Journal des débats 1986-oct-29 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Mr. O'Connor: I draw to the attention of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Kwinter) a very serious omission in existing legislation that has resulted in a most tragic death in an Oakville family. There is no provision whatsoever for safety or maintenance standards for commercial or home whirlpools in Ontario, although it is estimated that some 10,000 Ontarians use them on a regular basis.

This lack of standards has resulted in the death of Gregory Racette, an 11-year-old Oakville boy. Evidence at the coroner's inquest showed that at the Ontario Racquet Club whirlpool, the screws holding down the drain cover had corroded away some four years ago and were never replaced. The cover easily came off, allowing the boy's foot and leg to be sucked into the drain and causing him to be pulled underwater and drowned. The pressure at the outlet was more than 400 pounds per square inch. Greg Racette did not have a chance. For the outlay of $1.98, the cost of the four screws, he would be alive today.

As legislators, we have an obligation to ensure that this type of tragedy does not recur. If the prevention of one more death is any comfort to my constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Gaetan Racette, then let us show them by our actions that their son did not die in vain.

LEAD LEVELS

Mr. McClellan: I have a number of documents I have brought in from my files that I would like to share briefly with members of the House. The first is the latest report on lead contamination of soil in the vicinity of Toronto Refiners and Smelters in the south end of Bellwoods riding.

l also have my files on the matters that were opened on December 2, 1976. Members with long memories will recall that there was a soil removal program in 1976 and 1977 in the vicinity of Toronto Refiners and Smelters, and we were assured by the ministry that control orders had ended lead contamination of our residential neighbourhoods.

In August 1985, the Ministry of the Environment refused to answer questions about lead soil contamination in the neighbourhood on the grounds that staff members planned to be away on vacation and were unable to devote the time to do that. Staff members have shown up at meetings in our neighbourhood and told residents there is no safety problem and no lead soil contamination in our neighbourhood from Toronto Refiners and Smelters as recently as October 1984, and repeated it in correspondence from the ministry as recently as April 1985.

This report shows those statements were lies. We were lied to by officials of the Ministry of the Environment in correspondence and in public meetings. I expect the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) to explain to the House why his officials deliberately misled people in our community.

ADOPT-A-SCHOOL PROGRAM

Ms. E. J. Smith: I wish today to draw the attention of this House to a very excellent program currently in place in London. Under the auspices of the chamber of commerce, London has entered into a program called Adopt a School. In this program, 16 major corporations in London have adopted the 16 high schools. During the course of the year, the corporations will work with the high schools to show them how the business operates, by bringing them into the business atmosphere and by sending people from the company to speak to the various classes in the schools at the various levels of involvement.

This is the first time in North America this program has started in a city with the whole city participating, all 16 high schools. We look forward to it being extremely successful. At this time, when it is so difficult and so much effort is being made to involve the educational system in business needs and standards and also to involve business in the course of what is going on in the educational system, it is felt very strongly that this two-way communication will be beneficial to both the students and the companies involved.

ELEVATOR LICENCES

Mr. Rowe: I wish to bring to the attention of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Kwinter) an important matter. This may be an elevating or uplifting bit of information for the minister. I will just jog his memory about how quickly after his appointment he equipped all elevators at Queen's Park and other buildings around the province with licences bearing his signature.

The minister must surely be surprised and shocked, as I was, to realize the licences for various elevators in the provincial government building we are currently in are all outdated. They expired in April 1986. Need I remind the minister to get his house in order before he has inspectors chasing down delinquent owners of elevating devices throughout Ontario?

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Ms. Gigantes: My colleague the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) refers to the Ministry of Labour as the swamp. I would like to let members know how the swamp works as it affects workers in Ottawa-Carleton. I asked the Minister of Labour (Mr. Wrye) eight days ago to report on the fact that a report from the Ottawa-Carleton district of his ministry, outlining to his legal branch the reasons there should be legal action taken in the case of an injury of a worker involved in cleanup at the Lees Avenue coal-tar site, has disappeared in the ministry.

It was shipped to the ministry legal branch in July 1986 and for three months it has not surfaced again. I asked the minister about this question in the House a week ago. What he provided me with a few days later was a letter of almost three pages, in which he briefly referred to the question I asked. He wrote: "I am further advised that this information was not provided" -- this is the information concerning the safety hazard -- "to the union or to the joint health and safety committee as a whole until May 27," which was several days after the incident. "This matter has been referred to the legal services branch of the ministry for consideration."

I asked where the report was. I get a letter back that does not even deal with where the report was. The report has disappeared.

HOSPITAL FUNDING

Mr. Offer: I would like to take this opportunity to inform the House of a grant by the Ministry of Health in the amount of $1.5 million to the city of Mississauga and the Mississauga Hospital for the phasing in of a neurological centre. Some minor surgery is now being performed at the hospital, but most patients needing this service must travel to Toronto or Hamilton.

The new unit of the Mississauga Hospital will accommodate up to 1,200 patients a year from the area. In addition, the hospital is expected to hire approximately 30 to 40 additional staff members for the service, including nurses and other health care professionals. The hospital will assign 30 of its existing beds and one of its eight operating rooms to establish this neurological unit.

In conjunction with this grant, a fund-raising campaign has been launched by the people of Mississauga to match dollar for dollar what has been given by the Ministry of Health. I congratulate not only the Minister of Health (Mr. Elston) and the ministry but also the people of Mississauga for their initiative, determination and commitment to making certain this very vital service will be found within Mississauga.

REMEMBRANCE DAY

Mr. Hennessy: I am speaking on behalf of the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 6, which has been refused permission by Brewers' Retail to place its poppies in the Brewers' Retail outlets in Thunder Bay.

In 12 days, communities across Ontario will be pausing to remember the men and women who served Canada so proudly in two global conflicts. Remembrance Day is the only occasion veterans have to remind the community of their sacrifice and of their continuing needs. Remembrance Day is a special time. That is why I am surprised and indignant to learn that veterans of the city of Thunder Bay are not allowed to place collection boxes for the sale of poppies in local Brewers' Retail outlets this year.

The sale of poppies is of great significance. Not only are the funds raised important for the great work of the legion, but also the sale of poppies provides an important symbol for all the people that we remember and appreciate the heroism of two generations who fought to preserve freedom here in Canada and elsewhere in the world.

While I can understand the concern of Brewers' Warehousing managers not to clutter their outlets with collection boxes, I believe we should give a special place to the veterans in the weeks leading up to Remembrance Day. Brewers' Retail stores should not forget. They should provide the space for collection boxes for RCL Branch 6 of the city of Thunder Bay.

13:42

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

CORRECTIONAL PROGRAMS

Hon. Mr. Keyes: I would like to report to the House today on the progress of the Ministry of Correctional Services in developing what is recognized to be one of the most essential aspects of correctional programming, that of clinical treatment and rehabilitation of offenders.

During the past 12 months, the ministry has completed an extensive review of its mandate, structure and strategic directions. The results of that review are contained in a detailed corporate plan, which sets out a number of new directions for the development of correctional programs, both in institutions and in the community.

We are projecting significant growth in ministry operations over the next 10 years, not only in the number of offenders we expect to come into our care but also in the number and variety of programs we have developed to handle the projected increase in our case load.

During the ministry's analysis of its role and function in society, it identified some sobering facts about some of its client population. Specifically, on a typical day in the early spring of 1986, the ministry had under its care and control 959 adult inmates, or 15 per cent of its total inmate population, who had psychiatric, psychological and/or behavioural disorders that required some form of treatment. Added to these were another 148 adults who were determined to be suffering from a degree of mental retardation which would require a certain level of specialized care.

In developing our new directions for the ministry, we have been mindful of the needs of these groups, not only for their own wellbeing but also in the long-term best interest of the communities from which they come and to which they will all eventually return.

I am pleased to announce four major initiatives that will have significant impact on our ability to effect meaningful treatment measures with that portion of our client group in need of such services.

First among these initiatives will be some organizational remodelling reflecting the ministry's need for clinical leadership and supervision in the area of treatment.

Second is the proposed expansion of our network of fee-for-service contracts with consulting psychiatrists.

Third is the near-term planning for the establishment of additional treatment beds and a range of community treatment programs designed to serve the needs of offenders throughout all regions of the province.

Fourth is the immediate implementation of a major treatment capability in eastern Ontario. The ministry currently maintains three provincial treatment facilities -- the 220-bed Ontario Correctional Institute at Brampton, the 50-bed Guelph Assessment and Treatment Centre and a maximum security treatment unit at the Millbrook Correctional Centre near Peterborough -- for inmates who exhibit extreme behavioural problems or present a security risk.

These three institutions are at present funded at a total annual operating budget of just under $12 million. Added to these are current fee-for-service contracts with consulting psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and other ministry clinical service professionals, having a total annual budget of more than $2 million. We are now spending just slightly less than $14 million for treatment services.

I am pleased to announce today that the ministry is expanding its annual resource funding for treatment programs by nearly 30 per cent, or approximately $3.8 million, to a total annual operating budget of $17,634,000.

This will involve, first, the establishment of two new clinical supervisory positions -- chief of social work services and chief of psychological services -- at the ministry's head office in Scarborough. Working closely with the chief of medical and psychiatric services, these two clinical positions will spearhead the continued development of treatment services in the ministry.

Second, to support the treatment capability offered directly by the ministry, we are increasing the number and extent of fee-for-service contracts with consulting psychiatrists. The value of agreements established for both institutional and community-based services located throughout 16 operating areas of the province will be increased from $497,000 to $875,000 per year.

Third, I wish to report that continuing discussions are taking place with the regional municipality of Sudbury regarding the possible establishment of a northern treatment centre to serve the needs of the northern part of the province. I hope to be able to provide more details on this new treatment centre, as well as a number of other treatment programs, in the next few months.

Fourth and finally, I am pleased to report that tomorrow I will be joining with officials of the Ministry of Government Services in opening the Rideau Treatment Centre, located on the grounds of the Rideau Correctional Centre at Burritts Rapids, Ontario.

The Rideau Treatment Centre will provide 84 beds for the assessment and treatment of those with psychiatric, psychological and behavioural disorders. Rideau and the other programs that will follow in other areas of the province will serve as focal points for therapeutic communities capable of serving inmates as well as those under the ministry's supervision in the community.

Our considerable efforts at upgrading treatment services are guided exclusively by the obvious and pressing needs of the many people under the ministry's care whose conflict with the law may very often be the result of psychological or psychiatric impairment. The measures we are announcing today are fully consistent with the ministry's goal of providing rehabilitative opportunities that can enable those who come into our supervision to be integrated or reintegrated into society as productive, law-abiding citizens.

Mr. Sterling: I would like to respond to the minister in his position as the Minister of Correctional Services. I want to congratulate him on agreeing to come to my riding tomorrow afternoon to open the Rideau Treatment Centre at Barrios Rapids. It was a pleasure to be a minister of the Progressive Conservative government that initiated this project, and when we open this very substantial institution -- with the jobs that will be spinning off -- I am certain the minister will be mentioning my involvement in the building.

While we look forward to these initiatives, we are still concerned about the tremendous overcrowding that exists in the many correctional institutions run by this province across Ontario. While these measures are window-dressing, the government is still not addressing the basic problem of overcrowding in our institutions.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I too am glad to see that finally there is a recognition of the need for clinical services in our correctional institutions. I am very concerned that the response to those who are mentally retarded and developmentally handicapped in the institutions is inappropriate and ill focused in this report.

There are no definite programs put forward to look after those 148 individuals who are said to require certain specialized care. There is only talk about psychological assistance and assessment. This is usually totally inappropriate for the developmentally handicapped.

For years I have been raising the issue of the inappropriate placement of mentally handicapped people in these institutions and the requirement that we have a completely different way of dealing with mentally handicapped offenders. It is not just a matter of providing a few local services to those institutions, especially by people who do not have expertise in the developmental handicap, but it is a matter of getting those people out of those institutions and into appropriate placements for people with mental handicaps.

CRIME PREVENTION WEEK

Hon. Mr. Keyes: I am sure all honourable members will be interested to know that next week is Crime Prevention Week in Ontario and that it will be marked by a number of special activities across the province. Crime Prevention Week was established as a testimonial to police forces and to members of the public who have a common cause, namely, making the province a safer place for all of us.

The results of this initiative have been impressive. A productive dialogue has been developing between police and civilians dedicated to reducing the rate of crime in their communities. Neighbourhood Watch programs are operating in more and more communities across Ontario. Citizens' organizations are playing vital roles in the campaign against drinking and driving. Groups such as Child Find and Block Parents are organizing to protect our children. The private sector and service clubs have, on many occasions, extended a helping hand to worthwhile programs on many occasions. The people of Ontario are getting involved, and we are reaping the benefits of this collective effort.

Next week, I will be visiting communities across the province to acknowledge the contribution of both the police and the public in this cause. My ministry will be presenting more than 200 people and organizations with the Solicitor General's Crime Prevention Awards, a recognition by this government of leadership and achievement in the field of crime prevention. The awards will be presented at seminars on crime prevention in Brockville, Trenton, Sudbury, Saint Ste. Marie, Fort Frances, Windsor, St. Thomas, Simcoe and Richmond Hill.

I believe the local police chiefs have already invited many members of this House to attend the seminars in their respective areas. I urge those members to accept those invitations. The success of this program is in no small part due to teamwork among all parts of the community. We are all part of the team.

Mr. Sterling: I would like to comment briefly on the Solicitor General's announcement of Crime Prevention Week. I welcome this initiative by the Solicitor General. We recognize this is needed each year to remind our citizenry of its involvement in the whole area of crime prevention. When the previous government had a Provincial Secretary for Justice, a position I held, I instituted the first Justice Week. I believe Crime Prevention Week is a child of that initiative.

At that time, I suggested it was very important to get all the different people involved with the justice system and the social system into the same discussion to make our justice system and the rehabilitation part of the system work more smoothly. Therefore, I as an MPP and each member of the PC caucus will be supporting any endeavour the government takes in Crime Prevention Week next week.

Mr. Harris: I am pleased to respond briefly to the two statements made by the Solicitor General today, perhaps to what is not in his statements as much as to what is in them. There is no discussion of the funds to be forwarded to police forces across this province. There is no discussion about providing adequate services to our police forces so they can competently do the job of crime prevention.

The only thing I have seen the Solicitor General do in the past year and a half is follow up on the suggestions of my colleague the member for Carleton-Grenville (Mr. Sterling), and he has completed that one project that was started by my colleague from Carleton-Grenville. In the past year and a half, perhaps he has been too busy replacing all the police commissions in the province with his Liberal crony patronage appointments. If he spent more time worrying about his ministry instead of that, perhaps we would get something done.

Ms. Bryden: I commend the Minister of Correctional Services for supporting crime prevention measures during Crime Prevention Week. The measures he mentions are among the ones for which we have been pressing for a great number of years: support of Neighbourhood Watch and Block Parent programs and intensified programs to meet the serious problems arising from drinking and driving, a growing problem.

I also welcome the minister's announcement of additional treatment centres in correctional institutions. The present overcrowding in these institutions has intensified the need for this kind of service, and there is a growing diversity of problems coming into the institutions, in both the medical and psychiatric fields.

One thing the minister has not mentioned is how he is going to provide the employees with information on how to deal with inmates who have serious medical and psychological problems and how the employees can be protected from any possible infection or dangers from the illnesses that are being recognized as rather prevalent in some of our institutions.

Also, the minister should include in his program of health care some education on the hazards of smoking, so that those who come into the institutions are aware of the dangers of continuing to smoke, a danger not only to themselves but also to those with whom they share the space. We welcome these measures, but we hope they will be adequate to meet the present overcrowded conditions.

13:58

ORAL QUESTIONS

RESIDENTIAL RENT REGULATION LEGISLATION

Mr. Grossman: Today, I thought we would go back to the Minister of Housing. I am once again sending over to the minister a copy of the analysis I sent over yesterday, trusting that perhaps by now Gardner Church has been able to go through Bill 51 with the minister again so he can assure the tenants of this province they will not be facing a 22 to 25 per cent increase as a result of Bill 51.

The minister will recall that yesterday I pointed out to him that a 22 per cent rent increase could result from 5.25 per cent in the guideline rate, five per cent in financing costs, five per cent in capital improvements, two per cent for chronically depressed adjustment and five per cent for equalization payment. I trust the minister will agree that the last two categories, chronically depressed and equalization payments, which allow a seven per cent increase on their own, are not allowed under the current law but would be allowed under Bill 51 and therefore at the very least there will be a seven per cent increase over the base rate in addition to what is being paid today. Will the minister agree with that?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I trust the Leader of the Opposition knows that buildings built after 1976 are not under the rent review regulations now. There are increases in excess of 20 per cent, which is a worse case now. I want to inform the member of that. Bill 51 will bring much more savings to the tenants than the previous bills.

Mr. Grossman: Not to cut this point too finely, the example I was giving the minister -- and he has it before him -- is for a building built before 1975. Dealing with a building built before 1975, can the minister explain which of the five rental adjustments, all of which I suggest are permitted under Bill 51, will not apply? If he cannot answer that question, then he must acknowledge that the rents in the pre-1975 buildings could go up by as much as 22.25 per cent in the example I have offered.

Hon. Mr. Curling: Let me point out again to the Leader of the Opposition that Bill 51 includes those buildings that were built after 1975.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: We know that; that was in the accord.

