The House met at 1332.

Prayers.

REPORT, INFORMATION AND PRIVACY COMMISSIONER

The Speaker: I beg to inform the House that I have today laid upon the table the third annual report of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario for the year ending 31 December 1990.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Mr Chiarelli: This is what I told the House at the last recess, 18 December:

"Ontario is sadly disappointed by the performance of the Minister of Financial Institutions.

"Over the past session, what have we seen in the way of needed legislative protection and reform from this minister? Diddly-squat. Zero. What have we seen for the 40,000 people whose uncertain future livelihood will hinge on his Utopian pie-in-the-sky scheme for driver-owned auto insurance? Nothing. What have we seen in the way of protecting Ontario's savings and loan industry in the wake of federal reform? Nothing. What have we seen in the area of safeguards for financial consumers in the wake of a collapsing real estate market and loose control of mortgage brokers? Nothing. On pension reform? Nothing.

"What have we seen to address the uncertain status of the Ontario Securities Commission? Nothing.

"Despite the recession and mounting job losses across the province, not once has the minister stood in this House to announce a program, make a statement or to introduce a bill to alleviate some of the uncertainty and increase protection for consumers and investors alike in these volatile economic times.

"Has the Premier dispatched his cowboy minister out on to the range, never to be heard from again?"

Yes, the member for Welland-Thorold is gone, and at this recess the new minister gets the same grade: diddly-squat, zero. He has done nothing.

TAXATION

Mr Stockwell: Today is the day that Ontarians, the most heavily taxed people in the country, can finally start working for themselves, after having spent the last 175 days working for governments. It is a pity that governments do not spend more time working for the average Ontario family, which spends about half its income on taxes.

Again this year, Ontarians are the last Canadians to celebrate tax freedom day. The old adage "better late than never" is probably not going to be sufficient to forestall a long overdue tax revolt in this province.

Death and taxes may be inevitable, but Ontario taxes are becoming the more painful. Contributing to the pain is the fact that taxpayers are no longer receiving quality services in return for their tax dollars. If we were to apply the principles of value-for-money auditing to the current crop of greedheads occupying the government benches, there would be millions of taxpayers in line for refunds.

As it stands, however, they are only in line for another increase in the gasoline tax next 1 January. At the rate the NDP is going, by the end of its term we will be observing tax freedom day and Labour Day concurrently. The prospect is enough to make most of us in the province hope that Thanksgiving Day comes early, as on that day we will get rid of all these turkeys. If you throw in the deficit, it would be some time in August before people would start earning money for themselves. Unbelievable.

FAMILY FARMS

Mr Mills: Many of my constituents in Durham East live and work in rural communities. There are more than 2,000 farms in the Durham region, and a large number of them are family farms located in Newcastle and Scugog.

As all members from rural ridings know, family farms have been suffering for some time. High interest rates, unstable commodity prices and the recession have all had a devastating impact on farmers in Durham East.

But farmers are pleased that our government is helping them in these difficult times through the net income stabilization account and the gross revenue insurance program. They also welcome the farm interest assistance program and the feeder cattle loan guarantee program.

Many of my constituents are concerned about the loss of agricultural land to development and the disappearance of the rural way of life. Long-term planning is crucial to keep family farms viable for the future and to strengthen our rural communities. That is why our government is looking at proposals to deliver long-term affordable credit to farmers.

Much work still remains to be done. There are no easy, quick-fix solutions to the problems facing our farming and rural communities, but farmers I have spoken to are pleased with what we have done so far and with our government's commitment to work in partnership with them to find long-term solutions to their problems and help strengthen rural communities.

MINISTRY OF CITIZENSHIP

Mr Curling: Yesterday the Minister of Citizenship held a press conference to outline her ministry's initiatives over the last nine months. Understandably, it was a rather short meeting. Here are the highlights of the minister's first term.

In March the minister announced she would implement Liberal proposals to strengthen the race relations directorate, which she has renamed the anti-racism secretariat. Five months have passed and the secretariat is still directionless, as its top position has not even been advertised.

Plans were announced to provide core funding to community groups. This funding represents less than 1% of the minister's budget. Five months later, no criteria have been developed and none are expected until late into the year.

The now Premier made a commitment last summer to immediately implement the recommendations of the task force on access to the trades and professions. The community is still waiting to hear from the minister.

A so-called employment equity consultation strategy was announced last week. This consultation will last all of six weeks and will take place at a time when, in the minister's words, "It wouldn't make sense to hold consultations, because people are not available during the summer."

Why then this hollow public relations exercise? Why not reintroduce the member for York South's private member's Bill 172 so the Legislature can get on with the debate and public hearings on this important legislation?

We have heard platitudes about fighting racism and discrimination, but nothing has been done to address concerns about the current ability of the Ontario Human Rights Commission to fulfil its mandate.

Public confidence in the commission is eroding, yet the minister will not look into allegations of discrimination within the commission itself, and despite the findings of a recent report by the provincial Ombudsman the minister has done nothing to address the immediate need for additional compliance officers and other frontline staff at the commission.

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HIGHWAY SAFETY

Mr Eves: I rise in the House today to bring attention to the intersection of Highways 124 and 69 in McDougall township just outside of Parry Sound.

As a result of my correspondence with him and meetings which we have both attended to discuss this matter, the Minister of Transportation is well aware of my concern and that of others over lack of safety at this intersection.

After much persuasion on the part of local citizens and McDougall council, the previous government agreed to construct an overpass at this intersection. However, completion of this intersection has been postponed by ministry officials twice and MTO now has a scheduled completion date in fiscal year 1992-93.

That is very little consolation indeed for the family of the individual who was killed at this intersection or the four persons who have sustained major personal injuries in accidents at that intersection, the most recent being on 18 June.

Local residents are so concerned about the uncertainty of safe passage at the intersection that the West Parry Sound Board of Education has decided to change its school boundaries and transfer students to another school rather than have them cross this intersection in a school bus. The Ontario Provincial Police division in Parry Sound also agrees that this intersection is totally unsafe.

Surely there is no greater priority than saving lives, and I would suggest that construction of this very important overpass start tomorrow.

JAMES WALKER

Mr O'Connor: In 1934 James Walker started planting trees on his property located in the township of Uxbridge, and he never stopped. Fifty-seven years later he has planted over two million trees and transformed more than 1,000 acres from barren wasteland into productive forest. He has been referred to as Ontario's Johnny Appleseed.

However, unlike the legendary figure who went about scattering seeds wherever he went, Mr Walker's forest is a product of scientific management, careful experimentation and old-fashioned hard work.

Before Mr Walker bought the land, it had been rendered useless by the removal of the huge white pines that had grown up there over the centuries. Without the trees and vegetation to hold the remaining soil, wind and rain washed away the thin topsoil, making the land infertile for agricultural purposes. He started by planting 100,000 quick-growing poplars each year in an attempt to stop the worst of the soil erosion. He has now turned what was once barren land into a forest that by the late 1980s was producing approximately 400 full cords of firewood and 30,000 to 40,000 board feet of hardwood lumber per year.

Yesterday, the Minister of Natural Resources announced in the House that he was releasing interim guidelines to protect the Oak Ridges moraine. Mr Walker's property is located on the moraine and is part of the headwaters for Duffin Creek. As part of the minister's announcement, he indicated the government was fully committed to the plans of the Metro Toronto and Region Conservation Authority to purchase the James Walker --

The Speaker: I realize 90 seconds is not enough.

ROUGE VALLEY

Mr Ramsay: Yesterday I put a question to the Minister of Natural Resources regarding his ministry's interest in Pinegrove Forest adjacent to the Rouge River Valley Park.

This site has been recommended by his staff as an area of natural and scientific interest, and I requested that the minister express the corporate position of his ministry to Pickering council. As of 10 o'clock last night, during the council meeting discussing this issue, it was stated that the Ministry of Natural Resources had not informed Pickering planning department that it had concerns.

Why did the minister not inform Pickering council of the natural history value of the site, which his staff people believed deserves protection afforded by the ANSI status?

On the same day the minister expressed concern about natural history protection in the Oak Ridges moraine, he was unable to take this very simple step of informing Pickering of the value his ministry scientists put on this particular site. This was not an oversight, because he was made aware of it yesterday. We can only conclude that natural history protection in the Rouge Valley area is a very low priority with this minister.

I hope he acts more responsibly with respect to the recommendations put to him by the Rouge Valley Park advisory committee. These are that the province apply interim protection controls on land in phase 3 of the park, and seek co-operation from all parties, and that the province provide a commitment that the public lands in the North Pickering greenbelt-agricultural reserve will remain in public ownership.

The Rouge Valley Park advisory committee meets tomorrow, and we are all looking forward to this minister's support for its recommendations.

HOSPITAL BEDS

Mrs Cunningham: University Hospital in London, which is internationally known for specialized programs such as the multi-organ transplant program, orthopaedic surgery, the epilepsy unit and in vitro fertilization, to name a few, recently announced it would be closing 47 beds and the entire ninth floor by 1 November 1991. Closing beds seems to be the only way they can receive the tax dollars needed to maintain the services they have been providing for years. The volume of transplant patients has increased, yet the revenue generated to perform this specialized surgery has not.

This short-term solution could jeopardize the integrity this hospital has worked so hard to develop for over 18 years. By closing hospital beds, the number of transplants and other operations that so many people desperately need will decrease and, as a result, patients will be forced to seek treatment in the United States, which will cost Ontario taxpayers substantially more. Physicians, some with specialties that Canada has supported with education tax dollars, will be beckoned to the US and other areas where they are appreciated and welcome.

University Hospital is a provincial and national resource that attracts patients from all over Canada and the world. The hospital has worked for 18 years to become a world-renowned hospital. Because of a lack of provincial government leadership in health delivery management in this province and of a commitment to integrated, cost-effective, long-term provincial policies, University Hospital and others are stuck with short-term, piecemeal decisions that hurt patients, hospital workers and taxpayers.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Mr Mammoliti: I would like to bring to the attention of every member of the House a matter that causes me grave concern.

We are all aware of the major problem of the lack of affordable housing in Metropolitan Toronto. Every member of government at every level, federal, provincial and municipal, must work together to find a solution.

I represent an extremely densely populated riding, Yorkview. Any type of further development in my riding would require careful consideration. Affordable housing is a pressing problem and there has been much dialogue and correspondence between me and the other elected officials representing Yorkview on this issue, as there should be.

To my utter disgust, I have a copy of the correspondence from Mayor Mel Lastman. He, too, has grave concerns on already densely populated neighbourhoods, but he states that he would "consider supporting a condominium development" as opposed to an affordable housing complex in my riding. Condos? Are we to believe that Yorkview is too crowded for non-profit assisted housing but not too crowded for more condos?

What is Mayor Lastman saying? That only certain people, those who can afford condos, need housing, and no one else needs housing? This is a man who will spend millions on an art centre rather than putting the money towards housing projects. Disappointment is not a strong enough word for my feelings on this matter.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

NORTHERN HEALTH TRAVEL GRANTS / FRAIS DE TRANSPORT AUX FINS MÉDICALES

L'hon. Mme Lankin : J'ai aujourd'hui le plaisir de passer brièvement en revue les améliorations au Programme de subventions accordées aux résidents du nord de l'Ontario pour frais de transport à des fins médicales. Ces changements ont été annoncés par le Trésorier lors de son budget du 29 avril dernier.

Ce programme s'adresse aux résidents et aux résidentes du nord de l'Ontario qui doivent parcourir de grandes distances pour obtenir des soins médicaux spécialisés.

Le gouvernement est sensible aux défis particuliers que pose l'immensité du Nord.

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In 1988 and 1989 the NDP task force on northern health care issues travelled throughout northern Ontario for 18 months. Residents of northern Ontario communities spoke passionately about their concerns around health care in the north. Presenters to the task force consistently pointed to improvements that were needed to the health travel grant.

The Ministry of Health agreed with the need to expand the program after a review was completed in 1990, along with the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines. Hospitals, patients, health care professionals, medical societies, and local social and family services were all consulted. These consultations, as well as contributions from many of my colleagues from the north, as well as the member for Parry Sound and the member for Kenora, formed the basis for the changes I am announcing today.

We want to ensure that northern residents receive the quality health care they need and deserve. We believe the expansion of this program is an important improvement to ensure access to necessary health services in the north. The changes I am announcing today will enable more people in the north to qualify for the program.

Beginning 1 July, residents in Parry Sound and all of Nipissing district will be able to make travel grant claims. This change complies with the redefinition of northern Ontario which came into effect for all government programs on 1 June 1989.

In the past people had to travel at least 250 kilometres within northern Ontario or to Manitoba to qualify for the program. The minimum distance required will be reduced to 100 kilometres. As well, patients in the north had to journey at least 300 kilometres for specialized medical care in southern Ontario to be eligible. This requirement will be lowered to 200 kilometres.

Before now, only people accompanying patients under the age of 18 could apply for travel grants. As of 1 July those travelling with patients of any age will be eligible, provided the need for a companion has been recommended by a physician. Program grants will also be expanded to include patients referred to the Speech Foundation of Ontario's Toronto Children's Centre. Patients travelling to abortion clinics licensed under the Independent Health Facilities Act will be eligible as well.

The improvements I have outlined today will increase grants under the program by $3.4 million a year. Since December of 1985 the northern health travel grant program has helped more than 80,000 patients and their travelling companions. It has awarded approximately $35 million in grants for about 212,000 trips.

This program makes health care more accessible for people in the north. As well as assisting with travel costs associated with medical care, the program gives patients the freedom to choose their own practitioner. It also encourages the effective use of health care resources in the north and supports the goal of self-sufficiency in northern health care.

The changes I have outlined today support these goals and will enhance access to health care services for residents of northern Ontario.

FIREFIGHTING

Hon Mr Farnan: I am pleased this afternoon to introduce for first reading a bill that will give the fire marshal and assistants authority to deal more effectively with threats to environmental and public safety.

This bill will amend the existing Fire Marshals Act. It will permit the fire marshal and assistants to issue an order for corrective action where, although the risk of fire is low, the potential environmental consequences of a fire would be high. It would allow the fire marshal and assistants to take the corrective action themselves where fire would cause a serious threat to environmental or public safety and the person responsible is unable or unwilling to do the work. Action could only be taken with authorization from the fire code commission. Once authorized, this corrective action could be performed even though the original order was under appeal. The appeal process would not prevent or delay necessary corrective work, as is currently the case.

The amendments will also give the fire marshal and assistants power to take remedial action in all buildings and premises where there is an immediate threat to life safety. Currently the fire marshal only has the power to close a building, requiring the tenants to move out until the hazardous situation is remedied. These changes, as well, permit recovery of the costs of any necessary corrective action through a person's municipal taxes or a court judgement. In all cases, there is a right to appeal an order to pay costs.

The proposed amendments will also cover fire protection in areas lacking a municipal government. Fire protection teams currently exist in many such communities in northern Ontario, but there is a need to formalize their existence. We are therefore proposing that these amendments give the fire marshal the power to make agreements for the establishment and operation of fire protection services in communities with no municipal government. As well, the province will have the power to make regulations for the operation and administration of these services.

The proposed amendments also recognize the importance of the mutual aid system, a system that co-ordinates firefighting resources in neighbouring municipalities during an emergency situation. The amendments authorize the fire marshal to appoint fire co-ordinators, determine their duties and provide them with immunity from legal action.

In addition, the revised legislation will expand application of the fire code to cover the occupied parts of buildings under construction or renovation.

I submit for first reading these amendments to the Fire Marshals Act. They will greatly improve the safety and security of Ontario residents.

RESPONSES

FIREFIGHTING

Mr Curling: I am glad the minister brought forward this amendment to the Fire Marshals Act. As a matter of fact, it is Liberal legislation which was introduced in June 1990. Basically it is a Liberal legislative amendment he has brought in. It took him some considerable time to do this. If this is indicative of most of the regulations that are now sitting in the minister's office and not being introduced, we realize that nothing will be done.

I am somehow feeling he did not want this to pass, having introduced it at such a late stage in the game. We have about two days to go before the House adjourns.

We had hoped also that the minister would have taken some action in regard to the coroner's inquest into rooming houses, specifically the recommendations that were made on the Rupert Hotel fire.

We are quite disappointed. We find that in one of the most active ministries in the government, most of the regulations that should have been introduced in many areas have not been done. I hope this is not the way he performs in the coming sessions. I am quite disappointed. But we hope that Bill 22, which was introduced by the then Solicitor General, will be a good guide to the minister.

NORTHERN HEALTH TRAVEL GRANTS

Mr Phillips: I am pleased to respond to the announcement on the northern health travel grants and to say it is rather typical, I think, of the government. The health travel grants were originally implemented by the previous government in 1985. Then the improvements were announced, almost word for word, a year ago in August 1990. Now finally, eight months later, the minister has been able to get around to examining them and finally announcing them.

I raised this issue in the Legislature with the previous minister in November. The response I got then -- the previous minister probably will recall -- was that she is dealing with them and we would be seeing something, I believe the words were, "in the next few weeks." Finally we see the announcement today. Believe me, it is essentially the same announcement that was made last August.

Obviously I am particularly delighted on behalf of my colleague the member for Kenora, who has been pushing very hard for this announcement for some time.

We are pleased to see at last the northern health travel grants coming forward. They are now coming out eight months after they were announced by the previous government. The people in the north have been very much waiting for these announcements to come forward. I would just urge the minister to deal as quickly as she can with many of the issues that are backing up in the Ministry of Health. We really cannot wait eight months for an announcement like this to be analysed and then essentially reannounced.

Mr Miclash: I too would like to say I am pleased the minister has come forth with an announcement regarding the northern health travel grants. As the House will know, this was the topic which I surrounded my resolution with on both 31 May 1990 -- where it received unanimous approval, I must admit -- and then again on 4 April 1991, where it actually did not receive the approval of the NDP caucus. I am just very happy that she has seen fit to go forth today and announce these improvements to that travel grant -- again, as the previous speaker indicated, announcements that were made back in August by the former Premier.

I must point out as well, as the minister will know through my correspondence and my many discussions with her, that a good amount of correspondence to my office has been concerning the travel companion, concerning the distance and concerning many other things surrounded by this. Again, I am happy to be able to report back to my constituents that we are finally moving ahead in terms of meeting their needs in terms of health care throughout the north.

Again, I would just like to say I am happy, even though it did take a couple of resolutions and a good amount of time, to see these coming forth from the government.

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FIREFIGHTING

Mr Carr: I think I speak for all members when I say we all believe the fine men and women across this province who are working in our fire departments are doing a terrific job. I would also say that anything we can do to support those men and women in their task would be met with support from all members of the House, and I think some of the measures they talk about in terms of fire protection to help some of the municipalities would be a good thing.

When we talk about some of the things like the immediate threat to life, however, we are going to be very interested to see how those things are defined. The problem we have with this government is that when we get involved with regulations, we are a little bit sceptical and a little bit concerned. The last time we had any regulations that were doctored in this province, the people of this province lost the oath to the Queen, so you can rest assured that when it comes to changing the regulations in this province, we will be very mindful and will be watching the Solicitor General.

