wetlands are assessed as recreational and residential property and they are valued at $1, 300. I want to point out that the value is much less. However, multiplied by a percentage factor of 4.5, it equals $58.50 an acre for the assessed value. Applying the present mill rate in Dover of 2.89 to all three classes of land results in a tax of $25 per acre for class 1, $22.12 an acre for class 2 and $17.43 per acre for wetlands. It might strike members that all of these taxes are very high. However, this is very valuable land, and it does have very high costs of drainage. In most cases, the water is pumped off the land.
The wetlands, however, are not eligible for the farm tax reduction program, which allows for 60 per cent of the property taxes to be rebated the following year by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Calculating in the rebate, the real tax payable on farm land is $10 for class 1 and $8.85 for class 2 farm land. This, of course, has to be compared to the real tax payable on wetlands, which remains at $17.43 per acre. We have the anomaly of the owner of the wetlands actually paying about 70 per cent more out of his own pocket than the farmer pays on class 1 agricultural land.
I realize that $7 is perhaps not a huge amount of money. Nevertheless, it does send the wrong message that we are discriminating in our tax policies against wetlands. It certainly gives an individual pause to consider whether he or she wishes to retain the wetlands or wishes to consider draining the wetlands for some other purpose.
Many of us think councils of rural municipalities may all be in favour of development because they want more tax base and so on. As well, in an agricultural township one might expect that the council would be in favour of developing, just as a matter of principle.
On March 29, 1984, the Dover township council passed the following resolution:
"That a letter be sent to Jim McGuigan, MPP, and Mr. R. S. Riddell, regional assessment commissioner" -- I assume he is no relation to our Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Riddell), but he has the same name -- "requesting that the province of Ontario change its policy on marshland assessment so that marshland is not taxed at a rate similar to farm land."
Here we have a municipal council in an agricultural area recognizing it wants to save that marshland. I know many people feel wetlands should be added to our agricultural base. The tragedy of this is that drained wetland soils oxidize or burn up at the rate of one inch of soil a year.
I will just take a minute to point out how wetlands are formed in the first place. Sages, bulrushes, trees and all sorts of vegetation grow up in that wetland environment. When the vegetation dies and sinks below the water, oxygen is held away from it. Rather than rotting, as it does on upland soil, and becoming part of the mineral soil -- adding organic matter to the mineral soil -- the vegetation that goes under water turns into organic soils itself, because it does not have the oxidizing effect or burning effect of oxygen. When we remove that water and add oxygen to the chemical equation, oxidation takes place. The soil literally burns up at the rate of an inch a year. When we drain wetlands and use them as agricultural soil, we are headed to the ultimate destruction at the rate of an inch a year. A four-foot depth can disappear in a matter of 50 years.
They have done that around Lake Okeechobee in Florida, where I was visiting a number of years ago. Most of our winter vegetables come from that area of the state, Dade county. Right on the front lawn of one of the experimental farms, a concrete post was sticking about four feet out of the ground. This was about 30 years ago. As I saw it, I remarked, "What is that concrete post?" They said, "When this experimentation was established, we dug a post hole down into the ground and filled it full of cement levelled to the top of the ground." In the years that had elapsed, and I have forgotten what the date was, the soil had subsided so that the post hole was a vertical post sticking about four feet out of the ground. I am sure it is sticking out a great deal more because of the 30 years that have gone by.
As soon as we drain the soil, we are destroying it. One of the ironic things to think about relates to the levels of the waters in the lake. I see you have not got time for this, Mr. Speaker. When we drain the wetlands and send the water down, as some people propose, to the American Southwest to irrigate dry soils -- I have not time to explain it -- when we irrigate dry soils, we also destroy them. This has been illustrated all over the world. Wherever we go into a dry climate and irrigate the soil, we destroy the soil.
Mr. Speaker: The member's time has expired.
Mr. McLean: I am pleased to speak on this bill this morning. I support private member's notice of motion 35, which concerns existing wetlands and promoting the creation of new wetlands where environmentally advisable.
I have spent 16 years involved in conservation in Ontario and have been on the executive committee of conservation authorities in Ontario for some years. I realize the value of the wetlands and of their preservation. Of the more than 47,000 acres that we have in the Minesing Swamp, the province now owns approximately 10,000 acres in co-operation with the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
When we look at the price paid for that land -- $54 an acre was what the first 2,000 acres was bought for -- and see the price that land is selling for today, it has increased rapidly; but we also have to take into consideration the taxes those people are paying on that land, and it is in a wetlands environment. I think it is great because of the attractions there for people who want to canoe through the Minesing Swamp and see the wildlife. Some of the species there can be found nowhere else in Ontario.
11:50 a.m.
I also had occasion to be at Luther Marsh, in the riding of my great friend the member for Wellington-Dufferin-Peel (Mr. J. M. Johnson). I observed the number of geese, the wildlife that was there and that was doing harm in the cornfields of the farms in the immediate area.
When we are creating wetland, we have to realize what happens within the area around the wetland. I know that government guidelines with regard to the wetlands were released back in 1984. At that time, the government wanted to meet its commitment and be responsible to help create and maintain wetlands where feasible.
There were a lot of concerns from the farmers in my area with regard to the study that was being done and the people who were travelling over their properties without any approval. There were some 2,000 acres that were supposed to have been classified as wetlands, and when the ministry completed its report, it identified more than 4,000 acres. So when we talk about wetlands, we also have to take into consideration flood-line mapping, how we reduce the flooding, hold it up in the spring and let it go as the season progresses.
When we look at the millions of dollars taken in on our hunting and fishing licences and the value of the fur and the wild rice industries, they exceed $300 million on an annual basis. Approximately 80 per cent of the original wetlands in southern Ontario have been drained for a variety of reasons. The wetland area is currently being reduced at a rate of one to two per cent annually.
I can endorse a resolution such as this, but my endorsation comes with a reservation as to what happens within the farming community that surrounds the wetlands. With the wildlife that is attracted, the geese that get in the farmers' corn, the grain and alfalfa fields, there has to be consideration so that the farmers are protected. I am not interested in compensating people; I am interested in protecting people from what we as a government may create.
Flood plain mapping has been under way with the federal government in co-operation with the Ministry of Natural Resources to have a proposal for the township of Rama that would reduce the area that is being flooded at present so that those farmers can use their lands earlier in the spring and thereby not create the flooding that is taking place now. The townships have a great concern in that.
I say to the member who brought this resolution in that the municipal people, municipal councils and the leaders in the community should be made well aware of what has taken place. The elected municipal people should have some input, because they know their municipalities better than anyone else. They are the ones who should be told: "Yes, we are doing a study. How can we help you?"
Mr. Knight: In the time remaining, I would like to comment on the contributions of the speakers this morning, and I thank them for those.
The member for Simcoe East (Mr. McLean) mentioned that farmers were the original environmentalists, and I have no quarrel with that statement. I would also not quarrel with him when he indicates that farmers would not knowingly damage the land.
I am aware that the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has been very heavily involved in discussions with conservationists and environmentalist groups with respect to the methods we could undertake to preserve wetlands. Having spoken to them and others participating in that process, I know their contributions have been very even-minded, in some instances going the extra mile to assist the efforts brought by the farming community to preserve the wetlands and in making suggestions about the compensation programs the government should introduce.
I thank the member for Durham-York for agreeing with my general resolution that wetlands should be preserved. I hope he is also supportive of the recommendations I have mentioned this morning.
I am aware of the long-standing interest of the member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren) in that matter. He indicated it has been seven years since he first took an interest and he mentioned the brochure the Federation of Ontario Naturalists published in 1979. I hope that in 1986 we are now at the point where the government of Ontario will be bringing forth a comprehensive strategy to be enshrined in the Planning Act. He mentioned I should speak to the Minister of Natural Resources, with whom I am pleased to speak and chat from time to time, and I shall do that.
I was interested in his comments on assessments. He suggested more specific assessments, such as single assessments on classes 1 and 2 and class assessments on 3 to 7. Suffice to say that I agree there should be some sort of assessment, which should be funded. It would be nice if we were able to go to the 1987 conference in Saskatchewan with a policy in our pocket. I look forward to that myself.
I thank the member for Kent-Elgin (Mr. McGuigan). I have to mention to the member for Nickel Belt that if I am not able to chat with the Minister of Natural Resources, I am sure the member for Kent-Elgin has a closer relationship and probably would be able to talk with him in my stead.
I thank the other members who spoke to the resolution. This is a matter of importance to me. I hope it is important to the rest of the members of the Legislature. The process has been ongoing for some time. I am confident that with the support of all members of the House for my resolution we will be able to encourage the government to complete the process and bring forth a comprehensive wetlands strategy that can ultimately be enshrined in the Planning Act.
I hope my comments today will ensure that strategy will provide for compensation for agriculturalists and other land owners in preserving wetlands. Also, I hope we can put out the message that education is important to ensure that the preservation continues, with or without -- let us hope it is with -- a comprehensive strategy.
Mr. Warner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I wish to draw to your attention that I am very upset with the treatment which was provided to a group of senior citizens who this morning attempted to sit in the gallery and listen to the debate. Part-way through the debate they were asked by the officials here to leave the gallery; yet they had done nothing to warrant being removed from the gallery. I would appreciate it if you would look into the matter so that this type of thing does not happen again.
Mr. Speaker: The member has drawn a point of information to my attention. Because of his request, I will certainly try to find out the reason. It is quite possible these people were here on tour as a group, as many are, and were in the House for a certain length of time.
Mr. Cousens: Mr. Speaker, I would like to share in the concern. This is a very legitimate point of order and is worthy of --
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Cousens: Mr. Speaker, if this is not a point of order, I do not know what is in this House.
Mr. Speaker: Order. There is nothing out of order. However, I said I will look at it. I do not think anything further can be done.
SENIORS' INDEPENDENCE ACT
Mr. Speaker: Mr. Warner has moved second reading of Bill 3, An Act for the Provision and Integration of Community Based Services for Seniors.
Motion agreed to.
Mr. Speaker: The bill, according to the standing orders, will be sent to committee of the whole House.
Mr. Warner: I wish to have the bill sent to the standing committee on social development.
Mr. Speaker: The standing orders say a private members' bill will be sent to committee of the whole House unless the majority of the House wishes it to go to a standing committee. The member for Scarborough-Ellesmere has made such a request. I would like some indication from the majority of the members of the House whether it should go to that standing committee.
Ordered for standing committee on social development.
WETLANDS POLICY
Mr. Speaker: Mr. Knight has moved resolution 35.
Motion agreed to.
Mr. Speaker: That completes the business of
the House this morning.
The House recessed at 12:02 p.m.
AFTERNOON SITTING
The House resumed at 2 p.m.
VISITOR
Mr. Speaker: I ask all members to join me in welcoming and recognizing in the Speaker's gallery today Senator William A. Sederburg from the 24th district, Lansing, Michigan.
ACCESS TO LEGISLATIVE BUILDING
Mr. McClellan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: Before members' statements, I want to raise a subject that has been raised many times in the past in this assembly. I thought you might have made a statement with respect to the change in policy that has obviously been made with respect to demonstrations within the assembly. I want to say right off the bat that I welcome that change.
I recall two incidents from the past which illustrated the previous policy. During the debate on Bill 179, the wage control bill, delegates from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union were ordered out of the building because they were wearing OPSEU T-shirts and buttons and were thus technically demonstrating inside the assembly. Earlier, in 1979, a delegation of injured workers who were demonstrating outside the assembly in the hot sun were prohibited from entering the building to get a drink of water.
I am pleased to note that under this new policy, the demonstrators from the Ontario Medical Association were permitted to enter the building wearing their OMA uniforms and buttons and accompanied by their own photographer. They were given four reserved tables in the dining room downstairs, where they were able to make short speeches, toast and applaud their guests and quench their thirst with glasses of Henkell Trocken sparkling wine.
My point is that I trust all these amenities will be available to the injured workers the next time they come to Queen's Park.
Mr. Gillies: On the same point, Mr. Speaker: I am sure I speak for my colleagues when I say I always considered it a bit of an anomaly that someone coming into the galleries of this place wearing a T-shirt or a button would be considered in any way part of a demonstration. If the leniency you are showing today is a change of policy, we welcome it. We also particularly welcome the members of the medical profession who are here today to demonstrate their concern for their rights.
Mr. Speaker: I will respond to the two members who have spoken, even though it is not a point of order. I believe the only thing that comes under a point of order would be in regard to demonstrations in the gallery. Guidelines have been set out by previous Speakers. I looked very carefully at those, and it is stated that participants in any demonstrations held outside are not allowed into the hallways or galleries with their paraphernalia or equipment.
As far as the so-called demonstration in the dining room is concerned, I have no authority over that. I believe it is the members' dining room, and I am sure a member of the Legislature is responsible for those guests.
Mr. McClellan: Either there is one rule for everybody or something else. Which is it?
Mr. Speaker: I agree. In our discussions earlier this morning, it was agreed that on a previous occasion there was a demonstration with white coats etc. It was asked that those white coats should be removed before they could enter. There is no demonstration today. I will be glad to look at it more closely.
2:05 p.m.
MEMBERS' STATEMENTS
DISASTER RELIEF
Mr. J. M. Johnson: I take this opportunity to remind the members of this Legislature that one year ago this Saturday on May 31, 1985, tornadoes struck several parts of southern Ontario.
In my riding of Wellington-Dufferin-Peel, tornadoes carved a devastating path of destruction through the area of Arthur, Belwood, Grand Valley and Orangeville, moving into Simcoe county and Barrie. These killer tornadoes left 12 people dead, hundreds injured and thousands homeless. The costs of nature going wild for a few minutes wiped out generations of toil, effort and savings.
That evening, after inspecting this terrible devastation, I requested the assistance of the then Solicitor General, the member for Mississauga East (Mr. Gregory). The next morning the then Premier, the member for Muskoka (Mr. F. S. Miller), the Solicitor General and the then Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, the member for Don Mills (Mr. Timbrell), arrived in Grand Valley after visiting Barrie and area. The Premier assured me that he shared my view that it was a disaster area and that the province was prepared to assist in restoring the devastated communities on the base of three-to-one funding.
In conclusion, may I express my condolences to the families who lost loved ones, my hope that all the injured are fully recovered, my best wishes to the many who lost their homes and businesses and were forced to rebuild and my thanks to the many thousands of good people who provided help to the victims of this disaster.
INJURED WORKERS DAY
Mr. McClellan: I am sure all members will want to join with me in recognizing that this Sunday, June 1, will be Injured Workers Day in Ontario. The day will be marked by a gathering of injured workers and their supporters at the steps of the Legislature starting at 10 a.m. At 11 o'clock, there will be a moment's silence for injured workers who have died as a result of industrial accidents or disease.
I want to take the occasion of Injured Workers Day in 1986 to remind the Minister of Labour (Mr. Wrye), the new government and all the members of the assembly that the legitimate and just demands of working people in this province for safety on the job and for a reform of the Workers' Compensation Board is still unfulfilled.
Injured workers are still not properly compensated for industrial accidents. The Workers' Compensation Board has not even begun to address adequately the issue of compensation for the victims of industrial disease. Injured workers do not have a legal entitlement to job retraining and job placement after being disabled.
Until these things are done, injured workers in Ontario will continue to feel a deep sense of grievance that they have been cast off and forgotten by their community, and for the rest of us this should be a source of deep shame.
D-DAY REUNION
Mr. Morin: I wish to bring to the assembly's attention an important event taking place in the city of Toronto on the coming weekend. In recognition of the 42nd anniversary of the Normandy invasion, the Toronto and area branch of the Canadian Airborne Forces Association has organized its first Allied airborne D-Day reunion and memorial ceremony.
At that French beachhead all those years ago, airborne forces guaranteed their place in history by taking the crucial first step in the liberation of an enchained Europe. We owe a deep and lasting debt of gratitude to the members of the Allied forces who answered their country's call to fight for our democratic ideals and who, when necessary, sacrificed their very lives to ensure our freedom today.
As a result of the tireless efforts of the branch president, John McGillis, who is in the gallery this afternoon accompanied by a master warrant officer of the Canadian Airborne Regiment, members of airborne units of Canada, the United States, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Britain and Israel are gathering in our provincial capital to commemorate this historic occasion. I am sure all members of the assembly join with me in wishing them an enjoyable and successful reunion and ceremony.
DISASTER RELIEF
Mr. McCague: As my colleague has mentioned, this Saturday marks the first anniversary of the devastating tornadoes that struck parts of southern Ontario. I think it appropriate at this time for all members of this House to reflect for a moment on some of the positive efforts that came in response to that disaster.
The public was saddened by the deaths and property destruction that occurred at that time. Out of the disaster, however, emerged the public's generosity: as simple as offering a meal or a few nights' shelter to a neighbour, volunteering in one of the many emergency centres that had been established, sending in clothing or contributing to the nearly $10 million raised for the Central Ontario Disaster Relief Committee.
In all this, the people of our province demonstrated the true spirit of co-operation and a high regard for one another. I am sure all members of this House share with me in thanking the members of the Central Ontario Disaster Relief Committee, especially its chairman, John Morrison; the chairman of fund-raising, Geoffrey Lind; the chairman of the claims committee, Ed Thompson; and those hundreds of people who responded in so many ways to the needs and concerns of others.
FREE TRADE
Mr. Foulds: The free trade studies released by the federal and provincial governments confirm what the New Democrats have been saying for 18 months or more. The so-called benefits of free trade will be paid for with the jobs of workers. That is why the 800,000-member Ontario Federation of Labour, the United Steelworkers of America, the United Auto Workers Union of Canada, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, the association of retirees, the United Church and many other Ontarians oppose free trade.
The Premier (Mr. Peterson) said last Tuesday there is "a great deal to be lost if any government in this country fails to represent the interests and views of its people...forcefully." The majority of Ontarians expressed their interests and their views. The Premier must not fail to represent them. On Monday in Ottawa, the Premier must insist that softwood, lumber, potatoes, hogs, cattle and the auto pact are, in his words, "kept off the bargaining block."
Surely it is now clear that the cost to Ontario of a free trade deal with the United States will be jobs and communities. He should remember Kipling, who said, "It is her own soul that Canada risks today." Ontario's economy and her soul are at risk. The Premier must report to Brian Mulroney what he suggested to the grocers on Tuesday: Include us out of your impossible dream.
FUTURES PROGRAM
Mr. Cordiano: Members of the Legislature will recall that the Minister of Skills Development (Mr. Sorbara) announced a new initiative six months ago to provide training, educational upgrading and work experience for hard-to-employ youth. The program, called Futures, grew from a commitment made more than two years ago by the Premier (Mr. Peterson) when he was in opposition and reaffirmed by him as he took office last summer as Ontario's 20th premier.
The development of the Futures program and its operation were placed in the Ministry of Skills Development. It is extremely satisfying to announce today that we set out to help 56,000 young people in the past fiscal year and that our goal was met.
Our pleasure is not derived from a numbers game but in the knowledge that 56,000 hard-to-employ Ontarians between 16 and 24 years of age received counselling, on-the-job training and work experience and in some cases very basic pre-employment training. More important, for most of these young people, participation in this program led to permanent jobs and a decision to return to school.
In my riding of Downsview, Seneca College is one of the delivery organizations for Futures. A letter from one of Seneca's Futures graduates sums it up pretty well. She wrote to say thank you, because through the program she obtained a responsible position as an administrative assistant.
DISASTER RELIEF
Mr. Rowe: Saturday marks the first anniversary of the tornado that struck central Ontario. We in this House should take a moment and reflect on that most bleak and tragic day.
At approximately 5:15 p.m., the devastating tornado touched down just west of Highway 400 in Barrie. By the time it left a few minutes later, a path of death and destruction lay behind. We have all learned something from this tragic phenomenon -- some bad things; some good things. One such lesson is the need for restructuring of the tornado assistance guidelines, which are antiquated and must be overhauled.
Let me take a minute to thank the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Mr. Grandmaître) for his assistance with many tragic personal cases I have sent him. However, I also want to remind the minister there are still personal cases outstanding, and I urge him to act expediently to help solve these cases.
2:15 p.m.
STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES
COMMUNITY COLLEGES
Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I wish to preface my remarks by saying that the statement I am about to make gives me perhaps more satisfaction and pleasure than any I have made thus far in the House, dealing, as it does, with community colleges and the resolution of an issue with which I was confronted when I first came to my position as Minister of Colleges and Universities.
Today I have the pleasure of making a statement to this House of major importance to the future health and vitality of Ontario's colleges of applied arts and technology. The 1986-87 operating grant to the colleges is being increased by a further $60 million. This will bring the total operating support being provided to the colleges this year to $588.1 million. This is in direct response to the needs of the community college system for increased financial resources to improve the quality of education.
Upon becoming Minister of Colleges and Universities, one of the first items to appear on my desk was the Instructional Assignment Review Committee report, known in government as the Skolnik report. As members will recall, college academic staff were on strike in the fall of 1984; there was disarray in the college system, and faculty work load was the critical issue. The work load issue was not resolved in the strike, and a committee chaired by Professor Michael Skolnik was appointed in November 1984. Its job was to conduct a comprehensive review of all aspects of instructional assignments in the colleges.
The Skolnik report concluded that faculty did have a serious work load problem and that the quality of education was being adversely affected as a result. After I reviewed the report, I indicated that the work load issue must be addressed at the bargaining table and strongly urged both sides to arrive at a negotiated settlement. I am pleased to report today that a negotiated settlement has been achieved and that an agreement was signed on May 22. It is a two-year contract, by the way.
New work load provisions in the contract permit more contact between teachers and students and provide greater opportunities for faculty to keep abreast of developments in their particular fields. With today's commitment of additional funding, colleges will be in a position to hire substantial numbers of new faculty members. I am particularly pleased that these hirings will provide new teaching opportunities for women and accelerate the hiring of women faculty in the colleges.
As well, with the new work load provisions in the contract, nursing faculty will now be treated exactly the same as teachers in other post-secondary programs. Historically, nursing faculty, 96 per cent of whom are women, had been required to teach more hours than any post-secondary faculty. I am pleased to report that the new work load provisions remove this discrimination.
This government has on many occasions stated its commitment to excellence in education. Colleges are a most important component of the province's educational system. Colleges play a large role in ensuring that our labour force has the skills to enable Ontario industries to remain competitive in world markets, and they enable adult learners to adapt to changing technologies.
This government recognizes that additional funding alone is not sufficient to revitalize the province's colleges of applied arts and technology. I have initiated various studies to develop more effective governance and operational structures for the college system. I will be reporting on these studies in the coming months.
With the establishment of the college excellence fund and the $60 million in new funds I am announcing today, I am confident we are making strides to build a stronger and more vital college system.
Mr. McFadden: I welcome the announcement by the Minister of Colleges and Universities in relation to the extension of further operating grants to the college system. In Ontario we have the finest system of colleges in Canada. We can be proud of it, and I very much welcome what the government has done today.
Mr. Allen: I compliment the Minister of Colleges and Universities for recognizing the eminent merits of the Skolnik report in its judgement that the work load situation in the colleges, over which a strike was held and on which we stood alone in the debate in this House, really merits full response.
I hope the minister continues in this tradition of responding and of overturning some of the predelictions and attitudes of his colleagues in a past forum in this Legislature.
COURT SYSTEM
Hon. Mr. Scott: I am pleased to announce the appointment of the Honourable Mr. Justice Thomas Zuber of the Ontario Court of Appeal to conduct an inquiry into the organization, jurisdiction and structure of the courts of Ontario.
The impetus for this inquiry comes in part from complaints, suggestions and recommendations made to me during the past 11 months concerning the operation of our court system and in part from my own conviction, based on my experience at the bar, that substantial changes are needed in the system. These changes are needed to ensure that (1) the public has ready accessibility to our courts, (2) the public receives a proper level of service from the courts and (3) all this be done in an efficient and economical manner.
The most recent systematic investigation of the operation of our courts and their structure was conducted more than 15 years ago by the Ontario Law Reform Commission, which prepared a three-volume report entitled Report on the Administration of Ontario Courts. Since that time there have been fundamental changes in our society and its laws but none whatever in the courts. The time has now come for a thorough examination of the problems inherent in our court system so we can better cope with the constantly increasing demands placed upon us.
We have given Mr. Justice Zuber the widest possible scope in his terms of reference to deal with any question that arises in the area of organization, structure, jurisdiction or the work load of any court of Ontario, from a justice of the peace to the Ontario Court of Appeal, and any matter dealing with access to the courts by the public and the provision of service by the courts to the public.
I want to make it clear to my colleagues that this inquiry is not intended to be a mere tinkering with the existing system but rather a fundamental rethinking of all the assumptions on which our courts have operated since 1792, when they were first established upon the creation of the province of Upper Canada. I have personally asked Mr. Justice Zuber to consider redesigning the entire system from the ground up to provide us with an organization that responds to our needs today and will be adaptable to our needs 15 years from now in the year 2000.
Mr. Justice Zuber will provide me with his report by April 1, 1987. I undertake to consider his recommendations immediately and to act as swiftly as possible on them.
Mr. O'Connor: On behalf of our party, I welcome the inquiry announced by the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) into the court system in Ontario and particularly, as the statement indicates, into the organization, jurisdiction and structure of the courts of our province.
Given the events of the past few days, how could the minister omit perhaps the most important, pressing and urgent problem in the legal delivery system today, namely, that of facilities and, in particular, courthouses?
We have heard horror stories through the news media and in this House of condemned, leaking, falling-down court buildings. There is nothing in the statement about an inquiry into this very serious problem. We will hear more about the situation today. The minister continues to ignore it.
What good is a better flow of people and paper if there is no adequate place in which to hold trials? The minister should consider expanding the inquiry, to include reference to the physical facilities of this province, and making the inquiry public so that the people of this province can observe its deliberations and have input into the final outcome of this inquiry.
We welcome the inquiry as it stands, but it must be expanded.
Mr. Rae: With respect to the courts, I say to the Attorney General that I can only hope Mr. Justice Zuber will be suggesting reforms that will be far-reaching and will deal with the need, in our view, to combine our senior courts into one unified system, which would make the most sense.
FREE TRADE
Hon. Mr. Nixon: I am tabling a study entitled Canada-US Free Trade: The Exchange Rate and Employment Policy. The study is part of our ongoing analysis of the issues surrounding Canada-US bilateral trade negotiations. It reflects recent developments and may aid members in understanding the background to press stories linking the trade talks to Canada's exchange rate policy.
The study outlines the link between US trade policy and initiatives by the US administration related to exchange rates. It notes that pressure may be brought to bear on Canada's exchange rate policy through the new Group of Seven. The study outlines some estimates of the negative effects on the Canadian economy of a deliberate attempt to raise the exchange value of the Canadian dollar.
Mr. Brandt: I want to respond briefly to the comments of the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon) with respect to the background document he has released today.
First, I want to compliment the Treasurer on sharing this information with us.
[Applause]
Mr. Brandt: I am not finished yet. I believe it is important in the discussion of free trade policy that we get this type of background information. In this paper, it indicates that for every five per cent of the dollar that is reduced, we lose some 56,000 jobs. In an earlier statement made by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology about the study it undertook, there was a background document indicating some 280,000 jobs would be lost through free trade.
As I have requested of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology (Mr. O'Neil) and of this House, I suggest we get all the background material and that we be provided with some information from time to time on what some of those gains might be so we can get a balanced picture from that side of the House, something that has been lacking so far.
Mr. Harris: On behalf of our party, I want to join with the member for Carleton East (Mr. Morin) in welcoming John McGillis and Master Warrant Officer Clarence Jardine, who are here --
Mr. Speaker: Order. We are not in members' statements. That was a member's statement.
Mr. Foulds: This week the Premier (Mr. Peterson) said with regard to free trade negotiations that all the facts must be on the table. The facts are clear. The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology reported 280,000 jobs at risk in the free trade negotiations. The report of the Treasurer indicates 56,000 additional jobs at risk because of these negotiations.
The Premier admitted his government began to study the effects of free trade on agriculture and food in this province just this week, and the study will not be completed for several months. I say to the Premier and to the Treasurer, do not go quietly into that dark night, because they are going into shark-infested waters in Ottawa. They cannot preside over the dismantlement and the dismembering of Ontario's jobs and Ontario's economy.
ONTARIO STOCK YARDS
Hon. Mr. Riddell: I am sure my statement will touch the senses of each and every member of this Legislature. I am pleased to report that the review of the Ontario Stock Yards conducted by John Kruger, special adviser to the Premier (Mr. Peterson), and Don Dunn of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, is complete.
The purpose of the review was to determine options and recommendations on the role of the Ontario Stock Yards facilities in meeting future needs for livestock marketing. The review explored various options, such as privatization, relocation or closing of the stockyards. All businesses, organizations and individuals with an interest in the stockyards were encouraged to voice their opinions.
On the basis of this extensive consultation, the government has decided to maintain the 37 acres of livestock marketing facilities and services at the 590 Keele Street location. The stockyards will continue to operate as a government agency, but a number of operational changes are planned.
For example, we will be amending the Ontario Stock Yards Act to clarify the Ontario Stock Yards board's responsibilities and provincial ownership of the stockyards' property. We will also amend the Ontario Live Stock Community Sales Act to license and regulate commission firms operating from the Ontario stock yards on a similar basis as all other livestock community sale operators in Ontario.
The Ontario Stock Yards board will be asked to develop a five-year financial business plan and to submit annual budget forecasts to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. These will include plans for necessary capital improvements and a property management plan to address property requirements and sale or lease of surplus land. A revenue recovery system, based on a combination of fixed overhead charges to each commission agent and a per head charge for livestock sold, will be developed in consultation with the commission firms.
As recommended, the Ontario government will discuss with the city of Toronto payment of property taxes in the future.
The 590 Keele Street office building will be maintained because of its importance to the tenants operating from the stockyards and the livestock industry organizations.
The status and role of the stock yards will be reviewed again in 1991.
I am very pleased with the findings and recommendations, which reflect the views of many livestock industry businesses and organizations that were consulted during the review. I would add that the city of Toronto has recommended maintaining the stockyards in its present location.
Although the percentage of the Ontario livestock sales through the stockyards has declined in recent years, the facility continues to provide an important marketing service for livestock producers and buyers. In 1984, the four commission firms at the stockyards sold more than 500,000 head of cattle, calves, sheep and lambs. This represented some 31 per cent of Ontario's calf and cattle sales and 50 per cent of the sheep and lambs. In addition, the yards handled 81,000 feeder cattle transported by rail, and 180,000 hogs were shipped through the Ontario Pork Producers' Marketing Board's assembly facilities at the stockyards.
Ontario Stock Yards Board chairman Ross Beattie, other board members and general manager Doug McDonnell provided valuable input to this review. I look forward to working with them on the future management and operation of the Ontario Stock Yards.
Mr. Shymko: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of privilege. I think it is an affront to all members of this Legislature that this information was leaked to a weekly tabloid in Toronto's west end, which published a front-page article outlining all the details of this report before the elected members of this Legislature received any information.
The action of the minister in providing that information as a priority to the editor of a tabloid as being more important than the elected members of this province is a subversion, usurpation and abuse of the privileges of the members of this House.
Mr. Rae: Not only does the member for High Park-Swansea have a point with respect to the leak, but I think the Toronto Star does as well, because it has leaked everything else so far. It is a pity it did not get this story as well.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The member rose on a point of privilege. As I have stated on previous occasions, I cannot see this as a point of privilege or a point of order. However, it may be a point of courtesy; I do not know. I ask the honourable member to take his seat while the Speaker is on his feet. Thank you. Therefore, it is not a point of order or a point of privilege.
Mr. Shymko: I want to point out that once again all the members' sentiments have been touched by the leak of that information. Notwithstanding this, the statement that there had been extensive consultation is a lot of bull, if I may use a pun. It is a total sham. The unionized workers have not been consulted, nor have the ratepayers of the area or the elected municipal and provincial members, not to speak of federal members. This follows the Kelljair report, which seriously wanted to look at the option of relocation. There is no reference to a serious study.
I am seriously concerned that the minister has not referred to the fact that the city of Toronto has not been paid millions of dollars of taxes by the Ontario Stock Yards. I want to know whether that same excuse for millions of dollars not paid would be given to the average taxpayer.
According to the leaked information, some land is to be given freely to the city of Toronto. I wonder whether the mystery refers to the fact that this is a way of avoiding the payment of these taxes. There is no reference. According to the leak, that was one of the contemplated suggestions of giving land to the city of Toronto.
I believe the whole report is a sham. It is a half report and a lot of facts have been hidden by this minister.
Mr. Rae: It is my happy task to comment on the statements about the courts and the stockyards. After listening to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in the last couple of weeks, I find the difference between those two to be diminishing somewhat.
With respect to the report on the stockyards, it would perhaps have been appropriate if the minister had chosen to make his statement with respect to the future of the stockyards on a day like today, when the air is fairly close, standing at the corner of Keele Street and St. Clair Avenue, which is on the border of my constituency, and talk to the neighbourhood.
I am not in favour of moving the stockyards, but I am also deeply concerned, as I think he should be. I am glad to see his colleague the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) here as well. I invite both of them to come down with me on the St. Clair streetcar, stand at that corner and talk with the neighbours about the smell.
It is a problem. There is a problem of pollution. It is particularly strong in the summer and it is particularly real in the summer. It affects the areas to the north, the south, the east and the west. They are working class neighbourhoods with people who have been there for 20, 30 or 40 years, and they are very concerned about the quality of the air they breathe.
The minister would have been wise to have combined his statement today with some assurances with respect to environmental changes that might do something about the fact that we have a very large facility, plus Canada Packers, in the middle of a residential area, and that does have an impact on the quality of the environment.
DISASTER RELIEF
Hon. Mr. Grandmaître: Late in the afternoon of Friday, May 31, 1985, several tornadoes swept through central Ontario, causing extensive damage in some 30 municipalities. The village of Grand Valley and the city of Barrie were the hardest hit. A dozen people were killed and hundreds more were injured. Many more were left homeless.
On this anniversary, I would like to tell the House that during these 12 months the vast majority of people who suffered loss of one kind or another have rebuilt their lives and are putting this tragedy behind them. Some, because of trauma and loss, will never be able to recover fully, and I know every member of this House has deep sympathy for their personal plight, especially where family members were killed.
There is no adequate recompense for the loss of life, and I will not pretend that any type of relief program can compensate for that. However, I can say Ontario has the best relief program in North America. The goal of the Ontario relief assistance program is to assure that victims of disaster can begin to rebuild their lives without starting from scratch. Through this program, we have provided adequate money, and the majority of victims are satisfied with the way the program assisted them. The goals of this program have been met.
I am proud to live in this province, in which the time, effort and energies of volunteers and the overwhelming contribution of the general public poured forth in such a time of need. Looking back, I believe the shining examples of community volunteers, including the Red Cross, the Mennonites and many other groups and individuals, inspired all those involved in relief efforts. As this is a time of reflection, we can all Team from looking at what we can do as communities and individuals to secure as best we can our lives and property should disaster strike again.
As individuals, we must have insurance for property. It is essential. No relief program is intended to be a substitute for adequate insurance coverage, nor can it relieve an individual from responsibility to ensure adequate coverage. As communities, we can learn from those municipalities that had working and practised emergency plans in place when disaster struck.
The province is not exempt from learning from the events of last year. As I have said, the Ontario disaster relief assistance program is the most generous relief program I know of. As I told this House a few weeks ago, a major review of the program is being undertaken by Woods Gordon Management Consultants. If we can make the program better, we will.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that the government has been accused of not living up to its commitment to help the victims of the disaster of May 31, 1985. Many promises were made in the few days immediately following the storm. They were made by politicians who sincerely believed total damage costs would exceed $150 million. As it turned out, most victims were adequately insured and the province was not called upon to provide as much assistance as had been estimated. Had greater financial assistance been required, the province would have given it.
As well, as I said earlier, the level of generosity of the people of this province and this country was spontaneous and heart-warming. Their contributions covered more than three quarters of the financial assistance required to get these people back on their feet. The settlements that people received ranged from $23 to $629,000. The average settlement was $20,300. The total funds that went to our residents in central Ontario from the Central Ontario Disaster Relief Committee were $12.6 million, of which $9.5 million was contributed by the public.
If there are heroes of this tragedy, they must be those people who volunteered their efforts and money when the going got tough for their neighbours. The government salutes these people.
Mr. Breaugh: I will reply very briefly to the statement of the Minister of Municipal Affairs on the disaster relief fund. I wish I could report to the minister that everyone in Ontario thinks this fund is as great as he does, but that is not the case.
Let me make one suggestion to him. I was designated as this party's appointee to an all-party committee. It was one of the less arduous tasks I have had here. The committeenever met, nor was there ever any communication.
I suggest to the minister it would be a step forward if an attempt were made to remove partisan politics from such things as disaster relief. I do not think it sits very well on any government when it attempts to play some kind of political process around a disaster. I think an all-party committee would serve him well, and I recommend very highly that he do that.
SINGLE-INDUSTRY COMMUNITIES
Mr. Speaker: I would remind the minister that under the new standing orders there are only two and a half minutes left.
Hon. Mr. Fontaine: I want to advise the members that the advisory committee I established to examine the north's resource-dependent communities has completed its report and presented it to me this week. I will be releasing the report to the members and the public this Monday, June 2.
Mr. Wildman: I join with the Minister of Northern Development and Mines in congratulating the chairman of the Committee on Resource-Dependent Communities, Dr. Bob Rosehart, the other members of the committee and the staff for the work they did in preparing the report. In view of the time frame and of the complexity of the issues, this was a very difficult task, but an important and stimulating one.
Unless the government responds specifically to each of the recommendations of that report, then those efforts will prove a waste of time and money. I urge the minister to give a specific response to each of the recommendations and not to leave it sitting on the shelf, as has happened with the Fahlgren report.
BISHOP TUTU'S VISIT
Mr. Gillies: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker: I feel my privileges and the privileges of other members have been seriously breached, regarding the visit tomorrow by Bishop Desmond Tutu to the special session of the Legislature.
I put this point to you. My understanding as a member was that all three parties had agreed very happily to a special legislative session tomorrow and to the bishop's address. In that regard, we expected that invitations to guests to the event would have gone from you on behalf of all the members of the Legislature. Instead, we note the invitations have been distributed under the invitation of the Premier on behalf of the government. We do not feel that is appropriate.
We are concerned about the politicization by this government of what should be a nonpartisan event, which was supported happily by all members of this assembly.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: I cannot see that there is anything unduly partisan in the head of the government inviting citizens to attend a special meeting in which the bishop will be addressing the Legislature. I assure the honourable member that the tickets were distributed to all sides on a fair and equitable basis. We expect a big crowd to be here, and I think it will be a great event.
Mr. Speaker: On that point of information, all I can say is that it was on a motion passed by this House that the special session be held tomorrow.
2:47 p.m.
ORAL QUESTIONS
EXTRA BILLING
Mr. Grossman: My question is for the Premier. Can the Premier indicate whether his government indicated to the Ontario Medical Association at any time that extra billing might be allowed in some circumstances?
Hon. Mr. Peterson: I am going to refer the question to the Minister of Health (Mr. Elston), who attended all of the meetings. I did not, obviously, and a wide range of things were discussed.
Hon. Mr. Elston: There was a broad range of discussions with respect to options that might be available to meet the requirements of the OMA that it have some independent means to ensure that the government would be responsive to negotiating with it in good faith. We did discuss briefly the question of what was reported as the window. We also discussed other things such as binding arbitration or continuation of the Joint Committee on Physicians' Compensation. We discussed a number of options in those meetings which, as the honourable member knows, took place over a considerable length of time.
Mr. Grossman: I put it to the Minister of Health that he has said in this House consistently -- and I have all the times he said them -- such things as: "No person in this province will be asked to pay more than the Ontario health insurance plan schedule." "The government believes that this principle is fundamental and cannot be compromised." "We will not and cannot consider a manner in which patients' rights will be bartered away in exchange for the relief of some patients. We have committed ourselves to ending extra billing in this jurisdiction."