Hon. Mr. Curling: The member who interjected may know that, but he may not understand what it means.

I was trying to say to the Leader of the Opposition that more tenants are protected now under Bill 51. On average, tenants will receive far lower increases.

The case the member puts forward is quite inaccurate. He is saying that if someone comes before the board, all these things will be given. I said all these things will be taken into consideration. I answered the member yesterday, and I told him all these situations will be taken into consideration under Bill 51.

Mr. Grossman: The minister may be surprised to hear this, but we do know that the post-1975 buildings are included under the legislation. We want to assure the tenants of pre-1975 buildings that their rents will not skyrocket as a result of this legislation.

The minister is trying to pretend that these things may be given by the board. Will the minister not agree that under his legislation it is not a matter of "may"? Under his legislation, if a landlord can satisfy these five headings, he has a right to and will be given these increases amounting to 22 per cent if he can just file the appropriate information. Either he has the right to do that under Bill 51 or he does not. Which is it?

Hon. Mr. Curling: Again the honourable member has given us a hypothetical situation. In the first instance, he talks about a chronically depressed rent of $500. We have not seen chronically depressed rents of $500 per month. Immediately, the example he gives is wrong. Furthermore, he talks about a guideline being given at 5.2 per cent. If one is asking for anything above the guideline, he will not get the guideline; he will get the guideline minus one per cent. Again the situation the member has given is wrong.

Mr. Grossman: Could the minister send in Gardner Church tomorrow? He will tell the minister, he will tell us and he will tell the House that the minister is absolutely wrong on all the information he has just offered; absolutely wrong.

URBAN TRANSPORTATION DEVELOPMENT CORP.

Mr. Grossman: I have a question to the minister responsible for fire sales, the Minister of Transportation and Communications. Will the minister begin to fess up today to some of the facts on the sale of the Urban Transportation Development Corp.? Perhaps he could begin by telling us how much the province received on closing of the UTDC sale and how much the province has paid to Lavalin as of October 31.

Hon. Mr. Fulton: The terms of the sale to Lavalin Inc. call for a $10-million cash payment, of which the Leader of the Opposition is aware, a further $20-million debenture and a percentage of the profits, which we believe, and Lavalin certainly believes, will be of great benefit to the taxpayers of this province.

Mr. Grossman: The minister did not answer part of the question, namely, how much the province has paid to Lavalin. if the minister's information is right, Lavalin has paid the government $10 million.

However, as of October 31, pursuant to the documents we finally got from him, the following payments will have been made by the government to Lavalin: a $2.2-million management fee; $11 million for overhead costs; a return of Lavalin's deposit, if members can believe that -- it is the first time I have ever seen a deal where one gives back the deposit on closing -- $1.5 million for the first year's research and development; $1.9 million worth of R and D for advanced light rail transit technology; $660,000 for the buyout of Hawker Siddeley's 20 per cent, and a $9-million prepayment by GO Transit on the contract.

That means by October 31 the government will have sent payments to Lavalin totalling $27,348,712 and received in exchange $10 million from Lavalin.

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Interjections.

Mr. Grossman: It gets worse and not better. Will the minister confirm that this flow of funds is correct?

Hon. Mr. Fulton: The honourable member continues to attempt to answer his own questions. I do not know why he bothers wasting the time of this House asking, only to detail the very answers contained in the documents we have continued to release on the dates they were made available from day one -- all the documents relative to the sale, the letters of intent and so on, which contain the information the member just introduced to the House.

Mr. Grossman: Does the minister mean my documents are accurate? Does he mean he has received $10 million from Lavalin and handed Lavalin a cheque for $27.3 million?

An hon. member: Let's make a deal.

Mr. Grossman: Do not let him near Minaki. The minister said he got back a $20-million debenture. Can he confirm that, as of today's date, the debenture has not been executed or signed? Can he also confirm today that the reason the debenture has not been signed is that he has given Lavalin the right to reduce the amount of the debenture in the event that its tax position is such that it is a taxable benefit to Lavalin, in which case he has agreed to adjust the sale price to pay the tax load to Lavalin?

Hon. Mr. Fulton: I do not confirm the statements made by the Leader of the Opposition. He well knows that the dollars included and the monthly amounts, as previously stated, are the very same; UTDC would in the normal process of doing business have to cover those costs.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Rae: I have a question for the Minister of Financial Institutions. There are reports this morning that the minister is producing a plan with respect to changes in car insurance. Such reports in our experience usually stem from an inspired leak of one kind or another, and I just want to find out how inspired the leak was. That is why I am addressing this question to the source of much of the inspiration for the insurance industry, the Minister of Financial Institutions.

14:10

Can the minister confirm that the government is about to introduce a plan that will result in higher benefits to those who are injured in accidents and, at the same time, continue to give the monopoly for the delivery of insurance to the private sector, the private profit insurance companies? Can he tell us how it will be possible to have a higher benefit plan that is paid for by the private profit insurance companies and that, at the same time, results in substantial savings for Ontario drivers? This is one of the claims contained in the leak of the day.

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: I thank the leader of the third party for the question. He correctly identified it as a leak. It is not something I am prepared to discuss. As a result of Dr. Slater's report, I am looking into the whole area of automobile insurance, as I am looking into all of the other recommendations he made.

Mr. Rae: This is silly. The minister cannot float an idea in the Toronto Star, based on a detailed scheme with detailed numbers. We know how that works. We know how the system operates around here and how it has operated for years. He cannot float that kind of scheme --

Hon. Mr. Peterson: Tell me about it, because I do not know.

Mr. Rae: One day we will find out too.

The minister cannot float that kind of information with detailed schemes and then say he is not prepared to discuss it with the House. Is there a scheme that is going to deal with the insurance industry? If not, why is there not such a proposal or some such idea that will deal with the problem facing drivers, the ripoff in the current system? He can have the question both ways: if he is not going to do something, why is he not going to do something?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: I did not say we were not going to do anything. All I am saying is the purported information in the paper is just that -- it is purported. When I am ready to introduce it, I will.

Mr. Rae: There is something strange about the conduct of public business. The minister has had Dr. Slater's report; it has come down, indicating the direction in which he thinks the government should go. The material is being discussed with cabinet, and we now have the issuance of an inspired leak of one kind or another.

Is the minister saying the statement contained in the press today has no substance whatsoever to it?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: All I am saying to the leader of the third party is that I have no responsibility for what appears in the newspaper. When the time comes, I will bring forward my recommendations.

RENTAL HOUSING LOAN

Mr. Reville: I have a question for the Premier. The Premier boasts loudly and repeatedly about government without walls; yet Huang and Danczkay, experienced and successful developers in this city, felt they had to hire Ivan Fleischmann, a Liberal lobbyist, in order to get access to a Liberal government program.

Will the Premier now tell this House that all that has really changed in Ontario is the colour of the ties? Is this the kind of stewardship the Premier advocates for the province?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I say to my honourable friend, Huang and Danczkay are in a position to hire whomever they want, to do whatever they feel is appropriate in the circumstances. I would like to give the member and others the very clear message that no one gets special favour or treatment in any way.

I am familiar with the innuendo the member and others are trying to suggest. I have read about the comments of some, including Dale Martin and others, who would like to impute motive. I guess that is fair pool because motives are being imputed all the time.

I have asked the deputy minister for a complete review of the circumstances. He tells me it was handled in the normal course of events, as are many other applications in similar circumstances.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am willing to wait until the members are ready to listen.

Mr. Reville: In the careful review of the Premier, he may have come across these other names in addition to Mr. Fleischmann's: David Appel, vice-president of Huang and Danczkay; Bram Appel, director of Harbourfront Corp.; David Greenspan, chairman, Ontario Housing Corp.; June Rowlands, councillor, city of Toronto; and Arthur Eggleton, mayor of the city of Toronto. All of them are Liberals and all of them are connected in some way with the circumstances surrounding this loan.

We have had evidence before the House that Mr. Fleischmann received $30,000 in lunch money from the public purse to arrange a deal in the Wyda affair. Now we have this situation. Will the Premier not stand before this House and commit his government to bring in legislation to control these finders' fees and to control the lobbyists who, in the last analysis, are being paid with public moneys?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The honourable member will be aware that most people in the province are Liberals now; so I cannot account for the list he wants to name or names he would like to drag in. I can mention a lot of other names, but I am not sure what that accomplishes. If the member has some evidence of some special treatment or favour, then he has an obligation to present that. When he makes that kind of an allegation, I am sure he is aware he is alleging some kind of criminal activity.

Mr. Rae: No, he is not.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The honourable member is quite wrong about that. When he suggests that someone is getting special or preferential treatment because of who he or she is, that is a criminal activity, and he should bring that forward.

Mr. McClellan: Did the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) give the Premier this legal opinion?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I have read in the paper some of those names the member mentioned. I presume he suggests that something is untoward or there is some great conspiracy in that particular regard.

I have no idea why Huang and Danczkay hired him or anyone else in the circumstances -- I presume it was a free market decision -- any more than I have any understanding of why the New Democratic Party has hired Pierre Berton to tell it why the party is not extinct. I cannot explain these decisions made by the member or others, and everyone has the right to make them.

The message is very clear, everywhere in the public service and outside of the public service, that no one has any special privileges. Everyone has the right to speak to his or her government, regardless of political persuasion and regardless of where he or she comes from. Everybody has a right to fair, even-handed treatment in this government.

Mr. Reville: One would expect a Premier of a province to have a firmer hand on the tiller.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: I guess the member does not have a question.

Mr. Reville: I do indeed, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I am sure everyone will pay attention.

Mr. Reville: Under the Ontario rental loan construction program, now defunct, Huang and Danczkay received $1,413,720, which produced 10 units of rent-geared-to-income housing. In the midst of a housing crisis so deep that the hostels in Metro cannot keep up with demand, how does the Premier dare to continue to squander public money in a way so shameful and in a way that will produce so pitifully small a mitigation of the misery on our streets?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I gather the member raises another issue, does he? I am not familiar with the facts he raised in this example. I am sure he would be the first to agree that I personally did not review all the applications under the convert-to-rent program; they are handled in a bureaucratic way. The regulations under which they complied were regulations brought in by the previous government, not our government.

I guess the member is critical of the 502 units that are being built. I find that a little strange. He is the first to admit that we have a housing crisis with a shortage of units, but when there is real activity going on, he is the first to stand up and criticize. He cannot have it both ways. Perhaps he revels in misery; I do not know. We are trying to solve the problems and not just sit and yap from the back.

14:20

Mr. Gillies: My question is for the Minister of Housing. It arises directly from the Premier's last statement. We too are interested in how public funds are expended in Ontario in this day and age. Will the minister confirm to the House that Mrs. Paulette Fleischmann, the wife of Ivan Fleischmann, was involved in the organization of two fund-raising dinners for the minister?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I will be glad to answer that. No, she was not involved in two fundraising dinners for me.

Mr. Gillies: Thank you. We know Mrs. Fleischmann was involved in fund-raising for the minister. If it was not two dinners, can the minister tell us how many it was?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I do not know any Mrs. Paulette Fleischmann anyhow. Go fishing again.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. New question. Perhaps everyone will remain silent. I am waiting for a little silence.

Mr. Harris: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I wonder whether the Attorney General realizes that while he yells across the floor waiting for the question, the people of Ontario are watching him.

Mr. Davis: Tit for tat.

Mr. Pope: He stood up and mocked us.

Hon. Mr. Scott: I spoke the truth.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Will the honourable member take his seat? That is not a point of order.

Mr. McClellan: Yes, it was.

Mr. Speaker: Order. No, it was not. Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I apologize to the member for Lake Nipigon, who I believe wanted to ask a question.

[Later]

Hon. Mr. Curling: I rise on a point of personal explanation. The member for Brantford (Mr. Gillies) asked earlier whether I knew the wife of Ivan Fleischmann and whether she was involved in any fund-raising activities of mine, and I told him no.

I think the honourable member is referring to a Paulette Vassiliou. I asked my staff to check on that, and they told me the member may be referring to a Paulette Vassiliou who was involved in one of my fund-raising activities in 1985.

NATIVE SELF-DETERMINATION

Mr. Pouliot: I have a question for the Premier. I hope the recently baptized chief, Light of the Heavens, can still hear the drums. While we helped to organize the rally for self-determination currently taking place --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order, the member for York Mills (Miss Stevenson) and the member for Essex South (Mr. Mancini).

Mr. Pouliot: The Premier will be cognizant of the importance of self-determination for our first Canadians. While the Constitution does indeed guarantee the rights of all Canadians, it recognizes and affirms only "existing aboriginal and treaty rights." I am dealing here with subsection 35(1) of the Constitution, and the Premier should feel free to check with the sous-chef to his immediate left.

Will the Premier give this House, and more important our native Canadians, the unqualified commitment and guarantee that he will send a message of support and ask the government of Canada to substitute the word "guarantee" for what now exists in terms of the lack of guarantee in our Constitution under section 35?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: Like the member, I was moved by the rally we participated in today. He will be aware of the things I said as well as of things the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) said and of some of the great progress made in the past year. That is not to say for a moment there is not much more progress to make as well. With respect to the discussions on section 35, they are ongoing. The issue is the word "existing" in the Constitution. I am told by the Attorney General, the responsible minister, that those discussions with his peers are ongoing. It is our intention and our hope to come to an agreement with the other provinces and the federal government to entrench those aboriginal rights. That is one of the subjects around which the discussions are going at the moment.

Mr. Rae: Can the Premier give us in this House today the guarantee, which will be of great importance to the native people of Ontario, that no change or amendment will be supported by the government of Ontario unless it has the full and complete support of the native community in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I understand the intent of the member's question, but I am not in a position to give him an absolutely bald, flat assurance on that point. I believe we are working very closely on this. As with many other groups in society, there are different points of view, which is understandable in the circumstances, but I think the mode of co-operation we have established is a good one. I believe that the native people in Ontario have seen significant progress and that at this moment they have faith in the Attorney General, who is negotiating on their behalf. I certainly am anxious to represent their interests with a clear voice. I cannot say they will approve of every single point we make, but I think the member will find, when it comes out in the wash, we are speaking on the same wavelength.

TARIFFS ON SOFTWOOD LUMBER

Mr. Bernier: In the absence of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology (Mr. O'Neil), I will direct my question to the Minister of Natural Resources. We have just learned today that McKenzie Forest Products has given layoff notices to 44 of its employees at its Hudson operation, that Atikokan Forest Products has given layoff notices to 30 of its employees, that Great West Timber in Thunder Bay has given layoff notices to 49 of its sawmill employees and that Northern Wood Preservers of Thunder Bay has given layoff notices to 49 of its employees.

A total of 172 sawmill workers have been given their layoff notices because of a direct lack of this government's interest and concern, in fact because of its indifference to the recent 15 per cent countervailing duty imposed by United States authorities on softwood entering that country. What is the minister planning to do for these 172 employees and all the other sawmill workers in northern Ontario, who are now facing the prospects of a very bleak Christmas and a jobless winter?

Hon. Mr. Kerrio: This government has made representation across the country to other ministries of forestry and to the federal representatives. It is understood very clearly that the Prime Minister of this country must take action because, as Pat Carney has said, the decision handed down by the Department of Commerce in the United States was grossly unfair and certainly not without influence from the elections there. The member should know a great deal of pressure has to be brought forward by the Prime Minister of this country if we are going to resolve trade problems with the US.

14:30

Mr. Pope: When the minister's provincial policies were under attack in Washington, he failed to be there; he failed to fight for Ontario jobs. Over the past two weeks, we have given him details of layoffs in Chapleau, Timmins, Atikokan and Thunder Bay. What we want to know is not what he is going to do to try to cover his case now, after the fact, in Washington. We want to know what he is going to do for these workers who are out of work. What employment programs is he going to bring in to put them back to work in communities across northern Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Kerrio: This issue, as I have described, was one that this government pursued with vigour. We did attend every meeting we were asked to attend with Pat Carney, Mr. Merrithew, Mr. Kelleher and Mr. Clark. We made good presentations on behalf of Ontario.

As I have said before, the initiative has to be taken by the federal government. We are supporting them every step of the way, and we are doing everything we can do to prove that Ontario is not guilty of any substantial initiatives that would interfere with a fair price for lumber in the US. Unless the initiative is carried forward by the Prime Minister, we in Ontario will not waste our time. We will do everything we can to be helpful.

That is where it is. We are fighting that fight, and we are going to do everything on behalf of Ontario to support the federal government's initiatives in Washington.

ACID RAIN

Mrs. Grier: I would like to ask a question of the Minister of the Environment about his acid rain control program. I had hoped to have had the opportunity to raise these questions in the select committee on the environment, but as that body has never yet met, I would like the minister to comment on the first six-month status report from Ontario Hydro on its progress towards Countdown Acid Rain. Does the minister accept Hydro's contention that by using nuclear power it can avoid installing scrubbers on its coal-fired plants until the mid-1990s?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: The member will know that when we brought in this program, one of the items I emphasized, which I think is important when we bring in a program of this kind, was that the specific technology not be dictated to any of the people who are involved in the regulations -- the four main polluters, for instance -- and instead that they employ the technology that they feel is appropriate to abate the sulphur dioxide and reduce the acid rain.