NORTHERN HEALTH TRAVEL GRANTS

Mr Eves: I would like to comment on the statement made today by the Minister of Health. I never thought I would actually live to see this day when the riding of Parry Sound, in its entirety -- meaning the district of Parry Sound and the district of Nipissing, both of them in their entirety -- was finally included in northern Ontario for the purposes of northern health travel grants.

This a promise that has been made by succeeding premiers, ministers of Northern Development and ministers of Health over the last fair number of years, I think it is fair to say. I recall back to 1988 when the then Minister of Northern Development and Mines and the then Premier of the province promised that the Parry Sound riding would be included in its entirety in northern Ontario for the purposes of all provincial government ministries, boards, agencies and commissions, only to find out about a year later, on 1 June 1989, when the changes went into effect, that several ministries still refused to recognize Parry Sound as part of northern Ontario. One of these was the Ministry of Health and another was the Ministry of Natural Resources, to name a couple.

We then pursued that matter at some length. It took an election campaign, during which -- 14 August 1990, I believe the date was -- the Premier of the province, Mr Peterson, appeared in Parry Sound at a barbecue to which he had all of about 50 red-T-shirted people in attendance, I believe. That is an increase compared to previous elections, actually; I want to get that on the record. Obviously that was a big waste of time because not only did he not do anything in that riding in the election campaign; he also failed to deliver on his promise to include Parry Sound district and Nipissing district in northern Ontario for the purposes of the northern health travel grant program.

I would be very remiss if I did not mention in my comments here today the efforts of many municipal officials and concerned people in the districts of Parry Sound and Nipissing. It is the people who are less fortunate in society who benefit from a program such as this. It is for those people that I think everybody has been fighting for a great number of years now to have this program include the people in this district in their entirety.

I have received literally hundreds of letters and phone calls over the last two to three years with respect to this particular problem. Some of those stories are very sad indeed, especially with respect to people who require cancer treatment. They often have had to come to Toronto for treatment and in some cases literally could not afford to come to Toronto as often as they should for this treatment. I am pleased that these people will now have that opportunity, an opportunity that unfortunately for many has been lost over the last few years.

For those in the future it has been gained, and I would sincerely like to extend my thanks to the minister today for her commitment.

ORAL QUESTIONS

FUEL CONSERVATION TAX

Mr Nixon: I have a question for the Treasurer. I have examined his statement yesterday as carefully as possible and read the statements made by the Treasury officials. Can he confirm that the former gas guzzler tax as he announced it in the budget would impact on about 10% of the cars sold in Ontario and that his Bob White fine-tuning will impact on about 99% of the cars sold in Ontario?

Hon Mr Laughren: Yes, I can confirm those numbers very roughly and assure the leader of the official opposition that when we made the change we thought very carefully about the fact that more cars now would be subjected to the fuel conservation tax. We all know a lot of the cars that now will have a fuel conservation tax could not be categorized as gas guzzler automobiles. We appreciate that fact.

However, the member will notice that the more fuel-conservative the car is, the less tax is paid, until you get right down to the point of the most fuel-conservative automobiles, where there is for the first time anywhere in North America a $100 rebate on the purchase of those automobiles.

Mr Nixon: I appreciate the confirmation from the Treasurer. I remember a year ago when he was talking about a minimum tax on corporations. It appears this has transformed itself into a minimum tax on automobiles. Frankly, I have never seen the cars that are not only exempt but carry with them a $100 cheque from the Treasurer. They are a little small for people like me. On the other hand, the Treasurer may have a fleet of them; I do not know.

It seems to me that his commitment to a minimum tax has finally been fulfilled, since every car sold in Ontario except for less than 1% will carry a minimum tax of $75, and upward from there.

Can the Treasurer explain why he feels this is going to do anything other than augment his revenue? In fact, it will have little or no impact on the environment but will have a substantial impact on reducing whatever buoyancy there is in the car market as it fights against the depredations of NDP policy.

Hon Mr Laughren: I must take issue with what the leader of the official opposition says. If we had not consulted so widely on the change, perhaps I would give some credence to what he says. I can tell him that the automobile manufacturers say this is a much better package than the previous one; the Canadian Auto Workers, the union representing the workers, says it is a much better tax; the automobile dealers say it is a better tax; and, quite frankly, environmentalists in the province are very pleased with this tax as well. I think it is not appropriate for the leader of the official opposition to depict this tax as anything other than a much better package than the previous one.

Mr Nixon: I am not sure all of the people of the province would agree with the tax as the Treasurer sees it. As a matter of fact, it looks as if it were dreamt up by the same geniuses who thought of the tire tax, if members know what I mean. But in the case of the tire tax, all of that money, as the former Minister of the Environment will tell members, went to support the environmental budget. We were very proud of that accomplishment. At least we not only made that commitment but were able to see that it was fulfilled.

In this instance, I know members would agree with me that this is nothing more than a tax grab. For the Treasurer of Ontario to allow the Minister of Finance for Canada to put the GST of 7% on these cars, and then to put his own 8% on in parallel and then a minimum $75 on top means that he is seriously damaging this industry. Surely the people who are contemplating the purchase of a new car will postpone it on that basis.

What steps is the Treasurer going to take to see that there will not be a reduction in car sales and that in fact he has not further damaged this industry, which is one of the basic foundations of our economy?

Hon Mr Laughren: The fact is that the previous tax was higher on a lot of the categories than is this one. It should not be too difficult to understand that if you are going to reduce the amount of tax on a certain number of vehicles, then you broaden the base. You broaden the base so that the revenue base is not eroded. I do not think there is anything unreasonable about that.

What I find difficult to understand is how the leader of the official opposition sets himself up as a better expert on the automobile industry than the manufacturers, than the unions that represent the workers. I do not understand why the leader of the official opposition does not understand that those people with the most at stake are very supportive of this rearranged tax, and he should be too.

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Mr Nixon: I discount Bob White's approval, but the president of the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers of Canada, Donald McArthur, has said, "As the tax stands now, it will damage the automobile industry at a time when it is just beginning to recover from recession."

FOOD BANKS

Mr Nixon: I want to move my attention to the Minister of Community and Social Services, who, along with her party, promised the elimination of food banks.

The minister is aware that the Canadian Association of Food Banks predicted that two million Canadians, 700,000 of them children, will require emergency food assistance in 1991. That is a 40% increase from 1990. The facts and figures in Toronto indicate that year over year the demand is up 48%. Here in Toronto the Daily Bread Food Bank is now supplying food to over 50,000 young people per month. Food banks in Ontario are now feeding 275,000 people a month.

I would like to ask the minister, although she has already conceded many months ago that she will not be able to abolish food banks, how she is getting along in providing programs that are going to at least level out the increase in demand on the food banks in Ontario, and particularly Toronto.

Hon Ms Akande: The Leader of the Opposition will recall that this government has dedicated and addressed itself to removing the need for food banks. In an attempt to do that, we have been quite effective in moving many of the Back on Track recommendations towards achieving those ends. We have made it possible for single parents to hold on to more of their income because we have taken out the tax and reduced the tax and increased the level of income they may acquire before they pay Ontario tax.

We have directed many of the single parents towards back-to-work programs and retraining programs. Many of them have been quite effective and are now earning income and gradually moving off social assistance rolls. We have indeed moved in the direction to which we dedicated ourselves, that of reducing the need for food banks.

Mr Nixon: I could not hear all the details, but the minister will understand that her answer boils down to the fact that her government has increased the payments to the needy people by 2%, from the 5% that was allocated in the previous budget to 7%. The problem here is that many people do not realize there are hundreds and thousands of people who depend on this. Many of them voted for the NDP because they felt it more sincerely put forward the concept that it could do something about the problem. Now it is 48% worse than it was. The Daily Bread Food Bank is rationing food, and now instead of 15% of these young people going hungry on a daily basis, it is as many as 25%.

Most of us, believe it or not, are well fed. Most of the people who may be watching this exchange are looking out at one of the best crop years in the history of our province. It seems incredible that the NDP, which very properly was critical of inadequacies in the past, has not been able at least to move in the direction of a solution. In fact, it is getting worse.

Can the minister not give us some specific plan that is going to come to grips with this situation, moving at least in part towards the solid promise and commitment that she and her colleagues made a year ago?

Hon Ms Akande: We have in fact identified what we are doing. We have dedicated $215 million, which by the way the opposition at that time said was excessive, towards directing services to make sure they are fairer, to make sure those people who need those services and that support the most get it, and towards a back-to-work initiative so that in fact people are receiving a great deal of assistance.

It is unfortunate, though, that while we are doing this with such dedication and determination, we are affected by the policies of the federal government, which make it impossible for us to contradict what is happening in terms of unemployment, in terms of its removal from support on unemployment insurance and in terms of its continuing with the cap on CAP. Yes, our determination has not changed.

Mr Nixon: The minister and all members of this House know that the year-over-year increase in the budget was 13.4%, probably the largest in history. The minister and all members in this House know that instead of the regular $200-million increase for the 22,000 medical practitioners, the budget found $484 million extra and it found $220 million extra for the civil servants. The minister has allocated an extra $1 million to food banks, which is 40 cents per month per customer.

Is she satisfied with this? Does she not understand that, I suppose because of political realities, the pressure on her on this matter has decreased, but the numbers out there are still going hungry and her commitment has not been fulfilled or even nearly fulfilled?

Hon Ms Akande: Yes, we do understand. These people are real to us, and we have addressed many of the programs we have in order to meet their needs. Certainly the supports to employment program has done that, the employment opportunities program has done that and our anti-recession program has done that, and we have met with much success.

The thing I must emphasize is that while we continue to work this way, there are other forces, the recession for one and the unemployment numbers for another, which work to add more and more people to the needy. I would mention to the Leader of the Opposition that when one increases social assistance from 5% to 7%, it does make for an overall 40% increase.

COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL SERVICES SPENDING

Mr Harris: My question as well is for the Minister of Community and Social Services, and perhaps explains why there is not enough money for those who truly need assistance.

I recently received a copy of a letter to the Premier which I believe was also sent to the minister. My copy was received about four days ago. It is from a civil servant in her ministry's central regional office. The letter states in part:

"At a time when welfare rolls are increasing, food banks are strained, the number of homeless is growing, many of us are outraged by the spending of the senior management in central region. Rather than holding senior management meetings in the boardrooms, the staff frequent resorts and hotels all over southern Ontario and in Metro."

Would the minister tell us if, four days after receiving this letter, she has investigated this alleged abuse and waste of tax dollars? What does she have to say about the spending priorities of her ministry's staff when we hear of food banks and those who are needing assistance and we see this kind of spending by her ministry's senior staff? Could she tell us the results of that investigation?

Hon Ms Akande: Yes, I have received the letter and I have set about, although not as promptly as the leader of the third party has, to ask questions, and those questions are directed.

I would want to correct the member, though, in that he has assumed the spending is excessive and unusual. I was surprised -- I might say I was appalled -- to find out about the practices of both of our previous governments in terms of the use of hotels and extravagant settings. If anything, we have reduced that spending and we intend to continue.

Yes, I am interested in finding the answers, and when I do, I will share them with the member in this House.

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Mr Harris: I would suggest that if the minister spent more time looking at what is going on today instead of re-reading history from 42 years ago, we might have more money for food banks and for the needy and for the hungry.

I was quoting a civil servant in her ministry who is appalled. That is who sent the minister the letter anonymously, because she has not changed the rules as she promised for the whistle-blowing legislation.

While she was asking questions, let me tell her about what is going on next. The SkyDome Hotel has confirmed a three-day extravaganza for senior staff in the central region office at the end of July. Nine rooms have been booked at a cost of $90 per night per person. An interoffice memo, which incidentally staff are directed to destroy and take out of the computer after reading, says, "There will be a voluntary evening session on July 31, which includes the Cleveland Indians and the Toronto Blue Jays."

Unless these two teams have joined the minister's staff, does she not think this three-day retreat, compliments of Ontario taxpayers, is at the very least improper and irresponsible?

Hon Ms Akande: I must express my appreciation to the leader of the third party for the express information he has given me. I must be clear with this House. Let us be frank. I will deal with this immediately and I do appreciate it. But I am interested in history, because unless we learn our history, we are condemned to repeat it, and that would be the last thing we would want to do.

Mr Harris: The minister had the letter at the same time I had. The Premier had the letter at the same time I had. It is tough over here, with our resources, keeping track of every ministry. One would think the minister could look after her own.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Mr Harris: I know it is tough for the minister to hear because her own caucus will not shut up but, if they would like to hear, I think the minister has a problem.

In addition to nine rooms, a two-level suite has been booked at a cost of $350 per night for two nights. That suite is reserved for the director of central region. That director works and lives in Toronto, yet taxpayers are going to spend $700 to put her up in a luxurious suite at the SkyDome. This may be how Bob White and the Treasurer plan to pay down the SkyDome's debt, but I think it is shocking that, according to this letter, we are going to pay down the SkyDome's debt instead of looking after the poor, the hungry, the homeless and the food banks that were raised by the leader of the Liberal Party.

We have already spent thousands of dollars to give this director a bigger office, colour TV, china for 50 people, so she could hold these things in her own office -- redecorated it, a bigger office. While children are going hungry, where are the minister's priorities?

Hon Ms Akande: My priorities are where they always are. I have already expressed some surprise and some concern and I will continue to do so. Let me reiterate my promise to the leader of the third party. I certainly will get complete and specific information and share it directly with the member in this House.

INMATE SECURITY

Mr Carr: My question is to the Minister of Correctional Services. The minister may have read the headline that was in one of our papers in the Hamilton area: "Guard Watched While An Inmate Was Killed." The article said:

"Two guards watched while a 63-year-old inmate was beaten to death by an enraged cellmate in one of the jails. Under jail regulations, the guards were powerless to intervene, an Ontario court jury was told. The third guard had to be present before they could intervene."

What is the minister doing to ensure that incidents like this do not happen in Ontario?

Hon Mr Farnan: All I can say to the member is that our policy is under review.

Mr Carr: The Minister of Correctional Services will also note that one of the staff psychiatrists who was testifying said the man was likely suffering from an acute psychiatric episode, which had started before the victim had arrived at the facility. After this incident, he was moved out of the dormitory and placed in a two-person protective custody cell, which was already housing another individual. We had a situation where a man had been violent with the police, he went into protective custody and, as a result of that, the man died. Why was this individual not put in secure protective custody alone, without another prisoner?

Hon Mr Farnan: Whenever a situation like this occurs within an institution, the matter automatically becomes a matter for an inquest. Obviously when the matter is under review in an inquest, it is inappropriate for a comment to be made. That is very clear.

Mr Carr: My concern is that this may be happening and we may be able to prevent deaths. We cannot afford to wait. If there is a problem, I think what the people of Ontario would like to see is that we take corrective actions in case we have another tragedy on our hands.

This would appear to be a case where an individual with a psychiatric disorder was placed in another prisoner's cell as a result of overcrowding. When the minister was in opposition, he said we should take action to reduce the overcrowding in our prisons. This very clearly is a case where, as a result of the overcrowding, we have now had a death. What is the minister doing to make sure that anybody with any psychiatric problems is not being put in a cell with other individuals where he may inflict punishment upon them?

Hon Mr Farnan: Within our system we are responsible for a large range of individuals, many of them requiring treatment. We have facilities that range from Ontario Correctional Institute, where there are very, very excellent treatment programs that compare with the best in the world. It is our continuing intent to give the best level of treatment to all of those within our care. That continues to be our goal. At the same time, the treatment would be geared to the individual. We also have a responsibility for security and for the people who work within our system. We try to balance all of these and we continue to refine the process as we go along.

CHILD CARE SERVICES

Ms Poole: My question is for the Minister of Education. As the minister knows, her ministry provides 100% capital funding for child care centres in new and replacement schools on her priority list. Mr Speaker, you yourself are a Metro member and you are very much aware that in Metro we are not building new schools. However, we are replacing our older schools which desperately need it.

Many of those schools currently have child care centres which should be replaced when the schools are rebuilt, but the Minister of Education is refusing to allow these schools even to go on the waiting list for capital funding for child care. Without this funding, when the schools are rebuilt, the existing child care facilities will not be rebuilt. If these spaces are lost, not only will the associated jobs be lost but more importantly our children will be left without care.

I know of nine replacement schools among the six school boards in Metro where the minister has denied funding for the construction of child care centres. I would ask the minister, when the need has been proven and has been documented, why is she refusing to fund these desperately needed child care centres in Metro Toronto?

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Hon Mrs Boyd: The member is quite right that under the current capital allocation scheme, the situation for Metropolitan Toronto means these replacement schools are not entitled to child care funding, as she stated. The Minister of Community and Social Services and I are very aware of this problem and have been talking at some depth about how the Ministry of Community and Social Services, which is the lead ministry in terms of child care, and the Ministry of Education might find some way to collaborate to prevent this from happening.

I should point out to the member that this is a concern not only in Metro Toronto, although it is most urgent in Metro Toronto, but in some other areas where previously unused school space has been converted to child care space and now, with the increased demand, there is a real need for this.

We are very aware of it. We are trying to deal with it as best we can under the recession. We can only assure the member that it is not through lack of caring, but through our need to come up with a comprehensive child care plan that is going to address this and similar issues.

Ms Poole: This is more than a matter of caring; this is a matter of equity. All we want in Metro Toronto is our fair share for child care. By restricting funding for child care to the construction of new schools and by denying it for replacement and renovated schools, the minister has clearly discriminated against Metro. How can she justify it?

She cannot deny that the need in Metro is particularly acute. We have the highest number of single parents in the province and we receive no funding from the province for education. We know the minister has saved $2 million by cutting the Ontario scholar award. If she insists on making that cut, why does she not do something worth while with the money and give Metro its fair share for child care?

Hon Mrs Boyd: The member is well aware that under the general legislative grants there is a formula that was intended to ensure some equity. It is a formula that is based on the assessment base of municipalities and on an equalized mill rate. Under that formula, Metropolitan Toronto is entitled to no grants, either capital or operating, at the present time. We have indicated very clearly that we do see problems with equity in this. We have made a commitment in this House many times to look at the financing of education, to revisit this whole issue of how are funds are divided in the province, and certainly we see this as a first call.

I should remind the member that during the discussion of Bill 30, we clearly indicated our intention of changing the regulations to allow replacement and renovated schools to include child care facilities. That still will not affect Metropolitan Toronto under the current allocation grants. The member is quite right that we need to be looking at this and finding ways to attain more equity and funding of education across the province. At the present time, however, until we do that study, we are simply not in a position to change our formula willy-nilly.

ONTARIO ECONOMY

Mr Runciman: My question is for the Premier. Last Friday I met with representatives of the corporation of the city of Brockville and 21 manufacturers representing well over 1,000 jobs in my community. They were expressing concerns with respect to tax levels in this province and administrative costs brought on by legislation, much of it brought in by the former Liberal government. They were talking about proposed legislation that the Minister of Labour and other ministers have talked about.

Today I tabled a resolution from the city of Brockville calling on the Premier to respond to the concerns of these manufacturers, many of whom are suggesting they are going to move out of the province, freeze expansion or even close. Besides inciting 1930s class rhetoric with Conrad Black, what is the Premier planning to do to initiate constructive discussion to resolve the very real concerns of Ontario's business community?

