The House met at 1002.

Prayers.

Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: You must know that it's the government's commitment and it's obliged to have a quorum in the House at all times. I do not believe there's a quorum present this morning.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): I'll check with the table.

Acting Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees (Ms Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present.

The Speaker ordered the bells rung.

The Deputy Speaker: A quorum is present.

PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS

COURT SYSTEM

Mr Harnick moved resolution number 24:

That, in the opinion of this House,

(1) Recognizing that the Attorney General is a member of the executive council; and is also a member of a political party who, as such, is subject to partisan political influences; and recognizing that it is desirable to reduce the potential for conflicts of interest; and

(2) Recognizing that the Attorney General is responsible for the financing and administration of the courts; and recognizing the importance of the independence of the judiciary; and

(3) Recognizing that the Attorney General is responsible for the decision-making process of the prosecutorial system; and recognizing the importance of the independence of the prosecution service,

The government of Ontario should transfer the responsibility for financing and the administration of the courts to the judiciary and create by statute the position of an independent director of public prosecutions.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Mr Harnick moves private member's notice of motion number 24. Pursuant to standing order 94(c)(i) the honourable member has 10 minutes for this presentation.

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): This resolution is a resolution that I think is of some significance to the administration of justice in this province, and that is precisely why I have moved the resolution.

May I deal first with the idea of the creation of a director of public prosecutions by statute? The rule in Ontario at present is that the independence of the Attorney General in making prosecutorial decisions has been accepted by constitutional convention, but changes in society have made it increasingly difficult to demonstrate that independence.

Part of the problem is the problem of the Attorney General's accountability to this place. That accountability is what I describe as ex post facto accountability. The Attorney General is only accountable to the Legislature after a decision not to prosecute has been made or after a prosecution has been completed, because we all know the custom is that the Attorney General will not comment on a case when it's before the courts.

It's become increasingly difficult for the public to escape the conclusion that partisan political considerations aimed at furthering the interests of the government are not involved in decisions being made by the Attorney General. Let me be clear. I am not alleging this, but with every passing day it is becoming a possible conclusion, almost a probable conclusion, that can be reached by the public.

I point out the issue of the Brian Rapson prosecution, where the Attorney General was in the position of preferring an indictment. I point out the Wade Lawson decision, where there was a decision not to appeal an acquittal but where the jury system was immediately called into suspicion by the Attorney General, in conjunction with the Wade Lawson matter. It wasn't something that happened independently. It was a clash of the Attorney General's responsibility for legal policy versus his responsibility as a prosecutor.

I think there are too many conflicts right now in terms of the Attorney General's position vis-à-vis his prosecutorial duties. As minister of justice he's responsible for legal policy, but as the Attorney General he has to prosecute, and he has to prosecute in a neutral way to get at the truth of any particular matter. Those functions may well be in conflict: the function of dealing with legal policy versus prosecutorial neutrality.

The same minister, the Attorney General, is in charge of prosecuting. He's also in charge of delivering the legal aid system. There's a basic conflict in that. The Attorney General, as chief prosecutor, also has a say in choosing judges and deciding on their remuneration. The conflicts are obvious and the conflicts have to be eliminated.

The Ontario Law Reform Commission states that its primary concern is the independence of the prosecution service from potential pressure, and therefore it believes, and I agree with it, that a director of public prosecution, by statute, should be created.

The rationale for that is I think quite obvious. The rationale offered for the creation of an office of the director of public prosecutions is that a tenured professional with no political ties would be better able to disregard partisan political considerations when making decisions to prosecute. That is fundamental.

Such an office would increase the actual and perceived independence of the crown prosecution service. Moreover, it would remove the conflicts arising from the fact that the Attorney General and minister of justice -- they are one and the same -- acts both as legal adviser and prosecutor for the government.

I believe the Attorney General would continue to have the authority to give instructions to the director of public prosecutions in the form of general guidelines for the handling of cases, as well as specific directives for the handling of individual cases. Any guidelines or directives that would be issued by the Attorney General would be in writing, published and tabled in this Legislature.

The very concept I am outlining today is a concept that attempts to strike a balance in the need for prosecutorial independence but recognizing at the same time the involvement of the Attorney General as being the person most responsible and continuing to be that person. So I think the idea that this person, this director of public prosecutions, would usurp the function of the Attorney General is not part of what I'm saying.

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Finally, dealing with this aspect, the Ontario Law Reform Commission recommended that the budget for the office of the director of public prosecutions be included within the budget of the Attorney General, but once the funds have been allocated by the Attorney General to the prosecution service, the director should have authority to allocate those funds within the prosecution service. Such an arrangement would again stress the independence of the director of public prosecutions.

The other aspect of my resolution is dealing with judicial independence and who in fact should be running the court system. I don't mean to imply that any judge, as an individual, is not independent in terms of the decisions he must make. However, we have a problem with the judiciary as a collective, because the Attorney General controls the purse strings; because of that, we have basic conflict.

Should your opponent, meaning the Attorney General, control the court system? Should your opponent decide the balance between civil case resources and criminal case resources? Should your opponent direct and hire and fire the staff of the courts in which you as a litigant might be fighting him? Should your cases be decided by judges who are forced increasingly into an economic and administrative dependence on your opponent? If the province's chief litigant controls the allocation of funds, how can it be said that the administration of justice is independent of the executive branch of government?

What I say is that the Attorney General should give the function of controlling how the courts work to the very people who should be operating the courts, and that's the judges. The people who work within the court system should be working under the direction of the judges. They shouldn't be working under the direction of the Attorney General, and then in a subordinate or tangential way, operate under the control of judges. It just doesn't work. I would ask this Legislature to reflect on that.

I further point out that sittings of the court, the assignment of judges to sittings, the assignment of cases to individual judges, sitting schedules, the makeup of trial lists and courtroom assignments should be controlled by the court process. They should not be controlled by the major litigant before the courts, and that's the Attorney General. I think the court system fails if we give the impression that the judicial system does not control its own process.

Again, we're looking for a balance. We're striking a balance. No one is saying that the courts get carte blanche to spend whatever money they want. They've got to be accountable to this Legislature, just as other functions of this Legislature are accountable to it: the Ombudsman, the privacy commissioner. They all have independence. They are all accountable to this Legislature for the money they spend. The court system would be no different.

Accordingly, I would be very interested to hear the remarks of my friends, particularly my friends opposite, on what I believe is an important question.

Mr David Winninger (London South): I'm pleased to join in this debate today. The member puts forward an interesting resolution with some history to it. I should indicate that back in 1975 this Ministry of the Attorney General released a discussion paper proposing that control over most staff in the court system's budget should be transferred to the judiciary, who would be accountable directly to the Legislature.

That paper was not implemented by the Conservative government of the day, in which Mr Roy McMurtry became the Attorney General. I think it would be fair to characterize the response to that paper at the time, in 1975, as somewhat lukewarm.

Five years later, in 1980, while the Conservative government was still in power, the Deschenes report, Maîtres chez eux: Masters in Their Own House, was proposed with largely the same approach. That report was written by a Quebec judge for the Canadian Judicial Council, which is made up of the federally appointed chief justices from across Canada.

The 1987 report, Report of the Ontario Courts Inquiry, conducted by Mr Justice Zuber, popularly known as the Zuber report, proposed a system of partnership in management of the courts, with judges, the government, lawyers and the public functioning as a sort of policy board for the court system, but leaving certain essential elements in the exclusive control of the judiciary and others in the hands of government.

In 1989 the previous government, the Liberal government, accepted this approach and created, by amendments to the Courts of Justice Act, regional courts management advisory committees and the Ontario courts management advisory committee, these committees being made up of equal numbers of representatives of the judiciary, the legal bar, the Ministry of the Attorney General and the public.

Recently, as the member has noted, in 1991 the Joint Committee on Court Reform, an umbrella group of lawyers' organizations formed to respond to the court reform initiatives of the previous government, struck a special subcommittee to prepare a report to the Attorney General on this very topic. It states, among other things, that a method of providing accountability for the expenditure of public funds in the courts would have to be devised if responsibility were transferred to the judiciary, but it does not develop the concept.

There are many questions on the issue of the transfer of management to the judiciary which remain, in effect, unanswered.

First of all, is there any actual conflict between the Attorney General's responsibility for court administration, as the member indicates, and the Attorney General's responsibility for the conduct of prosecution in government civil cases?

Secondly, does the public perceive any apparent conflict of interest between these roles as a problem?

Thirdly, is there another, perhaps more effective or less drastic, way of dealing with any actual or apparent conflict of interest?

And certainly, apart from conflict-of-interest concerns, are there measures that could be taken to enhance judicial involvement in the administration of the courts, short of an outright transfer of all responsibility?

What organizational structure is most likely to bring about efficient management of the court system and yet secure the essential elements of judicial independence?

What mechanism best secures accountability to the public for the expenditure of public funds on the court system, and what approach, moreover, will best ensure public confidence in the justice system?

Until these fundamental questions are answered, any change to the responsibility for the administration of the courts should be delayed. Further study needs to be done, I would submit, to determine the answers to the questions that I've just posed and to develop options for consideration by all parties.

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Certainly, this government recognizes judicial independence as a fundamental and constitutional principle of the Ontario justice system. It cannot be infringed upon. The judiciary is assigned, as you may know, Mr Speaker, the right under section 93 of the Courts of Justice Act to determine court sittings and assign judges at the present time.

As far as the proposal to create a director of public prosecutions is concerned, in 1989 the royal commission on the prosecution of Donald Marshall recommended the establishment of a director of public prosecutions in Nova Scotia. That proposal has now been implemented.

I admit to the member that there is a strong philosophical appeal in the administration of the criminal justice system by the judiciary or by a director of public prosecutions. However, such a proposal will require extensive policy work and fundamental legislative changes following a very wide consultation with all of our partners in the justice system.

Under the member's proposal, the role of the Attorney General would change fundamentally. While the director of public prosecutions would supervise prosecutions, there would also have to be a vehicle for accountability to the public through the Attorney General.

Despite these apparent and very actual difficulties, this government is committed to looking at the feasibility of such a system, and looking at the feasibility of such a system is certainly part of this government's overall review of how effectively our justice system operates. I'll have more to say about some of our initiatives in this regard as the debate unfolds.

Mr Robert Chiarelli (Ottawa West): First of all, I want to thank the member for Willowdale for introducing this particular resolution. In fact, I want to compliment him on being a superb member of the bar and a credit to the justice system in the province. I think we're fortunate to have him in this Legislature.

I do want to say, however, that the justice system is the glue and the fabric that holds our democratic system and our society together. I think it requires significant and substantive leadership. There are a number of pillars of leadership or certain groups that we look to for leadership in the justice system. We have the bar, if not the law society, which has been giving over the last couple of years superb leadership in terms of administration of justice. There are leaders from the bar who have been lobbying and advocating significant changes to improve the system in a very responsible manner, and I think they're having a significant effect.

Another pillar of the leadership required for the justice system is, of course, the judiciary. With one hand tied behind their backs, they are giving leadership in a way that they haven't in the past. I'm referring to people such as Justice Sopinka.

Another pillar of leadership in the justice system and for the administration of justice is the legal scholars and the various law reform commissions. They have done a superb job in terms of bringing issues to the fore and trying to bring significant change to the system, change which is long overdue.

Of course we have another pillar of our system of justice, which is the law enforcement officers and organizations across the country and the province. Once again, I think they are doing a superb job.

We come to the fifth pillar of leadership, and unfortunately in the province of Ontario it simply is not there, and that's the leadership of government, the leadership of the Ministry of the Attorney General and leadership of the justice bureaucracy here at Queen's Park and in the Ontario government.

If we do not have leadership from all those pillars, the system will fail. The system is now failing us because of the inertia and inaction of governments -- the Tory government before the Liberal government, the NDP government now -- and we must look at significant change from government, legislative change. That's why I compliment the member for Willowdale for bringing this resolution forward.

We have now an Attorney General who is a minister of reaction, reacting to Askov, reacting to legal aid funding crises, reacting to problems in his ministry, such as the Mary Hogan affair. There is inertia. There have been precious few initiatives brought forward by this Attorney General.

There are a number of initiatives which he has brought forward. They are ad hoc and they are very medium range in terms of reform of the system.

We need significant change in the legal system in Ontario. The people look to this government for leadership in many ways. The judiciary is looking for it, the legal profession is looking for it, and it's not forthcoming. I think I would like to put partisan comments aside; I would like to come up with a consensus for action, and that's why I'm complimenting the member for Willowdale on his resolutions, which I do want to address with some particularity.

I'm going to deal first with the question of director of public prosecutions. First of all, the role of the Attorney General is fraught with conflict. When you look at the various roles of the Attorney General -- the Attorney General's relationship to this Legislature, the Attorney General's relationship to cabinet, the Attorney General's relationship with the crown prosecutor, the Attorney General's relationship with the courts and the administration of the courts and the Attorney General's relationship with the police -- it is fraught with conflict. We see it day in and we see it day out, and I think it puts the Attorney General from time to time in a very untenable position, whoever that Attorney General may be.

In light of the wide range of duties and responsibilities of the Attorney General, the potential for conflict of interest is significant. In particular, there has to be concern that when the head of the prosecution service is also involved in the political process, the prosecution system could be subjected to political pressure. We have seen that time and time again in this Legislature.

Some recent Canadian cases, such as the Donald Marshall inquiry in Nova Scotia, the Manitoba ticketgate affair and the Patricia Starr inquiry in Ontario, have highlighted the need for an independent prosecution service.

Another potential conflict arises from the fact that the prosecutorial and policy branches of the justice system are combined in one ministry.

When we look at the need for reform, we only have to go back to 1990. The Law Reform Commission of Canada released a working paper entitled Controlling Criminal Prosecutions: The Attorney General and the Crown Prosecutor.

It should be noted at this time that Nova Scotia is the only jurisdiction in Canada with a director of public prosecutions that is a statutory position. Other Canadian jurisdictions have officers with similar titles, but these positions are filled by order-in-council appointments. In Ontario, for example, there is a director of criminal prosecutions, but that is an order-in-council appointment. The role of the director is to conduct special prosecutions, handle direct indictments and advise the Attorney General on cases affecting the public interest.

The difference between a position that is created by statute, as suggested in this resolution, and the one that is filled by an order-in-council appointment is that the decisions of the order-in-council appointee will inevitably be subject to the view of cabinet; and that's a conflict. On the other hand, the decisions of a director of public prosecutions whose position is created by statute are also protected by that statute.

Let's look at some of the specific examples of potential conflict for an Attorney General. For example, the Supreme Court of Canada has held that the charter must be given a broad and liberal interpretation. The minister of justice, therefore, in carrying out the duty of certifying that legislation complies with the charter, should ensure that the legislation favours the protection of individual rights and should not approve legislation that restricts such rights. However, the minister of justice, acting as Attorney General, is responsible for prosecutions and would likely favour legislation that enhances law enforcement capabilities.

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There are a number of issues of potential conflict. I don't want to go into them all in detail, because time doesn't permit, but another example is the fact that the same minister is responsible for both prosecutions and the legal aid system. This situation means that the same law officer is, in effect, responsible for prosecutions and defence, since the Attorney General must allocate funds between the prosecution service and the legal aid plan, a large part of which is devoted to defending people charged with crimes.

Another example of conflict deals with the fact that the Attorney General appoints judges and negotiates their remuneration. There is at least a perception of conflict when the person who holds the position of chief prosecutor also hires the judges in the prosecutorial system.

Another potential conflict is that the agents of the Attorney General, the crown prosecutors, are sometimes called upon to investigate members of the justice department. This situation arose in the Manitoba ticket-fixing scandal. In that case, police and crown prosecutors, both under the jurisdiction of the provincial Attorney General, were required to investigate and prosecute persons, including two provincial court judges and one magistrate, who were part of the court system administered by the Attorney General's department. The judge who conducted a review of the handling of the case commented that the case demonstrated "a point at which internal conflict arises and independence of the prosecutorial role breaks down."

There are number of other areas of conflict that I won't go into. However, with these types of examples in mind, the law reform commission recommended that a new office, the office of director of public prosecutions, should be created. This office would be in charge of the crown prosecution service and would report directly to the Attorney General. The director of public prosecutions would not be a civil servant but would be a lawyer appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council, chosen from a list of candidates recommended by an independent committee.

The rationale offered for the creation of an office of director of public prosecutions is that a tenured professional with no political ties would be better able to disregard partisan political considerations when making decisions to prosecute. We've seen the partisan nature of the Attorney General's office many times in this Legislature.

The recommendations of the law reform commission go on in some detail to deal with matters such as the term, the salary, removal and accountability. I therefore support the portion of the member's resolution dealing with this aspect of the administration of justice.

On the other issue, in terms of the administration of the courts, I want to deal with the recent report on Ontario court administration issued by the Joint Committee on Court Reform, which was formed in 1988 and represents the views of the Canadian Bar Association -- Ontario, the Advocates' Society, the County of York Law Association, the Criminal Lawyers Association and includes representatives from the Law Society of Upper Canada. I want to just refer to some selected statements from that report, because essentially I endorse the recommendations of that report and therefore support the resolution of the member for Willowdale on this particular point.

In referring to some of the comments, I want to point out that this group said it soon became apparent that there was recognition by all participants of the existence of serious problems and the common commitment and desire to address these problems in a constructive fashion. I think the parliamentary assistant for the Ministry of the Attorney General is being overly partisan and too defensive when he looks at constructive suggestions that are coming from a respected member of the bar, the member for Willowdale, coming from the Joint Committee on Court Reform, coming from the Law Reform Commission of Canada, and they choose to put them on the shelf and continue the inertia that exists in the system in Ontario.

I do not have time, because we are limited here, to go into all the bases of the recommendations for the Joint Committee on Court Reform, but essentially, this particular report supports the member's resolution, which I endorse.

The committee refers to some US models which have proven to be very successful. In particular, the federal courts in the United States are administered by the Administrative Office of the US courts, which is referred to as AOC. The federal judicial branch budget is developed by the AOC under the direction of the budget committee of the judicial conference, which is an all-judge committee, approved by the judicial conference and incorporated without change in the president's budget submitted to the US Congress. In fact, some states have provisions for the court's budget to go directly to the State Legislature. In the United States, attorneys general play no role in court administration.

So the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Court Reform, with respect to independent funding of the administration of justice in Ontario, is a good recommendation. I endorse the recommendation in principle. There obviously have to be some refinements in terms of the recommendation of this committee. There obviously have to be some refinements in terms of the member's resolution, how exactly the funding will go into place, but we are at a point where the system of justice in Ontario is almost in disrepute.

In fact, when you see how the judges are speaking out -- I've received confidential calls in my office, as critic for the Ministry of the Attorney General, from judges complaining about the administration of justice. We are seeing them speaking out in speeches, issuing papers. We see the bar, the law society and groups such as the committee I have referred to saying that we need fundamental change. The society is moving in a geometric progression, and our ability to deal with the justice system here in this Legislature is still moving at an arithmetic progression level. We're not keeping up.

I think we should take the good advice of the bar, of the judiciary, of commissions, look at good examples which have been developed and adopt the principles that are embodied in this resolution.

Mr Norman W. Sterling (Carleton): I'm glad to enter into this debate, because as the former critic for the Attorney General, one of the first discussions I had with the member for Willowdale was on this particular topic. I have felt there was a problem with regard to the role of the Attorney General in the province of Ontario.

I think, however, that we must take the suggestions of the member for Willowdale and have some pragmatism about whether or not they can be put into place. I think that, as a Legislature, we should explore the avenues to achieve the principles in the most practical way we possibly can.

Historically, we derive our justice system from Britain, so the role of the Attorney General has evolved over a long period of history, some 800 or 900 years. Originally, the Attorney General was appointed by the king, the crown, to represent his interests in the courts. At a later time -- I think it was around 1400 or 1500 -- the king required that the Attorney General be a member of the House of Commons in Britain. As we progress through history and Canada started to be inhabited, the British governors appointed representatives whom they called attorneys general here in the province of Ontario.

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I don't know whether many members are aware that there are certain cabinet ministers within Ontario who are mandatory under our Constitution. The Attorney General happens to be one of those members of the executive council required by section 63 of our Constitution. It includes the Attorney General, the secretary and registrar of the province, the Treasurer of the province, the commissioner of crown lands and the commissioner of agriculture and public works.

So you have not only a problem in dealing with the changing role of the Attorney General in terms of what we can do in this Legislature, we might have a constitutional problem in making a dramatic change with regard to the Attorney General's role.

His role has been defined to some degree in federal law under the Criminal Code of Canada, but most of his powers -- and the most important part of his power has been his right to prosecute people in the province on behalf of the state -- have been evolved through common law, or through tradition or practice or whatever one might say.

The Attorney General in Ontario has four or five different kinds of functions he undertakes, and therein lies the problem or the potential for conflict between the various roles he undertakes. As I mentioned earlier, perhaps his most important traditional role is to represent the crown, the province of Ontario, in the courtroom in prosecuting people who have harmed the state, ie, the criminals or people who have been charged with a criminal offence.

The Attorney General also defends or sues people in the name of the crown. In other words, the government of Ontario is a very large institution and, as a result, that large institution has to be represented in the courtroom both in terms of criminal matters but also in property matters: civil suits indeed.

Therein lies one of the first problems with regard to conflict. If you're in the court on one side or the other, if you are prosecuting an individual in terms of a crime or you are representing a plaintiff suing somebody or representing a defendant, and if you're sitting in front of a person who's on your payroll, people might think the judge will favour the government as a result of the fact that it's paying the salary of the person sitting in judgement above. I don't think in practice that happens, but someone who has lost the case might think about that very fact.

Another very important function of the Attorney General now is the funding of the legal aid plan. The legal aid plan provides many people with funds who are unable to afford to defend themselves in our court against the Attorney General. But what happens in the situation where the Attorney General is put in a period of restraint, which most people are in the public service, and says to the legal aid plan, "It cost $70 million last year and we're going to have to cut that back to $65 million"?

One might argue that what he is doing, or what the potential conflict might be in the minds of the people, is that the Attorney General wants to win more cases in the court so he's cutting down the resources of the people who are trying to meet him in court or argue against his case in court. There's a problem there.

My colleagues have mentioned the problem with regard to the administration of the courts, and we of course deal with nitty-gritty things like how much judges are paid. I can remember two or three years ago when the former Liberal government faced this problem with provincial court judges, as they then were, who had not had a settlement with regard to pay increases and benefits or in being successful in talking with the Attorney General of this province for two or three years. The Attorney General of this province, trying to establish some distance between his ministry and the independent judiciary, set up a committee called the Henderson committee under Gordon Henderson, a very, very knowledgeable and probably one of the most eminent counsels in Ontario and in Canada, and he comes from the Ottawa-Carleton area.

Mr Winninger: Is he a Conservative?

Mr Sterling: I'm not sure what Mr Henderson is, but he was appointed by a Liberal government.

Interjection.

Mr Sterling: I was asked about his politics.

At any rate, Mr Henderson worked with a group of people and came forward with recommendations. Those recommendations were ignored for three years, and it was only after pushing by myself and by some other members of the Legislature pushing the Attorney General that a solution was reached. Therefore there was the appearance between the Attorney General and the judges that he was in a fight with them, and here are the people whom they are meeting in court and there shouldn't really be conflict between the people who are deciding and the people who are being represented on one side of the court or the other.

Then there's a problem we have presently with the Attorney General, who, as I indicated, under our Constitution and under our legislation in Ontario, is a member of cabinet. Mr Speaker, you may know that I had the privilege of serving in cabinet for a period of four or five years, from 1981 to 1985. During that period of time, I must admit, there were occasions when I, as a lawyer, felt uncomfortable about the discussion that was taking place around the cabinet table -- not that there was any intent or malintent about that discussion, but there were times when I wondered whether or not the discussion should be taking place at all, whether or not political and judicial interests were being intermingled and whether or not it was appropriate for the Attorney General of the province to be in the same room where that discussion was taking place.

I like the British system that has now been set up and I'd like to say, in Britain the Attorney General is an elected member. The Attorney General is appointed, I believe by the government of the day, and is normally a member of the same party. The Attorney General sits in the House of Commons in Britain every day and is responsible to the House of Commons, but he is not a member of the political cabinet. He can consult the cabinet and ask them questions, but he never takes political direction from the cabinet in Britain. Therefore you have an Attorney General who is in all regards, or very much more than our Attorney General, not a political character as such in terms of the cabinet.

I talked to the Attorney General from Britain, I think three or four years ago, and I was interested in the model which Britain has. I asked him how many staff he had, and his total staff was the grand sum of about 20 people. I would imagine that did not include, however, crown attorneys out in the counties around England and Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland. But the fact of the matter was that they have set up a model whereby they have an Attorney General but he is separate and apart.

Under our system, we had back from 1971 to 1985 a character, or a cabinet minister, if you want to call him that, called the Provincial Secretary for Justice. Actually, I served in that role for about a year and a half, from 1981 to 1982 or 1983.

I proposed at that point in time that perhaps it would be more appropriate within the government structure to transfer from the Attorney General certain parts of those functions which I mentioned before. Legal aid perhaps should be over to a Provincial Secretary for Justice. You could transfer in fact just about all of the functions, save and except the prosecutorial role and maybe a legislative role as well, because I don't think a legislative role is as political or whatever.

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You and our future governments might also consider the option of in fact following the British model and saying that the Attorney General shall not be a member of cabinet and that a secretary for justice shall take up all of those other roles, other than the prosecution or the defence of the crown in civil suits or whatever.

I agree with the thrust of my colleague's resolution and I will vote for the resolution. However, I am concerned about setting up another body which is not directly accountable to the government. I am very much concerned with the bodies which we have already which claim to be responsible to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. We have had difficulty in getting accountability back to the Legislative Assembly for those independent bodies.

I think it can be done through some kind of compromise, perhaps a more pragmatic and practical approach which I have possibly put forward in terms of splitting the role of the Attorney General between two ministries. Whether or not you want to remove the Attorney General from the cabinet is another consideration one might make, or in fact the Attorney General might want to remove himself from some but not all discussions of cabinet.

I want to leave the rest for my colleague to respond and add on to the end of his remarks.

I have enjoyed this. I have enjoyed a debate on an intellectual issue which I think should be carried forward more in this Legislative Assembly during private members' resolutions.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for London South.

Mr Winninger: I appreciated the remarks of the member for Carleton. I think it's quite interesting that not only did he serve as justice critic in the last government, but I also believe the one time that he served as parliamentary assistant to the Attorney General; he can correct me if I'm wrong.

The Deputy Speaker: I made a mistake. I suddenly realized that you've already addressed the House and this is not your bill. Normally, the one who introduces the bill has two minutes to -- unless I have unanimous consent to do so. Agreed? Agreed. The member for London South.

Mr Winninger: Thank you.

So as parliamentary assistant to the Attorney General of the day -- perhaps it was Roy McMurtry, I'm not sure -- as I said earlier, his government sat on a recommendation that was made way back in 1975, 17 years ago. Now he comes before us as a born-again acolyte of judicial administration of the courts and the establishment of a director of public prosecutions.

He also talks about legal aid. He suggests that because of a perceived or actual conflict, the Attorney General might diminish the resources available to legal aid. I put it to members: The facts speak for themselves. In the last two years, due to the rising demand for legal aid, the Ministry of the Attorney General has contributed 50% more than in 1990. If anything, the costs of the legal aid system are going up, not down.

The member for Ottawa West suggests that this Attorney General is reactionary rather than proactive. Ian Scott was pretty good in his day, but I suggest that this province now is blessed with the most progressive Attorney General it's ever had. Even Chief Justice Lamer of the Supreme Court of Canada paid the Attorney General a compliment on the way he was able to deal with the result of the Askov decision so effectively and in such a timely fashion.

At the time of the Askov decision there were approximately 205,000 criminal charges outstanding in this province. Of these charges, 151,000, or 74%, were in jeopardy of delay. After injecting a not insubstantial amount of money into the justice system, $39 million, including hiring and appointing additional judges, prosecutors and court officials to handle the delay and ensuring sufficient space was available, now, of the 188,000 charges pending in the province, only 17% are scheduled beyond the time guidelines set out in Askov. That's either due to the complexity of the case or, in some cases, the defence has waived its right to plead undue delay.

I promised that I would refer to some of the initiatives taken by this government in the interest of making our justice system work more effectively and in a more cost-effective manner for constituents. Some members of the opposition may say that there are ways to create accountability were financial administration of the courts to be transferred to the judiciary, but I would have to go back to my constituency and ask my constituents: "Who do you want to make basic decisions regarding where money is spent on the courts and whether too much money or too little money is being spent? Do you want a democratically elected government to make those decisions or do you want an appointed judiciary to make those decisions?" This is part of the consultation that we have to enter into.

Earlier this year the Attorney General said to the people of Ontario that Ontario's justice system must be coordinated, it must be responsive, it must be accessible and fair, its practices must be efficient and its resources well managed. Its decisions must be enforced and respected and greater emphasis must be placed on prevention. The court system should be reserved for those matters to which it is best suited. Reforms aimed at achieving this vision will preserve and may enhance the integrity of the system.

Over the next 20 years we may require upwards of 100 new courtrooms, at an average cost of $2 million to $3 million each. So this government is exploring, with the judiciary and other parties interested in the functioning of the judicial system, measures that we can invoke to make better use of available space to avoid major capital costs.