A number of options are available to Hydro. One, of course, which I think the member will agree with, is conservation; that is an important component of it. The second component would have wet scrubbers as one of the options. A third is limestone injection, which is being experimented with at the Lakeshore generating station; the member will be very familiar with that.

The fourth is to purchase lower-sulphur coal, which is available, some of it in western Canada itself. That would probably assist western Canada economically as well as being of some assistance in this regard. A fifth is to look at other fuels that might be available -- natural gas, for instance, which might be used. That is one option; I am not saying they will exercise it.

There are a number of options they could exercise -- even the purchase of power from Manitoba or Quebec if they wanted to go in that direction. Those are the options available to Hydro.

Mrs. Grier: All the minister has done is to describe the options that were available to Hydro before he announced his program. He has not commented on its predilection for the substitution of nuclear for coal-fired plants, and that is what the question was about.

In 1981, the then Minister of the Environment, Harry Parrott, announced that Hydro would immediately begin retrofitting coal-fired plants with scrubbers. Now Hydro is telling this minister that it requires a 10-year lead time for such a retrofit.

Surely the minister is not going to put up with that kind of delay by Hydro. Is the minister going to allow Hydro to manipulate the Countdown Acid Rain program in such a way that we have to wait 10 years for new technology to avoid emissions from coal-fired generating plants?

[Applause]

Hon. Mr. Bradley: I cannot anticipate what the applause was for, except that I would anticipate the question.

Mr. Mackenzie: Never mind playing games. Just answer the question.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: The member for Hamilton East no doubt has comments to add. I am sure he has concerns about this matter as well.

I can assure the member for Lakeshore, as I did when I announced the acid rain program on December 17, 1985, that all the key players in this are required under the regulation to meet its stipulations. They have to do so within the time frame and the specifics of that regulation, and that is true in this case.

As to the member's question about nuclear power, I can assure her that the acid rain program we have put into effect is not contingent on any particular nuclear capacity of Ontario Hydro. They must simply meet the stipulations of that regulation, and I intend to see that they do that, whether they like it or not.

RECYCLING

Ms. Hart: My question is to the Minister of the Environment. Currently there is a debate going on in my riding, the borough of East York, about recycling. We no longer have recycling pickups in that borough. Can the minister hold out any hope to the people of East York for increased funding for recycling?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: In regard --

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: I am sorry. There were several interruptions. I was trying to listen to the original question from the member. As far as I could hear it, it was a very good question concerning recycling and the amount of money that would be flowing for recycling programs.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: Order.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: Thank you. The member for Scarborough West has been kind enough to call order.

I can assure the member that the amount of money for recycling in this fiscal year, as I indicated very clearly in a speech I made to the Recycling Council of Ontario last Friday, is significantly above even the allocation we had anticipated, which in that case was $2 million, which was the amount that was spent from 1981 to 1985 on source separation.

The actual figure for expenditures in this fiscal year will likely be $4 million rather than the $2 million that was allocated. That is because of the popularity of the program and the number of municipalities and others that have indicated a clear interest in it.

Ms. Hart: Despite the popularity of recycling, some municipalities appear to be somewhat recalcitrant. Given that this responsibility is shared with the municipalities, what is the ministry doing to encourage the municipalities into those programs?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: The financial incentive in itself is important. Our ministry has also provided a good deal of technical and other information to municipalities. As minister, I have encouraged them to become involved in recycling.

Our program is now a five-year program as opposed to a three-year program; so there is staged involvement in that program on the part of municipalities. However, there is also a somewhat negative factor that contributes to it that we all recognize. Under the Environmental Assessment Act, which is now applied to all greenfield sites, it is a much more difficult and expensive process to site a landfill site or to establish a facility that would involve incineration.

For that reason, many municipalities are recognizing that it is important to reduce the amount of garbage going into a landfill site before it even gets there. That is why the program has become popular and that is why, as I have described, our ministry is encouraging municipalities in so many ways, financially and otherwise, to become involved in the program.

14:40

NATIVE SELF-DETERMINATION

Mr. Shymko: My question is to the minister responsible for native affairs. Chief Gordon Peters, who is the regional chief of Ontario for the Assembly of First Nations, said following the surprise assurances from both the Premier (Mr. Peterson) and the minister, "We must have been sitting at different tables for the past two years."

In terms of his answers, the minister should be named Clouds of the Heavens if the Premier is Light of the Heavens. Is he prepared to commit himself today that at next year's first ministers' conference, he will follow the lead of the Assembly of First Nations and assure them that he will endorse only changes at the constitutional conference that meet with the approval of the first nations, and will he endorse their fundamental principle that a government cannot give to the Canadian aboriginal peoples rights in the Constitution that, by implication, they already have and that it can be explicit only on rights that are already implicit.

Hon. Mr. Scott: At the meeting outside the Legislature today, which was very well attended and which was very moving for one who is interested in native affairs, I pointed out the four or five things this government has done in the self-government area, in which Chief Peters participated. The declaration of political intent was, of course, initiated and signed by Chief Peters and others. The Nishnawbe-Aski nation agreement we have made to negotiate was one in which chiefs participated.

We have taken a lead in negotiating the constitutional amendment to which the honourable member refers. There have been two ministers' meetings leading up to the first ministers' conference. Two more are contemplated in which the four native groups will play a major role. We have teams on both sides that are working to develop a compromise position that the four native groups, the required number of provinces and the federal government will be able to support. We have made plain our commitment to this process, and we hope it will have a satisfactory conclusion.

Mr. Shymko: Once again the minister is well-meaning, but he is doing what he thinks is right for the natives. The Premier said today that paternalism is dead, but when he says, "I will speak for you," we are perpetuating that paternalism. Will the minister say categorically today that he cannot dictate to the chiefs of the first nations as he does to his cabinet colleagues? Why will he not let the first nations of this province forge their own destiny? They should speak through us. He should not speak for them.

Hon. Mr. Scott: The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Grossman) really must get a native affairs critic who will read the material that is provided to him so there will be some foundation on which a debate can take place. It is well known that there are four native organizations. No government can dictate to them, and we do not propose to dictate to them.

With the other nine provincial governments, the two territories and the federal government, we are in the process of trying to negotiate a constitutional amendment that will obtain the provincial support that is necessary if the Constitution is to be changed. We in Ontario are taking a lead in that exercise with Manitoba and one or two other provinces. It is a subtle and difficult exercise. The one direction we are not going to follow is the direction that was followed by the previous government of Ontario.

DAY CARE

Ms. Gigantes: My question is for the Minister of Community and Social Services. The minister promised a white paper on child care policy for June 1986. Now we are told we will not see the policy until January 1987. In the meantime, indirect subsidies to municipal day care centres will end.

The minister tells us he is looking to the federal government to commit itself to continued and increased funding of child care. Why is the government waiting for a no or a yes on federal funding? Does he think this is a good way to get adequate child care for Ontario families? Is he going to make policy and programs, or is he going to beg for policy and programs?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The government of Ontario is not waiting for the federal government to tell it what it can or cannot do. The honourable member will be well aware that at present there is a 50-50 sharing arrangement between the two levels of government. For us to put forward the program policies and proposals we would like is dependent on this kind of sharing. If this kind of sharing is not going to be maintained, if it is going to be changed in any significant way, that will very much influence the program we put forward. I simply want to know what the rules of the game are going to be.

Ms. Gigantes: I think this government has not learned the lesson of the softwood lumber debacle. If one needs something from the feds on behalf of citizens and families of Ontario, one goes there and says: "This is what we are putting in place in Ontario. You tell us how you are going to support that progressive policy." That is what the government should be doing for day care for families in Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: In terms of my discussions with the Minister of National Health and Welfare, the discussions of the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon) with the federal Minister of Finance and the discussions of our Premier (Mr. Peterson) with the Prime Minister, that is precisely what we have done.

STABILIZATION PAYMENTS

Mr. McGuigan: I have a question for the Minister of Agriculture and Food.

An hon. member: Did the minister write it for him?

Mr. McGuigan: No. I wrote it myself. There has been a great deal of confusion among livestock and grain farmers surrounding the federal and provincial stabilization payments. A small number of livestock people are splitting their operations into a grain operation and a livestock feeding operation so they can collect on the grain stabilization payment and still be eligible to collect on the animal stabilization program.

I wrote to the federal Minister of Agriculture asking him for clarification, and he simply said payments will be made on a net basis. He really avoided the answer. Can the minister tell the Legislature and the farmers of Ontario what advice they should follow in setting up their businesses and what are the policies on stabilization?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: I have received numerous submissions from various farm organizations, as I am sure my federal counterpart has, to have grain fed to livestock included for stabilization purposes. I have discussed the matter with Mr. Wise in Ottawa, and the members of my staff have travelled to Ottawa to meet with the Agricultural Stabilization Board to see whether it is prepared to amend its program to allow for feed grains to be included under the stabilization program.

The decision was that they would not. They have not in the past, and they will not stabilize grains that are fed to livestock. They will stabilize the product that is sold to an arm's-length market. If the corn producer is feeding corn to livestock, then whatever purchases are made by way of grain will be used to offset whatever stabilization he receives on the corn produced that is not fed.

CONSTRUCTION DELAYS

Mr. O'Connor: I have a question for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. I raise my correspondence with the minister in March on the serious and increasing problem of new home construction delays, with which I think the minister is fully familiar. He stated then that he had no intention of assisting the situation with legislation.

It appears that the best this government can do is to allow a resolution by the minister's parliamentary assistant in tomorrow's private members' hour. It is hardly an answer for the thousands of people who are affected by this problem. In view of the fact that the situation is now worse than it was earlier this year, will he consider taking a direct hand to resolve the continuing problems between builders and their purchasers?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: The honourable member should know that, contrary to what he is saying about the thousands of people who are being affected by this, it is not in the thousands at all; it is somewhere around five per cent of the people who are buying homes. When we consider that 95 per cent of the builders are responsible builders and are delivering their homes to the best of their ability -- certain things happen over which they have no control; strikes, poor weather and things of that type -- to bring forward legislation would not solve the problem.

I have looked at the alternative of bringing forth legislation. If I thought we could bring forth legislation that would solve the problem, I would do it. We have examined it, and we feel there would be so many exclusions that the legislation would be relatively worthless.

14:50

Mr. J. M. Johnson: I would like to follow up on that. Is the minister not aware that there are thousands, and certainly hundreds, especially in Caledon in my riding, who are forced to live with friends or in motels because some builders are intentionally delaying home starts in order to force the buyers out of their deals and get better prices in a booming market? Will the minister at least consider legislating a standard form of purchase contract requiring interest to be paid on deposits during delay periods?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: Those two recommendations are certainly under consideration. We are working in conjunction with the industry. I am very aware of the problem. I am trying to come up with a solution that is going to be enforceable.

The member has to understand that the building industry runs in cycles. There are booms and there are busts. Every time we do something at one end of the cycle, we have to make provisions at the other end. It is not an easy problem to solve. We are looking at it and trying to come up with a resolution.

The building industry, which is the largest industry we have, is very concerned about it; it is very cognizant of it. The building associations have been meeting. They are trying to come up with a discipline within their own industry, but there are various problems that cannot be resolved with legislation. How does one legislate against a company going on strike? How does one legislate against a rain storm? How does one legislate against a municipality that does not bring forward the building permits?

These are all problems that would have to be excluded in the legislation, and there are many more. By the time we do that, we have legislation that does not have any teeth at all.

NURSING HOMES

Mr. R. F. Johnston: My question is for the Minister of Community and Social Services, although variations of the question can go either to the Solicitor General (Mr. Keyes) or to the Minister of Health (Mr. Elston). It concerns the situation in the Ellenvale Acres Nursing Home in eastern Ontario, where three developmentally handicapped youngsters have died in the space of five weeks.

I will go to the Minister of Community and Social Services. Incredibly, there has not as yet been an inquest called and there has been no push for one that I have heard of by other ministries. The minister has made commitments in the past to get these kids out to homes for special care. There are still four children under the age of 18 in that home and there are almost 40 who are in their 20s. What is the minister going to do to get those kids into a proper home with proper care?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The honourable member will be aware that, despite the fact that our ministry does not operate those homes, we do provide the day programming for those residents. Therefore, we assume some responsibility for the residents themselves, even if we do not do so for the facility. At the same time, we have clearly indicated -- and there has been a clarification between the Minister of Health and myself -- that there should be a transfer of responsibility for those residents to our ministry.

I have already made a public commitment that the children in all those homes across the province will be removed from them and brought back into the community within the next 18 months. That does not mean that nothing is going to be done for 18 months; it will be done during that 18-month period. My staff are out now working very closely with the staff of the Ministry of Health to decide which ones will be moved first and where they will be put. As the member knows, there must be a residential placement for them and there must be a day programming opportunity for them.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: I remind the minister that the member for Bellwoods (Mr. McClellan) first raised this issue in 1978. He got commitments at that time that it would be a very quick process to get those under 18 years of age out of these homes. As I said, the majority, almost 40 of the people in that institution, were under 18 years of age at the time he made his first request.

Although there is a ministry person there providing programs, my information is that a week ago Sunday, when somebody went to visit a relative there, he found children still in their cribs in the middle of the afternoon. They had to step over people who were lying on mats in the hallways and there were only three staff members on hand for a total of 20 people.

Will the minister make a commitment today that he will give us progress reports regularly in this House on getting not only these specific children out but also the rest of those under 18 years of age at least, and I hope those in their 20s, during the next number of months, so that we can see practical progress and can hold him accountable day by day? These kids have been in there since the early or mid-1970s.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I most certainly recognize the work done by the member for Bellwoods. There is no quarrel or difference of opinion between us as to what needs to be done. The request from my honourable critic is a reasonable one, and I will do the best I can to accede to it.

OBSTETRICAL SERVICES

Mr. Stevenson: In the absence of the Premier (Mr. Peterson), I have a question for the Minister of Health. The board of the Uxbridge Cottage Hospital has been forced to take funds from an already very tight budget to pay the fee for a visiting consulting obstetrician to get the obstetrics unit reopened in that hospital. Now that the minister has forced his version of health care inaccessibility on the women of the Uxbridge area, why has he refused to pay the cost of getting that obstetrics unit reopened in that hospital?

Hon. Mr. Elston: The concerns raised at the local level about the people who provide service in their hospitals are, after all, decisions that have to be made by the people who are trustees for that community. They make the decisions about how and what funds will be allocated for what purpose.

In that situation, the individual physician had decided that he wished to receive more money. I do not provide the specific line-by-line approvals of what hospitals do. There is a global budget, and if they wish to make a decision about paying a salary to a particular person to become a member of a department in that hospital, then they are at liberty to do that.

I must advise that when they make those decisions, they make them on the basis of the business information they have available to them, and I expect them to make them on the basis of the ability of their budget to accommodate whatever steps they deem necessary.

I was in touch with the chairman of the board when this problem originally arose and I spoke to him about it. I had indicated I was not able to provide him with a special fund to pay that physician to return to service in Uxbridge, but I expected that if the board had wished to make a determination on its own with respect to what was available in its budget, then certainly that was well within its mandate to do so. It obviously has taken the step and made a decision that its budget allowed it to provide a salary for that person.

Mr. Stevenson: Boards routinely apply to the ministry for new programs, and clearly the minister has forced them into a new program. Obviously, he is not going to fund this program now or in the future. Will he then increase the budget to return the services that are going to have to be cut to keep the obstetrics unit open in that hospital?

Hon. Mr. Elston: It is not usual to describe payment to a particular physician in a hospital as a new program. In fact, he had been serving the area before on the basis of a determination that he would like to provide a consultant service to the practitioners in that area. As I understand it, he visited regularly from a place where he resides outside of the hospital that he normally attends.

From my own standpoint, I cannot find that this is a new program. Particularly, I cannot find that employing a new person in a hospital setting is a new program as defined under the means by which I would have an ability to fund. In this case, I cannot give the honourable member an undertaking to provide additional funds to this facility. We review the budgets and the submissions that are provided to us on the basis of their needs, but I cannot do it in this situation.

In addition, the members here will be happy to know that we have set up a new program under which district health councils will help to advise --

Mr. Speaker: Order.

PETITION

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. D. R. Cooke: I have a petition several pages long, in which the undersigned are not satisfied with the way the automobile insurance companies are monopolizing the insurance business and would like the provincial government to do something about it.

15:00

REPORT BY COMMITTEE

STANDING COMMITTEE ON REGULATIONS AND PRIVATE BILLS

Mr. Callahan from the standing committee on regulations and private bills presented the following report and moved its adoption:

Your committee begs to report the following bills without amendment:

Bill Pr7, An Act respecting the County of Huron; Bill Pr22, An Act to revive Cedarhurst Golf Club and Bill Pr26, An Act respecting the University of St. Jerome's College.

Motion agreed to.

Bills ordered for second reading.

Mr. Grande: I would like to address the assembly briefly on Bill Pr7, if I may.

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry, I cannot hear you.

Mr. Grande: You asked whether the bill passes and I stood up to speak on the bill.

Mr. Speaker: No.

Mr. Grande: Why not?

Mr. Speaker: I understand this bill was discussed in committee and this is a report back. It is the usual custom that there is no further discussion on second reading. That is the report of the committee. I am sorry.