Hon Mr Rae: I appreciate the question. I was meeting with the mayor of Brockville, among others, on Thursday when I had an opportunity to talk very directly to him and to the other eastern Ontario mayors about their concerns. I want to say to the member that I think I have had nearly 100 meetings with members of the business community since 6 September.

At the last meeting I had at the Premier's Council, to which I call people together from all sectors of the community, I made it very clear that there is no room in this province for a return to the outdated views of the 1930s, 1940s or 1950s, that we do have to work together, that this government is interested in working with people and that we are determined to do so.

We have also stated very clearly that the policies we bring forward are ones that are going to be discussed with people. I think the Treasurer yesterday showed this very clearly. We had the industry, the manufacturers, the workers, the environmental community and the dealers all on side, and the Treasurer willing to make a creative change. I think we have shown that we are willing to do this and that we are interested in doing this.

Anyone who is in the Premier's chair has to speak on behalf of all the people. That includes the manufacturers of this province as well as the workers of the province. I am interested in working with the manufacturing sector. I have been talking with them and trying to do my best to work with them since becoming Premier. We are going to continue to do that as we face the most difficult structural change we have faced as a province since the Depression.

Mr Runciman: We have heard a lot of rhetoric in this House from the Premier with respect to co-operation and partnership, but reality is something quite different. The response I got from the mayor of Brockville, when he met with the Premier and other mayors from eastern Ontario and raised these very real concerns of manufacturers in eastern Ontario, was that the response from the Premier was less than positive, that he was rather agitated that the matter was raised. That is the response the mayor reports to me.

The business community is sounding the alarm bells. The message is loud and clear. If jobs are to be saved, if business is to remain in Ontario and remain competitive, then the policy direction must change and it must change now. Will the Premier commit to a full consultation with the business community and, in his words, "co-operate with business," or is he hog-tied to his ideological view that capitalism is an offence in NDP Ontario?

Hon Mr Rae: I must tell the members that since I have a cottage in the member's constituency, I consider myself at least a part-time constituent of the member for Leeds-Grenville.

The member, whose views and outspokenness are well known in the House, has asked me not to be ideological on these questions and I can assure him that is exactly the approach I intend to take. He said, "Will we consult with business?" Of course we will. We do so with a sense of clear responsibility and with a sense of eager anticipation, because our sense is that the vast majority of business people in this province want to continue to do business in Ontario because they know it is a good place to do business, because the workforce is keen and positive and because the quality and the standard of life have been described, in the latest survey conducted by the World Economic Institute at Davos, as the second-best anywhere in the world.

We happen to think we are in a very difficult period in terms of the economy, but we are determined to work with everyone, I might add including very much the member for Leeds-Grenville.

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GRAPE AND WINE INDUSTRY

The Speaker: The Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations has an answer to a question asked earlier.

Hon Ms Churley: I would like to take this opportunity to respond to the question raised yesterday by the honourable member for Leeds-Grenville and, I hear, part-time MPP for the Premier.

It is important that I take a moment to answer this question now, as promised, because after looking into this issue for the member, I realized the reason I had such trouble answering the question. I remembered that when I heard the member's statement a month ago, I had the same trouble with it. The problem is that the question and the statement were distorted; there were inaccuracies in his basic premise. I would like to answer it now.

The member talked about the purchase of surplus grapes by this government. This whole argument seemed to be based on that premise. In fact, it is the federal government that purchases the excess grapes, not the provincial government. We help the grape industry in other ways, but it is the federal government.

He also implied that the LCBO gives preferential treatment to foreign brandy products. This also is not true. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario carries a wide variety of brandy --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Would the member take her seat for a moment, please.

Mr Mahoney: I am just trying to help you, Mr Speaker.

The Speaker: I appreciate the help of all members. At this point the greatest help you could be would be to remain quiet so that I can hear the response. I ask the minister to make her response as succinctly as possible.

Hon Ms Churley: I am not sure the member who is concerned about this question was able to hear. I will continue quickly.

The LCBO does carry a wide variety of brandy, including five different sizes of the Rieder Distillery small cask brandy. I would be happy to further enlighten the member on this issue later, if it so pleases the Speaker at this point.

Mr Runciman: That is a very generous offer, that the minister is going to enlighten me, when I raised this issue yesterday and she was not familiar with it at all. In fact, she still does not have her facts straight.

The reality is I was talking about the LCBO not purchasing brandy from an Ontario producer. I am not talking about it having products on the LCBO shelves; of course it does. I am talking about products carrying the LCBO crest, the Ontario crest, that are purchased from France. They are not purchasing Rieder brandy. Rieder brandy is in its own bottles on the shelves of the LCBO. I posed the question to the minister, why does the LCBO not start supporting an Ontario producer, an Ontario distillery and start purchasing brandy from Rieder? It is as simple as that.

Hon Ms Churley: The member still does not have the story straight on this. As I just said, the LCBO sells this particular type of brandy, five different sizes of it, in all its stores across Ontario.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Will the member take her seat, please. It is not productive to simply shout at each other.

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

Mr H. O'Neil: My question is to the Minister of Health. Last year, in response to a questionnaire circulated by the Ontario division of the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Premier stated that he fully supported the Graham report which established a comprehensive model for community mental health services and that he would urge the government to implement it.

Now that the member for Beaches-Woodbine is the Minister of Health, would she explain why we have heard nothing about the Graham report, which emphasizes community-based mental health delivery, and can she tell us, what is her timetable for implementation?

I raise this because I am told by officials of the Hastings-Prince Edward county community mental health program in my riding that there are waiting lists of up to anywhere from three to six months in our area. These are people who require counselling for mental health, suicidal tendencies and sexual abuse.

Hon Ms Lankin: I can give a preliminary response to the member today. I cannot be completely detailed in terms of the time frame at this point in time for implementation. The ministry has been working, as the member is well aware, on a number of the recommendations from the Graham report. Our government is very committed to those recommendations.

I have been reviewing some of the suggestions flowing from the ministry coming out of that, with respect to the community advisory boards working with the psychiatric hospitals and the regional structures that might be put in place to work with the community mental health side of it, in conjunction with some of the planning that would implement those Graham recommendations.

We are currently working on that. In the time I have been in this portfolio it is something I have been getting up to speed on and intend to move ahead with. I cannot give the member an actual time frame right now -- and that is not a matter of stalling; I personally do not know the time frames involved yet -- but I will get that answer for the member.

Mr H. O'Neil: The next question I am going to raise is going to have some shocking figures, at least figures that are very shocking for me. Fundamental to the Graham report is the sense that mental health services need to be integrated to make them responsive and accessible to all who need them. Yet the system in the Hastings and Prince Edward area is so fractured that case loads are being juggled in order to respond to demand.

Even more horrifying is the incidence of suicide over the past 12 months. Staff of the community mental health program in Hastings and Prince Edward counties, a service for children and adults, are aware of seven suicides among teenagers and 22 adult suicides in the last year. I relate that again to the three- to six-month waiting list. Community mental health services in Hastings and Prince Edward counties have submitted a proposal for additional staff to serve the area. We have a crisis in our area. Can the minister tell me how she is prepared to act on it?

Hon Ms Lankin: The member for Quinte indicates that a report has been submitted from the group, and I will undertake to review that report expeditiously. However, I know reports such as that are being activated from many areas around the province through the district health councils and through working with the mental health community out there. Quite frankly, I share his sense of urgency about moving in this area. Some of those reports are further developed in both their community development and the review by the ministry. I know the areas of Durham, for example, are looking at the catchment area for Whitby Psychiatric Hospital and the community mental health services there. That has been under review for some time and there are some suggestions coming forward in that area.

I will undertake to look at the specific report the member is referring to, from that area of the province, but I suggest it is in the context of a shortage of services across the whole province that need to be addressed.

PAY EQUITY FUND

Mr Eves: I have a question of the Minister of Health in her capacity as Chairman of Management Board of Cabinet. The hospitals in Ontario have been waiting for approximately four and a half months to access the pay equity assistance fund initially announced by the Treasurer on 11 February 1991. At that time he announced some $100 million was being set aside by the Treasury. Then in his budget of 29 April he announced that a further $25 million was being set aside to help with pay equity costs for different transfer agencies such as hospital boards, municipalities and boards of education across the province.

Hospitals across this province have been closing beds and laying off staff. As my colleague alluded to earlier, a university hospital in London last week announced the closing of the entire ninth floor; 57 beds are being closed and between 75 and 100 people are being laid off at this one hospital alone. Could the minister please tell the House, and more particularly the hospitals in the province, why they have had to wait almost a quarter of the way through the fiscal year and still have not gained access to this fund?

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Hon Ms Lankin: The member raises a number of issues in the preamble to his question. I would like to try to address a couple of those so I can give him as full an answer as possible.

With respect to the hospital budget process, as I have responded a number of times to the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, who has raised this issue, as of next week we should be receiving all of the budgets from the hospitals. The deadline is currently the middle of June. We will have a chance to review the implications of those budget cuts in a number of areas. Having said that, there are also a number of formulas of growth and equity funding. We are reviewing the reports from the various hospitals to try to put this in place.

I met with the Ontario Hospital Association on Friday morning, with the assistant deputy minister of institutional health there, and I gave an undertaking to expedite that process and get that money to the hospitals this fall. We are working closely with them. They admitted that the hospitals themselves are part of the problem.

Mr Speaker, you are getting anxious but there were several parts to the question.

With respect specifically to the question about pay equity funding that the member raises, the Ministry of Treasury and Economics is currently working --

The Speaker: Would the minister take her seat, please. If it is of help, sometimes if there are quite detailed responses to the members they might best be put in written form or on Orders and Notices. We do try to limit the amount of time for responses.

Mr Eves: With respect to the minister's remarks, I have talked to the OHA. Officials there tell me they have asked her ministry several times how they could access this fund and, including her meeting with them last Friday, they are still in the dark as to how they can access it. In fact, they indicated to me that she told them they should be contacting the Treasurer to see how they could access the fund. This does not coincide with what the Treasurer said on 11 February in this House when he stated, "The ministries responsible will be in touch with the major transfer groups to explain how to access these funds."

The OHA says that it has been in touch with her ministry several times and that her ministry does not know how to access the fund. They claim she indicated to them on Friday that they should talk to the Treasurer. The Treasurer said on 11 February that they should talk to her. What is going on over there and why can these people not get access to this money?

Hon Ms Lankin: That is a fair question. With all due respect to the ruling of the Speaker, I have to say that if members are going to ask very long, detailed questions, it is only fair that we get a chance to respond or we will be criticized by the members of the opposition.

Specifically to respond to the question the member asked, I did meet with the OHA on Friday morning. I genuinely do not recall suggesting to them that they should contact the Treasurer; I believe I said those discussions were ongoing with Treasury. If I left that impression with them, it was incorrect and I can correct that and speak with them directly.

The member is quite correct that our ministry will be giving them the response directly. That is what the Treasurer said and that is what we will be doing. We are currently working with the Ministry of Treasury and Economics to develop a plan of how the transfer payment agencies will access that. The member is right in that we have not got that finalized yet. We have informed the OHA of that. I told them that as of Friday morning and we will get to them as soon as we can with a response.

The Speaker: The Minister of Natural Resources has an answer to a question asked previously.

ROUGE VALLEY

Hon Mr Wildman: Yesterday the member for Timaskaming raised a question with regard to an area of natural and scientific interest, an ANSI, in Pickering near the Rouge Valley. I have some details in response to that question.

Interjections.

Hon Mr Wildman: Does he want an answer or not? The proposed subdivision development is adjacent to the Rouge River ANSI that was referred to in my response yesterday. The ministry has not identified a great blue heron nesting site actually within the 55-hectare Bramalea development area. The ministry will continue to protect the species where their rookeries are located in the Rouge Valley.

The development has been given draft approval and commitments have been made by the municipality under the Planning Act, but last night the municipality deferred final approval until August. The ministry is currently reviewing the subdivision plan to determine the impact of storm water runoff on the surrounding area. We had engineers on the site yesterday and are looking for the developer to ensure that the storm water concerns will be addressed effectively and sensitively.

I will work with my colleague the Minister of Municipal Affairs to review the proposed development and look to the councillors in Pickering to ensure that the local environmental considerations are addressed in the future.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Wildman: The members obviously do not want the answer.

Mr Ramsay: I am quite happy to have the answer. I just would like to raise a point of order, Mr Speaker: Is it appropriate and part of the rules of order of the House that after a minister has given an answer to a question properly laid on the previous day, the minister has another opportunity just to stand up and volunteer another question?

The Speaker: A point of order, yes, indeed. When members ask questions to which the minister promises a response, the minister then can respond, to which the member who originally asked the question has an opportunity for a supplementary in answer to that, of course, and then back to the rotation normally followed, in this case another member from your caucus. So the member may pose a supplementary if he wishes.

MINISTER'S OFFICE

Mr Scott: I have a question for the Minister of Community and Social Services. I want her to understand that it is a frustration to the opposition, which gets only about four or five questions each day to ask of ministers, when an important question about food banks and homelessness in Toronto is put aside by generalities of the type we had this afternoon in response to my leader's questions.

If we cannot get specific answers from the Minister of Community and Social Services, I wonder whether she can answer these specific questions. We have been advised that in the last few months, notwithstanding the enormous difficulties in funding food banks, the minister was able to allocate, dredge up and spend more than $56,000 redecorating her personal office in the ministry, which was fine when Charles Beer left it.

Will the minister explain why and on whose authority she expended that money, and would she be good enough to tell the people in my riding of St George-St David, which is an enormous homeless and food bank community, how many children would have been fed if that money had been spent on food banks and not on redecorating her couch?

Hon Ms Akande: I am very happy to have this question. As a matter of fact, the member is incorrect. He may visit my office if he doubts that, and so may the others in the opposition. I have not redecorated my office. I have replaced the rug and --

Interjection.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Ms Akande: The carpet has been replaced. The boardroom to which the member refers is now the boardroom of the deputy minister. The carpet has been replaced because of an allergy to mould. We found that mould was growing within the office. There has not been a redecoration of my office.

Mr Scott: I would like to have from the minister an account of what was expended on the decoration of her office. I understand decoration may have another kind of meaning in other parts of Toronto, but for me the purchase of a new rug is decorating the office. I would like to have in the House, from the minister, at the first available opportunity, a list of the purchases that were made to redecorate her office and the cost of them. I do this not because I am opposed to new rugs; I do it because in Metro Toronto the demand for food banks has increased 40% over the year. Can I have the minister's undertaking to have that information tomorrow?

Hon Ms Akande: I would gladly present to the member the information concerning the redecoration of my office. I hope that at that time it will be appropriate for him to correct the information he so eagerly got about its cost, because it is inaccurate. The laying of new carpet is necessary because of health conditions within the office.

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APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

Mrs Cunningham: My question is for the Minister of Skills Development. I do not see him here right now. The ministry has not told us he would be away. If he cannot be found, I will put the question to the Minister of Education. I am sure she is aware that in London the trustees recently backed a plan to expand technological studies to all classrooms. They talked about the importance of stressing the need for teaching, technology and technological training in our elementary schools.

This information is not new. It is something that should be done. It has to be encouraged from time to time, but it is absolutely not a major breakthrough in the delivery of education in Ontario. What is needed is co-operation among the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Skills Development and the Ministry of Colleges and Universities to get those apprenticeship training programs down into the classrooms where they are most important, where they can not only help our young people become skilled, help Ontario become more competitive but, more important, where they can actually help and support young people to stay in school.

Can the minister advise this House today as to what steps she has taken in moving apprenticeship training programs into the elementary and secondary schools, or specifically the secondary schools, where they are definitely needed?

Hon Mrs Boyd: I am very pleased to answer the member for London North. I too was very pleased that our local board of education passed that resolution and I know that the technological renewal grants we have given from the Ministry of Education will assist it and many other school boards across the province to do so.

The Ministry of Education is involved in the restructuring of education. The first piece of that restructuring was to look at the needs for technological education. The consultation that has been out among educators in the province for some time is now complete and the analysis of the feedback from that consultation should be available in the early fall for the major conference where we plan to look at where we are with restructuring.

We are working on with it well. We are working together with the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, particularly in terms of the linkages that were recommended in the Vision 2000 report, to ensure that we are linking together the elementary, secondary and post-secondary educational areas in this field.

Mrs Cunningham: Certainly I have been a school board trustee for many years and this change has been necessary for at least the last decade. All previous governments did not act when requested to do so by the young people in this province.

The Minister of Education knows and I know that the ratios of apprentices to journeymen are not sufficient, nor have they been changed or looked at. We need more placements for young apprenticeship people in the province. We have talked about business, government and labour working together; I have not been particularly successful in getting that working. Really, this province and country are sick of rhetoric. What specifically have the minister and the Minister of Skills Development done in order to talk to both business and unions about changing those apprentice-journeyman ratios to date?

Hon Mrs Boyd: At the present time I can certainly tell the member that we have been quite concerned about it. The various actions that could be taken have been discussed on a number of occasions. It is certainly a major issue for the Premier's Council on the Economy and Quality of Life. At the present time, the discussion centres around how to improve that ratio, given the reluctance there has been on the part of many members of our community to do so, and how, from our point of view in education, we can more effectively improve the vision and value of the whole apprenticeship program.

We find that our major task in the elementary and secondary schools is encouraging students and their parents to recognize the value of skilled trades and to try to enter into those. We need the assistance of business and industry and labour in order to raise the profile of those very important professions. We are working hard to do that in our sector and are prepared to work well with Skills Development and the Premier's Council in terms of this issue.

ENERGY CONSERVATION

Mr Mills: My question today is for the Minister of Energy.

My constituents have told me through householder mailbacks that one of the most important issues of concern to them is the environment. I know this government's new energy directions show its commitment to the environment by emphasizing conservation and efficiency. How will the proposed changes to the Power Corporation Act further this policy direction and help Ontario Hydro encourage conservation and efficiency?

Hon Ms Carter: It is a pleasure to be able to inform the House how this government is putting Ontario in the lead in North America in energy conservation and efficiency. We are encouraging and enabling Ontario Hydro to look at all energy options and to consider the best interests of the environment and the consumer in making its decisions. A key amendment to the Power Corporation Act allows Ontario Hydro to encourage fuel substitution. For example, in home heating, where natural gas is available, there are environmental and often cost benefits in its use. This will allow Hydro to support the delivery of the type of energy which is most appropriate to the end use.

The Speaker: The time for oral questions has expired.

USE OF QUESTION PERIOD

Mr Elston: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: When the member for Algoma, the Minister of Natural Resources, stood and said he had an answer to a question previously asked, I would have joined the fray at that point, but my colleague the member for Timiskaming stood and raised a point of order.

I think it is quite clear, as we reviewed the Hansard from before, that the minister had never really indicated he was coming back to the House. What he was doing was providing a supplementary answer to a question he already answered yesterday. He answered both parts of the question, and I think, more just for guidance, it happened to be the member for Durham East, and luckily on the third try he finally got his question in. But the member was disadvantaged and there was no indication that the material the honourable minister was providing to us, although helpful, could not have been sent by dispatch to the member for Timiskaming, rather than coming into question period and actually taking up some more time at that point.

I think it is quite clear there is room in the standing orders, when he has given an undertaking to return with an answer, that he can very well do that. There was no such indication in a review of Hansard. I wish to bring that to your attention only so we can progress with the question period. At that stage, Mr Speaker, we also sort of lost several minutes on the clock.