In view of the financial constraints in this economy and that this government faces, with the soaring demand for access to the justice system and plummeting revenues, a number of initiatives have been undertaken.

We're exploring ways in which judges, lawyers, court staff, court users and other partners in the judicial system can make better use of court facilities, including holding tiered-court sittings.

We're developing a pilot project for an intake court for criminal matters, including screening of police charges by crown attorneys, disclosure to the defence and limited use of court duty counsel to defend summary conviction and minor indictable charges.

We're exploring the possibility of a video remand system so that prisoners would not have to leave detention centres and so police confessions might be videotaped. We're exploring improvements to procedures and technology in court reporting services. We're improving the enforcement and collection of fines and exploring the alternative of civil remedies such as licence removal.

We have joined initiatives with the federal government on Criminal Code amendments that would expedite court proceedings, such as allowing senior police officers to attach bill conditions, and we're looking at the reclassification of offences.

We're exploring alternative dispute resolution techniques, such as arbitration for construction disputes. We're exploring satellite courts and evaluating them in the light of modern transportation routes and population trends, looking at their impact on access to the justice system -- not to mention the announcement of the pilot project for supervised access sites, amendments to the Arbitrations Act and the Class Proceedings Act, increases to the small claims jurisdictions and a variety of other initiatives that no previous government has had the courage to implement.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Willowdale, you have two minutes to reply.

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Mr Harnick: Mr Speaker, I understand that we have a minute left on the clock, or 53 seconds, that I would also like to use.

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): It's our time.

Mr Harnick: Which is our time as well.

The Deputy Speaker: Is there unanimous consent? Yes, that's fine.

Mr Harnick: I regret the fact that we are having what I consider to be an intellectual debate. My friend the member for London South approached it in what I would describe as a pretty vitriolic way, and I regret that. But one of the things that causes me great concern over this issue -- and quite frankly, I'm not really interested in what a politician's opinion about this is -- but I'm caused some distress when the Chief Justice of Ontario states:

"The system has failed because the Ministry of the Attorney General has imposed a top-heavy bureaucracy on the administration of the courts, one which has little experience in the courts and courts administration. It has failed because the government has failed to recognize the need to safeguard the judicial independence which makes the courts different from government agencies.

"It has failed because it did not reflect section 93 of the Courts of Justice act, which, in restating the principles laid down in the Supreme Court decision called Valente v The Queen, provides that the judiciary shall determine the sittings of the court, the assignments of judges to sittings, the assignment of cases to individual judges, sitting schedules and the makeup of trial lists and courtroom assignments.

"Most importantly," Chief Justice Callaghan says, "it has failed because it does not comport with the constitutional principle that the judiciary should be independent of other branches of government."

When the Chief Justice of this province says that, I think every person in this room has to be concerned, every member of the public has to be concerned and has to stand up and say that while the Attorney General did just fine looking after the Askov case, when he spent $27 million and left the justice system with nothing, tapped out, so that the rest of the civil side of the justice system is faltering, it is just absolutely burying your head in the sand.

When the Chief Justice of the province says that the system is failing, surely a debate on something like this is timely and important. I would hope that we would all consider it, not as politicians but recognizing that a member of the judiciary, who also, I might add, was the Deputy Attorney General for many years and knows this system probably better than any of us will, makes these kinds of comments.

May I just close by reading what former Chief Justice Dickson said about the independence of the judiciary:

"It is essential that the public have faith and trust in the judiciary as impartial adjudicators of all disputes of a legal nature. I fear that public faith and trust may be put at risk by the existing nexus between the judiciary and the Minister of Justice. Preparation of judicial budgets and distribution and allocation of resources should be under the control of the chief justices of the various courts."

The Deputy Speaker: The time allotted for the first ballot item has expired.

RURAL ONTARIO

Mr Johnson moved resolution number 29:

That, in the opinion of this House, recognizing that the rural regions of Ontario have concerns that are distinct from those of the urban regions and that it is important for government policies to take these differences into account; recognizing also that this government now must deal with the economic and social problems of rural Ontario, and in particular with the issues of planning, resource development and of the environment; and recognizing that it is important that rural regions be given representation at every level of the decision-making process, the government should do one of the following:

(1) Create a ministry or secretariat of rural affairs;

(2) Expand the mandate of an existing ministry to include rural affairs;

(3) Create a rural development commission or agency.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Mr Johnson has moved ballot item number 28. Pursuant to standing order 96(c)(i), the member has 10 minutes for his presentation.

Mr Paul R. Johnson (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings): It wasn't by luck or by chance that I designed this resolution. I must say that I come from a part of Ontario that, compared to other parts of Ontario, is about as rural as you can get. Except for two small towns, namely Picton in Prince Edward county and Napanee in Lennox and Addington county, the rest of my constituency is mostly rural. There are some other small villages and hamlets, but for the most part I guess I could say that I truly represent a constituency of rural Ontario.

I was a municipal councillor some years ago. In Athol township, where I was a councillor, it became apparent to me at that time that the relationship the municipalities had, and indeed rural Ontario had, with the provincial government was such that there was a feeling that there was some misunderstanding in Toronto, as we always say in rural Ontario, or at Queen's Park, about the real and true needs of rural Ontario.

I've asked for a number of things within my resolution to give the government some options, because we know that if we're very demanding and very direct, sometimes what we ask for isn't what we get.

Certainly I think a ministry or a secretariat of rural affairs would be in the best interests of rural Ontario, but I want to say that it doesn't have to cost a lot of money to have better representation for rural Ontario. I'd like to think that a minister without portfolio responsible for rural affairs would be a good ministry, but then again maybe a secretariat that represented rural Ontario would be the best way to go.

As I said, I was a municipal councillor, but I've had the opportunity recently as a member of this Legislature to travel throughout my constituency and other parts of rural Ontario, and I've listened very closely to what the municipal politicians have had to say, to what the people have had to say, and, in my opinion, it's not a new problem. I want to make that perfectly clear. This is something that's been ongoing for a long period of time.

I think it's appropriate at this point in time to raise the issue of how, or how not, rural Ontario is treated by the governments of this province. I don't think it's been done with any direct disdain for rural Ontario. It's sort of the result of happenstance. I think rural Ontario wants better recognition at the cabinet tables of the governments of this province, and I don't think there's a member in this House who would disagree with that once he becomes aware of it, and I think that's what we want to do today. We want to have some dialogue within this venue, the Legislature of Ontario, where we can voice our concerns.

This chamber is full today with the members from rural Ontario, so that shows you they are very concerned indeed about rural Ontario and the role it plays in the government of this province.

Presently, we have a Ministry of Northern Affairs, and I recognize that it's a very important ministry and is a ministry that would deal with those issues that are particular to northern Ontario. I think that's very important, and I wouldn't want to suggest that we not have a Ministry of Northern Affairs.

But with regard to rural Ontario, I like to think it's unique enough and its differences from the rest of Ontario are substantive enough that the resolution I have brought before this Legislature today will be given some very serious thought by the government and by all the members of this Legislature.

Within my own constituency I have a chance quite regularly to talk with my municipal politicians, and they tell me they are concerned about how well they are heard or understood at Queen's Park. Certainly all of us, as members of this Legislature who represent rural constituencies, come before this Legislature and bring our concerns into this House, and still there is that concern that maybe the message that rural Ontario wants to give to the Legislature of Ontario, to the cabinet of Ontario, isn't strong enough. It isn't the kind of message that is being heard as well as the people in rural Ontario would like.

We must remind ourselves from time to time that taxpayers in this province pay taxes to the federal government, the provincial government and the municipal government and there's only a limited number of them. These taxpayers are quite concerned. They say that some of the programs, some of the decisions that are made at Queen's Park are made with an urban flavour, an urban characteristic that doesn't really represent the smaller, less densely populated areas that are rural Ontario.

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When we look at how municipalities raise their taxes to pay for their programs and the services that all people in Ontario want, they believe there is an inadequacy with regard to how some of these programs are developed. They feel if there was a voice at the cabinet table, rural Ontario would be represented in such a way that some of these shortcomings and problems that become realized as a result of changes in legislation or regulations may not happen. I think that's a very important argument.

Certainly I can use the example of education, not to be opposed in any way to the changes the Minister of Education has advocated for the people of this province. However, I want to speak about my county of Prince Edward, which is within my constituency of Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings. It's the one school board that I, as a member of this Legislature, am entirely responsible for, inasmuch as a member of this Legislature can be responsible for school boards. I know they're having some difficulty with some of the programs the Ministry of Education would like to see implemented. They are having problems because they don't have that density of population or that tax base to draw the dollars without a great hue and cry from the taxpayers within that area with regard to raising the funds for the programs.

Rural Ontario is not a rich area. I think if we examine rural Ontario more closely, some statistics from Statistics Canada very recently suggest to us that rural Canadians and those people in rural Ontario have a higher mortality rate, they have more serious health problems and they have lower literacy rates than their urban counterparts.

Towns and villages have difficulties in luring new businesses. Trying to get a business loan in a small town is not an easy thing, especially during these very difficult economic times. Also, according to some of the statistics, economic downturns affect rural areas first and hardest. Let me tell you, Mr Speaker, that's the message I'm hearing from my constituents.

Unemployment is about 25% higher in rural areas. That means that of unemployed people in the province, you would find it would be 25% higher in rural Ontario. As a result, we find that poverty becomes an issue in rural Ontario. It has a rural flavour, if you will. It's somewhat unique. It's not the same as in some of the urban areas.

I've offered three options to the government and I just want to reiterate them:

To create a ministry or secretariat of rural affairs: That would be my first and foremost option if I was to make a choice; that would be my first choice.

To expand the mandate of an existing ministry to include rural affairs: If we can't have my first choice, then the second choice isn't too bad. It's going to send a message to rural Ontario that the government or the Legislature of Ontario is more concerned about rural Ontario.

To create a rural development commission or agency: That too has some merit, but it's not my first choice.

In winding up, I just want to say that I think this resolution is one that doesn't come from me; it comes from all those people in rural Ontario whom I've spoken to. In fact, some members of my caucus have raised this issue previously with me, and --

The Deputy Speaker: Your time's expired. Thank you.

Mr Johnson: -- on their behalf and on behalf of all rural members, I just want to suggest that they support this resolution.

Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): I'm very pleased to be allowed the opportunity to speak to this important resolution. At the outset, I want to say that because of my concern for the survival of rural Ontario, I will be supporting the resolution brought forward by the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings.

I do have some reservations, but before proceeding with outlining the reservations, I just want to acknowledge the increase on rural municipalities as the province downloads in various ways in services on local and municipal councils and on county governments, and increases, of course, the standards and imposes regulations as government proceeds. I well recognize the view in rural Ontario that Toronto solutions are in many cases imposed and they're not seen as being the answer or indeed as being helpful.

I want to point out the tremendous increase in local taxes being experienced in many rural areas of the province, and I specifically mention the Haldimand county section, the towns of Haldimand and Dunnville in my own riding, where there are tremendous, inordinately high taxes in comparison to my own area in Brant county.

I realize the face of Ontario is changing and it has changed, and I attribute that to the construction of the superhighways. The QEW, of course, goes back prior to the Second World War in 1939 and attracted development and industry, but since then we've seen the construction of the 400 series of superhighways, highways 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, and there are probably some others. They are attracting the industry, the development and the people, and as they attract the development, the cities are expanding.

We see London-Middlesex, of course, in a present bill and how much the city of London is growing at the expense of the rural municipalities.

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): Progressive liberal.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, order.

Mr Eddy: It seems the rural municipalities are not allowed to have commercial and industrial development, and I think that's a shame.

But the superhighways are attracting it and as that happens the rural areas in the hinterlands, if I can use that term, are indeed losing industry. Many areas are one-industry towns or villages. They lose that and there's nothing there to replace it. Jobs are lost and the population diminishes, and that certainly accentuates the problem so I'm very pleased to speak to that.

Mr Johnson's resolution states "that this government now must deal with the economic and social problems of rural Ontario," and I agree with that, although I find it quite ironic that the member's government actually decreased the Ministry of Agriculture and Food's budget by 6% this year. This indeed was the first cut in agriculture since --

Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): Ten per cent.

Mr Eddy: Ten per cent? Thank you, sir. I appreciate your help, honourable member. This is the first decrease, I'm told, since 1985.

It is with great pride that I remind members on both sides of the House that the Liberals increased the budget for the Ministry of Agriculture and Food by over 60% during its short stay in government. In its now famous Agenda for People, the NDP --

Mr Villeneuve: They changed the ministry.

Mr Eddy: Well, we would have done more probably if we had stayed.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, order.

Mr Eddy: The NDP promised in its Agenda for People that $100 million would be made available for low-interest loans for farmers. However, after taking office, the government initiated the Hayes task force, which presented a report on recommended farming initiatives during early spring.

There's no mention of $100 million in election promises in the options that are being discussed in the report. The long-term proposals in the report all involve government guarantees on private funds as opposed to direct government funding, as we feel was promised.

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Does this now indicate that the government is considering following through with the promise? Is the government going to stop putting the burden of farm financing on the backs of struggling rural communities, because most of them indeed are farm assessment? That's what the backbone of the rural communities is. So that is a question I have.

As I stated earlier, I support the resolution, but I really don't believe we need to create a separate ministry or secretariat of rural affairs, not that that wouldn't be an advantage. It's because I don't believe this type of expenditure would be tolerated by the electorate, and of course Mr Johnson spoke to that, that it doesn't need to cost a great deal.

I do support the idea of expanding the mandate of an existing ministry to include rural affairs. However, I don't believe the idea would be to hire more civil servants, but to refocus the kind of assistance the ministry offered. I also support the idea of creating a rural development commission or agency.

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture believes that the reason rural development strategies fail is because they are based on a top-down planning approach. However, the ministry is utilizing a bottom-up approach in its community planning pilot project in Huron county. The member for Huron is present, I'm pleased to see.

I believe there are at least two other pilot projects in the province. There is a municipality in my own riding that has an application pending and I hope that can proceed. It's a large rural township that needs the advantages the project offers and I hope could be accomplished.

The federation is hopeful of success in this project. A group of community leaders identify local problems and then plan and implement integrated solutions to the problems. The ministry's role in this project is to provide resource people to the group while the county provides a professional facilitator. The OFA hopes this approach will be utilized in other counties.

For this reason, I believe that a rural development commission or agency would be most beneficial to the rural communities. If it could be designed so that the communities are consulted at the beginning of the process in order to identify the problems instead of at the end of the process in order to listen to solutions, certainly success would be better attained.

The decline in the farming industry in the last 10 years has put tremendous economic pressure on Ontario's rural communities. Rural development initiatives are required to enhance the natural economic opportunities available in rural communities for new on-farm and off-farm business ventures. Rural members know that family farms are depending more and more on off-farm income in order to support their farming operations, indeed in order to survive these days, and that is a fact.

Our rural communities need the same support in planning their economic viability as the Ontario government is giving to the GTA. Perhaps with the establishment of a new rural commission or agency we would be able to help our rural communities, which they greatly need.

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I welcome the opportunity to comment briefly on this important resolution brought forward by the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings. In fact, it's so important that I would like to read it into the record one more time:

"In the opinion of this House, recognizing that the rural regions of Ontario have concerns that are distinct from those of the urban regions and that it is important for government policies to take these differences into account; recognizing also that this government now must deal with the economic and social problems of rural Ontario, and in particular with the issues of planning, resource development and of the environment; and recognizing that it is important that rural regions be given representation at every level of the decision-making process; the government of Ontario should do one of the following:

"1. Create a ministry or secretariat of rural affairs;

"2. Expand the mandate of an existing ministry to include rural affairs;"

"3. Give added support and priority to the activities of the Rural Advisory Committee;

"4 Create a rural development commission or agency."

I consider the resolution to be important, because many of those who live and work in rural Ontario live in poverty, and the NDP government fails to realize that poverty is just as rural as it is urban. Our farmers may not be unemployed, but no matter how hard or how long they work, they just cannot make ends meet. They fall into debt and they lose hope.

Our farmers are not included in the government's long-term vision of the future. Our cheap food policy is neither kind nor just to our farmers. They are part of an economic system that does not treat them fairly or equitably. They earn less than the minimum wage even though they produce what we cannot live without: the food on our tables. Farmers could make a decent living if only they were paid fair prices for what they produce, enough to at least recover their costs. Others in the food chain prosper while farmers suffer. That is a sorry state of affairs.

In rural Ontario we are particularly fortunate in having some of the best agricultural land in the world. Our harvest is bountiful, but most of the time farmers are taken for granted. In 1991, the NDP government announced the appointment of a Commission on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario, the so-called Sewell commission. They were to travel around the province and develop a new system of planning and land use development for Ontario.

You can bet that a commission made up of city folk will come up with some recommendations that are not going to sit well with rural communities, including our farmers. What do a bunch of people from the city know about septic tanks and sewage systems and water allocation questions that the people in rural Ontario don't know? I can tell you, I don't think John Sewell knows.

The time has come for this government to finally realize that it becomes the responsibility of any society to collaborate with its agricultural and rural community to ensure productivity and fair distribution. Rural Ontario is the backbone of our province, and this implies that we all do our part to ensure that the inheritors of the good earth can stay on it, work it profitably and preserve it for the future generations.

Any modern province like Ontario that fails to protect and promote its rural community is headed for big trouble. A province that is not reasonably self-sufficient and secure in its production of food and the preservation of the rural way of life risks losing a precious measure of independence, security and prosperity.

As I noted earlier, the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings is trying to make this matter as easy as possible for his own NDP government and for his colleagues by providing them with a resolution with multiple-choice answers. The government is asked to "create a ministry or secretariat of rural affairs" -- that is the member's first priority -- "Expand the mandate of an existing ministry to include rural affairs," or "Give added support and priority to the activities of the Rural Advisory Committee" or "Create a rural development commission or agency." I've said that before.

It is my hope that this government will select choice number 2, "Expand the mandate of an existing ministry to include rural affairs," perhaps within the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Civil servants already employed by the ministry could deal exclusively with rural affairs, and use money for that purpose that is already part of that ministry's budget.

I don't want to see more taxation to pay for more civil servants working in a new bureaucracy, especially when we have the budget already cut by 10% now in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. This government has got to get its spending priorities in order and spend money that is already there more wisely, more efficiently and more effectively. This government must realize that the current bleak economic climate simply cannot support the creation of another new and expanded bureaucracy.

There are two PAs attached to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. The Ministry of Agriculture and Food's budget has been reduced. What have these two parliamentary assistants been doing? Have their salaries been reduced? I think not. Perhaps they should consider that in the near future. The member is not paying attention, but I think I finally got to him.

I thank you for the opportunity to say a few words and I hope that in the future this government will realize the ineffective way it's been dealing with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

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Mr Dennis Drainville (Victoria-Haliburton): It is an unusual privilege indeed to speak today on behalf of rural residents of Ontario. I have lots and lots of material and I only have five minutes, so I'm going to have to summarize a number of issues, but let me be very clear.

We hear a great deal of, I think, unfortunate rhetoric around the issue of the difficulties of rural people in Ontario making their needs and aspirations known to the government and to the bureaucracy. I want to cut through the rhetoric and just say this is a problem that's been with us for a long time, and it has more to do with demographics and structural problems than it has to do with political will.

In fact, in terms of the change in demographics over the last 50 years, we've seen a real shift in Ontario in the power base. The power base is now with urban areas, and consequently those municipal infrastructures have been built up in those urban areas. More people live there. More money goes there. More services are offered to those people. In fact, we have a situation in which those who make decisions -- on a day-to-day basis, not the political decisions; the decisions on how various programs are developed and how they are administered -- those people who make those kinds of decisions are out of touch with the reality of rural Ontario. So it's an opportunity today to speak to that reality.

I'd like to say first of all that, as for my own area of Victoria-Haliburton, there are a number of issues that are very particular and make Victoria-Haliburton, like other rural areas in Ontario, very particular.

Access to government: In our area we do not have many government offices, and therefore in my own constituency office we end up working as brokers, trying to connect people to the various levels of government, trying to help them to access programs, trying to help them to cope with the bureaucracy in Ontario, but not having the means to do it, because there are few enough members of the bureaucracy there in our area to support the different questions and different people who are coming forward.

Also, I'd like to say that in terms of the rural population, there are some interesting figures. In Haliburton county, for instance, the population of seniors is 20.36% of the total of that county. The same in Victoria county; it's 17% of the overall population. What we're seeing is an increase in the number of seniors in our area.

What does that mean? In terms of infrastructure, it means we need heightened health care. We need more supports that are just not there for seniors in those areas. But does that mean we get more money coming into our ridings? In fact, no, that's not the case. We have great difficulties in trying to access proper programs and proper projects for seniors in our area.

I'd like to speak a bit about one of the most difficult problems, and that is that because Victoria-Haliburton is situated where it is, we have very limited membership on boards and agencies that surround us. For instance, many of our boards are located in Durham, or they're located in Peterborough, or they're located in Toronto, but they're not located in our area. Usually, when we want a decision, whether it be in terms of health care or whether it be in terms of a children's aid society or whether it be in terms of even the Ministry of Transportation, we have to go outside our area to represent our views and put forward the needs of the people of Victoria-Haliburton. Very often, we have one seat on a board of directors or one seat on a particular agency that's been set up by the government. In other words, we are always at a disadvantage. We are always in a situation where we have to fight for everything we get.

This is not just the case with Victoria-Haliburton; it's the case right across the province of Ontario in issues surrounding the disabled, in issues surrounding women, in issues surrounding children. In all of those areas we are very, very underfunded in terms of programs. So it is that people in the rural areas begin to wonder indeed whether we're going to be able to get the kind of supports we need.

I would say that the resolution that's put forth by Mr Johnson is a resolution that needs support. It needs support because the voice of rural Ontario needs to be heard loud and clear in this Legislature but also throughout the bureaucracy. I will be standing up and voting in favour of this resolution and I would ask every member of this House to do it for rural Ontario.

Mrs Joan M. Fawcett (Northumberland): I welcome the opportunity to join in the debate on the resolution put forward by the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings, which demands that his government make rural Ontario a priority or, at the very least, that it be recognized by the Bob Rae government.

We from rural eastern Ontario have surely seen the disregard afforded our part of the province by this NDP government. Your government has dismantled the eastern Ontario cabinet committee, the eastern Ontario community economic development program and the Eastern Ontario Development Corp. Is it any wonder that the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings cries for help from his caucus colleagues? But let me tell him, he's knocking on the cabinet door, but nobody's home. Surely the cabinet ministers from eastern Ontario, like the Honourable Fred Wilson from his adjoining riding or the Housing minister from Ottawa, should have made their voices heard by now. But, as he well knows, they haven't.

Perhaps the best example of how Bob Rae's government disregards not only eastern Ontario but all of rural Ontario is the way in which it has humbled the Minister of Agriculture and Food, the member for Hastings-Peterborough. This year's budget decrease of 6%, or $37 million, is the first time the Ministry of Agriculture and Food has seen a decrease in funding since before 1985, when the Tories were in government. The member's cry for help is like a wolf howling at the moon. Surely it's plain for the eye to see that his government has totally disregarded the families and communities of rural Ontario.

It's really difficult not to be negative when talking about the NDP government's record in rural Ontario. Almost every policy or program they put forward negatively affects rural Ontario. I ask, who was speaking for rural Ontario at the cabinet table or in caucus when the Minister of Health made cutbacks to our ambulance services, services that provide access to emergency medical treatment in places where there is none to be found, the services that link many rural Ontarians to hospitals and medical centres?

Did the NDP government forget rural Ontario when it was drafting its plan for long-term care? Did they not realize that we don't need another costly level of bureaucracy that district health units are more than capable of providing? They do provide this and coordinate many of the services that make it possible for seniors to live independently as long as possible. Those dollars could be spent expanding services that seniors and the disabled need, but instead, they continue to remain on long waiting lists.

For the first time in years, municipalities, and certainly municipalities in my riding, have had to turn down supplementary funding offered by the Ministry of Transportation simply because they couldn't afford to match it. You see, municipal governments are far more fiscally responsible than this NDP government. They are not willing to run up record deficits or tax their constituents to overspend in these economically tough times.

Perhaps the biggest problem facing municipal and county councils is that of waste management. I am sure the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings is aware that the landfill capacity in his riding is non-existent and that it could take five to 10 years to get an approval for another site. I ask him, as I am sure many people in his riding and the people throughout rural Ontario do, what are people supposed to do with their garbage? Can't you get your Minister of the Environment's head out of Toronto's garbage to at least look at the situation in all rural Ontario?

As the member points out in his resolution, there is, and I would say more now than ever before, a need for government to recognize not only the unique needs of rural Ontario but the significant contribution rural Ontario can have in rebuilding our economy.

We in our party have always believed that people in rural Ontario have had a strong entrepreneurial spirit. Governments need to promote programs to help rural men and women put good, new ideas to work. The spirit of entrepreneurship in our rural communities deserves this solid backing from the Ontario government.

For instance, why did the government take so long to make the decision to support the ethanol project? It took numerous days of the member for Cornwall as well as the member for S-D-G & East Grenville pleading, demanding, almost shaming the minister into action on this project, which was in danger of being lost to the province of Quebec. Why did something that made such sense environmentally and was energy efficient and cost-effective, to say nothing of the shot in the arm for corn farmers, not get top priority and approval?

The government must make its commitment to help rural communities manage change before change manages them. In doing so, community involvement must be an integral component of the planning process. There must be funding to provide for studies on rural development and to encourage rural entrepreneurs. No longer do we want to hear farm and community leaders say that rural Ontario's greatest export is its youth. No longer can the NDP government stand by and watch the GTA tail wag the Ontario dog. We must recognize rural Ontario for all that it has to offer and make a commitment to help develop and diversify the potential that exists in rural Ontario.

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I commend the member opposite for bringing attention to the plight of rural Ontario. I only hope his government is listening carefully. Of the three options he suggested, certainly expanding the mandate of the existing ministry to include rural affairs -- but one of the key things there, I think, is to stop the cutbacks to the present OMAF. There can be no more cutbacks; we need increases in that budget. In creating a rural development commission or agency, I would definitely want to make sure that it was made up of farmers and rural-thinking people.

Mr Villeneuve: I too am pleased to rise in my place for a few minutes and address the private member's motion from the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings. First of all, I guess I want to admire him a little bit for not quite putting the facts the way they are. Indeed, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food had its budget cut 6% in the budget document and a further 3%-plus announced in August by the Minister of Agriculture and Food, so indeed we have a 10% reduction. I would like the member to maybe address that in his closing remarks. I know he's concerned by that. It is certainly concerning all of us, because Agriculture and Food does have the vehicles in place to look after the rural parts of Ontario. They are set up in all parts of Ontario. If indeed the member's motion is going to meet with approval from the powers that be within this government, I think it has to go to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

It was interesting to notice the Liberal member mentioned that when the Liberal government was in power it increased the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food by 60%. The interesting part about that is they took the farm tax rebate out of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and put it into the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. It was about $150 million, so it didn't mean one penny more from the government to rural Ontario, but it looked good when you added it to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

I remember back in the days when the NDP was in opposition. They promised us a ministry of eastern Ontario, believe it or not. But that sure went up in smoke very shortly after they formed the government, and of course the cabinet did not include anyone as a minister of eastern Ontario. That I guess we can accept.

However, we find out now that the Ministry of Natural Resources is going out into rural Ontario and designating areas as wetlands in spite of the fact that the farmers had no input. It's a great thing to designate so-called wetlands; however, remember people own that land and pay taxes on it. Just like the London annexation -- 64,000 acres -- farmers are very unhappy.

I suggest to those farmers who are in the area that's being annexed that indeed they should have the priority of selling at market value to the annexing body or to the government of Ontario with a leaseback. If they cannot farm without the hassle of that area, then at least they have their money at market value. But right now their rights are being totally disregarded in the London annexation.

More bureaucracy is something we don't need. I attempted to establish how many bureaucrats we have working for the government of Ontario right now. Would you believe that we don't have any more bureaucrats? They're FTEs, full-time equivalents. Now, that's interesting. We have more than 90,000 FTEs, full-time equivalents, working within the bureaucracy of the government of Ontario, up some 10,000 from about seven years ago. If indeed this new ministry is going to bring more FTEs into the system, I'm not sure I'm going to support it.

The Ministry of the Environment is one that gets very much involved in what happens in rural Ontario. I have met recently with a number of people within the Ministry of the Environment because of a certain project that's happening, not only in my riding but in my home community. Yes, the Ministry of the Environment did invest some money for architectural and engineering, but all of a sudden, we've come to where we are going to start putting bricks and mortar in place. There will be a lagoon dug, at least supposedly, and the sewage and water project was about ready to go, but they have no money for new projects. I understand they will continue with the existing projects, but there is no money for new projects. Yet this particular project would bring in some 160 new homes to a small rural community. It would also look after major problems with sewage and water.

But there's no money for new projects. Money has been spent, the engineering is done. Basically the municipality has gone out on a limb and spent some of its own money to go into final design, but there is no money for new projects from the Ministry of the Environment. Yet the same ministry came through and put all sorts of requirements and absolute musts for this municipality to meet, procrastinated, put the things off, and now there is no money.