Mr. Grande: Mr. Speaker, if I may, I understood --

Mr. Speaker: Order. It has not been the custom. This is just the report from the committee. There will be a further chance for you to make some comments on the bill.

MOTIONS

HOUSE SITTINGS

Mr. Nixon moves that when the House adjourns on Thursday, November 6, 1986, it stand adjourned until 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 12, 1986.

Motion agreed to.

COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTIONS

Mr. Nixon moves that the following substitutions be made on the standing committees: on the standing committee on administration of justice, Mr. Ramsay for Mr. Callahan; and on the standing committee on public accounts, Mr. Callahan for Mr. Ramsay.

Motion agreed to.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. Sterling moved first reading of Bill 145, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Sterling: This bill makes it mandatory for all motor vehicles to have their lights on whenever the vehicle is in motion. If this measure were to become law, according to statistics of the Department of Transport of Canada, accidents would be reduced by three per cent to six per cent and the loss of 40 lives and 4,000 injuries could be avoided.

I am pleased to introduce this bill during Headlights On Week sponsored nationally by the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

GEOGRAPHIC TOWNSHIP OF HANSEN ACT

Mr. Shymko moved first reading of Bill 146, An Act to change the Name of the Geographic Township of Stalin to the Geographic Township of Hansen.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Shymko: The purpose of the bill is to provide a permanent monument to Rick Hansen, who is now crossing Ontario in his heroic travel around the world on behalf of the handicapped.

I introduced this bill in the light of the concern felt by many Ontarians and Canadians from the Jewish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Polish and other communities about the name of Stalin and in the light of letters that have been written to the Premier (Mr. Peterson) and his reply to the MP for Calgary East, saying he will be pleased to keep the suggestion of that change in mind. The Premier said the problem he had is that we have a very tight and busy schedule in the Legislature which will not permit an amendment to the Territorial Division Act, and I thought this bill might pass with the support of the House.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

Hon. Mr. Nixon: Although it is not on the business page for today, I would like to call the fifth order by and with the agreement of the House.

THIRD READING

Hon. Mr. Elston moved third reading of Bill 129, An Act to amalgamate Toronto General Hospital and Toronto Western Hospital.

Motion agreed to.

LIQUOR LICENCE AMENDMENT ACT (CONTINUED)

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 134, An Act to amend the Liquor Licence Act.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Wellington-Dufferin-Peel (Mr. J. M. Johnson) adjourned the debate yesterday. Do any other members wish to participate in the debate?

Mr. Charlton: I rise to speak to Bill 134 and to raise a number of concerns I have with the bill as it is put before us. Let me start out by comparing some fact sheets I have here which were put out by the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

In regard to the bill itself, the fact sheets talk about the definition of a "retail food store." They also talk about the definition of an "independent retail food store." Unfortunately, I cannot find in Bill 134 any reference to those definitions or anything that specifically indicates to me that those definitions are going to be in place once this bill passes.

Undoubtedly, the minister will assure the House that the distribution of wine and beer to independent retail food stores will be regulated by a definition in the regulations.

15:10

That also speaks to the concern that has been raised a number of times during this debate over the course of the last year and a half since the Liberals made this promise during the election campaign; that is, although they have chosen to come here to the Legislature to make the changes to open up the retailing process for wine and beer, this government will be able to expand that retailing process by regulation outside of this Legislature as it had the power to do with this change in the first place.

The government obviously wants it both ways. It wants this Legislature to take responsibility for the basic change, but it wants to take away the ability of this Legislature to take absolute responsibility for the change and its regulation.

Mr. D. R. Cooke: What about free debate?

Mr. Charlton: That is what we are having here today. That is why we are here, is it not? Is not democracy about the rule of the majority?

Mr. D. R. Cooke: That is right.

Mr. Charlton: That is exactly right.

My first concern is that although this government is asking this Legislature to make the basic change, it wants to take away from this Legislature the right to control how that change is used in the future. Mark my words, three or four years after the passage of this bill, if it should pass, the entire retail sector of the food and variety store type will be involved in the retailing of wine and beer by changes in regulation that would be done over on that side without any input by the Legislature or by the public of this province.

The second basic concern I have with this piece of legislation is that the title itself and the definitions on the fact sheets from the ministry talk about beer and wine in independent retail food stores. The comment from the outset has been that it would be small, independent stores that are helped by this rule. It is interesting that although I have some letters from individual citizens, consumers, some in favour of and some in opposition to this change, I have been contacted so far by only five people whom I would categorize as small, independent retail food store owners in the pure sense; i.e, they are not in a franchise of a chain, they are not proprietors --

Mr. Callahan: They know the member is against it; why would they write to him?

Mr. Charlton: These are the people he is saying the bill is for. They are also against it, my friend. The small, independent, family operated food stores are going to have real problems with this piece of legislation because those are the very operations that depend, in large part, for their ability to survive, on the hiring of students to work in their stores.

All five -- and they happen to be the only five truly independent food retail stores in my riding -- oppose this legislation because they do not want to get involved, they do not want to have to lay off their students and they do not want to get forced by the small chains to have to stay open longer and a whole range of things that this society has placed as pressures on them over the course of the last 20 years. They see this bill as just the next, additional step in pressuring them out of business as small, family operations, because they will not have the ability to operate or to compete.

During the course of this debate, we have had some discussion about the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the effect these changes, by allowing only Canadian beer and wines, will have on a number of commitments this country has made with other jurisdictions.

The minister was quoted as saying the GATT people are also very concerned about what they consider to be our discriminatory policy as far as European wines are concerned, and that is a very serious bone of contention with them. They have already put us on notice that if we put beer and wine in corner stores and exclude those brands, this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

If this bill should pass, I am sure that for the first, very short period the minister will stick by his word and the regulations will say small, independent retail food stores, as defined in this fact sheet, and the sales will be limited to Canadian wines and beers. However, as we well know and as I have already commented about the mounting pressures, the campaigns and the lobbying from other retailers, so too will the lobbying increase for the expansion of the products that are available.

It will not be very long, a year, two or three years down the road, before we will see a change in what started out as a program to provide some convenience to the consuming public, supposedly provide some assistance to small, independent retailers and to provide a boost to Canadian-produced wine and beer. All of that will go down the drain. We will see these products available in the large retail chains of grocery stores and we will see more than just the Canadian products available, because that is what the consuming public will demand. Ultimately, if they are going to want to take advantage of the convenience, they are going to demand the products they like best, whether it happens to be a Canadian beer, a Dutch beer, a German beer or a British beer. They are also going to demand access to their own particular favourite brands of wine.

Although all we are being told in this debate may be very true in the very short run and in the very first instance, we know it is bunk in terms of where we will end up in a short period. A lot of the rationale the government has used to promote this piece of legislation will become exactly what I called it, bunk.

I have one other major concern which is about a complaint I have already heard from the small retailers in this province for many years, never mind adding to that problem. It is the concern around deposit-returnable bottles. The small retailers in this province have had problems with returnables for at least a decade and probably for closer to 20 years. Among the small retailers nowadays, one can find virtually none that meets the requirements of the legislation as far as the display of soft drinks is concerned, for example.

The small grocery or variety stores are stocked with two kinds of soft drinks: the one-litre bottles, which in some cases are returnable, and cooler after cooler of cans. There are no returnable bottles in the one-drink size, just cans. Every single one of those stores is currently breaking the law and is in violation of the regulations that are in place in this province in terms of returnables versus nonreturnables.

15:20

With beer, we recover currently 98 per cent of the deposit-returnable beer bottles in this province through the Brewers' Retail system that we have. We also recover currently 75 per cent of the deposit-returnable beer cans that are distributed in this province through Brewers' Retail outlets. As someone who was the Environment critic for this party for four years, as someone who saw over the course of the last few years the huge lobbies that went on around returnables versus nonreturnables, I know that if we add to that lobby to get rid of the deposit-returnables all of the small retailers in this province because they are now not only being asked to handle returnable pop bottles but they are also being asked to handle returnable beer bottles, we will lose everything we have gained over the course of the last decade from the environmental perspective.

I know the minister will again tell us, "We will make sure that does not happen." I saw both the previous government and this government already start to bend under that lobby and if we add a whole pile of small retailers in this province who are now trying to retail beer to that massive lobby, we will see everything we have accomplished in terms of returnable bottles go down the drain -- and returnable cans as well, for that matter, because they do not want to handle them either. They do not now, they will not then, and no matter what the minister says that lobby will grow.

It is time this government started to face up to reality. It has not even skimmed the surface in terms of the problems the changes it is talking about will cause. It has not even thought through where this is really going to end up. I am not saying the commitment they are making about what will be true on day one is not a reality. It may be a reality then, but they are kidding themselves. They are being naïve and they are playing games with their constituents if they believe that is where it is going to stay and that it will not go any further. They are being silly and naïve.

All I can recommend to this House is that we defeat this bill and end this stupidity as quickly as we can.

Mr. D. R. Cooke: I have a couple of comments. I am surprised that the member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Charlton) is suggesting, as I think he was, that there were five variety stores in his neighbourhood --

Mr. Charlton: Five truly independent stores.

Mr. D. R. Cooke: All right. I am surprised at that. I live on the corner of Filbert and Frederick streets in Kitchener and I am right across the street from Fisher's Variety Store. I know Bob Fisher is most anxious to have beer and wine for sale.

An hon. member: Is that something like Earl's Shell?

Mr. D. R. Cooke: I do not know if he is related to Earl's Shell Service or not, but he is most anxious to have beer and wine available for sale in his store. He is quite prepared to deal with the bottle returns without any problems whatsoever. That is the case in other stores in that neighbourhood as well.

Mr. Charlton: Before he votes in favour of this bill, the member should take the time to find out who this bill is going to affect and to understand that the variety store he talked about is not covered under the definition that we got from the ministry office. The definition talks about the sale of nontaxable food stuffs. This little independent variety store, which I agree really is an independent variety store, will not qualify under the definition the minister has provided us with. He is not going to get to sell wine and beer unless he starts to lobby, along with the others I have talked about, to expand the jurisdiction of the bill. Look at the facts before voting.

Mr. Mitchell: I do not intend to be long but I feel some comments have to be made about the sham that has been created for the people of Ontario. It is more than a sham; it is a hoax perpetrated on the people of Ontario because it was done for political expediency. It leads the people of Ontario down the garden path.

Mr. Callahan: What the member is doing is political.

Mr. Mitchell: Not at all. If the member reads the bill, perhaps he will understand and appreciate this.

In the minister's introductory statement, he said one of the goals was to maximize convenience for consumers. If I may borrow an expression, there are 100 problems related to alcohol but access is not one of them.

There are many questions that remain unanswered by this legislation. I am going to treat them on a broad basis rather than deal with any one specific. For example, in the minister's statement to the Legislature, was he serious about the age of the person who would be in the store selling beer and wine? In his statement, he said the age of 19. However, I understand the Liquor Licence Act would have to be amended to change the age because I believe it says anyone 18 years of age can sell spirits. I would like to know the situation.

I will continue with this age situation. There are many stores in the communities represented by the members of this House that are known as mom-and-pop independent stores. In these mom-and-pop stores, the kids rely on the income they get from helping their folks to run the store. I see members laughing; obviously, they do not have mom-and-pop operations in their areas.

I can give a specific example. In the riding I represent, there is a family that operates a busy convenience store. The children operate it at night when they are finished with their school work and so on. It gives them added income during the school year. None of them meets the age criterion, whether it is 18 or 19. As a result, from now on, if this bill were to pass, those kids would not be able to work in the store. The family might not be able to afford to have the children there as well as an adult. How many kids, not only from this family, who rely on this for added income for their school year are going to be unable to work in a store and earn an income?

The other thing I am bothered by with this sudden access to beer and wine in the grocery stores, independent stores or convenience stores -- I am not sure what name to apply -- is that I am concerned about the protection of those who are still students, even of those who do meet the age criterion who are still students. Peer pressure can be pretty hard on one. Who is to say what will happen with an 18-year-old or a 19-year-old, whatever age happens to be the age selected, who is working in a store late at night if a bunch of his peers come in and apply a little pressure if it is after hours and so on, and use threats or whatever one might expect to get a case of beer or wine.

Speaking about the security of wine and beer in these independent or convenience stores, are we going to enforce the present Sunday legislation? How are we going to account for the safe lockup of all these products on a Sunday so that one can ensure they are protected and are not sold? Or are we planning on changing the legislation as well to allow for that? I see that as a problem. It may not be, but I see it as a problem.

15:30

As I say, I am dealing with this on a broad basis. The minister has said in an answer to a question, I believe, that he does not see a problem with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. That is fine; maybe he does not see a problem, and I am not going to pursue that further. However, I am concerned about the hoax that I feel has been perpetrated on the people of Ontario, because when the sale of beer and wine in corner stores was announced during the election as a platform item -- the Liberals said they would introduce it if they became the government -- people expected they would have full access to all beers and all wines.

I do not object to protecting the Canadian wine industry, as this bill does, but we are saying to the people: "If you are unable to go to the store, we do not really care. You are just not going to be able to buy even one or two or three imported brands. You are going to have to deal with what you get." We are telling them now what they should drink. Notwithstanding GATT, we have buffaloed the people, because they felt they would still be able to get a selection of beer and of wine, which they can get in Quebec.

Mr. D. R. Cooke: I take it the member agrees there are not enough outlets.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Morin): Order.

Mr. Mitchell: I did not say that at all. I am just showing the fallacy and the foolishness of a lot of the parts or components of the minister's statement and, as a result, of this bill. Interestingly enough, let us talk about outlets. The minister is going to maximize availability. What happens if it becomes so readily available at the stores that some of the Brewers' Retail outlets find business is dropping off and have to lay off staff, or they decide to amalgamate their stores into one or two other stores?

Who is going to protect the jobs of those people who work for Brewers' Warehousing, which is a creature of the breweries? The breweries do not care, really. They are going to make their buck if they are selling it to the grocery store; so in reality, the employment of the fellows who work in those stores could be secondary in importance to them. They are concerned with selling the beer.

Mr. D. R. Cooke: Brewers' Retail controls the whole opposition.

Mr. Mitchell: Listen to Heckle and Jekyll over there. It is rather interesting.

The Acting Speaker: Address your remarks to the chair. Ignore the interjections.

Mr. Mitchell: I am also interested in and concerned about the real cop-out of this bill. This bill need not even be here. It could all have been done with regulations. The bill need not be here at all; but it is, so we are dealing with the bill in the way it should be dealt with.

To say to the municipalities, "If you do not want it, you have a right to say no," is a cop-out.

Mr. Callahan: That is democracy.

Mr. Mitchell: Oh, come on. The member knows the municipalities' position as well as I do. He is sitting there with his hand on his chin, but he knows how they feel about it.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order. There will be a period of 10 minutes for members after you are through. They will have two minutes each, and then you will have two minutes to answer the heckling. Take advantage of that.

Mr. Mitchell: I apologize, Mr. Speaker. I allow myself to react too much to it.

Because there are a number of people who wish to speak, let me say that this bill is ill conceived and has been handled in a way that has fooled the public. But people are suddenly getting an idea of what it is all about, and I suggest this bill should not be supported.

Mr. Callahan: The people of Ontario are mature enough to receive a bill such as this to make beer and wine accessible to them at nearby retail outlets. It is time we got rid of this cobweb idea of the Conservatives, such as it was when I was a young man -- and that was some time ago -- when you had to have one of these little books, and they would write how much you were going to buy, because you could not be trusted; you were an adult, but you could not be trusted.

I get a big kick out of the beer companies. They have all the arguments that the guys over there are putting up, bogus arguments. In fact, they are planning on locating outlets at each subway stop. These guys are concerned. Those guys over there created a monopoly for them. They have joined the New Democratic Party. They are no longer free enterprisers. Those guys believe in monopoly, and they are playing games with the public. They see an issue that is popular, that has come of age and that should be passed, and they are prepared to hang with the NDP to defeat this bill. The people of Ontario will judge that question in the next election.

Mr. D. R. Cooke: Briefly, the comments by the member for Carleton (Mr. Mitchell) seem to fall into a pattern that I understand occurred in this House yesterday when the member for Welland-Thorold (Mr. Swart) and others were speaking. The pattern seems to be speeches prepared in the interests of the breweries or of Brewers' Retail.

I understand the member for Welland-Thorold mentioned the Price Waterhouse study. The House should know that study was commissioned by Brewers' Retail. Similarly, the member for Carleton raised issues of concern that are obviously the concerns of the Brewers' Retail workers. I think there are other people in the province.

Mr. Philip: Since the previous speaker has made the accusation that somehow the Conservatives and the NDP have created a monopoly, will he not agree that this bill does not allow the free market system to work, that it does not provide for any kind of competition and that therefore, if there was ever a monopoly, it is the monopoly created by this bill, which will not allow for any price discounting or competition as may have existed in any jurisdiction?

What the Liberal government has done is to create the worst of all worlds. There is no competition at all built into this bill, and the price is going to go up.

Mr. Mitchell: In answer to the member for Etobicoke (Mr. Philip), two points are correct. I would also like to say to the member for Kitchener (Mr. D. R. Cooke) that I have been speaking on this issue in my riding for a number of years. I have spoken out about beer and wine in the grocery stores, and been quite open about it, for a number of years.