My question to the minister is this. He has a situation today where doctors are withholding services and there are problems all over the health care system. It is all because of this kind of unbending, unyielding attitude. Today we discover that options to extra bill under some circumstances have been made available to the OMA.
I invite the minister to tell us this afternoon, not what options were discussed, but whether he put forward an option or an offer, having discussed it with the federal government, to allow the doctors to extra bill under certain circumstances.
Hon. Mr. Elston: I indicated before that we discussed a number of options, all of which were rejected. The honourable member does not quite understand what discussions and negotiations are about. Obviously, he does not understand that one talks about a number of opportunities that might be available for us to provide an answer to the request of the OMA. I can tell this House that everything was flatly, outrightly rejected. The honourable member has asked that question. It was discussed and rejected.
Mr. Grossman: The minister can run, but he is not going to be able to hide on this issue. This is too fundamental an issue around this province.
We know now from the newspapers that this option was discussed. Just as we found out about his amendments by reading the newspapers, we found out what the minister said at the negotiating table by reading the newspapers. We know it was discussed. The public of this province, suffering today with job actions and strikes, wants to know, did the minister make an offer to the OMA to allow doctors to extra bill under certain circumstances?
Hon. Mr. Elston: The offer of this government to the OMA has been that we will work to put together an Ontario solution to end extra billing. We made an offer to those people to discuss in a reasonable and rational manner a mechanism by which --
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Order. New question.
COURTHOUSES
Mr. O'Connor: I come back to a matter I raised with the Attorney General a couple of days ago with regard to courthouse facilities, particularly in St. Thomas. The Attorney General will be aware that a situation exists there whereby victims, witnesses and accused are forced to occupy a 15-foot by 15-foot room. It is the only place in the building where they can sit while awaiting a trial.
Is the Attorney General aware of that situation? Does he find it acceptable? If not, what is he going to do about it?
Hon. Mr. Scott: St. Thomas is no different from a number of other courthouses. The courthouse is owned by the county. The lease is about to come due. We have told the county we are anxious for it to make improvements in the building, and the Ministry of Government Services is looking very carefully at alternative accommodation that will be more suitable for the court than that which the county has been able to provide so far.
We hope an arrangement will be made by the owners, the county, so that we can continue in this historic building. If not, I have it from the ministry that appropriate solutions will be obtained to find an adequate courthouse in the private sector.
Mr. O'Connor: Putting aside entirely the overall problem of the inadequate courthouse, what is the Attorney General going to do about the problem I related to him; that is, the problem today of victims and the accused occupying the same room, where the accused has the opportunity to intimidate the victim, there is no police protection and fist fights have broken out? Will he look into providing additional accommodation to separate those two groups while waiting for a trial?
Hon. Mr. Scott: In the first place, I do not accept that the conditions my honourable friend has described occur with any regularity. It is undoubtedly true that people who come to a court frequently wait in the waiting room outside the court. People who come to a court include witnesses or victims, as my friend puts it, and the accused, who is out on bail. That has been the situation in Ontario all my life. If it should happen that a witness called by the crown requires to be isolated because of the unpleasantness of waiting in a public waiting room, arrangements can and have been made and will be made in future as required.
Mr. O'Connor: This morning I spoke to a crown attorney and a sheriff of the judicial district of Elgin, who confirmed that exactly this situation happens frequently. There is no other place for these people to go.
Is the Attorney General aware that in that same building there are no fire escapes, no fire alarms, no sprinklers and no smoke detectors? Will the Attorney General be more specific in ensuring improvements? Will he please ensure that the victims are safe while they are awaiting trial? To assist him in this regard, I offer him this smoke detector, a cheap way of ensuring some safety for those victims.
Hon. Mr. Scott: This business of handing me a smoke detector is not very appropriate.
As my friend who is a practising lawyer knows, outside every courtroom in Ontario is a waiting room. The people who come to courts in Ontario have the opportunity to wait for their case to be called either inside the courtroom or in the waiting room outside the courtroom. If they choose to wait in either place, they may run into people who will be witnesses in their own case, or may be the accused on bail in their own case or the witnesses or accused in other cases. That happens in every courtroom in Ontario and has always happened.
There are cases where it is an important matter that witnesses who are victims should have special facilities, special isolation to protect them from embarrassment or harm. In all cases where that is required in the judgement of the crown attorney or the police or where the victim requests it, it has been and will continue to be provided.
ELECTRIC SHOCK THERAPY
Mr. R. F. Johnston: My question is for the Minister of Community and Social Services. Last week I raised questions with him about the use of electric prods in institutions for the developmentally handicapped across the province. He indicated at that time there were only two facilities using them, and he thought they were being reduced. I now find out they are being used in another facility. The Midwestern Regional Centre has acquired a cattle prod. One person is actively being treated with this, a transferee from Bluewater under the other regime's program. The other person is being maintained with it, they say. All they have to do is show it to her and she responds.
Does the minister not think it would be appropriate to have a moratorium on the use of this equipment until he makes his decision about whether it is acceptable for use in Ontario?
Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I will investigate the specific reference the honourable member has just made. I remind the member that this procedure is used as an absolute last resort and for a very short period of time. If it does not produce the results, it is not used. There is a review going on at present, and I will take under consideration what the member has suggested.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: I want to inform the minister that the Midwestern Regional Centre purchased this equipment from the United Co-op store in the local community for $60. Yesterday my assistant went out to try to buy one, found one for $38 and could not believe that the bigger $60 unit was being used. That prod is at least two to three feet long. We purchased this little one here, which I have tried, and it hurts a great deal. It says on it: "For the use of animals. Keep out of the reach of children." Obviously, it is not out of the reach of patients in Ontario. It has two nine-volt batteries in it. It is not medically developed equipment. It is for use for large domestic animals.
Mr. Speaker: Supplementary?
Mr. R. F. Johnston: Does the minister not think he should be providing adequate support to deal with these people humanely instead of treating them with this kind of equipment, which has not even been medically tested in Ontario?
Hon. Mr. Sweeney: In the majority of our facilities it is not used. I indicated two, and the honourable member has discovered a third one. That is an indication that alternative methods of dealing with the situation are being found and are being used. That is the whole thrust of the review and the report that is being prepared right now to see whether there is any need for it.
I draw to the member's attention that this piece of equipment is not used on any resident except when it is used first by the person who is going to administer it to be sure it is not unduly excessive.
3 p.m.
Mr. R. F. Johnston: These things are not adjustable; they have only one voltage regulation. The D'Arcy Place workers have it in their contract that they do not have to use it on themselves because it is so excessive. Let us be clear that it is not used by each worker before it is done. In one facility it is true that is the case.
There is a presumption of therapeutic value in what the minister is talking about. I want to raise with him the case of somebody in a Woodstock facility who was very self-abusive. They did not have the staff to deal with him appropriately. In a last desperate move they sent him to Cedar Springs. After two months of this kind of shock therapy, the person came back in almost vegetable fashion. When he finally realized he was not going to be prodded any more, he became very violent with the staff. He has gone back again.
Does the minister not realize the terribly oppressive message we are sending to these very vulnerable people instead of providing them with a humane loving community that would maximize their potential and not demean them?
Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The difficulty that our staff and professional people have in some of our facilities is that the alternatives are not very humane either. There is no doubt that one can keep a person tranquillized through medication, physically restrained by using a straitjacket or locked up in a room all by himself. None of these procedures has any behavioural change effect. They do not change anyone.
The only reason this process is attempted, and it is strictly an attempt over a short period of time, is to see whether it can produce any change that will allow the person to be more independent and autonomous. It works for some people; it does not work for others. That is the whole purpose of the review.
EXTRA BILLING
Mr. Rae: I want to ask a question of the Minister of Health. Can the minister tell us how many elective surgeries are being cancelled over the next two days? He must have a reporting mechanism that will tell him that. He must have a reporting mechanism that will tell him how many children who were going to have elective surgery have had the surgery cancelled. Can he tell us how any cancellations might relate to the possible investigation of cancer? He must have information on that directly from the hospitals involved.
Hon. Mr. Elston: We will be getting that information. In fact, some initial contacts were made around noon hour today; the information was not available for me to bring to the House. On Monday, I will provide the information by way of a statement to let the individuals here in the House know exactly what has transpired. It is my understanding from a report in the papers that these surgery cases are to be rescheduled over the next two weeks.
Mr. Rae: On April 1, 1982, the then Minister of Health, who has since gone on to different things, stated that "there is a legal requirement for hospitals to use committees if they are to retain their accreditation or teaching capacity." He went on to say, "I do not believe that hospitals can ensure patient care without the participation of physicians on these committees, and I do not expect many doctors can boycott them."
The minister will be aware that similarly as it did in 1982, the Ontario Medical Association has suggested and urged that its members withdraw systematically from membership on committees, which the minister will know has very important legal and practical consequences in terms of patient care. Can the minister tell us precisely what steps he is taking to ensure the continuity and maintenance of the standard of care of patients in this province when doctors are systematically being told by their association to withdraw from the committees?
Hon. Mr. Elston: I regret that the OMA has seen fit to place itself as a barricade or blockade between the physicians and their patients by suggesting that this type of action should be carried on. I do not think it is appropriate, but the suggestions have been made and the advice given. Regrettably, it has even been encouraged by some members of this Legislature.
In any event, I can tell the honourable members that where we are aware of the facts coming to light that there is a wide dissociation from committees, we will move to help any hospital that finds itself in need. We have mechanisms by which we can follow up on those happenings.
If the honourable leader of the third party will provide me with the information of the events, I will take the necessary steps to ensure there is a way of monitoring the patient care inside those facilities. I hope he will provide me with information as soon as he gets it, although I can tell him that my area planning people from the institutional branch are monitoring all hospitals today and tomorrow.
Mr. Rae: I have not been able to get hold of the original letter from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario that was written on April 29, 1982, but I can tell the minister there is a quote in the May 4, 1982, edition of the Toronto Star which clearly excerpts from that letter. I ask the minister why, in his view, a similar position has not been taken by the college and has not yet been taken by his ministry? The letter said:
"Further disruptions of longer duration would have serious implications for the health and welfare of those who need medical attention. Appropriate investigations have been made, and on the basis of information we are satisfied that essential services have been maintained, but we are concerned that further disruptions of longer duration would have serious implications for the health and welfare of those who need medical attention."
Can the minister tell us why the college is not issuing a similar letter if there is evidence with respect to the discontinuity of care?
Hon. Mr. Elston: What each of us will do is carry out the function that is mandated through legislation. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario has indicated voluntarily to me by correspondence that it will carry out its public role of protecting the public interest and ensuring there is good-quality care of patients in institutions as well as those out of institutions. It is prepared to move when that situation is brought to its attention.
The college has also set up a hotline so people will be able to access its offices quickly in cases of need for information. In addition, my ministry has lines available to ensure that patient care is provided.
Representatives of the college have been to see me, and we have spoken on more than one occasion. They have indicated quite clearly to me that they will carry out their role of protecting the patients' interests.
Mr. Grossman: The yellow and cynical attempt of the Minister of Health to blame others for the strike he has on his hands because of the disgraceful treatment his government has afforded the OMA in the negotiations will not wash and will not be tolerated.
Mr. Speaker: New question?
Mr. Grossman: The minister has indicated, after weeks of us asking the government House leader where the minister's amendments are to Bill 94, that he may have the amendments for us this afternoon. Unless this party has his amendments to Bill 94 this afternoon, he will not get supply in this House today. We have been waiting long enough for those amendments. He has shared them with the media; he has shared them elsewhere --
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
3:10 p.m.
Hon. Mr. Elston: My colleague has risen to new heights, I think. I can tell the honourable gentleman opposite that we have draft amendments, which we have been working on and which we have been refining. I communicated that to the member, and I can tell both him and the rest of the people in this House that the amendments are being made available in their present form.
In fact, before the member for Lincoln (Mr. Andrewes) was able to arrive in the House, I sent a note over asking whether he was going to be here today. I said I would share those things with him today. I gave a previous draft to my colleague the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. D. S. Cooke); I did not give it to the Toronto Star. The form of the amendment has yet to be finalized, but I told the Health critic I would provide it to him today. It will be there today.
Mr. Grossman: I remind the minister that this bill was originally scheduled for today; it was listed in the Orders and Notices paper for today. When time permits, the procedures invite amendments to be filed within two hours before consideration of the bill. The committee hearings finished a month ago. The bill was introduced five months ago. The minister has been trying to push this on for some time, and he is expecting reasonable discussion and passage in the next few weeks.
Given all that, why did the minister go through the step of telling the media, and through the media the public, his interpretation of the amendments he would like to try, sharing with them the details of his amendments, without having the common courtesy, one month after the committee hearings finished, to share them with the Legislature, from which he seeks co-operation?
Hon. Mr. Elston: I accept the offer of the Leader of the Opposition --
Mr. Grossman: We buy the Globe and Star to find out the minister's amendments. It is a disgraceful way to do it.
Mr. Gillies: He treats this House with contempt.
Mr. Grossman: It is contemptible. This strike is the minister's strike. Let us make no mistake about that.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I will wait until the members quieten. Again, you are wasting your time.
Mr. Gillies: You are wasting our time.
Mr. Speaker: I do not mind standing here. Any further comments?
Hon. Mr. Elston: I was going to advise the honourable gentleman that we have worked very hard at coming to a negotiated settlement with respect to this bill, as he knows.
Mr. Grossman: No, we did not know that.
Hon. Mr. Elston: I had very real and visible indications that we were getting close to a negotiated solution to this thing.
Mr. Grossman: He did not. He never did. He should not mislead the public.
Mr. Speaker: Order. Once again, I will remind the members that interjections are out of order.
Mr. Rae: The Health Disciplines Act states, among other things, not only that it is an act covering professional misconduct having to do with the contravention of bylaws of the hospital but also that there is a question of professional conduct with regard to failing to carry out the terms of an agreement or contract with the hospital.
Is it the minister's understanding that there is a social contract that in exchange for admitting privileges and a professional association with a public hospital, a member of the medical profession has a social contractual obligation to serve on the general work of hospitals and in particular on the committees of hospitals?
If that is his view, we are still in the dark as to how he intends to enforce the act and how he intends to take steps to ensure that the work of hospitals and the care of patients is not disrupted ad infinitum by the actions being taken today.
Hon. Mr. Elston: I think I have asked the honourable gentleman before to provide me with the details of the situations about which he has first-hand information and said we will provide our assistance in remedying those situations.
In relation to running the public hospitals, that falls within the mandate of the boards of trustees of those communities. They do their jobs, fulfil their responsibilities and look after the administration of their bylaws and protocols in their facilities the best way they can.
In addition, there is always the role of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario when it is advised of problems developing at the local level. They have indicated, as have the hospitals, that they will keep us informed. My area planning people in institutional health are monitoring the situation, and if action is required, the college has indicated voluntarily through correspondence that it is ready and willing to make its efforts available to support the provision of health care.
Mr. Rae: The minister is giving us exactly the same answers -- he can go back to the 1982 Hansards and see it -- as the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Grossman) gave the House in 1982, when he was Minister of Health. I would have thought he might have come up with something a little different.
What guidance is the minister giving to hospitals and to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario with respect to the specific decision by physicians to cancel elective surgery in cases where it may have been scheduled for many weeks or even months in advance and their refusal to serve on committees which by tradition, and I would say by social contract, they have been serving on for a good many years?
Hon. Mr. Elston: I have not given specific advice to the college. As the honourable gentleman knows, it is independent of the government. I am not in a position to advise it with respect to enforcing its mandate of ensuring the public interest.
With respect to the hospital boards, they have an independent role to play; they are at arm's length, although we fund those institutions. They, with the operation of their executive and administrators, will determine what action is required to ensure that the people who are serving in their hospitals are not jeopardizing patient care.
Mr. Grossman: I have a question for the Minister of Health. In response to an earlier question, the minister tried to evade answering by suggesting there were options on the table for periodic extra billing or for extra billing in certain circumstances. He said the Ontario Medical Association rejected that offer. If the OMA rejected the offer, is it not fair for the public and this House to presume that the minister made the offer, since he was the only other party at the table?
Hon. Mr. Elston: The offer was that we would look at forms of providing the OMA and its members with an independent way of ensuring that we would bargain in good faith and that there would be an independent forum so it could have its advances or whatever proposals administered fairly.
Under that proposal, several items were discussed. There was the concept of the Joint Committee on Physicians' Compensation, which we talked about earlier and which the OMA brought before the committee as something it felt had worked reasonably well. We mentioned the binding arbitration route, and there were brief discussions with respect to that option, which have been reported by one of the daily papers here in the city.
Mr. Grossman: The minister can run, but he is not going to hide on it. I want to quote him. The minister said, "That was one of the options that was discussed with us." Who put the option of being allowed to extra bill on some occasions on the table? Was it the OMA or the government? It can only be one of two.
Hon. Mr. Elston: That option was raised on various occasions by both parties. We discussed it, and we were party to those negotiations. We worked with those people and had real indications that there might be some acceptable discussions taking place. We talked about that option, along with binding arbitration and other things. The member will understand that during negotiations there is a wide discussion of the opportunities available for coming to a negotiated settlement.
ACCESS TO ABORTION COMMITTEES
Ms. Gigantes: My question is to the minister responsible for women's issues. I wish to emphasize it is not to the Attorney General but to the minister responsible for women's issues.
The minister must be aware that the question of equitable and timely access to abortion service is a women's issue. I ask him to put aside his role as Attorney General for a moment and tell us what he is doing, as minister responsible for women's issues, to ensure that the Liberal government meets its leader's promises of equitable and timely access to abortion service for women in Ontario.
Hon. Mr. Scott: What I am doing is what I did yesterday, referring the question to the Minister of Health because it is a health matter.
Mr. Speaker: I understand the question has been referred to the Minister of Health.
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Order. It is too bad other members will not have the opportunity to ask questions today.
3:20 p.m.
Hon. Mr. Elston: As I indicated yesterday following a similar question --
Interjections.
Hon. Mr. Elston: Mr. Speaker, I will sit down.
Mr. Speaker: Supplementary to the Minister of Health.
Ms. Gigantes: Does the Minister of Health not feel, as I do, that the minister responsible for women's issues is playing a contradictory role, in which he seems to prefer to be the Attorney General rather than the minister responsible for women's issues on this matter'? Does the Minister of Health not think, as I and many of the women of Ontario think, it is time the Attorney General resigned his job as the minister responsible for women's issues if he does not want to carry out that responsibility?
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I have to rule that question was directed incorrectly. It is not the Minister of Health's responsibility which ministers are appointed.
Ms. Gigantes: I was not questioning the appointment; I was asking his opinion.
Mr. Speaker: You can ask questions regarding his responsibilities.
Mr. McClellan: The member has asked a clear question. You are not obliged to bail the minister out of it.
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Order. Naturally, I cannot make any response to such a comment. I have ruled the question of the member for Ottawa Centre (Ms. Gigantes) out of order. This is question period. There is nothing out of order as far as that goes. New question.
ROMAN CATHOLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS
Mr. Davis: I have a question for the Minister of Education. Does he believe the Constitution of Canada grants the separate school system the right to discriminate in hiring at the secondary school level?
Hon. Mr. Conway: Let me say at the outset that I am disappointed, because in 11 years of knowing the Leader of the Opposition, I have never seen such an incredible display of bad manners.
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Hon. Mr. Conway: This is on a day when his very distinguished father is in our special visitors' gallery. I know Allan Grossman raised his son in a better tradition than what we have seen here today.
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Gillies: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: We do not have to listen to that garbage.
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The standing orders say this is question time, and questions can be asked.
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Order. Will the minister answer the question?
Hon. Mr. Conway: As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, it is the view of this government, as stated in this House and as argued successfully in the Ontario Court of Appeal, that in Bill 30 we seek in this province to complete a Confederation commitment to complete one system of denominational schools in Ontario that would enjoy one set of consistent and clear constitutional rights and privileges. That is the case we have argued successfully in the Ontario Court of Appeal, and that is the case we submit to this Legislature.
Mr. Davis: I am aware the courts have ruled that the separate school system has a constitutional right to the preferential hiring and employment practice at the elementary level. However, the minister is setting a dangerous precedent by placing in legislation the right to discriminate in hiring practices at the secondary school level. How can the minister condone such action?
