[Report continued from volume A]

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ORDERS OF THE DAY

ONTARIO TRAINING AND ADJUSTMENT BOARD ACT, 1992 / LOI DE 1992 SUR LE CONSEIL ONTARIEN DE FORMATION ET D'ADAPTATION DE LA MAIN-D'OEUVRE

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 96, An Act to establish the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board / Loi créant le Conseil ontarien de formation et d'adaptation de la main-d'oeuvre.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): The honourable member for Kingston and The Islands had the floor when we last debated this bill. Does the member wish to continue?

Mr Gary Wilson (Kingston and The Islands): Yes I do, Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to continue some of the themes I was developing in my remarks late last Tuesday night, and I think all members will agree that we've had a very good discussion on these issues.

I'd like to begin by just going over some of the ground that has led to the development of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board. The entire OTAB initiative has been part of a new and innovative approach we have taken to consultation and the involvement of government's partners.

The introduction of the legislation to establish OTAB is an important milestone in the OTAB initiative, and the legislation itself reflects the same sort of commitment to consultation and a direct involvement of labour market partners.

I'd like to mention at this point that the OTAB projet has come up with some very attractive and interesting and I think inclusive notes called fact sheets that give us this development. It begins with Steps to Date to Implement OTAB, a very thorough description of the various steps that were taken to bring about the development of OTAB. These fact sheets would be available through any MPP throughout the province, or you could write to the OTAB project communications. They're well worth looking at, because they do give a very good description of how we came about the development of this project.

The original concept of OTAB emerged from a consultative approach initiative by the former government through the Premier's Council. The council, as it was then constituted, was the first group to recommend that government establish such a board and involve the labour market partners directly in the strategic management of Ontario's training and adjustment system.

The recommendations of the Premier's Council were reviewed by this government, and consultations were undertaken on ways to strengthen and improve the proposed model to ensure that OTAB could meet the challenges of the labour market as we saw them. The results of government's deliberations were identified in Skills to Meet the Challenge, the consultation document which was released in late November 1991 and which provides the base for the OTAB consultations.

I must say this is well known throughout the province, because over 40,000 were distributed, and on top of that, many community meetings were held to discuss the proposal.

The purposes of the consultations on OTAB were to refine the proposed model, further the understanding of training and adjustment issues, build up the capacity of the labour market partners to work in the multistakeholder consensus environment that OTAB will be and develop communications and linkages across all the various partner groups involved.

The labour market partners were involved in the design of the consultation process put in place for OTAB through a committee established by Minister Allen to provide government with expert advice on how to proceed. Business, labour, educators and social equity groups were represented on this committee.

The minister himself travelled to many communities in Ontario to hear directly from interested members of the public and the labour market partners with regard to their advice and recommendations for OTAB.

I'm pleased to say that I was present in Kingston on May 2 when we held a meeting among the various stakeholders to discuss these proposals. It was very well attended, so well in fact that at least one more meeting was scheduled; that is three in the day instead of just two. There was a good representation of the groups and I think it reflected the kind of work the stakeholders in the Kingston area have already done to meet the challenge OTAB represents. There have been many meetings of the members of the stakeholder groups to plan the move towards OTAB and the kinds of opportunities it represents.

Labour market partners themselves were asked to form steering committees, drawing representatives from their constituencies from across the province together, to address the OTAB proposal. These groups have worked very hard over the past 11 months.

This consultation exercise has drawn together people from very diverse backgrounds and perspectives to address the important issue of reform of Ontario's training system -- and I think we know from the discussion we've had that there is a need for reform -- groups representing business, labour, educators and trainers, women, racial minorities, people with disabilities and francophones.

The OTAB consultations provided opportunities for these groups to meet and engage in serious and informed discussions about OTAB, its proposed mandate, its roles and responsibilities, the ways in which it will be accountable to the public and so on. These have been very useful discussions. They have gone a long way towards fostering the kind of cooperative environment that will be needed to address meaningfully the economic and social challenges we face as a province. The labour market partners have demonstrated ownership of this initiative and a strong desire to make it work for their own interest and for the broader public good.

The consultations have not been without controversy and disagreement, but the important issue is that the partners have continued to work together and with government to resolve the issues and government has responded to the input received from the labour market partners on OTAB.

The representation on the OTAB governing body was modified to include the direct representation of Ontario's francophone population in response to consultation input, and the need for the board to achieve gender balance and be representative of Ontario in many ways was recognized and emphasized. We have also included representation of the municipal government sector in Ontario on the governing body and in an ex officio non-voting capacity in response to strong input through the consultation.

The mandate of OTAB was fleshed out thoroughly as a result of discussions with the labour market partners. The bill we are reviewing today was developed in close consultation with the labour market partners to ensure that important concerns and objectives were included right from the start, because OTAB has been envisioned differently, as an agency that is needs-driven, inclusive, equitable and accessible, designed and owned by the stakeholders.

We have had to devise a consultation process that best reflected these objectives. Our consultations on OTAB have differed qualitatively from traditional methods of consultation. We have continuously made efforts to include and involve people in designing a training and adjustment system which will be responsive to their needs. As a result, OTAB will reflect the collective vision of the people of Ontario.

Having now listened to 12 speakers on this matter for over 12 hours, pursuant to standing order 47, I move that the question now be put.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Kingston and The Islands has moved a motion that the question be now put. According to section 47, "A motion for closure, which may be moved without notice, until it is decided shall preclude all amendment of the main question," and in the opinion of the Speaker, we do require some further debate. It's a very substantial bill and the Speaker at this point is of the opinion that we should have more debate on this very substantial bill.

The honourable member for Kingston and The Islands can continue with his participation in the debate.

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Mr Gary Wilson: Thank you, Mr Speaker. As I pointed out, I thought there was a thorough debate on this issue, certainly by the representation of the opposition here. It seems they've had enough to say on it, or at least they're no longer interested in the debate. Anyway, I'm pleased that this is such a fascinating topic that there is more for me to say about it. In fact --

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I have the standing orders before me, and I believe that it is contrary to the rules of procedure of this House for one member to question the motives of another member. I clearly heard the member for Kingston and The Islands impugning the motives of members of the opposition. The reason we said no to the closure motion of the NDP member was because we believe this is a substantive bill and we wish to have substantive debate.

Mr Speaker, I would ask that you censure him for his behaviour in this House and ask that he retract --

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. I do not believe the language was unparliamentary. However, the member for Kingston and The Islands may want to reconsider, if indeed he feels he was impugning motives. Please continue with the debate.

Mr Gary Wilson: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to assure the House that I had no intention of impugning the motives of anyone, especially people who aren't here. I would like, though, to mention a few points here. I'd like briefly to speak to the --

Mrs Caplan: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I'd like to refer to the rules of procedure and parliamentary tradition in this House, where it is clearly improper for any member to refer to those who may not be here in this House. I would point that out too and ask you to remind the New Democratic members of the traditions of this House and ask the member to refrain from that kind of improper behaviour.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Kingston and The Islands, please continue.