I just bring it to your attention for information purposes and ask that if people have more material to provide after a question has been asked, maybe they should do it by way of a statement, because this likewise could have been done in a minister's statement today, to supplement information we were given yesterday, and it would have then been able to elicit a reply from my colleague. I just think we must be more precise in what the rules allow. I am quite happy when more information is made available, but there are other mechanisms.

Hon Mr Wildman: I take the comments of the opposition House leader seriously. There was certainly no intention on my part to take up the time of the House. I was attempting to provide information following on from the answer I gave yesterday, that I thought would be helpful to the member for Timiskaming and, frankly, the reason I chose to give an answer in this way was to afford the member the opportunity to have a supplementary question, rather than doing it as a statement. That was my purpose and, frankly, I was surprised that he did not take the opportunity for a supplementary. I certainly was not intending to waste the time of the House. The information was important and I was doing it as a service to the opposition member. I apologize if I was out of order.

Mr Ramsay: On this point, Mr Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Algoma for giving me that opportunity. I did not take advantage of that opportunity because I felt he was out of order and I wanted to bring that to your attention. But I appreciate that opportunity. Obviously, in this case there is a difference of opinion between the Rouge advisory committee and the officials of the Ministry of Natural Resources as to the exact location of this Pinegrove Forest and --

Interjections.

The Speaker: The member for Timiskaming, would you take your seat, please.

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Mr Eves: On the same point, Mr Speaker: Just suffice it to say that I concur with the remarks made by the official opposition House leader, in that standing order 32(a) in fact does not make provision where a question has already been answered the previous day and the minister has not undertaken that he or she will take the question as notice and give an answer on a later day. It is inappropriate for the minister to stand up on a succeeding day and then really, in effect, answer the same question twice. If the minister had taken the question as notice yesterday, then he would have been quite proper with what he did today, but that was not the case, as I understand it. I would just bring that matter to your attention.

The Speaker: That is fine. To the member for Bruce, the member for Parry Sound and the Minister of Natural Resources, the point is well taken. The Chair is placed in an awkward position when notified by a minister that he or she has the answer to a question asked previously. Of course, all members are aware that when that occurs and the supplementary is then given to the person who asked the question, in effect the government backbenchers have lost an opportunity to ask a question. That, from a reading of the rules, seems to me to be a balancing with respect to the opportunities for all members to ask questions.

Your points are well taken, and of course along the same line, where there are very detailed questions that would certainly require detailed responses, maybe some of those could be put in Orders and Notices.

MOTIONS

CONSIDERATION OF BILLS

Miss Martel moved that standing order 85, respecting notice of committee hearings, be suspended for the consideration of Bill Pr70 and Bill Pr82 by the standing committee on regulations and private bills on Wednesday 26 June 1991.

Motion agreed to.

PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS

Miss Martel moved that Mr Turnbull and Mr Cousens exchange places in the order of precedence for private members' public business.

Motion agreed to.

PETITIONS

PROVINCIAL COLLEGES

Mr Daigeler: I have a petition signed by some 34 residents from the Ottawa-Carleton area. The petition reads as follows:

"Whereas Ontario provincial colleges are not required by provincial law to pay sessional teachers the 4% holiday pay that all Ontario employers are required to pay their employees, we request that the Legislative Assembly move to include these provincial colleges in the above mentioned law."

RENT REVIEW

Mr Carr: I am pleased to table a petition to the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario signed by residents of the Diplomat apartment buildings in Burlington urging the Minister of Housing to review the increases of rent that have occurred at the Diplomat apartment buildings at 5166 and 5170 Lakeshore Road to establish whether these increases are within the legal requirements.

ELECTRICAL POWER PROJECT

Mr Ramsay: I have a petition here:

"Whereas the Chiblow Lake dam site north of Iron Bridge, located at the south end of Big Chiblow Lake, has a proposal submitted for a hydraulic generating station;

"Whereas this proposal involves a major lake-trout-producing lake for the area, a deer migration route and a local scenic attraction;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

"To halt all proceedings for this project and preserve this unique site from future danger."

I will append my signature to this petition.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Ms Poole: I have a petition signed by over 100 employees of AXA Home Insurance Co:

"We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

"Whereas a government takeover of the automobile insurance industry will involve job loss and dislocation for private sector employees; and

"Whereas a government monopoly leads to increased costs through inefficiencies and hidden tax subsidies and eliminates the public's right to individual freedom of choice;

"We believe that the insurance needs of the Ontario public are best served by private industry in an open, competitive, free enterprise market system, rather than a government-run monopoly.

"We want to keep our jobs. We do not want the NDP government to take over the automobile insurance in Ontario."

I have appended my signature to this petition.

TAXATION

Mr Harris: I have a petition that is signed by 5,186 residents of Hamilton and region, all collected by one individual who attempted to present it to the Premier or the Treasurer. They would not accept it, so I am presenting it in the House this way to them. It reads:

"We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"We will not tolerate any more tax increases. The proposed budget would push the accumulated provincial debt to over $50 billion. This translates into a tax burden of $5,000 for every woman, man and child in the province.

"Ontario is already the highest taxed jurisdiction in North America. The NDP government expects to squeeze an additional $1 billion in new taxes out of the Ontario residents next year.

"The taxpayers of Ontario want the provincial government to know that we want a balanced budget now. We do not want increased spending. We do not want higher deficits. We do not want to mortgage the future of our children."

I too have affixed my signature to this petition and I congratulate Mr Bobolo, a nurse from Hamilton, who is here in the gallery to see this petition finally being presented to the government.

FRENCH LANGUAGE SERVICES

Mr Cousens: To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from approximately 50 people in northern Ontario, Brinston, Dalkeith, Mountain, Sault Ste Marie, Englehart and other communities:

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"Whereas the French Language Services Act, 1986, Bill 8, continues to elevate tensions and misunderstandings over language issues throughout the province, not only at the provincial but also at the municipal levels; and

"Whereas the current government disputes its self-serving select committee and intends to encourage increased use of French in the courts, schools and in other provincial services to ensure that the French Language Services Act is working well to the best of their concentrated efforts; and

"Whereas the spiralling costs of government to the taxpayer are being forced even higher due to duplication of departments, translations, etc, to comply not only with the written but also the unwritten intent of the French Language Services Act; and

"Whereas the spiralling costs of education to the taxpayer are being forced even higher due to the demands of yet another board of education, the French-language school board;

"We, the undersigned, request the French Language Services Act be repealed and its artificial structures dismantled immediately and English be declared as the official language of Ontario in government, its institutions and services."

I have affixed my name to this petition.

OATH OF ALLEGIANCE

Mrs Sullivan: I have a petition signed by some 100 members of the Halton Regional Police Association, reading as follows:

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"The assembly shall demand that the government of Ontario rescind its decision to eliminate the oath of allegiance to the Queen of Canada for police officers who must uphold laws that are proclaimed in the name of Elizabeth the Second."

I have affixed my signature to the petition and concur with it.

ONTARIO SCHOLARSHIP AWARD

Mr Sterling: I have a petition from Sarah Lawrence and 27 other Ontario scholars from the Earl of March Secondary School in the city of Kanata.

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the government of Ontario has unilaterally discontinued the practice of awarding $100 scholarships to Ontario secondary school students who achieve an average of 80% or more on their OAC courses; and

"Whereas the 1991 Earl of March Ontario scholars were not informed of the discontinuation of the scholarship until virtually the end of the school year and therefore feel that they have been treated unfairly by the NDP government of Ontario; and

"Whereas it is the belief of the 1991 Earl of March Ontario scholars that the $100 scholarship, although small, provides an incentive for Ontario's secondary school students to strive to do their best, and the removal of this award has therefore removed the incentive at a time when illiteracy among residents of Ontario is alleged to be a government priority; and

"Whereas the 1991 Earl of March Ontario scholars firmly believe that inspiring Ontario secondary school students to do their personal best will benefit the province of Ontario; and

"Whereas the Carleton Board of Education has gone on record supporting the position of the 1991 Earl of March Ontario scholars;

"We, the undersigned 1991 Earl of March Ontario scholars, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately reinstate the policy of awarding $100 scholarships to Ontario secondary school students who achieve an average of 80% or more on their OAC courses and to consider increasing the amount of the award."

I am very proud of these Ontario scholars who took the leadership and gave me this petition to present to the Legislative Assembly this afternoon, and I have affixed my name to it.

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PARKING FACILITIES

Mr Harnick: I have a petition from the Pineway Area Ratepayers' Association. It is addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. It is regarding the Old Cummer proposed GO-TTC service integration improvements and it reads as follows:

"We, the undersigned, wish to express our objection to the recent proposal of the city of North York and GO Transit regarding the extension of parking facilities for the Old Cummer GO station to the area west of the station and east of Pineway Boulevard."

It is signed by 296 residents. It consists of residents on Mandel Crescent, Pineway Boulevard, Adamede Crescent and all the other areas in the immediate residential area where the proposed parking lot is due to be constructed. I have affixed my name.

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Mr Turnbull: I have a petition signed by several hundred people. It reads as follows:

"We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"To halt the recommendations listed in the first report of the advisory group on new social assistance legislation. These recommendations, called Back on Track, are on the desk of NDP Community and Social Services Minister Zanana Akande.

"Already we have the ultimate welfare madness here in Ontario, but key Back on Track recommendations are to eliminate any requirements forcing welfare recipients to look for work, and then, if they are on welfare for 24 months, put them on permanent family benefits, which deem all recipients unemployable, cash for life."

This petition will be delivered to the office of the Minister of Community and Social Services at Queen's Park as well as a copy to the office of the Premier. I have attached my signature.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr Wiseman: I have a petition along the same lines as the one earlier:

"To the honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

"Whereas the government takeover of the automobile insurance industry will involve job loss and dislocation for private sector employees; and

"Whereas a government monopoly leads to increased costs through inefficiencies and hidden tax subsidies and eliminates the public's right to individual freedom of choice;

"We believe that the insurance needs of the Ontario public are best served by a private industry in an open, competitive, free enterprise market system rather than a government-run monopoly."

Only one of the people on this petition is a resident of my riding. The rest are from all over Ontario.

OATH OF ALLEGIANCE

Mr Tilson: I have a petition from the members and friends of the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 371, in Bolton. It bears 40 signatures:

"Whereas we the members and friends of the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 371, disagree with the NDP government's decision to remove the oath to the Queen from the Metro Toronto or York county police departments; and

"Whereas this action only further erodes the heritage of Canada in a time when unity is an issue, not only for those born and raised in this country but also for those who chose Canada as their homeland;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"We wish to add our voices to the protest regarding the removal of the oath to the Queen for the Metro Toronto or York county police departments."

Mr Harris: I have a petition here that is signed by thousands and thousands of citizens from across this province. It says:

"We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"Whereas the government of Bob Rae has placed our heritage in danger;

"Whereas we live in a constitutional monarchy;

"Whereas the symbol of our national unity and identity has been removed;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislature of Ontario as follows:

"To immediately restore the name of Her Majesty the Queen to the oath of allegiance sworn by police officers."

As I said, this is signed by thousands from across this province. I too have affixed my signature to this petition and contrary to some, I believe this one is all in order.

BUDGET

Mr Sterling: I have a petition which was given to me by Dan MacMillan of Constance Bay in the riding of Carleton.

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the NDP budget of 29 April 1991 takes the province of Ontario 180 degrees in the wrong direction; and

"Whereas the only way to end this recession and save jobs in Ontario is to cut taxes and reduce government spending;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows;

"To stop this budget."

That is signed by over 100 people from the riding of Carleton. I have affixed my name to it.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

FIRE MARSHALS AMENDMENT ACT, 1991 / LOI DE 1991 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES COMMISSAIRES DES INCENDIES

Mr Farnan moved first reading of Bill 131, An Act to amend the Fire Marshals Act.

M. Farnan propose la première lecture du projet de loi 131, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les commissaires des incendies.

Motion agreed to.

La motion est adoptée.

Hon Mr Farnan: This bill will give the fire marshal and assistants authority to deal more effectively with threats to environmental and public safety and to life safety by taking appropriate commonsense action. Just to dispel any doubt that was raised in the House earlier in the day when a Liberal member of the House suggested this bill was merely a reintroduction of the previous Bill 228, that is not the case. The previous bill dealt only with environmental hazards, and this of course goes beyond that. It deals with environmental and public safety and life safety. It is a piece of legislation that the fire community is very supportive of and has waited for and is enthusiastic about.

COUNTY OF SIMCOE ACT, 1991 / LOI DE 1991 SUR LE COMTÉ DE SIMCOE

Mr J. Wilson moved first reading of Bill 132, An Act respecting the Amalgamation of Municipalities in the County of Simcoe.

M. J. Wilson propose la première lecture du projet de loi 132, Loi concernant la fusion des municipalités du comté de Simcoe.

Motion agreed to.

La motion est adoptée.

Mr J. Wilson: The purpose of the bill is to prevent the amalgamation of municipalities in the county of Simcoe where the municipalities do not consent to the amalgamation. During the election campaign the Premier indicated he would not, and his government would not, force the restructuring of municipalities in Simcoe county. Subsequent to the election campaign, the NDP member for Simcoe Centre also has indicated he would not force restructuring in Simcoe county.

I believe this bill I am introducing today fulfils the commitments made by both the Premier and the member for Simcoe Centre and I am looking forward to the government's support of this bill when we resume sitting in September. I am also pleased to report today that my colleague the member for Simcoe East supports this bill. That is important because municipalities are being forced to restructure in his part of Simcoe county also.

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PUBLIC SECTOR FOOD SERVICES ACT, 1991 / LOI DE 1991 SUR LES SERVICES D'ALIMENTATION DU SECTEUR PUBLIC

Ms Haeck moved first reading of Bill 133, An Act to require Public Sector Institutions to serve Food grown in Ontario.

Mme Haeck propose la première lecture du projet de loi 133, Loi exigeant des établissements du secteur public qu'ils servent des aliments cultivés en Ontario.

Motion agreed to.

La motion est adoptée.

Ms Haeck: The bill would require public service facilities in which prepared foods are provided to use only food grown or wholly manufactured in Ontario. The bill would also require that any wine provided in the public sector facilities be Ontario wine. An exception would be allowed in the case of fruits and vegetables which are either not grown in Ontario at all or in sufficient quantity, but only if no Ontario-grown fruits or vegetables that are available in sufficient quantity would be a satisfactory substitute in relation to cooking and nutritional needs.

A public sector body or organization receiving provincial funding could have its funding eliminated or reduced if it was found that a facility on its premises was providing non-Ontario food or wine.

UNSOLICITED FACSIMILE TRANSMISSIONS ACT, 1991 / LOI DE 1991 SUR LES TRANSMISSIONS PAR TÉLÉCOPIE NON SOLLICITÉES

Mr Cousens moved first reading of Bill 134, An Act respecting Unsolicited Facsimile Transmissions.

M. Cousens propose la première lecture du projet de loi 134, Loi portant sur les transmissions par télécopie non sollicitées.

Motion agreed to.

La motion est adoptée.

Mr Cousens: When this House considers this bill, it will have a chance to put an end to unsolicited facsimiles. Those people who end up wasting all the paper from those who send the unwanted fax that has no business purpose are just soliciting some kind of attention for themselves. When we consider this bill and pass it in private members' period we will have a chance to clean up the air waves from some of the garbage people are sending on our fax machines. This is a fax bill, so let us make sure when we consider it that it gets through second and third reading.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

WANT OF CONFIDENCE MOTION: GOVERNMENT POLICIES

Hon Miss Martel: I ask for the unanimous consent of the House to proceed with this resolution as we did last week with the non-confidence motion put forward by the Liberals, that we split the time equally among us and that we move to a vote at about 5:50 this evening.

Agreed to.

Mr Cousens, on behalf of Mr Harris, moved that the government has lost the confidence of this House because:

(a) Its fiscal and budgetary policies are undercutting Ontario's economic competitiveness, discouraging investment and encouraging the outmigration of Ontario firms, and because these policies will impose an intolerable burden of debt on future generations of Ontario taxpayers and are having a negative effect on cost-sensitive Ontario industries such as the tourism industry, manufacturing industry and the trucking industry and are exacerbating the problem of cross-border shopping.

(b) In spite of its rhetoric on the need for partnerships, the government has practised arbitrary and secretive decision-making, as exemplified by its unilateral decision to change the oath of allegiance to the Queen and has failed to engage in meaningful consultation with the Ontario business community as evidenced by the debacle surrounding the legislation to establish a wage protection fund, Bill 70.

(c) The Premier has diluted and failed to enforce the principles established in his own conflict-of-interest guidelines and consequently the government has failed to meet what it described as its first challenge, to earn the trust and respect of the people of Ontario.

Mr Harris: I do not plan to speak at great length today. Many members of my caucus would like to get their views on the record. So while some of them are in committee, trying to catch up on the government business -- never have I seen such incompetence, even ordering the schedule of business since this government came in -- I know they will be able to come forward into the House. I will not be able to get --

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. Let's make sure we start on the right foot, okay? Just keep it down, please.

Mr Harris: I know not everybody in my caucus who wishes to speak will be able to get on, but I am going to try to provide an opportunity for as many of them as I can.

This motion is pretty self-explanatory and straightforward. I believe 90% of the public of Ontario agrees with it. Any intelligent observer of politics and of the Legislature since 6 September to this date of 25 June would agree it has been an unmitigated disaster, a disgrace, a terrible period in the history of this province.

This motion refers to three separate parts. I wish to deal with each of the three briefly in ascending order of importance. Part (c) talks about the guidelines. This is the least important, quite frankly. The long-term damage being done to this province; the opportunity being destroyed for our young people; the taking away of hope of opportunity for the have-nots in our province; the absolute disgrace that we are saying to those young people, to those who have not been able to share in the blessings of this province, "We are going to choke and thwart and take away that opportunity for you even more."

This direction the government is going in is allegedly on behalf of those same have-nots it is absolutely destroying. This philosophy of taking from the rich and giving to the poor does not hurt the rich, it does not hurt the haves. They have many options. That is the most important part I want to talk about, this blind, doctrinaire philosophy of a party that was a good lobbyist for causes and now cannot get out of its mind when it is the government that it must stop lobbying and arbitrate in bringing people together from all sides in finding commonsense solutions to the problems.

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The guidelines, I say, are the least important of the motion, but it is an important signal that here is a government that says one thing, that has all the rhetoric. For 10 years in opposition, the member for York South, the holier than thou, smartest, shrewdest person, knew every guideline, knew every nuance of what any cabinet minister ever did in all the time he was in Ottawa and was here in Queen's Park, knew what the conflict guidelines should be, knew when any minister walking down the street was even possibly thinking of contravening either a guideline in the sense of personal gain, or more importantly, perhaps, because we have seen it abused so many times by this government -- not personal gain guidelines being broken so much as the guidelines that go to the heart, the core and integrity of our justice system, of the police, of our courts.