Hon. Mr. Conway: With all due respect to my colleague the member for Scarborough Centre, we are not setting a dangerous precedent; rather, we are completing an important and historic journey in the life and history of this province, a journey that was begun in its most recent phase by the very distinguished former member for Brampton and leader of the Progressive Conservative Party some two years ago.
Once again, I invite my colleagues in the official opposition to join the government in the completion of this journey which has presented itself to this 33rd assembly.
RACE RELATIONS
Mr. Grande: My question is for the Attorney General, with regard to the statement that he made in the Legislature yesterday. I want to send him a paper that was presented by Roy McMurtry three years ago. Does the minister not recognize and understand that the debate is over in this province in regard to the principles, goals and the desirability of having harmonious race relations in this province? We are all in agreement that this debate is over.
What specifics can the Attorney General provide to us with respect to programs and laws that will break down the barriers that feed the systemic discrimination in our province? Will the Attorney General stand in his place and tell us that in this session his government will introduce employment equity legislation and will release the data on visible minority youth unemployment, which was ready in 1984 and which the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick did not allow to be released?
Hon. Mr. Scott: I made two points in response to the same question yesterday, which can be summarized as follows.
First, a report was commissioned three or four years ago about race relations in urban housing in Toronto. About 49 recommendations were made in that report. They have been reviewed. As I said yesterday, we have adopted all the principal ones, including 22 which are set out in the race relations statement.
I agree with my friend. The debate has taken place. The report has been made. The principles are decided. The report recommended action; nothing was done about it. On housing, we have done that.
3:30 p.m.
With respect to the report concerning minority women, the previous government funded a convention to receive their views and to have them make a report. They made a report in 1982. The debate is over. The report has been made. Nothing has happened.
We have not adopted all, by any means, but in the statement yesterday we adopted the principal recommendation of that report, which was to set up a consulting mode with the women's directorate and to begin to deal with these issues. What we have been trying to do is to take these old reports, meet the people who made them and say, "Now you have a government that is prepared to respond to these questions and take action."
Mr. Grande: Obviously, the Attorney General does not realize he is returning the debate to 1983 or even before that time. On page 5, the Attorney General states, "I am also pleased to announce that cabinet has agreed to assure that qualified members of racial minorities are fully represented on the government's agencies, boards and commissions."
Does the Attorney General not know that the Minister of Citizenship and Culture (Ms. Munro) has already shot down that idea by stating in reference to the Premier's policy of appointing visible minorities and other members of the multicultural community, based on competence, to all boards, commissions and agencies, "it is recognized that even with overt attempts this is impossible."
What response does the minister have with respect to putting that principle in that statement again when the Minister of Citizenship and Culture said it is impossible to do?
Hon. Mr. Scott: As I have tried to make clear, I do not accept the assumption upon which the question is based. My answer stands as it is.
DAY CARE
Mr. Cousens: This question is of the Minister of Community and Social Services. In spite of the fact that we have not had any answers to any questions today, we will continue to ask questions.
On May 8 the minister told this House his white paper on child care was about to be released soon. To help the minister, the Oxford dictionary defines "soon" as "not long after the present time" or "in a short time."
It is now May 29, 21 days later. Instead of giving a flip answer, how soon will it be before we get this white paper?
Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The answer is still soon, but it is predicated on the obvious fact that we want to be sure we have a package together that meets the needs of the people of this province.
Mr. Cousens: It would be far better if the minister told us he does not know. His paper is probably in the same place as is the paper for the Minister without Portfolio responsible for senior citizens' affairs (Mr. Van Horne), because it just keeps circling around.
Can the minister tell this House how he has allocated the additional $6 million in the budget for child care? Perhaps it is being used for courier service as this paper is being delivered back and forth within the ministry.
Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I can assure the member it is not being used for courier service.
The $6 million, as announced by my colleague the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon), is clearly designed to provide additional spaces. As the member knows, we made a previous commitment to provide 10,000 subsidies. But the member also knows that simply putting the subsidies out there, making them available to parents without having spaces available to which they can apply the subsidies, makes it very difficult. Therefore, the two of them have to go hand in hand.
Right now we are providing the additional subsidies. The $6 million will be used to provide the additional spaces. The two of them go together.
SOUTH AFRICAN INVESTMENTS
Mr. Foulds: I have a question of the Premier. Bishop Tutu will be addressing this assembly tomorrow. The member for York South (Mr. Rae) and my party have raised many issues relating to Ontario's economic involvement with South Africa. The Premier has asked the Treasurer "to investigate where our jurisdiction lies" and to report to him "how wide our reach is in these matters."
Now that the Premier has received the Treasurer's report, what concrete action will this government take that will have a practical effect on events in South Africa and reduce Ontario's economic involvement in South Africa?
Hon. Mr. Peterson: Let me repeat, the policy of this government is to not involve ourselves in the business of South Africa, but to register our disapproval in every way we can. As the member knows, the Treasurer has been investigating a situation with respect to his jurisdiction. I have some information on that. I understand the Ontario municipal employees retirement system board is meeting tomorrow, May 30, and the opinion of this government has been conveyed to it and to other transfer agencies under our jurisdiction.
Mr. Foulds: Words and opinions are easy; actions are what we judge a government and people by. I believe the Premier called on the private sector to make no additional investments in South Africa. Is he prepared to state that those companies that wish to continue to do business with the government of Ontario and that have an involvement in South Africa, companies such as Rio Algom, Moore Corp., Dominion Textile, Bata Ltd. and Ford, must now begin to divest themselves of their South African interests if they wish to continue to do business with the government of Ontario?
Hon. Mr. Peterson: I agree with my honourable friend that actions do speak louder than words. He knows where this government stood when it made the initiatives with respect to the purchase of South African wine.
Mr. Rae: You can still go downtown and buy it.
Hon. Mr. Peterson: I would just say to my honourable friend --
Mr. Foulds: You did not want to take an economic loss yourself.
Hon. Mr. Peterson: He can shout at me if he likes to, but let me just allow him to think through what he has suggested. What are we going to do? Cut off Rio Algom and lay off the people at Denison Mines if we do not do business with them? My friend should think it through and he will realize that he would be the same person jumping up in this House and asking, "Why are all the people laid off at Rio Algom in Elliot Lake?" He cannot have it both ways.
The policy of this government is clear. We have made a strong moral statement, unlike other governments, on this matter.
Mr. Foulds: The policy is clear but the action is weak.
Hon. Mr. Peterson: That is not right. I do not disagree with my honourable friend, but I ask him to think through the responsibility in this matter. I think if he were charged with any responsibility, he would come to the conclusion that what he suggests, frankly, is not only unworkable but also unenforceable and could seriously hurt some of the people he wants to help.
COUNSELLING PROGRAM FOR WIFE ABUSERS
Mr. Baetz: My question is to the Minister of Community and Social Services. The minister may recall that on April 29 I asked him about future Ministry of Community and Social Services funding for New Directions. That is an Ottawa group working on one aspect of a comprehensive program under the Regional Co-ordinating Committee on Wife Assault.
In view of the fact that the minister's reply, to the effect that the decision not to continue funding was one arrived at locally, has now been sharply contradicted by both the New Directions program and the Regional Co-ordinating Committee on Wife Assault, and in view of the fact that committee chairman Joan Gullen requested the minister, in her letter dated May 14, "to set the record straight with your colleagues in the Legislature and Mr. Baetz," is the minister now prepared to admit that his reply of April 29 was incorrect and would he now accede to Joan Gullen's request to set the record straight in this Legislature for all concerned?
3:40 p.m.
Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I believe my reply to the honourable member when the original question was asked was that the advisory committee made the decision. I was incorrect in that. The advisory committee is, as the name suggests, an advisory committee. Let me repeat what I said at that time. The very strong recommendation -- and the strongest part of that recommendation came from the chairman -- was, as just indicated, that New Directions not get that money. The two operators of New Directions are on that advisory committee.
It seemed to the officials in my Ottawa office that if they could not persuade their own colleagues on that committee who were advising us on the distribution of approximately $900,000, then that was not where it should go. That was a strong local recommendation. I will correct the use of the word "decision" for "recommendation."
Mr. Baetz: It appears there is still a very clear and sharp difference between the minister's response to this situation and the local response. I would appreciate it if the minister would look into that.
However, in view of the fact that in all likelihood the problem here is not who said what, but a shortage of funding, will the minister assure us that this very worthwhile program dealing with the incidence and results of wife battering will receive further assistance from his ministry?
Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I point out to the honourable member that in the past year, the Ottawa area got $951,000 -- that is almost $1 million -- for this process. If we look at the distribution of funds across the whole province, I suggest to him that Ottawa got its fair share. Whether there is enough money in the whole package is open to debate, but with respect to Ottawa's general share of that pot, it got a fair share.
The second point I make to the member is that the committee is meeting again at the end of this month. It will again make recommendations to my Ottawa area office and, once again, we will look very carefully at those recommendations and make our decisions accordingly.
HOSPITAL FUNDING
Mr. Morin-Strom: I have a question for the Minister of Health about the recent budget commitment of $850 million for hospital construction over the next five to eight years.
The minister's regional allocation of these funds includes a mere $25 million for northern Ontario, representing only three per cent of the total capital funding of $850 million. Even on a population base, northern Ontario has 10 per cent of the province's population, and in terms of health care needs, I would venture to say it requires even more.
Given the economic difficulties faced by communities such as Sault Ste. Marie and the need to move capital spending ahead in the north, will the minister now increase the allocation of hospital funding in northern Ontario?
Hon. Mr. Elston: The allocation with respect to that phase of the capital plan for hospital construction in Ontario is in addition to the existing programs that are under way. The honourable member will be familiar with the fact that there is an EldCap program, which is also providing additional beds in the northern part of Ontario. Other opportunities are available for the construction of facilities in Wawa and other places where we have provided assistance for upgrading and repairing facilities that need the expenditures. We have commitments to improve those facilities, and the allocations are made on the basis of the commitments, which are well known at the moment. In the second phase of our capital program, we will be taking a more intensive look at how we can modernize the rest of the hospital facilities.
Mr. Morin-Strom: The minister calls it the first phase, but the first phase covers starts over the next five years and completions over the next eight years.
The minister was in Sault Ste. Marie on Tuesday, and I am sure he was briefed on the need to replace that ageing facility, the Plummer Memorial Public Hospital, and the need to construct a central services unit to connect with the General Hospital. The local community and the chamber of commerce have recommended to the government that this major project, which alone represents $60 million, be brought ahead in the government's timetable for improved health care in the Algoma district.
Will the minister now re-examine the timetable for the Plummer hospital project and other major potential projects in northern Ontario and assure us that a fair share of hospital funding will be allocated to the north?
Hon. Mr. Elston: I know of the plans for building the central services in those hospitals in Saint Ste. Marie. It is very difficult to move planning steps ahead significantly. There are steps that have to be taken all the way along in the planning. They are now in the process of making the plans. The two hospitals have submitted to the district health council their plans for sharing those central services and they have received its approval. These came to my ministry in the month of March and we are examining them. We have sent back a couple of points for some clarification.
I can tell the honourable gentleman and the members of his constituency that we have that project under close consideration. In addition, I have indicated to the current chairman of the district health council that I am going to meet with him, the mayor and the administrators of the city of Sault Ste. Marie to deal with it.
TOMATO PASTE IMPORTS
Mr. Mancini: My question is for the Minister of Agriculture and Food, who I am sure is aware of the terrible situation of the Ontario tomato paste industry with goods stockpiled and unable to be sold because of cheap imports from Europe. Has the minister made representation to his counterpart in Ottawa as to what action the government of Canada is willing to take to prevent these cheap imports from coming into Ontario?
Hon. Mr. Riddell: When the federal government first indicated that it might provide some financial assistance to the Southern Ontario Tomato Co-operative and asked the Ontario government to share in that program, I made a special trip to Ottawa. I spoke to my counterpart and asked him whether he was prepared to limit the amount of tomato paste coming into this country if he was going to support another endeavour that would increase production of tomatoes, particularly in the part of the country where tobacco has been grown and now is being --
Mr. Andrewes: That is an interesting condition. The minister did not ask that condition a year ago.
Hon. Mr. Riddell: The reduction in tobacco is quite drastic, as we all know. I have spoken to my counterpart and asked him to do all in his power to limit the amount of tomato paste coming into this country.
Mr. Mancini: The minister is well aware that under the programs of the previous government large amounts of money were given to different industries to expand the tomato paste industry. Is the minister going to keep a close eye on the production levels of these industries so that farmers who have made tremendous investments will not be harmed?
Hon. Mr. Riddell: Yes, we will be keeping an eye on that and doing everything in our power to see that we retain our present production or even increase it. However, we have to have the support of the federal government to limit the amount of tomato paste coming into this country. If we can restrict the amount of paste coming in, there is no question but that there will be all kinds of opportunity for extra production of tomatoes in Ontario.
PETITIONS
EXTRA BILLING
Mr. Jackson: I have several thousand signatures from Burlington and area constituents who are petitioning the government as follows:
"We strongly oppose the unilateral actions of the Liberal government of Ontario, which have created an atmosphere of adversarial confrontation with the health care providers of this province.
"We deplore the disruption of our world-renowned system of private and public health care by the imposition of a state-controlled health care system.
"We, therefore, respectfully petition the government of Ontario to begin immediate and meaningful consultation with the health care providers of this province in a manner that will sustain the quality and excellence of health care for the people of Ontario."
ROMAN CATHOLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS
Mr. Davis: I have a petition to the Lieutenant Governor signed by 1,258 residents of Scarborough:
"We, the undersigned beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario as follows:
"Whereas we are convinced of the value of a strong public education system, and believe that this system will be damaged if Bill 30 is implemented, we petition the Legislature of Ontario to withdraw plans to extend funding to Roman Catholic separate secondary schools."
3:50 p.m.
REPORT BY COMMITTEE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC AFFAIRS
Mr. D. R. Cooke from the select committee on economic affairs presented the following report and moved its adoption:
Your committee recommends that the deadline for the tabling of its final report be extended to October 15, 1986.
Mr. D. R. Cooke: Briefly, this report is the result of a motion passed in committee this morning because some difficulties in scheduling committee time have occurred since last November. I have brought this problem to the attention of the House leaders, whose meeting occurred this morning. I am involved in active discussion with the House leaders and I expect that the matter is going to be resolved.
On motion by Mr. D. R. Cooke, the debate was adjourned.
MOTION
PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS
Hon. Mr. Nixon moved that Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Harris exchange places in the order of precedence for private members' public business.
Motion agreed to.
INTRODUCTION OF BILLS
ARBOUR DAY ACT
Mr. Laughren moved first reading of Bill 47, An Act proclaiming Arbour Day.
Motion agreed to.
Mr. Laughren: In order to put the fears of my colleagues to rest, this is not a bill that would nationalize all the trees in the province. Rather, it would require each local municipality to designate a day in May as Arbour Day.
MYLAKE MINES LIMITED ACT
Mr. Harris moved first reading of Bill Pr19, An Act to revive Mylake Mines Limited.
Motion agreed to.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
INTERIM SUPPLY
Hon. Mr. Nixon moved resolution 4:
That the Treasurer of Ontario be authorized to pay the salaries of the civil servants and the necessary payments pending the voting of supply for the period commencing June 1, 1986, and ending June 30, 1986, such payments to be charged to the proper appropriation following the voting of supply.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: This is a routine motion. Because of a variety of events and the rather late beginning of the session, the bills of the province have been paid by special warrants and that money is still current. Obviously, with the Legislature in session, continuing with special warrants is totally inappropriate.
The motion for interim supply has been in Orders and Notices for a number of days. While I considered asking the House to give interim supply for the next five months, I thought it more appropriate to follow the traditional period and ask for just one month, ending at the end of June. The House will be in session at that time and interim supply can be asked for again for a period through the summer months.
The motion covering June 1 to June 30 will be for approximately $2.4 billion. For those who will be participating in the debate, it may be interesting to note that without the motion, transfer payments, including payments to hospitals, doctors, municipalities, family benefits recipients, suppliers accounts and civil servants' salaries, cannot be paid. It is also interesting to note for students of the arcane that statutory payments can be made. These include interest on the public debt -- thank heavens, the most significant item in terms of dollars -- pension payments, loans to the Ontario Development Corp. and all payments from trust accounts.
The process is well known. Following the budget, the estimates of expenditures were tabled by my colleague the Chairman of Management Board of Cabinet (Ms. Caplan). The House leaders are in the process of distributing the estimates to the various committees for review in the time available to the committees between now and whenever their work is completed. It has often been a subject of criticism as far as governments are concerned that the money is spent before the supply bill is passed. Yet we know that in our process the supply bill is usually the last item put before the Legislature before adjournment and often at that stage a large percentage of the total budget has already been used up in paying for the day-to-day operation of the government and its various responsibilities.
For that reason, interim supply is required. I hope the House will give a reasonable and speedy passage to the motion. For your interest, Mr. Speaker, payments of approximately $80 million for the Ontario health insurance plan will be due within the next few days, an additional $80 million for post-secondary education, $130 million for general legislative grants to school boards and $200 million will be payable in the early days of June for hospital maintenance.
Naturally, I am prepared to listen and to respond to any comments made by the honourable members. I will not recall to everybody's attention what is obvious, that we have been discussing these general matters, financial and otherwise, since the House resumed five weeks ago. There has been ample opportunity for the discussion of these matters. I look forward to hearing the comments of the members at this time.
The Deputy Speaker: Are there any questions or comments?
Miss Stephenson: I rise to participate in the debate --
The Deputy Speaker: No. Are there any questions or comments? There being none, the member for York Mills.
Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, will you clarify for me in the situation of the introduction of a motion such as that provided by the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon) whether is it true that the new rules provide for questions or comments after the introduction? Do we not go directly into debate about the statement?
The Deputy Speaker: Yes, I understand they do.
Miss Stephenson: I am sorry. I did not realize that.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: Presumably, the member is going to be making some comments.
Miss Stephenson: I anticipate the participation of most members will be related to comments regarding the expenditure process and the estimates booklets which have been received by members.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: The chairman of the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly is thinking about this.
4 p.m.
Miss Stephenson: Seriously. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As the Treasurer has stated very clearly, the urgency of the completion of this debate could have been obviated totally had the Treasurer introduced his motion for interim supply earlier. I have been in this House for close to 11 years now, a much shorter time than that enjoyed by the current Treasurer, who has been around here for ever, if that is the appropriate measure of time to use. In the nearly 11 years I have been here, I have never experienced the use of special warrants at the level at which they were used this year by this government and for an extended period of time even while the House was in session. That was a most unusual circumstance.
As the Treasurer suggested, he could ask for interim supply for a longer period at this point. I gather we will be going through this same interim supply debate at the end of June again to permit the Treasurer to continue to pay the bills of Ontario, and I wonder whether that is the most appropriate use of the time of the House.
I also wonder whether the use or, one might even suggest, the abuse of the special warrant procedure earlier this year is something the Treasurer should not reconsider as far as potential future action is concerned. That amount of money by special warrant, it seems to me, flies in the face of the democratic process, which can be introduced to examine the monetary requirements of government while the House is in session and which should be utilized appropriately.
There are several items that rear their heads as a result of the distribution of estimates booklets and the budgetary information provided by the Treasurer. As a result of his budgetary underestimate, the Treasurer is again suggesting that the growth of this province is not going to be quite as great as many others suggest this year. Indeed, he is being supported slightly, but ever so slightly, by the report of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that came out on Canada alone, not necessarily Ontario. Perhaps the Canada figure might be extrapolated to suggest that his figure of 4.2 per cent in 1986 should be upped by a little. Even OECD, which is chronically pessimistic about things, has suggested it might be slightly higher than the Treasurer is predicting for this province.
In spite of the fact the Treasurer is being pessimistic about the increase in revenues, and in spite of the fact he has had a very significant amount of money gratuitously provided for his capacious pocket this year, he has not made any attempt to curb --
Hon. Mr. Nixon: I am told there is not much room in my pocket.
Miss Stephenson: The Treasurer does not want me to say what I said before. All right, I will keep quiet. I will not touch that one with a 10-foot pole.