There are a few letters, one signed by Frank Anthony, the president of the Ontario Corn Producers association, and its heading is "Farming is not a Queen's Park Priority." I appreciate the member this morning realizing that, but he's bringing it with a rather soft touch. I think we have to tell the people of Ontario that Agriculture and Food got a 10% cut in the last year. It's now less expensive for the government of Ontario to provide support for Agriculture and Food than it is to run the provincial jails, for example. Not many people know that. Jails cost more to maintain in Ontario than the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Another interesting statistic is that the Ministry of Labour got a 16% increase in its budget. What did Agriculture and Food get? A 10% reduction.

I compliment the member for recognizing that, but call a spade a spade. That's what been happening. The Minister of Agriculture and Food, the Honourable Elmer Buchanan, I think is doing a great job, but he's a lone voice in the wilderness at that cabinet table, and I'm not sure that creating a new bureaucracy outside of his ministry is going to assist him.

There are two of my friends who are parliamentary assistants. I get to chat with them regularly and we discuss the problems they have in their particular ridings. Give these gentlemen more responsibility within the ministry of agriculture, the only ministry that has two parliamentary assistants. Let's use them. They're already being paid; let's use them.

In the Kingston Whig-Standard, a paper I'm sure the honourable member reads on a regular basis, the September 30, 1992, heading is "Mind-Boggling" regarding the additional costs that are being anticipated for the Ministry of Agriculture and Food: meat inspection and water testing, licensing fees for tractors, the purchase of annual permits by people engaged in food handling and the charging of provincial sales tax on resale of homes. These are costs it is being speculated will be added to the rural Ontario residents as taxpayers.

Another letter here -- and it's too bad the time is so short: "The gambling casinos that will be apparently occurring will destroy the horse racing industry of Ontario, which is anchored within the rural parts of Ontario. It's a multibillion-dollar business, the raising, the training, the production of feed etc, and it will be decimated by the coming of the one-armed bandit, that doesn't eat much hay, but it's sure hard on your wallet."

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"A key difference between the Saskatchewan and Ontario situations is that we have not had the support of the Ontario Premier and the Ontario government seeking redress in the hardship year created last year." This is a letter from the Ontario corn producers, the soybean producers, the wheat producers and the OFA.

We have a major problem, and I have just touched the tip of the iceberg. I appreciate the honourable member bringing it to the attention of his government, but put the facts on the table.

Mr Paul Klopp (Huron): I stand here today to recognize my colleague who brought forth this ballot item number 28. It's amazing: It makes it sound like nothing has been done to this point in time, and I want to try to get the record a little more clear.

My political life started back in the late 1970s. One of the things I didn't hear when I went to meetings was that the government didn't care. As I worked my way along, all of a sudden this word kept coming into meetings, "It's the Toronto solution to rural Ontario." I kept a very open mind, but as time passed, we continued to hear that message. In fact, I think the message was not heard by the Tory government, and it was put out. The Liberals got in. I thought they would catch on that they should talk about rural issues, and not just talk about it but do something about it. I don't have to scratch very deep: We did not hear at the meetings about the situation changing. It still kept going: red tape, Toronto issues forced on local governments in rural Ontario.

I think that was one of the reasons a lot of us in government were elected in rural Ontario, because they were not listened to. More importantly, they were not acted on. In getting here, one of the very first things was the graded lumber issue, which was put in by the Liberals; it came into effect when we got in. I got phone calls in my office: "What are you guys doing putting this graded lumber thing in? Don't you know anything about rural Ontario?" I instantly said, "I'd like to know who did this, we're going to find out about it and we'll fix it."

The first thing I found out was that the Liberals put it in. If they didn't consult rural sawmills, that's their problem. That's just one example. More importantly, we fixed that issue. It wasn't in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, it was in the Ministry of Housing, but the Ministry of Housing doesn't consult with rural Ontario and that's probably one of the reasons that happened, although there may be others.

So what did we do? We had to spend time fixing that problem. To me, it was one prime example of why we need to have the government of Ontario put the loop in of rural Ontario, not just the Ministry of Agriculture and Food but the Ministry of Housing, the Ministry of the Environment, MTO and every ministry. Basically, you take steps at a time, you build, and that's what this is about today.

I don't recall over the last 10 years in this House this kind of debate about rural Ontario. I find it bizarre when I hear questions, especially from the official opposition, which clearly had the mandate to get back on track. I can understand the Progressive Conservative Party losing it, because after 42 years maybe one gets a little complacent and that can happen, but for the Liberals to sit there and do that, I find it bizarre.

More importantly, what have we done? We've started to turn this ship around. One of the first things this government did was set up the Rural Advisory Committee, of which I was honoured to be the chair and have many colleagues on. That was one of the issues, the lumber grading issue. We talked in RAC and said, "Let's get on this," and we helped move it along.

The situation about the whole rural fabric isn't just agriculture; it's the towns. The opposition talked a little bit earlier about everybody leaving rural Ontario. Basically, the policies of government caused that. It's a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. We listen about big multinationals and the free trade issues, but not the fact that you need small businesses and you need rural economic development. We are working on that.

Mr Robert Chiarelli (Ottawa West): Why do they leave it to a backbencher to bring it forward if it's so important?

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr Klopp: Obviously, I've hit a chord. The member knows I'm right. Thank you very much over there for your problems.

We started the pilot projects that were mentioned earlier by colleagues across the floor. You know, the best compliment is when your opposition tells you you're doing a good job, and I thank you.

Of course, it takes time. We've had 10 years with this horse in rural Ontario that's been fed poor hay. You can't fix it instantly. You've got to start rebuilding. People in my riding have told me you don't go for quick solutions, because that is not the right way. It is very painful, but we're working very hard on those things.

I look at the Ministry of the Environment; everybody talks about the situations there. We are working on that to streamline the process. It takes time, but we're working at it.

I look at little things which tell me we're doing things. The community centre in Belgrave, a little hamlet: Very clearly, if we hadn't had an NDP government promoting the idea that the lottery funds go all over Ontario, not just -- we all take our little chance and buy those tickets, and rural Ontario should have just as much chance to get those grants as a large municipality. I'd like to think, and I know, it was our initiative that said: "Belgrave should be on that list. It's just as important as a city of 40,000 or 50,000."

We say: "Let's spend more money. Let's spend more money." The reality is that we can't spend more money; we've got to spend it smarter. In the town of Bayfield the local seniors said, "We need to have something in this little town for our people." You know what happened? Because of the direction from our leaders, the Ministry of Health said, "Go and try to get it resolved, but there is no money." A local solution was arrived at. I went to that seniors' opening that day. Bayfield people do pay taxes, but it didn't cost the taxpayers anything and they got a service they wanted.

Indeed, I think we are doing great things. We are moving as fast as we possibly can, and today is one of these examples to show that we do care about this province and rural Ontario.

Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): I am very pleased to be up here speaking in favour of the private member's resolution of the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings. I don't have a whole lot of time, so I'll just touch on some of the issues that were raised.

The Liberals, for example, talked about the budget and cutting back on the budget. Needless to say, the public knows, and all the farmers and all the rural communities know, that the Liberals left us with great debt and pretended they had excess money.

The other issue they talked about is that it took us so long on the ethanol situation. Why are you only interested in it after this government got into power? You weren't interested when you were in.

The member from the Conservative Party was talking about two parliamentary assistants. There are two parliamentary assistants in there who do work very hard. The difference is that the parliamentary assistants to the previous governments never had any input and weren't invited into many of the meetings with the Minister of Agriculture and Food.

The difference is that this government, even though there are certainly cuts in the budgets -- and not just that budget. We do not like to see cuts in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food budget at all; none of us does. But let me tell you one thing. This government, especially the Minister of Agriculture and Food, is doing a better job and spending our money more wisely, with less money. The farmers told us, "If you can put together a good program with less money, it's better than what the previous governments did." They spent lots of money on poor programs, ad hoc programs.

We had a program, the farm income assistance program, because of the financial review committee, where the farmers came to me and said, "This is the first program that I, as a farmer, was eligible for because you have set this program up for the people most in need." I think that's very important.

With regard to some of the problems we do have, the issue was raised on the annexation in the London area. I think with this type of resolution, and if this is followed through, there would be more and better input from the rural community to deal with some of these issues, because the things that we have in legislation that's passed or bylaws, or whatever the case, that are done in Toronto, traditionally for too many years these things have not necessarily met the needs of the people in rural communities.

The other thing is that with all the programs like FIAP, like the commodity-based loan program, the private mortgage program, the rural loan pool, the apprenticeship programs, these things that we're dealing with right now, let me tell you, this is the first time that we've had every farmers' association and all the commodity groups and the farm women's network and all these people on committees dealing with every one of these so the farmers have a voice right from the ground floor up on these.

The Deputy Speaker: The time provided for private members' business has expired.

Interjection.

The Deputy Speaker: Oh, I apologize. The member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings.

Mr Johnson: First of all, I want to apologize to all the members from the north. It was brought to my attention by the member for Cochrane North that there is not a Ministry of Northern Affairs. Indeed, there is a Ministry of Northern Development and Mines. However, that ministry does represent the north.

I listened very carefully to all the comments that all my colleagues in this Legislature made today. I agreed with many of them, and some of them were not so agreeable. However, let me tell you that with regard to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, I think the member for Essex-Kent is right: People from rural Ontario have been telling us for a long time, "You've got to spend your money more wisely." That's the message this government's taking now. It's the message that we've been given. Let's be fair and let's be frank: We're in very difficult economic times right now. At no time have we had to spend our money more wisely.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Food is doing a good job, in my opinion. I don't think the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, representing farmers and the farming communities in this province, should have to deal with all the other issues that I spoke of earlier. They shouldn't have to deal with the issues that are raised by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of the Environment.

I think there needs to be some kind of representative body, and as I've already indicated, I think it should be a ministry or a secretariat. There should be that representative body that is available for the people in rural Ontario to lodge their concerns with that comes before the cabinet so that there is true and real representation of rural Ontario at the cabinet. In my opinion, that has never happened in previous governments. It's not happening now. It doesn't have to cost any extra money. We can redistribute moneys within other ministries.

The Deputy Speaker: The time provided for private members' business has expired.

COURT SYSTEM

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): We will deal first with ballot item number 27, standing in the name of Mr Harnick. If any members are opposed to a vote on this ballot item, will they please rise?

Mr Harnick has moved private member's resolution number 24. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour of the motion will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the nays have it.

Pursuant to standing order 96(f), the recorded vote on this ballot item is deferred.

RURAL ONTARIO

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): We will now deal with ballot item number 28, standing in the name of Mr Johnson. If any members are opposed to a vote on this ballot item, will they please rise?

Mr Johnson has moved private member's resolution number 29. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour of the motion will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Call in the members. This will be a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1206 to 1210.

COURT SYSTEM

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Will the members please take their seats. We will now vote on ballot item 27, standing in the name of Mr Harnick. All those in favour of the motion will please rise and remain standing until your name is called.

Ayes

Arnott, Bradley, Brown, Callahan, Caplan, Chiarelli, Cunningham, Drainville, Eddy, Elston, Eves, Fawcett, Harnick, Jordan, Kormos, Lessard, McLean, Miclash, Murdock (Sudbury), O'Connor, Owens, Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt), Poole, Sterling, Turnbull, Villeneuve, Wilson (Simcoe West).

Nays

Abel, Akande, Bisson, Carter, Cooper, Coppen, Dadamo, Duignan, Farnan, Frankford, Haeck, Hansen, Harrington, Hayes, Jamison, Johnson, Klopp, MacKinnon, Malkowski, Mammoliti, Marchese, Mathyssen, Mills, Morrow, Perruzza, Rizzo, Sutherland, Wessenger, Winninger, Wood.

Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): The ayes are 27, the nays 30.

The Deputy Speaker: The ayes are 27; the nays are 30. I declare the motion lost.

RURAL ONTARIO

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): We will now deal with private member's notice of motion 29, standing in the name of Mr Johnson. All those in favour of the motion will please rise and remain standing until your name is called.

Ayes

Abel, Akande, Arnott, Bisson, Bradley, Brown, Callahan, Caplan, Carter, Chiarelli, Cooper, Coppen, Dadamo, Drainville, Duignan, Eddy, Elston, Eves, Farnan, Fawcett, Frankford, Haeck, Hansen, Harrington, Hayes, Jamison, Johnson, Jordan, Klopp, Kormos, Lessard, MacKinnon, Malkowski, Mammoliti, Marchese, Mathyssen, McLean, Miclash, Mills, Morrow, Murdock (Sudbury), O'Connor, Owens, Perruzza, Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt), Poole, Rizzo, Sutherland, Wessenger, Wilson (Simcoe West), Winninger, Wood.

Nays

Cunningham, Harnick, Sterling, Turnbull, Villeneuve.

Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): The ayes are 52, the nays 5.

The Deputy Speaker: The ayes are 52; the nays are 5. I declare the motion carried.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. All matters related to private members' public business having been completed, I do now leave the chair. The House will resume at 1:30 this afternoon.

The House recessed at 1217.

AFTERNOON SITTING

The House resumed at 1330.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

ATTENDANCE OF PREMIER

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): A review of Hansard, the transcript of all proceedings in the Legislative Assembly, can be rather revealing. Consider the following statements:

"What are we supposed to do if they do not come here day after day and choose when to be here and when not to be here?" or

"The Premier has chosen to be away every single day since he announced his retirement in this House, with the exception of the one day we forced him to turn up. If he chooses to be an absent duck as well as a lame duck, that is his privilege, but we are certainly entitled to ask questions."

The author of those legitimate complaints is none other than Bob Rae, the Phantom of the Assembly, the absentee Premier who appears rarely in the House these days, and when he does favour elected members with his presence, chooses to depart early with opposition questions left in abeyance.

To the thousands of men and women in the Ontario auto industry whose jobs may be in severe jeopardy as a result of past and impending announcements of plant closings, the departure of Premier Rae for the Far East must be as dismaying and infuriating as it is to their elected provincial representatives, who wish to hold the Premier accountable and to seek solutions.

The Premier of Ontario should stay home to protect the jobs of General Motors workers in this time of decision by the new corporate regime, rather than abandoning the province to embark upon yet another foreign tour. It is time for the Premier to go to bat for the potential victims of the GM axe now, before the axe falls.

RYAN RIVINGTON

Mr Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): I would like to take a moment to tell you about a remarkable child by the name of Ryan Rivington, son of Mr and Mrs Rivington of Almonte, Ontario. He's a 13-year-old boy who was born with an extremely rare chromosome disorder called Wilf Hershorne syndrome. Ryan is one of only 40 people in North America who have this condition, and of these 40 cases, none of these children have walked and talked to the extent that Ryan has.

According to Ryan's language teacher, Brenda-Leah Dizzell-Jordan, Ryan has personally raised the limits of his syndrome through individual courage, the determination of his family and the support of the students and teachers of Caldwell school in Carleton Place.

Of 608 students nominated throughout North America, Ryan was the recipient of the Yes I Can award for 1992, for which he was honoured in Atlanta, Georgia. This award recognizes the tremendous progress that Ryan has made despite his handicap. Ryan is able to speak in five- or six-word sentences now. He is developing grammatical skills every day, and he's able to communicate through the use of a computer. The story of Ryan Rivington can serve as an inspiration for all families and children who face the challenges of being physically disabled.

FACILITIES IN WINDSOR

Mr George Dadamo (Windsor-Sandwich): I'm pleased to rise in this House today to announce the opening of two unique facilities in the city of Windsor.

I was proud to be part of the opening of Century Secondary School just last week in my riding of Windsor-Sandwich. Century Secondary is the amalgamation of both Shawnee and Cal-Tec schools, which have come together to form a creative new endeavour. Along the way, $2.5 million was spent renovating the 28-year-old building.

It is with due respect that I congratulate Mr Don Henry, principal of Century Secondary, as well as the staff, students and the parents on behalf of my Windsor colleagues.

I'm also pleased to inform members of the Legislature about the opening of the Accessible Housing Services office in Windsor at University and Campbell Avenue. I've had the opportunity to meet with Ms Barb Murdoch, the executive director of the office, and her staff, who will be assisting people in Windsor in need of shelter. They will be working closely with the offices of all the Windsor MPPs and together will find solutions for suitable housing.

Shelter is central to everything in our lives: our families, our work, our peace of mind. Housing is critical to our wellbeing. The service the office will provide to the people of Windsor and Essex county will make a real difference between a place to sleep or sleeping on the streets, and I'm pleased to be part of that solution.

Again I offer congratulations to everyone at the new Century Secondary high school at 1375 California Avenue, and also to Accessible Housing Services on University at Campbell Avenue in Windsor.

POLICE JOB ACTION

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): Yesterday truly was a sad day when 5,000 to 6,000 police officers in this province found it necessary to come to the front lawn of Queen's Park to protest.

In the questioning in this Legislature, the Premier found it convenient to simply quote out of context from a release by Chief Robert Lunney, the chief of police in the region of Peel. I want to make it clear that the chief in the region of Peel is not in support of the job action, but clearly is in support of the men and women of the Peel Regional Police force. He understands the frustration, and in fact has said in an article from the Toronto Star: "Their concerns" -- referring to the men and women of the police force -- "are the same concerns that the chief has, the same frustrations that I've experiencedI'm pleased to tell you that I support them because I feel the same way."

I've asked the Premier to stay home and deal with the police. We understand that on November 5, as has been pointed out by my colleague, the Premier will be leaving. He refuses to stay in this Legislature to answer the questions of the opposition. He refuses to meet with the police officers. He refuses to accept the fact that the chief of police in Peel region is in support of the men and women of that force and wants a meeting to take place. I call on the Premier to stay home and solve this problem.

FAMILY FISHING WEEKEND

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): My statement is for the Minister of Natural Resources. It concerns a unique suggestion from the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters that would promote family activity and foster participation in conservation.

The Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters has written to your deputy minister to suggest that your ministry implement the concept of a licence-free family fishing weekend. Apparently, the province of Manitoba is already promoting a similar event, which has become quite successful.

It is my hope that you will give the federation's suggestion serious consideration. Perhaps a family fishing weekend could take place each year on the civic holiday weekend in early August, because I believe this event would go a long way towards fostering participation in conservation and greater caring for our natural resources in Ontario.

Minister, I think there is another very important reason for holding a family fishing weekend each year in Ontario, and it directly relates to a concern I have with your government's Sunday shopping legislation. Bill 38, An Act to amend the Retail Business Holidays Act, will all but do away with a common pause day in the province of Ontario. I've always believed we should retain Sunday as a traditional day of rest, a common pause day, when we can worship in the church of our choice, rest up for the coming week or spend some quality time with our families. The NDP government's Bill 38 will put an end to this tradition.

Therefore, I urge the minister to seriously consider the federation's suggestion of a family fishing weekend to preserve the family structure as well as fostering participation in conservation and greater caring for our natural resources.

LONDON INVESTMENT IN EDUCATION COUNCIL

Mr David Winninger (London South): I'm pleased to rise in the House today to highlight a small but very positive step towards making Canada more globally competitive.

In my riding of London South, business and education are cooperating to teach grade 8 students what it takes to get and keep skilled jobs. This is being accomplished through an innovative first project of the London Investment in Education Council. Fifty London businesses and organizations will open their doors to 47,000 grade 8 students for three half-days of hands-on job experience. Such organizations as 3M, VanWesten and Rutherford Consulting Engineers, London hospitals and the University of Western Ontario will, on the work site, involve students in exploring a variety of different kinds of jobs.

The ultimate aim of this program is to demonstrate to students that they must be trainable and remain trainable to compete in a changing world, to show them there are not simply jobs to get but skills to learn. This understanding may abide with them throughout their lives.

I support the work of the London Investment in Education Council. I trust that its success will help our children succeed in the future and will help Canada succeed in an increasingly competitive world.

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PREMIER'S CONDUCT

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): I want to express my profound disappointment with Premier Rae. Two events this week have revealed a side of the Premier that is most concerning and in my opinion have done much to damage his personal credibility.

The first was when he decided to send a letter to the chair of the Ontario Municipal Board urging the chair to take action in support of the government. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. This is a quasi-judicial body. It's like a court. The Premier can't be sending letters instructing them what to do. It's wrong and it has done much to damage the personal credibility of the Premier.

Every single member of your caucus knows it's wrong, every cabinet minister knows it's wrong, but what did he do? He chose to defend the indefensible. He should have said he was wrong, admitted it and apologized to the people of Ontario.

The second thing that damaged his credibility was that, right when we're in the midst of an economic crisis, he has chosen to flee the country for two weeks. Right when we see youth unemployment in this province 20% higher -- Ontario's unemployment rate among young people is 20% higher than it is in the rest of the country -- what does the Premier choose to do at this time? He's gone. He has gone to Japan while we in the Legislature want him here to defend his actions. The Premier can run but he won't be able to hide from these issues.

TRANSFER PAYMENTS

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): My statement is to the Premier. Mr Premier, since the rejection of the Charlottetown accord on Monday you have been quoted as saying the economy, jobs and training will be your government's priority.

On January 21, 1992, your Treasurer announced historically low transfer payments of 1%, 2% and 2%. School boards, universities and community colleges recognize these economically difficult times and have made responsible financial decisions based on your government's announcement. School boards and universities are now hearing they may not receive the promised 2% transfer payments for 1993.

This was a contractual obligation your Treasurer announced as part of a multi-year promise. Transfer payment agencies have already budgeted with a 2% increase for the following two years. Salaries have been negotiated and services have been rationalized due to the low transfer payments.

Mr Premier, if this is true, if this is truly a fact, this is totally irresponsible. You cannot effectively run a province while reneging on your financial commitments. No one would run a business this way. How can you possibly run the province in this way?

If you are truly committed to improving the economic situation in this province, you will ensure that school boards, universities and colleges receive their 2% increase for the next two years so that they can continue to educate our youth, so that they can meet the challenges of tomorrow.

Mr Premier, you should know that universities receive approximately $1.9 billion from the government, which means that for every $1 the government invests in higher education, our universities generate some $3.

TORONTO WATERFRONT

Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): I'm pleased to rise to share with all of you a success story in my riding of Fort York.

There was little vision on the part of the Harbourfront Corp and the local municipality when the west Harbourfront community, made up of co-ops and Cityhome buildings, first came into being approximately 10 or 12 years ago. At that time, no plans were made for schools, health and recreational facilities, transportation services or a shopping area for this new community. The residents of this neighbourhood have fought long and hard to bring some of these essential services to the area, and earlier this year I was pleased to attend the opening of the Harbourfront Community Centre.

This past Saturday I was invited by the community to celebrate another success. Faced with a lack of accessibility to affordable food in the community, the residents got together to find a creative, community-based solution to their dilemma. The result was that on August 22 of this year, a small group of volunteers opened up the West Harbourfront Food Co-Op on the abandoned Canada Malting site. At present they stock fresh Ontario-grown fruits and vegetables, an assortment of fruit juices, and bread from a local bakery.

The elected municipal representatives and I strongly support this project and are working closely with the community to find a permanent location for the co-op with better facilities so that a wider range of food products can be offered.

The West Harbourfront Food Co-op is an innovative community initiative which deserves our recognition and praise. It provides residents with nutritious food and invaluable work experience, but most of all it shows what a determined community can accomplish together.

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Pursuant to standing order 34(a), the member for Mississauga West has given notice of his dissatisfaction with the answer to his question yesterday given by the Premier concerning police job action. This matter will be debated today at 6 pm.

Point of order, the member for Welland-Thorold.

VISITOR

Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): I rise with great seriousness and indeed recognizing full well how important points of order are. Mr Speaker, you might recall that some three months ago I announced the birth of George Dadamo's son, Anthony. Well, here he is live at Queen's Park, Anthony Dadamo from Windsor-Sandwich. We all welcome him, with his mother, Maria.

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): On that point of order, Mr Speaker: I noticed that young Anthony was listening with real rapt attention when his father was making his statement in the House today, but I was discussing this with Anthony at lunch and I know how disappointed he is that Premier Rae is not here for his appearance in the House.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I don't know if the member for Welland-Thorold can find anything in the standing orders that allows him to make this point, but how could I rule a baby out of order?

PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): I have a point of order with respect to some of the events of the last few days in this place. I have spent some time, if not my entire waking hours, looking at the rules and the standing orders and other things as we try to find a way in which we can conduct the business of this House. I've read in various places. This happens to be Erskine May, but I've been looking in other places as well, and I look at page 200, for instance, where it talks about the role of the official opposition and the fact that this forum is our only place to do business, our only place to hold accountable the work of the executive of the government of Ontario, the only place to hold accountable the Premier and other people.

While we aren't asking you to sort of go and drag the Premier in here day after day because he won't attend on his own merit, because we understand that's not your role, Mr Speaker, we understand that generally speaking, the standing orders do provide the members of this place with guidance as to how we can do our work.

Our work is to analyse the public policy that is brought here to this House by the government. We have now been forced to deal with Bill 40 on the basis of three days of second reading debate and a few days in a committee over the summer, a committee which excluded almost 75% of the public deputations that wanted to be heard. We have gone through clause-by-clause, which excluded the reading on to the record and the debate of both the government amendments to the bill as it was filed for second reading. We have gone through two days of committee of the whole which also excluded the actual reading of most of the amendments upon which votes were held yesterday.

We have tried several ways of being able to do our business as members of Her Majesty's official opposition. As members of the opposition of this House, we are duty-bound to question, to query and to develop arguments against bad policy decisions. While I understand we cannot always come to an agreement that our case is right, we understand that we must be allowed, as official opposition, to put our case, sir. The standing orders tell us how to do it.

On numerous occasions, there have been questions about whether or not the time allocation motion which has been levied by the member for Windsor-Riverside in his capacity as government House leader actually covers off all the angles, and we have attempted to raise on several occasions means by which we could do our business.

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Just reading these, I have found it somewhat problematic to feel comfortable that I can find anyplace where all the rulings and other things are available for me to consult, because when I raise something that is not specifically dealt with in these items there is, without hesitation, I might add -- and that causes me some degree of pause -- a ruling that the exact translation of the words on the page is to be dealt with. In other cases, I have found that you have liberally interpreted what has been written on the page in order to process the business of the day.

My point of order is this, Mr Speaker: If I cannot rely upon the words written in the standing orders of this House for guidance as to what can and cannot be done, then I would ask that you, Mr Speaker, with the work of your Clerk, right away compile for us a guide for the use of the standing orders, an annotated standing orders issue, line by line which helps us understand where in the dickens you're getting all of your rulings, and how it is that the rulings which you have done so far comply with not only the tradition of the Speaker, but your statements to us as members of the House when you were running for the elected position of Speaker, that the rules of this place would be maintained and that the rights of the minority would be protected in this Parliament.

Mr Speaker, I ask you to consult with your Clerk and to come forth with all the materials in one written document so that I can use it as a companion to the standing orders and so that I cannot be surprised by some new interpretation on an ad hoc basis. There must be, if this place is to run well, a building on the traditions of this House obviously, but there must be a degree of certainty for those of us as legislators.

One final point that I wish to make is that while I know we have some difficulties in the way the procedure of this place works from time to time, it must be well understood that this House, this Legislative Assembly has its own traditions and that we cannot take the traditions of some other forum and move them into this place just because somebody thinks it's better somewhere else.

If there are to be changes made in the way that we do all our work here, then they should be done in accordance with how this institution has developed. I ask you, sir, if you will not help us in understanding what and where all the rules, all these things are hidden so that we will not be surprised.

Finally, we are talking about new rules now, many of which are not part of our tradition, many of which had no existence in this place before June 22, 1992. That, I understand, will cause some pause for being able to write down an annotated version of all those rules.

But the one point that I must make more than ever is the fact that the new rules are really now pushing all these members into a position of being unable to speak on very many of the bills. The time allocation motion will guarantee the government that on any sort of critical public issue it will have only three days to listen to the members. I can tell you that if it is a critical public issue, like the labour bill is, has been and will continue to be, then three days ensures that very few of our members, very few of the Progressive Conservatives and almost none of the government people can ever find time in this forum to raise their constituents' views on the issues.

It must be, Mr Speaker, assuredly a concern of yours and you must tell us how you are going to make this place work in a way that allows us to freely speak, because in my view it is in our best interests and it is in the interests of our constituents to be able to freely speak, and it is in accord with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for the people's forum to be the place where we can put our case.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): I would also like to stand on this point of order and ask you, Mr Speaker, if you would kindly provide our caucus House leader with a written ruling on the point of order offered by our House leader, the member for Parry Sound, last night with respect to your ruling on the mace being on the table.

I'd like written reasons, because as I checked Hansard I could find nothing offered by yourself as to why you ruled the way you ruled. On the point of order that the member stood on, you didn't offer an explanation as to why you ruled the way you ruled. You simply left the chamber when the member for Parry Sound was on his feet on a point of order. You didn't even stay to hear his point of order. You offered no reason as to your ruling on that point of order, and with all due respect, Mr Speaker, I have a very difficult time understanding exactly why you ruled the way you did.

This particular caucus would like to see, in writing, exactly the rationale, the precedents and your reasons for ruling that Mr Eves's point of order was not in fact in order. We would like to have it as guidance for future use, to find out, if we are in the House after 6 o'clock, why we have not adjourned. We would like to know, in precedents, how you could leave the chamber after 6 o'clock, while the House was sitting after 6 o'clock, and revert this House back to committee of the whole. We still have a very great deal of trouble with your rationale, with your ruling. We would like to see it in writing for future use and we ask you to give us that some time next week, because we would like to see a comprehensive review of your decision.