Mr Gary Wilson: I will continue with these remarks then. I just want to talk about the accountability of OTAB. OTAB represents a fundamental shift in how labour force development programs are managed in Ontario. The government is preparing to share with its partners real responsibility for training and adjustment programs and services which, because of their importance to the economic and social wellbeing of the province, affect us all.

In order to develop a labour force development system that is more responsive to the needs of the labour market, OTAB will be led through its governing body by representatives of the labour market partners: business, labour, francophones, persons with disabilities, racial minorities, women and educators and trainers.

While providing OTAB and its governing body with the autonomy to undertake fundamental reforms in the labour force development system, the government has also taken very definite steps to ensure that the agency remains accountable to government.

The government will continue to set broad labour market policy. OTAB will be directed to operate within the economic and social policies of the government and within the government's accountability framework. Set out in OTAB's legislation are specific reporting and auditing requirements of the agency. These requirements include the obligation to file for approval with the minister multi-year and annual plans as well as annual and fiscal reports. OTAB will also be part of the government's fiscal planning and estimates process.

In addition to the requirements set out in the legislation, OTAB will be required to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the government. This MOU will outline very specifically what the minister responsible for OTAB and OTAB itself expect from and must provide to each other. The agreement will set out clearly the policy objectives of the government, the role of the minister, the operating, administrative, financial control and reporting relationships, the government's requirements for staffing, audit and conflict of interest.

To ensure effective and efficient use of public funds, OTAB will be subject to review by the Provincial Auditor and other audit arrangements, as required by the minister.

As a crown agency, OTAB must comply with all relevant Management Board, treasury board, Human Resources Secretariat directives, with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the French Language Services Act.

OTAB's legislation specifies that the governing body members have a primary responsibility to serve the public interest. Although governing body members will seek information and guidance from their supporting reference groups, they --

Mr Noel Duignan (Halton North): Point of order, Mr Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: Point of order, the honourable member for Halton North.

Mr Duignan: It appears that the opposition has very little interest in the retraining of the workers of this province, Mr Speaker, when we only have four members present.

The Acting Speaker: I'm sorry, that's not a point of order. Are you calling for a quorum? If you're not calling for a quorum, it doesn't really matter.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Let's call for a quorum, then.

The Acting Speaker: On a point of order, the honourable member for Etobicoke West.

Mr Stockwell: Yes, I would like to call a quorum, Mr Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: Is there a quorum? Can I ask the table to check?

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees (Mrs Deborah Deller): Mr Speaker, a quorum is not present.

The Acting Speaker: A quorum is not present. Call in the members.

The Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is present, Mr Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: A quorum is now present. The honourable member for Kingston and The Islands can resume his participation in the debate.

Mr Gary Wilson: I've been discussing the accountability of the OTAB and I think you can hear from my remarks that there is a very strong element of accountability built into the governing of the new body. As well, of course, it's so rooted in the community that there will be a very close watch in communities throughout Ontario on the operation of this body. Then, as well as the various projects that it brings forward, there will be a great amount of interest to see how well this essential and crucial element of our economic renewal is working.

That being said, I'd like to say that staff in the various ministries have demonstrated impressive dedication and commitment to clients and delivery agencies. These same individuals will play an important role in the establishment of OTAB and in making the dramatic positive changes to Ontario's training and adjustment system. Overall, OTAB will result in a leaner, more efficient system than we have today. Government programs and staff will be consolidated under a single agency with a mandate to minimize duplication while responding more effectively to the needs of the people of Ontario.

At this point I would like to turn the debate over to others who might wish to make comments about it.

The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments.

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): I've listened to the comments from the member for Kingston and The Islands and I must say that I am very disappointed and shocked by what the member attempted to do during the middle of his comments, and let's be clear what the member attempted to do. The member attempted to stop debate on the bill, which the member himself says is extremely important. The member's actions during his own debate attempted to shut the door on the rights of all other members in this Legislature to speak on this bill, to bring their thoughts and opinions and concerns to this legislative floor -- thoughts, opinions and concerns which have been heard through the communities, through the constituencies of this province.

The member speaks about a bill as an important bill and 20 seconds later tries to close debate on the bill, tries to prevent other members in this Legislature from giving their opinions and their thoughts from their constituents on this particular bill. The member should be ashamed, the member's party should be ashamed, for what he attempted to do during this debate.

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I have but one question to ask of the member, because the member speaks about how important this is for the community. Would the member please explain and respond to what the impact of this bill will be to an organization known in Peel and Halton as the Halton and Peel Industries Training Advisory Committee, HAPITAC, which has a long history of success in training and job adjustment? What happens to them? I will tell you that this bill puts them out of work.

Hon Richard Allen (Minister of Colleges and Universities and Minister of Skills Development): Nonsense.

Mr Offer: I have your own letter that says that.

Hon Mr Allen: Nonsense. This bill has got nothing to do with stopping local boards, and the member knows that. It's got absolutely nothing to do with it.

Mr Offer: I have your own letter.

Hon Mr Allen: Go home and think again.

The Acting Speaker: Order. All members will have the opportunity --

Mr Offer: Testy, aren't you?

The Acting Speaker: Order. The honourable member for Etobicoke West.

Mr Stockwell: It was rather disappointing to hear a rather lame, bureaucratic statement with respect to something as important as this OTAB piece of legislation that has come forward. It was just filled with the obvious.

It's hard to believe that a member could stand up and say OTAB will be subject to the Provincial Auditor's reporting. Everybody's subject to auditor's reporting. We all know that. You don't need to say it. It's like, "Everyone has a vote." Of course everyone has a vote. We know these things. I expected something a little more concrete and a little more tangible, since this particular piece of legislation is being assaulted out there from all sectors: the business community, the labour community; all communities are assaulting this piece of legislation.

Hon Mr Allen: They are not at all.

Mr Stockwell: It's patently unfair. It's totally slanted --

Hon Mr Allen: Give us your evidence.

Mr Stockwell: -- to the labour social side with very little participation.

Hon Mr Allen: Don't just say it, give us evidence. Tell us who. Name the people.

Mr Stockwell: I make this point very clearly. We can't get this minister to answer questions, yet he heckles when we get our two minutes to speak to OTAB. He won't answer a question in the House when it comes to this. It took him two years to draft this piece of legislation, which he suggests isn't as complicated as all it was made out to be.

It's being assaulted out there from all sides because it's a slanted piece of legislation that's going to be a black hole for up to $2 billion of taxpayers' money, supported by few, if any, and it's slanted against business. The votes on this board will be made up of union representatives and social groups that will make it impossible for business communities to get a fair and honest input into this particular process.