None the less, the Treasurer has not made any kind of provision for a reduction of the item in the provincial budget that grows faster than any other; that is, the amount of money required to service the debt of Ontario. If one looks at the budgetary requirements of the Ministry of Treasury and Economics, one will find that number looks astronomical this year when compared to the number that was provided last year or the year before. It is growing by leaps and bounds.
Instead of increasing very dramatically the amount of money being expended in administration by this government, it seems to me there should have been a very significant application of those increased funds, somewhere between $2.2 billion and almost $3 billion, to the reduction of that consolidated debt and the reduction of the projected cash requirements for next year. It is the one action that would have reduced, at least partially, that very significant growth in the largest expenditure for which this province is responsible on an annual basis.
When one has that money, surely it is time to be as thrifty, as careful and as foresighted as possible and to expend the funds for the purpose of relieving future generations of the burden of that debt. Surely the Treasurer understands that if he does reduce the requirement of approximately 11.7 cents out of every dollar to be directed towards debt servicing this year, he has only slightly more than 88 cents left to provide the services the citizens of Ontario need or demand. If he permits that percentage of the amount from each dollar to grow, as he has this year again, he is going to ensure that there is less capability for the provision of those services and needs for the people of this province next year and the year after.
It does not take a very large cerebral capacity to understand that when one has to devote more of one's money to servicing debt, one will not have as much for the provision of services. Having understood that, the Treasurer might have applied his talents for frugal budgeting, as he regularly keeps telling us he does, to the reduction of that debt and a more appropriate mechanism for the distribution of funds within the government area of responsibility.
Hon. Mr. Bradley: The member wants us to spend more, though.
Miss Stephenson: That is not what I am saying. I am saying he should have serviced the debt and reduced his net cash requirement more significantly this year, instead of providing a huge increase for administration in every ministry. That can only be accounted for by a very significant increase in the employment of staff for the purposes of serving this government.
As members are very well aware, for a period of about nine years there was an annual reduction in the total number of Ontario government employees, because the previous government understood that the people of this province felt that as long as we could maintain services and the quality of those services, we should not be the most expansive employer within Ontario. There was a very careful effort designated towards ensuring the services and quality were maintained but the numbers required to supply or deliver those services reduced annually. This year, for the very fast time in a decade, we have a significant increase in the number of Ontario government employees.
Hon. Mr. Bradley: That is because of all those good new programs.
Miss Stephenson: It has nothing to do with the introduction of new programs, as the member for St. Catharines (Mr. Bradley) continues to bleat, because there are no new programs. There are some continuations of excellent programs devised by the previous government, the introduction of new wrinkles into programs that had been in place in a number of areas and some little additional bumps to old programs, but there is absolutely nothing new. The member for St. Catharines, who is rapidly retreating from the House at the moment, it should be noted, should retract that statement publicly at some point.
I find it appalling that the expenditures of this government are increasing this year at a rate that is the highest percentage rate of increase of any government in Canada, including the federal government. This government came into office in a well-managed province, in which the fiscal arrangements were sound and the financial management excellent. There were no major problems in that area. This government has not been hamstrung with the kind of millstone around the neck -- not just around the neck but around the neck, the waist and both feet -- that the federal government has had, burdened with the tremendous amount of debt that was raised by the previous Liberal government in that jurisdiction. I do not think the people of Ontario want that kind of Liberal legacy once this government has been removed from office in this province. They are asking that this government provide the kind of prudent frugality, sensible direction and appropriate increase in support necessary to maintain quality services in this province.
4:10 p.m.
Hon. Mr. Bradley: Such as buying oil companies and a jet.
Miss Stephenson: What jet? It would have been a great idea. I am sure the Minister of Northern Development and Mines (Mr. Fontaine) would be congratulating everybody if there were one right at the moment.
As a matter of fact, Ontario has been parsimonious in the services it has traditionally supplied to the members of the executive council and others within government. However, all that has changed; it has all changed marvellously. We see that in various ministers' offices; the costs of administration have doubled, tripled or almost quadrupled in a couple of instances. We can only ask, "What on earth is this for?"
We have listened to the Chairman of Management Board (Ms. Caplan) tell us this government has narrowed down. It did away with three policy secretariats. Save two, I believe, every one of the 74 staff in those policy secretariats is employed within the government. Every individual who has assumed responsibility in those areas has been provided with additional recompense for the services that are being provided.
There is precious little saving in dollars at all; in fact, there is an increase in the expenditure of dollars for Cabinet Office. Mr. Speaker, do you want to know the degree of increase? For Cabinet Office, the additional sum is more than $3 million. When combined with the Office of the Premier, it is up by more than 47 per cent from last year, which was an increase over the year before.
This is not careful management of money. This is profligate support for the needs of tired ministers to ensure they do not fall flat on their faces everyday within the House when they have questions addressed to them, or to ensure they have lots of support when they go out to meet the public so that support can then tell them the answers to problems that are posed or questions that are asked.
It is very significant that the proposed expenditures of this government will increase at a rate of 7.4 per cent in 1986-87 over the previous year in dollar terms. That amounts to $2,176,000,000. Again, for the benefit of the loud member for St. Catharines, there are no significant new programs introduced in this government's activity. There is no significant program that could account for such a large increase. Almost all the increase appears to be for administration and increasing staffing levels, especially within ministers' offices or the main offices of ministries.
If one looks very carefully at the total amount spent by ministers in this government, I doubt that one would find it is less than that expended by previous governments. I would be willing to wager -- and I have not done this calculation yet, but I shall -- that the amount of money expended by these somewhat fewer ministers is greater than the amount that was expended by the ministers in the previous government.
Hon. Mr. Bradley: We had to replace the furniture that disappeared.
Miss Stephenson: Oh, come off it.
An hon. member: Even the typewriters.
Miss Stephenson: Typewriters, my foot.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: I am using the same old car. It even has a sun roof.
Miss Stephenson: I would like the Treasurer to know that for the first four years as a minister in the Ontario government, I used a car that had been used by a previous minister. It was six years old when it was traded for the first time. Now, cry; go ahead and cry. The Treasurer has a perfectly good car, in good shape, which is not all that old. He should keep it; there is no doubt about that.
Hon. Mr. Bradley: Was it a Cadillac?
Miss Stephenson: No, it was not a Cadillac. Mr. McClellan: Why is she talking so much about her car?
Miss Stephenson: It is not my car; it never was my car. The car belongs to the people of Ontario, and I would hope each one of us would remember that.
Mr. McClellan: She is obsessed with her loss of a car.
Miss Stephenson: I am not obsessed with my loss of car at all. It was the loud member for St. Catharines who raised the car issue, and the Treasurer, the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk.
The Deputy Speaker: Order.
Miss Stephenson: The member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk was wont to allow to the House that he felt very unhappy that he had an old car that used to belong to the previous Treasurer.
Mr. Polsinelli: I know what it is like to drive one's own car.
Miss Stephenson: I do not mind driving my own car, except when some members get on the road driving their cars, we should notify the Ontario Provincial Police.
This government is not in any way as prudent or as careful with public funds as the Treasurer would like any one of us to believe. He keeps talking about the fact that people in St. George manage their budgets well. They learn to do this on the farm; they learn to be careful with money, which is scarce on the farm. "Parsimonious" is an appropriate word. "Stingy," I am not sure about. "Frugal" is probably a more appropriate word. That is not demonstrated in this budget, however, nor in the estimates of any of the ministries.
As I said, the expenditures in the Office of the Premier and the Cabinet Office together this year are increased by more than 47 per cent over last year, and that was an increase of something in the order of 10 per cent more than the year before. In the Cabinet Office, the increase is in the order of $3 million. There is an interesting little reduction in the Office of the Premier's estimates, something in the order of $700,000 related to main office staff and salaries.
We know the entire administrative staff of the Premier's office has been transferred. The question is whether it has been transferred to the Cabinet Office or to the Ministry of Treasury and Economics. I believe the section that provided for the administration of the Office of the Premier, the payment of salaries, has been transferred to the Ministry of Treasury and Economics. It is interesting that in the main office of the Ministry of Treasury and Economics there is an increase of $700,000, which just matches the Premier's office. Is that not marvellous?
What is the extra $3 million for in the Cabinet Office? What is the Cabinet Office doing now that it did not do before? Is the Cabinet Office accommodating the 21 policy advisers who immigrated from all sorts of places, including Ottawa, to the Premier's office to provide him with the kind of wisdom that will help him to keep the media in Toronto under control? That is a question I believe needs to be answered. Why would the Cabinet Office need an additional $3 million?
Hon. Mr. Bradley: Does the member think the media can be controlled? I do not.
Miss Stephenson: The minister does not have to control the red Star; it controls him anyway.
The wages bill alone in the Cabinet Office has increased by $3 million, a figure I want the Treasurer to know is higher than the total operating budget for the Cabinet Office when the Conservatives were in power. That is just the increase. The increase this year is higher than the total operating budget ever was when the previous government was in place in the Cabinet Office. Why? What is the government doing?
Nothing in the estimates book tells us what they are doing. Nothing defines any need for that kind of increase. Is the Cabinet Office holding seances, conferences or conventions? Are they travelling all over the place? Why do they need a $3-million increase in the Cabinet Office? Is it because the work of the secretariats is now being done in the Cabinet Office? If that is so, then the government has had to have hired additional people to do the work done by the 74 it moved out of the secretariats into various other ministries to accommodate that demand for $3 million.
This is a very peculiar situation. It is a puzzlement, as a matter of fact, and it is one puzzlement that should be solved by clarity and with some crystal kind of exposition of what is going on. We have been told on numerous occasions that this government is open, free and provides all the information. We know that is not the truth, but I invite it to begin by giving us the factual information about this activity.
4:20 p.m.
The ministers' office staffs have increased very dramatically, as I said earlier, in almost all circumstances. Not only have the numbers increased but the cost has also increased, by geometric progression in some circumstances. While there may be fewer ministers in cabinet, there is no decrease in cost, because the total expenditure is higher for the responsibilities and activities of ministers, the Cabinet Office and the Office of the Premier in total than it ever was in any previous government in this province. I am not sure that is something this government should be proud of.
We are aware that the salaries being paid to ministers' staffs are in some instances 50 per cent higher than any that were ever paid to the staffs of members of cabinet or ministers in previous governments.
Mr. Polsinelli: Ask the Chairman of Management Board.
Miss Stephenson: Oh, come on. I have heard the Chairman of Management Board. She says the government has picked the brightest and the best. If they are the brightest and the best, this government is in deep trouble, and I mean that. They are not worth 50 per cent more than the excellent people who served previous ministers. In fact, it is a measure of this government's profligacy, its wild expenditure pattern, that it has gone in the direction of providing that kind of salary increase in that short a space of time. That is not the right way to function.
Mr. Polsinelli: Has the member gone through their qualifications? She does not know how qualified they are.
Miss Stephenson: I have gone through their qualifications and I have looked at them very carefully. Several of them should not be there at all, and many do not have the kind of qualifications that many former staff members had. I do not believe they are any better than the former staff members were at all. I mean that, bar none.
However, that is beside the point. This is simply one example of the fact that this government is not as careful with public money as it should be, and that worries me. I do not think it is a characteristic of this Treasurer. I believe this Treasurer feels strongly that he should be careful, that he should not expend public moneys with abandon. However, he has not been able to persuade his colleagues of that, I fear. He certainly has not been able to persuade the Chairman of Management Board, who should be able at this point to keep the damper on that kind of growth in both numbers and dollars. That has not happened.
The Treasurer should be aware that we are going to keep a very close eye on this activity to ensure that the public is made aware of what will happen if it continues in the future. It has been bad enough over this 11-month period. It is obviously going to be worse for the next 12 months. After that, this government had better watch out.
There are a couple of ministries about which I am very knowledgeable, having been there for seven years or so. I am aware that in those combined ministries the minister had a full staff of never more than 14, including clerical staff and secretaries. These were not highly paid advisers; they were people who actually did a lot of work. The total number at any one time was never higher than 14. I am also aware that the two ministers responsible for those combined ministries now have more than 31 personal staff serving them.
In the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, ministry administration has increased in these estimates by 827.7 per cent. How do members like them apples? There is absolutely nothing new, not one thing. It is slated to increase by another three per cent to $2,114,000 in 1986-87. That is unprecedented, unbelievable and absolutely wrong. Why should that be happening? The minister has more personal staff in his office to look after that one segment of the former minister's responsibility than the former minister had for three ministries. There is no need for this; it is a waste of taxpayers' money.
Salaries and wages in the main office of the Ministry of Colleges and Universities have increased from $280,000 to $476,000. That is an increase of 70 per cent in one year. How can the minister account for or justify that? I am sure he can account for it. I would like to hear him account for it, but can he please tell me how he can justify it?
Mr. Polsinelli: How do you justify quadrupling our constituency budgets? The Tories and the NDP got together to do that.
Miss Stephenson: Oh, really? Oh, I see. Yes, and there was absolutely nobody on the Liberal side who wanted any increase. No, never. There were demands for that for ages from the member's colleagues in the Liberal government. We understood --
Hon. Mr. Nixon: We voted against it.
Miss Stephenson: Not before, they did not. At that point, yes, but look at the records before that.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: It was a money grab by you on the way out.
Miss Stephenson: I shall ignore that.
The Deputy Speaker: Order, member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk.
Miss Stephenson: If I were to use the rhetoric of the Chairman of Management Board or of the member for Downsview, I would say that the only purpose of that increase was to serve the people of Ontario better, and that is the rationale which I believe is appropriate in that instance.
Mr. Polsinelli: It is Yorkview, by the way.
Miss Stephenson: Pardon me; the member for Yorkview (Mr. Polsinelli). To the member for Downsview (Mr. Cordiano), I am sorry.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: It used to be Vernon Singer.
Miss Stephenson: The member for Yorkview?
Hon. Mr. Nixon: Downsview.
Miss Stephenson: No, he was not the member for Downsview; Odoardo Di Santo was the member for Downsview.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: The member for the old riding of Downsview was Vernon Singer.
Miss Stephenson: That was a long time ago. Vernon Singer was the member for Wilson Heights.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: Among other things.
Miss Stephenson: He is also a member of that profession which the Treasurer loves so dearly, the legal profession.
Mr. Foulds: He is not a doctor.
Miss Stephenson: No, he is a lawyer. He is one of the Treasurer's friends.
There must be some very close questioning of the ministries of Colleges and Universities and Skills Development. The Ministry of Skills Development also has had an increase for administration, although that minister is responsible for both. Again, there should not be any huge increase in the administrative cost there, because there are not any really new programs. There are expansions of old programs and a couple of modifications of some of our very good old programs, but there are no new ones. Therefore, I would have to question why there should be that kind of significant increase in ministry administration in those two instances.
The ministry administration in the Ministry of Education is increased this year by 8.4 per cent, and salaries in the main office -- as members know, that is the main office in which are housed the minister and the deputy minister -- are increased by 30 per cent. That is monstrous. In fact, the program administration in education programs is up by 12 per cent this year, but the increase is significantly higher than that in the minister's office and it is almost four times higher than the increase in the expenditures for the special schools for the blind, for the blind and the deaf, and for the deaf and for the demonstration schools for those students with specific and severe educational incapacity. The increase there is seven per cent. Why does the minister's office need an increase of 30 per cent when all that is to be granted to these special schools is an increase of seven per cent?
4:30 p.m.
It is indeed troublesome that we have this huge increase in administration costs for this government, costs that the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon) and the Premier (Mr. Peterson) assured us would not be there because they were paring down, they were decreasing, they were eliminating a whole lot of things which would ensure that the cost of the government would not grow so rapidly. Here we have a budget and estimates that demonstrate the highest rate of growth of any jurisdiction in Canada. Is that something we are going to be proud of?
Mr. Mancini: It is the most popular government in Canada.
Miss Stephenson: I do not care whether it is popular or not. Can we be proud of it?
Mr. Polsinelli: We should always be proud of growth.
Miss Stephenson: The member should not be proud of growth that is not controlled, and this is not controlled growth.
Mr. Mancini: The member is distorting the facts.
Miss Stephenson: I am not distorting the facts. If the member for Essex South (Mr. Mancini) is not quiet, I will go over and make sure, since I am taller than he is --
The Deputy Speaker: Order. The member for Essex South will please withdraw the words, "The member is distorting the facts."
Mr. Mancini: Mr. Speaker, I withdraw the words, "The member is distorting the facts." I really would like to --
The Deputy Speaker: No. Order. Carry on, member for York Mills (Miss Stephenson).
Hon. Mr. Bradley: How about asking her to withdraw the physical threats?
Miss Stephenson: Oh, I will be glad to withdraw them.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I am not sure "distorting the facts" is on our list of parliamentary no-nos. Actually, I thought "hypocrite" was on our list, and the Speaker did not respond to it earlier today. I think "distorting the facts" is a rather nice way of putting it.
The Deputy Speaker: I do not believe I recall the original withdrawal.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: Forget it. He did not say anything.
The Deputy Speaker: I am sorry, I did not hear that.
Mr. Polsinelli: He did not say anything.
Miss Stephenson: That is normal. He never does.
The Deputy Speaker: Order. For the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon), I do not remember the words "hypocrite" or "hypocrisy" today.
Mr. Breaugh: You have a short memory.
Mr. Foulds: You forget question period.
The Deputy Speaker: Today?
Hon. Mr. Nixon: Today.
The Deputy Speaker: I am sorry, I was not in the chair and I do not recall it. Carry on, member for York Mills.
Miss Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, out of charity, I shall withdraw the invitation I was about to issue to the member for Essex South to join me in the corridor after this session, because I will be glad to demonstrate to him that I am factually correct and am not distorting anything. The only distortion that is going on in this House is the position this government is taking about the fact that it is going to control expenditures when indeed it is not.
It is interesting that the Treasurer, who has talked about the need to maintain strict control --
Mr. Mancini: I withdraw my withdrawal.
Miss Stephenson: The member cannot withdraw his withdrawal.
Mr. Breaugh: He can. He does it all the time.
Miss Stephenson: No, he cannot.
The Deputy Speaker: Order.
Hon. Mr. Bradley: This debate is deteriorating.
Miss Stephenson: As soon as the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) came back, it deterioriated.
It is unfortunate that the Premier and the members of this government have ganged up on the Treasurer and have overridden his natural tendency to be careful, to be parsimonious, to be frugal, to be stingy and to ensure that the money of the taxpayers of Ontario is expended wisely. I remind each and every member in this House that the dollars we deal with are not our dollars; they do not belong to us. They belong to every single individual who works in the province, be he employee or employer. Those dollars are ours only in trust to manage, and it is that management which I think is important.
It would be delightful if we could be assured by those few members of the Liberal Party in the House that they will prevail upon the Premier and the other members of the executive council to be more careful and to be less strident with the Treasurer, to provide less pressure on him, to ensure those taxpayers' dollars are expended in the most prudent way possible.
Mr. Mancini: We kicked the big spenders out of office.
Miss Stephenson: No, you did not. The big spenders were kicked into office by our friends on the left. They are doing it in spades. We will be able to demonstrate to the people of Ontario that they are the big spenders of Canada. People are beginning to see it right now because they did not do any of the things they promised to do with the additional money available to them. All this government did was to increase administration. That does not necessarily add to the quality of service for the people of Ontario.
Mr. Breaugh: Come on, Bette; toughen up.
Miss Stephenson: All right. If the member for Oshawa insists, I shall. I am being entirely too gentle. I must be a little more severe with the members of the government. I have difficulty being excessively tough with the Treasurer because I know him to be a careful man. Given his own way, he would expend the taxpayers' money in the same way he expends his own.
Mr. Breaugh: A nickel at a time.
Miss Stephenson: One penny at a time, one penny here, one penny there, one penny elsewhere. Poor Dorothy, promises, promises, nothing else and no money.
Mr. Breaugh: That is what she told me.
Miss Stephenson: Exactly. However, unhappily he is not left to his own devices; he is pressed upon.
Interjection.
Miss Stephenson: The Minister of the Environment does not have much effect. All he got was $14 million and it all should have gone to the Ministry of Health anyway. The other ministers have obviously been able to persuade the Premier to remove that responsibility and that characteristic from the Treasurer in an inappropriate way this year so that there is a massive increase in administration cost, which is not the correct direction for this government to take.