I am not speaking as a result of any lobbying. Nobody has lobbied me or anything. I am telling the member that he and his party have an ill-conceived bill that is not in the least bit concerned with the employment or the effect on youth. In fact, it is mind-boggling that his Solicitor General (Mr. Keyes), who is the chief police official in this province, is ignoring all the recommendations with regard to the problems associated with beer and wine. He is ignoring it all. He is not supporting the very people to whom he is responsible. That points out how ill conceived this legislation is.

Mr. Allen: I rise to oppose the bill along with my colleagues in this party. I do so with a certain sense that in this issue, as is so often the case, we are once more dealing with a great deal of mythology.

I look at the minister's announcement when he introduced this subject some time ago and tabled the bill. It has such language as "come of age," "paternalism of the past," "make choices for themselves," "updating" and "moving forward." I suggest these are part of that language we always hear, which is, "Get into the 21st century," "Will that not look bad from the perspective of the 21st century?" or "Why do we not get out of the 19th century and into the 20th?"

All that type of stuff, when we come down to it, seems to suggest that the people who are proposing the things in question have some secret knowledge of what is supposed to be down the road 10, 20 or 30 years from now, that they know and the rest of us do not, and therefore some of the things they are proposing are somehow stepping us into the great progressive era of the future, in which every person is mature, self-determining and so on in ways they were not in the past.

I find that rather ironic. One of the members opposite used those words again in defence of this bill -- "the right to make a mature, independent decision" and so on -- as though, somehow or other, decision-making in our time as in any other time does not require us also to make decisions that are properly made as a collective group, as a whole population, to be accomplished through our public sector, through government, which is people working together.

15:40

If people working together is not something that is mature, I do not know what is. The notion that problems such as this one dealing with a major area of consumption or the issue of tobacco use should simply be left to individual decision, irrespective of known impact on public health, frequency of traffic accidents, etc., is surely most immature and utterly childish.

The proposal the minister and the government have given to us is a childish proposition that will not move us into any mature future. Indeed, it will march us into some proposals, circumstances and institutional arrangements that we will regret.

As a Canadian historian, I happen to have been the historian who initiated at least some new re-evaluation of what happened in the era of Prohibition, around which an immense mythology exists. If one looks back at that history realistically to what happened when the most severe constriction on alcohol consumption in our country occurred, one finds some very interesting things.

Jails were closing all over the country. Debts were paid all over the country, and small retailers did not have to worry about collecting their debts. Police forces were underemployed, and we were able to reduce our public order account. Children attended school with greater regularity. If we consult all the social workers of the period, we discover the real social benefits that came with Prohibition.

I do not propose that we move back to the era of Prohibition, which had its own infantile characteristics too. I want to suggest, however, that on an issue such as this, if we are at one extreme we are pretty infantile; but so we are at the other extreme, where we say, "Let us open the whole thing wide and leave it to individual choice." That is the direction of the rhetoric, that we can all cope with mature, individual decision-making in Ontario.

If we can cope with it, why between the mid-1960s and 1978 did the statistics for alcohol consumption, alcoholism and alcohol-related offences and diseases virtually double? They did so because accessibility expanded dramatically. We moved the drinking age limit for young people from 21 to 18, and with that additional accessibility there was a significant multiplication of all the problems.

That is precisely the message of the most mature and scientific research. Taking into account all the cultural variations in the background and the elasticity of various products in the alcoholic beverage market, the message is very clear. Expanding accessibility in this fashion, as is true of virtually every other expansion in the context of Ontario's history, will lead to an exaggeration of all the problems.

I prefer to take my stand with the schoolteachers, with the principals of this province, with the municipal representatives who do not want the problem and with all the people who are standing up and saying there is a proper, mature decision to be made in a collective fashion by the people of Ontario, through this Legislature, about the way they control their access as a people to products that have significant social and health repercussions. They do not want to see that decision made on an individual-by-individual basis.

Speaking as the Colleges and Universities critic, I am not impressed by the impact on university initiations of the open accessibility that resulted for 18- to 21-year-olds after that age group was brought into the picture. Likewise, I prefer to take my stand against an industry which in advertisement after advertisement is saturating the media, trying to give us an image of the good life that goes with beer and alcohol consumption, just as I do against the tobacco industry, which tries to corrupt young people in associating good health, good sports and adventure with smoking.

I stand, along with my colleagues, opposed to this bill. I think it is a backward step. I think the minister is shrouded in the mythology of the past, as are most of his colleagues apparently who stand up and make their interjections. I look forward to us defeating this bill and then continuing to look at this issue in the kind of public policy perspective of a mature kind that our party proposes.

Mr. Callahan: In normal circumstances, I have the greatest respect for the gentleman who just spoke, but I think he is a bit misguided in this respect.

I can give examples under the present system, which I experienced during my years of practising criminal law and acting for young people. They buy three 24-packs of beer from the local Brewers' Retail, supposedly to drink over the weekend. They drink it all on Friday night and wind up ripping off a Mac's Milk store. I do not see that making it more accessible is going to make a greater attraction to the people who can already get it through the Brewers' Retail. That argument does not wash.

As far as the municipalities are concerned, it has been traditional in questions of wet or dry -- historical, in fact -- that the local option process be there. Sitting on council as a member of council, I would want the opportunity to be able to decide whether there should be beer and wine in a corner store, because as a municipal councillor I know my municipality better than the people in the senior level of government.

I wanted to address those two aspects. They are complaining because they do not want the responsibility, but the responsibility is theirs; it is part of theirs as being the local representatives.

Mrs. Marland: It is incredibly interesting to hear the member for Brampton say that when he was a municipal councillor he recognized that the municipalities knew more about this subject than other levels of government. It is incredible to me because his municipal council is a member of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, which does not want this bill. On the one hand, he is saying municipalities know what is right and what should apply. On the other hand, he is supporting a bill that the very same municipalities have said they do not want.

Mr. Philip: I am simply amazed that a lawyer could have the kind of convoluted logic, or illogic, that was just exhibited. If we take his case, he says that on Friday a group of people went out, got drunk and used up all the booze they had; then on Sunday they robbed a Mac's Milk store. One can only assume that at least now when they rob the Mac's Milk store they will be drinking milk. Under his system, of course, they would be stealing the liquor and beer in the store.

Mr. Allen: I think the member opposite simply made my point about mythology. Mythology rests on legends and stories that one builds up from casual observation as against scientific analysis. He is prepared to talk about a single incident in a Mac's Milk store with total disregard to the scientific analysis of consumption habits on a number of foundations. That kind of approach is totally immature.

Mr. McLean: I take great pleasure in speaking on Bill 134, An Act to amend the Liquor Licence Act.

This bill was introduced to the House a short time ago, on October 16. This week we are debating it. I am curious how this bill could be introduced and, all of a sudden, brought forward for debate. It was my understanding there were many pressing items of business this government wanted to get through the House and many items and bills of the budget of last May that the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon) wanted to see go through the House. All of a sudden, this bill is a priority.

15:50

I am not so sure it is a priority in a way the government intends it to be. I think this is an election promise that was made. After October 16, they found out the bill would be defeated and they wanted to bring it forward to have it defeated, so they could say they had fulfilled their commitment.

The present system is in need of much improvement and modernization to suit the needs of a changing society. We might look first at making changes in the delivery and retail system in underserved areas. We might look at many ways within the jurisdiction of the Ontario government that the expansion could take place. It is important that the control remain with the government, and there are innovative recommendations on how the current system could be altered to benefit Ontario's consumers and to promote domestic products.

There are many different ways in which we could alter the system. We could improve the way products are put on the shelves; we could have more self-service stores; we could have more stores within communities. However, we are not really talking about corner stores; we are talking about grocery stores, in which 51 per cent of the produce has to be groceries. To me, this bill is not the answer. The government could broaden the scope by regulation; therefore, it is not necessary to bring this bill forward.

One part in this bill that bothers me is the provision whereby the municipalities have to pass a resolution if they want beer in corner stores and, in my understanding, they have to pass a resolution if they do not want it. We have more than 800 municipalities in Ontario. Do all these municipalities have to say they either want to allow it within their jurisdictions or they do not? Section 39 of the bill sets out the powers to make regulations. The changes are complementary to section 1. The municipal resolutions are an important aspect. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario has indicated it is not interested in promoting the bill.

The definition of "store" has to be clearer. If the municipality allows the sale of beer and wine, who will determine who cannot have it? There is a LCBO store in my riding at Port McNicoll which was put in as a summer store. It was doing a great business, but it has been closed. Is the government providing a service for profit or is it providing a service for the community? With 2,000 people in the community, there is no LCBO store. The government is playing games.

The other part of the legislation that concerns me is that there is a minimum price for all products that are sold, but there is no maximum price that may be charged. With regard to pricing, the indication our task force had when it travelled across the province was that it would cost at least $2 more for a 24-pack of beer in a grocery store. I guess that is the price of convenience.

The system could be expanded by regulation to make it more convenient for an ordinary worker who may want to pick up a six-pack on his way home from work. There are other ways to expand the system. People could purchase products they wanted to take home at the hotels and licensed premises we have now.

The people who are raising the greatest issue of concern are the police, the drug research people, the church, families and teachers. Many people are raising concerns about this legislation.

When we consider the 18-year-old employees working in the stores, there are many students across this province who need that extra money during the summer months. They need a job and, together with the families who run the stores today, those young people want to work and they should continue to have the opportunity to do so.

I want to conclude by saying that there are ways of modernizing and expanding the service to communities across this province. The task force of our critic, the member for Leeds (Mr. Runciman), which travelled the province, indicated through the hearings that were held across the province how the service could be expanded in many ways.

People came and told us how they thought that could happen. This piece of legislation is nothing more than an election promise. The government felt that it should keep its commitment to that promise, suddenly, after it realized the two opposition parties were opposed to it.

I do not believe many members on the government side want to see this legislation passed. I will repeat that there are other ways the government can change and modernize the Liquor Licence Act through amendments other than this piece of legislation.

It can be done by regulation. I believe we would be pleased to help them, but I do not support Bill 134 in this form. There are other and better ways of doing it.

Mr. Mackenzie: I am pleased to speak to Bill 134 and I am more than pleased to have my comments on record for my constituency which, I might point out, is probably more of a workers' constituency than many in this province. It is a constituency where shift work is the norm, not the exception, and where you might expect this to be a popular bill.

To begin with, one has to argue whether there is an accessibility problem. I have been in this House for only 11 years, but I have not had very many people complain about the accessibility of beer and wine. I have six sons and daughters, all of whom have reached the age where they like to have a beer. Sometimes I wish they did not as much, but ours is a very active house, with a lot of young people around because of involvement in sports as well.

I was interested in the reaction of my own children. It simply was, "Is this the most important thing they can think of to debate in the House, Dad?" It is not an issue. None of them is concerned about being able to pick it up in the corner stores. As a matter of fact, what I think to be the truth is one of the good arguments I heard made by one of my own sons.

A young group is out drinking late. It may be somebody who is a heavy drinker to begin with, or some young people who may not have as good control as some of their colleagues, or there may be peer pressure. They are most likely to run down to the corner store when they have run out. That is a danger, and it is a point that one of my own family raised with me.

There is a particular hypocrisy in this bill that I find more than passing strange. We are worrying right now about the consumption of alcohol, particularly by the young, as well as about drug use. We are talking about whether the lifestyle advertising we see should be allowed. We are talking about raising the drinking age. I happen to think that would be a mistake; I was one of those in this House who supported raising it to 19 on the basis of trying to get some of the problem out of the high schools. That was useful, but it would be a mistake to go beyond that because there are too many more rights that young people have that we cannot negate or say they do not have the responsibility in terms of this area.

16:00

However, at a time when we are talking about what we can do to cut consumption and specifically what we can do to deal with the problem of younger people drinking, it is passing strange that this is the very time the government wants to open it up, by how much we do not know, and I will not make arguments on those kinds of figures. Making it available in corner grocery stores is going to open it up, make it more accessible and make it much harder to police and control. It does not make sense. The two are at odds with one another.

We are also talking about the question of jobs. There are some 2,000 regular employees, with about 1,500 -- I could be out by 100 or so -- who are unionized workers at Brewers' Retail and who have a decent wage. There are also some 4,500 or 4,600 part-time workers. Even the part-time workers make a better-than-average wage for the hours they work. There will likely be a loss of jobs. It is difficult to put numbers on this, but in these well-paid, organized outlets, we are likely to see a loss of employment. I challenge anybody in this House to say what we are likely to see in the way of new employment in some of these corner stores except for minimum wage jobs. The argument will be, "We will keep it going with the family rather than hire any new employees in any event." It does not make sense.

There is an additional argument we should look at very seriously. Many people in this province and in this country are beginning to worry about concentration. We talk about corporate concentration and financial concentration. In terms of the beer industry, I suggest we are inviting it with this bill.

Mr. Callahan: What is the Brewers' Retail?

Mr. Mackenzie: I will tell the members why I suggest we are inviting it. Most small corner grocery stores are not going to have the facilities, especially if they are challenged by the chains. I think they quickly will be, and the chains will probably win the right to sell beer and wine in their stores. The small stores are not going to have the capacity to handle all the brands one gets at the Brewers' Retail. This means the purchasers are likely to stick with the three or four main brands that are the big sellers. This has the potential to add to the control and concentration of the big boys in the industry. I do not like it at all.

Mr. Callahan: It is already there with the Brewers' Retail monopoly.

Mr. Mackenzie: I wish the heckler across would be quiet. He has not been making much sense since he started today.

In terms of the public perception of this, I do not claim that my riding survey is a scientific one, but I know that to the question -- it was asked very fairly -- "Would you like to see an expansion of beer and wine into the corner stores?" we had almost 1,100 responses, which is a better-than-average response. I thought I might have been out of tune with some of the voters in my town, Hamilton East, an industrial sector with shift workers, but it was slightly better than 55 per cent no and 42 per cent yes. That is an indication there is not overwhelming support for this idea.

My final point is that it is a cop-out to say: "We want to bring in this bill, but we do not have the guts as a government to say this is what it is going to be. We will bring it in and then give the local municipalities the power to say yes or no."

I suggest some members in this House stop and think about some of the complaints they used to get, before it became almost widely acceptable, about one community outside their own town having late-night shopping and the pressure that was there and the fights between the merchants. We could not control it that way. If there was a community a mile down the road that allowed it, this was unfair to those where it was decided there would not be open shopping.

The government is opening itself up to all kinds of problems in this area as well. The bill does not make any sense. I am very glad to be on record as saying clearly that I will not support it. It is not in the interest of families. It is not in the interest of young people. It is not in the interest of family life. It is a so-called liberal move that will not be beneficial to the community and the people in this province.

Mr. Hennessy: When the task force of the Progressive Conservative Party appeared in the city of Thunder Bay, it was well advertised. In all, 13 people from various groups made presentations, including the police chief, the members of council, the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation and other people who have establishments selling liquor. Of the 13 people there, not one was in favour of having liquor, beer or wine sold in corner stores. At that time, they indicated to the task force they were not interested in having beer and wine in the corner stores.

For the government to say it is going to let the members of the city council make a decision to that effect is being unfair to the councils in Ontario because it is a very difficult question. There would be a lot of lobbying in different areas with regard to what would be done.

Therefore, with all due respect, if the minister is going to give them jurisdiction to say who is going to have beer and wine in the corner stores, why does it not give the jurisdiction to say who is going to have a liquor licence to sell liquor in the taverns and hotels? The government may as well let them issue the banquet permits, if this is the case. If it is giving them this jurisdiction, it is not passing the buck but it is giving the council authority for which it has no feeling and no legislation. Council does not make the laws with regard to the dispensing of liquor in the city of Thunder Bay. It is unfair to ask a council to go into that aspect.

I fully agree with the members who have spoken that the Brewers' Retail, and LCBO employees will lose their jobs if this goes into effect. They are very much concerned, and I can see their point. If it goes into the corner stores, from what I hear, a pack of 24 will cost $2 more a case than it normally costs. Therefore, the costs will go up and the government will not solve anything in that respect.

The government has put out the reduce impaired driving everywhere program with regard to safety on the roads, where police try to spot people who are drinking and driving. The government is bringing in one program and, on the other hand, it is trying to bring in another program that would more or less make liquor available to people in corner stores. It is very difficult to have it going in both directions at the same time, to have a safe driving program and also to sell it in the corner stores.

The addiction research foundation is definitely against it. The chief of police in the city of Thunder Bay and the police force are against it. They know it will be a problem with regard to drunk driving in Thunder Bay and policing it.

There was some thought given to trying to expand the Brewers' Retail and the LCBO outlets. Why not look at the hotels as licensed establishments to have off-premises such as they have in Winnipeg and in other western areas? That would be more advisable for the simple reason that if a person has a liquor licence, he can lose a lot more -- perhaps $100,000 a week -- if his licence is suspended. A corner store would not lose that kind of revenue. I am sure the LCBO would make sure these rules were kept.

I do not want to take too much time because there are other members who wish to participate in this debate. I am not in favour of beer and wine in the corner stores. I do not think two people in Thunder Bay have approached me and said they were in favour of it. With all due respect, I ask the minister to reconsider his decision.

Mr. Callahan: Where does the member get his information and statistics that there will be jobs lost in the Brewers' Retail and that the overall net result will not be an increase in jobs? That is what my friend the member for Hamilton East was suggesting as well.