Finally, Mr Speaker, you want to know how out of touch this is and how far removed? This government doesn't even get to make the appointments to the boards. They've passed that off to the union people as well. That's how irresponsible this government is -- the lack of responsibility it wants to take for legislation it's passing off as good for this province.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments.

Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): I want to thank the member for Kingston and The Islands for his thoughtful comments. It really makes me wonder sometimes when you wake up and what do you read in the newspaper? You read about the jobless benefits being cut in a spending squeeze by the federal government. It's really a damn shame when the working people who pay into unemployment insurance benefits and the people who employ people -- the benefits are there for those people who work for them. It's a damn shame that doesn't get passed on down to those working folks.

When you see a provincial government that cares about working people and moves forward on something like the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, all I have to do is take a sigh of relief because I know we have someone out there who is concerned about working people.

The member for Kingston and The Islands talked about the representation on the board. We're hearing a lot of discussion because we've got some employers in there, we've got employees in there, we've got people from different minority groups in there. I think, hurray, it's about time we tried to make boards look as representative of the population as possible. It surely isn't representative when you see tax cuts like this happening to working people from the federal government. You certainly don't see any support for the working folks there, do you, Mr Speaker?

Sitting back and listening to some of the comments that have been made, we've had 14 hours of debate on this and a full discussion on it and I'm sure everybody who had a chance to get up and speak got their chance because they would want to be in here, and the place would be jam-packed to the rafters.

There have been a lot of staged comments, and the member for Kingston and The Islands has certainly put it all in context because the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board is about people, about getting people training, about having a workforce to meet the future and to bring the Ontario economy into the future and into the next millennium. That's what this is all about. I'm proud to be part of this party.

The Acting Speaker: We can accommodate one final participant. The honourable member for Oriole.

Mrs Caplan: I listened very carefully to the remarks of the member for Kingston and The Islands and I was very disappointed. As he is parliamentary assistant to the minister, I would have expected more from him in the way of substantive debate.

I don't think there's a more important issue facing the province today than the issue of training and retraining of our workers for the jobs of the future. It's very disappointing to see this NDP government, after two years, come forward with its proposal for the Ontario training board, which is not supported by the business community, because they do not believe it will achieve the goals of the former Premier's Council when this was one of the council's most significant recommendations.

Two billion dollars in assets being turned over, primarily, to labour leadership; the fact that the minister's representative, the parliamentary assistant, would stand in his place today, deliver a very bureaucratic speech, talk about an MOU, which most people in this province do not know is a memorandum of understanding; the fact that he would stand there and call for closure after limited debate on a very substantive piece of legislation is shameful.

I would say further, time and again we hear Premier Rae talking about fairness. I would say to the member for Kingston and The Islands that his behaviour in this House today was anything but fair. It was unfair, it was arbitrary and, as a member of the government caucus, it was unbecoming of a New Democrat in this place of democracy, with very little debate, to cut off the rights of the opposition to do their job and speak for the people of this province and raise the concerns of business leaders and people who care about whether or not they're going to have a job tomorrow and whether or not they're going to be properly trained and retrained for the jobs of the future. That's what this legislation is about. In order for us to do our job, we must have the opportunity of free speech and time here in this Legislature.

The Acting Speaker: This completes questions and/or comments. The honourable member for Kingston and The Islands has two minutes in response.

Mr Gary Wilson: I'm pleased that my colleagues joined in the debate. I'm not sure they raised substantive questions that would help in this debate. In fact, the member for Mississauga North used most of his time to question the process here. If he spent as much time as I have in listening to the debate -- and I point out, it's over eight hours with 10 speakers; there has been a lot of debate -- he will find it's been a bit uneven in that there was a lot of time devoted to questions that were, at best, a side point to what our main point is.

If the bill is that bad, why don't they want to get it out into the community and let the community have a say about it? Our point is that the consultation has been very extensive; it has involved the labour market partners in developing this legislation. We think it's very good. The comments we're getting from the community is that it's very good, that it will meet the needs of focusing the efforts of 10 ministries over 48 different programs into one effective and unified body, OTAB.

I must say the member for Oriole is a little bit dismissive of the people of Ontario. I'm sure there are people out there who have been following this issue who would know that MOU means memorandum of understanding, which I did use in my remarks. I think she's just being a bit patronizing there.

I think we've had a good discussion up to this point. We've covered all the issues. We believe there's very solid agreement among the labour partners. Business has been in agreement on what we've done to this point. They've been cooperating. I'm sure they too want to get this into the community, into committee hearings, so we can look at it in more detail and even advertise its existence and its purpose to the community. Again, I want to thank the speakers who joined in.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate? The honourable member for Mississauga North.

Mr Offer: I'm pleased to join in this debate on this particular piece of legislation about which, I must say at the very outset, I have some significant concerns which I look forward to bringing forward in the time allocated to discuss this matter.

At the outset, however, it is clear that the member for Kingston and The Islands did not answer the essential point that was brought forward by members opposite. That is, what prompted the member for Kingston and The Islands to try to shut down debate on this particular piece of legislation? What is it that prompted the member, as a representative of the government, to try to shut the door on all other members to bring forward their thoughts on this particular piece of legislation?

Why is it that the members on the government side seem to be so preoccupied with shutting the doors of this Legislature, with shutting the doors on the rights of other members of this chamber to bring forward the thoughts, comments and concerns of their constituents to this place? What is it that prompts a member to do that on a bill that the member himself has indicated is so important?

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Well, I have some concerns with the particular piece of legislation and I believe that all members of the Legislature who do have those types of concerns should have the opportunity to bring them forward to this place. That is our right. That is one of the ways which we have and one of the reasons for our election. We have been elected to bring forward our opinions. We have been elected to bring forward the thoughts of our constituents and their opinions on pieces of legislation that they feel are of importance.

It is shameful that the members on the government side, and in particular the member for Kingston and The Islands, seek to shut the door on members of this Legislature from doing that particular job. That's our responsibility. It's something we take very seriously. It's the heart and soul of democracy, and the member has just tried to shut this down.

For that, I believe the member should be severely criticized, and if he has received some word and some authority or some direction from his government, it too should be extremely criticized for that. I would expect that the government members would not attempt to thwart the rights of members by trying to pull that trick when their turn next comes forward. I would expect they now know that there are a number of members who wish to speak on this piece of legislation and that we would expect that the members on the government side would not try to pull a trick like they have just attempted to do.

Mr O'Connor: Well, you sit down and let someone speak on it.

Mr Bob Huget (Sarnia): What the government needs is less talk from the politicians and a little more work.

Mr Offer: But to speak to the legislation, it appears that the members of the government seem to be a tad sensitive when they try to pull a trick and they get caught and it doesn't work, when they try to shut the doors of debate in this Legislature and they get caught and it doesn't work. They seem to be a tad sensitive when that which they tried to do has been found out and they've been stopped. We'll see if they will try once more when their turn comes about.