For example, ministry administration in the Ministry of Community and Social Services is up by 14.9 per cent this year. There was a decrease last year when the minister came in, but it has gone up. They have eliminated the decrease, overidden all of it and gone far beyond the rate of inflation. What has happened? In the main office expenditure, the salary component is up by 13.1 per cent. Financial services are up by 14.8 per cent, most of it in salaries, Supply and office services have an increase of 10.8 per cent. These are the areas of the ministry that do not necessarily directly provide services to people. The total spending increase on income maintenance is 5.8 per cent. Compare that with 14.9 per cent. Program administration for the adult and children's services area is up by 28 per cent on all programs.
Mr. Polsinelli: Why does the member not break that down into real dollars rather than percentages?
Miss Stephenson: It is the percentage that is important. It is the percentage that is the measure of this government's concern for the delivery of dollars for services rather than administration of government offices. That is where the real problem lies with this budget and these estimates .
Mr. Mancini: The member is wrong again.
Miss Stephenson: Absolutely not. I am sorry, but there is no doubt about the fact that in the area of skills development, for example, the overall budget for skills development is up by 4.1 per cent, but ministry administration has increased from $2.4 million to $4.6 million, an increase of 106 per cent. How does the member like that? That is not an appropriate way to expend public dollars.
4:40 p.m.
In actual fact, the money allocated directly to skills training in this budget has been decreased by a little more than seven per cent. We have a 106 per cent increase in administration and a seven per cent decrease in the amount of dollars allocated specifically to skills training programs.
That philosophical approach to the budgetary exercise is one at which I believe the Treasurer and others must look critically, because it is not the right thing to do at the present time. With the scarce public dollars that are available, the dollars that come out of the pockets of every working person of this province, we should be ensuring that the vast majority of increases and the largest increases are directed towards the provision of necessary services, not towards the provision of extra staff for ministers or extra people in the office to talk to the press or to talk to whomever.
Mr. Breaugh: Or for parliamentary assistants.
Miss Stephenson: I am sorry? Oh, parliamentary assistants.
Mr. Breaugh: Why leave them off the hook?
Miss Stephenson: Okay. It is very disturbing that the normal characteristics which we anticipated of this Treasurer have been so overridden by the rest of cabinet. It is very disturbing that the kind of windfall which be had in his hot little hands has been expended so inappropriately in this budget and through these estimates. It was a windfall as a result of the excellent management of this province in the past by the previous government and the kinds of provisions for increased employment which ensured that there would be increased revenue in the province. It was that increased revenue which has provided the Treasurer with a windfall.
In addition, we must remember that the Treasurer in October, fearful that he would never have enough money to accommodate the demands of all his cabinet colleagues, increased the taxes on the people of Ontario by $730 million. That increase, I would remind him, is a higher tax bite out of the wages and salaries of the people of the province than the federal budgets have produced over the last two years. There should have been tax reductions in this budget.
Mr. Mancini: There were no tax increases this year. The member knows that.
Miss Stephenson: There is no need whatever for the member for Essex South to develop verbal diarrhoea right now. Pardon me, I withdraw that word. There is no need for him to use semantics theateria, which is providing us with some difficulty.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: You are suffering from intellectual constipation.
Miss Stephenson: The obstipation which occurs in this House occurs as a result of the kind of budgetary exercise which the Treasurer is putting us through. If that is not constipated, I do not know what is. He had the chance to do something really progressive, and what has he done? He has sat on his haunches and done nothing except fatten the budgets for administration in various ministries. That is wrong and that he should not have done.
It is disappointing that the natural characteristics of the Treasurer were so debased by his cabinet colleagues and that he was overruled so frequently by the Premier that he has produced a set of estimates which provides us with the opportunity to be as critical as this simply about one area -- I am not even going to talk about the other areas -- the area of administration in ministers' offices and senior administration in the various ministries.
The kind of activity taking place there is a complete turnaround, a complete about-face from the kind of activity which the people of the province demonstrated clearly for years that they wanted the government of Ontario to take: to pare down the cost of government; to pare it, not to slice it to the bone but to pare it. That is what was being done on a regular basis for a period since 1976 until this budget.
With this budget we have the Marcos demonstration in Ontario. We have Imelda controlling all the capital building in the province, depending upon what it is that government decides it wants to do politically in terms of capital construction. We have the Treasurer bound hand and foot by the Premier and his colleagues and unable to protect the taxpayers' dollars from the inroads of those minister colleagues who insist on having twice the staff in their offices that any previous minister had, paying them twice as much as any previous minister did and increasing administration right across the board in ministries within this government. That is not the direction which should be pursued in this province at this time when we know we are not going to have extra-large amounts of money forever.
We should reduce our debt, get rid of the type of expenditure which grows faster than any other, that which is required to service the debt, and ensure that we concentrate the expenditure of taxpayers' dollars upon the provision of needed services. That is the role, the requirement and the obligation of the Ontario government.
The Treasurer knows that is the obligation of this government. It is unfortunate that he has not managed to get out of the manacles of his colleagues long enough to demonstrate to the people of Ontario that he has the capacity to do what he said he was going to do. For years, whenever there was any debate on the budget, the Treasurer's favourite words were "frugal," "stingy," "you are not doing it right," "you are spending too much money" and "you are wasting money."
This government is wasting money. It is wasting all kinds of dollars on things which do not benefit the people of Ontario. I hope the Treasurer will develop the sensitivity I know he has and allow it to grow and expand, so he can take the ruling role he should have in cabinet and ensure the way the taxpayers' dollars of this province are expended is appropriate for the needs of Ontario, and not necessarily to meet the demands of ministers and ministries in terms of their administration and the activities they personally want to be involved in.
I know the Treasurer has that capacity and those characteristics and that he would be willing to exercise them given half a chance. Up to this point, he has not been given half a chance. It is time his cabinet colleagues realize their demands, their so-called needs, which I translate in other ways --
Hon. Mr. Curling: On housing.
Miss Stephenson: I would be delighted to have some money expended on housing, but not on administration of the Ministry of Housing or on the administration of the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Skills Development or any other. That is not where we need the money. We need the money in the programs. We need the money for the transfers which are necessary. That is the area we should be concentrating on.
For example, the Minister of Colleges and Universities (Mr. Sorbara) stood up today and made a big thing about the request to comply with the recommendations of the Skolnik Instructional Assignment Review Committee, a very learned committee. I should know. I appointed it to look at the problems of time and work in the college system. We knew it was a problem and we knew it would never be resolved by negotiation. Because he has accepted those recommendations, as any logically thinking person would have, it has cost an additional $60 million. That is understandable. But do not stand up and tell the community that the college system is being granted an additional $60 million out of the largess of the heart of the Premier. It is to meet the requirements of agreeing to the recommendations of the Skolnik committee, and that is rational.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: The member was strangling it for so many years.
4:50 p.m.
Miss Stephenson: It was never strangled. The college system was never strangled, but there were developing problems in some areas and those areas had to have the solution found. That type of solution is not found in negotiation. It is found as a result of a critical examination by thoughtful people with the time to do it.
I took that advice because it was given to me by very knowledgeable people, not by my colleagues in the House necessarily, but by Carl Goldenberg, by those who had looked at the college system in other areas and by knowledgeable educators who felt very strongly that it was not the type of solution that could be found in negotiations or in a political setting. It had to be done as a result of a very careful examination.
That is precisely why that committee was appointed. It provided excellent recommendations, and I am pleased the minister has ensured that those recommendations will be followed.
The Treasurer should not look so tired and discouraged. I have sat for hours on end in this House listening to him, and far too long listening to the kind of rudeness I would not have believed could have emanated from the mouth of so young a person as the member for Renfrew North (Mr. Conway). The lecture he was trying to deliver today was hypocritical in the extreme.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Miss Stephenson: We have just learned from the Treasurer that is not a word that is on the list of no-nos.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: "Hypocrite" is.
Miss Stephenson: I said "hypocritical." I did not say he was a hypocrite. I said his performance was hypocritical.
The Acting Speaker: Order. Perhaps you would withdraw the word "hypocritical."
Miss Stephenson: I shall withdraw the word "hypocritical." I shall define the language that was used by the member for Renfrew North as language that befits the kind of guttersnipe he was attempting to portray today. Is the word "guttersnipe" a no-no too?
Hon. Mr. Nixon: Look up guttersnipe.
Mr. Breaugh: Your limited vocabulary is going to get you in real trouble.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Hon. Mr. Curling: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I think to address my honourable colleague's remarks as guttersnipe remarks is very unparliamentary.
The Acting Speaker: Would you please withdraw the word "guttersnipe"?
Miss Stephenson: Do I have to withdraw that word as well?
The Acting Speaker: Knowing the background of the honourable member, I am sure her vocabulary is very elaborate and she could possibly use another word that is not so offensive.
Miss Stephenson: I shall indeed. I shall withdraw that word and simply suggest that the minister's behaviour today befitted that of a juvenile miscreant. He was obviously behaving in a manner that should have been dealt with by his colleague the Minister of Correctional Services (Mr. Keyes).
Even though the Treasurer may be bored, it is his responsibility to listen to the concerns that are being expressed. I hope he will take some of them to heart. I hope he absorbs the concern that is being stated here that there is no need for the rapidly growing expenditure in the area of support administration to the detriment of other services or other responsibilities that may impede the capability of future Treasurers to meet the needs of Ontario.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: We have cut $300 million out of that.
Miss Stephenson: I implore the Treasurer to consider seriously withdrawing some of that increase in administration. He can do it. He can do in-year examinations of the program activity that is going on and he can find money. We used to cut about $290 million to $300 million every single year. It was the right thing to do, because we discovered that some of those activities were not being pursued and it was better to ensure the money was not expended in that way. He should apply that money to the reduction of the debt servicing requirements of this province so he will not be jeopardizing the future of the generations I know he is looking forward to seeing. He is going to be a grandfather some time.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: I am.
Miss Stephenson: But not enough times at this point. The Treasurer does not have enough grandchildren yet to make it an absolute requirement for him to look carefully at that kind of expenditure and to ensure that his grandchildren will not have to suffer as a result of it.
I hope the Treasurer has listened. I hope, in addition to listening, some of it has penetrated what from time to time appears to be a logic-tight compartment within his cerebral cavity, in order to have some sensitivity next time or during this next year while he is ensuring the budgetary activity of this province is appropriate.
I would also ask him to speak very clearly to the Chairman of Management Board to ensure that really firm rules are established related to the kinds of guidelines given to ministers regarding their personal staff, because we have seen no example of that at this point. It would be very worth while if that was to emanate from the office of the Chairman of Management Board.
Almost in closing, I would simply like to tell the Treasurer that absolutely nobody is deluded by this delightful little position he has put forward as the example of the really significant change in management of Ontario; that is, the cash requirement for next year is only what is necessary for capital expansion. If the Treasurer was being really truthful and honest, he would have stated very clearly that in examination of previous budgets for at least the last seven years in Ontario, the amount of money that has been the cash requirement on an annual basis has been that related to the capital requirements for the building of universities, hospitals, highways, courthouses, Ministry of Government Services buildings and all of those other things for which the government of Ontario is responsible.
I agree this is an excellent plan. It is the right way to explain that if there is a cash requirement, it is for the purpose of investment in the future of the province. That is the kind of philosophy with which I agree, but to try to suggest this is a whole new development is just a little bit specious and beneath the kind of characteristics I know this Treasurer has.
At any rate, my present concern is primarily with administration. I do hope the Treasurer will reverse this most unfortunate direction the government has taken, in spite of the fact it said it was going to be extremely careful with the taxpayers' money. That is not the way to be careful. One is careful when one expends it as though it was one's own. The Treasurer must remember that. That is what he would want to do. He should make sure the rest of his cabinet colleagues feel exactly the same way. He is a very good teacher. He taught history for years in all sorts of places. He has not been able to teach Dorothy because she has been teaching him for years, but that is good. None the less, he is a good teacher. I hope he will exercise that capacity with his cabinet colleagues and all of the members of his caucus. That is one of the responsibilities of the Treasurer, which I am sure this Treasurer should be able to pursue with vigour.
Mr. Breaugh: I want to pay some compliments here. As you all know, the member for York Mills is one of my favourite Tories, next to the great Darcy McKeough. She shares a lot of things with Darcy McKeough, such as mental attitude, physical capacity, ability to work and to express a point of view. She expresses perhaps better than most members of her caucus a real political philosophy. I do not share any of it, but at least one can identify her as a true bona fide right winger, tough, hard as nails --
Miss Stephenson: I am not a right winger. I am right down the centre.
Mr. Breaugh: -- a little cruel from time to time. My only mild criticism, and it is a faint one, is I thought she was a little wishy-washy today around the edges. I felt she took some abuse, particularly from the member for Essex South, and I always find that regrettable because it is not necessary.
5 p.m.
As many members of the Conservative Party have discovered, I do appreciate there are a lot of hangers-on around the ministers of the cabinet. I remember the first occasion when I met some of these people. I kept asking them, "What do you do?" I found out they came in during question period and took notes. Some observed the ministers' responses. Some read things for the ministers. A few opened the mail. Frankly, it has been my observation that has not changed a great deal. I seem to see the same type of folks hanging around these ministers that were hanging around the previous ministers. They seem to be very busy, carrying in briefcases, opening doors, seeing that the ministers know where they are at any given moment.
I agree with the member for York Mills that this is perhaps an unfortunate price to pay. I observe no real difference here except that there may be is a little more openness. One can find where they are on the books these days. I do not recall being able to do that previously.
Mr. Mancini: That was a cheap shot.
Mr. Ashe: It is nice to know that the member for Christmas cards, the member for Essex South (Mr. Maneini), is awake and listened to the last remarks so closely. It is time to get the Christmas cards ready for the Premier (Mr. Peterson) for the coming year. The member should not forget.
Mr. Foulds: Is that a speech or a comment.
Mr. Ashe: It is a speech. Does the member want comments?
Hon. Mr. Nixon: Wait a minute. I thought the member was commenting on his colleague's speech.
I just want to say to the member for York Mills, who accused me of acting bored and so on, that I did not want her to transgress the commitment made by her House leader that interim supply and the borrowing bill would be carried before 6:30 p.m. A number of members want to participate. I agree with the comments made by the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh). The member for York Mills is one of my favourite Tories too. However, I wish she would not be so easy on me.
I have another correction. I taught science and I would be prepared to give the member for York Mills a little lesson in the voltaic cell any time she wants to get together. I also want to state specifically something about the costs of the Office of the Premier and the Cabinet Office. The information has been available; the member may be aware of it. The expenses of the Office of the Premier decreased by $700,000 over the year before.
Miss Stephenson: Exactly the amount that was transferred to the Cabinet Office.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: As the member interjected with her explanation, she is talking about it being transferred to the Cabinet Office. In fact, all those policy secretariats that they used to move around in from time to time in the old, unlamented, late administration cost us $2.5 million under her administration. They have disappeared. Co-ordination under the cabinet committees cost us $1.2 million, representing a saving of $1.3 million. It is in the Cabinet Office because those ministries have disappeared.
It is not necessary to have a lovely, brown, Oldsmobile 98 limousine with two aerials on the back for one of those. In fact, there is a whole bunch of these cars sitting in the government garage because we reduced the cabinet requirement down to about 23 or 24. That is why I am driving the member's old car. I really admire the member's choice, not only of model but of make.
Mr. Foulds: I would like a clarification from the previous speaker. Did I understand the member for York Mills to say that as a matter of current Tory policy, they would be in favour of purchasing a jet for government travel?
Miss Stephenson: I am pleased to respond. I have two minutes to do this. I suggested that the member for Cochrane North (Mr. Fontaine) would probably have been delighted had the previous administration purchased a jet. That was what I said. We did not purchase a jet; it was not available. There was an agreement with the federal government that we should. That agreement was broken and the jet was sold elsewhere.
I am delighted to know the Treasurer taught science. I taught biochemistry and the physical examination of patients. I would be pleased to give the Treasurer a demonstration at any time as well.
I have tried to be as firm as I possibly can with the member for Essex north, south, east, west. It is difficult because he has one of the most voluble mouths in the House. From time to time, I cannot manage to overcome the noise level.
There is no doubt in my mind that the delightful figures suggested by the Treasurer are reasonably accurate, except that the increase in the Cabinet Office is $3 million. I remind him that the 74 staff from the secretariats are all being employed in other ministries now. Therefore, that amount of money, $1.2 million, has been scattered throughout a whole tot of other ministries. The Treasurer did not save anything. He has not saved a cent except perhaps for the cars that are sitting over there. That is all.
I say to the member for Oshawa there is a very significant increase in the number of staff for each of the ministers, and that is a significant increase in dollars. That is troublesome. I agree there is no necessity for a huge range of people who do not do things, and that is why we have tried very diligently to ensure that would be ended. The previous Chairman of Management Board was bringing in a policy.
The Acting Speaker: The member's time is up.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: That is that.
Miss Stephenson: Oh, no it is not. The Treasurer is not that lucky.
Mr. Foulds: This motion is necessary to pay the salaries of those employed by the government and to make other necessary payments for a period of one month. We support the motion and think it should be carried. It does not need a lot of debate; we just had the budget debate. We will have estimates debate going on for a considerable time.
I want to make three quick points. The previous speaker engaged in the polite fiction that it was not the Treasurer's responsibility that costs of administration have gone up. That is a nice, neat, parliamentary thing to do if one is in an old boys' club, if members will pardon the sexist comment, such as this. However, it is not true. Whatever is in the budget and whatever is expended is the Treasurer's responsibility and he has accepted that. Therefore, the buck stops with the Treasurer when it comes to matters of the Treasury, and the polite fiction engaged in by the member for York Mills (Miss Stephenson) should be seen as just that.
Second, I find it offensive that the Tory parry is now preaching the song of restraint and the song of constraint, particularly when it comes to administration, when for so many years its administrative, and if I may say so, its political costs escalated at such a rate, particularly during the years of William Davis, Premier, and Darcy McKeough, Treasurer. If members take a look at a graph of the expenditures in those years, and the tradition was carried until the phoney bicentennial year, they will see that in every year before there was an election, there was a jump in expenditure that was sheer patronage, political expenditure, done with the taxpayers' money. I find the crocodile tears about the taxpayers' dollars being held in trust just that.
Last, I find it offensive that both of the parties I face, the Conservative Party to my right and the Liberal Party across the way, will still continue to expend money on things such as government advertising at an unnecessarily high rate, travel for cabinet ministers, high living --
Interjection.
Mr. Foulds: -- yes, high living, when in this province today we use cattle prods on human beings in centres for the developmentally handicapped because we do not have the staff in those institutions to deal with those people in a humane way. I need say nothing more.
Miss Stephenson: May I make one comment? Not being a crocodile, I do not shed that kind of tear, but I feel strongly about this. It is the responsibility of any Treasurer to ensure that everybody understands tax dollars are held in trust. That may be a personal commitment which the member for Port Arthur (Mr. Foulds) does not appreciate, but it is there.
5:10 p.m.
None the less, I also suggest to the member that we should be looking very critically at whether the committees of the Legislature need to move about outside the province on as many occasions as they appear to do. This is something that has always been troublesome to me, and I have never felt it was appropriate. The Treasurer does not control that in most circumstances. It is something this Legislature should be carefully looking at, rather than asking the Treasurer to do it alone.
Mr. Foulds: Of course, I did not imply that the member for York Mills was a crocodile. Her tears may be crocodile-like, but there are other forms that I am sure her personality could be more appropriately described as.
I do not think the expenditure by committees of the Legislature is one of the areas where a great saving can take place, although some saving perhaps could take place. I worry more about ministerial and ministerial staff travel. I worry more, frankly, about unnecessary trips throughout the province by civil servants, who see nothing and report nothing when they come back.
I have some of the same concerns about using the taxpayers' dollars in trust, but I would say it is better to spend money wisely to avoid future costs than it is to restrain spending unnecessarily. The former administration restrained spending in areas such as education, health care and developmentally handicapped centres in the Ministry of Community and Social Services, where it actually affected the service that we as a society had made commitments to deliver to the people of
Ontario. It is unfortunate that this Treasurer has not seen well enough to expand in those areas as much as he should have.