When we are dealing with these we are not dealing with my guidelines, we are not dealing with Liberal guidelines, we are dealing with the Premier's guidelines, the man who said: "I will have the toughest guidelines and we will adhere to them like nobody before us. We care more than the Liberals. We care more than the Conservatives. We care more than anybody in the world about these guidelines. We treat them more seriously than anyone has ever treated them." Eight ministers systematically in a period of nine months have broken and violated those guidelines. I suspect they did not understand them, but why did they not understand them? Obviously the Premier did not treat them seriously because he did not explain.

I do not believe the Minister of Northern Development sat down and said: "I'm going to write a letter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. I know it's against the guidelines, I know the Premier is supposed to sack me if he finds out, but I'm going to write it anyway." I do not believe that. I believe she did not know she was breaking the guidelines and I said so when she came forward with her apology, which I accepted.

The Premier is the one who said, "We treat them seriously," and he refused obviously to even bother explaining the guidelines so that relatively intelligent ministers -- and then there is the other category of ministers who are obviously going to take a lot more explaining -- understand. It is typical of the NDP led by Bob Rae who, holier than thou, knew all the answers. Now we see that not only are they fallible, which of course as human beings they are, but they are more fallible, if you like, than any other government we have seen in the history of North America.

Furthermore, they do not have the courage and the gumption to stand up and admit they were wrong. I see the Minister of Community and Social Services at taxpayers' expense send a newsletter out saying: "We're different. We're a party. We're a government that is human and we'll make mistakes, and when we make them we will admit them. This is a desirable quality, it is what the public of this province are asking for." They have all the rhetoric down pat, they can read the polls with the best of them, but in practice the Minister of Community and Social Services has never once said: "I'm sorry, I apologize. We made a mistake." Not once. I asked her in the House: "You say this in your newsletter. Could you tell us one mistake you've made in nine months?" She could not think of one. We have abuse after abuse, waste after waste in her own ministry; I brought three examples forward today. Did the government ever say, "I'm sorry, I made a mistake"? It has not. It does not deserve the support of this House or the right to govern. It does not deserve it by its actions over the past nine months.

The second aspect of this motion, part (b), again I say, now more important than part (c) and not as important as part (a), talks about partnerships. I have heard the rhetoric. I hear the word "partnership" from the minister and the Premier two or three or four times in this House. We see it in speeches. We see it as they travel around the province: partnership, partnership.

Yes, there is partnership with Bob White. Yes, there is partnership with the big unions. But when it comes to taxpayers and ordinary people, ordinary Ontarians, working men and women who do not belong to a large union, small business people and large business people, those who create the jobs, the entrepreneurs, the doers, the risk-takers, the investors, what kind of partnership do they have with them? What it is called is, "We spend and you pay, partner." That is the only partnership we have seen from this government when it comes to the taxpayers, the entrepreneurs, the business community, the doers and the job creators in this province.

The number of unilateral decisions that have been made by this government is appalling, again at the same time as it has championed the cause of consultation, of partnership. When we look at legislation, we look at Bill 70 and the obvious lack of consultation the fact that 99% of it had to be gutted. I give the Premier credit for overruling and shaming the Minister of Labour from Hamilton in just saying: "We have gone too far here. This isn't workable. There won't be any directors left to volunteer or profit-making companies. There won't be any companies left." Somebody woke up a little bit on that one. Had there been consultation before that would not have happened.

We have seen it in the gas guzzler tax. There, fortunately -- I do not for one minute not believe anything to the contrary -- had Bob White not come forward and stood side by side with me in that fight against the budget, we would not have been able to get that tax changed. It is an example that when the Canadian Auto Workers and Bob White and those workers of the province join hands with Mike Harris and the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, we will get things done in this province. When we work together, we can make sure there are jobs, and good paying jobs, in this province for working men and women all across Ontario.

We need partnerships. They have read the polls. They have the rhetoric down pat. But the examples they have been setting have been disgraceful. The partnerships need to be built. If we are going to come forward in this province and be able to restore the opportunities that were here for so many years for so many people -- the environment, the clean water, a facility for taking care of garbage in an environmentally sensitive way -- if we are going to be able to look after those people, we will need help, a hand up; not money to stay at home and do nothing, but a hand up, education, retraining, apprenticeship programs, perhaps relocation. If we are going to truly be able to help people the way we once helped them in this province, they are going to have to bring new partnerships that have never been before.

They are going 180 degrees in the opposite direction. They are insulating themselves itself. They are not using any common sense in dealing with these problems.

I give the the Quebec example. The Liberal government in Quebec -- not at all like its Liberal colleagues here -- over the last five or six years has cut taxes, got more competitive and said, "We've got to be able to compete." Ontario, thanks to 42 years of proper, sensitive, right-balanced government, is a more appealing jurisdiction to locate business and create jobs in than Quebec, so they moved in the opposite direction while the Liberals in Ontario started us down this path of destroying this province of opportunity.

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I want to mention the Liberal government of Quebec over this period of time. I want to mention the relationship they have built up with unions and with business. They recognized they were in a recession in Quebec, that they could not meet the payroll, that they could not balance the books and that they had problems.

They went to the unions and they said, "We think there should be a wage freeze for all those in the public sector, zero increase." They said: "Those of us in the public sector -- the Premier, the cabinet, the members of the Legislature, teachers, nurses, civil servants -- have these guaranteed, recession-proof jobs. We have these pretty good pension plans. It's not fair for us to be taking an increase in wages while the brothers and the sisters in the private sector are laid off and hungry." The government of Quebec said there would be a wage freeze and the unions in Quebec said: "We agree. We'll stand with you, government. We will help fight this recession, not on the backs of the poor, of the unemployed, but we will share."

That is partnership. That is working together, bringing unions and government and business together. What did we do in Ontario? We wanted partnership, and we have given up obviously with the business community, with the large and small taxpayers, with municipalities, with school boards. They wanted to have that one partnership with that big body of people that pays all the NDP bills, the big unions with their checkoff that give them all the money.

How did they develop its partnership with the big unions? The Chairman of Management Board, responsible for negotiations with this body she used to be president of, put on a new hat, opened the door to the vault, threw it wide open and said: "Walk in. Take whatever you want, and then some, 6%, 8% or 10% increases and then merit pay. What is merit pay? Merit pay is that when you show up you get 4% or 5%. If your attendance is good all year long, you get 6% or 7%. If you actually do the job, you are paid to do, you get 7% or 8% on top of inflation, on top of the 6%.

Then there are those senior civil servants making $60,000 to $110,000. The minister said there would be up to 20% increases for them. Why? She said, "We've got to keep them in the public sector." They want to rush out, commit suicide in the private sector and be laid off, I guess. So we have to give them a 20% raise -- $100,000 a year and 20% to keep them in the public sector. They were not looking for any jobs in the private sector. There are none. Those jobs are going to New York. They are going out west. They are going to Quebec.

In Quebec the public service said: "We'll help. It's our duty to be responsible." That is the kind of partnership they had. In Ontario it is, "Open the vault and take what you want," to buy peace from those people who pay the NDP bills. It is a disgrace. It is time it was exposed and it is time the people of Ontario understood that when it comes to its own vested interest, the NDP will sell its soul and the people of this province down the drain to keep the money flowing into the coffers to the party.

However, I want to talk about section (a) of this motion because this is the section -- the budget, the fiscal and budgetary policy -- that my six-year-old son will pay a horrendous price for, that all our children, all the students, those not working yet, will pay a horrendous price for: the budgetary policy, the deficit, the massive accumulation carrying on from the Liberal spending. They started us down this slippery slope and now the NDP is taking us even farther.

I think back 20 or 25 years ago when the federal government had a fiscal policy where at least it had the ability to pay the interest on the debt. If their total spending they were paying 10, 11 or 12 cents on the debt. Then a succession of Liberal governments started the spending increases, just like the Liberals here. The times were good during the first five years. The money was rolling in and they doubled spending over a period of about four or five years. That is what the Liberals did to this province. But times were good so it was okay.

Then a recession came, a little downturn, as they always do. They said, "We've got to carry on this spending and more." Then the debt started to go up and it is now out of control, as we know, at the federal level. It is a disaster. It is something we all must be trying to come to grips with. What is this province doing? Is it trying to help the federal taxpayer? No, it continues to spend 10% or 12% increases and says to the feds: "We want more and more money, even though there is your $30-billion deficit this year. We want more and more of your money. We want to spend more here in the richest province, Ontario."

We are embarrassing this country. Every other province is struggling to keep up. All other nine provinces are struggling to keep up. In Ontario it is spend, spend, spend more money on new programs. It does not matter if they cannot afford them in Newfoundland. It does not matter if they cannot afford them on the prairies. It does not matter if they cannot afford them in the Maritimes. We are greedy; we want them here in Ontario. If there is ever a divisive factor in the whole constitutional question, it is the massive lack of understanding and spending by the former Liberal government and this NDP government. They are destroying this country and this province.

When you talk about western alienation and about the concerns in Newfoundland, those concerns are saying: "The province of Ontario is out of step with the whole world. They still want more. They want to grab all the wealth for programs. We cannot even afford to half keep up to the programs that they have, and they want to keep going with more and more." It is upsetting this country. It is very harmful in the whole debate over the Constitution.

The NDP and the Premier have talked about those people in the business community who have come forward and gone public, and said that these policies are hurting business and are hurting this province. Premier Rae said, "They're stabbing me in the back." They are not stabbing him in the back. They are up front, face to face, right in front of him. They are drawing attention to it and I applaud them.

Do members know where the back-stabbing is coming from? The back-stabbing is coming from this government. It is stabbing every person in this province who needs an opportunity to get ahead.

Do members know who else is hurting? Those people in this province who are not speaking up, those who are just saying: "The heck with it. I'm taking my money. I'm going to Alberta. I'm going to Buffalo. I'm going to Florida. I'm going to Europe. I'm going to Quebec." You cannot blame those who are leaving, those who are taking their jobs with them. They cannot make a buck in this province. Why should they invest when the government says, "Why should landlords invest in new housing?" The Minister of Housing says, "I'm allergic to landlords."

They are told ahead of time, "If you invest your hard-earned, after-tax dollars in this province -- mortgage your house, work seven days a week to try to get ahead -- make those investments, and if you succeed we are going to take it away from you." Do they blame people for not doing that? Why would you do that in a jurisdiction where the government says: "Even if you survive the highest taxes in North America, the most regulation in North America and all the red tape, and do make a buck, we've got a Fair Tax Commission. We are looking at a wealth tax. We are looking at business tax. We are looking at minimum corporation tax. We're going to take it all away from you anyway."

They wonder why somebody will not mortgage his home and invest -- entrepreneurs -- in this province. Common sense tells you that we are driving the entrepreneurs, the job creators, the wealth creators, out of this province.

I was re-reading some history the other day. Members will recall when 10 or so years ago New York City went bankrupt. Ninety days before they went bankrupt, they did two things. They brought in a wealth tax and they substantially increased the eligibility and the amount of money payable for welfare. In 90 days, all those who needed welfare moved into New York City. That was the place to be. It paid the most. All the money went to New Jersey, because it did not have a wealth tax there, and 90 days later that city was bankrupt. That is how long it takes. They wonder why people are concerned. When there is misguided policy, when there are mismanagers, when there is the waste -- we cannot afford four years, before we allow this province to go bankrupt. We cannot afford it.

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This is a strong province, this is a wealthy province. We are blessed in geography, we are blessed in climate. We are situated here in this part of North America close to the proximity of this northeastern, North American market. We have minerals, we have trees, we have fresh water, we had an infrastructure that was built up over 42 years. We have good people in this province, good workers.

This province, because of that, much of it no credit to any politician, much of it just the luck of birth, the luck of geography, can take a lot of abuse. We have seen that over the last decade, the taxes, the regulation, the red tape, but we have still survived it all. But that spring is stretched right now to the limit. When they try to take it a notch farther, it is going to snap. We are going to destroy this province unless we can bring some common sense back into the fiscal policies of this government.

That is why I and my party led the fight against this budget. That is why we went on strike. I admit that. I did not like it. I tried reason, I tried logic, I tried debate, but they were not listening, they were not reasonable. So I did something I thought even these guys would understand. I had to go down to their level. I did not like it when I was there, but they understood strike. Now we have full hearings on this budget; we have rollbacks of Bill 70 that is in the budget; we have Bob White who came and joined with us and we got the gas guzzler tax changed.

If this motion for some reason does not carry today and we get a new election, we get this government recalled, we get the people of Ontario having a say in this fiscal direction, if this motion does not carry today, as I expect it will, we will form new partnerships. We will form partnerships with the trucking unions; we will form partnerships with the men and women who are losing their jobs; we will form partnerships with taxpayers; we will form partnerships with municipalities, with business, large and small; we will bring government, business and labour together in a constructive way, as other jurisdictions have.

I always find it strange when I hear people saying we have to worry about Mexico. Do members know the jurisdictions that are taking our jobs, the good-paying, high-tech jobs? Not Mexico, but Germany, with higher wages than we have, and Japan, with much higher wages than we have. Wages are not the problem. It is government that is the problem. It is the taxation, it is the lack of partnerships, it is the inability to train and retrain and have apprenticeship programs and get the high-tech skills going.

It is that inability to do as Germany has done, as Quebec is now doing. Quebec welcomes the challenges. The people of Quebec said: "Free trade? We love it. Bring Mexico in. Good, because we can compete. We're now operating the way the Europeans are, the way the Japanese are. We have brought the people together. We will have the jobs in Quebec." And they will, if we do not get our act together here in Ontario.

I went a tad longer than I wanted to because I know a number wish to speak. But the people of Ontario deserve a second chance, the people of Ontario deserve an opportunity. The homeless, those who are looking for shelter, those who are going to the food banks, those who are out of work, the poor, the unemployed, the undereducated deserve a chance. The only chance they have in the short term is to throw the rascals opposite out of office. They can do that if members will carry this vote today, this non-confidence motion. They will have an opportunity and we will give hope back to the people of this province.

Mr Sutherland: It is a pleasure for me to join in the debate right now, particularly after the leader of the third party has mentioned so many inconsistencies in his presentation. It left me thinking that he wants to become the Herbert Hoover of the 1990s.

As members will recall, we had a petition presented by the leader of the third party, which had 5,000 signatures, calling for a balanced budget. I found it rather interesting that the leader of the third party went on talking about how no one else would present this.

The petition came from a gentleman in Hamilton who is a male nurse. I think it is great that a progressive-thinking person in a non-traditional role for males decided to go out and get so many people on his view. The leader of the third party said the petitioner was a male nurse who was calling for a balanced budget, and the leader of the third party affixed his name to it.

As I was sitting here thinking, it struck me as an irony that this young-looking person, who has probably just got into the nursing profession, was talking about a balanced budget when in fact to get a balanced budget, that very person could lose his job. That is the type of significant cut we would be looking at to have a balanced budget. It struck me as being rather ironic that we had that type of petition come forward.

I wish the leader of the third party had been here last week. I see that the member for Renfrew North has left the House, but he gave a very good and far more eloquent presentation than I ever could about deficits we have had in the past under Tory governments, deficits that we had during the Depression, and even more important, deficits that we have had during war. He commented about those deficits being far larger than the one being presented here.

What I want to focus in on is the exact motion. The leader of the third party said this is a very focused motion. I would like to say that it is not very focused and I think his comments clearly indicated how unfocused he and his party really are. For example, let's look at section (b). It is supposed to be an issue about partnership with business, but they bring in the oath to the Queen, trying to point out that that is not some type of partnership.

I want to come back to the question of the budget deficit, because I think it is important that we all have an understanding and that the viewers at home have an understanding of how we got to that deficit. We know we inherited a $3-billion deficit. We know the increase in that deficit up to $9.7 billion comes from several factors. One of them is our increased commitment to our partners, our transfer agencies, in terms of welfare costs, because of the number of people who are unemployed due to federal high interest rate policies and free trade, an extra $1.4 billion. We also know that at the same time those demands are increasing, the federal government is capping transfer payments, and that is affecting our income. We also know tax revenues are down, and at that point we get to $8.2 billion.

It was interesting listening to the leader of the third party at one moment talk about how wonderful it is that unions are on board with him, claiming the CAW and Bob White, and then the next time saying that he had to go on strike and how awful it is to go on strike and how inconsistent his remarks really were here.

I want to talk about the issue of partnership. As the leader of the third party was wrapping up his speech, he talked about the homeless, he talked about the unemployed, he talked about the uneducated, yet he signed his name to a petition for a balanced budget. How does the leader of the third party really think we are going to provide housing, educate people and provide jobs without spending some money? It just cannot happen. In this budget there was a commitment to an extra 10,000 non-profit housing units, to provide some homes for those people that he mentioned were unemployed.

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He also talked about how during 42 years of Conservative government, the infrastructure had been built up and it was a superb infrastructure. As we know, the infrastructure has to be maintained on a regular basis and it takes more than a commitment once every 42 years to maintain that infrastructure, and that is what this government is committed to do. We demonstrated in many ways our commitment to infrastructure and to partnerships. I want to talk specifically about the partnerships with the transfer agencies. Members will recall the many announcements that came out on the anti-recession funding. Where did most of the anti-recession funding money go to? It went to school boards to help them maintain and repair their schools; it went to municipalities so they could improve their roads; it went to hospitals to help them as well.

Another irony of the third party is that earlier today the member for London North got up and made a statement about University Hospital closing beds. The Tories' Health critic, the member for Parry Sound, got up and asked the minister a question about one floor being closed. What do they think would have happened if we had a balanced budget?

They are full of inconsistencies. As the Premier said time and time again, on one hand the leader of the third party is Dr Spend and on the other hand he is Dr Save. He simply cannot make up his mind. Nowhere in the leader of the third party's presentation this afternoon did we find out where he was going to make out these significant, and I repeat significant cuts, not the saving on 17 letters worth 43 cents. Nowhere did he indicate where those significant cuts were going to be made. Nowhere did he tell the gentleman from Hamilton who was here to present this petition: "Very well. You could lose your job because beds could be closed in Hamilton. Beds could be closed all across the province." The type of cuts they would have to make to get a balanced budget -- and that is what they are saying -- would be incredible, insignificant. I really think that the third party needs to go back and re-evaluate its strategy here and figure out and be truly honest with the people of this province as to where they are going to make the significant cuts if they are going to balance the budget of this province.

I want to talk about a few other things. The member also mentioned a little bit about retraining and skills development. I find it ironic that a member of the third party talked about how they were in power for 42 years and helped support an infrastructure and developed a very effective infrastructure. Other than the member for London North, who is the critic for Skills Development, who gets up and quite effectively talks about issues related to training and skills development, I never hear the leader of the third party talk about that issue. All I hear from him is talk about tax cuts. We would not be in this situation, we would not have as much restructuring going on if his party, when it was in power for 42 years, had developed an effective skills development policy.

My colleague the member for Dovercourt is also going to speak this afternoon. As we were listening to the leader of the third party, we were talking about the fact that when my colleague was with the Toronto Board of Education, it was approaching the then Minister of Education to talk about issue of apprenticeship training in schools at that time. The reality of the situation is that we have not had an effective skills development policy in this province and it is very sad and unfortunate.

The leader of the third party talked about the hope in the future for young people. As the youngest sitting member here, I consider myself in that category, and I would like to know, when there is not an effective skills development policy for those people who have dropped out of school, how those people are going to have hope. How are they going to have hope if they do not even have the basic necessities in life, a roof over their heads, adequate food? While people have got to go to food banks and continue to go to food banks, they are talking about a balanced budget.