Mr. McClellan: The member for Brampton (Mr. Callahan) waited until the member for Hamilton East left to ask the question.

Mr. Callahan: I cannot help it if he cannot stick around in an important debate when he is so against this particular issue. One would think he would be in the House.

Mr. McClellan: The member waited until the member for Hamilton East had left the assembly and did not ask a question when the member was in the assembly. It is typical of that member.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The member has up to two minutes to make comments or questions on the previous comments by the member for Fort William (Mr. Hennessy).

16:10

Mr. Callahan: I did not have an opportunity to do that while the member for Hamilton East was in the chamber, because my good friend the member for Fort William was speaking and I did not want to interrupt him.

It seems to me that one has to have hard, cold statistics that say jobs are going to be lost rather than the rhetoric that is given to us by the third party. That is probably the reason the people in the riding of Hamilton East are not in favour of having beer and wine in the corner stores: members of the third party run around making this frothing-at-the-mouth statement that jobs are going to be lost. I suggest that defies logic, because in fact people will still be buying the brands that are not available in the corner store from the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.

However, the member for Fort William belonging to a free enterprise party, I cannot understand how he and his colleagues, who purport to be free enterprisers, can allow six major brewers to control the entire operation of Ontario. I cannot understand that.

I also cannot understand how the member for Hamilton East could make --

Mr. Speaker: The member's time has expired.

Mr. Offer: The member for Fort William made remarks with respect to certain advisory hearings taking place in Thunder Bay a while back. I was in attendance; I am the chairman of that committee, and I would indicate that during the day we heard some very important and very constructive comments with respect to changes and modifications to the regulations under the Liquor Licence Act.

The question of beer and wine is not within the terms of reference of that committee, but I would indicate that the police chief of Thunder Bay, who is also the president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, took the time and the effort to make some very constructive comments, criticisms and concerns with respect to the regulations under the Liquor Licence Act of Ontario.

I would indicate to the member for Fort William that the comments and suggestions with respect to change under the Liquor Licence Act have been taken very seriously by the committee. We will be taking those into consideration in our deliberations, especially from many of the people in Thunder Bay and the surrounding area.

Mr. Hennessy: I will reply to remarks made by members of the Liberal Party. The member mentioned the loss of jobs. He is not aware that the liquor control board operates on a quota basis. If it sells X hundreds of thousand dollars' worth a year, that determines how many people it has in the store. If sales go below, say $400,000 a year, one employee is dropped. if there are three or four employees -- I do not know exactly, but that is the way the liquor control board operates; it goes by sales. It does not go by how many people come into the store; it goes by the amount of sales.

Just for the information of the Liberal members, there were people from the Brewers' Retail union and the liquor board union who appeared at that meeting. I am a little amazed that the Liberal member is against the working men of Thunder Bay. I am very surprised he would take this attitude. I am very surprised, with the problems we are having in preserving jobs, that he would deliberately say he does not care about the people in Thunder Bay in regard to their keeping jobs. With all due respect, the member has made a serious allegation that is not called for in this House.

Mr. Gregory: I am very pleased to have an opportunity to make a few remarks on Bill 134 and on beer and wine in corner stores. I suggest to the minister that one thing that makes me very unhappy is the method by which this bill is being introduced.

It reminds me of a very old story, which some members may recall, where a local politician was invited to speak to an Indian band. The Indian band gathered on what used to be a buffalo wallow. They met there, and as the local politician was speaking and making this promise and that promise, the natives were saying, "Kalanga, kalanga." After they had done this several times, they were all walking out and the chief said to the politician: "Watch your step. Don't step in the kalanga." That is what the minister is doing. Believe me, the way he is doing it is a whole lot of kalanga.

Mr. South: Is that parliamentary?

Mr. Gregory: Mr. Speaker, is there anything unparliamentary about the word "kalanga"?

Mr. South: I am asking the member.

Mr. Gregory: I do not think there is. This piece of legislation is totally unnecessary, as the minister will be the first to agree. He knows as well as I do that it can be handled by order in council or regulation. It seems to me there is a very definite reason the Liberal government is presenting it this way: it wants the best of both worlds. Government members know what the polls says. They know as well we and the members of the New Democratic Party do that the majority of people are not in favour of this.

Before the most recent election, the Liberal Party promised it was going to bring in beer and wine in the corner stores. This way they can appear to attempt to bring it in while knowing it is not possible for it to pass, so they can tell people, "We tried to, but those mean members of the opposition would not let us." To the people who do not want it, the government can say: "You got your way. The legislation did not pass."

They are trying to have it both ways, and it is not necessary to do it. If they really want it, and if they want to satisfy those constituents they appealed to in the most recent election, they can simply bring it in by order in council. They do not have to fool around like this.

The other piece of kalanga in this whole exercise is that they are passing the buck to the members of local councils. They want to bring in something to satisfy their constituents but they have not, as the member for Hamilton West (Mr. Allen) has said, the guts to do it. They want to bring it in but give the responsibility to stop it to local councils. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario has told the government it does not want that responsibility. The association says, "If you want to do it, then do it and take the flak for it." The government should not pass it off on to the municipalities and make it seem their fault. I know the government would not hesitate to do so, if somebody complained.

The government is pretending to push the bill through. It knows full well the bill is not going anywhere. I do not need to add my voice to those who have already told the government they are not going to support it. We all know what is going to happen; it should not come as any surprise to anybody.

The government is not considering those young people of 16, 17 and 18 years of age who work in the local stores. It is not considering what this does. It is not simply a matter of hiring somebody of legal age to sell the beer and wine in the stores. A mom-and-pop store can probably afford only one young person to work there on a part-time basis. This means that young person cannot be there, by virtue of the fact there has to be someone of legal age who can sell the product. That eliminates a lot of jobs for young people attending school or whatever. It eliminates jobs they need very badly. I do not think the government is considering them in any way.

Another point is, why does the government expect that local storekeepers should be required to enforce our laws? In effect, that is what is going to happen. We know right now that upwards of 100,000 people, perhaps as many as 400,000, are turned away from Brewers' Retail stores in this province every year because they are too young and the employees of Brewers' Retail require them to show proof of age.

16:20

The minister is either very naïve or does not care, but the local storekeepers are not going to take the trouble to try to find this out. Why should they? Why should it be their responsibility? Or is the government going to pay them a commission to do so? I do not know. They are not going to take the trouble to do this, and I do not blame them for that. Even if the local storekeepers were willing to take on this responsibility, do we know they could do it in the effective fashion it is done through Brewers' Retail?

We know that as a result of these things there will be an increase in the use or misuse of alcoholic beverages by the young. That may sound as if I am some old fuddy-duddy who does not believe people should drink. That is not so. I can handle a bit myself from time to time -- that is just as an aside.

I do not believe anybody should be deprived of having a drink provided he is of age, he can get it and, according to law, can drink it; but I do not see this idea of suddenly throwing it open so that drink is available in such an easy fashion. Members know these regulations are not going to be enforced in the corner stores. The consumption by young people will increase. Also, the consumption by drivers will increase.

Through you, Mr. Speaker, to the minister -- my tirade has scared him and he has gone away; oh, there he is -- that is why I say there is a great relationship between this bill and the way it is being brought in and the meeting of the Indian band. If the minister proceeds in this folly, he should watch his step so that he does not step in the kalanga.

Mr. Speaker: Before comments or questions, the member for Mississauga East asked me if that was an unparliamentary word. I do not even know how to spell it. Could he spell it for me so I could look it up?

Mr. Gregory: I do not know how to spell it.

Mrs. Marland: In rising to speak to Bill 134, colloquially known as the beer and wine legislation, I must say this Liberal government is a sham. I want to read what the Oxford dictionary says is a sham, because it is relative to my comments. Under "sham," it says: "feign, simulate; pretend to be; imposture, pretence, humbug; person or thing pretending or pretended to be something that he or it is not."

The point I want to make at the outset is that one thing this Liberal government is not doing is listening to the people of Ontario. The difference between the Liberal members and the Progressive Conservative members of this House is that we care enough about the people of Ontario to go out and ask them what they want.

In September 1985, we established a task force. We were not so presumptuous as to make our own conclusions before we asked the people what they wanted. We established a task force, of which I enjoyed being a member, and we travelled around this entire province. Did the Liberal government do this? No.

One year later, the Liberal government established a task force. It made it very clear that its task force was looking into the liquor licensing laws of this province, but as the chairman of the task force said in this House a few minutes ago, the beer and wine issue was not within the purview of the committee.

What a waste of time this is. How can the Liberal government introduce a bill which it knows the people of Ontario do not want? It also knows that both opposition parties will vote against this bill and, therefore, that it cannot pass. It is purely a political game at the cost and expense of the people of this province.

It is pretty disgusting that while thousands of people are losing their jobs in the lumber and related industries in this province, all the government cares about or cares about them is to bring in this sham legislation, taking up time instead of bringing in something that could be a remedy for the layoffs in the lumber and other industries.

I wonder how many Liberal members of this Legislature have even held a public forum in their riding to ask their constituents what they want. I would like to have tabled in this Legislature the evidence any single member of the Liberal government has that this bill represents the wishes of his constituency.

Who does this government listen to? Certainly not to the people of Ontario. They choose to ignore the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. At this point I would like to mention that my own municipality, the city of Mississauga, passed a resolution asking that this legislation not be brought in in Ontario. The government also chose to ignore the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation, the Ontario Provincial Police, school boards, teachers, the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. Recently, the Ontario Coroners' Association passed a resolution in opposition to this legislation.

How can this Liberal government ignore the opinions and wishes of these people, authorities and groups? Does this government know more? Does this government specialize in knowing what happens in the form of carnage on our highways? Does it know more than the Ontario Provincial Police? Does it know more than the chiefs of police association? I ask them this because, if they do know more, they owe it us to tell us their counterarguments to all these knowledgeable and informed people whose commitment to the people of Ontario is to serve and protect.

Do they think they know more than the elected officials in municipal governments? Are they saying the elected officials in municipal governments are less able than they to understand what the people of the province wish? In choosing to ignore the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, they are saying to all the mayors, city councillors and aldermen throughout this province: "We know more than you do. We know what the people in your cities, towns and villages want." They seem to be so knowledgeable that they almost border on a dictatorship.

There is no question that some of the liquor licence laws in this province are somewhat antiquated. Nobody is arguing that point. We agree that a review could well be beneficial, but to make progress I respectfully suggest one must always move wisely, especially in making change. Radical change makes about as much sense as going from flying a Tiger Moth biplane to flying a CF-18 jet fighter.

I have agreed with and been grateful for all the progress this province made under the previous Progressive Conservative government with the drinking-driving countermeasure programs such as the high school accident reduction program. It seems to me to be absolutely idiotic to spend millions of dollars on that program of prevention, only to follow it by making beer and wine more easily available.

One of the things we hear about all the time is that there is no problem in Quebec and the United States. I have a brief here that was presented by Superintendent Barry King of the Peel Regional Police. At this point I would like to point out that Superintendent King is in the same police force that serves two other members of the legislature who were here this afternoon, the member for Brampton and the member for Mississauga North (Mr. Offer), who by their comments this afternoon are totally in support of this legislation.

16:30

When he spoke to our task force, Superintendent Barry King said he was speaking on behalf of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, among others. I want to read a very short excerpt about what he said is happening in the United States. It is supposed to be so great in the US, but when I read these figures and heard this report, all I can ask is why we would want to emulate the US. He said:

"At this point, it is necessary to consider lifestyle in the USA, where liberal liquor laws have been a way of life. In 1983:

"(a) 26,000 Americans were killed due to alcohol-related accidents (equivalent to two fully loaded DC-10s crashing each week). In 1980 alone, 8,000" -- of those killed -- "were teenagers."

What is so magnificent about the US liquor laws that we would want to emulate those statistics? It is also a well-known fact that in the US, according to the comments made by Superintendent King of the Peel Regional Police, the relationship between violent crime and stores being open late at night and having large sums of money, as the liquor stores in the US do, is a very real one. The crime rate in the US -- and everybody knows what that is -- is not something I look forward to welcoming in Ontario.

I also want to quote from a letter written by someone who knows what impact this legislation will have from a social services aspect. This letter is from James Crozier, who is the commissioner of social services for the region of Peel. This letter was copied to the member for Brampton and the member for Mississauga North. Both members chose to ignore someone who has slightly more knowledge -- in fact, a great deal more knowledge -- in this area than either of these two lawyers.

Mr. Crozier says in his letter:

"Is it so coincidental in raising my concern that I note that the bill includes heavy penalties for improper sales?" I am sorry the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Kwinter) is not in the House to hear this letter.

"This very concept implies the bill in itself is wrong.

"Is it so coincidental in raising my concern that this very November I will be speaking at an addiction conference in Peel calling for the establishment of a detox centre?...

"Is it ever so coincidental that only today, October 16, I receive an invitation to Countermeasures `86, signed by the Attorney General for Ontario, which is a call to arms to fight against drinking and driving?"

Mr. Crozier ends his letter -- and I think this is very significant -- by saying, "My concern is humane and not political." That sums up better than anything I can say what this bill we are discussing today in this Legislature represents. It is purely political and it is certainly not humane. It is interesting that elected members from the region of Peel, the city of Mississauga and the city of Brampton chose to ignore the wishes of their own city councils and their own region of Peel.

In closing, I would just say I did hold a public forum. I do not want to lay out the challenge about what the Liberal government or Liberal members have done without telling members that one year ago, on November 19, I did hold a public forum on the subject of beer and wine in the corner stores. At that forum, we had questionnaires completed and, as a result of the publicity on that forum, we received after that meeting 394 telephone calls, all of which have been catalogued with names, addresses and phone numbers. I can verify every one of them. The overall consensus in Mississauga South, as a result of that public forum and the telephone calls we received, is very clearly eight to one opposed to this legislation.

This bill should never have been presented in this House and it must be defeated.

Mr. Callahan: I would like to address a couple of items the honourable member put forward.

Mr. McClellan: The member opposite is going to be on the back bench for the rest of his life.

Mr. Callahan: That is fine. She indicated it would be a radical change, and then her colleague asked why we did not do it by regulation. We did not do it by regulation because we did not want to bring in a radical change. We wanted an opportunity to --

Mrs. Marland: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The members have up to two minutes to make comments, and the honourable member has an opportunity to respond.

Mrs. Marland: I understand that, but I do have a point of order.

Mr. Speaker: What is your point of order?

Mrs. Marland: My point of order is that I understand fully the two minutes, but is it in order for this speaker to use a portion of his two minutes to ask a question of a previous speaker when he could have used two minutes to ask him a question?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The provisional standing orders say a member has the opportunity to rise to make comments or ask questions on anything said by the previous speaker.

Mr. Callahan: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker: My privileges have been infringed upon by the member for Mississauga South (Mrs. Marland) in that the clock is now at 36 seconds because she used it up raising a point of order. In fairness, I ask --

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry. I asked the member to leave her remarks until she had time to respond, and she was not willing to. Do you wish to continue for 10 seconds?

Mr. Callahan: I will leave it to someone else.

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: I want to apologize to the previous speaker that I was not in the House. As she knows, I have sat very attentively listening to everybody. I did not want the member to think I was slighting her in some way because I walked out while she was speaking. She should know that I and other members of the House had to attend the Lieutenant Governor, who gave royal assent to the hospital bill. That was the reason I was out. I apologize for not being here during her presentation.

Mrs. Marland: I appreciate the explanation of why the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations was out of the House during my speech. I personally appreciate the fact that he would have wanted to listen to me so intently otherwise. I feel it is a tremendous regret to this whole province that he has not chosen to listen to the people of the province as well as to the speakers on this side of the House.

Mr. Morin-Strom: I am pleased to have an opportunity to make some remarks on this legislation, Bill 134, on the issue of beer and wine in the corner stores.

This is an issue that seemed to come up on the spur of the moment during an ill-thought-out campaign in the last election. There does not seem to have been any thinking in advance by the Liberal Party about why it would pursue this as an issue. While it did generate some popular support at the time of that campaign, after further consideration by groups across the province and the public in general, it has become clear that this is an initiative that is not in the best interest of the province or our citizens. We are in a fortunate circumstance in our democratic representation in that we have a balance among the three parties, which enables a majority of the population to be reflected in the results we will see later today in the defeat of this bill on second reading.

16:40

It is clear that this promise was made in an ill-conceived manner and that the public opposition to it has continued to grow throughout the year and a half since the proposal first came forward. It is interesting to see what an Angus Reid poll indicates is the public's view of this issue. That poll indicates that 82 per cent of the public believe that beer and wine in the grocery stores or corner stores will increase sales to minors and only five per cent believe it will lessen them. The same poll also showed that 77 per cent believe it will increase sales to the impaired, while only six per cent think it will lessen them. As well, 70 per cent believe it will lead to increased impaired driving, while only seven per cent think it could possibly reduce these concerns.

We face serious concerns about the effect of drinking on the accident rate in this province, on our health care costs and on social costs of caring for those who have problems with addiction and alcoholism. As well, we have the serious concern of young people and the access this would undoubtedly provide to them.

I will take my own case of Sault Ste. Marie. A survey was done by the police force in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, of the outlets in that area that have beer and wine for sale. Of 30 outlets, more than 20 per cent had the opportunity for young people to go in and purchase supplies of beer and liquor. The test was done by bringing young people into the establishment and seeing whether they could make the purchases there. The fact is that the system will not work nearly as well as it does under the current controls and the limited numbers of places where either beer or wine can be purchased in the province.