But I want to speak to the legislation. If the member for Kingston and The Islands had not tried such a dirty trick on the members of this Legislature, shutting out their rights to bring forward the comments and concerns of their constituents, I would not have had to really give up five minutes of the 30 that are allocated to me to bring forward that matter, because it was something that concerned me and concerned many members of this Legislature. Maybe if the member --

The Acting Speaker: On a point of order, the member for Mississauga West.

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I know that government members would like to hear the words of our Labour critic, and yet there's not a quorum present.

The Acting Speaker: Do we have a quorum?

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is present, Mr Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: A quorum is present. The honourable member for Mississauga North can proceed with his debate.

Mr Offer: I think it's clear that the nature of work in this province is changing, that we are undergoing a significant restructuring in our economy.

Interjections.

Mr Offer: Mr Speaker, I am trying to bring forward some of the opinions that I have received from my constituents. The members on the government side are continually heckling as I'm trying to bring forward some of the thoughts that I have heard from my constituents on this matter. I know they've tried to shut down debate, but the very least that the members on the government side could do is that when somebody does have the floor and is debating the legislation, they could refrain from heckling; because they are not heckling me, they are heckling my constituents and those people who have come to me to speak about this particular legislation. For that, they should be profoundly ashamed.

Even as I attempt to bring forward some of the thoughts on this particular legislation, the members continually feel it is somehow necessary to shout down members who said at the very outset, as I did, "I have significant concerns with this piece of legislation."

We all know that the nature of work and our economy are going through a fundamental restructuring. I believe that yesterday is yesterday and that we cannot look to yesterday to attempt to solve the problems of tomorrow. I believe that it is incumbent upon all of us to try to work together to make this province a province that can stand alone as an example for investment, a positive climate for investment; a province that can create jobs, can create new wealth, can send out a message that those who want to open up a business can do so in this province, that those who have an existing business can expand it in this province, that this is a province where "profit" is not a dirty word but rather is welcome and that there are positive messages to attract that type of investment and growth.

For that, I have some concerns with this particular piece of legislation. I have concerns because I believe the legislation is faulty in the extreme. I believe that it's faulty because it looks to yesterday to try to solve the problems of tomorrow. I believe that the makeup of the board itself is just not in sync with not only what this province is but what we all hope it will become.

Let's talk about the makeup of the board. Let's talk about who is going to be in control. It has two co-chairs, one representing business and one representing labour; seven directors representing business; seven directors representing labour; two directors representing educators and trainers; one director representing francophones; one director representing persons with disabilities; one director representing racial minorities and one director representing women.

I want to talk about the makeup of this board: "Educators." Let's read that again: "Two directors representing educators and trainers" -- for the Ontario of the 1990s and into the year 2000, two directors representing educators. I don't have to look farther than a book that's really just been recently released, The Next Canadian Century by David Crane. I take a look at page 137: "The ability of a country to maintain a high standard of living depends more than ever before on the quality of its workforce."

Would anyone disagree with that? No.

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On page 141, it goes on that "Industry and government are demanding, and should be demanding, more scientists, engineers and managers."

It goes on, and I pick from the book: "To be a world leader in the quality of our workforce, we must" -- and he uses the word -- "reform the system from top to bottom. We have to look at the full system."

On page 163 of this book it says, and I hope all members will listen to this: "As we approach the next century, education at all levels must be our most important concern. To create the new goods and services that are necessary to replace old industries and to sustain our society, it is essential that we equip young Canadians with the knowledge, skills and lifelong learning opportunities that can make innovation happen."

That, I believe, is an important aspect. I believe that is an area where this legislation is not only deficient but neglectful. What does it do in the area of education? What is the representation of a 22-person board from the education area? Two individuals on a board of 22.

Let us go back to what David Crane has indicated, and we know that Mr Crane is the economics editor of the Toronto Star: "As we approach the next century, education at all levels must be our most important concern." This legislation neglects what will be the challenge not only today but tomorrow.

Interjections.

Mr Offer: Mr Speaker, I speak about this particular legislation, about the substance of the legislation, about some of the thoughts not only of myself and constituents but of others, and all I hear is heckling on the other side. Mr Speaker, I would ask to adjourn the House.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Mississauga North has moved adjournment of the House. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour of Mr Offer's motion, please say "aye."

All those opposed, please say "nay."

In my opinion, the nays have it.

The division bells rang from 1643 to 1713.

The Acting Speaker: Could all members please take their seats.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please.

Mr Offer has moved adjournment of the House.

All those in favour of Mr Offer's motion will please rise and remain standing until counted by the clerk.

All those opposed to Mr Offer's motion, please rise and remain standing until counted by the clerk.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: The ayes are 21, the nays are 59.

The Acting Speaker: The ayes are 21, the nays are 59. I therefore declare Mr Offer's motion lost. Mr Offer can now resume his participation in the debate.

Mr Offer: As I left off, I was referring to a book by David Crane that spoke how, as we approach the next century, education at all levels must be our most important concern. I used that because the makeup of the board does not put the emphasis on education for Ontario in the 1990s and into the next century, as it should. I believe that is a fundamental flaw in the makeup of this board and one about which I'm extremely concerned.

Mr Speaker, you will recall that I spoke to this issue and how it would affect an organization in the Halton-Peel area know as the Halton and Peel Industries Training Advisory Committee, with the acronym HAPITAC. I indicated in my response that this particular bill would really put this organization out of business. I believe the Minister of Skills Development interjected at the time, saying, "Well, you don't know anything about the bill if you could say such a thing."

The Halton and Peel Industries Training Advisory Committee has effectively and efficiently supported the training needs of local businesses. HAPITAC is a critical link in the coordination of educational and training needs in the Halton-Peel area and is one that carries a great deal of support.

Interjections.

Mr Offer: The members opposite heckle HAPITAC and its very credible past and, I hope, future. I was concerned about that. The members say I have not read the bill; this could only come from a member who hasn't read the bill. I inquired about what the future would be of an organization such as HAPITAC from this OTAB legislation, and I have here a statement that says: "I want to be clear that as local boards are developed, CITCs such as HAPITAC will stop receiving direct federal and provincial financial support. The functions currently performed will transfer to the boards under this legislation."

The members now are quite silent because they do not know who wrote the letter I am reading from. Well, I look at the bottom and it's by Richard Allen, Minister of Skills Development, the same minister who just 45 minutes ago criticized me for the concern I had for HAPITAC and agencies like this across the province. He criticized me, saying, "Well, this legislation won't affect them." The same Richard Allen, the architect of this bill, is the author of the letter which states that local boards such as HAPITAC will stop receiving direct federal and provincial financial support.

They are out of business. The work they have done in the past, the support for training needs, the linkage of training to local businesses, is over for organizations such as HAPITAC. It is shameful that those that have contributed so much to their community over so many years will now be cut off from the funding.