As I said earlier, we know what happened to Herbert Hoover. He was in and he got ousted very quickly. We know what is going to happen to the new Herbert Hoover of the 1990s. He is never going to be elected Premier of this province, and it is a good thing for the people who are really concerned about helping and caring and about supporting people in their greatest time of need. That is what this budget is. We are fighting the recession and not the deficit.

Quite clearly, and it became so evident today, the leader of third party has no sense of focus, no sense of direction, and does not want to be clear with the people of Ontario about the policy direction of the third party. He does not want to let the people know where they are going to make the significant cuts and the impact that is going to have in local communities.

I was proud of this budget. I am proud of this government. It is working for the people of Ontario in the time of their greatest need and showing what a true, caring government can do.

Mr Mahoney: I find it very interesting that the former speaker talks about a requirement for skills development programs. I can understand that. I think most of the members of the NDP should start enrolling in a skills development program of one type or another, because clearly the day is not far off -- I am sorry, but it is a fact -- when the member for Welland-Thorold will indeed be out in the employment lineup trying to find work, saying: "Well, I had a really good run of four years at the expense of the taxpayer. I really enjoyed life at the trough."

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

Mr Mahoney: I think the government members will find it necessary to plow money into that just to save their own hides.

But I want just for a moment to address this motion. I find a certain sense of irony coming from the tax fighter, the member for Nipissing, saddling up beside Bob White and all the brothers and sisters of the labour movement. I find it rather a tremendous sense of irony that he would stand there and say he is fighting with Bob White. He did not say he was fighting with Leo Gerard. I guess he cannot quite suck it up and get around to perhaps being that radical, but rather he sees himself in bed with the labour movement.

Interjection.

Mr Mahoney: I am sure the member just choked on his luncheon caviar that he is having out in the east lobby, listening to this debate.

Of course, I did a little bit of research just to try to determine where the Conservatives were when they were building and creating this wonderful province that they proudly take credit for in the days of purchasing Minaki Lodge, in the days of purchasing Suncor. Can you imagine? They run on the right spectrum of the political centre and they govern on the left, almost as far left as the honourable men and women on the other side of the House.

It boggles the mind to hear the nonsense and the rhetoric that comes out of the so-called, self-proclaimed tax fighter with his little group of seals sitting behind and supporting him when we look at the facts and go back to the Tory deficits.

Mrs Cunningham: Do you want to look at yours?

Mr Mahoney: As a matter of fact, I would be delighted to look at ours, and I will get there, if the member is patient.

But if we go back to 1982 they had a $1.7-billion deficit, in 1990 dollars $2.87 billion; in 1983 $3.1 billion, in our dollars today $4.6 billion; in 1984 $3.1 billion, in today's dollars $4.3 billion, and in 1985, when the people of this province came to their senses and finally threw the bums out of office, they left us with --

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The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. Take your seat, please. I would like to remind members that you should be in your seats. That applies to the member for Huron and the member for Chatham-Kent. I would expect that you would be in your seats. I would ask you to go to your seats, please. I would ask also that you stop the heckling. The member for Mississauga West.

Mr Mahoney: Mr Speaker, the heckling does not bother me. I would not let it bother you.

The Deputy Speaker: Through the Speaker, please.

Mr Mahoney: I am through the Speaker.

In any event, the point is very simple, and I would like to get on with at least agreeing with the spirit of the resolution, even though I find the ironies somewhat difficult to swallow, coming from people who proclaim to be the purveyors of fiscal responsibility. I have never heard such utter nonsense in my life.

What I find interesting about the motion, if I could speak to it, is that it says the government has lost the confidence of this House for a number of reasons. That is to presume that the government ever enjoyed the confidence of this House, which I find somewhat difficult. That is to presume that the government even enjoyed the confidence of the majority of the people of the province of Ontario. With due respect to those who were duly elected in the democratic process, they would have to be stretching their imagination incomprehensibly to actually assume they had a mandate or they enjoyed the confidence of the majority of the people. They did not. The figures show they won a number of ridings by the slimmest of margins, democratically so, and that is fine under our system. But the reality is, 37% of the popular vote does not give the government a mandate to destroy this province.

Hon Mr Pouliot: We were good enough in 1985.

Mr Mahoney: It is destroying this province, and it has no right to do it. The government should take a look at its deficit. The member for Huron can be proud if he wants to be proud, but one day he will be embarrassed when he looks at the damage that has been done to this province, because how do we pay off the deficit that is there this year?

Hon Mr Pouliot: We inherited the deficit.

Mr Mahoney: The government inherited nothing of the sort, and the minister knows it. The reality is that the deficit is like an overdraft, and the way this government plans to pay off the deficit at the end of the year is simply to put it on the debt, which is like the mortgage. At the end of every year, they keep piling it on and piling it on, so in four years' time, when the public gets a chance to say, "Holy smokes, we made a heck of a mistake," we are going to have a debt that will have increased from $39 billion, when the government took office, to $76 billion, perhaps $80 billion, $85 billion. If indeed the government's estimates of revenue are not even close -- and I suggest they are not, if one looks at them -- we could be looking at a deficit in the neighbourhood of $90 billion. We could be looking at a deficit that would be proportionately just as severe as the one that Ottawa saddled the people with.

The government understands the difficulty this creates. It understands why every day, when a baby is born in Canada, the baby cries. The reason is he is cold, he is wet, he is hungry and he is $21,000 in debt, without counting any of the debt the Ontario government is piling on top of him. It is absolutely irresponsible, and it boggles my mind, even though I understand the parliamentary tradition and the responsibility of backbenchers to support their government, to hear intelligent young people stand up in this Legislature and say they are proud of that. Are they proud of the legacy?

The member for Oxford will get married. Some woman will actually take him on one day, and he will get married and have children.

An hon member: Oh, come on. Don't be outrageous.

Mr Mahoney: I have confidence. He will leave those children a legacy that they will be unable to climb out of, that they will be unable to pay off. He will be able to tell his children and their children, "I was there during Bob Rae and Floyd Laughren's days, the days of red tape, red ink and Pink Floyd. I was there in those days, and I'm proud of that budget we brought in that destroyed the competitive position of this province."

Let me leave the fiscal side of it. It is so obvious, you do not have to be a rocket scientist -- which is a good thing in here, myself included, believe me -- to understand what a serious mess the government is creating, but let me, if I might, just leave the fiscal side of it and talk for a moment about the lack of trust the government has created.

The Premier said in the throne speech on 20 November 1990 that this NDP government would earn the trust and respect of the people of Ontario. It is unbelievable when we see scandal after scandal, incompetence after incompetence.

The thing I found most interesting was the two cabinet ministers, the Minister without Portfolio responsible for women's issues and the House leader, standing up and offering their resignations. In my opinion, they set the standard. For the first time in this government, we finally found a standard that made some sense. They stood up and they said: "We wrote a couple of letters to a quasi-judicial body. We did it because we were seriously concerned about the issue. We did it honestly and openly. It was wrong. We apologize and we offer you our resignation."

Why could the Solicitor General not have done the same thing? The Solicitor General did not write a letter to a quasi-judicial body; his staff wrote three letters to judges. My goodness, could he not have at least offered his resignation? The Premier could have accepted it and then a couple of hours later he could have flip-flopped and rejected it and left him in. At least there would be a sense that some justice had been accomplished in that. But no, he sticks his head in the sand: "I didn't write the letter. I didn't authorize the letter. I didn't see the letter. I didn't lick the stamp. I don't know what the hell's going on in my office."

He did not have the class the two lady ministers showed in setting the standard that I think any government should be proud of. I think they did the right thing, but clearly the Premier has become all confused. He does not know where his standards begin or where they end. He does not know whether he should accept one and not the other. He accepts one, then he flip-flops and turns around. He lets the Solicitor General totally off the hook for trying to fix parking tickets, for God's sake, one of the most despicable things.

When we get a member of the cabinet or this Legislature trying to interfere with the judiciary, it totally tarnishes the reputation of everyone involved in this business. I for one believe that most of us, including the members opposite, are honest, hardworking, dedicated men and women who want to serve our communities, who do not want to fix parking tickets. If my staff had done what the Solicitor General's staff had done, they would be looking for work somewhere. Maybe they could get it in his office. It is intolerable, it is inexcusable. The government has lost whatever limited trust it had. There was a certain amount of goodwill. The people were willing to say: "Well, okay, it was an accident. We didn't really mean to give them a majority. It's an aberration in political history, but they're there. Let's give them a chance." People are calling our offices and they are saying, "My God, what did we do?" It is not a joke; they are really worried.

The government is economically destroying the province. We have four years to put up with it. It has my promise it is going to be gone in four years. I do not know what kind of a mess it is going to leave, but we are going to do our best to clean it up.

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Mr J. Wilson: I stand today as the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party critic for the Ministry of Tourism and Recreation to speak for a few short moments on the motion of non-confidence in this government put forward by my leader, the member for Nipissing.

If the NDP members would just be quiet for a few moments, I am going to explain to them what tourist operators in Ontario are telling me and telling them about the absolute disaster they and the Liberal government have created in this province since they first made that accord in 1985, when we really had our first real socialist government in this province. I am going to read to them a quote from Tourism Ontario on behalf of the thousands and thousands of tourist operators in this province, who are from all political stripes, who are sending a very clear message to their government about the deteriorating economy and the effects their policies and, before them, the policies of the Liberals are having on this province.

I am going to quote from that press release that was issued last week, because this profoundly summarizes the tremendous path of frustration and anguish that exists among tourist operators in all parts of this province. This is from the third largest industry in Ontario and the largest private sector employer, so this government had better listen up. It says:

"In our industry alone, hundreds of tourism and hospitality businesses, many of them small and family-owned, have been brought to their knees by tremendous increases in municipal business and payroll taxes, statutory wages and benefits and compliance with a myriad of new and costly social, labour and environmental legislation and regulation since 1985.

"Our citizens have had it with ever-escalating taxes and a steady erosion of the disposable incomes. They are losing patience with politicians who will not face the reality that they are destroying consumer confidence and business entrepreneurship in this province through irresponsible imposition of taxes and costly political promises and through non-justifiable government spending, waste and service duplication.

"Political grandstanding, posturing and buck-passing has to stop in this province if we are to sustain our quality of life, and it must start with a serious and concerted effort on the part of all levels of the public sector to rationalize non-productive spending programs and bureaucracies."

Continuing, the release from Tourism Ontario says:

"The government of Ontario has been on an unprecedented and unabated taxation, spending, hiring and social and labour policy reform binge since the coalition Liberal-NDP government assumed office in 1985. Since 1985 the Ontario government has increased all forms of provincial taxes by 123.6%, program spending by 10% per year, and the NDP government has now increased that to an unprecedented 13.5% this year, hired 7,800 new bureaucrats and increased the long-term provincial deficit from $30 billion in 1985 to a stunning $44.5 billion in 1991."

They also point out, "The provincial government will collect $3.5 billion, or 80% more, in retail sales taxes, and $9.7 billion, or 155.5% more, in personal income taxes this fiscal year than it did in 1984-85."

Just to further emphasize the discouragement out there among tourist operators, I received in June a copy of the results of a survey of the members of the Ontario Hotel and Motel Association. The results are a further indication of the desperation felt by tourist operators in this province; 76% of those polled said they had suffered a decline in business in the last six months compared to the same time last year. A staggering 65% of the tourist establishments said they will have to lay off employees. The reasons for the layoffs and losses of business: 41% said increased labour cost, 31% said the employers' health tax levy -- brought to us by the Liberal government -- 43% said property and school board taxes and 25% said cross-border shopping.

Ultimately all of these factors are within the domain of the government of Ontario, the new NDP government, but the response from this government has been akin to someone saying, "It's not that bad, and if we think positively it will all go away and correct itself." Well, the economics of wishful thinking are simply a recipe for disaster, especially when served upon a platter of increased taxes and increased government spending and bureaucracy. We have a government that has lost the confidence of the people and that is incapable of leading Ontario in a competitive way into the 1990s and throughout the 1990s.

Not only do I support this motion of non-confidence put forward by my leader, the member for Nipissing, but I do so knowing that standing beside me are the vast majority of tourist operators and people of this province. It is about time this government smartened up. It could do us all a favour by simply calling an election. We challenge them to do that.

Mr B. Ward: It is a pleasure to join the debate on this particular issue today. I just point out that the member for Mississauga West made some good comments. My wife and I just happened to have a little girl on 1 March. As I was in the hospital, with our excellent medicare, I was thinking to myself, "Thank God we have a government that cares enough to keep our health standards where they should be."

We all know who created the economic problems we are facing. It happened before we were elected on 6 September. At the next federal election, I hope the member for Nipissing and the Conservative Party march with us hand in hand as we defeat the federal Conservative Party. I hope we can expect that. I am looking forward to that partnership.

Now I would like to turn to this motion. It is in three parts. The first part deals with fiscal and budgetary policies of our government. Let's look at the budget in a calm manner rather than with the rhetoric and the hysterics that have been going on in the opposition when we talk about our budget.

Sure, we made the decision as a government to battle the recession and cushion the economic blow working people face in this province due to the economic and fiscal policies of the federal Conservative government that have created the recession and the hardship to begin with. Once we made that decision, we realized we were going to face a shortfall in revenues because of the recession and an increase in expenditures because we made the decision to battle the recession. As a result, we have a $9.7-billion defict. We do not like that any more than anyone else. However, we felt it was necessary at this time because we made the decision to battle the recession.

Let's look at the budget. Sure there are tremendous education, health and social costs, but there is also $4.3 billion included in capital to rebuild our infrastructure. I would like the opposition to explain to me how rebuilding our roads and public transportation systems reduces our competitiveness in the province, and how building new schools or hospitals and replacing watermains or sanitary sewers reduces Ontario's competitiveness. They cannot.

Let's look at education. Can the opposition explain to me how providing a better education system, which produces a highly educated workforce in this province, discourages investment? The answer is that they cannot.

Let's look at health care. Can the opposition explain to me and the people of Ontario how providing a health care system that ensures we have a healthy workforce to meet the market requirements can reduce investment here and in fact encourage investment outside this province? There is a simple answer. They cannot explain any of that. In fact, those are all positives that they overlook in the budget.

Let's look at part (b) of the motion. It deals with partnerships and the concept of co-operation. I agree that we need greater partnership and greater co-operation in this province between labour, business, government and other organizations. I think that in the past there has not been enough effort towards that endeavour. The members heard the Premier today; he has had consultation with over 80 business groups. We have had consultation with social groups, environmental organizations, labour groups.

But we still have to develop that sense of co-operation. We cannot do it unless we have a level of trust built up in this province. I think one of the ways we can build that trust and co-operation between labour, business and government is by addressing the need for skills development. Whether you are a business person, a labour person or a government, we all have one common thing we can share: the need to increase our skills development. That is something we are going to work on.

We hope to expand learn to work together on skills development and expand from that into other areas of economic, environmental and social areas. I think that is how you develop co-operation. We do not develop it in this House by heckling each other and yelling back and forth; we do it by exchanging ideas and really listening. That has not been done in the past, but we are a government committed to doing it.

Let's look at the third portion. I will be brief. A number of other speakers wished to talk. The opposition states that the first challenge of any government is to earn the trust and respect of the people of Ontario. That is one thing our government will never forget. We got elected by being open and honest. We will continue to be open and honest with the people of Ontario. We will continue to earn the trust and respect of the people, now and for the length of our mandate.

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Mrs Caplan: I rise today to debate what I believe is a very serious non-confidence motion presented by the leader of the third party over the course of the last eight months. We have had an opportunity to see this first socialist New Democratic Party government in Ontario and review what it said during the election campaign of last summer, almost a year ago, and what its actions have been to date.

The motion before us deals with a loss of confidence of this House. But as I rise to participate in this debate, I say I have had the opportunity over the last few months, and particularly since the tabling of this socialist budget, this New Democratic Party budget, this Bob Rae budget in April, to discuss the implications for the people of this province. I have been talking to constituents in my riding; I have been speaking with labour unions; I have been talking to business people and investors. Many have concerns because they know there has been a lot of rhetoric and a lot of discussion over the course of time relating to the differences between reality and perception or the facts as we know them.

Many people are quite surprised when I tell them the province of Ontario has experienced operating surpluses since 1986. I remember the day when the now leader of the official opposition stood in this House as Treasurer to announce that Ontario had a balanced operating budget, and I can tell the people of this province proudly, when I speak to them in their own communities or respond to them by telephone, that was a sign of the kind of fiscal responsibility and confidence the people of this province could have in a government that understood the need to attract business and investment and to create jobs.

People know that over the course of the five years of the previous government some 700,000 new jobs were created in the province. They know as well, especially when I have the opportunity to discuss fiscal and economic policy with them, that the overall accumulated debt in Ontario was reduced for the first time in over 40 years by some $340 million in 1990. They know the province was in good economic shape to deal with this recession. Most people know there are economic cycles of growth, buoyancy, slowdown and recession. They know that just one year ago the province had confidence in itself. Business had confidence in Ontario and the people in the province had confidence in our ability to fight this recession.

In the last eight months since the Premier and the NDP have governed, much has indeed changed. The budget presented in April shows that Ontario, under the leadership or lack of leadership of this socialist NDP government, today is in serious trouble. This non-confidence motion that has been presented gives us an opportunity to make sure that people have the facts about what this government is proposing. The loss of confidence over the last eight months, particularly the last few months, has had an enormous impact on the opportunities that are available for Ontarians today and will have enormous loss of opportunity for the people of this province in the future.

The absence of economic leadership is serious. Yes, business and investors have lost confidence. Workers and their families, the people of the riding of Oriole, my constituents, are being hurt by this recession and they too have lost confidence in the ability of this new government, this inexperienced New Democratic socialist government, to lead the province, to see that when we come out of this recession -- and we will -- we have not sustained fundamental damage to our economy. They have lost confidence that this government will be able to do that because of the lack of leadership. Taxpayers are worried because of the budget predictions for the need for future huge tax increases.

What is most troubling to me is that young people in Ontario are losing confidence. Young people in Ontario are not having the opportunity to participate in the workforce. If members take a good look at the budget that was presented, at the fiscal and economic policy that has been proposed by this government, they will understand why the people of this province, why my constituents in the riding of Oriole, are losing confidence and why they are worried. Our economy is in recession and people are losing their jobs.

Yet what we have seen in a budget that is projecting a $9.7-billion deficit for this year alone and a sustained deficit level over the next three to four years of almost $8 billion annually is nothing which will bring about the kind of retraining and training opportunities for youth and for those who have lost their jobs because of the recession -- not one new dollar, not one new program to address itself to the needs of the people of this province for education and training and retraining to prepare them for the future.

We have seen the loss of permanent jobs, and that is what creates a difference between this recession and previous recessions. In the past we have seen job losses, but they were not permanent job losses. We have seen slowdowns, but this time we are seeing Ontario undergo a fundamental restructuring. Every signal this new government has sent out to business, every signal this government has sent out to potential investors has been, "You are not welcome in Ontario." We hear labels from this government. Big business is bad. Investment is bad. Labour is good. That kind of attitude, and we discussed this attitude on numerous occasions, does not lead to the kind of partnership approach that we have heard so often. That rhetoric is very confusing to the people of this province. That rhetoric is very upsetting to business and to labour and to those people who want to work together to see that Ontario will not only come out of this recession but come out of it strongly, prepared to meet the future.