Mr. Ashe: It is a pleasure to be able to participate in this debate giving supply to the Treasurer to pay the bills. We all agree the bills have to be paid.
What I have already heard from the member for York Mills and, frankly, even from the member for Port Arthur and others is the general concurrence in that. But what we all have concern about, what I personally have great concern about and what the Treasurer has concern about deep down in his chest, where there is a heart -- no, that is slipping a little -- is the level of the expenditures.
The $2.4 billion that is estimated by the Treasurer to be the amount needed to pay the bills for a month is not untoward in the breakdown of the annual expenditures. As a matter of fact, it is about one twelfth of last year's on a monthly basis, which is probably a little more realistic figure than the figure for expenditures this year.
I am offended personally -- and I think most of the people on this side, at least at this end of this side, are offended, and again I have to include the Speaker -- by the percentage of increase this year in the expenditures. One might ask, how does that relate to supply? The reason it relates is that if less money were being spent, the Treasurer would need less money to pay his bills for a month.
When one looks at the Treasurer's figures, the projections that were contained in his recently filed budget, one finds there is a 7.4 per cent increase in expenditures. That is from the estimated actuals last year. When one looks at the budget figures for last year, his growth in expenditures is approximately 8.6 per cent.
An awful lot of this increase, the additional expenditures in last year's budget, which no doubt were offset by increased revenues -- though that does not in itself justify the expenditure; it should have meant just a significantly lower deficit position for the year -- an increase of 8.6 per cent occurs at a time when the Treasurer himself projects an inflation rate of 3.8 per cent. Even if we take the actual projected revenue growth from the estimated actual to 7.4 per cent, that is nearly twice the rate of inflation. When we compare it to last year's estimates, it is considerably in excess of twice the rate of inflation.
When has that happened before? We will have to look back an awfully long way to get into those kinds of percentages. How many families in this province can increase their total expenditures by better than twice the rate of inflation? That is unconscionable.
The public interest debt is growing rapidly and is up to 11.4 per cent. One can say that is less than a half-point increase from last year. That is true, but look at the increased dollars involved in the growth. Did the Treasurer take advantage of the opportunity in the great, booming economy we have, thanks to the policies of the previous government, the general economic conditions in the world, the economy and our major trading partner to the south? Sure, those are all factors. This government cannot take credit for that in the least.
Did he take advantage of that opportunity to make his expenditure projections for this fiscal year more realistic and reasonable and look ahead to a rainy day when it may be a little tougher? I cannot imagine what that Treasurer would have done with the pressures of his colleagues around him if he had been in that position three or four years ago when the economy was tough. There was actually negative growth. Unemployment was high. I am sure he would have committed hara-kiri. He would not have been able to operate at all, because I know that deep down he does have a heart and feels for the taxpayers of this province.
It must really bother him that his colleagues, I would suggest probably in most cases his colleague to the left and the colleague to his right, who seem to operate the whole place, came down on him and said, "We do not care, Mr. Treasurer, that you have been generally known as a tight-fisted penny-pincher." That is probably why he was made Treasurer, or was he made Treasurer because the Premier and his colleagues in cabinet knew they could coerce him into spending money that he and the taxpayers did not want to spend? I am not sure of the answer to that. I leave it up to the conscience of the Treasurer to speak to that one.
My colleague the member for York Mills made some specific references to expenditure growth. I am not going into detail on a ministry-by-ministry basis because she touched on them in a very effective and fiscally responsible way, but I want to touch specifically on one she talked about.
There is no way the Treasurer can sweep under the carpet the $2.8-million growth in the expenditures of the Cabinet Office. It is true that I am rolling in the reduction in the expenditures in the Office of the Premier. That is quite legitimate. Therefore, it is down to $2.1 million. If we look at where the people from the various secretariats came before, we will find a huge majority of them have been rolled into ministry budgets and that they do not account for a significant part of the total $2.1 million net increase in the Cabinet Office.
Is that unique? Not really. It pertains to everybody over here, including the member for Port Arthur, and I think there was even an indirect reference by the member for Oshawa on the growth in the size of the staff.
5:20 p.m.
I have been here only approximately nine years, but I can remember for at least eight years, the Treasurer standing up three, four or five, I do not know how many times a year, and critiquing the government minister who was bringing something forward, the Premier or a parliamentary assistant if he was carrying a bill, on the basis of those big, chauffeur-driven limousines and all the parliamentary assistants and extra grandiose dollars that were paid out. Did that Treasurer really mean that? Obviously he did not.
I can remember his speaking about all the drones -- I think he may have used the word from time to time -- who followed behind the minister to carry his bag to his chauffeur-driven limousine and open the doors. Did he really mean that? Again, he did not.
If there is one point being made here today by my colleague the member for York Mills and others that I hope this Treasurer will take to heart, it is that he should really sit down with his colleague the Chairman of Management Board (Ms. Caplan) and look at the growth of administration and the numbers and costs within the ministers' offices.
I am afraid to look at what the parliamentary assistants must have. If it is anything in proportion to the ministers, some of them are probably spending as many dollars as some ministers in previous administrations used to spend on support staff. It is out and out disgusting. Just because we as a country have barely lived through the Trudeau spending years of a decade and a half, which took us into the deficit position this country is in, surely that is not an indication of what the Liberal Party generally stands for. It has been the case of what the Liberal Party of Ontario stands for, at least in approximately the past year.
They are going the same route: "Whatever it is, throw some money at it. Whatever it is, surround yourself with a lot of high-paid staff, whether or not they are qualified, and all the problems will go away." That disgusts me, and when the record becomes known over the next year or whatever, the taxpayers of Ontario will be disgusted as well and will show that.
In all sincerity, I think the Treasurer is equally concerned. Maybe we can let the Chairman of Management Board off the hook a little. She is new. She really did not know anything about the job, the operation, what people had in the way of staff size or what they were paid. She was told: "That is the way you go. You send somebody up to Ottawa and see what they pay them up there. You come back here, add some percentage to it, go out and hire all these people, whether they are qualified or not, and all the problems will go away."
Let me tell her that is not the way it runs. If she was honest and realistic and looked at --
Hon. Ms. Caplan: She is honest.
Mr. Ashe: I do not mean that in the sense of dishonest; I mean in the looking within. I am sure she is not dishonest in the sense she may have taken it. If she did, I apologize. It was not meant in that spirit. However, it is not directly honest somehow to make those concerns go away; it is disgusting.
Look at the number of people and the extra money that is being spent. Let the Treasurer think back over the years. If I had wanted to waste my own or a researcher's time, I could have dug out page after page in Hansard over the past decade where he was after one minister or another, the Premier or the parliamentary assistant on the costs of running the operation. I think there are better uses for my time and their time, so I did not do that. I mean that in all sincerity. I do not see any fewer cars out there and I do not see any fewer drivers. There sure is a lot more staff, and they are being paid a lot more money. There probably is not more than two per cent of the caucus over there which is not on some form of extra remuneration.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: Have the members heard this speech before?
Mr. Ashe: I think the minister has heard it before because he gave it. It is like looking in the mirror, and I appreciate that.
There are two other areas that bother me and that call upon the approximately $2.4 billion we are being asked to approve today. This goes back to the budget itself. If one looks at the total budget, the actual deficit for the year is something closer to $2.5 billion. About $1 billion is borrowed, absconded or whatever from within in an account sense, taken away from this account and reserve accounts. That created $1 billion. The traditional way of looking at the deficit is how much borrowing has to be done. That was reduced by a modest -- to use that word is being generous -- amount from $85 million to about $1.5 billion. They can not have it both ways.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: Neither can the member.
Mr. Ashe: They did not want to count that extraordinary expenditure last year when they talked about the growth in the deficit.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: How come the member was counting it last year?
Mr. Ashe: If he can take it both ways, so can I.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: There you are.
Mr. Ashe: Again, it is like looking in the mirror. The deficit is about $1.5 billion. In how many years in the last decade, including many tough years, did the operating account operate in a deficit position, particularly in the order of $300 million? In very few, even in the tough years. That is not considering the capital expenditures, which are for the future of this province. Nobody can deny that. The way we have our accounting system one has to look upon that as an investment in the future. The $300 million of that is not. It is current funds in a time of a buoyant, growing economy.
One of the last items I am sure the Treasurer will be happy to report in his quarterly, his semi-annual and in his third-quarter reports is that quite unexpectedly the revenues of the province are substantially higher than he estimated. We know darn well that will be the case because he estimated the lowest among all of the experts -- the banking experts, economic council and so on -- a growth of 4.2 per cent. We know it is more likely to be closer to five per cent, give or take a fraction of a point.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: The experts are all people you hired.
Mr. Ashe: I am glad to know we hired the heads of the Imperial Bank of Commerce, the Toronto Dominion Bank, the Bank of Nova Scotia, the Dominion Bank of Canada, etc., because those are whom I am talking about in the comparison.
Hon. Ms. Caplan: The Treasury experts, those budget wizards.
Mr. Ashe: We do not know for sure that 4.2 per cent was the actual final number of the Treasury experts, so we have to leave that in abeyance.
I suppose one of the last things that is causing the numbers to go up is the growth in the public service. Unfortunately, the growth in the size of the minister's office does not even show in this. The previous government was concerned, particularly when it saw what was going on in Ottawa with the growth of the public service, and over a decade it very consciously and conscientiously reduced the size of the public service by something of the order of six per cent, about 5,000 people.
What happened? In two budgets in less than a year, the Treasurer is projecting a growth of about 1,500 people; about 30 per cent of the 5,000 have come on stream. Before this decade is out, if Ontario is so unfortunate as to have this government still in office, I suggest that not only will we have regained the 5,000 that were trimmed over the years, but there will be another 5,000 on top of that.
Time marches on and there is no doubt we want to give the Treasurer the right to pay the bills during the month of June, as I know he will in a very judicious way. It is too bad that some of those dollars are not going where they should, because a dollar saved would be a dollar earned to reduce that deficit from the $1.5 billion to the $750 million that should be quite reasonably attainable for that Treasurer with this philosophy.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: I want to comment on the member's remarks if I may. I must agree with his concern about the 7.4 per cent rate of increase of the expenditure. At the same time, he must understand that our revenues in the same period increased by 8.2 per cent, so we are well below that. I acknowledge his comments in that regard. We are concerned at that rate of increase. However, the member must understand that new programs have been a part of the initiatives taken by the government of Ontario. The member and his colleagues have been urging us to undertake even more new programs and additional expenditures. We have had to make a judicious and, I hope, careful judgement in this connection. That is the basis of the budget and the expenditures we will be undertaking this month.
5:30 p.m.
He referred to the growth in the public service. We are watching those figures carefully. As a former Chairman of Management Board, the member will know just the sorts of discussions that take place there early in the morning. It is a great pleasure to work under the chairmanship of the Chairman of Management Board, who is here today. We have very interesting discussions indeed.
The principal growth in the public service was as a result of the requirements from federal legislation under the Young Offenders Act. The member is aware of that. It started when he was in office and it is continuing now, and the end is not yet.
Mr. McCague: I wish to participate in the debate.
Mr. Ashe: I have had no response.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I asked for comments or questions and then I called on the Treasurer for his windup remarks. If that was meant for the two minutes, okay.
Mr. Ashe: I think it was quite understood and I think even the Treasurer would acknowledge that he was responding, taking the two-minute opportunity. In fact, I have the right to respond to that, but I have no further comments.
Mr. McCague: I am pleased to participate in this debate and have another opportunity today to talk to the Treasurer. Like all those others who have spoken, I have no particular problem with the motion but just a problem or two with the origin of the motion, which really is the budget.
I have said in my local press, and I believe it to be true, that this is a very artfully written document. Also there are some very artful quotes from the Treasurer and member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk (Mr. Nixon) of previous years. I think I could relate those to some of the things that are in his budget.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: Your colleague said that researching old Hansards was a waste of time, and I agree with him.
Mr. McCague: It is in most cases but not in the Treasurer's case; it makes very interesting reading. The Treasurer will recall in talking of the Honourable James N. Allan, that he said of Mr. Allan during his years as Treasurer: "I always felt he did not have to stretch, strain and twist himself grotesquely to put a good face on the business management of the government. He simply spoke to all of us more or less as fellow members of the board and tried to discuss actual business substance of the province without the blather that has come to be part of the budgetary statement of the present Treasurer and his immediate predecessors going back two." That is what he said about the Honourable James N. Allan.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: I was complimenting the member.
Mr. McCague: Yes, when one talks about blather, that comes through very clearly. When it comes to blather, I do not think the Treasurer needs to take any back seat in that regard.
The one thing that disturbs me about his budget more than anything else is the section on health. In practically every section of the budget that one comes to, he mentions the spending of some money at least in the current year. On the health item, he does not talk about spending money in the current year, with the small exception of some for dental care.
I have great difficulty, as do the people in my riding who are interested in health care, in determining what the Treasurer really intends to spend in the coming years on health care. I have it right here. I have listened very carefully to the Treasurer's well-chosen words during question period when he is asked about this year's program, next year's program and the program the year after. In each case, he said, "We are going to honour all our commitments." There is $168 million in capital there this year. There will be money next year and the year after, but is this $850 million in addition to a flat-lined $168 million per year? In fairness, the Treasurer has not answered that question, that I am aware of, at any point in the discussions we have had to date.
I am wondering whether he does not intend, as he has said he will do, to honour the commitments out there and then, when they are honoured, this $850 million will kick in at approximately the rate he has in capital right now, which is not the $850-million program everybody grabbed on to and was very happy about.
When I say this was artfully written, I mean it was artfully written. I may withdraw that a little bit if he will clarify for me what he actually wants to do. I go back to something that has been mentioned to the Treasurer several times when he has talked about the Conference Board of Canada. He has talked about the Conference Board of Canada and the various other prognosticators. The fellows who sit around the gas stove at Earl's Shell have been right at least as often as the other groups in their view of the economic future. I am not sure why the Treasurer got rid of his own economic policy advisory group and is now taking the advice of these two groups. He might as well have kept the other one.
He made a few comments about double dipping. He said: "I do not believe double dipping should be permitted at this time or any other time at any level of the government. It would electrify this province if someone on the Treasury benches would say he agrees with this concept." I have not seen any debate where the Treasurer has followed through on that very profound statement he made a few years ago.
One of the problems the Treasurer will be faced with in the not-too-distant future is the place of agriculture in our economy. I acknowledge the Treasurer has done well. He has increased the budget for agriculture, but he is just getting the bottom of the barrel covered.
Mr. Speaker: I hate to interrupt the member. I hope you can tie that into the motion.
Mr. McCague: Yes, I can do that quite conveniently. The Treasurer is asking for money. He has not told us everything for which the money will be spent, and I hope none of it will be spent for double dipping. That was the point I wanted to make. Does that seem appropriate?
Hon. Mr. Nixon: What do you have against Russ Ramsay?
Mr. McCague: I have nothing against Russ Ramsay, Mr. MacDonald, Julian Reed or any of those people. I have nothing against them. I wanted to recall the things the Treasurer would probably not want to be accused of doing himself. He has changed.
I was going to go on and talk a little bit about farming. I presume there is some agricultural money in this. I was going to tell the Treasurer what he said. He wanted to make a point that was a local one but it extends into southwestern Ontario. He said: "The economic plight of farmers is a serious matter indeed. I happen to be a working farmer myself. The fact that I drive a tractor more than I run a pitchfork probably has something to do with certain problems that members have noticed."
I never want to accuse the Treasurer of anything but I wonder whether he is driving the tractor a little less and running the pitchfork a bit more. I am not sure, but there have been indications of that in the past few days.
5:40 p.m.
The problem the Treasurer is going to have in agriculture is probably that other provinces and the United States are subsidizing agricultural products to a much greater extent than we are. The Treasurer acknowledges that our level of subsidization in this province is not as high as it is in those other places. Therefore, I fail to see how he can buoy up the agricultural industry in this province and at the same time hope it will sell in other parts of Canada and export.
It is interesting to hear how the Treasurer complains. I remind him that he said: "The tobacco industry is the biggest farm industry in the province by a considerable amount, that is, returning dollars to the producers and to the economy. Since the tax was imposed, they have found that their revenues have gone down." I know the Treasurer is an outstanding constituency member and takes into consideration everything that his constituents say. I wonder why he thought it was necessary to increase the tax on tobacco after having told us in the very recent past that the revenues of tobacco farmers have gone down because of the taxes imposed by his government.
This is another small quote from the Treasurer: "It is very difficult to shake these old dinosaurs out of their comfortable situation. They like the big offices, they like the big cars and they like to be able to move and shake." My only question on that is one not really related to the budget. When he talked about old dinosaurs, he was talking about a member who has not been around here as long as the Treasurer has. I wonder where the Treasurer fits into the scheme of things. He made that comment about Jim Snow when he did not build Highway 403. How is it coming? The Treasurer will answer me in a moment.
I know he understands the problems we may have in agriculture as a result of subsidization in other parts of Canada and in the US. I compliment him for such things as his employee share ownership plan and the $15,000 loan available in the new ventures program. However, I need to have some clarification of the health item. As members of this Legislature, we deserve that. We have no problem with the Treasurer's motion today, but there is a problem in agriculture and particularly in clarification of that health matter.
Mr. Hon. Nixon: It might be best if I use the 90 seconds or whatever to respond following the honourable member's speech.
Mr. Speaker: Two minutes.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: The member's reference to the statement in the budget that we will provide $850 million for a major multi-year hospital capital expansion is much appreciated. In my view, this was the most important initiative in the budget. It is designed to give hospital boards a chance to plan for expansion, renovation and new facilities. However, I can assure the member that we have not subsumed in that amount all the commitments previously made. There are commitments made by the Minister of Health (Mr. Elston) before this announcement and those would be associated with it, but essentially separate.
The honourable member has looked at the table and found $168 million in capital funds, which is not out of the way in size. I can assure him that as we make capital commitments, particularly for the renewal of cancer treatment facilities, this capital amount is liable, and I predict almost sure, to go far above that figure of $168 million during the next five years. In the third year particularly, as the plans mature and the construction and the real costs are actually undertaken, those capital commitments and the payouts will be much larger than the $168 million allocated for this year.
I have half a minute. Referring to the farm situation, we have indicated an increase in the farm allocation in the budget. In the 11 months we have been in office, we can point to a 39 per cent increase in the allocation of those dollars. Obviously, this does not cure the recession in the farm industry, and we are going to keep concentrating on assisting in any way we possibly can.
Mr. Shymko: I would like to join in some of the concerns of my colleague the member for Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. McCague) and reiterate the statement that $2.5 billion of windfall money is coming into the Treasurer's office.
The Ministry of Citizenship and Culture has declared a serious concern in an area of fair and equitable distribution of some of the budget allocations. I am concerned that the Ontario Advisory Council on Multiculturalism and Citizenship has had its budget cut from $323,000 last year to $252,000. I also understand that classified salaries of about $70,000, which would have gone to hire an executive co-ordinator and a researcher, were used to redecorate the deputy minister's office after the new government came in. These are serious concerns when we are talking about the salaries of people. I compliment the minister for some of the concerns in terms of the delivery of services --
Mr. Speaker: I am sorry to interrupt the member. He is aware this is a two-minute period to comment on the comments by the member for Dufferin-Simcoe.
Mr. Shymko: I believe I have 53 seconds left.
Miss Stephenson: The member was not commenting; he was participating.
Mr. Shymko: I am commenting on some of the concerns raised by the honourable member, in that there should be some equity in other councils.
I understand the budget of the 13-member Council for Franco-Ontarian Affairs is $397,000, an increase from $379,000 last year. That compares with the 56-member Ontario Advisory Council on Multiculturalism and Citizenship, whose budget has been slashed to $252,000. These are concerns I would like to point out to the Treasurer to be looked into as he allocates the moneys to expensive ministries.
Mr. Speaker: The member's time has expired. The member for Dufferin-Simcoe has up to two minutes to respond.