Members opposite, though silent now, may wish to criticize, but I respond by saying that the bill calls the minister in charge as the Honourable R. Allen; the letter is written by Richard Allen, Minister of Skills Development. I would expect they are one and the same. I would expect my concern for the future of organizations such as HAPITAC is valid. Their future is in doubt and it is evidenced by the letter and under the signature of the minister who is the author of this particular piece of legislation.

I recognize my time is winding down and there are other areas of the bill that I find quite concerning, not only in the area of education and the way in which this particular legislation closes the door and turns its back on the demands education will be making on the workforce in the 1990s and into the next century and the way in which it has not given the proper emphasis to education that it should, but also I am very concerned with accountability.

Let me tell you why. This is a board that will stand apart from government. It is a board that will not be responsible, as members of this Legislature are, to the electorate. It is a board that I believe will have a cut in the linkage of program and accountability to the people. We don't have to go very far to see a real, true-life example. We can see the Workers' Compensation Board.

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The Workers' Compensation Board is right now -- again a board without any accountability to the electorate, to the taxpayers of this province -- embarking, with the approval of the Treasurer, on the building of a new headquarters, a head office, 525,000 square feet in the city of Toronto, and it is embarking upon that, which will have a cost of, we can imagine, not less than $200 million, at a time when we know there is commercial space available.

Now, someone might say there is always commercial space available in the city of Toronto. But how much? Are there 525,000 commercial square feet available? The answer is not only yes, but the commercial square footage available in the city of Toronto is 27 million square feet. This type of accountability in Workers' Compensation, which is lacking to the taxpayers, is one that can very well be carried over to the OTAB board.

We know there must be advisers into how we are going to retrain our workforce, to make certain that our working men and women are being trained not for the jobs of yesterday but for the jobs of tomorrow. We know that there is the need and the requirement for many pieces of advice on how that can be obtained, but we also must recognize that there is a serious matter of accountability: accountability to our electorate, to our taxpayers. This particular board may very well have in its control in the area of $2 billion, and I believe that before one can do that it, must be done by individuals who make the final decisions in a way that is accountable to the taxpayers.

Yes, those individuals can take advice from a myriad of professionals around this province and outside. There is no lack of those individuals. And yes, maybe there should be an advisory committee which is made up of education and labour and business. But to say to that group that you also are able to make the actual decisions to commit taxpayers' dollars without the accountability that runs with it is, I believe, something which concerns me.

It concerns me not only in principle, but also what I see happening with the Workers' Compensation Board headquarters, where there isn't that link of accountability, and Workers' Compensation Board is moving forward with building a new head office in the city of Toronto where there is ample commercial square footage available, where every objective analysis would say to use the space that is available, the glut in Toronto that is there. There are negotiations that can be undertaken and there is a certain sense of accountability which would then be met. But no, they work in a different area.

I'm afraid that this OTAB may also do that. My concerns are not just based on the fact that the board does not have the increment of educational input that I believe it should have; it also lacks that degree of accountability which I believe we hear about every day from our constituents. Every day we are saying that when you do something, you better remember that it is taxpayers' dollars. This is giving to the board probably something in the area of $2 billion without any link of accountability. To me, that is irresponsible. I believe the Workers' Compensation Board should not be embarking on the building of a new head office in the city of Toronto at a cost of $200 million when there is 27 million square feet of space available in that same city.

Maybe, just maybe, the board should have been looking in some outlying areas. Maybe, just maybe, it would have even been more economical to look at some of the space available in other areas. The question, in principle, is that where there is not accountability to the taxpayers, these types of decisions are made in a vacuum. They're made in an area where the comments, concerns and criticisms do not seem to hit home. We in this Legislature know what accountability is and we would respond. This board moves us away from that.

But I also want, in the very short time available to me, to speak to a concern that I have with, again, the makeup of the board, the business and labour component. I say this really as the Labour critic because I've been involved in the goings on of the Workplace Health and Safety Agency. The Workplace Health and Safety Agency is also a bipartite agency, again made up of business and labour, which have been attempting to work together to develop a core training program for health and safety in the workplace.

That had been progressing, but what has happened is that it has broken down significantly. It has broken down because it is alleged and stated that there has been interference by the Ministry of Labour in the workings of that agency. I believe that is true. I believe that bipartite approach, which should work, has not worked. It has not worked because of the approach that the government has taken to bipartite agencies and to the work of labour and management. I believe that sets a very bad example as to whether this system, as indicated in the OTAB legislation, will succeed. I do not believe it will, because the Workplace Health and Safety Agency did not work.

I have a question that was asked by our leader as to whether there was any interference by the Ministry of Labour. The Minister of Labour indicated there was no interference. Yet I have a letter from the Deputy Minister of Labour of September 4 that states, "The agency is facing several immediate challenges and needs your support." He's writing to other members in businesses. He is in fact interfering. The ministry is interfering. They offered to facilitate an informal get-together with a few influential business leaders and "would seek your indulgence in such a meeting being called as soon as possible."

We don't have to deal with the actual substance of these particular letters. That will be, I can assure you, for another day. But what we do have here is an example of the Workplace Health and Safety Agency being interfered with by the Ministry of Labour. It is not working. It resulted in the resignations of the management component. And what do we have here? A very similar agency being created, a similar agency with business and labour. I believe the example set by this government in the area of bipartism and letting the agency work, of not allowing that to happen, is one which will affect this particular piece of legislation. It causes me great concern.

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It is an area where there are many other issues that have to be dealt with in this legislation. I have touched upon but three. There is the lack of educational input, the fact that there isn't the necessary component of educational input to determine the needs of the workplace in the 1990s and the next century. I believe there is a substantial concern dealing with the whole issue of accountability.

These will be taxpayers' dollars, and I believe, from my constituents' concern and opinion, that it is irresponsible to move these expenditures of those dollars to another board that does not have that type of accountability that members of the Legislature have. That is, I believe, a fair representation of the concerns I am hearing about this legislation from my constituents.

I have concerns, as a subpart, as to why organizations with such a great history, with such a great past in working with the local businesses and local training, why those groups have to be put out of business. Certainly, I have a concern as to whether this agency, this board, will be able to operate truly independently. It is as a result of those concerns that I do not support this particular piece of legislation.

I believe there are many members of this Legislature that wish to speak about this particular bill, to talk about other areas of the legislation that are of concern to them and their constituents, and I would expect that the government would proceed and allow all members of this Legislature to speak on this bill.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): I thank the honourable member for his intervention in the debate. Further comments and/or questions?

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I want to take my two minutes to comment with regard to the member's speech here today in the House about OTAB.

Earlier this evening, the member for Kingston and The Islands wanted to put a motion through that the debate be closed off. I really find it hard to understand why, without a full and open debate, anybody would move that motion. I have been here over 11 years and have watched the debate go on in this Legislature and at most times there has been full and open participation by all parties. To see this government try to cut off debate is unacceptable to me.