I am flabbergasted. I found it unbelievable that you escaped; you didn't offer a reason and you escaped while a member was standing on his feet for a point of order that I know you saw, and in fact left this chamber from.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): First, to the member for Etobicoke West, who raises a very different point of order, I would direct the member first to Hansard, because I don't know if the member was in the chamber last night or not, but indeed I dealt with the point of order that was raised and provided the rationale for it. However, as is my wont to do, I'm more than pleased to respond in writing to requests by members.

I would like to respond to the member for Bruce. I realize, acknowledge and appreciate the deep interest which the member always shows in the procedures. I understand full well the frustrations which he has expressed. I must say, and I don't want to take it any further, but rather that every piece of legislation which comes before the assembly deserves a full opportunity to be discussed and debated. That's, I think, a very basic principle.

New rules were passed by the House. That is true. The member will know that standing orders are not the only thing that a Speaker must rely on in terms of procedure, that indeed the very references to which he referred, Erskine May, and Beauchesne are two of the reference books which we rely on, and in addition to that, practice and precedent.

The member is correct that we always look first to Ontario, to our own history as a Legislature, to be guided. Where there is no guidance available in that history, we then turn to other sources, usually the House of Commons in Ottawa, Westminster, and on occasion Australia, because they are Commonwealth members and because, of course, Westminster was the first Parliament.

I believe the member will be pleased to learn that currently we are compiling a book on practices and procedures in the Ontario House. That's not completed, but it is well under way through the Clerk's office. That book, obviously, I, like you, would be delighted to see printed as soon as possible.

In the meantime, I can assure the member that I will continue to be guided by the standing orders, the practices, the precedents, the good reference books on parliamentary practice, and indeed at every step of the way will do my best to ensure that we live up to the motto of this chamber: Hear the other side.

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Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): A point of order, Mr Speaker, if you'll indulge me for a moment: I was not in the House at the end of question period yesterday but I do understand a rather interesting ruling was made by you.

When the member for Leeds-Grenville had posed a question, I understand there was some unruly behaviour in the House and the remainder of the time for question period -- I believe it was approximately seven minutes -- had expired. When the House did reconvene or start up again, I understand you refused to recognize the member for Burlington South in terms of posing the supplementary that was left on the original question, and instead you permitted one of the government members to ask a question of a minister.

I would like this clarified in writing as well, sir, because I am not aware of anywhere in the standing orders where it says the Speaker will determine who will ask questions in this place. As I understand it, that is left to each individual party in the Legislature. With all due respect, sir, there are several occasions where questions are split, and one member asks the initial question and another member asks the supplementary, or one member asks the question and there are two supplementaries in the case of lead questions and two different individuals ask the supplementaries.

As I said, I must preface this by saying I was not here, but for you to indicate that the member for Leeds-Grenville was no longer in the chamber, I don't know what that has to do with the fact that the member for Burlington South wanted to ask a supplementary. And I don't know anywhere in the rules where it dictates that the Speaker will dictate to the opposition parties who has the right to ask questions and who does not. I'd like that clarified in writing as well.

We have another precedent, by the way, set by yourself where you did permit that to happen. So now we have one on each side of the issue. You have one where you say it is appropriate, and you had one yesterday where you say it's inappropriate. Maybe we could get our act together and you could clarify that in writing so we all know where we stand.

The Speaker: To the member for Parry Sound: I did deal with this point yesterday. Although the member who raised the point is no longer in the chamber, may I say, if it's of some assistance, that indeed he is correct in his interpretation of the standing orders.

If I could remind members as to precisely what happened, at the moment when we were finally able to restore order to the chamber I looked at the third party, which was entitled to a supplementary. There were a number of members who were standing at the time, all in about the same area as where the desk for the member for Burlington South is located. I could not determine that there was a particular member who wanted to ask a question, as there was a number of members who were simply standing or in the process of leaving the chamber. I then followed the standing orders, which say that the Speaker must go in rotation around the chamber, so I then looked to the government benches and indeed one member was standing, waiting to ask a question.

If the member for Burlington South had actually been standing to ask his supplementary and I didn't notice him because he was surrounded by other members who were also standing, I apologize for that oversight. It was not intentional. I was simply trying to comply with the standing orders.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

ACCESSORY APARTMENTS / APPARTEMENTS ACCESSOIRES

Hon Evelyn Gigantes (Minister of Housing): I am pleased to announce that my colleague Dave Cooke will be introducing amendments today to the Planning Act and to the Municipal Act to allow people to create an apartment in their house.

In June we released draft legislation to allow home owners to create an apartment in their house as long as reasonable health and safety standards are met.

This legislation has many benefits. Jobs are the priority for our government, and this legislation will create jobs in the renovation and building supplies industry.

Grâce à cette réglementation, les personnes accédant à la propriété et ayant besoin d'aide pour rembourser leur prêt hypothécaire pourront louer un appartement dans leur maison, et ce en toute légalité.

Seniors will be able to stay in their own homes longer, with the apartment providing additional income and the security of knowing someone else is living in the house.

All across Ontario, apartments in houses already exist. Most are made illegal by zoning bylaws. There are about 100,000 of these apartments in communities across Ontario, including an estimated 1,500 in London, 1,500 in Thunder Bay, 10,000 in Hamilton and 14,000 in North York. The issue now is how to make them healthy and safe for the people who live there. That's a major purpose of the legislation.

A recent survey asked Ontarians whether they favoured or opposed apartments in houses. Fully 70% of those asked said they favoured it. It's clear that both tenants and home owners want and need this form of affordable housing. Apartments in houses increase the supply of affordable housing at little or no cost to the taxpayers of Ontario, and apartments in houses can also save all taxpayers money by making better use of existing services such as public transit.

This type of housing intensification makes financial sense. In many older neighbourhoods, our services have a much greater capacity than we now use, as the number of people in an average household has decreased. We see increasing numbers of empty nesters and family households with fewer children than ever before. For example, over the last 30 years, the average size of the Ontario household has dropped from 3.7 to 2.6 persons per household.

With this legislation, tenants of these apartments would be able to determine if their homes met necessary health and safety codes without fear of eviction simply because of zoning bylaws, and the legislation would boost the enforcement powers of municipalities. Critics of the legislation would like to continue ignoring the problem of 100,000 existing apartments in houses, most made illegal because of zoning bylaws. The risk to health and safety of the people who live in these apartments is too great to continue neglecting them.

Au cours de l'été, mon collègue le ministre des Affaires municipales, Dave Cooke, et moi avons recueilli les commentaires de près de 300 administrations municipales, organismes ou particuliers. À la suite de ces consultations, nous avons apporté certains changements à la réglementation, et c'est cette nouvelle version que nous vous présentons aujourd'hui.

First, we've included regulation-making power to allow areas on private sewage services to be exempted from these provisions. This is in response to concerns raised by members such as Kimble Sutherland, the MPP for Oxford, and by a number of municipalities.

Second, we are exploring the possibility of putting standards concerning apartments in houses under the Ontario building and fire codes. This should avoid duplication and speed up enforcement. This is in response to suggestions by municipal building and fire officials.

Third, this government intends to fully explore the question, and the accompanying options and impacts, of which municipalities this legislation will apply to.

There is another major benefit to the legislation being introduced today. It provides greater flexibility for municipalities that wish to allow the creation of garden suites for people such as senior citizens or persons with disabilities. Garden suites are separate, self-contained units, typically located in the side or rear yard of an existing house. Garden suites allow seniors to be close to their families while maintaining their own independent living space.

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We appreciate that there have been concerns with the legislation that may not have been addressed. But I want to point out that there will be opportunities, through the legislative process, for a continuing dialogue.

I'd like to welcome some of the people who support this proposal and have joined us in the members' gallery for this occasion. These people have worked hard over the years to have a government respond to the need to bring accessory apartments out into the open and make them safe: Members of INC, the Inclusive Neighbourhoods Campaign, including Marnie Hayes of Metro Tenant Legal Services, Dianne Urqhuart, Michelle McCormick, Barb Jamieson and Bonnie Briggs; members of SOS, the Second Occupancy Steering Committee on Housing, including Lorraine Katryan and Doug Hum, and some home owners and tenants who own or live in an apartment in a house.

APPOINTMENT OF JUSTICES OF THE PEACE

Hon Howard Hampton (Attorney General): I am pleased to advise members of the House today of an important new policy directive for the selection and appointment of justices of the peace in Ontario.

Since becoming the Attorney General, I have tried to ensure that all justice of the peace appointments are made after an open and consultative process. This has included the advertising of vacancies and a review of applicants by community groups composed of members of the public, judges and lawyers.

Today I am pleased to announce that we have decided to expand this ad hoc procedure on a province-wide basis. Eight regional committees will be set up to make recommendations on the selection of justices of the peace. These committees will correspond to the eight judicial regions and will be based out of Brampton, Newmarket, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, London, Ottawa, Hamilton and Toronto.

It is my belief that an independent judiciary is enhanced by a public, open, community-based appointment system.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Hon Mr Hampton: By establishing these selection committees, we are ensuring fair and impartial appointments of justices of the peace and formalizing the selection process to include members of the public.

Our goal is to replace what many considered a system of patronage appointments with one that is fair, neutral and consistent, resulting in the best appointments possible.

As members of the House know, justices of the peace play an important role in the criminal justice system. Justices of the peace --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Order. Stop the clock, please. I ask the House to come to order. Minister.

Hon Mr Hampton: As I was saying before being interrupted, members of the House know justices of the peace play an important role in the criminal justice system. Justices of the peace, or JPs, as they are commonly known, preside over the majority of cases in the provincial offences court. They conduct bail hearings, issue search warrants and oversee the laying of charges to be tried in our courts.

Each selection committee will be composed of a judge, a lawyer and three members of the public representing various community organizations. A member of the courts administration staff and a justice of the peace will also be members of the committee, but with a non-voting status.

Each committee will be responsible for screening, interviewing and recommending to the Attorney General appropriate candidates for appointments as JPs. The Attorney General will then nominate a candidate who will appear before the Justices of the Peace Review Council.

The committees will use standard criteria to ensure uniformity and consistency across the province. The criteria for appointment will be based on an individual's professional excellence in his occupation, outstanding personal characteristics and relevant social and community experience. In addition, those appointed as justices of the peace must represent the cultural and racial diversity of this province. Not only will the new selection process encourage greater community participation, but it will mean uniform standards across the province.

As members of the Legislature can see, the establishment of these publicly dominated selection committees is another step in ensuring that the justice system continues to be accountable to the people of this province. This selection process will ensure that the best and most qualified people are called upon to serve their communities as justices of the peace.

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS LEGISLATION

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Minister of Financial Institutions): I rise today to announce a major review of Ontario's financial services legislation. This review will help the government to streamline regulation and improve the efficiency, growth and stability of the financial services sector in Ontario.

The financial services sector is of vital importance to the Ontario economy. It is a major employer and a significant consumer of information technology and professional support services. The sector plays a key role in financing economic growth, development and renewal in this province. The financial services sector is a strong, stable element of the economy. It has remained so through a period of dramatic change, change which is continuing.

The sector has traditionally been characterized as the four separate pillars of banking, trust and loan, securities and insurance. This characterization is no longer accurate. The range of products and services is expanding while institutions with historical roots in different pillars are competing head to head with each other. The description of four pillars also does not recognize the role played by other institutions such as credit unions and caisse populaires.

We are launching a far-reaching review of the ways in which we regulate this sector in light of the continuing evolution of the financial services marketplace. Current regulatory requirements often duplicate each other. For example, Ontario's loan and trust legislation contains a provision commonly known as equals. Equals requires all trusts wishing to operate in Ontario, no matter where they are incorporated, to abide by Ontario's rules. Equals applies to their operations both within Ontario and outside of Ontario.

Our review will draw upon the benefits of reforms undertaken in other jurisdictions and the extensive body of analytical materials on this subject to adopt our own set of first principles for the sector. We are prepared to examine all creative options and make fundamental changes to the government's role.

On the key issues of solvency and consumer protection, we are prepared to consider significant changes in roles and responsibilities. However, this will only be feasible if other, more efficient mechanisms can be put in place to ensure fairness and solvency.

There are a number of issues particular to each pillar which require attention, as well as many cross-pillar issues. One of the goals of the financial services review is to identify mechanisms, not necessarily governmental, which will empower consumers to protect their own interests in the marketplace. Consumers have very legitimate expectations which must be met as change occurs. Ontario's financial services statutes were developed in and for their times. Each statute and its supporting regulations presented appropriate regulatory structures given industry conditions in those times, and each continues to provide strong depositor and policyholder protection.

The rapidly changing financial services environment, however, has given rise to new issues and to new pressures. Because of their different regulatory approaches and legislative history, Ontario's statutes vary in their effectiveness in responding to these current market changes.

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The financial services review will be undertaken with a number of objectives:

Consumer protection: The interests of the consumer in sound, stable financial institutions and in a fair marketplace are foremost in our minds. In fact, the confidence of consumers is essential to the efficient operation of markets. As the financial services marketplace becomes more complex, consumers must be able to take advantage of new products and services and to have the means to protect their interests.

We are aware of the federal government's establishment of a committee to review deposit insurance. We will be seeking to play a role in this review.

Regulatory streamlining: As was stressed in the last throne speech, the regulatory system must be streamlined. Issues of regulatory overlap, duplication and inconsistent standards, particularly in the loan and trust industry, will be addressed.

A level playing field: Ontario financial institutions -- credit unions, caisses populaires, loan and trust firms, insurers and others -- need sufficient scope to compete in the financial services market and to take advantage of market developments. Legislation and regulations which may have been appropriate for different times and circumstances may now unfairly restrict Ontario companies from becoming full participants in the financial services market.

Economic renewal: Ontario's financial services sector needs a modern regulatory system to strengthen the sector's ability to fulfil its role in the economic renewal of Ontario. A strong, competitive financial services sector is vital to a strong, productive and expanding economy.

The financial services review will be the most comprehensive examination of Ontario's financial services sector ever undertaken in this province. Over the next several weeks my ministry will be issuing a series of discussion documents intended as a focus for detailed consultations, including the report of the insurance legislative review project, a guide to consultations in the loan and trust area and the report of the credit union and caisses populaires legislative review committee.

New credit union and caisses populaires legislation is needed in Ontario, and we intend to move expeditiously in this area. We will work closely with the financial services sector, with consumers, with users of capital, with professional groups and with all interested parties. We want their experience, their knowledge and their help in framing the issues and shaping the solutions.

We intend to take a broad sectoral approach. However, some work is in progress and other activity is further advanced. There are also some issues which are more pressing than others. Rather than waiting for the complete review to be completed, I will be introducing legislation as it is required and as it is completed. I do not want the process to hold up action.

And while the differentiation between the pillars is not as clear as it once was, there may be issues which require different approaches in their application to different institutions. Again, I do not intend to allow the process of review to hinder appropriate policy responses.

Working together, I am confident that we can succeed in putting into place a regulatory framework which protects consumers and encourages the industry to grow and to innovate.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Responses, official opposition.

ACCESSORY APARTMENTS

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): I would like to respond to the statement by the Minister of Housing on accessory apartments. The minister said in the last line of her statement, "There will be opportunities throughout the legislative process for an ongoing dialogue."

The problem is, we don't trust the minister, because she has shown that she may want a dialogue, but she certainly does not want to listen. The so-called consultation on this particular issue is a case in point. The draft legislation was announced in June, with only two months, July and August, for consultation.

I'll ask the minister, exactly what kind of public meetings did you think were going to held in the dead of summer? What ratepayers' groups, what tenants' groups, what meetings of council were you going to get in the dead of summer to debate this legislation and talk about it in a meaningful way?

AMO asked for an extension past the August 31 deadline. You denied that. You say you consulted with the municipalities. The municipalities deny that. They say you did not listen to their concerns, and the draft legislation reflected it.

Madam Minister, this reminds me of the consultation during Bill 121, when, before the deadline for the consultation was even reached, we learned that the Ministry of Housing had completed its second draft of the legislation. You had made up your mind you were proceeding, regardless of what the public said or thought.

I think what you don't realize is that many people in this Legislature agree with the principles of intensification and we believe that tenants in basement apartments deserve protection under the law and that they are entitled to it.

What we don't agree with is the way in which you have gone about this. You have a made-in-Queen's-Park policy which you are ramming down the municipalities' throats, instead of asking for their cooperation and working with the municipalities and giving them incentives and listening to their concerns and addressing them. Instead of that, you decided to ram it down their throats with legislation.

I have talked to people in London, Guelph, Ottawa, Toronto, Waterloo and Timmins, and I can tell you that they do not appreciate the fact that you have taken away the authority of their municipal governments, that you have not tried to cooperate with them.

Why don't you listen to the people when they are telling you, "We like the principle, but we do not like the way in which you are doing this"? Minister, please change your mind.

APPOINTMENT OF JUSTICES OF THE PEACE

Mr Robert Chiarelli (Ottawa West): The Attorney General has established eight regional advisory committees to deal with the lowest-level judicial office, with the public appointee being appointed by the Attorney General. This is intended to help ensure the independence of the judiciary.

One can only refer to the Attorney General's shallow standard of independence on this type of issue when he permits Emily Carasco, a nominated NDP candidate, to continue as chair of the independent Ontario Judicial Appointments Advisory Committee.

Real, substantive issues are being ignored by this Minister of Inertia. We see meltdown of the legal aid clinics across this province. We see access to justice being denied to the disadvantaged across the province.

If the Attorney General doesn't believe the opposition, he should listen to the executive directors of the legal aid clinics across the province, who are saying the same thing. The administration of the courts is close to meltdown, and if he doesn't believe the opposition, he should listen to Chief Justice Frank Callaghan, who publicly states that the administration of the courts is a threat to justice in this province.

With these serious problems, the minister is tinkering with this type of announcement. Shame on him.

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS LEGISLATION

Mr Remo Mancini (Essex South): With the 40 seconds that I'm allowed, I'd like to quickly respond to the statement made by the Minister of Financial Institutions. We in the opposition will be very closely watching the process that the minister has announced. We will be watching for the success of the process.

In our review of such a field, we would also want to look into the effects that this would have on consumer protection, regulatory streamlining, a level playing field and economic renewal. We will be judging the success of this review on how this review affects the very four points that the minister outlined.

ACCESSORY APARTMENTS

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): I particularly want to address the statement made by the Minister of Housing that, over the objections of virtually every municipality, she plans to bring in legislation that will automatically allow every single family dwelling to become a duplex or a two-family dwelling.

While the Association of Municipalities of Ontario agreed with the objective, agreed with the intensification and was supportive of the 1989 housing policy statement that was passed under the authority of section 3 of the Planning Act, 1983, that required municipalities to establish housing intensification policies, it suggested to the minister that rather than usurp what is a municipal authority, rather than come in in a very authoritative way and without any criteria of sewer, water, garbage, capability for decent parks, capability for policing, capability for libraries, for schools, capability for any of these, rather than ignore all that, she should allow it to work with the guidelines of 1989, to work towards intensification within the Planning Act, within the bounds of good planning.

We soundly condemn the minister, the cabinet, the Premier, the NDP government, for telling people that the only way to give them protection for basement apartments is our heavy-handed legislative way, because that not only isn't the only way, it is 100% the worst way.

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The way to proceed, to not throw away all the official plans, to not say to all the planners of the province, to not say to every municipality, basically, "Why are you wasting hundreds of millions of dollars in proper planning?" in making sure that when an apartment is built, that when a single-family home becomes a duplex, when a basement apartment becomes legalized -- and there is another process for that -- we will want to ensure that the proper facilities are there for those families that will live in that apartment --

You have abandoned all of that with this silly piece of legislation, and you, Madam Minister, have totally misled all the people in Ontario who were counting on you to bring forward a comprehensive, sound way of doing this by saying this is the only way. We condemn you for that.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Stop the clock.

I understand full well the members' concern. I listened carefully, and the term "misled" was not applied to the members of the House. It is a term which evokes a response when it's used -- I realize that -- and it's not helpful sometimes, but it is not out of order.

The member for Willowdale with his response.

APPOINTMENT OF JUSTICES OF THE PEACE

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): I'm responding to the statement of the Attorney General, this revolutionary statement that says how he's going to now pick justices of the peace. Well, let me tell him, they've been doing this for the last year. There's nothing revolutionary about these criteria. But listen to this: They're going to advertise -- boy, that's revolutionary. They're going to pick people of professional excellence -- well, that's very revolutionary. They're going to pick people with outstanding personal characteristics -- that's revolutionary. And they're going to pick people with relevant experience. Well, if those are the criteria they use for justices of the peace, they couldn't be elected a government on those criteria.

Now, in terms of patronage, all the senior positions are filled. I guess now we're going to start working on the rank-and-file level.

But, you know, in April of 1992, the Law Times indicates, dealing with training, that training for justices of the peace is not mandatory. I don't see anything about mandatory training in here. Isn't that what this is really all about? I might point out that justices of the peace, who have no legal training, are still dealing with bail hearings dealing with sexual offenders and murderers. Surely the Attorney General could deal with some of the aspects of this that are relevant and important instead of burying his head in the sand.

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS LEGISLATION

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): To Mr Charlton, the minister, I would say quickly that on the front burner of this statement that you made you should talk about the solvency issue. That's the biggest issue facing the people in the province of Ontario today. Yes, there is some blurring involved in financial institutions, but when you come up here today and suggest to them that you're going to open a dialogue, a consultative dialogue, they don't believe you, because a consultative dialogue to this government means a consultative monologue: You talk, they listen.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The member's time has expired. Point of order, the member for Mississauga West.

MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): Mr Speaker, you would note that today in ministers' statements there were three ministers who made statements, and yet we sit here day after day after day with no statements coming from any ministers of this government. What they've managed to do is to bring out three statements in one day and allow us only five minutes. The critic for our party got 40 seconds to respond to Minister Charlton. The critic here got 15 seconds. That's absurd.

I would like to ask for unanimous consent to put an additional five minutes on the clock to allow for --

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): It is perfectly in order to ask for unanimous consent to add five minutes to the clock. Do we have unanimous consent?

Interjections.

The Speaker: I will ask the question again. Do we have unanimous consent? Agreed? Agreed. Five minutes will be added to the clock.

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS LEGISLATION

Mr Remo Mancini (Essex South): I want to take this time that has been offered to us. I'm just wondering if my colleagues are going to share it with me, so I'll take a couple of more minutes to make some comments on the statements that have been made by the Minister of Financial Institutions.

I want to say very clearly that the government has a serious credibility problem when it comes to the Legislature and is going to announce to any sector of the people of Ontario, or any groups or individuals, as a matter of fact, that it is going to consult with them. They have not demonstrated over the past two years that they are capable of consultation. They have not demonstrated over the past two years that they're capable of listening. They have not demonstrated over the past two years that they're capable of putting practical ideas ahead of their own preconceived notions.

I say this very clearly to the minister because what he wants to consult about is very important. He wants to use this consultation process as a tool to change how we're going to deal with many of our regulatory rules on financial institutions, financial systems, financial planning and financial renewal. If there is a province in Canada that needs financial renewal, it has to be the province of Ontario. This province certainly needs financial renewal.

When we hear from the minister that he wants to consult about consumer protection, we want to consult with him but we want to make sure that he's listening to the consumers. When you say that you want to consult about regulatory streamlining, we want to work with you but we want to also make sure that if you're talking about streamlining that's exactly what we're going to get and not more bureaucratic socialist red tape.

If you're going to talk and consult with the people about creating a level playing field for the credit unions, for the caisses populaires, for the loan and trust firms, we want to work with you, because this is exactly the type of reform that is needed in this province and that the people are looking for.

Finally, the minister has in fact mentioned economic renewal. I touched on that subject earlier in my comments. I'd like to turn over the last two minutes and 20 seconds to my colleagues.

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): I'd like to comment for just a couple of minutes to raise a couple of things.

Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier, Treasurer and Minister of Economics): Come on, give Dianne a break. Free the back bench.

Mr Elston: In fairness, the member for Eglinton did have some time.

I want to add a couple of interesting pieces of information about this new study of our regulatory situation with respect to financial institutions.

Financial institutions have been under study in regulatory form for some time. I was there and we went through a whole series of studies. My understanding of where we are at is that there can be some steps taken but they must be taken in concert with other provinces. It is clear that the very issues about which the member for Hamilton Mountain speaks --

Hon Mr Laughren: What's wrong with what Remo said? You did a good job, Remo. You don't need this.

Mr Elston: I'm sorry; I can't understand what these guys have wrong with them today, sir.

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): As opposed to yesterday?

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): Just today, Murray?

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Mr Elston: They're using up my time. There is nothing that can be done except in concert with all of the other jurisdictions that regulate financial institutions in this country. We did a great deal, Madam Minister from Ottawa Centre. That person over there hasn't done her homework. What's more, every time they attempt to criticize our record they belittle the knowledge that they should have after over two years of activity in government. If they were able to grow in their jobs, then they'd understand what was happening.

An announcement of another study of financial institutions is not enough. It is not enough in terms of studying. They must coordinate the efforts across the country. That is made somewhat more difficult -- the minister knows that -- because of our situation or circumstances as a result of money; not in this case developed by him as his problem, but a problem with which he must wrestle.

His regulatory study, his streamlining, his whole thing, will now depend on the goodwill between the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia, the province of Alberta and otherwise, because when he does something with the regulatory system in Ontario, he touches all of those other jurisdictions. He knows it even if the Treasurer doesn't.

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Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Mr Speaker, to briefly elaborate, the difficulty this government is faced with is that it's common knowledge that it is not in favour of breaking down the interprovincial trade barriers. That's one aspect of a healthier and more vibrant economy.

There is no doubt, when you're going to deal with this type of language or consultation, you're going to have to develop a nationwide policy with respect to regulations. It has to be the same across the country.

This is the kind of thing that must be consulted with in the four pillars. When they go out to discuss with these four groups, the banks, the insurance companies, the trust companies and the brokers, the difficulty is that they frankly don't trust this government. They're going to go out and consult with a group of people who have very little if any trust.

Why don't they have trust? Because they've dealt with them in the past in these consultative dialogues -- the insurance industry etc. They know these consultative dialogues turn into consultative monologues. Your definition of consultation is, "We'll tell you what to do and then you stand up in public and agree with us." If they don't agree with them, tough on them.

A perfect example is the labour legislation, Bill 40. The business community doesn't agree with them; tough on them. There was no consultation. There was no consultation with respect to insurance; tough on them.

Quite frankly, you can tell me all you want that you're going to go out and dialogue with these people. They simply don't trust you, and I don't blame them.

ACCESSORY APARTMENTS

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I want to comment just briefly on the statement made by Minister of Housing. The Metropolitan Toronto syndrome seems to be applying right across the province of Ontario with regard to the announcement she made today.

She talked about consultation. I can tell you, Mr Speaker, this government has no idea what consultation is and it never has. They've never consulted with people. We've seen what has gone on with regard to the construction industry. We've looked at what has gone on with county restructuring. There's no consultation.

When I go to Penetanguishene, we have two or three subdivisions sitting there ready to be approved. They're not approved because the infrastructure is not there, and now you say to them, "You can put apartments in every house." How can you put an apartment in every house when you haven't got the facilities to use up what's there? You're all off base.

The village of Coldwater and the village of Elmvale are in the same position. They're ready for subdivisions to go ahead and you're saying now, "You can put an apartment in every house." Consultation is not there at all.

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): You're worried about the rural; I'm worried about the municipalities around Toronto. The municipalities are going to have all the responsibility and none of the control. What's going to happen with parking? What's going to happen with someone who rents out part of his house and then gets moved to another place? How then can he kick the people out? Where are the rights of the property owner in that case?

What we're seeing you do, as minister, is not listen to the total scene. You've got the Association of Municipalities of Ontario saying, "Come on, Minister, look at some of the concerns we have in trying to run our municipalities." You're ending up putting a good look on something, but the fact is, the people out there are not going to be well served by these announcements by this minister.

Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey): I'd also like to say something on this new housing announcement we just got. We have people like Ruth Grier and David Cooke who come into our riding of Grey and tell us that we can't plan, that they can do all the planning for us. They take away our planning rights, then they approve something like this which takes away the planning rights of the municipalities. I can't understand how they can be like this. To me, this is the most hypocritical thing I've ever heard. Both those ministers are hypocrites for coming into Grey county and telling us that we can't plan --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The member for Grey will please take his seat. The member for Grey will know that he uttered an unparliamentary word. I would ask him to please withdraw it.

Mr Murdoch: I'll withdraw the word, Mr Speaker, because I have 55 seconds.

These two ministers came into Grey county and told Grey county it did not know how to plan. "We're going to take over your planning and show you how to do it." Then they come along with a statement like this that takes away all local planning. This is not proper, and I tell you that these two ministers were both hypocrites to agree with something like this.

The Speaker: To the member for Grey, I ask him to please withdraw the term, and furthermore, to please resist the temptation of using it again. Would the member please withdraw the unparliamentary remark.

Mr Murdoch: I'll withdraw it for this time, but maybe later on we'll talk about it.

The Speaker: Oh, that's helpful.