These social concerns have been echoed by numerous groups across the province, from police forces to social work groups, the Ontario Medical Association, the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation and, of course, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. AMO has particularly expressed strong concern at the cop-out by the current government in putting the onus of responsibility on individual municipalities by having the municipality decide whether or not it wants to go along with this piece of legislation and permit it in its municipality or to veto it locally.

There are concerns about the possibility of increased hours of operation and increased numbers of stores that will provide access to beer and wine. I think now there is a clear majority across the province that wants to see this bill defeated.

Besides the strong social concerns, there are also the economic considerations. The cost of distribution is going to be much higher for each of the beer suppliers and the wineries in this province to service the number of outlets that would require servicing.

I have talked to the administrative heads at Northern Breweries in Sault Ste. Marie. They are an interesting case, because they have both beer and pop production in their operation. They know the difference in cost between the distribution system currently provided by Brewers' Retail in northern Ontario and their costs for distributing to all the corner stores. Basically, what we are looking at here is the cost of their pop distribution.

Their estimated cost difference is somewhere between $2 and $3 per case. There is a definite cost penalty. In northern Ontario, we have particular concerns, because right now the prices of beer, and for that matter of wine, are the same at the Brewers' Retail and LCBO outlets across this province. As a result, we are seeing one item at least that consumers purchase where we are not at a cost disadvantage compared to southern Ontario. It is a very rare case and one we would certainly like to see extended to basic products such as milk and also to a major commodity such as gasoline. However, beer is one where we have that opportunity now. There have been grave concerns expressed by Northern Breweries and others across the north that it will not be available to us in the future.

As well, Northern Breweries has indicated it feels it is likely to be forced out of business within several years as a result of this type of legislation. Its primary concern is in the area of getting shelf space in the stores. It is well known that stores have limited space, and they are going to supply a limited selection of the products which have the biggest brand names and the widest advertising across the province.

As a result, Northern Breweries has grave concerns that it would be discriminated against. To use the numerical analogy of pop distribution, the opportunity of buying shelf space and requiring major advertising in order to get the shelf space would result in a situation like that for pop, where basically only Pepsi and Coke are supplying the cola market. We would end up with two or three major brands of beer being the predominant ones in the corner stores.

I also have some strong concerns as a result of the discussions we have had on the free trade issue and the presentations we have heard through the select committee on economic affairs on what the consequences of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs rules, to which Canada is an adherent, may be as a result of this type of legislation.

Currently, we are in a very favourable situation in having essentially 100 per cent Canadian content in terms of beer distributed through the Brewers' Retail because, to distribute through those operations, one has to produce the beer in this province. This is a provision which has been grandfathered in, because it was in place before the GATT regulations on fair trade practices were established.

Under the current GATT regulations, in our province one could not restrict the corner stores to distribution of Ontario-produced or Canadian-produced beer or wine. The Liberals are well aware of that. The consequence would be the opportunity to flood our market with beer from plants such as Stroh Brewery, which I believe has a plant mothballed in Ohio with the capacity to supply the complete Ontario market.

In terms of the jobs currently in the brewing industry and in the distribution of beer, we in Ontario cannot see any advantage in opening up complete access to our beer market and potentially to our wine market through a challenge to this piece of legislation as undoubtedly will come forward from the United States and other countries that would like to supply these new outlets if we move ahead with this legislation. We are giving the Liberals a chance to get away from this piece of legislation. I hope they do not continue to pursue it in the future. I am very pleased we will be given the chance to vote on this and exercise our democratic right and the will of the people of this province to defeat this bill this afternoon.

16:50

Mr. Davis: I rise to register my opposition to the initiative of this new government, an initiative which it would like to indicate moves Ontario into the 20th or the 21st century. The government forgets there are economic and social consequences to this legislation. When it debates the bill, it tries to hide and ignore the kinds of complicating factors that exist.

The Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation, a world-renowned institution, has indicated that consumption would increase if grocery store sales were allowed. At some point, individuals, who look for leaders to give them information in areas where they do not have a lot of information, look to the addiction research foundation. I accept that premise, and I believe this step will increase consumption especially among the young people of our province.

I have been informed that in 1985, approximately 384,000 young people were challenged, based on the age of majority, within our liquor and beer outlets. The grocery system distribution could result in a much more lax attitude in challenging underage drinkers.

I recall when I was in my other profession in a small town north of the city of Toronto --

Hon. Mr. Nixon: The oldest profession.

Mr. Davis: The oldest profession. The Treasurer has to be careful with that.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: Priests have been around a long time.

Mr. Davis: Have they?

Interjections.

Mr. Davis: I will speak for ever.

One of the concerns of that small community was the drinking among underage teenagers. They were able to acquire their beer or wine through adults purchasing it for them or their not being challenged in the local outlets. I remember talking to a group of them, suggesting that when they go to the back roads to engage in their parties, it might be more appropriate that one of them be designated the driver for the evening, as we have seen occurring in our society, so they could all get home safely. The sad thing is that I was present at about four funerals of those young people.

What is disturbing to me is that while the Attorney General is continuing the previous government's policy of bringing in much harsher laws dealing with drinking and driving, this Liberal government is suggesting in this policy that we avail the public of a greater opportunity to acquire beer and wine in the local stores and therefore contribute to and enhance the drinking and the drinking problems of young people in this province.

I am surprised that the Minister of Education (Mr. Conway) in this government has not indicated to his colleagues that the school systems in this province are already suffering and dealing with abuse of alcoholism, never mind drug-related incidents. Youngsters go home at lunch hour and engage in little parties and then go back to class with alcohol on their breath or in a state of inebriation. I am not talking about high school students; I am talking about elementary grades. It is a known fact that in this province there are young children who at the ages of 12 and 13 are already suffering some addiction to alcohol. I have great difficulty with this government in wanting to catch the wave of modernization by introducing this bill.

I have deep concern about the employment crisis this bill will create. In the city of Scarborough, in my riding, I have met young people who are filling out job applications for part-time work to help them meet expenses that need to be met within a family income, and perhaps taxing the family income in this age, while they go to school. Many of those young people are working in the local corner stores. As I understand this bill, a youngster under the age of 18 who is employed in one of those stores, as many are now, will not be able to partake in the sale of alcoholic beverages. That leaves the manager of those stores with only two options: either he must be there full-time, or he must ensure that an adult, 18 years of age or over, is on the premises to sell and distribute the alcoholic beverages.

I note with great interest that there is a substantial penalty levied against the grocers for selling liquor to children under the age of 18. If the bill is passed, and God forbid it will be passed, I wonder how we will then deal with the question of whether one is technically breaking the law if one allows an under-18 person to buy a case of beer.

One looks at the record of this government on law and order, and it is a disgrace. Cabinet ministers are caught within the conflict-of-interest guidelines and breaking them, and the Premier, a man of honour, a distinguished gentleman, stands up and says they are only technically breaking the law. A number of stores across the province flout the laws and open on Sundays; again, ministers of the crown stand up and say they are only technically breaking the law. One looks at the Morgentaler clinic, which is in direct contravention of the Criminal Code, and the Attorney General of this province stands up and says it is technically breaking the law, but there is no action forthcoming.

With all due respect, I suggest the large grocery stores will incorporate the sale of beer and wine into their markets very quickly and they will do it one of three ways. Either they will do it as a court challenge under the Constitution, claiming they are being discriminated against; or they will effectively lobby the weak-kneed government of the Liberals, who cave in all the time -- they will send in Ivan Fleischmann -- or they will technically break the law and get away with it.

I also have concern for the estimated 500 people who will lose their jobs with the Liquor Control Board of Ontario by the year 1988. I am concerned about those who will lose their jobs because of this issue and this government, a government that has no compassion and no concern for the labour people in this province, as demonstrated by its cavalier, opportunistic attitude with respect to the stumpage fees, which we have already heard today, and the layoff of some 200 workers in the north, who will face a bleak winter. They are insensitive. It is a shameful type of inaction.

17:00

One of the concerns that will be developing, which the police in the city of Scarborough and in the riding of Scarborough Centre have expressed to me, is that of rising crime and vandalism. I ask members to consider for a moment this hypothesis. A group of youngsters 16 or 17 years of age comes to the local store and attempts to buy two 24s and a couple of bottles of wine to party, already under the influence of alcohol. The local grocer says: "I cannot serve you. You are under age. You have been drinking."

He is put in a tremendous quandary. The parents constantly shop in his store. If he refuses to deliver the beverages the youngsters want, will the parents somehow take action against him by not shopping again?

Mr. McGuigan: Is the member saying the parents are in favour of it?

Mr. Davis: I did not say that. I asked whether the parents would no longer shop there because their son had been discriminated against.

Mr. McGuigan: So they are in favour of it.

Mr. Davis: No, I did not say that. The member opposite said it.

Or if they are refused, do they come back later in the evening and break windows or threaten the grocer? In the United States, as we know, especially those in cabinet who are allowed to travel, when the Treasurer allows them to venture outside the province, outside Canada to the US --

Mr. Brandt: They can go anywhere now.

Mr. Davis: Can they go anywhere now? That must be new policy, a new initiative.

When one goes to Detroit, Chicago, New York, Miami, Fort Lauderdale or Tampa and visits the local grocery, where they do dispense alcoholic beverages, what does one see? One sees bars and sophisticated burglar alarms and other equipment to prevent break and entry.

It is interesting that the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police has said it is opposed to this.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: In its recent convention?

Mr. Davis: It has always been opposed to it. What we have then is the possibility, and a most definite possibility, that there will be an increase in vandalism on the streets of our communities. What is very interesting is that in the light of that kind of information, when one considers the recent report of the Metropolitan Toronto police saying they already do not have enough officers to look after the control of crime on the streets in this city, this government is suggesting we even increase that responsibility for a manpower force that is not able to deal with it.

Perhaps the most devious, underhanded part of this suggested policy is that this government, the Premier and the ministers of the crown said in 1985, when we fought the election: "We believe the people of Ontario are qualified and ready to have beer and wine in the local corner stores. That is a policy we champion. It is a policy we articulate and defend constantly across this province." That is what they said as we competed with one another in the recent election.

Then, by sleight of hand and an illicit marriage between two parties, the new government takes over. What does it do then? What we see is an abdication of responsibility, an abdication of leadership, an abdication of its own philosophy and an abdication of its own policy. The Liberal government does not have the guts to enact its own legislation. It can do it without bringing it in this House, as we all know. A government that is open to discussion and consultation has done it without consulting the people of this province.

Then what do they do? They back off. They go into the back corners and say: "Now we are going to introduce it, but we are not sure the people of Ontario really want it. We will lay the whole ball game on the backs of the elected municipal councillors, reeves and aldermen of this province. They will make the decision. They can pass a bylaw that allows them to enact it."

Shame! They are gutless. if they believe the people of Ontario want beer and wine in the corner stores, let them enact the legislation. They should not be allowed to place that decision on the backs of the people who are elected without this kind of qualification being placed upon them. I am ashamed of them; I am. They do not stand up for their philosophies.

Mr. Wildman: Let us have a vote on that.

Mr. Davis: Does the member want to vote on that? How many people are ashamed of them? Members put up their hands. They lose.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Morin): Order.

Mr. Davis: I think that is unfortunate. I think it is a flip-flop on the part of the Premier, who has said to the public, "Yes, we are going to introduce the legislation, but by the way, your local council or your local board of control has to enact it."

Mr. Speaker, how would you like to be one of those representatives, elected to ensure the smooth operation of your municipality? Big Brother government looks down upon you and says: "By the way, I am going to add one more little thing to your jurisdiction. You decide whether you are going to have liquor and beer sold in your municipality."

It is an abdication of responsibility, a total abdication.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr. Davis: Take it easy. The members will get a chance to come back at me. Hold on; wait. I oppose this legislation on the following grounds. It will increase alcohol consumption in our province, and it will increase alcohol consumption among the young people of our province and in the city of Scarborough in my riding. It will create unemployment, both among the youth of our province and within the industries that have already been established. It will increase deaths among young people through accidents caused by drinking and driving. Finally, I oppose it because this government does not have the fortitude, strength, courage or conviction to enact its own laws. They place it on the backs of municipally elected people.

I look forward with great pleasure to voting against this piece of legislation.

Mr. Wildman: I want to make some comments about this legislation, following along from the member who just spoke. I agree with his view that it is unfortunate this government is using legislation as a ploy. It is true that if they were serious about wanting this legislation passed, they could pass it by regulatory change. However, I am glad the government chose not to take that route.

I am glad the government prefers to have the matter debated in the House and a vote taken of the elected representatives of the province. There may be two reasons for that; one is a desire to have the elected members of the House express an opinion on behalf of their constituents, and the other is the fact that this government does not really want to have the measure passed.

17:10

I have done a lot of thinking about this matter, not just since this legislation was suggested by this government or in the election campaign previous to the change of government, but in other debates that have gone on from time to time in this House on the matter of the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages in this province. It is one about which I have done a lot of serious thinking, and I have come to the conclusion that I cannot support this bill. I do so for a number of very serious reasons which I think the members of this House should consider.

First, it is no secret that the problems related to alcohol consumption in this province are even greater in the northern part of the province. Every statistic related to alcohol consumption in Ontario is worse in the north. I do not make any apologies for that. It is not just a northern Ontario phenomenon; it is a northern phenomenon. It is true in the northern parts of Quebec, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. It is true, for that matter, in the northern states compared with some other parts of the United States. It is certainly true in northern Europe, in Scandinavia compared with southern Europe and in the northern parts of the Soviet Union and Siberia compared with the other parts of the Soviet Union.

I do not know the reason for this phenomenon. It does appear to be a northern phenomenon. There is a tremendously high consumption of alcohol in our part of the province. That produces all the concomitant problems and worsens them in our part of the province where we have fewer treatment facilities and less therapy available than they have in other parts of the province. For those reasons, I am very concerned about anything that might contribute to increased consumption in our part of the province.

When we are debating this legislation in this House, we should all recognize that we are talking not only about beer and wine in corner stores or a distribution process but also about the effects of alcohol in our society and how we as legislators should respond to some very serious problems that we all face in this province and that we face in even greater proportions in northern Ontario.

Alcoholism is Canada's third most prevalent disease. According to the Ontario Medical Association, it is exceeded only by heart disease and cancer. According to the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation, in 1981, there were 25 alcoholics per 1,000 Ontarians. I will use my area of northern Ontario as an example. I am not singling it out because it is typical of other parts of the north; alcoholism is not as serious in Algoma as it might be in some other districts in northern Ontario, but I will deal with my own district.

There are 25 alcoholics per 1,000 Ontarians across the province. In Algoma district, the figure in 1982-83 was 44 alcoholics per 1,000. That ratio represents 4,600 individuals suffering directly from alcoholism in the Algoma district, which has a total population of approximately 145,000. That does not even mention their family and friends, who of course are affected by their alcoholism. Therefore, I do not approach this debate lightly, nor do I approach lightly my responsibility as a representative of the people of Algoma, the people who are directly affected by these higher statistics in my part of the province.

In 1981, in my district, more than 2,600 alcohol-related offences were committed. I am very concerned about what might happen to that statistic if we have beer and wine distributed through corner stores. I have only to look across the border at Michigan to see some of the problems that are related to the 7 Eleven Food Stores, or so-called party stores, in the small communities in northern Michigan. As I said, this is not just a northern Ontario phenomenon. Although I do not have the figures at hand, I suspect the statistics for alcohol consumption in northern Michigan are higher than they are in the southern part of that state.

The minister would have us believe that this legislation will not increase consumption, that increased accessibility of alcoholic beverages will not necessarily lead to an increase in consumption. The minister has said that repeatedly, but he has not given any evidence to indicate that this is the case. He seems to be saying that because it cannot be proved that increased accessibility will lead to increased consumption, therefore we should proceed and look at the statistics maybe 10 years hence and we will find out whether he was right. If he is wrong, we are taking a chance. We are playing with lives, with the lives of young people and those of older people in our province and in my district, which I am not prepared to do.

Public opinion indicates that the majority of people in the province believe that increased accessibility will lead to increased consumption, particularly among the young and those who are already drinking heavily. The Angus Reid poll, which has been referred to several times in this debate, in 1985 indicated that 82 per cent of Ontarians believe that sales to minors will increase if beer and wine are sold in grocery stores, that 77 per cent believe sales to drunks will increase and that 70 per cent believe the problem of impaired driving will get worse.

Mr. D. R. Cooke: They have not looked at the Quebec statistics.

Mr. Wildman: I am going to deal with Quebec in another aspect in a moment.

It is this probability of increased consumption that leads the New Democrats in this House to oppose very strongly the sale of beer and wine in grocery stores.

I want to comment briefly on the aspect of this legislation that deals with local option. I represent 20 to 30 small municipalities. When I talk about small, I mean small. The largest community in my riding has between 4,000 and 5,000 people. I think the smallest municipality has 60 ratepayers. There are large expanses of my riding that are not organized municipally at all. Some of them have populations ranging from 2,000 or 3,000 down to less than 100.