The member spoke briefly with regard to how the program will be paid for. That is going to be a major concern for people out there. Is this going to be another bureaucracy like the WCB with regard to a levy on business? Is this going to be another bureaucracy that will be in debt to the tune of some $10 billion, as the WCB is? Also, Ontario Hydro is in much the same position.

When we look at the aspects of this bill that is before us today and the amount of taxes it's going to put on the taxpayer some two years from now, we must remember that it's going to be 18 months before this board is even going to be put in place. Some 22 members will be serving on that board. The majority of those members will be from labour. I find it hard to accept without a full and public debate and I would hate to see the government bring closure in on this until that has taken place.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Further questions and/or comments?

Mr O'Connor: I want to comment on what we've heard in this member's participation debate. For the first 10 minutes, he wasn't very kind to the member for Kingston and The Islands. Of course, there weren't very many opposition members in the House when he tried to put the question. Then, in the middle of his debate, he decided he would ring the bells to adjourn the House. Well, we're here for the night and we've got jobs to do, so I appreciate that.

He talked about not liking this bill. Well, today was a very important day, because General Motors of Canada made an announcement. In their announcement they talked about -- I want to quote a line here from it. "It's never a good time to make an announcement like this, but we wanted to be fair to our employees and communities, to make sure that the information was available as soon as the decisions were finished."

You know, for the workers in the plants in St Catharines, movement like this towards training and adjustment boards is so important. For the workers in Oshawa who have got now a weight lifted off them, just before Christmas -- they're going to be much happier. But you know, the important thing is -- they said it right in their press release: they wanted to be fair to their employees. When they talk about stuff like this, we've got to talk long-term and that's what OTAB is about: putting the employees they're so concerned about together, cooperation.

It took 125 years to get into the whole training bureaucracies we've got today -- 44 different programs in training -- and it's just not working right. We're changing from the type of industry we've got today to different industries, and who knows better than the employers? We should have them there, and the people from the community, get the employees in there. Some of the comments and the rhetoric from across the floor really does disturb me, because every day we're here we've got a lot of important matters to discuss, and adjourning debate in the middle of something isn't proper.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): The member for Mississauga North in his remarks has raised issues that should be of concern to the government as it proceeds in the further debate on this bill.

The first issue that of course he expressed some outrage about was the government's intention, through the member for Kingston and The Islands, to invoke closure on this particular bill. I certainly want to participate in the debate as it moves along. This is a singularly important initiative and should be handled appropriately and properly.

The member for Mississauga North has pointed out the shortcomings with respect to the makeup of the board and the lack of a place that is full for education on that board. Universities will clearly not be represented on the board. The community colleges will be shrunk in number in terms of their representation. What is the place of high schools, which in fact provide on an ongoing basis cooperative training and other approaches?

He alluded to issues relating to the importance of education: David Crane's analysis that education is the key and the cornerstone of workplace training as we shift into a new and very different world of work. If the government isn't hearing the member on those points it is very surely to fail with this agency.

The member spoke of many other areas that deserve comment and attention from the government, not the least of which is that this board is clearly designed as and will become another Workers' Compensation Board, and God knows we don't need that.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mr Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): I want to briefly comment on the establishment of this board, the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board. It would seem to me that the prime reason for providing this training is to provide well-trained people to be available for work in this province should the economy ever turn around. The problem is that no one is against this principle of training the people. The problem is, it appears to me, that the board is going to be basically a labour board and then the curriculum for training is going to miss that connection with the place of employment that's so important.

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I visited a plant in my riding last Friday that is very concerned about this Ontario training. They see the need, but it's the establishment of it and the basis on which it's being established that they're expressing concern to me on. So I really think that this should go to committee and allow the input from the people who are going to use the trained personnel to perhaps convince the government that the board mix should be such that the place of business and the place of manufacturing and those who are actually going to bring the economy alive again are going to have some direct input into not only the formation of the board but the policies and the process that it would follow.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member has two minutes to make a response.

Mr Offer: I think it's clear that the government is trying to paint a picture that anyone who speaks against this bill or that anybody who has a concern about this bill is somehow against retraining workers. They might try to do that but they'll never get away with it, because no one in his right mind would ever think that was the case.

The concern that I have with this particular piece of legislation, and the comments I have made, is not because one is against training, but I believe that what we should be looking at is making certain that whatever training we have for workers is for jobs that are in existence as opposed to jobs that do not exist. I believe that is not in the best interests of the workers of this province. I do not believe it is in the best interests of the continued growth of this province. I do not believe that it is in the best interests of the future prosperity of this province.

We have an opportunity to put in place a mechanism of advice, an advisory committee, whatever, that deals with what the real issues are. I believe that this particular piece of legislation doesn't meet those issues. I believe that if we want to create a province where workers have real training and retraining in a relevant way for jobs that exist, we must have more of an educational component. We must also deal with the issue of the small business aspect to training and what the requirements are.

This particular piece of legislation just doesn't hit the point, and I believe that in voicing my concerns I voice them because I speak in the best interests of the workers, not only today but tomorrow. I believe this bill falls short of that.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate? The honourable member for Etobicoke West.

Mr Stockwell: I appreciate the opportunity to enter into this debate. I have very serious and grave concerns with respect to this issue and its impact on the people in the province of Ontario.

Firstly, let me say that I don't think the business community really has a full understanding of this particular piece of legislation. As time marches on and OTAB comes closer to reality, the business community will begin to discover exactly how wide-ranging, encompassing and out of control OTAB is. OTAB will become the Workers' Compensation Board when it comes to a job training and adjustment board.

We in the Conservative Party have grave concerns for a number of probably ideological reasons, but not just ideological reasons. Our concerns also have to do with process and the capacity of such a burgeoning and bureaucratic process to in fact train and retrain the people who are in dire need of work, in dire need of retraining and preparing themselves for the new world order.

Many people have suggested that the first true hurdle will be when we discover whether or not business and labour can work effectively together. I believe business and labour can work together, in the proper forum, with the proper help and motivation from government.

The sincere difficulty I have with this piece of legislation is much like Bill 40. It's tremendously slanted and biased on behalf of the labour side and socialist agenda side, and absolutely leaves the business community with a very bad and awkward feeling.

The argument will be put forward much the same by the member for Durham Centre that it's really 50-50. That's the kind of sly response that doesn't deal with the realities and truth of the situation. The member for Durham Centre knows full well that the composition of this board is not 50-50, yet he continues to mouth the political platitudes that have been placed before him by the spin doctors post-John Piper. We know full well that the board makeup is not 50-50, and you know full well that when the business community opted out of this program in July of this year it was because the slant and bias towards the board makeup were clearly not in their favour.