ORAL QUESTIONS

LABOUR LEGISLATION

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): In the absence of both the Premier and the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology, I will direct my first question to the Minister of Labour. Minister, today --

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): Where is he?

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): Come on, where's little Eddy?

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Where's Waldo?

The Speaker: Would the leader take her seat, please.

Interjections.

The Speaker: The Leader of the Opposition.

Mrs McLeod: As I indicated, I will direct this question to the Minister of Labour in the absence of both the Premier and the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology.

Minister, I realize you are certainly not responsible for industry in the province, but I would ask whether or not you are clearly aware that once again today we've been confronted by the evidence of the weak state of the economy of this province, that in September business bankruptcies in this province alone topped 400, which was up 74% from this time last year, and that Ontario continues to lead Canada in total bankruptcies.

In Ottawa, Gandalf is laying off 60 people. In Thunder Bay, Abitibi-Price will permanently close one of its plants and it plans to sell or close a second one. But your government, which says its first priority is jobs, is pushing ahead with your Bill 40 which will kill even more jobs. Today you have business groups that have camped out in front of the Premier's office with 50,000 letters, Minister, all telling you to stop Bill 40.

Minister, once again we ask, why will you not listen to what people are telling you about what this bill is going to do to industry and to jobs in this province? Why won't you stop your bill before our economy is harmed even more?

Hon Bob Mackenzie (Minister of Labour): I think in terms of the financial situation we're in, nobody is more aware of it than this party and nobody is more concerned with what's happening in the province of Ontario. It seems to me that some people seem to conveniently forget things like the free trade agreement, the GST and a number of other issues that have caused us real problems.

But I do want to tell the member that we are doing what we can to respond to this current situation. This province is doing more in terms of training workers. We've done more in terms of setting up labour adjustment committees. We are doing more in terms of trying to find new means of investment capital in the province of Ontario.

The entire direction of this government is to try and meet the kinds of economic circumstances that we now have and some of the financial mess we inherited from the party across the way.

Mrs McLeod: Even in the absence of the Premier, the minister uses exactly the same line the Premier would use if he were here: "Blame everybody else. It's a worldwide recession. What can I possibly do about it?" Clearly, neither the minister nor the Premier understands the link between what's happening to the economy of this province and this government's own policies and this minister's own Bill 40, and that's the message we keep trying to get across. The Premier's decided that the way --

Mr Derek Fletcher (Guelph): An election.

The Speaker: The member for Guelph, come to order.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Would the leader take her seat and the member for Durham Centre take his seat as well. All I can do is to ask members of the House to exercise some restraint so that we can conduct a proper question period.

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): They're wasting our time.

The Speaker: Would the member for Oriole please come to order. The Leader of the Opposition.

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Mrs McLeod: Thank you again, Mr Speaker. The Premier's only response to the desperate state of the economy in this province is to tell us that he is now off to Asia to talk to companies like Toyota to tell them that it's safe to invest in Ontario. If the Premier were to stay in the province long enough, he might notice that Toyota is also in Cambridge and he could talk to Toyota there, or the Premier might meet with Dare Foods in Kitchener to ask why Bill 40 stopped it from opening a new plant in this province, or he might go and talk to Long Manufacturing in Mississauga and it could tell him why the company wants to open a new plant in Michigan instead of here. These are the people this minister and his Premier need to sit down with to understand what they're doing to the economy of this province.

Minister, do you not agree that if jobs were really your Premier's and your government's number one priority, the Premier should stay here and meet with these Ontario businesses to hear their concerns about Bill 40 and not leave the country next week when your bill becomes law?

Hon Mr Mackenzie: I think it's very clear that the Premier's trip to the Far East is not leaving because of Bill 40. I can tell the member that it seems to me to make some sense, in the tough economic circumstances we're in, to do what we can to build some bridges with the Pacific Rim countries. That's certainly one of the things he's doing.

Some of the other things he's doing and this government is doing are the things I mentioned in terms of investment, in terms of training, in terms of new initiatives in the labour field. They're all important issues we're dealing with. I think some of the work at both Algoma and Kapuskasing is a classic example of that. We are making efforts to find new ways of dealing with the problems we face in Ontario.

Mrs McLeod: Minister, the link is clear; I only wish we could somehow make you see it. You pass Bill 40 and we are going to lose jobs in this province. You pass Bill 40 and there's no point in the Premier going anywhere to try to convince people that it makes sense to invest in this province.

Minister, the United States is going to use Bill 40 as a way of attracting companies to move out of the province. Investment newsletters are already saying Bill 40 offers another good reason for business to expand anywhere but here. Companies are saying they will move out of this province if you pass this bill. Minister, will you not end this ideological insanity and stop this bill?

Hon Mr Mackenzie: I think it's unfortunate that the kind of scaremongering tactics of the opposition are what's coming across. The scare tactics in turn can be to some extent self-fulfilling, and I think there's more problem with the kind of questions we're getting from the leader of the official opposition than there is with what we're doing with Bill 40.

Bill 40, I can tell you, is an attempt to use effectively in the province of Ontario one of our most valuable resources, and that's workers in the province of Ontario, and involve them in the tough fight we've got economically in this province.

Finally, I very rarely refer to any articles, but there's at least a useful one in this morning's Globe and Mail, and it certainly indicates the difference in -- what was it, the "ballistic approach" they can't understand in BC in their province that's happening here in the province of Ontario? I think what we're doing in terms of the labour legislation in this province is going to tie in and make much more effective the involvement of workers in the province of Ontario.

LAYOFFS

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): My question is for the Premier, who as usual is not here to answer questions, or for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology, who's not here, so I'll direct it to the Deputy Premier and Treasurer.

Mr Treasurer, in December of last year you'll recall that I warned the Premier and other members of the cabinet that General Motors was about to make a major announcement of job losses in North America, and that many of the jobs in Canada and specifically in Ontario would be vulnerable as a result, including the jobs, and I mentioned this specifically, at the foundry and the engine plant in St Catharines.

Unfortunately, on February 24 of this year General Motors announced that it was closing the foundry in St Catharines -- that's 2,300 jobs -- and that it was discontinuing one of the lines in the engine plant, another 150 jobs in addition to the 750 jobs that would already be lost as a result of an indefinite layoff.

Will the Treasurer, as, I guess, the spokesperson for this government, assure the House that his government will not be caught asleep at the switch when the next announcement is made by General Motors about closings in North America, and will he assure the House that the Ontario government will not pursue policies which will discourage General Motors from keeping its operations going here in the Ontario and keeping those jobs for people in various communities in our province?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier, Treasurer and Minister of Economics): I don't really appreciate being third on the list of ministers to whom the member wants to ask a question, but I'll try.

The member for St Catharines would know, more than most would understand, the problems General Motors has been having all across North America. This is not an Ontario-based problem that General Motors is having, it's worldwide, and it's been highly publicized, not just in Ontario but everywhere.

Having said that, I want to reassure the member for St Catharines that we have a very senior person working on the problem, because we know it's not something we can dismiss or take lightly. The automobile industry is still the most important industry in this province and we intend to do whatever we can to not only retain the existing jobs in the auto sector, but to attract new ones, and to be fair, we've had some success in attracting new investment from the automobile sector as well.

Mr Bradley: There have been a lot of ominous developments the member is aware of within the GM corporation. We see that there has been a purge of Robert Stempel and the other senior officials from General Motors, and I quote from a Globe and Mail article that suggests:

"The immediate task of the new crew will be to slash costs at the biggest US auto manufacturer, and GM executives are bracing for what one official called a probable 'blood-letting.'

"The moves are aimed at giving the new leadership a loyal group of executives that will implement the board's accelerated timetable for restructuring. Industry leaders have indicated that they think that Mr Smale, who is probably going to be the new chairman, will certainly be moving at a faster restructuring of the money-losing company. 'I think this new guy's going to come out swinging,' said John Caines, who is the president of the CAW union in Oshawa."

In view of the fact that we have lost 3,000 jobs in St Catharines already and that this news does not bode well for the people of St Catharines, would you tell us what specific plans -- and I'm talking about specific plans in this case -- the Premier has to persuade GM to reverse its decision to close the foundry in St Catharines and to retain all of its other operations in Ontario, since it seems to be the case that the one in Quebec is safe from a cut?

Hon Mr Laughren: The member for St Catharines asks a most appropriate question, it seems to me, keeping in mind that General Motors holds in very high regard the province of Ontario and in particular its skilled workforce. That was reflected in their decision to retain the jobs in Oshawa, which was announced fairly recently, among other decisions they've made.

But in dealing specifically with the problem to which the member now refers, the member would recall that the former Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology, Mr Armstrong, is on this very day, I believe, the member for St Catharines-Brock informs me, meeting with General Motors to talk about a number of problems. So I think we're not sitting back simply waiting for shoes to fall, if you will, but rather being more proactive in encouraging General Motors to retain its investments -- as a matter of fact to put new investments in the province -- because it understands as well as any private sector operation the very highly skilled, committed workforce we have in this province.

Mr Bradley: One of the problems is that this is a most recent development. The development of Tim Armstrong's involvement came only after the Premier came to the city of St Catharines speaking as though he was the president of General Motors rather than the Premier of this province. He was chastised by Buzz Hargrove and others within the CAW.

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General Motors announced in December that some 74,000 jobs would be cut in North America. I count about 14,000 of those jobs cut already. That leaves about 60,000 still to go, with the GM corporate decision likely to be made in the near future, perhaps as soon as next week or next month. Will the Treasurer persuade the Premier of the province, the man with the most power, with the most influence in Ontario, to abandon his latest foreign excursion to the Far East and to stay home to fight for the jobs of General Motors workers in Ontario?

Hon Mr Laughren: I believe the member for St Catharines is certainly correct, and it's appropriate that he's concerned about the jobs of workers in St Catharines and elsewhere in the province. I think, however, that he's being somewhat simplistic, which is not the way he normally is in this chamber, in his view that it's either/or. It's not either stay here and fight for the jobs in Ontario or go to Asia and fight for new investment in jobs for Ontario there. I think that's being somewhat simplistic. There has never been a Premier in this province who didn't take his responsibility seriously, travel abroad and encourage investment in the province of Ontario.

Finally, I recognize whose responsibility it is ultimately, but I would encourage the member for St Catharines to send us any suggestions he might have as well.

ONTARIO ECONOMY

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): I wish to ask a question to the Premier. Obviously, as he's not here today, I can't do that.

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): What else is new?

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): We'll mail it to him.

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): We already used that line, Mike.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Mr Harris: I know the Liberals used that line, but that was our secret meeting this morning, that we'd both use it. Don't you remember that?

Mr Sorbara: I don't get invited to those ones.

Mr Harris: Don't you inform the caucus of our secret meetings?

I'll ask the Treasurer a question. Last month, over 2,600 people and companies went bankrupt in Bob Rae's Ontario. That means thousands of men and women no longer have a job. Many have lost their homes. Many have lost their life savings. Many have lost their dreams. Do you have a plan to stop this devastating trend?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Treasurer and Minister of Economics): The member is correct; there have been a lot of job losses in Ontario, as elsewhere. When I look at the job losses in Ontario since this recession began, it is more serious in this jurisdiction than others, going back a couple of years. As a matter of fact, about 80% of the job losses in Canada have been in Ontario.

I haven't heard any fairminded or objective person put the blame for that on the government that was elected in the fall of 1990. I think people understand that the recession is not simply here. Competing jurisdictions have had very similar problems to the ones we are having in Ontario. If the member wants, I could give him some statistics on that. However, the leader of the third party asked me --

Interjection.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Laughren: If the backbenchers from the third party would allow me to answer their leader's question, I will attempt to do so, but they don't seem to want me to do that.

The leader of the third party asked me specifically if we have a plan. We not only have a plan, we have several of them. If we are going to address the problems of the recession seriously, it seems to me there are two levels where we must do so. One, we must deal with the immediate problem of job losses, in almost a cyclical way, the way it's been done in the past. We've moved that way through the anti-recession program and through the Jobs Ontario programs this year.

In terms of the long run, what I think the leader of the third party is getting at is the long-term economic plan that will get us out of this recession in a healthier way than would otherwise be the case.

The Speaker: Would the minister conclude his response, please.

Hon Mr Laughren: We do indeed have a longer-term economic plan, but the Speaker will insist that I put that into my supplementary answer.

Mr Harris: Treasurer, in response to the question, you indicate that the problem is far worse in Ontario than any other jurisdiction. I agree. There is one thing different in this jurisdiction than in other jurisdictions, one thing different in Ontario than there is in the other nine provinces. The other nine don't have Bob Rae as Premier. We have Bob Rae as Premier here in Ontario, we have Floyd Laughren as Treasurer. They don't. Doesn't that tell you something, Mr Treasurer, that your plans, different from all other nine provinces, are the reason for the problem here in this province?

During the 16 days that Bob Rae plans to gallivant across the Far East, 1,300 more bankruptcies are likely to occur here in Ontario. Treasurer, we obviously need a different plan from the one you've been trying to implement for the last two years, because it's not working. In fact, it's working worse than all the other nine provinces, according to your own admission to me.

A year ago I offered you a series of different solutions, a series of different directions. Obviously, your taxing more and spending more is making the problem worse. Will you now admit that and adopt some of the policies I gave you in New Directions: cut taxes, leave more money in the hands of families, consumers and businesses? I assure you, Treasurer, they'll create more jobs than you are.

Hon Mr Laughren: The leader of the third party is on his feet demanding we cut taxes. He has a belief that if we cut taxes, that will stimulate economic growth and in the end we'll all be more prosperous. That's his belief. That's the same belief Ronald Reagan had in 1980, and in the subsequent eight years the deficit in the United States tripled. I don't think that's the answer here; the same leader of the third party would be on his feet beating us up because of the size of the deficit in Ontario. The member cannot have it both ways. He can't expect us to reduce revenues in the province and at the same time get our deficit down.

To put it in perspective with other jurisdictions, I would remind the leader of the third party --

Mr Harris: You're the one who said we're worse hit.

Hon Mr Laughren: I said that in this country, because Ontario is the manufacturing heartland of Canada, we have suffered more of the layoffs than other provinces have. That's what I was trying to convey to the leader of the third party. In competing --

Mr Harris: It's because they're leaving here and going to other provinces. That's the problem.

Hon Mr Laughren: That's not true.

Mr Harris: It is true.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Laughren: The leader of the third party is suggesting that the manufacturing jobs that have been lost here are moving to Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island. That is absolutely ridiculous. The employment in other jurisdictions with economies similar to that of Ontario, such as Massachusetts and New York, has fallen 8% between 1988 and 1992. The decline in retail sales in Massachusetts and Ohio was 9.9% in Massachusetts and 9.2% in Ohio. Housing starts fell 72.7% in Massachusetts and only 68% in Ontario, which is high nevertheless.

The leader of the third party should stop pretending that it's the policies of this government that have caused the recession. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Speaker: Would the minister conclude his response, please.

Hon Mr Laughren: This government, as a matter of fact, has preserved essential services that other jurisdictions would not have done if the Premier wasn't the Premier he is.

Mr Harris: The Treasurer says that my plan to cut taxes won't work, that his plan to hike both taxes and the deficit is the plan that'll work. But by any measure, Ontario is worse off today, Ontario is worse off every day that goes by that you and your government and your cabinet and your plan are in office in this province.

Since the last trip the Premier took to the Far East in May, we have lost nearly 40,000 jobs in Ontario. Over 10,000 more people are on welfare. This was the bonanza we reaped from his last Asian trip.

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One of the few things that will be different in Ontario from the time of last Asian trip to this one is that we will now have the most repressive job- and investment-killing labour legislation in North America. Treasurer, given that you've got the same economic framework as when he went away last time and now you've got Bill 40 on top of it, what's your estimate of how many jobs will be lost, how many more will be on welfare, and how many more bankruptcies we'll have following this trip to Asia?

Hon Mr Laughren: If the Premier of this province were not moving around and visiting investors in Asia and other places, the leader of the third party and the leader of the official opposition would be the first ones on their feet complaining that he seemed to be here in Ontario and didn't want to go out and encourage investment from other parts of the world. Nothing could be sillier. For the leader of the third party to try to draw some kind of link between encouraging investment from other parts of the world and the fact that there are layoffs here is simply ludicrous.

I know the leader of the third party doesn't like any kind of progressive labour legislation; I understand that. He would rather we had labour legislation that drove us all back into the Stone Age than to bring anything progressive at all to the working people in the province of Ontario. That's simply not on the agenda of this government, and it never will be.

Mr Harris: I wonder if the Treasurer could find me one potential investor who, when he meets Bob Rae and hears his agenda, thinks Ontario is a better place to invest. You would do a much better job if you hid the Premier, if he never went abroad --

The Speaker: Is this your new question?

Mr Harris: -- if he never talked to investors, if he never talked to those potential plant-builders and job-creators. Then you'd have a better chance.

SKILLS TRAINING

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): My second question, however, is to the Minister of Labour. I have here a flyer which was distributed to the members of the Legislature, "Beware of Ministry of Labour Mismanagement," talking about training. It charges that since you took over as Minister of Labour, approval time for an application and training proposal has gone from six weeks to 34 weeks in the Transitions program.

This is the program that gives people a chance to get off social assistance. As you destroy more and more jobs and more and more people go on social assistance, this is the program that gives them a chance to get off social assistance by teaching them new skills. Is this kind of program so unimportant to you that you've allowed it to be this badly mismanaged?

Hon Bob Mackenzie (Minister of Labour): No. This is a good program and one we're concerned with. I notice that the people who put the leaflet out didn't have the guts to put any identification, who printed it or where they got their information from. Can the leader of the third party tell me why he uses that kind of material?

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): You'd phone the police on them. You'd get the OPP on them.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The leader of the third party with his supplementary.

Mr Harris: By way of supplementary to the minister, I suppose they didn't identify themselves because you do call the police whenever they try to get information into the public's hands.

However, what they have repeated here is contained in a memo dated October 20, 1992, from the Ontario Ministry of Labour: "Dear Trainers." It's the same information, 34 weeks. It's signed by your ministry: "Anthea Pinkney, supervisor of Transitions for the Ontario Ministry of Labour." This flyer simply repeats what they were told by your own ministry.

Our businesses need skilled employees to survive. Older workers need new skills and training now. Our young people need new skills and training now. Your economic policies are forcing more of them out of work, more of them on to welfare, and now it's 34 weeks just to process an application. That is unacceptable.

Legislation which kills jobs, not creates them -- Bill 40 -- that's your answer. You spend all your time on this. You've let programs suffer that could actually help jobs. I ask you again, what's more important to you as Minister of Labour, kowtowing to the union leadership or helping men and women who want to work but who've been laid off and need the skills to get those jobs?

Hon Mr Mackenzie: Let me say that if the leader of the third party had come up with the question without the information put out by somebody too gutless to put his name or address or any information on it, it would have been more --

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): Mr Speaker, withdraw that word. Imagine calling employees gutless.

The Speaker: Order. Would the member take his seat for a moment, please. Have you completed your response?

Hon Mr Mackenzie: No. I would just say that we have a Transitions program here in Ontario that's very good, that we added money to, that we added staff to, that we added resources from the labour adjustment program to and that now is fully used. It's once again a question of whether there can be more money found to extend the number of people we're covering, which is currently over 90,000 this year alone in the Transitions program.

Mr Harris: I do not know how calling civil servants of the province of Ontario gutless, how calling our people who are desperately trying to help people get the skills they require for jobs by their coming forward with this information, how calling them gutless is going to solve the problem. What that has to do with answering the question and the lack of leadership from the top, I do not know.

My caucus has now produced two volumes of New Directions aimed at getting Ontario back to work, giving Ontarians hope, giving Ontarians the skills they need to make our province competitive again. If a page will come forward and pick up this copy, let me send over to you a copy of the most recent edition put out by my caucus, A Blueprint for Learning in Ontario.

Minister, by next week you will have passed Bill 40 and you will have successfully jeopardized thousands more jobs in this province.

The Speaker: Does the leader have a supplementary?

Mr Harris: I've sent over and released last week my plan to try to equip Ontarians with the skills they need. Given that your plan is a disaster and has failed, will you adopt the plan and the proposals put forward by my critics and my caucus to help you get people the skills they need to get back to work?

Hon Mr Mackenzie: Just let me be very clear, because I think it's important that this be done: The misrepresentation was not from anybody in the ministry. It was leaflets put out by people who have not got the guts to put their names or addresses or information on them, and it was the use by the leader of the third party of that kind of information and research that was so inadequate it didn't even tell him, "We don't know who's done this, but go ahead and use it, whether you can verify it or not."

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): My question is to the Attorney General. The Premier has claimed that a letter from his constituency office, on his letterhead, urging the speeding up of a hearing date, did not influence the Ontario Municipal Board. That is simply not the case. We have a letter from an OMB official which explicitly states that the hearing date was changed in response to requests. The very fact that such a letter is sent is in direct contravention of the Premier's own conflict-of-interest guidelines.

I have here a letter dated June 20, 1991, from the honourable Gregory Evans, the Conflict of Interest Commissioner. It states:

"A minister is not an ordinary member of the Legislature. A minister always wears the cloak of ministerial responsibility, and there is no way in which correspondence under his or her signature can be considered by the recipient as other than correspondence from the minister. A minister is a minister is a minister."

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I ask the Attorney General, will you not admit that the Premier is not an ordinary member of the Legislature and that any correspondence sent from the Premier's office must carry great weight? Would you not admit that Judge Evans is right?

Hon Howard Hampton (Attorney General): The Leader of the Opposition returns to a question which the House has dealt with on a couple of occasions now.

Let me be clear on this matter. The conflict-of-interest guidelines are the Premier's conflict-of-interest guidelines. They are guidelines which every member of the government tries to recognize and tries to operate by.

In my view, this question has been answered on several occasions already in the House, that there is no conflict in this case. The member will recognize that virtually every member of this House will write to, for example, the Workers' Compensation Board, asking when a hearing may be held, and I see no conflict.

As I say, this question has been dealt with on several occasions in the past --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Would the minister conclude his response, please.

Hon Mr Hampton: -- and I really believe the member is dealing with a dead horse.

Mrs McLeod: The Attorney General misses the point. I appreciate the fact that these guidelines are indeed the Premier's guidelines. I notice that he does not in fact deny that the letter the Premier's office wrote constitutes a violation of those guidelines.

But I would suggest that beyond the fact that the Premier has violated his own guidelines, he's also violated a fundamental principle that guarantees the independence of quasi-judicial bodies like the Ontario Municipal Board, the very independence that the Premier's guidelines were put in place to protect. These bodies are there to protect private citizens and to allow them to voice their objections to governmental action, free of political intervention. By voicing his strong support for the project, by urging the board to hurry up and deal with it, the Premier has violated the principle of non-interference and made it impossible for the board to maintain its independence.

Attorney General, you must protect the administration of justice in Ontario, and that includes preserving the principle of the independence of quasi-judicial bodies. Do you not believe that the Premier's guidelines are there to protect an important principle? As justice minister, do you not believe that quasi-judicial bodies should be allowed to operate free of political intervention? Therefore, do you not also believe that the Premier must refer his own violation of his own guidelines to the Conflict of Interest Commissioner?

Hon Mr Hampton: The Leader of the Opposition tries to dress up the question with several assumptions.

The fact of the matter is that members of this House from time to time will write to boards and agencies of the government, requesting information as to when a hearing may be held, requesting information as to what the procedures are for the setting down of hearings. When a letter such as that is written, it discloses no intention to influence the ultimate decision that the board makes. It simply requests information as to when a hearing may be held and if possibly hearings may be held at an earlier date.

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): Read the letter.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): It's inherent in the letter. Don't you understand influence?

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Hampton: There is no attempt, in my view, to interfere with the decision a board or commission ultimately makes. That is the gravamen of the case here. That's the issue. I think the member knows that there is no connection in terms of asking when a hearing date will be and attempting to influence the ultimate decision.

Mr Stockwell: He asked him to move it up.

The Speaker: Order.

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): You had a responsibility as a non-partisan justice minister. You have just lost the authority to be the Attorney General in this province. Your responsibility goes beyond politics, and you have just lost it.

The Speaker: Would the member for York Centre please come to order.

Mr Sorbara: I certainly will, sir. He has lost the authority to be Attorney General. A political answer like that means a breach of his responsibility as the Attorney General of Ontario.

The Speaker: I ask the member for York Centre to please come to order. The member for Leeds-Grenville with his question.

POLICE JOB ACTION

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): My question is to the Solicitor General, and once again it concerns the continuing frustration of all Ontario police officers because the Solicitor General and the Premier refuse to address their concerns.

The Solicitor General was quoted in the media last night as saying he has been asked by the Premier to intervene in this matter. We understand that the Solicitor General has offered to meet with the Police Association of Ontario. There's been no word on when that meeting might occur.

My party and I believe that a meeting between the government and the police association is necessary and that such a meeting may initiate a fair resolution to the job action of many police forces in Ontario. However, it's because of the government's failure to constructively communicate with all police officers that job actions are taking place.

Solicitor General, can you tell us today why the Premier wouldn't be included in this proposed meeting with the Police Association of Ontario and tell us why that meeting isn't being convened immediately?

Hon Allan Pilkey (Solicitor General): The member for Leeds-Grenville is in error. In fact, the meeting is not only being convened immediately; I've already convened it. It's announced that it will be held tomorrow morning in my offices at 10. I believe that will provide the kind of forum I have been requesting for some time, where principals can sit down in a common, rational and unemotional way and discuss the concerns that some individuals have with respect to regulations.

Mr Runciman: I appreciate that, and I believe it is going to be a helpful initiative. It's regrettable, though, that the Premier and the minister continue to refuse to meet with representatives of the Metro police association.

Some of my colleagues saw Mr Dudley Laws leaving the premises, the Premier's Office, around 6:30 last night. I raised this at the demonstration yesterday, Mr Minister, with respect to this individual who is well known in the Metro area. His views on policing are very negative; his views on policing are well known. This is an individual who is also under criminal charge. I have to ask you why someone like that has special access to this government when officers of the Metro association continue to face a stone wall in respect to a meeting with the Premier.

Hon Mr Pilkey: I have no knowledge of who was or was not in the building last night or who they did or did not meet with. I have no knowledge with respect to that. I leave that kind of speculation to the members opposite.

I would like to indicate, though, and unfortunately I was detained yesterday from responding to a similar question, that the Premier of this province has indicated to Mr Lymer that his door was open to him. All he asked in return was that an improper job action be ceased, even if it were only for 48 hours.

The notion out of yesterday's question, and raised again today, is that the Premier has all the time in the world --

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Premier's office, Premier's office.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order, the member for Etobicoke West.

Hon Mr Pilkey: -- to meet with certain special-interest groups and minority groups but that he has no time to meet with the police officials. I want to tell you that not only is that not true, because by way of extension I, as the Solicitor General, responsible for policing matters of this province, meet on an ongoing and regular basis with police stakeholders, but I'm pleased to inform the members opposite that the Premier himself personally picked up the phone, phoned Mr Lymer at home on Sunday afternoon and invited him personally to be in his office on Tuesday at 9. So the notion that he only speaks to this group or that group and ignores others is in fact not the case.

I think it's rather significant and telling that the Premier of a province would pick up a phone and phone somebody on a Sunday afternoon.

The Speaker: Would the minister conclude his response, please.

Hon Mr Pilkey: So he had that assurance that he was available to him.

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HOSPITAL SIGNS

Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): My question is for the Minister of Transportation.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): What terms and conditions?

Mr Mills: No, I want to be quite fair. The minister is pretty handy at big problems, but I have a small one and I can't seem to get anywhere with it. I refer to the Memorial Hospital in Bowmanville. They are requesting a hospital sign to be put up going eastbound on Highway 2. They already have signs up on Highway 2 westbound, on Highway 35 and Highway 115, but they really need the sign up on the east side to serve the people in Courtice. But I can't seem to get this sign up. I've spoken to MOT people and I can't get it up. Can you help me, Mr Minister?

Hon Gilles Pouliot (Minister of Transportation): The member, in his usual style, is far too humble: It is not a small problem. The proof is as follows. I've spent a good deal of time looking at what I thought was a legitimate request from the Bowmanville Memorial Hospital. They're requesting additional signage, big time: They want 10 more signs.

Keep in mind, sir, that we have to be fair, that we have to be equitable. However, having done this, we cannot jeopardize the integrity of our policy. You already have the maximum signage under the regulation.

We welcome the opportunity, maybe at a future date, to recognize the need, and it's legitimate indeed, but we're consistent with our policy. The signs are in place and we wish everyone well in this endeavour. I thank the member for his legitimate question.

Mr Mills: Mr Minister, I can't be satisfied with that because the people coming from Courtice can't see where the hospital is. Surely, it's not going to break the bank to put one extra sign up, regardless of what your rules and regulations are.

Hon Mr Pouliot: I'm not surprised; when you take your job seriously and the requests of your constituents with the sincerity the member does, it's a normal reaction indeed. It's the kind of reaction that you respect in local politics where you believe in the people who pay your wages and you try to deliver.

But I know, in his wisdom -- and the person is a wise sage -- he understands that this minister, like his colleagues, has to make very painful and very difficult decisions, for we must operate in the collective. I appreciate the member's sincerity. I know of his commitment in this endeavour and it pains me to say that this is all we can do at this time.