I do not like the aspect of the legislation that deals with local option for this reason. If it were a positive local option, I might have more sympathy with it. In other words, if it were the same kind of approach we used to have when a municipality could vote itself wet -- it was dry and through plebiscite could vote itself wet -- I would accept that. If the ratepayers of a municipality could have a plebiscite at the time of a municipal election and could vote to have beer and wine in its corner stores, that would at least be consistent with the historic approach to this in the province. This option is not that they can choose to go with this legislation, but rather that their elected municipal council can make a decision not to go with this legislation.

It is a negative type of local option. I do not like it because it is negative. I also do not like it because of the pressure it is going to put on small municipal councils. It might be quite possible for a large municipality such as one of the municipalities in Metro Toronto to deal with this, because we are talking about almost completely full-time councils with aldermen who are working fulltime. However, when one is talking about a small village where everyone knows everyone else, can the members imagine the pressure the local councillors are going to be under, both pro and con? I do not think that is fair.

It has been suggested in this House that councillors are elected to make decisions. They are elected to make decisions, but so are we; that is why we will be making a decision against this legislation in this House today. I do not want to pass the buck to the small councils and the small municipalities in my riding. I am prepared to make a decision here. That is what I believe we are elected to do.

17:20

It has been argued that in northern Ontario there is a problem of accessibility to alcoholic beverages because we have a lot of small communities that are great distances from one another. If that is a problem -- and I think it is in some cases -- then the way for this government to go is to establish more agency stores in those small communities. The reason I prefer agency stores for the sale of beer and wine to corner stores, convenience stores or grocery stores is that those agency stores are under the same direct supervision as the stores of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario; they are agents of the liquor control board.

I do not think we should be moving to try to make a large majority of the small grocers in this province agents of the liquor control board. The board will have to greatly increase its staff of inspectors to have the kind of control needed. That is not practical and will not happen.

If the government wants to increase accessibility to deal with distances between small communities in the north, it should create more agency stores; it should not have beer and wine sold in the corner stores.

Another reason many people in northern Ontario are opposed to this legislation relates to the experience we have seen in Quebec.

Not many years ago, the people in northern Ontario had to pay a differential. We had to pay five cents more for a pint of beer in northern Ontario than in the southern part of the province. We pay a differential on many products in northern Ontario; we still pay one on milk and gasoline. It would be nice if the government would do the same thing for those products as the government of a number of years ago did for beer. By edict, the government decided that there would be one price for beer in Ontario, that the people in southern Ontario would pay a couple of cents more so the price in the north could be equalized. I am very much in favour of that.

If we look at the experience in Quebec, we will find that the implementation of this kind of legislation will mean the end of one-price beer for northerners in this province. In Quebec, the prices for beer range from -- I am talking about cases of 24, and I have a few areas. Let us take Montreal as representing the urban southern price; the price there is $16.25 for a case of 24.

Mr. Guindon: That is $3 cheaper than here.

Mr. Wildman: Yes, it is cheaper than here. If we compare that to some remote areas of the province -- let us take the Magdalen Islands; that is remote -- the price for a case of beer in the Magdalen Islands is $16.90. At Sept Isles it is $16.75. I do not have the price for Baie Comeau, but I have it for the North Shore, where it is $16.65. In the northwest part of the province, at Abitibi, it is $16.55. At Gaspé it is $16.50. At Lac-Saint-Jean it is $16.40.

The reason we are given for the difference in price is distribution. I can tell members right here and now that if this legislation is ever passed in this province, we in northern Ontario will have the same excuse given to us to explain why we should have to pay more for the beer we purchase in northern Ontario than is paid in urban centres such as Toronto. Frankly, it took us too long to persuade the government of this province to equalize the price for us to give it up now.

In Quebec, where they have a system of distributing beer that makes use of convenience and corner stores, Price Waterhouse estimated the cost of distributing beer per case to be $4.31 in 1985. In Ontario, the distribution price per case is only $1.92. I ask members, why does this government want to increase the distribution costs for beer in this province so that people in the small northern communities will end up paying more?

Mr. D. R. Cooke: That is the Brewers' Retail study, is it, that the member is reading from?

Mr. Wildman: Is the member suggesting that Price Waterhouse does not have integrity, that it does not report its findings

Mr. D. R. Cooke: I just asked that the member identify it.

The Acting Speaker: Order. You will have a chance to reply to him later on.

Mr. Wildman: That is what I said: a Price Waterhouse study. Far be it from me to question the integrity of Price Waterhouse. The member opposite may wish to do so.

Mr. D. R. Cooke: I am asking for identification, not integrity.

The Acting Chairman: Order.

Mr. Wildman: A decentralized system of distribution such as that in Quebec is more expensive, chiefly because of the increased number of middlemen. Our experience in the north tells us that we will share disproportionately in those increased costs. I firmly believe that allowing the sale of beer and wine in convenience and corner stores and grocery stores will mean the end of one-price beer in Ontario. For that reason, on behalf of my constituents, I will vote against this legislation.

Mr. McFadden: I am very pleased to have the chance to speak in this debate in opposition to the bill now under consideration for second reading.

Any Legislature should embody the values for which a society stands. A Legislature should also, through its legislation, its debate and its conduct, advance healthy community and social values for the country or the province in which that Legislature is charged to act.

I ask now what values this bill seeks to communicate about our society or to our society. Will this bill in any way strengthen family life in Ontario? Will this bill enhance our neighbourhoods? The answer is no. What message does this bill have on alcohol abuse, underage drinking and drinking and driving? The message is negative.

With this bill, we will see the most major increase in the distribution and availability of alcoholic beverages ever undertaken in Ontario history in one single act. We have that in the face of concerns of the Attorney General about underage drinking and drinking and driving.

We cannot have it both ways. This bill transmits to the people of Ontario a feeling that this Legislature, if the bill were to be passed, feels alcohol should have broad distribution and dissemination throughout Ontario, without any regard for its harmful effects, without any

recognition that distribution and availability can have a major effect on abuse and consumption. The question we should consider here is, are people in Ontario being denied beer and wine? Is there a massive problem out there such that we should increase by 12,000 the number of outlets that would be able to sell beer and wine? I have never met a person in Ontario who has ever come to me and said he could not buy beer and wine. I have never received a letter from anybody who has said that he cannot get a beer or a bottle of wine or that he is being deprived of alcoholic beverages.

17:30

The minister has said this bill is being passed on the grounds of convenience. The word "convenience" keeps coming up. The current situation in Ontario is not tremendously inconvenient, certainly not so inconvenient that we have to enact legislation that will have such a sweeping effect on the distribution of alcoholic beverages throughout the province.

There are modifications to the legislation that potentially could be undertaken. For example, we could follow the western model and have the sale of beer and wine from licensed premises. In that situation, we would have the sale of alcoholic beverages in bottles and so on through hotels and restaurants that are set up to deal with beer and wine. They have the proper facilities; they have staff that is concerned about underage drinking and used to dealing with it. What we are proposing to do with this bill is to make available the sale of beer and wine in stores that are not set up for it, not currently aware of the existing law and will find dealing with the existing law difficult, if not impossible.

Who has come forward in opposition to this piece of legislation? It is not only members of our party or of the New Democratic Party. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, the Ontario Medical Association, the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation, various school boards and teachers, and Alcohol and Drug Concerns have come out against this legislation. These are not organizations that have a vested interest in the sale of alcoholic beverages; these are people who have a legitimate concern about the effect this legislation will have on our community.

One of the members opposite talked about Labatt's being against the bill. That is not the issue. It is true that all the breweries have come out against it. However, what is more germane is the number of groups in our society -- the addiction research foundation, Alcohol and Drug Concerns, the Ontario Medical Association -- that have no vested interest in the passage of this bill, except they are worried about what it will do to underage drinking, drinking and driving, and the overall abuse of alcohol. The list of groups and organizations that are coming out against this bill in our community is growing.

I know the Premier is concerned about his image. He talks about being modern. We are not talking about being contemporary or modern; with this legislation, we are talking about what is right for our society and our community and what kind of values this legislation transmits from the Legislature. I suggest that this legislation is wrong for our society. It is wrong for the impact it may well have in the long run for Ontario, for the young people and for families in this province. Therefore, I stand in opposition to this bill, and I am proud that my party stands in opposition to it as well.

Mr. Pollock: In rising to take part in the debate, I do not want to go through a whole lot of repetition on this bill; most of the points have already been covered. I truly think it is going to interfere with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

This bill is supposed to help small business and the small independent store. I am pretty sure the supermarkets will find ways to get around that, and they will certainly be handling beer and wine if we let the small independent stores handle it. In fact, I already have a petition from a group of people at a supermarket asking why they are being discriminated against. The wheels are already turning, and I feel certain that if we pass this bill, the supermarkets will eventually find ways to handle the product.

I come from a rural area, and I have witnessed a lot of small general stores close down. I know there are people in the few remaining general stores who think this is going to be a great thing for them; I think it is going to be fool's gold. Back when times changed, farms got bigger and that sort of thing, people drove into town to get jobs. When they were in town, they shopped in town, and the little independent general store started to lose business; it was not able to keep the stock, and eventually more people went into town and did their business there. The very same thing will happen with beer and wine in the small independent stores: They will not be able to keep the stock or the quality. If this bill passes, eventually the supermarkets will be able to take over that end of the business.

If there is to be any change, I am in favour of the western system, whereby licensed establishments such as hotels and motels handle the sales. They can supervise it; they have already been involved in this line of business. I have no problems with that. It might mean a few more outlets, but it will be supervised.

I am concerned about this bill, and I am going to vote against it.

Mr. Jackson: I am very sad to have to rise today to respond to this piece of anti-family legislation. I know it has upset the Treasurer, but it is especially going to upset the member for Halton-Burlington (Mr. Knight), because he well knows the highest cause of death of young people in Halton region is directly related to the consumption of alcohol.

A rather tragic case occurred in the town of Milton, involving the loss of six young people at one railway level crossing. In the coroner's inquiry, it was clear that most of the responsibility was the manner in which the students obtained alcohol that evening, and the deaths were totally attributed to the consumption of alcohol by those minors. I wonder who is speaking for the families in Milton when the member for Halton-Burlington, a member of the Liberal government, refuses to acknowledge the real tragedy that this kind of legislation will potentially bring to the young people in our province.

17:40

The government has been inundated with petitions and letters, but the most significant ones are from those families that have suffered the tragic loss of their loved ones because of alcohol-related traffic deaths. The high school teachers and the physical education teachers of Ontario have produced petitions at great length appealing to this government to withdraw this bill.

It is somewhat appropriate that, on behalf of the community of Burlington, the Solicitor General (Mr. Keyes) is in the House today for this debate. He is keenly aware of how efficient the Halton Regional Police and the Burlington detachment are, that all uniformed policeman are required to be out on the roads in that community, that we have very few policemen currently operating in that region and that this legislation clearly is going to tax their already overtaxed responsibilities.

Who is going to provide the additional moneys required to increase the necessary coverage to have responsible police protection to respond to this legislation? I seriously doubt that the Solicitor General has given this matter the thought that is required to ensure the kinds of safety and protection that Ontario citizens have come to enjoy and respect in this province.

I close with a reference to why I believe fundamentally we are faced with this legislation. I firmly believe this was nothing more than an election gimmick that has been allowed to manifest itself in legislation purely on that basis. We saw this with Bill 94 where, in spite of what is in the best interests of the citizens of this province, we had a government that rushed to make a decision to ensure that its election promise was maintained and upheld so that it could say, "When we promise something, we deliver."

In spite of the negative implications and in spite of the potential human tragedy that will occur as a result of increasing access of our young people to alcohol, the government is determined, in spite of good judgement and sensitivity to the needs of Ontario, that it is going to ram through this piece of legislation. I will not be supporting it. As the citizens of Burlington have made abundantly clear whenever there has been a tragic loss of life in alcohol-related incidents -- as I said, 11 of the 17 fatal accidents in the region during 1985 were directly attributed to alcohol consumption -- no member with a conscience should consider this a worthwhile and socially enhancing piece of legislation.

Mr. Swart: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: Concerning the rotation, it is inconceivable that not a single Liberal member was recognized this afternoon in support of the minister. Surely you have missed somebody there.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: We are all in support of the minister, and we are quite anxious to hear what he has to say on the bill, with the idea that we might decide it by our vote before six o'clock. But, of course, that is in the hands of the honourable members.

Mr. Speaker: With those points of information, is there any other member wishing to participate in this debate? If not, the minister may wish to make some closing comments.

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: I have to express a little bit of disappointment. I have been working diligently for the total period of this debate to try to refute the statements that were made. Unfortunately, in the interests of time, I will not be able to do that. It is rather interesting -- the members on this side are totally supportive, I can assure opposition members -- that the members of both opposition parties who were speaking resented the fact that we were wasting the time of the House with this debate when in fact they were the only ones who were debating.

I would like to make a brief statement. I had hoped to make a rather lengthy statement so I could refute many of the arguments. We have a golden opportunity for Ontario to break with its paternalistic past and enter into a new age of reasonable and responsible liquor laws. If one were to accept carte blanche the fearful pronouncements uttered by the bill's political opponents over the past couple of weeks, one could only conclude that much of the rest of this continent is doomed to suffer social breakdown because it does not have the benefit of living under Ontario's enlightened liquor laws.

Ontarians who choose to drink beer and wine are already drinking them, and they are drinking them at whatever rate they choose. The hypocrisy on the other side is that both parties have come out in favour of off-premises sales when one has finished drinking in the bar at night, with the owner saying: "Get out. You have had too much. You can take another bottle of wine or beer and move out." They feel that is fine and that there is nothing wrong with it.

By placing beer and wine in independent grocery stores, we may increase competition and improve convenience for the consumer. We may even put a chink in Ontario's monopolistic liquor distribution system. However, we are certainly not inventing a way to sell more alcoholic products, and we are not providing an easier means for youngsters to get drunk on a Saturday night.

The members should think about it. If we were selling more beer, the brewing companies would be on our side. The reason they are opposed to this is that they do not see us selling one more bottle of beer. They do see us in some way affecting Brewers' Retail, but they do not see beer sales going up.

We have moved cautiously and responsibly in bringing forward the proposed legislation. We have examined the other ways in which jurisdictions have dealt with beer and wine, and we have consulted with consumers, the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation, the hospitality industry, producers and many other interested organizations and individuals. After all this consultation and study, we have concluded that Ontario can successfully broaden the scope of its liquor distribution without detrimental social consequences.

As I said on introducing this bill for first reading, we know it can work because we have seen it work elsewhere. I add that many in the opposition privately agree with us. Their statements in the past make a compelling argument for the passage of this bill. I have talked to many people about this issue over the past year. I find it interesting that many of them, when speaking off the record, say the same thing, that the sale of beer and wine in Ontario retail food stores is an inevitable development, if not now, then five, 10 or 15 years down the road.

I should tell the House another thing that not one member of the opposition has brought to this debate: We have it now. There are 720 agency stores north of Highway 17 selling beer, wine and spirits. There has not been one problem with it. When I toured the north country, everybody said: "You guys in the south are nuts. We have had it here for years and there is no problem. Why is it a problem there?"

All of us in this House understand the natural tendency of individuals, groups and entire societies to resist change, but I am saying this is an idea whose time has come. It is time to embrace change that is responsible and well planned, change whose time has finally come.

18:10

The House divided on Hon. Mr. Kwinter's motion, which was negatived on the following vote:

Ayes

Callahan, Conway, Cooke, D. R., Cordiano, Curling, Elston, Epp, Ferraro, Fulton, Hart, Henderson, Kerrio, Keyes, Kwinter, Mancini, Morin, Munro, Newman, Nixon, Offer, Polsinelli, Reycraft, Riddell, Sargent, Smith, E. J., Sorbara, Van Horne, Wrye.

Nays

Allen, Andrewes, Baetz, Barlow, Bennett, Brandt, Breaugh, Bryden, Charlton, Cooke, D. S., Cureatz, Davis, Dean, Eves, Fish, Gigantes, Gillies, Gordon, Grande, Gregory, Grier, Grossman, Guindon, Harris, Hayes, Jackson, Johnson, J. M., Johnston, R. F., Lane, Laughren;

Mackenzie, Marland, McClellan, McFadden, McLean, McNeil, Mitchell, Morin-Strom, O'Connor, Philip, Pollock, Pope, Pouliot, Rae, Reville, Rowe, Stephenson, B. M., Sterling, Stevenson, K. R., Swart, Timbrell, Wildman, Yakabuski.

Ayes 28; nays 53.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: In the interests of democracy and neatness, the honourable minister has requested, with the consent of the House, that we continue with Bill 135, the companion piece, which has no principle in it other than that which would permit beer and wine in the grocery store. With the permission of the House, we would like to deal with it now.

Agreed to.

LIQUOR CONTROL AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Kwinter moved second reading of Bill 135, An Act to amend the Liquor Control Act.

The House divided on Hon. Mr. Kwinter's motion, which was negatived on the same vote.

ROYAL ASSENT

Mr. Speaker: I beg to inform the House that in the name of Her Majesty the Queen, the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor has been pleased to assent to a certain bill in his chambers.

Clerk of the House: The following is the title of the bill to which His Honour has assented: Bill 129, An Act to amalgamate Toronto General Hospital and Toronto Western Hospital.

The House adjourned 6:18 p.m.

29 octobre 1986