I'll just go through the process of how these people are appointed and the makeup of this particular board. There are two chairs, one representing business and one representing labour, seven directors representing business and seven directors representing labour. That is a fair and equitable split. The problem is that the board makeup does not end there, and the next groups that are put on are representatives for francophones, persons with disabilities, racial minorities and one director representing women.

Those decisions will be made by the board, slanted by the board. There's no doubt in my mind -- and it's very clear by the promises you've made to certain groups about whom they will appoint and the appointments you've already made to date -- that those being appointed are of left-wing socialist slant.

I'm not for a moment suggesting a government can't do what it believes to be correct. But the spin-doctoring that the member for Durham Centre has bought into hook, line, and sinker is that it's a fair and equitable process set up 50-50. That is patently untrue, and it's shameful that this kind of rhetoric continues to spill out from the government backbenchers, who apparently haven't done their research or their homework or refuse to look at these particular pieces of legislation with a true, unbiased eye.

Interjection.

Mr Stockwell: I don't relax. Those are the facts and that's the way I feel. Those are the facts put forward. That's the membership. That's the directorship. I know full well, and I will refer later in my speech, about the OFL sending out letters to its membership talking about the makeup of this board.

Interjection.

Mr Stockwell: The member for Chatham-Kent, who constantly harps, is constantly wrong and is constantly proven wrong, is harping again about this particular piece of legislation.

There is no debate. This is the makeup. The promises have been made. The directors, in some cases, have been picked. They've been bought off, and they're bought off with public money in support of this particular piece of legislation. Make no mistake about it; that's what's taken place.

The OFL itself has sent out letters -- and I will refer to them later on in my speech -- commenting that labour comment on these specific programs. They have said point-blank, "We are going to have to staff these boards and we should all fall in line because it's going to mean hundreds of jobs for us as directors of these boards, representing five or six days a month."

You know who sets the pay for these boards? That same directorate appointed by this government with its left-wing-leaning views. The bottom line about all this appointment is that this government doesn't have control of the local boards. They've passed off that position to this apparently autonomous, non-partisan, politically neutral group. We all know that's simply not the case.

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Why did this government do that? This government did that because it knows that if it doesn't get power next time, it's going to be that much more difficult to dismantle OTAB. The appointment process won't be with the government, the stewards of the taxpayers' money; it will be placed with a group of people appointed by a socialist government, which I think is reprehensible and is usurping the responsibilities that you were elected to carry out.

How much will OTAB cost? The cost factor is a very important factor that very rarely impacts on the studies this government does. The cost factor for OTAB will be excessive, in my opinion. If you think the WCB is run well, then you'll think OTAB is wonderful. In my opinion, in a very short period of time OTAB will be $2 billion, $3 billion, $4 billion in debt, sideways; no opportunity for recovery and a constant black hole when it comes to taxpayers' money.

We look at Ontario Hydro and the debt it's accumulated in the past brief decade. We look at the WCB and its unfunded liabilities. We look at this government and its capacity to borrow in two short years as much as we borrowed in 125. We look at this government and see ourselves facing, when it came into power, some debt in the term of $45 billion. When they leave some five years later, we'll be looking at $100 billion worth of new debt, because they're fiscally incapable of managing money.

Now they're going to pass off an additional few billion dollars to a board representative of no taxpayer, elected by no person, dominated by labour unions and social left-wing causes, that will be spending more tax dollars than most of your ministries that are in place today. That's what they call representative democracy.

That is abdicating the responsibility to govern and that's what OTAB is in fact doing. It's another arm's-length approach, much like the Minister of the Environment used on the landfill issue. The landfill issue was dealt with in the same manner. Rather than taking the issue head on and dealing with the concerns the residents have in the member for Durham West's riding -- I look across at him -- you strike a committee, you appoint people to that committee and they make those decisions that affect millions of people in the GTA. You wash your hands of it by saying, "I have no responsibility; the committee's at fault."

OTAB is going to do the same thing. We'll lose billions of dollars running an inefficient, bureaucratic process and we'll have no control over how they spend the taxpayers' hard-earned dollars. I don't accept that kind of decision-making and I don't accept the fact that they're abdicating the responsibility of government.

The question has been asked on a couple of occasions about the size of the bureaucracy that will be built up. This is a series of cells. Each cell of this particular process will have a cell at the top that will consist of that number of people I spoke about earlier: seven labour people and so on and so on. From that, off come the branches, where those people will also be appointed, labour organizers, social service people, in each cell around the province.

They have even said in the OFL training board letter they sent out to their union representatives that they will not only just have to meet four or five days a month but they're going to have to get together and caucus their position throughout the province to ensure that they're all singing from the same song book. What is the point of appointing all these people? You may as well just appoint one if you're going to have the OFL get its representatives to caucus this viewpoint all around the province.

I don't believe this government has any concept of exactly how large and immobile the operation it is setting up will be. I don't believe they have any concept of how out of control this will be and how out of control it will become in a very short period of time. They are creating a giant government bureaucracy, passing off responsibility and wasting taxpayers' dollars, all for a program, I might add, that I will say categorically will not be effective, functional or efficient. It will be a colossal waste of taxpayers' dollars. In a few short years you are going to find it to be nothing more than a money pit, a black hole for taxpayers'dollars, funded and dominated by labour-oriented people, paid for by the taxpayers at taxpayers' expense.

I also believe that when they find out how expensive this program will become, it will be a very short period of time before they realize that they can't afford this program from general revenue. I would like the members opposite to mark my words on this one. Before you leave office, before this government leaves office, you will have to introduce a new payroll tax to fund OTAB because you do not have the general revenues. The only way that you will continue to pay off your union leaders, by appointing them to OTAB, will be to implement a new payroll tax on the beleaguered, overtaxed and non-profitable private sector in this province, thereby driving more of them out of business and even more of them outside the boundaries of this provincial jurisdiction.

I will promise them that will happen. I want them to mark my words because when the day comes that this Treasurer tells you backbenchers that OTAB will become a payroll tax, you can remember the day that I told you you will not be able to afford this bureaucratic, bloated process.

The question will be put forward, and this is what the business community hasn't quite twigged to yet, that what will happen on these boards is that labour's viewpoint will dominate decision-making. I look the minister right in the eye because he knows it. This is how he set it up. This is why he set it up and he knows that this will take place. The decision-making will be dominated by labour's viewpoint.

It will not take you more than six months to alienate any of the business community that you've appointed to these boards. Before this legislation even hit the table in this House, you had already alienated a significant number of business groups that opted out of your program to investigate OTAB. They simply resigned, because they said it was pointless talking to you. You had a mind-set, you did not want their opinions, you had your minds made up, and it was a program to employ labour people, to pay off labour executives and put in place a socialist doctrine agenda that will be a colossal waste of taxpayers' money. That's what the business community said.