REVENUE FROM GAMING

Mr Joseph Cordiano (Lawrence): I have a question for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. Yesterday in a question that I posed to the minister during an estimates committee meeting regarding the role of the province with respect to the sharing of revenue that will be generated from casino gambling, she responded that the province was going to greedily hoard all of the revenue for itself, 100% of the revenue, and would not be sharing that revenue with anyone else, that in fact it was the Treasurer's lust for dollars and the lack of fiscal management, the lack of good management on his part, that would result in this new casino economy.

Unfortunately, charitable organizations were going to be dealt out of the equation; the minister quite clearly admitted to this yesterday. There's no role for them to play in the sharing of any of the revenues that would be generated.

I have to ask the minister, does she not understand the terrible impact, the negative impact, this is going to have on the ability of charitable organizations to generate revenues? Once she puts casino gambling in place, they will no longer be able to generate the kinds of revenues they have in the past. You're going to be cutting into their market share, quite frankly, and you're leaving them high and dry --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Would the member complete his question, please.

Mr Cordiano: -- without any alternative plans. You're doing nothing for them in the future. Will she admit that she is going to deal them completely out of the picture? Will she stand up and say that that's not going to be the case? Quite frankly, we can't see how that's going to be the case in the future for these charitable organizations.

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): I have to first of all say that my words were somewhat different from the words that were used by the member today. I certainly wouldn't use such words, especially in talking about our Treasurer.

Let me say that cabinet has not earmarked revenues generated by the casino at this point, but the benefits -- and I've said this before -- to the municipality will be in the form of direct spinoffs. Now, when I met with the officials from Windsor we talked about policing, the fact that we want to see a rigorous enforcement framework in place. We will discuss that. But the spinoff benefits are quite tremendous, and I think I can safely say that Windsor is very happy that it was chosen for the pilot project.

The Speaker: Supplementary?

Mr Remo Mancini (Essex South): Yes, Windsor had in fact asked to be a pilot project site. We agree with the minister. That's nothing new. But what the minister has not told the Legislature is that the city of Windsor has formally asked you to share in the profits that are going to be made by the casino. They believe that increased policing will be necessary, and possibly increased social services.

What we want to know from the minister, very clearly, is whether the ministry and the Ontario government are going to take all of the money and put it in the general treasury fund or whether the city of Windsor and the county of Essex are going to be able to receive a modest amount of the profits that are going to be made. That's what we want to know. Could the minister please tell us when these decisions were made? If they haven't been made, when are they going to be made and when will we get a clear picture of whether we will be able to modestly share, as the city council has requested, in the profits that are going to be made?

Hon Ms Churley: As I already stated, we have discussed and will be discussing further the costs of policing. We recognize that there will be more law enforcement required.

In terms of the spinoff benefits, we should not forget here that the location of the casino will generate a number of benefits, including an expanded tax base, increased tourism, a stronger hospitality and entertainment base, and secure permanent employment for a number of people. Those, I think, are benefits that the city of Windsor is feeling very good about. Obviously, we have to sit down and consult further about where we go from here. We have a lot of discussing and planning to do. However, I will be coming back to the House and we will be having more discussions about this project, but in the meantime I've made it very clear that the largest benefit to the community will be the spinoff benefits -- which are great, I may add.

SPECIAL SERVICES AT HOME PROGRAM

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): My question is for the Minister of Community and Social Services, and I request that she be asked to return to the chamber.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Your question is for the Minister of Community and Social Services. Okay. The member for Wellington.

Mr Arnott: Last week I told this House about the families in Wellington who are struggling because of service cuts to the special services at home program; for example, Mr and Mrs Earl Campbell and their daughter, Tannis. Tannis is three years old and she has Down syndrome. Another example is Mr and Mrs John Perkins and their daughter, Becky. Becky has an uncontrollable seizure disorder. She has as many as 100 seizures a day. There are numerous other examples of these service cuts.

Minister, you don't see the faces of the parents and the children who desperately need your help but aren't getting it because of your government's senseless priorities. My question is, how can you abandon these families?

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Hon Marion Boyd (Minister of Community and Social Services): We have not abandoned these families. In fact, we increased the dollars that we gave to special services at home this year. The problem is that the need far outpaces what we are able to give. I do see the faces of these clients and their children. They come to see me as well as they do every member of this House. I think we are all very concerned about the need for us to provide these kinds of appropriate services.

The member is well aware, because we met last week and talked about the problems that have arisen because our ministry has been underfunded in this area for some time compared to need and because of the difficulty that we are having getting the dollars that were intended for this program out of facility care and back into the community.

We will continue to do what we can. The Wellington, Waterloo and Kitchener offices are working with the families and are consulting with them on the best way to provide the greatest array of services that are possible.

Mr Arnott: Mr Speaker, you won't be surprised to learn that the answer is totally unsatisfactory. It's not a question of funding, Minister; it's a question of priorities, and your priorities are out of whack. When you turned your back on disabled kids, you betrayed every tradition your party ever stood for and you forfeited your party's soul. Your callousness is going to force some of these families to institutionalize their children, at a cost of over $100,000 a year. What are you going to do to help these families keep their kids at home?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We share the member's concern that the alternatives seem very bleak for parents, and we are deeply concerned with maintaining community services. What we have done in the case of this particular region, where the need has far outstripped the dollars that are available, is to try to work with the family groups to ensure that we are providing services to those with the greatest need and trying to stretch the dollars as far as possible. We are looking for other sources of funding. Certainly, if there are dollars available in other areas that are underspent, we are constantly monitoring that and trying to move those funds around.

The planning that was done under the multi-year plan by previous governments did not take into account the numbers of people who would be served in the communities, and we are attempting to correct the base funding for this program because we see it as a major preventive and interventive program as well.

LIQUOR STORES

Mr Brad Ward (Brantford): My question is for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. Minister, I can say that I have been contacted by numerous constituents in my riding of Brantford who work at the local LCBO outlets. They're very concerned because of rumours and speculation that is currently under way in the media and in conversation about the possibility of privatizing the LCBO outlets not only in Brantford but throughout Ontario.

I happen to think that the employees of the LCBO are excellent. They provide a great service to my constituents in Brantford. People like Rick Gans and Michael Warnock do a great job, and yet they're concerned.

Minister, perhaps privatization is on the agenda of the Liberal Party and perhaps it's on the agenda of the Conservative Party. Can you confirm or deny, Minister, that --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Would the member place his question, please.

Mr Ward: -- privatization is on the agenda of this New Democratic Party of Ontario?

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): There is absolutely no truth to the rumour that the government is going to privatize the LCBO. The speculation that I think people read in the Star is that: pure speculation.

Mr Ward: People like Rick Gans and Michael Warnock will be pleased to hear that, Madam Minister.

In my riding of Brantford we've been impacted by the recent layoffs that have occurred at the LCBOs. We have two retirements coming up in December. My supplementary is, can we have a commitment, through yourself, that the LCBO will review the staffing levels at that time to see whether or not some adjustments can be made because of these retirements?

Hon Ms Churley: I can't make any commitments. What I can say is that the LCBO is part of the retail sector and, as such, has suffered the same effects the private sector is feeling. There absolutely are declining sales. Will there be more layoffs? There are going to be reviews under way, all over the place, of all board operations, including Brantford.

I also want to point out that many people believe the LCBO is a monopoly and is not impacted by the recession. The reality is that's not the case. They're in competition with Brewers Retail stores, independent wine stores and onsite outlets. They are doing everything they can at this time to maintain their market share.

NON-PROFIT HOUSING

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): My question is for the Minister of Housing. It relates to a government that claims to protect tenants but in reality is acting like the worst landlord in the province. This is a government that will evict tenants and double their rents with no recourse or protection.

I am talking about Halam Park in Hamilton where 400 tenants and their children will be thrown out on the streets by this government because it intends to spend $4.5 million to renovate their building and turn it into a non-profit project. The tenants do not believe these renovations are necessary. When the tenants move back in, many will have their rents doubled, and this is on top of the expense and upheaval of moving their families twice.

Minister, these tenants are waiting to hear from you. They have waited for a month and they are frantic. Will you tell us that what you are going to do is remedy this mess your government has created?

Hon Evelyn Gigantes (Minister of Housing): The member has raised an issue which I think is an important one. It's one that was brought to my attention during a visit to Hamilton a couple of weeks ago. I didn't have time right then to speak to the tenants involved, but certainly we are concerned about the process that's been going on.

We have asked the regional office of the Ministry of Housing to involve itself and we have asked staff from our offices here at Queen's Park to involve themselves and try to straighten out the situation. It's been a very unfortunate kind of process that's been followed and we certainly don't want to see tenants evicted in this process.

PETITIONS

EDUCATION FINANCING

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I have a petition which reads:

"Whereas the British North America Act of 1867 recognizes the right of Catholic students to a Catholic education and, in keeping with this, the province of Ontario supports two educational systems, kindergarten to grade 12/OAC; and

"Whereas the Metropolitan Separate School Board educates more than 104,000 students across Metropolitan Toronto; and

"Whereas these students represent 30% of the total number of students in this area, yet have access to just 20% of the total residential assessment and 9.5% of the total corporate assessment; and

"Whereas the Metropolitan Separate School Board is able to spend $1,678 less on each of its elementary school students and $2,502 less on each of its secondary school students than our public school counterparts,

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to act now and restructure the way in which municipal and provincial tax dollars are apportioned so that Ontario's two principal education systems are funded not only fully but with equity and equality."

I have put my signature to this petition.

POLICE JOB ACTION

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario that reads as follows:

"We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, support the health and safety concerns of members of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association and other police officers across this province.

"We therefore join with the spouses of Ontario police officers in petitioning Premier Bob Rae to invite representatives of front-line police officers to a meeting to discuss their legitimate concerns.

"Surely this government, which in the past made health and safety one of its primary concerns, will exhibit the same concern about the lives of the men and women who police our communities as it does about people who work in factories, offices and elsewhere."

That's signed by several hundred people, and that is in addition to the 50,000 signatures that were submitted yesterday. I too have affixed my name to this petition.

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LABOUR LEGISLATION

Mr Will Ferguson (Kitchener): I'd like to present a petition signed by residents of Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, Kingston and Peterborough. I'll forget about the whereases, but the petition simply says:

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to pass Bill 40, an act to amend the Ontario Labour Relations Act, without further delay."

I affix my name to this petition.

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): I have a petition.

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas independent and non-partisan economic studies have concluded that the proposed changes to Ontario labour legislation will increase job losses; and

"Whereas they will cause a decline in investment in Ontario; and

"Whereas they will seriously undermine the recovery and the maintenance of a sound economic environment in the province,

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

"That the Ontario government declare a moratorium on any proposed changes to the labour legislation in the best interests of the people of Ontario."

This is a petition which has been signed by many workers across this province, from St Catharines, Streetsville, Etobicoke, Malton, Aurora, Ancaster and Bolton. I sign my name thereto.

POLICE JOB ACTION

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): I have a petition.

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, support the health and safety concerns of members of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association and other police officers across the province.

"We therefore join with the spouses of Ontario police officers in petitioning Premier Bob Rae to invite representatives of front-line police officers to a meeting to discuss their legitimate concerns.

"Surely this government, which in the past made health and safety one of its primary concerns, will exhibit the same concern about the lives of the men and women who police our communities as it does about people who work in factories, offices and elsewhere."

I too have affixed my signature to it.

REAL ESTATE GAINS

Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): I am submitting a petition on behalf of the Minister of Citizenship, Elaine Ziemba. It's from citizens here in Toronto and it has about 19 names on it. It is a petition opposing the introduction of a new tax on real estate gains. The "Be it resolved" is:

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to urge the Honourable Floyd Laughren, Treasurer of Ontario, not to proceed with an additional tax on real estate gains."

LABOUR LEGISLATION

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): My petition reads:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas independent and non-partisan economic studies have concluded that the proposed changes to Ontario labour legislation will increase job losses; and

"Whereas they will cause a decline in investment in Ontario; and

"Whereas they will seriously undermine the recovery and the maintenance of a sound economic environment in the province,

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

"That the Ontario government declare a moratorium on any proposed changes to the labour legislation in the best interests of the people of Ontario."

I affix my signature to this.

GAMBLING

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): My petition reads as follows:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the NDP government is considering legalizing casinos and video lottery terminals in the province of Ontario; and

"Whereas there is great public concern about the negative impact that will result from the abovementioned implementations,

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

"That the government stop looking to casinos and video lottery terminals as a 'quick-fix' solution to its fiscal problems and concentrate instead on eliminating wasteful government spending."

Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): Today I have a petition to the Legislature from some 134 citizens from across the Niagara region, some from Niagara-on-the-Lake, St Catharines, Virgil, even Stevensville, and some of course from the beautiful city of Niagara Falls, which reads:

"We, the undersigned, hereby register our opposition in the strongest of terms to the proposal to establish and license a permanent gambling enterprise in the Niagara Peninsula.

"We believe in the need of keeping this area as a place where family and holiday time will be enriched with quality of life. Such gaming establishments will be detrimental to the fabric of the society in Ontario and in the Niagara region in particular.

"We believe that licensed gambling will cause increased hardship on many families and will be an invitation for more criminal activity.

"We ask you not to license gambling anywhere in the Niagara Peninsula."

LABOUR LEGISLATION

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): I have a petition.

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas independent and non-partisan economic studies have concluded that the proposed changes to Ontario labour legislation will increase job losses; and

"Whereas they will cause a decline in investment in Ontario; and

"Whereas they will seriously undermine the recovery and the maintenance of a sound economic environment in the province,

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

"That the Ontario government declare a moratorium on any proposed changes to the labour legislation in the best interests of the people of Ontario."

I support this petition and affix my signature thereto.

POLICE JOB ACTION

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): My second petition reads as follows:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, support the health and safety concerns of the members of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association and other police officers across the province.

"We therefore join with the spouses of Ontario police officers in petitioning Premier Bob Rae to invite representatives of front-line police officers to a meeting to discuss their legitimate concerns.

"Surely this government, which has in the past made health and safety one of its primary concerns, will exhibit the same concern about the lives of the men and women who police our communities as it does about people who work in factories, offices and elsewhere."

GAMBLING

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I have a petition from the Abundant Life Center of Niagara. It's a petition to the members of the provincial Parliament of Ontario re the proposal to license a permanent gambling establishment in the Niagara Peninsula. It reads as follows:

"I, the undersigned, hereby register my opposition in the strongest of terms to the proposal to establish and license a permanent gambling enterprise in the Niagara Peninsula. I believe in the need of keeping this area as a place where family and holiday time will be enriched with quality of life. Such gaming establishments will be detrimental to the fabric of the society in Ontario and the Niagara region in particular. I believe that licensed gambling will cause increased hardship on many families and will be an invitation for more criminal activity. By my signature here attached, I ask you not to license gambling anywhere in the Niagara Peninsula."

I agree with this petition and I affix my signature to it to show my agreement.

LABOUR LEGISLATION

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): I have a petition signed by many residents. It's to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas independent and non-partisan economic studies have concluded that the proposed changes to Ontario labour legislation will increase job losses; and

"Whereas they will cause a decline in investment in Ontario; and

"Whereas they will seriously undermine the recovery and the maintenance of a sound economic environment in the province,

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

"That the Ontario government declare a moratorium on any proposed changes to the labour legislation in the best interests of the people of Ontario."

I've affixed my signature thereto.

STANDING ORDERS REFORM

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I have a petition from many constituents here to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas Premier Rae of the province of Ontario has forced upon the Ontario Legislature a change in the rules governing the procedures to be followed in the House; and

"Whereas Premier Rae has removed from members of the opposition the ability to properly debate and discuss legislation and policy in the Legislature by limiting the length of time a member may speak to only 30 minutes; and

"Whereas Premier Rae, who once defended the democratic rights of the opposition and utilized the former rules to full advantage in his former capacity as leader of the official opposition, has now empowered his ministers to determine unilaterally the amount of time to be allocated to debate bills they initiate; and

"Whereas Premier Rae has reduced the number of days that the Legislative Assembly will be in session, thereby ensuring fewer question periods and less access for the news media to provincial cabinet ministers; and

"Whereas Premier Rae has diminished the role of the neutral, elected Speaker by removing from that person the power to determine the question of whether a debate has been sufficient on any matter before the House; and

"Whereas Premier Rae has concentrated power in the Office of the Premier and severely diminished the role of elected members of the Legislative Assembly, who are accountable to the people who elect them,

"We, the undersigned, call upon Premier Rae to withdraw the rule changes imposed upon the Legislature by his majority government and restore the rules of procedure in effect previous to June 22, 1992."

I affix my signature.

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Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): "To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario," this petition reads:

"Whereas Premier Rae of the province of Ontario has forced upon the Ontario Legislature a change in the rules governing the procedures to be followed in the House; and

"Whereas Premier Rae has removed from members of the opposition the ability to properly debate and discuss legislation and policy in the Legislature by limiting the length of time a member may speak to only 30" -- short -- "minutes; and

"Whereas Premier Rae, who once defended the democratic rights of the opposition and utilized the former rules to full advantage in his former capacity as leader of the official opposition, has now empowered his ministers to determine unilaterally" -- and I use that word carefully -- "the amount of time to be allocated to debate bills they initiate; and

"Whereas Premier Rae has reduced the number of days that the Legislative Assembly will be in session, thereby ensuring fewer question periods" -- fewer question periods which he never attends anyway -- "and less access for the news media to provincial cabinet ministers; and

"Whereas Premier Rae has diminished the role of the neutral, elected Speaker by removing from that person the power to determine the question of whether a debate has been sufficient on any matter before the House; and

"Whereas Premier Rae has concentrated power in the Office of the Premier and severely diminished the role of elected members of the Legislative Assembly, who" -- I might add -- "are accountable to the people who elect them,

"We, the undersigned, call upon Premier Rae to withdraw the rule changes imposed upon the Legislature by his majority government and restore the rules of procedure in effect previous to June 22, 1992."

I shall sign this. I signed it.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): The time for petitions has expired. Reports by committees.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): May I rise on a point of order, Mr Speaker, before we go to reports by committees?

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Yes. On a point of order, the honourable member for York Centre.

Mr Sorbara: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I'm rising on a point of order today arising from remarks made yesterday by the member for York South, the Premier of the province, relating to questions asked of him in respect of the York City Centre matter.

I will refer first to standing order 23 of our standing orders; I think that's the correct number, although I know the numbers have been recently revised given the new rule changes. As you will be aware, standing order 23 deals with those occasions on which the Speaker may, or indeed is required to, call a member of this House to order. Although you don't have the section in front of you, you are aware that there are several paragraphs or directions under standing order 23, and I'm referring to standing order 23(g). I would like to read it into the record and, for your benefit, read it to you. It requires that the Speaker call a member to order if that member:

"(g) Refers to any matter that is the subject of a proceeding

"(i) that is pending in a court or before a judge for judicial determination, or

"(ii) that is before any quasi-judicial body constituted by the House or by or under the authority of an act of the Legislature."

Now, sir, there is a qualifying paragraph there which reads as follows:

"where it is shown to the satisfaction of the Speaker that further reference would create a real and substantial danger of prejudice to the proceeding."

I note that the Clerk is whispering into your ear, sir, but I hope I can continue to have -- I'm sorry, I apologize to the Clerk. It's not actually the Clerk, it's one of the eminent table officers. I do hope to continue, though, to have your undivided attention.

The substance of the rules, if I could paraphrase, is simply this: that you, as Speaker, are required to call any member to order if he refers to any matter, under paragraph (ii), that is pending before a quasi-judicial body constituted by an act of the Parliament, if you perceive to your satisfaction that what is being said has a real potential for prejudicing the outcome of that matter.

As you'll recall, during question period we were referring to the OMB, so we've met the first qualification; that is, the OMB is a body which is created under the authority of this Parliament, and it's certainly a quasi-judicial body. And the Premier, in his response, did refer to a matter that was before the body; there's no doubt about that. The York City Centre project is currently pending, and I think all parties would agree to that.

The real question you have to consider, I believe, is whether there is the possibility that you are satisfied -- although you were not in the chair at that time, I ask you in your capacity as Speaker to look at the words, and perhaps I'll just read the words again -- whether you are satisfied "that further reference would create a real and substantial danger of prejudice to the proceeding."

Could I just point out to you why I think, in the instance of the references by the Premier, you would be required under the precedents -- I'm going to refer to the precedents in a moment -- to call the Premier to order under this instance? For that purpose I want to quote the Premier's response, but before I do, remember that the OMB has before it a project that will change the face of the city of York, a $400-million project involving commercial development, market housing, non-profit housing, a transportation terminal, a $400-million project --

The Acting Speaker: Might I ask the member just for a moment to take his seat? Let me just say that this matter is under active consideration by the Speaker, as precisely the matter you are raising, in fact in almost the same way you're raising it, was raised by the honourable member for Ottawa West. So the Speaker is under active consideration of this matter and he fully intends next week to be able to issue a response to the point you're raising.

Two issues here: The first issue is that for you to raise it now, on the second day, when the Speaker is not in the chair who would be dealing with it -- or secondly, to ask me to make any kind of ruling is not I think appropriate under the circumstances. So I would say to the honourable member, indeed his point is under active consideration and I believe the Speaker will be making this at his earliest convenience at the beginning of next week.

Mr Sorbara: If I might, Mr Speaker, I was aware of the fact that the matter was raised. I want to advise you that I'm not going to ask you to make a ruling now. What I'm asking is, by way of a point of order under standing order 23, to put some matters on the record for consideration of the Speaker when he rules on that matter, because I think it's very important. If you'll just indulge me for a moment, I'll simply continue to point out that the --

The Acting Speaker: If I might say to the honourable member, and I say this with great respect, this point quite appropriately was made yesterday. In this House and in the tradition of this place, points of order have to be made at the time when there is disorder. So quite appropriately the member for Ottawa West made his point of order yesterday. It is, if I might say, inappropriate at this moment to raise this issue, because it happened yesterday. There is nothing out of order at this point in time.

If there is further information, as the honourable member is indicating, by all means, that should be given to the Speaker. But to disrupt the order of the House at this point in time does not make any sense.

Mr Sorbara: Mr Speaker, if I might just conclude, I'm afraid I can't entirely agree with you that the matter ought to be raised precisely at that moment. Indeed we have heard from previous Speakers that during question period they would prefer that matters relating to points of order, unless they are absolutely urgent, be postponed, if you will, until after question period. I would have done that and raised the matter after question period, but I wasn't here. I realize my friend the member for Ottawa West did raise the matter.

If you do not want to hear any more, sir, I will simply conclude by saying it is urgent that the Speaker refer to the comments made by the Premier yesterday, remembering just a couple of things: that in this instance the government of Ontario is the proponent at the OMB and therefore ought not to say anything about the validity of the project and, secondly, if the Speaker will consult Erskine May, he will find --

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. I thank the honourable member for making that submission. Reports by committees.

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): Mr Speaker, on a point of order: The member for York Centre is making a point of order and I for one am prepared to listen to it. I think he has --

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. I thank the honourable member for Markham --

Mr Cousens: He has tried to make it. He has been interrupted by the Speaker and he has every right in this House --

The Acting Speaker: Please take your seat. The honourable member for Markham should take his seat.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: There is nothing out of order in the House. We'll go on. Reports by committees.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Mr Speaker, on a point of order: On the point of order the member for York Centre is making, I think it's a very valid point of order. I would ask for unanimous consent that he can carry on with his point of order.

The Acting Speaker: Reports by committees. Introduction of bills.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

PLANNING STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT (RESIDENTIAL UNITS), 1992 / LOI DE 1992 MODIFIANT DES LOIS RELATIVES À L'AMÉNAGEMENT DU TERRITOIRE (UNITÉS D'HABITATION)

On motion by Mr Cooke, the following bill was introduced for first reading:

Bill 90, An Act to amend the Planning Act and the Municipal Act with respect to Residential Units and Garden Suites / Loi modifiant la Loi sur l'aménagement du territoire et la Loi sur les municipalités en ce qui concerne les unités d'habitation et les pavillons-jardins

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour of the motion by Mr Cooke, say "aye."

All those opposed, say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Call in the members; a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1613 to 1618.

The Acting Speaker: Would the members please take their seats.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. Mr Cooke has moved that leave be given to introduce a bill entitled An Act to amend the Planning Act and the Municipal Act with respect to Residential Units and.Garden Suites.

All those in favour of the motion, please stand one at a time and be recognized by the table.

Ayes

Abel, Akande, Allen, Bisson, Boyd, Carter, Charlton, Christopherson, Churley, Cooke, Cooper, Coppen, Dadamo, Duignan, Farnan, Ferguson, Fletcher, Frankford, Gigantes, Grier, Haeck, Hampton, Hansen, Harrington, Hayes, Jamison, Johnson, Klopp, Kormos, Laughren, Lessard, MacKinnon, Mackenzie, Malkowski, Marchese, Mathyssen, Mills, Morrow, Murdock (Sudbury), North, Owens, Perruzza, Pilkey, Pouliot, Rizzo, Silipo, Sutherland, Ward (Brantford), Wark-Martyn, Wessenger, White, Wilson (Frontenac-Addington), Winninger, Wiseman, Wood.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order. The honourable member for Grey will come to order.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order. I'd ask the honourable member to take his seat. Are there any further people who wish to vote in favour of the first reading of this bill? No.

All those who are opposed to this motion, please stand.

Nays

Beer, Bradley, Callahan, Caplan, Cousens, Curling, Eddy, Elston, Grandmaître, Harnick, Jordan, Mahoney, Mancini, Marland, Murdoch (Grey), Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt), Poole, Sorbara, Sterling, Stockwell, Turnbull, Wilson (Simcoe West).

Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): The ayes are 55, the nays 22.

The Acting Speaker: As the ayes are 55 and the nays 22, I declare the motion carried.

Does the honourable minister have any explanatory notes? No.

Further bills?

ORDERS OF THE DAY

COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTIONS

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Mr Cooke moves government notice of motion 18.

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): Unless the minister has some remarks, I wish to speak, please.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Bruce.

Interjection.

The Acting Speaker: Order. The honourable member for Grey will come to order.

Mr Elston: I have some remarks to make with respect to this particular motion. I had advised the House leader some time ago, when this appeared in the orders, that I would be speaking for a little bit of time on it because I wanted to convey my very big sense of disappointment about the procedure in this House and about the procedure that is being carried on in the committees themselves.

While this does not speak exactly to the whole issue of procedure, it does deal with the membership on committees and the ability or inability of our friends and colleagues to --

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please.

Mr Elston: I'm sorry to delay, but there are a few people who want to get out of here, and I'm prepared to sit for a couple of minutes until they get out.

The Acting Speaker: I think the member for Bruce can continue.

Mr Elston: As I was about to say, the membership of the committees gives us an opportunity to talk about the work that is to be done in committees and the work that these particular people will be required to do as they go into the various committees.

Some of the people who are watching but who have not got the Orders and Notices paper, like I have, won't know exactly what we're doing here. If I may read through the resolution that has been proposed by Mr Cooke, it says:

"That the following substitutions be made to the membership of the standing committees:

"On the standing committee on administration of justice: Mr Mills for Mr Wessenger, Ms Swarbrick for Mr Morrow

"On the standing committee on estimates: Mr Abel for Mr O'Connor, Mr Elston for Mr Sorbara, Ms Haeck for Mr Ferguson, Mr Rizzo for Mr Perruzza

"On the standing committee on finance and economic affairs: Mr Ferguson for Mr Christopherson, Mr Waters for Ms Ward (Don Mills), Mr Wilson (Kingston and the Islands) for Mr Ward (Brantford)

"On the standing committee on general government: Mrs Mathyssen for Mr Hope, Mr Morrow for Mr Ferguson

"On the standing committee on government agencies: Mr Cooper for Mr Ferguson, Mr Rizzo for Mr Wiseman

"On the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly: Mrs MacKinnon for Mr Cooper, Mr Wessenger for Mr Mills

"On the standing committee on the Ombudsman: Mr Abel for Mr Duignan, Ms Harrington for Mr Perruzza, Mr Mammoliti for Mr Johnson

"On the standing committee on public accounts: Mr Grandmaître for Mr Sorbara, Mr Perruzza for Ms Haeck

"On the standing committee on regulations and private bills: Mr Fletcher for Mr Dadamo, Mr Hayes for Mr Farnan, Mr Perruzza for Mr Sutherland

"On the standing committee on resources development: Mr Hope for Mr Waters, Mr Ward (Brantford) for Mr Dadamo

"On the standing committee on social development: Mr Dadamo for Mr Drainville, Mr Farnan for Mrs Mathyssen, Mr O'Connor for Mr Wilson (Kingston and the Islands)."

The reason I read through all that is to let the people know there are committees that are struck to do business of the House in relation to the bills which are brought forward, or indeed if there are special reports that are assigned out to them, to study and report back to us. They are important instruments of this democratic place.

But I have some concern over the way in which we are currently engaged in doing the business of this place and whether or not these members being appointed to these positions will actually be able to carry out their duties and obligations as members.