Today's non-confidence motion that has been presented speaks about the intolerable burden of debt on future generations of Ontarians. Probably the most disturbing feature of the budget that was presented in this House, because I think everyone can accept and understand the need for a deficit budget in time of recession, was the continuing deficit during times of projected economic buoyancy and strength. That is the concern.

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Mr Bisson: What about the $3 billion you left us?

Mrs Caplan: My friend opposite again wants to engage in rhetoric. The member for Cochrane South, when he goes back to his constituents and wants to talk about the fiscal policy of his government, knows that it is the policies of his government that accounted for the deficit they found for themselves last year. He knows that writing off UTDC, that the decisions they made on Suncor, that the policy decisions they made to have resources available to create an anti-recession fund, as they call it -- all of these policies contribute to the overall fiscal and budgetary policies of government that determine whether there will be a deficit and what size that deficit will be.

As much as he and the members of his caucus would prefer to participate in an exercise which says, "Blame the feds, blame the previous government, blame the person sitting in the seat beside you," each time he does that he abrogates his responsibility as a member of this Legislature to do what he can to make sure the people of this province have the information they need, the facts, the correct information, and to encourage people to work together to see that we can meet the future and restore confidence.

He understands the concern his constituents have and I know he has the concern my constituents have when they see operating deficits. That means they are borrowing for groceries. That does not mean they are borrowing to buy a house that they can afford and that they can pay off their mortgage over a period of time because they have a good plan. The concern people have, and it is one of the things I believe people understand today in a way they have never understood before, is the need to do what they can afford to do to make sure they are getting value for money from government, and most of my constituents are very concerned because they do not believe they are getting value for the tax dollars they work so hard to earn.

They are concerned because everywhere we turn we hear people very concerned about the lack of fiscal responsibility, the lack of economic leadership, the lack of vision of this government. We know there has not been a jurisdiction in Canada that has not introduced a program to control government spending, to look at restraint, to examine the existing programs to see what is still relevant today and what in fact could be eliminated or reallocated, what is not as effective or as efficient as we would like, and yet there has been nothing here except the creation of a new bureaucracy. There has been only the creation of a new bureaucracy and what we who have had the opportunity to serve in government know as a traditional holdback, clawback or constraint program as opposed to restraint and a program evaluation. That is of real concern.

One of the things I have addressed in this House on numerous occasions is the government's message in its very first throne speech when it talked about cynicism. The point I would make in the few minutes I have remaining today is that the test of your credibility, the example you give to the people of this province, is if you do what you say you are going to do. Part of the reason people are so cynical, part of the reason people do not trust anyone in public life is because of the example they see from this new government, which said one thing when it was in opposition and says something else now that it is the government, which said one thing during the election campaign and is doing something else, and example after example, day after day, of the kind of rhetoric that, quite frankly, my constituents in the riding of Oriole are sick and tired of. They want to be able to have confidence that you stand in your place and read a statement or tell them what you are going to do, that is what you are going to do.

I will be supporting this non-confidence motion today because each action this government has taken over the last eight months has done nothing to instil confidence in the people of this province, has done nothing to instil confidence in the business and investment sector in this province and has done nothing to lower the level of cynicism of the people in this province. It is sad, but it is true. I say to all members of this House and to my constituents in the riding of Oriole that I will stand in my place in this Legislature and do what I can to encourage this government to raise its standards so that there will be credibility and confidence and people will be able to look to Ontario as a good place to come and invest and live together in the future.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs Haslam): I remind the members that the debate is usually directed through the Chair and does not take place back and forth between individuals.

Mr Carr: As I reflect on this government over the last little while, one of the things that has been more disturbing than anything else has been the fact that it did not say it was going to do this before it was elected. If they had said before the election that this is what they were going to do, that they were going to double the provincial deficit in just four short years, if they had said they were going to do that and if they had said they were going to spend like there was no tomorrow, then I guess I could have accepted it as an individual. What I find very hard to accept is a government that in opposition does not tell the people what it is going to do and then, when it gets into office, wham, we end up with the biggest provincial deficit in the history of this country and it never said it was going to do it.

Let's look at some of the statistics. Some of my friends talked about where the money is going to go. The biggest rise, if we look at the spending in this province, is what we spend on interest. It is a line item with the Treasury and it is the fastest-growing. It is going to be the fastest-growing of all of them.

Let's put it in perspective. At the end of the mandate of this particular government we are going to be spending $1 million an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, not to pay for health care, not to pay for services for seniors, not to pay for transportation and infrastructure, not to pay for any other programs, but just to pay the interest on the deficit alone.

A lot of people can relate to that. When we start talking about percentage of gross domestic product and the $38 billion and it is going to some $70 billion, people cannot relate to that, but it works out to be almost $15,000 a minute. In two minutes, while I speak, we will have paid the average wage of an employee. It is not to pay for health care but just to pay the interest on the deficit alone. That clock keeps ticking 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, just to pay for the fiscal madness of a government that never said it was going to do it. They did not have the political courage to say before, "We're going to run up the deficit and spend like there's no tomorrow." They did not have the courage because they knew nobody wanted that.

In the throne speech the government said it would listen to the people and respond to the best of its ability. They should not listen to me; they should listen to what some of the people are saying. An individual who runs a small business says: "I'm scared stiff. Based on the attitude I've heard from business people, they are overwhelmed and they are leaving Ontario, giving up or doing something else. I've never spoken to people who are more negative, more pessimistic and more frightened to be in Ontario."

The next headline is, "NDP Frightening Off Business." "'Ontario's government is scaring business and jobs away,' says the Toronto board of trade chairman. 'We expect business to be competitive, but not to anticipate antagonism from government. High taxes and bristling business legislation such as the increased payroll tax is driving jobs out.'"

The headlines go on. The same chap says: "Queen's Park has not seen fit to respond to the fast-eroding international marketplace in Ontario. This isn't a display of disloyalty, nor is it a threat; it is a new economic reality."

In this province today there is one fundamental fact that is truer and clearer now than it has ever been. If we cannot compete, we are going to lose markets, and when we lose markets people lose jobs. The sad part is that the people who are going to lose their jobs never knew what they were voting for when they voted for the NDP, because it did not have the political courage to tell them it was going to do it. Now they are going to lose jobs.

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All the government has done is increase the taxes on the people through deferred taxes. I want to save a bit of time, but I will sum up one thing. A group of kids in grade 4 came into my legislative office here and brought me a little money tree and they said, "Would you please tell the Premier of this province that money does not grow on trees and we're not going to pay because of Bob Rae and what he is doing to this province?" Kids in grades 4 and 5 have an appreciation of the debt and when I spoke with them, most of them said, "Do you realize what you are doing to us with the environment and the deficit?"

When others spoke about it -- close to $20,000 accumulated deficit; in this province it was $3,500 -- we will double it. In this province, as we sit here today, I could have accepted it if they had said that was what they were going to do. They never said they were going to do it. They did not have the political courage to do it and my kids and the children in this province are going to have to pay for it and I do not think it is fair. I will be voting in support of this resolution.

One last point I want to make about this government is that I believe the Premier two short days ago said, "I want to hear from the people in the justice committee because I want to consult." Two hours later they invoked closure in that same justice committee and rammed it through because they did not want to hear about conflict any more. Two hours, he speaks and says, "I want to hear from the justice committee." Two hours later the member for Ottawa Centre rams through closure on the justice committee and then we wonder why people are cynical and sceptical about politicians. They are cynical and sceptical about this government, and I am going to be voting for this resolution and I hope the people of Ontario get an opportunity, because next time they are going to have to live on their record. We are very pleased to introduce this resolution and I will be supporting it.

Mr Silipo: As people know, I am not one who tends to get up and speak a lot in the House. When I saw this motion I asked to be put on the list because I was very interested in having an opportunity to make a couple of comments. Because I know there are other members on this side who wish to speak as well I will try not to be too long.

One of the things that troubles me a lot, as a new member in this Legislature, is the kind of double standard that seems to be applied throughout this House and the members of the opposition and, in this case the members of the third party, seem to be developing to new heights. I think it is quite appropriate for members of the opposition to call us, as members of the government, to task when we do not seem to be doing things in the way we suggested in An Agenda for People. I think that is quite appropriate. But it is also important for members of the opposition, particularly the leaders of the opposition -- in this case, the leader of the third party -- to be quite clear about what it is they are saying when they bring forward motions like this one.

I listened with great interest to the speech from the leader of the third party today. It was full of inconsistencies and contradictions. I just sat in amazement at some of those and I want to touch on a couple and make a few comments about them.

The motion attacks this government on its budgetary policies. Of course, at the heart of all of that is the continuous opposition to the $9.72 billion deficit which certainly none of us would have wanted to see, but a deficit we felt was necessary, not because we wanted to see the deficit in that way, but because we felt it was important in this difficult time to use the resources at our disposal to help those most in need. That is what provincial governments are supposed to do.

I can well recall the times the Tories were in government when they did not provide program after program requested of them, whether in education or other fields, until and unless 10 different polls said it was okay to do so.

Mr Klopp: Or just before elections.

Mr Silipo: Or just before elections, exactly. I can certainly recall, when the Liberals managed to get in power with our support some years ago, that some improvements did happen and we did see some programs. However, they then seemed to perfect the art of passing the buck literally on to the municipalities and the school boards and have been able to balance budgets, in effect, on the backs of the property taxpayers.

It seems to me we are trying to take our responsibilities as a provincial government as seriously as we can. We are ensuring that programs are continued, that social assistance is provided in this particular dire time of need because, what is the alternative? The alternative is to say to people: "Sorry. We are not going to help you." The alternative is to say to school boards and municipalities, "We are not going to give you the money you need to run those services and you can then talk to the property taxpayers about whether you want to increase those rates."

That is what it comes down to. When we talk about the huge deficit we need to put it quite honestly in that kind of context because otherwise we would be less than frank with the electorate out there. My sense is that while nobody likes the $9.75-billion deficit there is in fact some understanding, much more so than people in this room would want to accept about the need for that deficit to be there.

The other point made in this non-confidence motion is the question of the way the government goes about doing its business and, as set out in the motion, practising "arbitrary and secretive decision-making." It is interesting, again, to go back to some of the comments the leader of the third party made on that earlier. Within the space of a couple of seconds in his speech, he was on the one hand berating us for not having the courage to admit when we made some mistakes, when we were wrong and when we perhaps did not fully size up the issues before us, and on the other hand was critical of our bringing in changes to Bill 70, for example, the wage protection bill.

That, interestingly enough, is set out right in the motion. He cannot have it both ways. He either is prepared to take the position that he is going to criticize us wherever we make changes, or he has to be prepared to acknowledge that, yes, we as government also acknowledge that sometimes the initial policies and bills brought forward maybe do not take into account everything that needs to be taken into account and that, through the consultation process that ensues, changes and improvements to that legislation are made.

That, quite frankly, is part of the process. A lot needs to be done to entrench that as a system of operation around this place. As government, we need to be open to those changes and I think the opposition needs to also be prepared to acknowledge that when those changes are made, they are made with every good intention and goodwill.

The last point I want to make deals with the third point in this resolution that attacks the government's sense of integrity in attacking the conflict-of-interest guidelines. Again, I find it puzzling that the leader of the third party is able to stand up and berate the government on that when at the same time he is able to participate in, and I presume lead, this kind of campaign that has appeared in ads in our newspapers. On the one hand he not only juxtaposes some photographs, in my view distorting the perception people have of these kinds of issues, but at the same time encourages people to donate to the PC fund on the understanding they will then get a generous Ontario tax credit in return.

I want for a minute to ask the members of this House to consider what the position of the leader of the third party would be if there appeared tomorrow an advertisement in the same newspaper on behalf of the NDP applauding some particular initiative of the government and saying; "Send in your cheques to the NDP because you are going to get a nice rebate in return." This is the same individual who stands up as tax fighter number one and berates us on our spending practices and yet has no qualms about turning around and using taxpayers' money for this kind of tactic. In the end it comes down to a sense of consistency and decency.

There is no doubt that in our period as a young government we have not done everything perfectly. All of us on this side of the House would be quite open in standing up and saying that. A lot of that comes from the inexperience of being in government, but I also agree it is something we need to overcome, and I am confident we will overcome. It is one thing to make mistakes because of inexperience; it is another thing to make mistakes or not to make decisions because you do not want to.

This is a government that has the interests of the people of the province at heart. This is a government prepared to act, to take on the responsibilities, even if it means making the tough decisions economically and running up the kind of deficit there is, because to do otherwise would mean that the pain out there would be multiplied 10-fold. That is the difference between this government and the opposition.

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Mr Bisson: I was expecting more members from the opposition to speak, but I guess they have used up most of their time.

I guess you can stand here as a government member, an opposition member, and indulge in the rhetoric we find in the House. I would like to apologize to the member from Oriole for what I said a little while ago. I was indulging in that practice. I am trying to contain myself because I do not really think it gives us anything. We have to respect each other's positions and try to be able to work together, to try to find some solutions to the problems we find ourselves in today.

Rather than going around from the other end and talking about the budget and the decisions we have had to make as a government -- some pretty tough decisions, I might add, coming into government and finding some of the things we found when we got in -- I would like to talk a little bit more about what is happening in regard to the strategy on the part of the opposition parties, both the Liberal Party and the Tory party at the same time.

It is interesting that in this debate today a lot of analogies have been drawn by members from both opposition parties. The analogy that is always used, the one we hear in this House all the time, is about the NDP socialist government being a draconian-type government. The member for Mississauga West a little while ago used the analogy of every child in Ontario being born crying because there is an NDP government and this debt we are putting on him. Really, give me a break. It is quite something to listen to that because I really do not think it adds to the decorum of this House. It further demonstrates contempt towards the voters of this province. All this does at the end is to instil a lack of confidence in the provincial economy itself. I think we all understand in this House how you get an economy rolling; yes, it is by direct government policy, to a certain extent, but it is also on the basis of the people within the province having some faith in their own economy.

When we hear the things the member for Dovercourt talked about -- the article appearing in various papers condemning our government over the past budget and how all of these businesses are running away from the province because of this draconian socialist government, as they like to term it -- it does absolutely nothing to try to instil some positive aspects in the people of this province.

We have to keep in mind that 90% of the people in this province are working. They have money in their pocket. The problem is they are afraid to spend that money. Why? Because they listen to the parliamentary channel, they pick up the paper, they do all of those things. When people sit back and look at that kind of thing, they get a little bit worried. They get worried when they see the coalition of business coming together really incensed about the whole idea of having an NDP government in power, because really that is what it is all about. It challenges the status quo, the way the power structure used to be situated in this province until about a year ago. Getting together and talking about all the ills we find today within our society -- the businesses moving south, the cross-border issue, all of the problems we have now -- what they are trying to do is associate them with this government.

Mrs Caplan: Your policies are making it worse.

Mr Bisson: If the member for Oriole would listen, she would see that what happened is that there were a lot of policies that were put in place by our federal counterparts, the cousins, the member for Nipissing's friends in Ottawa, under the Brian Mulroney government that really affected directly the problem we find in our economy today.

We look at the effect the free trade agreement has had on the people of Ontario and the people of Canada, but especially on the people here with regard to what it has done to our economy; it has been atrocious. Yes, it is true that businesses are picking up and going to the United States and other places because of mechanisms that were put in place by the policies of the federal government to allow them to do that.

What people forget is that when we set out to build this economy back in 1867 and on forward, there was a recognition of the fact that we have the second-largest geography in the world, that we have one of the least densely populated countries in the world -- we have some 26 million people -- and that it was necessary for the government of the day and the ones that came from 1867 on, including Liberals and Tories, which brought good policy at the time, to build an infrastructure within this country that allowed business to be competitive.

If we left it strictly to the private sector to develop our transportation industry, telecommunications, education, the social infrastructure that we now understand as being necessary to do business, it would not be done. Not only would it be to the detriment of the people of this country and this province, but it would mean that those businesses could not afford to compete. If you had to set up a transportation industry strictly based on the economy the Tories are trying to tell us, it would not happen. You would have the corridors between Montreal and Toronto and Winnipeg and nothing else on the outer fringes such as Timmins and Sudbury, different places within the country and the province that are not as densely populated as we are here in the south.

The thing is that there is some reality we have to look at. This country is very different. We built this country based on some standards and on some admission of both our geography and the population within this country, to make sure we put in place that infrastructure so that in the end business had a place, had a way it could do business and could rely on to make sure it can move their goods from St John's, Newfoundland, to Vancouver Island, to wherever, with a good transportation net that, yes, was paid by the taxpayers of this country. We all admitted that. The past Tory governments and Liberal governments and CCF-NDP governments in the past realized that and built on that.

What we have had in this country over the past six or seven or eight years is a total reversal of how we built this economy. That is the problem we have today in this country. It is not because an NDP government got elected that we have this problem; it is because there has been a total reversal about what this whole country is about. There is no more admission that the government and the people have a responsibility to make sure that infrastructure is in place, to make sure we take care of those who are less fortunate than others. That is what we built this country on.

The leader of the third party stands before us today and tries to blame all the ills and the wills of the Ontario economy on this present government. I tend to differ. I think he is misleading the people of this province. He is doing it purely for political gain. All this does is try to instil a further lack of confidence on the part of the people of Ontario towards this government so that in the end they can say, "We told you so." All they are doing is trying to add fuel to the fire, trying to help to a certain degree the dissatisfaction, trying to get business to move away from Ontario, because in the end that is politically good for them. But it is the people of Ontario who will be hurt in the end.

I really resent that. I think it is partisan politics to the uttermost contempt of politics. What we should be doing is trying to work together. We should be trying to bring forward solutions on how we are able to solve some of the economic problems we find ourselves in today because of what has happened, because of the global economy, which is not all a Canadian problem, because of the economies around us that have changed. We have to respond to that, because of the changes that we have seen in federal legislation over the past eight years.

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If all of the parties were to sit in this Legislature, as the people of our ridings want, to put forward good proposals, maybe then we could move ahead. But what do we get? In the throne speech, we talked as a government at the very beginning that where we heard people speaking loudly on an issue, who wanted us to to change our minds on something, we would do so. On the one hand, we hear the opposition talking about how we need to consult and how we need to be able to be flexible and change our positions on situations, and when we do that in the other breath they jump all over us saying: "That's terrible. It shows that you're incompetent, that you're not able to do anything, that you're not able to make a decision" --

Mrs Caplan: Incompetent. You're not able to do anything.

Mr Bisson: The member for Oriole is saying it again. She is adding to that. What they are advocating is that we as a government do not listen to the people. That is what government is all about, listening to our constituents within this province and acting according to their needs, realizing at the end of the day we as a government have to make a decision. Even if we make the best decision in the world and 80% of the people are happy, we will still have 20% who will be unhappy, and that 20% will make some noise. That is what democracy is all about. But to get active in partisan politics to the point of hurting the economy of this country and of this province, I think is very irresponsible on their part, and I would say that the people of this province will remember that.