Mr. McCague: I am faced with the same problem from the Treasurer. I do not know whether to accuse him of choosing his words so carefully that nobody can figure out what he means. I am not sure what to do, but he talks about a planning period. There have been all kinds of planning. There have been five-year plans. A five-year planning period has been the rule at practically every hospital for years. I think I heard him say he was not going to honour all the commitments of the previous government.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: Yes.
Mr. McCague: is he going to?
Miss Stephenson: No. He said there were some the minister had.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: This is hardly the time to go over those one by one.
Mr. McCague: That is what is worrying me. We will never get to that time, because we cannot get to it in question period.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: There are the Ministry of Health estimates.
Mr. McCague: That is true. We will not have the Treasurer there, though.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: I will be glad to attend.
Mr. McCague: As is his custom.
However, he is obviously going to pay for the projects that are under way. The projects that are not under way are under review. We all know that. It is still not clear how much money he is actually putting into the health care system. Some members over here feel he is not going to put any more money into the health care capital than has been the case for several years.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: O ye of little faith.
Mr. McCague: I can be accused of having little faith. I would like a little fact. That is what the Treasurer is a little short in himself.
Mr. Treleaven: I am glad the Treasurer is here. Being the member for the other part, the remainder of Oxford county, he will be particularly interested in my comments, with his fourth or fifth hat as member for the county. Mr. Speaker, as you admonished my friend the member for Dufferin-Simcoe, I will stay on the motion.
Mr. McCague: So did I.
5:50 p.m.
Mr. Treleaven: Certainly. However, my comments will have some relevance to the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk. I will not be running the clock until 6:30 p.m. However, I will be making some comments. Were it up to me, this would be another good opportunity to vent certain things. Antagonized enough, I would run it to 6:30 and much beyond for my own purposes , but I will not. There will be other opportunities for me to deal with that.
We are dealing today with a motion by the Treasurer: "That the Treasurer of Ontario be authorized to pay the salaries of the civil servants and other necessary payments pending the voting of supply...such payments to be charged to the proper appropriation...." Just a moment ago, when my friend the member for Dufferin-Simcoe was winding up, he mentioned and the Treasurer interjected about honouring the undertakings of the previous government.
Let us look at the 50 beds in Oxford county. I do wish the Minister of Health (Mr. Elston) and the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) were here because they are the objects of my attention these days and will become succeedingly more so. The Treasurer knows things will get more painful. I am sure he will relay my comments -- on topic, of course, but maybe rambling a bit -- in Hansard to those two ministers.
Hon. Mr. Bradley: I heard the House was coming to a standstill.
Mr. Treleaven: No, there is no standstill.
Hon. Mr. Bradley: I read that in the Oxford Times.
Mr. Treleaven: It is called "ratcheting." The bills of the two ministries, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services, will come to a standstill ultimately.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Treleaven: You are admonishing me.
Mr. Speaker: I think the member has previously heard the Speaker say that interjections are out of order. Members should disregard the interjections and speak to the motion.
Mr. Treleaven: I will disregard the interjections. We are going to talk about the undertakings of the previous government and honouring those. May I refer to a letter from the Minister of Health who states -- this is just an excerpt, Mr. Speaker; I would not think of reading wholesale from any document -- "193 beds to the Thames Valley area were announced by the previous government with no mention of keeping these beds separate from Community and Social Services extended care beds."
Apropos of that and what the Treasurer just said, I would like to refer to a news release of a previous Minister of Health, the member for Cochrane South (Mr. Pope): "More than 600 new nursing home beds being announced for southwestern Ontario." On the third page are the words, "The additional beds announced today include only extended care beds in facilities under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Health, not those in homes for the aged, which come under the Ministry of Community and Social Services."
That is an undertaking of the previous government. The Treasurer's friend, the Minister of Health, comes along and says there was not an undertaking. What are we to think? One minister states that the undertakings will be honoured and another denies it.
On the question of these 50 beds, 50 extra nursing home beds which have been promised, Mr. Speaker, you would be unfamiliar with the area, but I am speaking of Tavistock, Ontario, where 41 per cent of the Oxford nursing home beds are located, the majority being filled by residents of Perth county, Waterloo county and the riding of the Minister of Community and Social Services. These are the 50 nursing home beds I am talking about, which the government has reneged upon.
The Treasurer is now asking for salaries to pay civil servants. I am sure the civil servants to whom he is referring are the nurses, nursing attendants and so on for these 50 nursing home beds.
I do not want to stray too far. At other times on other bills there will be time to get into these details more explicitly. In his motion, the Treasurer is referring to paying the salaries of civil servants. Perhaps he is referring to the civil servants of the Thames Valley District Health Council. I am sure you, Mr. Speaker, are familiar with the move to bring the county of Perth into the Thames Valley District Health Council as the fourth county.
Far be it from me to give advice to a member of an adjoining riding, but I suggest from the experience of Oxford that would be a step backwards for any other county to do so. Although I understand Perth is not connected with a health council, in the last number of years it has probably gained more and perhaps progressed more than Oxford in the health field without being connected with a health council. It could not have progressed any slower.
Perhaps the Treasurer is asking for authorization to pay the salaries of the bureaucrats at the Thames Valley District Health Council, who in an 1982-83 report listed among their accomplishments -- accomplishments, note that -- that they had prepared a proposal to undertake a study of the needs.
Hon. Mr. Bradley: At one time, you used to like the bureaucrats.
Mr. Treleaven: Bureaucrats? That is the height of bureaucratese, as my friend the Minister of the Environment has interjected.
Hon. Mr. Bradley: Good people, bureaucrats.
Mr. Treleaven: I will pay no attention to the interjections. I have never had any time for bureaucrats who procrastinate and people of that ilk who would list as an accomplishment in an annual report that they have prepared a proposal to undertake a study of the needs. Anybody who has been a lawyer or any type of businessman, who believed in giving service --
Hon. Mr. Bradley: A lawyer?
Mr. Treleaven: I do not want to rise to the interjections of the member for St. Catharines. I would end up saying something disparaging about teachers. I am married to one and that would get me into trouble at home.
Mr. Breaugh: Go ahead. Put it on the record and take your abuse like a man.
Hon. Mr. Bradley: You would insult most of the NDP caucus.
Mr. Treleaven: No, I will not. The member for St. Catharines has taken my mind away from what I was saying. I believe I was referring to the Thames Valley District Health Council.
Mr. Swart: Who appointed these health councils anyway?
Mr. Treleaven: I was not here when the health councils were appointed. Whoever did it had a bad idea, from my perspective. From the perspective of Oxford -- I have experience with only one health council -- if they lined up all four levels of bureaucracy, gave them two weeks' notice and heaved them out the door, Oxford would be much better off.
Interjections.
Mr. Treleaven: To my mind, the Thames Valley District Health Council has never really been that; it has been the London health council and it continues to be the London health council. They do not accept Oxford people into Middlesex and London facilities. This Treasurer wants money to pay civil servants in London and Middlesex who deny the residents of Oxford the ability even to put in applications for the facilities in London and Middlesex county.
Hon. Mr. Bradley: Oh, we have got him going now.
Mr. Treleaven: No. I promised myself I would not get rolling.
Mr. Mackenzie: You sound like a square wheel to me.
Mr. Treleaven: No. I will stay nice and calm. I will not get rolling today.
Hon. Mr. Ruprecht: We know why.
Mr. Treleaven: The interjection down there from Toronto really cannot be relevant. He has probably never been west of Roncesvalles, so he could not really know what the Thames Valley District Health Council is like.
6 p.m.
When we speak of the Treasurer asking for these funds to be authorized to pay the salaries of the civil servants for the children's mental health service in Oxford, it does not exist. Oxford is the only county in southwestern and southern Ontario, in fact, that has no children's mental health funding. Those are the civil servants that are to be paid by the Treasurer.
It is interesting. One looks at expenditures by municipalities for the fiscal year ending March 1984. When one looks down the list under the Ministry of Community and Social Services, its expenditures under children's services for children's mental health, and that includes speech therapy, one sees there are no funds. Incidentally, in Oxford, the number receiving speech therapy is 29 and the waiting list is 28. The waiting list is up to a year; but can the overflow from Oxford go to Middlesex or London? No, it cannot. They have to pay privately. There are no funds for Oxford people, children, preschoolers, etc., to go to the other jurisdictions within the Thames Valley District Health Council. They have to pay privately. They have to pay $22.50 an hour. The government is not paying out of the Treasurer's money. Why is it not going to help out the residents of Oxford?
When we look at the expenditures by the Ministry of Community and Social Services in the year 1984, when we look at the expenditures in municipal units, the list is all the way down. We have the central region, Barrie, Mississauga, Toronto; the southwestern region, which includes the Hamilton area; and the London area, which is Elgin, Haldimand-Norfolk, Huron, Middlesex, London, Oxford and Perth.
Then we look at the Waterloo area and the Windsor area. When we get through all of southern Ontario, however many millions of people there are, and we look across under institutions, money expended for institutions for children and youth and children's mental health, lo and behold, the only jurisdiction, the only county with nothing but dots under those two is Oxford. Under there previously had been Perth, but it has $240,000 given in 1985, the following year. At the point when this annual return came out, Perth and Oxford were the only two jurisdictions in southern Ontario that had no money in children's mental health from the Ministry of Community and Social Services.
Mr. Mackenzie: I guess the member did not have much influence.
Mr. Treleaven: Yes, it could be that. Therefore, as a member for Oxford, I have found a new path. Being a nice guy perhaps did not get any figures in the column.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: The member had to be nicer.
Mr. Treleaven: No. Nice guys do not finish first around here. Therefore, we take a little different tack.
It is surprising that Oxford is the only jurisdiction that has no money put into it. The same bureaucrats that have allowed this to happen are the people the Treasurer wants to pay. He wants money for them, believe it or not. They must assume that the people of Oxford are in some way different to everyone else in southern Ontario. They must assume that children's mental health, speech therapy and on and on, there being a different breed in Oxford, do not need to be funded. They do not need any of that money for which the Treasurer is now seeking authority.
Since they have had some studies, they are doing the usual bureaucratic thing. They are submitting the reports they have, expensive reports from the hospitals and family and children's services of Oxford. They are going to deal with it by committee. They have a joint committee of bureaucrats. Let us see what is it called in the motion. These same civil servants have a joint committee of the Ministry of Community and Social Services and the Ministry of Health where they kick things around. They made one of these decisions. What is that decision again? They are preparing a proposal to undertake a study of the needs.
The committee has met and has decided to refer this matter back to the Ministry of Community and Social Services in London and the Thames Valley District Health Council. When all four layers of civil servants at the Thames Valley District Health Council get through with it, they will submit studies and reports back to the joint committee of Community and Social Services and Health here in Toronto. Will they at that point authorize it? No. The same civil servants will then be in a better position to discuss it. Really, they told the people in Oxford that when all these steps have gone through, they will contact the officials in Woodstock and Oxford county and they will be in a position to consider it.
I do not want to go on; I want to watch my time here. However, in regard to children's mental health, the children's mental health unit in St. Thomas, again made up of bureaucrats, wrote a letter supporting the children's mental health progress, shall we say, in Oxford. Among many other things, they said they could not supply services. They come into Tillsonburg. Money is expended down there. These are civil servants. Money is expended out of St. Thomas to come up into Tillsonburg and the surrounding areas of Norfolk, Elgin and Oxford counties, but they say they come up there and supply that because there is no service in that area. They come when they can, but they state and admit they do not have the services to do it. A lot of people apply and have to be turned down; they cannot be served. A lot of them simply go away. They strongly support children's mental health. They are stating they cannot fulfil the needs.
They do want this. Money is being spent there, but it is not being spent properly. The best use is not being made of these civil servants whom the Treasurer wishes to pay. I promised I would finish at 6:10 p.m. I am sure I will have another opportunity soon.
Mr. McClellan: No.
Mr. Treleaven: I certainly will have another opportunity soon. It will not be as thrilling, exciting and spine-tingling as my presentation today. It will be a little more pedestrian, but I am not working on my large files of notes here. I am only working on my anger files. These are my angry files. I have prepared for subsequent health and --
Mr. Speaker: For this motion, I hope.
6:10 p.m.
Mr. Treleaven: Yes. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. I am glad you brought me back to this. These other files do not deal with civil servants' salaries directly, although they refer very much to the bureaucracy and the civil servants who perhaps should be lined up and shot. There may be some hundreds or thousands of them here in Toronto. It would really do a lot of good for various parts of Ontario if one could simply clean house and get back to a business basis where needs out there in the real world are met and money is expended properly, paying bureaucrats to do proper jobs.
I will leave it at that and continue on another day.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: I know the honourable member's strong feelings about medical and special services for children in the county of Oxford. I share his concerns and I have asked for additional information, which I will share with him as soon as it is available. I hope anything that is seen to be and that actually proves to be an inadequate and unfair distribution of funds for these special facilities will be corrected.
Mr. Harris: Could the member for Oxford (Mr. Treleaven) make clear his position on the Toronto civil service attitude towards Oxford county? I am not sure I understand where he stood on that matter.
Mr. Breaugh: I listened somewhat attentively to the member's comments. I would make a plea that he go away and come back on another day and do this in a coherent manner, so that we might be able to figure out in one of our official languages just exactly what it was he was trying to say.
Mr. Speaker: Is there any reply from the member for Oxford? Up to two minutes.
Mr. Treleaven: It is a very short one. I did speak on this briefly at the concurrences on February 12.
Mr. McClellan: Yes, we heard you then, too, and we still do not know what you were talking about.
Mr. Treleaven: Yes. That was entirely incoherent. Today was only semi-incoherent. My problem is that when I get into these subjects, I tend to get wrought -- overwrought at some times.
Mr. Breaugh: How about rotten?
Mr. Treleaven: "Wrought," not "rot," for the member for Oshawa.
I do promise at the next opportunity I have, on the next Ministry of Health or Ministry of Community and Social Services bill, I will be much better organized. It will be much more logical. It will be duller, mind you, much duller.
Mr. McClellan: We want to know what it is you are trying to say.
Mr. Treleaven: I will expand further in the future.
Motion agreed to.
ONTARIO LOAN ACT
Hon. Mr. Nixon moved second reading of Bill 40, An Act to authorize the Raising of Money on the Credit of the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
Hon. Mr. Nixon: The 1986 Ontario Loan Act will provide the government with the borrowing authority necessary to meet the financing requirements forecast in the 1986 budget. In addition, borrowing authority will be sought for the period from April to September 1987. The estimated borrowing requirement for these purposes is $1.7 billion. Any unused authority will lapse on September 30, 1987, as was recommended by the appropriate committee.
The authority requested is less than that provided in any loan act since 1979. As outlined in the budget, the government intends to borrow from three sources, the Canada pension plan, the teachers' superannuation fund and the public capital markets, by continuing the Treasury bill tenders at current levels.
The budgeted net cash requirement for 1986-87 is $1,544,000,000. Also during that year, loans of approximately $349 million will mature and be refinanced. There will be no material change in liquid reserve levels.
The authority sought will be sufficient to allow Ontario Hydro to borrow funds surplus to Ontario's needs from the Canada pension plan fund if it is beneficial to do so.
In accordance with the procedure recommended by the standing committee on public accounts in 1978, borrowing authority is being requested to permit the borrowing of amounts offered by the Canada pension plan and the teachers' superannuation fund for the period to September 30, 1987.
Mr. Harris: I was not going to speak on this bill.
Mr. Speaker: I am sorry, are there any comments? Is this comments or your regular speech?
Mr. Harris: Let us go right into my regular speech just in case I go beyond two minutes. I was not going to speak on Bill 40 until I heard the Treasurer make his comments. I believe I would be remiss if I did not comment on his statement that the borrowing is the least amount in the last one, two or three years in the bill.
I think it is absolutely disgraceful that there is any borrowing required at a time when we are looking at windfall profits coming into the Treasury of some $2.5 billion; at a time when there is a surplus from last year of approximately $380 million. When that is rolled into the base, that is another $380 million. The amount of money is staggering when we look at the forecast for growth or the lowest projection of any of the estimates of any of the major financial institutions, which could lead to up to another $800 million. It is at a time when inflation is running at 3.8 per cent and the increased spending of this government is running at 7.6 per cent, pretty much double the rate of inflation.
We are not here to impede the government's ability to carry out this raid on the people of Ontario because there are other forums and there are budgets and there are other mechanisms for doing that, but we understand that in order to carry out this raid on the people of Ontario moneys have to be raised.
While I do not believe this is the forum for me officially to oppose the borrowing, I want to be on record as saying I cannot understand why this year there should be any deficit or any borrowing necessary. I feel strongly that in this year when the good times are rolling and the money is coming in, we should be able to reduce the deficit by more than the peanuts the Treasurer is talking about reducing it, $80 million or $85 million.
Hon. Ms. Caplan: I think $600 million is a lot of money.
Mr. Harris: We are reducing it by $85 million on a $1.5 billion or $1.6 billion deficit, and it is disgraceful. The people of this province will regret this day and they will regret this budget when times get tougher and our capacity to respond to them gets tougher. They will regret the fattening of all the budgets across the board. They will regret the increased hiring in the civil service across the board, at a time I might add when the private sector has been expanding and the private sector is growing. Now is not the time for the public sector to be growing as well . Surely now is the time when we should be planning for the future and we should be planning for times ahead that may not be quite as rosy as we are facing at this time in Ontario.
My colleagues are telling me my time is almost up. I understand that and I did not plan to speak today, but I want to say to the Treasurer it bothers me that we are borrowing this kind of money at this time in our history.
Mr. Speaker: Any comments or questions for the member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris)? Do any other members wish to speak?
Mr. Ashe: Briefly, I want to second the comments of my honourable colleague.
6:20 p.m.
Mr. Foulds: I rise in support of Bill 40. I note that the net cash requirements as a percentage of the gross provincial product are the lowest in five years. I note also that the gross provincial product has increased by 50 per cent over the last five years and that this is not an outrageous amount of borrowing that is required.
Unlike the present government and the present official opposition, I am able to say what we have said all along. As long as the deficit, the net cash requirements, the gross provincial product and the overall spending of the budget are in balance, there is no great cause for alarm. We do not get obsessed with a fetish about having to borrow. A lot of the money we borrow goes into what the private sector would call an asset.
In our case, it goes into schools, hospitals and institutions all over the province. We require the capital for them. They serve our citizens, and borrowing to build those is not necessarily a bad thing. I have harsher things to say about the net cash requirements for Ontario Hydro, because I think its way of financing is absolutely silly. However, we support this bill. Thank you for allowing me these few remarks.
Miss Stephenson: Our party will support Bill 40, primarily because the pattern which is laid out in it is what was established by the previous government in the direction of confining borrowing to the funds made available through the teachers' superannuation and Canada pension plans. That has been a pattern that has been considered appropriate for several years in this province and it is one we think it is appropriate to continue to follow.
The concern which has been expressed by my colleagues that this is one of the years when perhaps we did not need to borrow at all is one I have clearly stated in my discussion of the previous motion. I will not express that concern again at this moment. However, this is a reasonable bill which the official opposition will be pleased to support. We hope the Treasurer will find the strength to persuade his colleagues that he does not need to borrow to the limit of the amount that this bill permits in this year and that he will be providing additional moneys to repay certain of the consolidated debt to ensure there is a decrease in the cash requirement and to provide some relief for taxpayers in the province in the future.
Mr. Foulds: I support the member for York Mills (Miss Stephenson). Unlike the present government, which used to oppose borrowing by the Ontario government from Canada Pension and the teachers' superannuation plan, we have always supported such borrowings. We think that is a good social as well as good economic use of those funds.
Mr. Speaker: Do any other members wish to participate in the debate? Does the Treasurer have any final comment?
Hon. Mr. Nixon: No.
Motion agreed to.
Third reading also agreed to on motion.
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Hon. Mr. Nixon: I would like to indicate the business of the House in the coming week. With the exception of the first item on Monday, June 2, which will be Bill 98, the Foreign Arbitral Awards Act, and private members' public business standing in the names of the member for Mississauga East (Mr. Gregory) and the member for York South (Mr. Rae) on Thursday morning, the week will be devoted to committee of the whole House for clause-by-clause examination of Bill 94. If by any chance it were to carry short of the end of the week, the House leaders will be glad to provide additional work for the members.
The House adjourned at 6:27 p.m.