What are the duties and obligations of the members as they take their seats in this place? First and foremost, Mr Speaker, they are elected to represent the views of their constituents, judged in a manner which the members describe to themselves from the input they receive by being out in the community on weekends, as I know you are; at the fall fairs in places like Tiverton and Teeswater and Walkerton, or I'm sure you have your favourite fall fair locations as well; receiving the letters which come to us, receiving the materials which come to us at formal functions in the riding, or indeed those times which I find to be actually most appropriate for members, as we go leisurely about our business, our day-to-day routine in the riding, and people come up to us on the street and say: "Murray, do you know about X or Y? Would you help us find our way through this particular piece of business?"

It's up to us as local members to come back to our offices, to consider the input from our local constituents and then to develop, in our opinion, on the basis of this rational digestion of all the information that comes to us from our constituents, together with information gleaned from experts who may want to speak to us about the material at hand, and come to a conclusion about how best to examine the public issues that are introduced by way of resolution, motion, government bill or whatever.

It seems to me that the way our rules are struck, we are now generally precluded from carrying out our mandate. I'm concerned, as one of the people who is appointed to one of these standing committees, that I will not be able to carry out my responsibilities fully in relation to my constituency duties.

There is another duty which I think befalls all members in this particular place. It has to do with the fact that we are members of what in essence is a provincial council chamber. I try to make the point, when I go to speak to people in places like Wiarton or Lion's Head or to school children in Mildmay or wherever, to understand that the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, while a very important assembly for the people here, has got to be compared with others of our democratic institutions, like the council chamber in each of those localities; that in essence what we are is a provincial council. We are representing, each of us, a constituency.

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Although we have particular interest in the parochial nature of our concern for our own constituents, like the jobs at the Bruce A nuclear plant, which I have stood from time to speak about in this House to try to get the Premier and the Minister of Energy to commit to giving a fair assessment to the proposal for the retubing and maintenance work at the Bruce, and while I exert the most influence that I can in this chamber to force this government through its Minister of Energy and through the Premier not to destroy the fairness in the assessment of the future of the Bruce nuclear, I am also under the knowledge and understanding that as a member of a provincial council I have an obligation which stretches a little bit beyond the parochial interest. My membership here, my representation of my constituents here, requires me also to balance my parochial interest with those interests of a provincial nature.

It is important for me to be able to carry out that function, the function of a member whose mandate it is to ensure that the province also does well in our deliberations, that I be able to attack each of the public interest items that comes before us as a point of business in a way which is full, which is fair and which allows us to air all of our concerns about the particular public policy that is brought to our attention.

I don't feel at this particular time in our history that we are able to do that, and I will tell you why, Mr Speaker. It is because I have discovered that this grey book which I now hold, which is entitled Standing Orders of the Legislative Assembly, is radically being changed on an ad hoc basis in the manner in which our affairs are being conducted.

It is true, without doubt, that they were changed in the formal sense by motion of the government House leader, with the support, I might add, of all of the government members over the very wild objections, and I can only describe our objections to the change in procedure in this place as being very wild objections, because the Liberal Party was extremely upset with the manner in which this whole task of changing our standing orders occurred. But it was passed because there was a majority of the government members, and there were in support of them the members of the Progressive Conservative Party, to change the manner in which a member can actually perform her or his function in this place and in the committees.

I tell you that the change in the way business is done in this chamber has really shackled and has really prevented the members of those standing committees -- and in fact any of the other committees that we set up, because from time to time there will be special committees established by us -- from doing any real work. And you might ask, what is your example? The example which I use, of course, is the powerful tool now enshrined in an easy one-two-three, step-by-step, precise sort of nature in our standing orders given to us under the motion that amended the standing orders with the help of the New Democrats and the Progressive Conservative Party.

The time allocation motion, which was before these days -- I guess before June 22, 1992 -- a matter of very serious and of last resort, has now been brought forward in these amendments to the rules. In fairness, sir, I must say that the member for Victoria-Haliburton has stood from time to time and has suggested that the new rules do not allow full debate, nor do they allow the members to fully express or even partially express some of their views on these matters for or against a particular public issue because they curtail our time of discussion so much. I want to put that fully on the record in recognizing that there are democrats among all of us, but some have felt more compelled than others to rely not on democracy but to rely on the tool of efficiency as their chief god when they have come to voting on these amendments.

I want to say there is no time left for us, because the time allocation motion specifies that no matter what the business, no matter how long it is to take, it is clear that you have, as in our last bill, Bill 40, but a few days to do clause-by-clause. Once the time has run out, whether the business is done or not, clause-by-clause is done, and everything that has to be done to make sure the votes are all taken, to make sure the materials in support of amendments are included in the record, is done.

What does that do? It does several things. It requires that even though a motion has never been read in the committee, raised by a member from the government benches, talked about by the parliamentary assistant or the minister who steers this through the committee, talked about by the members of the opposition or seen by any of the people who have provided public input, it will be deemed to have been seen and read and heard in the committee.

Nary a minute's time has been spent by the committee members in dealing with those amendments. Never a second of time has been spent in debating the amendments with the minister, the parliamentary assistant or the members of the government benches, who generally support their ministers.

I'm not complaining about that; that's the nature of this place. But one thing I cannot abide, as I look at the list of the women and men who are assigned the task of democratically examining the public policy that is being promoted by government bills and resolutions or whatever in committee, is that they cannot do their business because the rules have proclaimed that they have no business to do.

What a terrible statement for the people of this province to hear: There is no business to do in this place but the business of efficiency. That cannot be the primary rule of this place. Whatever people may think about democracy, whatever they may think about governing, whatever they may think about the relevant merits of a particular bill, they cannot sacrifice democracy to efficiency.

If we were to look at the most efficient form of government, it would be a long way from democracy. It would be a long way from the cost associated with moving public policy through our committee structure. In fact, it would probably tell us that we wouldn't need any of the standing committees that are listed in our standing orders, that we wouldn't need to substitute Mr Cooper for Mr Ferguson and Mr Rizzo for Mr Wiseman in the standing committee on government agencies because they would have nothing to do. There would be no examination of the public policy. There would be no examination of the public input placed before the committee. There would be nothing required of the people's representatives when it came to passing the legislation.

That's not the way this place works. I have been here since 1981 and in those days I was elated to find in this House and in the committees I served on very capable and highly dedicated men and women when it came to promoting the issues of free and open debate.

Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier, Treasurer and Minister of Economics): Name names.

Mr Elston: I will name names: James Renwick, for one. I have nothing but the highest regard for Jim Renwick. Although I didn't know him well, when he passed away I thought I had lost in some way a real friend. Look through the debates of 1981, 1982 and 1983 and, I'm sure, before that because he was a very good speaker, but those are the ones I remember.

I can picture him standing in his seat just off to my left. In those days, of course, not only did he sit off to my left but he was to my left as well. I can picture him standing, putting the arguments clearly -- I suspect you probably knew Mr Renwick, Mr Speaker -- about why it was that under the circumstances this House should not take away the rights of the members to put their complaints with respect to public policy. And we had lots of complaints in those days.

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I was elected on March 19, 1981. Now, some of us will remember that that was the return of the Davis government to a majority. Not far from where the Treasurer now sits a man from Brampton sat, and as we complained about not being able to speak up there would be uttered very famous words -- at least, they became famous after a few utterances -- "Mr Premier, why is it that you are doing this to us and taking away our rights?" The reply? "These are the realities of March 19."

It got so that it was such a popular saying that every time one of the members of the opposition stood to inquire about the negative effects of some Conservative public policy the ministers would start to reply by saying, "The realities of March 19 let us do it."

It let them do it all right, and we felt pretty well done in after several of the debates. I can remember going into committee in those days and dealing with Bill 179, which was the bill to deal with implementation of wage controls. It affected a good part of the public service; in fact, it was supposed to affect all of the public service in the province of Ontario.

Well I remember those committee meetings, and well I remember the members from the loyal opposition's third party in those days, the New Democrats, yelling and screaming and bringing their cohorts, members of their party who had positions in the public service, into the committee and day after day bringing forth all the condemnation they could find to try and frustrate the government of the day from proceeding with its bill to stop the wages. It was a major public policy, and it was a policy which we were providing opposition to in those days.

In the committee, when we were putting our case, we were allowed a relatively free flow of debate, none of this: "You have 20 minutes. They have 20 minutes. The New Democrats have 20 minutes. Oh, and when you get to 20 minutes, whether you're in the middle of a question or not, that's your last question. Finish the question. Finish the answer. Move on to the next."

I recall quite well that there was a certain member from the Conservative Party, the government in 1981 through to May 2, 1985 -- a little bit longer than that, actually. June 26 or something, I think, was the date things changed over. I remember that the Conservatives had a designated hitter in the committee who, when you saw him starting to salivate with a sense that, "It's my turn to speak," you knew the hammer was coming down on us and that we were preparing to move on.

But you know something? In the committee work in those days there was never a time when we were told that we couldn't even read the amendments, that we couldn't force the government to at least read the darn things so that they could be on the record. I can't tell you the frustration that probably would be carried for a member of that House, 1981 through 1985, with the type of scenario that we now have in our committees today, largely because of the way our committees are structured and largely because of the sort of -- I don't know -- insatiable need of the government for efficiency.

Efficiency isn't the bottom line in democracy. What is the bottom line in democracy? What is it that these men and women are going to be assigned to do in these committees? It is to filter out the best way that they can, with the tools they are given, the best interests of the province. I will agree with everybody else that it is unlikely that New Democrats and Liberals and Tories will agree unanimously on very many things of public policy. There are some examples.

When I spoke not that long ago in this House about the cooperatives bill, which I actually aided getting through here in relatively quick fashion because we believed in it, it was because I was representing to the members of the government the fact that if there are no questions of divergent public interest in our mind about a public policy, then we're prepared to move the debate forward, that we are not prepared as women and men in opposition to hold things up that we see few problems with.

I don't think there are any of us who talk about products of human minds and hands as being perfect, but in many ways the bill about which I spoke, the cooperatives bill, was one we supported and wholeheartedly aided getting through this place. In fact, we aided its getting through the committee of the whole stage and we were prepared to help.

We were prepared to aid in getting the University Foundations Act through this place not that long ago. I think it was just barely a week or so ago. We assented to it because we saw that there was a public need on the part of the university community to move forward with the implementation of the legislative framework there to allow it to do its work to raise money. That's important, and we agreed with the importance of that bill. We said to the House, "Let us move forward quickly with it." That was efficient, but it was an efficiency associated with an agreement as to the need in the public policy sense. The Conservatives agreed with the movement of that bill right quickly, and this House came together unanimously to move that bill through with very little delay.

But now we see that when we are prepared to cooperate on the basis of an acknowledgement that the public policy is good for the community on which it is focused, we now find that if we disagree with the government, then the best we can hope for is that we will have three days of debate on second reading and then we will be time allocated in a way which strangleholds the operation of this place and which throws out the window all the merits of the democratic system in which we are situated.

That is not acceptable. It is a complaint --

Hon Bob Mackenzie (Minister of Labour): Not acceptable to you.

Mr Elston: The Minister of Labour says it's not acceptable to me. You know something, it ought not be acceptable to Bob Mackenzie, the member for Hamilton East, who used to stand and applaud people like Jim Renwick and others as they complained about being shut down from debate. It shouldn't be a complaint, but the member for Hamilton East, who is now adorned with the mantle of office, Her Majesty's servant, the prince of the Labour ministry, says that it's acceptable to him that efficiency rather than democracy become the chief objective of the government.

It is not acceptable to us. It is not acceptable that democracy be replaced with efficiency. Effectiveness and efficiency can come from a democratic institution that can work and that has the freedom to work and that is not dominated by members of a government that are insatiable in the exercise of their power. That's what we have now, and that is why these standing orders have been so radically changed under the passage of the amendments that were brought to this place by the member for Windsor-Riverside, the government House leader.

Hon David S. Cooke (Government House Leader): You mean the ones you negotiated.

Mr Elston: We didn't negotiate those sorts of things, Mr House Leader, and Mr Speaker, you know we didn't negotiate those sorts of changes because we would not have provided this sort of corruption of the standing orders and the end of democracy as we have known it in this place.

Hon Mr Cooke: This is hardly corruption.

Mr Elston: Mr Speaker, if they have a point of order, let them stand up and let them be recorded, but from now on perhaps at least when I am given the time to speak on these motions you could listen. I can't understand, Mr Speaker, how it is --

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order. Order, please. Order. The honourable member for Bruce has the floor.

Mr Elston: The standing orders have been changed and while it would be unusual for me to take much time on a motion of this nature, I find that it is the only time in which I can have some minutes to express in the greatest degree my chagrin at the change in the nature of this House and the committee structure of this House, and the fact that I believe the men and women we are appointing to go into those standing committees are going to encounter such terrible harassment when they try and do their work.

That's why I'm making my remarks. I have no other place to do it. I can't complain except by raising points of privilege and find that on an ad hoc basis, one after the other, the resolve of this House that the rights of the minority be supported is going to be overruled, for very technical reasons in some cases. I have raised in the greatest degree my concern that the Speaker backs out of the role of supporting the rights of the minority merely because something happened in the committee and a majority of the committee members don't report it back to him. Let's talk about that as a problem for these committee members.

Let's take a look at Bill 40. Bill 40 went into the committee and was time allocated. Very close to the end of the time for clause-by-clause in the standing committee on resources development, which is where Bill 40 was sent for examination, the government of the day dropped over 20 amendments on the table at the last moment, knowing full well that the eighth day, which was coming up on the Monday, would have at maximum probably half an hour to consider these 26 amendments. The government knew full well that the people who are members of the committee would not be able to deal with the existing amendments that were on the table, which by that time, I understand, numbered somewhere near 182.

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Knowing full well that there would be no time for us to deal with the issues on the last day, 26 or so more government amendments fell on the table. It was known full well that those amendments would not be able to be introduced one by one in the half-hour that remained to us on the eighth day of clause-by-clause, because the time allocation motion said that at 4 o'clock on that day, all amendments that had not been put would be deemed to have been read and all the work had to be done to make sure that votes on all those sections would be taken.

It was a startling revelation to all the people who had been watching the proceedings to understand that not only would the amendments not be read, but they would not even be read when the votes were taken. There was not one time during the committee when the written documents appeared on the written agenda of our committee's table.

They were given to the clerk of the committee, that clerk saw them, and they were distributed to the members, but my understanding is that they're not part of the record. In essence, what happens is that they get recorded in the amended bill as it comes back to the House, but they were never read in the committee so that the members of the standing committee on resources development could hear, one by one, not only the amendment but also the explanation of what the amendment would do to Bill 40.

It's interesting that when the committee members on the standing committee on resources development went through the votes, it was done on the basis of, "Shall the amendment to section whatever carry?" Item after item, the government said yes and the opposition said no, but never, if someone was sitting in that committee room, would anybody know what the yes was for and the no was against, because nobody ever heard it read, no one ever heard it explained. No one discovered the merit of the amendment to a bill which has been in the making for several months.

That doesn't help our democratic process. That may be efficient and that may scupper any opportunity democracy has of surviving in a very modern world.

I think I understand about as well as anybody the reasons why so many people these days are relying upon efficiency as their god. I don't agree with it. Like you, Mr Speaker, I come from a rural part of Ontario, where our society, because of various pressures, has changed terribly, where the issues confronting us as members and the issues confronting our constituents are of such magnitude and such daily importance that it requires in some ways a very quick response if one can possibly be found.

I understand the need for urgent activity, and I understand the nature of the change of the society which I represent in the great riding of Bruce. Urgency is all about us. Farms are closing up, businesses are issuing their last cheques, companies are sending out their last inventory, shopkeepers ordering their last bits of stock and people are losing their homes, their businesses and their jobs.

Our people are in urgent need of help. There isn't any question about it. Look what's happening to our industries. Look what is happening to the steel industry in Hamilton, the men and women there who have just gone through another announcement that there will be fewer workers needed in Hamilton steel, the workers who have just discovered that perhaps the GM plant in St Catharines is under a new scrutiny because of the overthrow of the existing hierarchy in GM.

All those things require an urgent intervention by this place, but not necessarily by this place. There is a role to be played by the Premier as chief of the executive council and by his ministers. They can do certain things in the executive capacity, efficiently and effectively if they choose, without even coming to us. It will embarrass us, I am sure, when we look back on this government's term to find out just what has been done without the government coming to this Legislative Assembly.

People need to check the regulations this government has passed and is passing, the regulations which may find their way into the standing committee on regulations and private bills -- to which Mr Fletcher, Mr Hayes and Mr Perruzza are going to be appointed by this motion -- but which probably won't receive much review whatsoever, to be quite blunt.

The executive council can be pretty efficient, can be pretty effective without doing very much and allowing us to do very much, but this House is not --

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): On a point of order, Mr Chair: I know the member for Bruce is fixated on my name and wants to use it as often as he likes and looks to using it, as he did a few minutes ago. But I'm the member for Downsview, and I think it's the decorum in this place that we refer to members in the Legislature by their ridings. Essentially that's what's important, because this desk that I occupy in this chamber belongs to the people of Downsview.

The Acting Speaker: I thank the honourable member.

Mr Perruzza: This time, through their good graces, I'm here. Next time there will be somebody else here --

Interjection: I can't argue with that.

The Acting Speaker: I thank the honourable member. I believe the member for Bruce was reading the motion that was placed by the honourable House leader. The honourable member for Bruce has the floor.

Mr Elston: I have lost track, but I don't propose to go back to the beginning of my remarks. I was reading from page 21 of our Orders and Notices paper, number 74. I was only going through the names of some people who were going to have to do work in committees, and that I felt they would be compromised.

Perhaps some of those members will find out about the regulations in a way which will be more timely than the rest of us, and maybe we'll find out about the efficient way the member for York South and his cabinet are processing business in their sphere, but we still have to guard the traditional and, we hope, democratic institution of the chamber here so that we can do our work.

What other concerns do I have with respect to what the members to be appointed to these committees are going to be faced with? Well, concern for the members going on to the standing committee on public accounts. There are a couple of new members there. I won't mention their names, but I will tell you that one of the problems that will be confronting the members as they go into those committees is that the government invariably has a majority in each of those places. If there is an independent will to be expressed, if there is a hope by the opposition, in minority, to do certain business, it cannot be done if the whip is in on the members from the New Democratic Party. We understand that the independence of these committees is only dependent upon the chief government whip and her instructions from the Premier.

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It is a sad reality, but it is none the less the way our tradition has developed, that the committee structures are generally based in each Parliament on a proportionate representation in the committees, as best we can make it. In this Parliament, where there are 74 members of the government caucus, 35 members of the official opposition and 20 of the people in the third party, and now one vacancy, as you well know, proportionately in committee we have a representation along those lines because we believe that the people have generally spoken in that regard.

So there are as members of the committee, in addition to Mrs MacKinnon and Mr Wessenger, who are going on to the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly, four other New Democrats, there are three Liberals, there are two third-party members and there is a chairperson to handle the business. I think in Legislative Assembly that chairperson happens to be a member of the New Democratic Party, but we have come to an agreement, under the progressive leadership of the Liberal administration, just now narrowly dismissed in the last election --

Interjection: Narrowly? It wasn't narrowly.

Mr Elston: There seems to be some disagreement. But in any event, the progressive leadership of the people from the Liberal Party decided that it wouldn't be just the public accounts committee that had an opposition member as Chair. That has been traditional for some time. The Chair of public accounts has been traditionally, for many, many years, a member of the opposition parties. I don't know where the tradition began, but it is quite clear that, of all the standing committees, that is probably slightly more independent than others, because the Chair has a very interesting role to play if he or she decides to be very aggressive in pursuing matters of financial interest.

However, in all cases, if a matter is reported to the committee, whoever is the chairperson managing that committee, the majority vote will always rule and the government will always get its way, unless, in some small way, the members of the committee are able to embarrass the government into taking the whip off the backs of their members and some kind of deal is struck whereby some flexibility of activity can occur and the public issue can be inspected from the view or perspective of the opposition, the minority interest, not the government interest.

That didn't happen all the time. It didn't happen very often, in fact, in the days when I first came here in 1981 through 1985. But it did happen on occasion, because we were able to use some tools, both in the committee, as members there, and in this place to force the government majority to deal with the public interest issues.

Now, as we've become more aware of the frighteningly efficient nature of our society, people believe that our democracy must be so efficient that we don't give time for anyone to do anything, and when that happens, the minority in committee doesn't have any instrument at its disposal to force the government to re-examine the public policy if the government decides to close its eyes and plug its ears.

That's happened with Bill 40. The government has determined that it doesn't want to hear anything more about it. They don't want to be challenged about its application on the business community and the resulting problems that are associated with it. They don't want to be challenged with questions of economic impact. They don't want to be questioned about the validity of the amendments that have been placed in committee but never debated. In short, they don't want to bother with the very basic precepts of democracy that the committee members have a chance to challenge the minister, have a chance to challenge the parliamentary assistant, have a chance to challenge the bureaucrats who are promoting the public bill in the committees.

When that occurs, of course, the need for the standing committees is really under question. The need for moving of substitutions of membership on these standing committees, the resolution made by Mr Cooke as number 18 on this government motions list, is really under question, because what is it that this House requires the women and men as members of the committees to do but stamp the work of the Premier?

The member is more than just a tool or an instrument of the executive council. I was a member of the executive council at one point, and I was proud of it. I felt privileged that David Peterson in those days chose me as one of the members of the executive council. While from time to time the workload became so oppressive and days became so long and nights so short that I felt like I was going to run out of every ounce of energy I had, never for a moment did I question the need of the women and men who were members of the Liberal caucus -- the government caucus in those days -- to confront me with questions about the nature of the policies and programs which my ministry was bringing forward.

I may have on occasion found it irritating that the questions were repetitive, that sometimes a member who was just now approaching me had just missed a series of questions put by another one of my colleagues and I had to repeat it all, and I may have from time to time become impatient. When people get tired and a little bit ornery, impatience is of course one of the necessary side products of that whole operation. I can admit that there were days when I was tempted to try and figure out how I could become more efficient, and in fact from time to time I went to the government House leader of the day and asked, "Why can't we do this faster?"

Why couldn't we do it faster? Because the needs of our institution are such that every person in this place, as long as he or she is not repeating the same question, the same line minute after minute, needs to be heard. If there is a different point of interest, if there is a different question that comes to the mind of an individual here in relation to a minister's proposal, why can't he or she put it?

She can't put it, he can't put it, because the government has moved to make sure that the standing orders are not the guiding interests of protecting democracy, but they become, with their guiding principles, an instrument of efficiency. That is not the way this world is supposed to work if we are to have free and happily democratic institutions.

These standing orders govern the work here. They govern the work in the committees that are the subject matter of the resolution brought by Mr Cooke. On the day when we find that efficiency is the name of the game, then surely we must all agree that democracy has been sacrificed for the purposes of the government. I don't understand that.

You, like I do, come from rural parts of Ontario, and you, like I, have been elected for some time. As I now reflect, the current member in the chair, the member for S-D-G & East Grenville, was an honorary member of the class of 1981. Not having come to us really early, he none the less was sort of brought in in an honorary capacity; 1984 is a little bit short of 1981. But you, like I, come from the roots and traditions of this province which really require us to be out and listening, sometimes unpleasantly, to the interrogatories of our constituents about what we're doing or not doing in this place.

You know that from time to time as a government member, in your case more briefly than I was, that the only way people have a chance of assessing the effectiveness that you or I have at this place is that they're able to quiz us about what we have done, where we have taken their inquiries, what action has been required of us and, "What have you done to require the Minister of X to look after my problem?"

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Oftentimes, Mr Speaker, I must say that if you couldn't get on the list in the House, from 1981 to 1985, as I was trying to do, and as I'm sure you must have been trying to do as the new member from then-Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry -- it's been a terrible travesty in changing the name, but that's for another day, perhaps -- if you couldn't get on the list to do anything in the House, then the local member had the tool of the standing committees. While we substitute men and women on to these committees to be official members, it is generally accepted that any member who wants to speak can wander in at an appropriate time when some business is being done and speak to the committee, although he's excluded from voting on any issue that may arise there as a matter of business.

But it would be easy when we were walking down the streets of Winchester, perhaps, or down the streets of Port Elgin, to just happen to have in our back pocket a copy of a speech that was made in the standing committee on finance and say to the honourable constituent who asked, "Noble, what did you do with my letter?" -- actually, I don't know what you were doing in Port Elgin. Anyway, maybe it was I who was in Port Elgin and he asked me the question. You could pull out of your hip pocket a little extract from the meeting wherein you quizzed either the deputy minister or one of the public servants, the minister or the parliamentary assistant about a particular problem from our area.

It was comforting to both the member and the constituent that each had recorded the fact that there, in the Hansard of the committee, the member was able to put the question and there was a reply recorded publicly so that everybody who wished to know about issue X could go to our Hansard report and say, "You know, there's a person who had a problem just like I did, and that member brought it forward so that we have an answer." It might not be the right one, but it might even be an undertaking to change some regulation that would make that problem disappear.

From my point of view, that role in our committees today is much, much restricted, and I'm concerned by that, because what instruments do we have as members of committees, as members in this Legislative Assembly, when we are so often prevented from voicing our concerns? The new government has substituted its very high-sounding words of support for democracy for a rigorous alliance with the new concept of efficiency in terms of government. They don't want to have members going into the standing committees and asking ministers --

Hon Mr Cooke: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I would ask for unanimous consent to move to the supply motion, which the government must pass today. If the government doesn't supply the supply motion, there will be severe consequences for this province. It must be passed by 6. I ask for unanimous consent to move to the supply motion of the government.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): The honourable member cannot move a motion on a point of order.

Hon Mr Cooke: I asked for unanimous consent, Mr Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: We can ask for unanimous consent.

Mr Elston: No, sir, you cannot ask for unanimous consent. There is nothing out of order.

Hon Mr Cooke: I asked for unanimous consent.

Mr Elston: You can't.

The Acting Speaker: We quite obviously do not have unanimous consent.

Mr Elston: He cannot do it on a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Hon Mr Laughren: You can do anything with unanimous consent. Don't be silly. You're denying unanimous consent.

Mr Elston: Mr Speaker, he cannot use that. It's not a point of order.

Hon Mr Cooke: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I just think the opposition should understand the consequences of what it is doing here this afternoon by denying supply for the government.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. I understand. I think all members know the consequences. The honourable member for Bruce has the floor and may continue.

Mr Elston: There are very few times when we have to speak in this House, because the rules have been changed to ensure that we have been silenced. There have been major changes in the standing orders because this New Democratic Party now worships at the altar of efficiency. They have forgotten about the principles of democracy. Every time we stand to speak and bring to the attention of the people of this province that democracy has been sacrificed to efficiency, it seems to me that these people barrack and break up everything --

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): The cheques are in the mail.

Hon Mr Cooke: No, they're not.

Mrs Marland: Yes, they are.

Mr Elston: Mr Speaker, I would ask --

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member for Bruce has the floor. Please allow him to complete his presentation.

Mrs Marland: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: The government House leader raised a point of order about why he wanted to move the supply bill now with unanimous consent instead of continuing with the motion he also placed some hour ago.

The Acting Speaker: I appreciate the information. I don't believe it's a point of order.

Mrs Marland: Speaking to his point of order, he is arguing that the welfare recipients will suffer because of his inability to bring forward the supply motion. We simply say to him that he had a choice of which motion to bring forward this afternoon.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you.

Mrs Marland: Mr Speaker, I say simply that if the government was concerned about the welfare recipients, it wouldn't have to spend $16 million on bilingual highway signs --

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. It was not a point of order. The honourable member for Bruce may resume his participation in the debate.

Hon Mr Cooke: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: On the point of order just raised, the fact of the matter was that today your House leader and the House leader for the official opposition were told the committee motion and supply, and they agreed to both. Now they're making people pay because they're not happy with a decision yesterday.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Cooke: It's absolutely despicable what you're doing.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): Mr Speaker, on a point of personal privilege: I have taken a lot of BS from this government and its puppet Speaker over the last couple of days, but I can tell you one thing: One thing I will not stand for is the honourable government House leader saying --

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Eves: -- that I told him he would have anything passed today, because I did not.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Eves: I give him an opportunity to withdraw that --

The Acting Speaker: Order. I realize everyone is on edge.

Interjection.

Hon Mr Cooke: You knew the committee motion was coming and you said you'd be speaking for a short period of time.

Mr Eves: I said nothing --

Hon Mr Cooke: We know you're filibustering on supply and people are going to suffer because of --

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Interjections.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Throw him out.

The Acting Speaker: Order. The more of these interjections we have, the more difficult it will be to conduct business. The honourable member for Bruce has the floor. He may resume.

Mr Elston: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. As I said before, all that the current New Democratic government wishes to do is to have efficiency. They want to quiet us down. They want to shut us up. They don't want to hear any type of criticism. They will do and they will say anything to try and overcome our freedom of speech.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please.

Mr Elston: Thank you.

The Acting Speaker: We have many interjections. We have people who are not in their place interjecting. Please, interjections are out of order, particularly when a member is not in his or her seat.

Mr Elston: We have had actually a couple of notices that the motion for supply was going to be called. The earliest time was in the latter part of September, and at that time the government House leader withdrew it from the list and didn't bring it forward. There were discussions. He postponed it. He didn't bring it forward. He chose not to because he was playing with this issue. He wanted to make sure --

Hon Mr Cooke: You can make all the argument you want, but you're the one who's holding up the cheques, not us.