The other point I am going to make very quickly, because we are running out of time, is that the Liberals like to talk about all the experience they have. I remember that in 1985 the Liberal government was elected in a minority situation and with the accord with the NDP government of today put forward some good legislation with the help of us, yes, a socialist government. I use that term very much pride because socialism is something that works. It has been proven.

But, my God, they were the third party. They had no more experienced members when they came to government in 1985 than we did in 1990, but somehow they try to put the perception that somehow we do not not have the experience.

I would point to the good ministers and members we have on this side of the House, with a vast amount of experience from business to economics to labour to agriculture to industry to a number of issues, who are able to bring to this government a different flavour on how we solve problems within this province.

That is all people want. People want honest government that listens and in the end acts on what it is being told. This government has shown that. As to the Treasurer, I was quite proud on Monday when he stood in this House and talked about the need to be able to go back on one of the things we had mentioned in the budget, after we had heard from people within the community. We did so. We realized people would look at that as being somewhat indecisive, but it is recognizing the fact that we need to listen to people out there.

With that I will conclude my remarks. There are only about eight minutes left on the clock. I just want to remind members that we should be working together, rather than sitting here trying to point fingers at each other, and trying to come up with solutions in here. On points where we have fundamental disagreement, then let us disagree, but let us work together.

Mr Runciman: In the brief time I have available, I want to put a few matters on the record.

Earlier today I tabled a resolution with respect to 21 manufacturing operations in the city of Brockville, which I represent, expressing concerns about their ability to do business in this province, not only talking about the current government but also about initiatives brought in under the Liberal regime of five years. Many of them have impacted on businesses in terms of administrative costs in a significant way, where they have seen their administrative costs increase four to five times and their ability to compete with offshore manufacturers being eroded.

We are now seeing initiatives undertaken by the socialist government that are going to further erode the competitive position of business and industry in this province. Some of the legislation that is being proposed which will enable employees to unionize the workplace with a very modest number of employees is one of special concern.

One that bothers me, as a former member of management in industry, is the suggestion that they are going to prevent management from maintaining operations in a strike-bound plant. I know many industries are marginal operations and if they are placed in a position where they cannot continue to operate, even on a reduced basis, they are going to close. In effect initiatives such as this one that is one proposed are costing jobs, forcing manufacturers out of this province.

That is a reality. That is a reality for people who have carried out meaningful jobs in business and industry in this province and can have some appreciation of that, unlike the members occupying the socialist benches in this House.

I want to talk about one other element that has not been mentioned to any significant extent. I chair the government agencies committee of the Legislature. We have been dealing for the past number of months with appointments to government agencies, boards and commissions, and this is not getting a lot of public attention.

What is happening with this government is that we are seeing day after day political hacks, if you will, people who have been NDP socialist supporters for many years, finally getting their just reward. It is scary when we see appointments to the Workers' Compensation Board and the tilt that is going to have in respect of business and industry operations in this province. Even scarier are the appointments to the Ontario Hydro board of directors. What we are seeing is government control, government takeover of Ontario Hydro, and that is a scary proposition when we see anti-business, anti-nuke types appointed to the board of directors of Ontario Hydro, and this socialist, ideological government wanting hands-on control of that crown corporation. It is scary for all of us.

A businessman in my riding, Bill Fraser, president of Computer Assembly Systems, was quoted in the Toronto Sun today talking about the business environment in this province: "I've never spoken to more people who are negative, pessimistic and frightened."

Mr Bradley: I want to begin by indicating my support for the motion of non-confidence in the government. I have to stretch my own thoughts a bit on this to be supportive of it, particularly when I hear some of the disparaging remarks that members of the Conservative Party direct towards the previous government.

One of the aspects of the non-confidence motion deals with the budgetary deficit. Of course we are dealing with the largest budgetary deficit since we had the last Conservative government in Ontario back in 1982, and 1982 was the previous high deficit in this province under those who now characterize themselves as the tax-savers.

I want to zero in, first of all, on the tax on auto workers which has been a point of discussion in this Legislature for some period of time. Those of us in opposition in the Liberal Party have directed a number of questions. I have had the opportunity in this House to direct a number of questions to the Minister of Labour, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology and to the Treasurer about the inadvisability of the tax that was announced in the provincial budget which essentially is a tax on auto workers and those who rely on the automotive industry in this province.

I was discouraged by the fact that in the midst of a very significant recession, at a time when we are facing the kind of unprecedented competition we have certainly not seen for my lifetime in this province, the Treasurer would introduce on behalf of the government a tax that essentially was a penalty on the automotive industry and ultimately on auto workers in this province.

I was encouraged by the fact that in recognition of the pummelling the Treasurer took from the opposition and some of the pressure from the outside, he was at least prepared to modify this under the relentless pressure that was placed on him, that he was prepared to modify the tax. But essentially what his modification exposed was the fact that in the first place it was simply a tax grab disguised as some environmental initiative. When we see that he started out his discussions, with all the players who appeared on the panel at the press conference, by saying that he was going to maintain his revenues, that it was going to be essentially tax neutral, we recognize that it was a tax grab and nothing less.

Now he has modified it. I said to the Treasurer I would not say he retreated, and I did not use the word "retreat." I said I would compliment him if he withdrew that tax and provided a tax incentive for individuals in Ontario to purchase new vehicles that would have better pollution control equipment, that would have better mileage or, as we refer to it, fuel efficiency. He did not do that. Instead of withdrawing that tax and providing significant incentives, he threw some peanuts to the crowd by giving $100 for some very small cars and of course rejigging the tax so he still got as much money in from the automotive industry.

I am frankly surprised that a government which supposedly knew so much about the automotive industry, which has so many members in the caucus who have had some experience, would come forward with a tax like this. It leads me to believe they did not share with their caucus members what they were planning for Ontario.

My friend the member for Chatham-Kent would not have been a person who would have advocated this. My friend the member for Lincoln would not have been an individual who would have said, "Yes, please tax the auto workers of this province." They are people who, because they know on a firsthand basis the impact of the industry, would have counselled that there be no tax increase and that the incentive be provided so that the Treasurer could meet both the environmental desires of the government and the people of this province, and stimulate the economy at the present time.

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We have now heard General Motors make suggestions that it is going to move jobs out of Canada. Now that is a very difficult circumstance, because we are in a situation where virtually all of the analysts who have looked carefully at the automotive industry in this province are saying it is very competitive and there is overcapacity, and of course the pressure is on many people who work in the industry when we start talking about moving the jobs from one country to another.

The Canadian Auto Workers union will make its own judgement. It will assess what the company has to say. It will take the course of action that it deems appropriate, and that is the responsible and correct way. It is not for any of us in this Legislature to dictate to those workers in those plants whether they should make any changes to their demands or make any concessions. It is entirely up to the union to make that judgement.

My concern is that this government is not creating an environment which would encourage industry to stay in Ontario -- never mind those who are in the plant -- by making any concessions or changes. They are not creating an atmosphere which would encourage companies to maintain their investments in Ontario, where we have an excellent workforce and good facilities, and they certainly are not encouraging people in this country and other countries to invest in new plant and new equipment in this province. That is most unfortunate, because we recognize that the automotive industry is responsible, directly or indirectly, for probably one in six jobs in Ontario, between its suppliers and the direct jobs that are created.

There is another thing the Treasurer did not take into account, and nobody mentioned it at the press conference yesterday. By the way, he lined all the people up at the press conference to nod acquiescently that, yes, this was better than what he had before. It reminded me of those dolls in the back of a vehicle where all the heads were moving like this. But essentially what they were saying was that a kick in the shins is better than a kick in the head and therefore they are prepared to accept it.

But auto workers across this province will know the devastating impact of this. Consumers across this province will know and certainly those who thought the government had come forward with an environmental initiative will know that it was a fraud, that essentially it was a tax grab. If the Treasurer had come before the House and said, "I want to grab some taxes out of the pockets of the people of this province," and he was direct and forthright, I would have said, "I'm opposed to that, but at least you're being up front." But no, there is a disguise of some kind of environmental initiative.

What they do not understand, what many of those people do not understand, is that we make auto parts in Ontario. Nobody on the panel talked about parts. Certainly in my community of St Catharines, we make automotive parts -- we do not assemble vehicles -- and we make them for all kinds of cars in our various factories across the province. Some of them are hit by the tax, some of them are not hit by the tax. Surely somebody over there in the government would have recognized that the impact was on those who produced parts, not just those who do the assembling in the province. That is why I was surprised when the Treasurer came forward with this tax on auto workers in the first place and when he retained that tax and simply rejigged it.

There are a couple of other items I would like to discuss very briefly. The Globe and Mail editorial spotted this one. I spotted it immediately because it reminded me of W. A. C. Bennett and the Social Credit in British Columbia. What he used to do was use crown corporations and BC Hydro to hide his debts somewhere else. He would say, "Look, we have no deficit in the province this year," or "We're not spending this money, we're not spending that money," and really it would be the crown corporations doing it, with the hand of the government well behind them. This government has intruded into that area once again. They figure perhaps that when people see their hydro rates increase, they will not recognize that this is a government expenditure.

I would not be critical of what they are attempting to do in terms of social programs and in terms of investments. It is the fact that they pretend that it is not taxpayers' money doing it. Be up front; be honest. That is what the Premier always said in opposition. That is what I wanted to see when he came to government, if he ever did.

We have an expenditure of $52.8 billion in Ontario this year. I know out of that amount probably the Minister of Health is thinking, "I must be able to find some money for a CAT scan machine for the Niagara region or an MRI machine for the Niagara region." She knows she would not have to pay the capital cost; it would simply be the operating costs later on if it is approved appropriately. She knows --

Mr Nixon: Did the Liberal government not put one down there already?

Mr Bradley: The government has already put one down there, but the minister knows it would be done appropriately because the Niagara District Health Council followed all the rules. Now apparently those rules have been thrown out the window and everybody comes running in trying to get a CAT scan. This is according to those who have done investigative research in this particular matter. I am sure the Minister of Health would want to look into that.

In terms of cross-border shopping, I am the first person to say it is not an easy problem to deal with. It really is not. I want to be fair to both the federal government and the provincial government in that regard. But what this government does is make it worse. Just when people started to say, "Perhaps patriotically I might not buy my products in the United States," along comes the federal tax, bang, on cigarettes, alcohol and gasoline. Those are the loss-leaders that get people going over the border. Then we have the provincial government doing the same thing. So people will go over the river for those purposes, as we say.

I am looking for this government to cut those taxes to encourage people to stay here. I am looking for this government to assist as well. I think the Minister of Agriculture and Food made some reference to this, in fairness to him, about advertising the good products we have here in the province and some of the good reasons why people might shop Ontario instead of making purchases that they think would be more desirable in other places.

I also want to talk about, because this resolution deals with traditions, the OPP Pipes and Drums. Every person here in every community of the province has seen and heard the Pipes and Drums. Only the member for Oxford has not, and I am sure all of his constituents have seen the OPP Pipes and Drums and the Golden Helmets precision team. Even though they would have to pay more for their gas and maybe a tax on the vehicles, the fact is that they instilled a lot of pride in the people of Ontario. Members will remember when I read the letter from Mrs Kay Todd about her experience in Gogama, one of the places the Treasurer is familiar with. I hope the government will reconsider that decision. I think that was something that instilled pride in the people of Ontario and maintained traditions, traditions that the government has often cast aside.

One of the things I want to say, and I will take the opportunity here to say it, is I was pleased that this government followed through with the contract for the Port Weller drydocks for the Pelee Island ferry. What we need now, and I am sure this government would support it, is a federal government contract for those minesweepers. I know some people over there do not want any minesweepers built perhaps, but if they are going to be built, let's have them built in the city of St Catharines. I know my friends from the peninsula agree with that and they will support it because they can blame Mulroney if it is not done. That of course makes it very attractive to members of the government.

How I wish I had a couple of hours to deal with all of the matters that are before us, but I do not have. Let me talk very briefly about patronage. One thing the members opposite have done, which is great for any succeeding government I suppose, is they have made so many patronage appointments that no other government will have to apologize if it does the same thing. They are entitled to do it -- I have never denied the fact that they are entitled to do it -- but they were not going to; they gave the impression that they were not going to do this.

With Ish Theilheimer and so many other people getting their jobs, we can be sure that while the people of this province may not see the NDP at this point in time as being worse than the other parties, they are recognizing that the NDP and the Premier of this province are essentially the same as other politicians and other parties. The halo is gone. If there ever was a halo, it is gone, and that is reflected in the resolution of non-confidence put forward by the third party this afternoon.

I wish I could vote for the government in a non-confidence motion. I wish I could say I had that confidence, but at this point, with the performance of this government, with the performance of the members of this government, with the circumstances in the province, I find myself in the position of having to support the Progressive Conservative motion.

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Hon Ms Lankin: It is interesting to listen to this discussion and to the tone and much of the rhetoric I have heard this afternoon. I listened particularly to the leadoff speaker for the third party and I was amazed at some of the outrageous things I heard said in terms of what I think were very problematic statements, given my understanding of the facts.

I think it would be helpful if we could get some better research for the third party members so they were factually correct in what they started from and the premises that they took, but quite frankly I think they are not interested in that. I think they have an agenda, and it is a partisan political agenda; there is not an honest intellectual debate going on in this House.

We do have differing opinions and that is okay; that is what democracy is about, exploring ideas, ideologies, different approaches. We have a different approach to the way of doing things. We believe different things. We start from different points of view. We can discuss that, and that is an important discussion to have, but we cannot have that kind of discussion when it is veiled in the rhetoric of partisan politics that is not interested in truth as the premise to start from.

I have to make an exception in terms of some of the discussion that has gone on and say that the member for St Catharines, as usual, tried very hard not to engage in that kind of ill-founded presentation of the facts. That does not mean I agree with him on everything he said, and there are a couple of points I would respond to.

Towards the end he talked about patronage appointments. I am just amazed to hear that kind of allegation. Within one of my portfolios as the Minister of Health, I sign many, many appointments and reappointments to district health councils, to community advisory boards. By and large, these are appointments that have been made under Conservative and Liberal governments that we are reappointing, hundreds of them. These are not placing NDP hacks, as I heard being said.

In regard to the appointments that come through cabinet and orders in council, as chair of cabinet I have to sign all of those orders in council when they are approved by cabinet. There is no foundation to that kind of statement, saying that there are not high-profile Liberals and Tories being appointed. What we are doing is getting people who have got backgrounds and abilities and a contribution to make, some people who have been shut out in this province and never had an opportunity to make a contribution in the past. They are getting that opportunity now and that is the difference.

The member for Mississauga West talked about how shocked he was to hear that people on this side could say they were proud of what had happened during the process of setting this budget and coming forward with the budget and presenting it to the people of Ontario. Let me say I am genuinely proud to be a member of this government and to be a member of the cabinet and to have been a member putting forward that budget to the people of Ontario.

I think it is time there was some truth put on the record with respect to this deficit. Let's talk about what that deficit is made up of. Let's talk about the $8 billion that is institutional, systemic in its structure with respect to revenues that have dropped off in this province to a level below that which we have seen before. We have never had a real shrinkage in revenues in the Ontario government before. We experienced that this year. That is a first.

Let's talk about social assistance payments. Let's not just use numbers, a 40% increase in social assistance recipients. Let's translate that into real people, into the human suffering that represents. What would the other parties have us do with respect to that in the budget? Just cut those people off? Not present for them a choice, an opportunity, a hope? That is what our budget means for these people. It is a hope of building back from this recession.

I agree with one thing the member for Oriole said. We are suffering through a recession that is different from any recession we have suffered through before. There is a major restructuring going on. There is permanent job loss. This is not a time in which we can just bat around phrases and say, "Cut and slash," or where we can just scapegoat public sector workers as though somehow that is going to solve the problem. The problem we are facing is much deeper and much more structural than that. Quite frankly, we need solutions where there is co-operation.

I have heard words about partnership. I have heard accusations that we are not attempting to build partnerships with the business community. I heard from the third party that this party over here has just gone willy-nilly and raised taxes. Nothing could be further from the truth. They should look at that budget and tell me where there are massive tax increases that hit people and that hit business.

Quite frankly, there is no doubt we are suffering from a public who at this time is very anxious about tax increases. Over the last number of years it has experienced an incredible rate of tax increases. There is no doubt that kind of rhetoric will find resonance out there and people will say, "Oh no, more tax increases." But that is not what happened in this budget and it is time there were some truth in what the third party presents to the people of this province.

I hear from this party that we have to have restraint, yet I have members from this party come across daily to me, as the Minister of Health, who want us to build more hospital beds and spend more money in their ridings. They speak out of both sides of their mouths.

I have to come back again to the member for St Catharines. It is not that I personally want to attack what he said, but he raises an important symbolic issue. He talks about the fact that we have not supported traditions because we cut money in certain areas. He refers specifically to the OPP Pipes and Drums and the Golden Helmets.

The process we went through in terms of setting this budget was obviously a very difficult balancing act. We cut $700 million from the budget of Ontario. That is the largest cut ever taken in this province at any time in history. We had to do that in order to reprioritize, to spend money on new programs that were important. Those are difficult choices. Those are not choices that make governments popular. It would be nice to continue to pay for everything that is out there.

The choices are going to become more difficult as the years go on. As we roll out into our second- and third-year projections on this budget, we will have to continue to make very difficult choices about reallocation of dollars, because we are no longer in an economy in which we can just have add-ons and add-ons of new programs. We have to look at the moneys we are spending. We have to spend them in smarter ways. We have to look at reallocation. That is what fiscal responsibility is about.

I understand how difficult facing this kind of budget deficit is right now and how difficult it will be over the next few years. The kind of partisan rhetoric I have heard today is not helpful in solving those problems. I say we are absolutely dedicated to being fiscally responsible and taking those hard decisions, and I surely believe I will hear the members of the opposition stand and howl about those cuts.

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

Ayes -- 39

Arnott, Beer, Bradley, Callahan, Caplan, Carr, Cleary, Conway, Cousens, Cunningham, Daigeler, Elston, Eves, Grandmaître, Harnick, Harris, Henderson, Jackson, Jordan, Mahoney, Marland, McLean, McLeod, Miclash, Murdoch, B., Nixon, Offer, O'Neil, H., O'Neill, Y., Poirier, Ramsay, Runciman, Sterling, Stockwell, Sullivan, Turnbull, Villeneuve, Wilson, J., Witmer.

Nays -- 68

Abel, Akande, Allen, Bisson, Boyd, Carter, Charlton, Christopherson, Churley, Cooper, Coppen, Drainville, Duignan, Farnan, Ferguson, Fletcher, Frankford, Gigantes, Grier, Haeck, Hampton, Hansen, Harrington, Haslam, Hayes, Hope, Huget, Jamison, Johnson, Klopp, Kormos, Lankin, Laughren, Lessard, Mackenzie, MacKinnon, Malkowski, Mammoliti, Marchese, Martel, Mathyssen, Mills, Morrow, Murdock, S., North, O'Connor, Owens, Perruzza, Philip, E., Pilkey, Pouliot, Rae, Rizzo, Silipo, Sutherland, Ward, B., Ward, M., Wark-Martyn, Waters, Wessenger, White, Wildman, Wilson, F., Wilson, G., Winninger, Wiseman, Wood, Ziemba.

The House adjourned at 1800.