The Acting Speaker: Will the government House leader please allow the member for Bruce to continue his debate. I realize there is a great deal of disagreement here, but you will have your turn. The member for Bruce has the floor.

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Mr Elston: What is occurring now is exactly what these people are all about. They are manipulating the procedures of this place to make sure that we cannot, that we will not, that we will never be able to criticize them for anything. When we raise the issues, they shout us down. They will use any language they think they have to to make sure we are injured by their interjections.

It is not true. The government House leader has always had it within his ability to call this motion, and in fact it was up for calling an awful lot earlier than now, but he kept pushing it back and pushing it back.

In respect of this committee assignment motion, I have advised the member on more than one occasion that I would be speaking about the committees and about how I see this place working, or better put, not working. He put this on the day he thought he would call supply so that he could shut me up.

He will not keep me quiet by all the manipulation that is in his hands, by all the power he has bestowed on himself through these standing orders. I will not allow him to prevent me from speaking. I said that when these rules were passed. I have said it to him personally. I have said it to many of the people in this place. Whatever you do and however you plan to do it, I will not be prevented from speaking my piece about the way this House has evolved to the current day.

When these people believe that efficiency is democracy, they have forsaken all their forefathers in the CCF and in the New Democratic Party. If there was one thing I believed when I was looking at the development of those parties, it was that the founders of the New Democratic Party had a thrilling sense of democracy, that they had an enviable history of complying with the democratic organizations at the local levels and throughout their party structures, that they adhered to the words of their women and men members at the grass roots, that they abided by the principles of democratic formation and that efficiency wasn't the issue that struck them in their party's organizations, but effective democracy was.

Well, these people sniffed power. These people have experienced power. These people have been moved by power to sacrifice democracy for efficiency. They have confused their will with the democratic will. They have confused their position with an unsellable position on all of their public positions. They have really determined that no work needs to be done in the standing committees and that the people who are now being substituted on to those committees by this resolution are not going to be needed. The men and women won't have any real work to do because the directions will come from the Premier's office, because the directions were coming from the minister's office, and they are being sent forward by the whip's office on to those committees to make sure that nothing untoward happens and that nothing can be done by the minority members of the committees.

What a travesty. What belligerence. What a usurpation of the democratic institutions of this province by the New Democrats. I would like to see the member for Hamilton East go in and organize his labour unions on the basis that nobody could speak freely, that nobody could have any time to question the positions being put by the leadership. I would like him to go in and say that this is an undemocratic institution, that nobody will be able to have their words, and if you do have your words it will be for a matter of two or three minutes at a time.

The standing orders now are such that there is a stranglehold on freedom of speech in this province. I am very much concerned by that. There is a stranglehold on all the men and women who are being substituted on to the standing committees. The direction does not come from the committee any more. It comes from the Premier's office. It comes from the chief government whip. It's her job. She takes the message from the cabinet, of which she's a member, and she takes the message from her caucus and she makes sure the committees do the bidding of the government.

That's all that happens. They've got more members than we have. You know what really frustrated me more than anything else? It was standing in this House and addressing Mr Speaker himself, the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere and a democrat by nature, and being told that unless the majority membership on a committee raised an issue about problems in the standing orders being applied in the committees, he could not do anything for the members of this House to protect their minority rights.

He said that unless the majority -- which of course in the committee is really the New Democrats -- allowed for a matter of a violation of the standing orders to come forward to him, he would have nothing to do with the matter because it was fully under the control of the committee. These men and women now are going to abide by the fact that there is nothing, nothing that can protect them against the will of the majority, the New Democrats. Nothing, nothing can protect us against the committee dominated by the government.

They can have their way. They can violate every standing order in this book that applies to the standing committees. They can violate every tradition that's talked about in this book, Erksine May's Parliamentary Practice, in the standing committees. They can violate everything that is said in the Beauchesne book, which is a text we use as part of the foundation for the administration of business in this House. They can violate everything that has been traditional in the committee and they can get away with it, because before it comes here, the committee members who feel affronted must get a majority vote and then a report by their Chair to this place to have the matter resolved.

When is it going to happen? Never. Never. We have the examples. Bill 40 is one of the best examples of the most blatant violation of parliamentary tradition in our history, and it was all because there was a decision in the mind of the member for Hamilton East, the Minister of Labour, that said: "I don't want to bother with all of these complaints. I don't want to bother with any of this nonsense about democracy. I want efficiency and I want to drive this down the throat of anyone who has a question. I don't want to listen or be confronted by those people who have complaints. In fact, I won't ever bother going there."

That's what these men and women are going to have to put up with. They're going to have to put up with the fact that when the minister decides or when the Premier decides -- goodness knows when the Premier will be back in this place; he's hardly ever here anyway. But when the letters of instruction are written to the committees by the minister or by the Premier or maybe a letter will be written by the Premier's executive assistant -- who knows? -- scheduling business, the will of the majority will make sure that these men and women won't have anything to say if every parliamentary tradition is violated in the standing committee, if every standing order, on its own, is violated.

I am very much concerned by that. That's why I want to stand and talk about this motion in regard to the appointment of these people. I'm really wondering, what is the use of these people being appointed to this committee, because what really do these committees do?

There are a couple of standing order provisions that allow the opposition to actually bring forward business that's of importance to us, and we tried to do that just this week. We filed, in its former form, a 123 -- which is now a 125 -- motion to study a matter about the investigation of the circumstances surrounding the invasion of the Leader of the Opposition's office and the member for Halton Centre's office by the provincial police at the behest of the Premier and the Treasurer.

The attempt in the committee, under a standing order that allows us to do so, was fully frustrated by the fact that the people the committee needed to attend refused to show up. The Treasurer refused to show up and help us deal with that item in the standing committee. The Premier refused to show up and help us investigate the issue in the standing committee, so the members who are going to be substituted on to that committee will soon discover that even though they have a job to do they can be frustrated at every turn by the Premier and by any other member of the government when they put in the whip to the majority of the members on that committee and shut them down.

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The standing orders are designed to protect the interests of the minority. In fact, there isn't any reason why that 125 now is available to us except that there was an acknowledgement when it first appeared that the opposition needed to have some of its own time to investigate some of its own public issues. That's what that was a recognition of, and now we find that the government can frustrate it merely by stonewalling the attendance of the chief and, most important of all, the witnesses.

There's probably a reason why those people refused to show up. It was because they didn't want to answer the embarrassing questions about why they sent the police to investigate opposition members and why they decided to use the provincial police as an instrument of intimidation against the people who were freely putting forth complaints about public policy decisions.

Interjection.

Mr Elston: It's very interesting that the member for Sudbury is over there sort of yelling.

Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): Asking you to speak up.

Mr Elston: She has been noted for her cool and calm. I've seen her participate in events from time to time, I've been in committee with her from time to time, and it never bothered her if she had to speak up. I had to speak up because there was so much chatter. I had to bring it to the people's attention that the way the government works, it does it to frustrate the rights of the minority to do things that the standing orders allow us to do.

Interjection.

Mr Elston: I listen to Mr Wessenger over there. I guess I can call him by his surname because he is not sitting at his desk, but he likes to barrack. He's talking about Liberals thinking they're gods. Well, the activity carried on by this New Democratic Party these days, the manner in which it provides policy from on high and then requires it to be adopted, in a democratic institution, exactly as it says, without any debate and without anything else, really does smack of a sense of being a deity in a way which has never been done, in my view, before. This is like the New Democrats descending from the mountain. That's the way they're treating Bill 40. Nobody can complain. Nobody has a reasonable complaint that needs to be heard in this land of ours. I must say, that is so offensive.

If the member for Simcoe Centre had been here in 1981 to 1985, he would have heard the member for Hamilton East, as he was then, complaining about the terrible government tactics of Bill Davis. He would have heard the then member for Riverdale complaining about the terrible tactics of the government. He would have heard Ross McClellan, as he now is and the former member that he was, complaining about the tactics of the Davis government. The complaints that were levelled against the practices of those days had merit, and I supported them. But the activities of Bill Davis pale by comparison to the activities of the people who are now in government.

For me, it says it all that they now are more in love with efficiency than with anything else. That is the sadness of the current New Democrats here in the province: efficiency over every other consideration, efficiency over democracy, efficiency beyond any other need for this democratic society we have. When you sacrifice democracy to efficiency, you sacrifice effectiveness, because people have no way of underscoring the mistakes that are being made by the people who are members of the executive council.

I am wondering why we are debating the substitution of these members into committee at all when I see this government undermining all the things that committees have formerly been able to do, when it is undermining the work of this place in the name of efficiency, when it is undermining our democratic institutions.

In the end, we will have to take our time to speak in the very small openings we are allowed to speak in this place. We are making one commitment to our constituents, one commitment to the people of the province, one commitment to the government: that when we are now given the chance to speak, when we are not shut down, when we are not shut up by their new version of the rules and their new interpretations, we will speak. Because we must speak: It is our duty; it is what we were elected to do.

That one commitment is enough to know that in terms of the committee work we will do whatever we can to be heard through the minority members on the standing committee, about to be joined by others who are being substituted in under this motion.

I thank you for allowing me to share my views with you.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Eves: I would like to speak briefly, in the time that's left for me, to government notice of motion number 18, standing on the order paper today.

Before I address that government notice of motion directly, I think I should say that while the government House leader may find it convenient to blame opposition members for government notice of motion number 20 not being dealt with, I might remind him that it is the government House leader who determines the order of business and the orders of the day in this place every day. If he really thought government notice of motion number 20 was of utmost importance as opposed to number 18, he would have called government notice of motion number 20 instead of 18 and dealt with it.

As a matter of fact, I find it passing strange that he would not have called what he now considers to be important, at the 11th-and-a-half hour -- he must be learning something from Brian Mulroney, I guess. Now, on Thursday afternoon on October 29, he decides it's very important. How come he didn't call it this past Monday, this past Tuesday, this past Wednesday? Because he thought that getting Bill 40 in committee of the whole was more important, as he just pointed out, than welfare recipients getting their cheques. Well, he's got what he wanted. He thought that Bill 40 in committee of the whole was more important.

As you well know, Mr Speaker, when you were here in a different capacity last evening as Chair of the committee of the whole House, there was a little bit of a foofaraw in here and, in my humble opinion, the rules were somewhat circumvented and bent to make sure that the government House leader got committee of the whole on Bill 40 yesterday.

I find it extremely offensive. I say to him that he has put the interests of passing Bill 40 in a certain stage above the interests of every person who was supposed to receive a cheque. So if by some strange passing fancy some people don't get a cheque, the person to blame is the government House leader, who could have called this order any time he wanted since this House reconvened in September. Some five weeks later, he now thinks it's important at 5:30 in the afternoon on the last Thursday before October 31.

1740

Hon Mr Cooke: You know that's nonsense.

Mr Eves: That is not nonsense. That is fact.

We should probably know what we're debating here this afternoon. The motion we are debating stands as government notice of motion number 18 on the order paper. It reads as follows in the name of Mr Cooke:

"That the following substitutions be made to the membership of the standing committees:

"On the standing committee on administration of justice: Mr Mills for Mr Wessenger, Ms Swarbrick for Mr Morrow

"On the standing committee on estimates: Mr Abel for Mr O'Connor, Mr Elston for Mr Sorbara, Ms Haeck for Mr Ferguson, Mr Rizzo for Mr Perruzza

"On the standing committee on finance and economic affairs: Mr Ferguson for Mr Christopherson, Mr Waters for Ms Ward (Don Mills), Mr Wilson (Kingston and the Islands) for Mr Ward (Brantford)

"On the standing committee on general government: Mrs Mathyssen for Mr Hope, Mr Morrow for Mr Ferguson

"On the standing committee on government agencies: Mr Cooper for Mr Ferguson, Mr Rizzo for Mr Wiseman

"On the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly: Mrs MacKinnon for Mr Cooper, Mr Wessenger for Mr Mills

"On the standing committee on the Ombudsman: Mr Abel for Mr Duignan, Ms Harrington for Mr Perruzza, Mr Mammoliti for Mr Johnson

"On the standing committee on public accounts: Mr Grandmaître for Mr Sorbara, Mr Perruzza for Ms Haeck

"On the standing committee on regulations and private bills: Mr Fletcher for Mr Dadamo, Mr Hayes for Mr Farnan, Mr Perruzza for Mr Sutherland" --

Hon Evelyn Gigantes (Minister of Housing): Read some rivers.

Mr Eves: No, I'm reading what your House leader considers important this afternoon.

"On the standing committee on resources development: Mr Hope for Mr Waters, Mr Ward (Brantford) for Mr Dadamo

"On the standing committee on social development: Mr Dadamo for Mr Drainville, Mr Farnan for Mrs Mathyssen, Mr O'Connor for Mr Wilson (Kingston and the Islands)."

The date of that motion, Mr Speaker, was October 15, 1992. Perhaps members of the public out there don't understand what committees do around here, and I think perhaps we should talk about when committees sit and what they do. I think it would also help us to look at what some committees have before them right now. Perhaps we should talk about some of the substitutions being made. One can only surmise why some of them are being made. Obviously, some are being made because some members have been made cabinet ministers.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Read the rivers, Ernie. Come on.

Mr Eves: No, I'm talking directly to the motion.

Hon Mr Cooke: This is more important than sending out cheques.

Mr Eves: The committees; that's what you've decided.

Hon Mr Cooke: No, you're deciding right now.

Mr Eves: The committees sit on Mondays of each week that the Legislature is sitting. The justice committee sits in room 228, the resources development committee sits in committee room 1 and the social development committee sits in room 151.

Interjections.

Mr Eves: That's also known as the Amethyst Room, for the benefit of the Minister of Transportation over there.

On Tuesdays, all three caucuses have caucuses in the morning, and the committees sit in the afternoon as follows: justice committee in room 228, estimates committee in committee room 2 and social development again in room 151.

On Wednesday mornings, government agencies in room 228; the Ombudsman's committee in room 151; regulations and private bills in committee room 1. Wednesday afternoon, estimates committee in committee room 2, Legislative Assembly committee in committee room 151 and resources development in committee room 1.

On Thursdays, the finance and economic affairs committee sits in committee room 1, general government in room 151, public accounts in room 228. On Thursday afternoons, general government in 151 and the finance committee in committee room 1.

I think it is also kind of important that we talk about some of the work some of these committees have before them right now and the effect some of the new standing orders that this government insisted upon have had on committees in this place.

The standing committee on the administration of justice, for example, right now has a designated matter that was sent to it pursuant to standing order 125 -- it used to be standing order 123 -- relating to the decision by the Treasurer, Deputy Treasurer, Minister of the Environment, Deputy Minister of the Environment and the executive council of Ontario to ask the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate matters of Ontario's public service and members of provincial Parliament regarding the release of government information to those same members of provincial Parliament.

That is a very important issue, and it's an issue that I have watched, interestingly, the government try to avoid dealing with. At all costs, they have tried to avoid dealing with the standing order referral of this particular issue in this item under standing order 125. I can understand their reluctance in not wanting to deal with this before the committee because, heaven forbid, if everybody who has been summoned by the committee ever appeared and told everything they knew, the government, indeed, might be in a great deal of trouble, and some very important members of the government might be in a great deal of trouble.

Right now we also have before the standing committee on resources development, I believe, a reference with respect to the bicycle helmet bill that was introduced by my good friend our whip, the member for London North, and I understand that it only has a couple more days. The government has sought a report, which is coming back before the committee, and assuming that this report is acceptable, that matter will be dealt with.

That committee also has before it another standing order 125 referral, and it'll be interesting to see if the government decides to try to stifle it and put it on hold as well. That is the referral with respect to Mr Holt's dismissal at Ontario Hydro. Despite the protestations of the Minister of Energy that he did not do such a thing, despite the fact that he stood in the House one day and said that he did not instruct the board to do any such thing, lo and behold, my colleague the member for Lanark-Renfrew produces a letter signed by the very same Minister of Energy who claimed that he did not do any such thing, saying that Mr Holt indeed was dismissed and would be dismissed.

Now the government is going to have a decision to make, because now it has decided that it wants to send the two pay equity bills, Bills 168 and 169, to committee. I can just see it all now. We're going to go to a House leaders' meeting and the government House leader is going to say, "Oh, we can't deal with that dicey issue of Mr Holt; we've got to deal with Bills 168 and 169 first."

He's probably going to do this about the 16th or 17th, whatever that Thursday is that week of November, because it's our next House leaders' meeting, or two House leaders' meetings from now, and then he's going to tell us that he wants to ram through the pay equity bills by December 10. He's going to give us about two and a half to three weeks' notice, and that's how he thinks business should be conducted in this place.

Hon Mr Cooke: That's why we talked about dealing with it in the spring.

Mr Eves: No, that isn't why we talked about dealing with it in the spring.

Hon Mr Cooke: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I'd like to ask for unanimous consent to move to government notice of motion 20 so that the government may get supply and send out the cheques that are due on October 31. So I ask for unanimous consent.

The Acting Speaker: You do not have the floor. The honourable member for Parry Sound has the floor. Please continue.

Mr Eves: I just might want to say to the people out there that in fact it is our understanding that social assistance recipients' cheques have already been mailed to them, so the picture that the government House leader tries to paint is not entirely accurate or fair. For people who need social assistance cheques, it is our understanding that those cheques have already been mailed and those social assistance recipients will be receiving them in any event.

The government House leader knows very well that he can deal with this issue like his government is wont to do: retroactively. Just stop and think about some of the pieces of legislation this government, which now says it can't do anything retroactively when it suits its convenient political purpose, has passed in the last 26 months that have been retroactively effective. Give me a break. You do it every day. You've taken retroactivity and made an absolute farce of it with piece of legislation after piece of legislation.

1750

Let's talk for a moment about the standing committee on the Ombudsman. There is a very interesting committee indeed. I don't know how we've gotten to this point, but we seem to have gotten to a point in this place where the Ombudsman of Ontario seems to be at loggerheads with the Ombudsman committee of the Ontario Legislature.

I can recall a frantic phone call from the Ombudsman during the summer recess -- what summer recess we had, because we didn't leave here until July 25, if my memory serves me correctly -- indicating that she would like to come and meet me in my office. I presume she made the same request of the other two House leaders as well, because she couldn't get anywhere with respect to a request she made to the Ombudsman committee of this Legislature. She indicated to me that all she was requesting was an opportunity to be heard by the committee for the first day or two.

That is a very difficult issue indeed and a very worthwhile endeavour that that committee is dealing with, for example.

Look at the London annexation bill, which of course has been sent to the standing committee on finance and economic affairs. That committee will be dealing with the city of London annexation legislation. There has been agreement that that committee will discuss the bill. It sits Thursdays all day, mornings and afternoons, as my understanding has it, and at least two of those Thursdays will be used for public hearings. Another two Thursdays will be used for clause-by-clause deliberation. If there are enough people who want to appear before the committee, and I imagine there may well be, then there will be three Thursdays set aside for public hearings and one Thursday for clause-by-clause deliberation of the bill.

While I understand that my colleague the member for London North and others are very supportive of that particular piece of legislation, I do want to say that there is a very concerning aspect to that bill in that the public utilities commission is done away with, almost as a passing of the hand, in an amalgamation bill. I find that a very frightening precedent indeed. I know many of my colleagues are quite concerned about that issue, as indeed members of all three parties should be concerned about the precedent that is being set with respect to that particular piece of legislation.

The government House leader, in his hurry to have the rules amended last June and July, amended the standing orders by way of resolution number 11, standing in his name. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but the following parts of the standing orders were amended as follows:

"That standing order 6(a) be deleted and the following substituted therefor:

"6(a) During a Parliament, the House shall meet:

"(i) from the Monday following the week prescribed by the regulations made under the Education Act for the school holiday in March to the Thursday preceding Victoria Day and from the first Monday following Victoria Day to the fourth Thursday in June; and

"(ii) from the fourth Monday in September to the Thursday preceding the week in which Remembrance Day falls and from the Monday of the week following Remembrance Day to the second Thursday in December."

All that gobbledegook basically means, in common sense, that the government doesn't want to be here as often as it was here before. They want to sit two weeks less a year so they don't have to subject themselves to question period. They don't have to be here until the Thursday just before the Christmas holiday and they get another week off to boot during the course of the year.

The problem I have with that is it might be nice to see some good faith on behalf of the government, that when the House does sit now, even two fewer weeks a year, most cabinet ministers and certainly the Premier of the province should be here. How many days have you seen the Premier of this province in his place during question period since this House reconvened in September?

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Three.

Mr Eves: Three, the member for St Catharines says. Now, that may be understandable to a large degree with respect to the referendum issue before us, and I understand how the Premier of the province might want to be out there talking about the referendum, but I do have a problem with what has happened since the referendum. I do have a problem when the Premier of the province has only been in this place for three days and now has to leave at 2:45. He can't even see fit to stick it through an entire question period. I find great difficulty with that. I find great difficulty with the fact that he couldn't be here to answer questions today but he wasn't too tired to be on a plane to Sault Ste Marie to do a sod-turning this afternoon. I find it a little tough to understand that as well.

It has been suggested by some members of the government that the Premier may be a little tired. So what's he going to do when he's a little tired? On November 5 he's going to leave here and go on a 16-day jaunt to the Far East. That's his rest and relaxation time, I guess, R&R, instead of being here. I'd suggest that maybe he should --

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): Where's Mike Harris? Where's McClelland?

Mr Eves: Where's Mike Harris? If you want to compare Mike Harris's attendance record to this Premier's attendance record, he attends question period more often in one week than your Premier has the whole time the House has sat this fall.

Also speaking very directly to this particular motion, I'd like to point out that not only did the government House leader have a choice of which order he called first today -- and if indeed his priority was interim supply, surely he would have called that first, but that wasn't his first priority -- I want to read the new standing order 23(a) that this House leader wanted passed and did pass when the rules were amended:

"23(a) Except where otherwise expressly provided by the standing orders, when the Speaker is in the chair, no member shall speak for more than 30 minutes.

"(b) Notwithstanding clause (a), the first speaker for any recognized party in the House may speak for not more than 90 minutes in the following circumstances:

"(i) debate on second reading of a government bill.

"(ii) debate on third reading of a government bill.

"(iii) debate on the address in reply to the speech from the throne.

"(iv) debate on the budget motion.

"(v) debate on the interim supply motion.

"(vi) debate on any other substantive government motion."

One interesting little quirk to this whole thing here this afternoon is that indeed the government House leader could have treated this, if he wanted to today, as a motion to be moved during motions, but he chose to treat it as a substantive motion. He chose, by doing that -- it was his decision, which he could have done or not done -- to give, knowing full well that it meant that each opposition leadoff speaker would now have 90 minutes to speak instead of 30 -- that was his choice and his choice alone, and he chose it.

Hon Mr Cooke: This is your choice: $180 million being held up.

Mr Stockwell: Because you're incompetent.

Interjections.

Mr Stockwell: He's calling you a liar, Ernie.

Mr Eves: The interjection of the government House leader is simply not accurate. It's not an accurate account of what happened at the House leaders' meeting today. Never at any time during the House leaders' meeting this morning did I indicate to the government House leader that he would have this motion today. I never made a comment on it; I was never asked about it.

He asked me, "If there's a vote on interim supply, will you put it to a vote or will you let it go?" My response was, "There will be a vote."

1800

Hon Mr Cooke: What does that say to everybody?

Mr Eves: What it should have said to you was, if you wanted interim supply passed, you should have called it. If interim supply was so important to you and you were concerned about those cheques, you should have called it yesterday instead of ramming through Bill 40 clause by clause. That was more important. Mr Mackenzie's bill for Bob White was more important than those cheques.

You have nobody to blame but yourself. You could have called it yesterday, the day before yesterday, Monday, last Thursday, the Wednesday before that, the Tuesday before that, the Monday before that. You can go all the way back to when the House reconvened in September. You could have called it any day for five weeks, but you waited till 6 o'clock on the last day because Bob wanted his bill. That's what you did. It was your choice. It was your choice. It's your priority. How do you like your choice now?

I have it on good authority that the family benefits cheques went out yesterday, so lest the government House leader led us to believe that needy people out there will not get their cheques, the reality is they went out yesterday. Assuming that the postal system works, which is a tenuous proposition at the best of times, they will indeed be receiving their cheques, as they were supposed to. The fearmongering on the part of the government House leader is just that: fearmongering.

I can't help it if he decided that passing Bill 40 in committee of the whole was more important than dealing with interim supply. That was not my choice. That was not the choice of the House leader for the Liberal Party. That was his choice. He has the opportunity to call and determine the business of the House.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please.

Mr Eves: This afternoon he thought the committee motion was more important than an interim supply motion.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Eves: I'd like to adjourn the debate, Mr Speaker, it being past 6 of the clock.

The Acting Speaker: It is past 6 of the clock. We also have a late show, but I would like the government House leader to provide us with a schedule for next week's business.

Hon Mr Cooke: Since what has happened this afternoon, I don't have a schedule. I find it interesting that they have decided to hold up supply because they're opposed to Bill 40. I thank the House leader for the third party for telling us the truth this afternoon. This is all about Bill 40.

Mr Stockwell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: If the House leader is going to supply us with a schedule of business for next week, I'm prepared to listen, but the House leader does not offer any other information.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. We, I gather, do not have a schedule for next week's business. Therefore, pursuant to standing order 34, the question that this House do now adjourn is deemed to have been made.

The member for Mississauga West has given notice of dissatisfaction with the answer given yesterday by the Premier to a question. The honourable member for Mississauga West will have five minutes to make his presentation, at which time the Premier or his representative will have five minutes to reply.

POLICE JOB ACTION

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): Mr Speaker, before the five minutes begin, you said "the Premier or his representative." Could I have some indication if there is a representative of the Premier? My understanding is that only his parliamentary assistant would qualify to respond to this. His parliamentary assistant, I believe, is the member for Fort York, who is not in attendance. I just ask for that clarification because you said "his representative." I want to know if you're going to allow some other person.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): His representative is, as you have correctly stated, the parliamentary assistant, who is the only person who can speak in his place. The honourable member for Mississauga West has the floor.

Mr Mahoney: I'm assuming that since the Premier is not here and the parliamentary assistant is not here, I will simply make my remarks and there will be no response to this request, to this dissatisfaction, from the government side. I hope that changes. I hope the parliamentary assistant at least, or the Premier, is in the outer lobby and will attempt to come in, because these are very real concerns when members of the opposition express their dissatisfaction with answers given by ministers. If they were not to respond, this would obviously be a slap in the face, not only to me but to all members of the opposition and a clear recognition that the government doesn't really care about the minority, who also represent people in this province. I hope that is not the case, but I'm afraid that perhaps it is.

Mr Speaker, one of the reasons I was dissatisfied was that you will recall, sir, that when I asked my question, it was very specific, asking the Premier to respond to the requests of the police, particularly the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association, to have a meeting without the preconditions the Premier put on. They said they want open and honest and frank discussion. The Premier's response to that question was to stand up, and here's his opening line, "I just want to get on the record a comment made by Chief Lunney, who's the chief of police in Peel."

It strikes me as just a little passing strange that when I ask him to respond to a request from the Metro police association, he would stand up, obviously prepared -- I guess he knew I was going to ask him this -- and instead of responding to the concerns of the police, he quotes, and quotes, frankly, out of context, from information he had attained from a release from Chief Lunney.

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): Did he mislead us?

Mr Mahoney: It was close to misleading.

Had he read the entire release, he would have said that this was a release called Network, from Peel Regional Police, and it's signed by the chief, and no mistake, the chief is not happy about the job action. But clearly the chief is not happy, nor are the men and women in Peel region, nor are the men and women in every police force in this province, 5,000 to 6,000 of them on the front lawn, demanding that the Premier simply sit and talk, without preconditions, without requiring to stop their job action; to listen to them. I believe at one stage they even backed down and said, "Just give us 10 minutes." The Premier chooses to ignore that.

Then he gets up and in his defence, rather than telling us why it is he refuses to meet, which we have to surmise, he talks about public safety being in jeopardy. He even says, "That's what's at risk here, public safety."

If he really believes there is a risk to public safety, he is the first minister of the land in this province, and why would he not demand a meeting with the police, never mind requesting it? Why would he not, if he believed for one minute that the public was at jeopardy? It is his responsibility and the responsibility of this government to call the police in and say, "How can we resolve this problem?" to sit at the table, to get to the table and talk.

That's what Chief Lunney asked for. Chief Lunney said that it's time to get to the table and talk. He said clearly that he wanted the executive to meet with government officials, with or without the other police associations, and give them a documented list of the grievances. Here's Chief Lunney offering to be a representative on behalf of the Peel Regional Police Association, "Give them a documented list of your grievances and an understanding of your desires for settlement."

The key is that the police want to settle this matter. No one in the police associations, the men and women who serve and protect our province, no one involved in policing in this province, is happy that they have been forced to go to a job action. Yesterday on the front lawn they were saying how much they regret that they had to do this.

Instead, what do we get? The Premier, by not showing up here today, by not responding to this legitimate concern, by not sending a representative to speak on his behalf, and with one member of the government sitting in this audience, just shows his contempt for this place, his contempt for democracy and I --

The Acting Speaker: Order. There being no one present to respond, the motion to adjourn is deemed to have been carried. This House now stands adjourned until Monday, November 2, at 1:30 of the clock.

The House adjourned at 1811.