It says right here, "Business Group Quits Joint Project In Protest." It says, "A small business organization has pulled out of the province's major training scheme for partisan, political reasons." Mr Rae, the Premier of this province, took a run at these people in another proof that there's no acceptance over there for the business community. These people gave Mr Rae their honest opinion. There was a slanted board and your Premier took a run at these people who offered their time and expressed their disenchantment. What does your Premier do rather than trying to readjust it and fit them back in and listen to their complaints? He takes a run at them in the paper, saying what an irresponsible lot they are.

I think that's pretty unbelievable, considering the economic times, the recession that we've hit, the closings that have taken place. One business community offers up some direction they'd like to see the Premier go in and he takes a run at them, calling them partisan, political sorts.

Interjection.

Mr Stockwell: I'm sorry. I missed that from the ex-member from Middlesex.

How will the programs be paid for? I just spoke to that, Mr Speaker. Those programs of course in the end will be paid for by a payroll tax.

A very important point needs to be made here, and this is exactly where the socialist doctrine fits in with this piece of legislation. Socialist doctrine fits in because in their viewpoint there's only one kind of worker in this province and that's an organized worker. The only people you deal with, the only people you represent, are those people who are involved in organized labour. The only difficulty you're faced with, and I say across the floor to the members opposite, is that 70% of the people in this province don't belong to a union. I know you don't like that, I know it doesn't fit with your socialist doctrine, I know you prefer that everyone belonged to organized labour, but it doesn't happen that way. Seventy per cent of the people in this province don't belong to an organized union and are not represented by the Bob Whites of the world who cozy up with your Premier at every opportunity.

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The question must be asked for those 70%, the vast majority of workers in this province: Who represents them on the OTAB board? Nobody. Nobody represents the 70% of unorganized workers in this province. Why? Because you don't want to hear from them. You don't want to know what their concerns are. You don't want to hear about their position with respect to OTAB. You don't want to hear what they have to say about the operation of this province because they don't fit into your very narrow-minded, pigeonholed idea of what a worker is, and a worker is only someone who belongs to a union.

You can argue with me, saying that's simply not the case, but how do you tell me, how do you explain to the people of this province, to the 70% who don't belong to a union, that they don't have a single person representing them on the OTAB board when you've got room for seven labour and seven business for 14, two chairs for 16, two educators and then four directors, and you haven't got a single seat on that board for the 70% of the people who are paying taxes and working in this province who don't happen to belong to organized labour? Why is that? The explanation may take you quite a long period of time because there is no explanation, there is no excuse, and it's unacceptable, in my opinion, to totally ignore that many, that majority of workers in this province.

But that's very typical of these people. It's very typical of this government. They look down in an arrogant, self-centred attitude: "I refuse to listen to this argument, although it's been made. I refuse to deal with this argument. I'm just going to listen to the 30% who belong to organized labour. I'm just going to listen to the Bob Whites of the world, because when we got elected we promised we would pay them off." And that's what OTAB's all about as well. The business community will say the same thing: This is a union payoff.

The other point I'd like to make is that I think OTAB is going to spend more time introducing social change than actual training and adjustment. OTAB will be the arm for this government to institute or introduce social change, because I don't really believe the main thinking in this government's attitude towards OTAB was that of training and adjustment. It's an indoctrination and a policy they're putting forward that will allow these boards, spread out, fanned out across the province, paid for by the taxpayers, dominated by unions, to introduce social change in all sections of this province, whether those communities want them or not. That's the game plan.

You think it's going to buy you support in these communities around the province. These people are going to see through this. They're going to see through it. They're going to see it for what it is: a cheap political stunt with taxpayers' money being wasted. Business is going to see through it; those 70% of the people who aren't represented are going to see through it. Everyone's going to see through it except you and a few of your union élite executives. They're the only ones who are going to be bought off by this process, and the few, 200 or 300, people you're going to appoint from the unions. Those are the only people who are going to buy into this.

My prediction is that this will be radically changed, if not eradicated altogether, by the next government. I will say this: It will be done so because the taxpayers in Ontario will simply rise up and point this for exactly what it is -- a complete and absolute sellout by this government to its union friends.

What will be the relationship between OTAB and the 22 local boards? This government has provided absolutely no detail on what the relationship will be. The thing about this minister is that he's been mouthing about this piece of legislation since they got in. For two and a half years all we ever heard from this minister was: "Oh, ask me that when OTAB comes in. Oh, you won't have this problem when OTAB gets here."

I don't know what he's been doing. He could have written a word a day and gotten this piece of legislation done in two and a half years. Finally he introduces OTAB and nobody is quite sure why it took him so long. I don't even think he's quite sure why it took him so long. He finally introduces this piece of legislation and some very simple, very honest and some very direct questions are asked.

What will be the relationship between OTAB and the 22 local boards? They've provided no detail on this. What have you been doing for two years? What exactly have you been doing besides figuring out ways to cut your transfer partners, make promises you can't keep and rip off students for those grants that they expected you to make universal, rather than the loans that you foisted upon them and those promises you made? Besides doing all that, which means breaking your promises, what have you been doing with respect to OTAB when such a simple question can't be answered?

The other question is, why is the existing training infrastructure being abandoned? Twenty-two local boards replace the 57 community industrial training committees. The expertise of all existing CITC members will not be utilized as the number of boards shrinks from 57 to 22. It's hard to believe that they've had all these CITC boards in place and they're just simply going to abolish them. I'll tell you why they're going to abolish them: because the people who make up those boards don't fit into their socialist, pigeonholed union doctrine. That's why they're being abolished. They're going to start these new boards because they can start appointing and paying off their friends.

There's no guarantee that the CITC members will be nominated by their labour market partners to the new local boards. CITC staff will not be protected and therefore will have to apply to the local boards for employment. Isn't this a wonderful lot over here? This is the group that wants to protect jobs, protect people's right to work, protect someone who is working in a certain industry and maintain that person. When you made OTAB, when you introduced this legislation, none of the people on those 57 local boards was protected. Don't you find that slightly hypocritical? You're not protecting any of those people. They simply have to reapply. They could have been working for years and they may not get the job.

This isn't funny. These are people who have invested their lives in this kind of work, and you're just simply throwing them out in the cold. For goodness' sake, Varity had a better relationship with its employees than you do on this one, and you held the door open for it to leave the country.

Mr McLean: He said he wouldn't do that, though. He criticized Peterson for doing it.

Mr Stockwell: They've said they wouldn't do a lot of things that they've done. In fact, they're barely recognizable. Certainly, they were far more recognizable when they wore their checked jackets and elbow pads and peasant dresses than they are today, because I can barely recognize them today and the promises they stood for when in opposition.

Interjection.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please.

Mr Stockwell: Excuse me, I can't hear you, the ex-member for Middlesex.

Interjection.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Stockwell: I've got to relate this one. The member for St Andrew-St Patrick talks about the poverty situation. I would hardly suggest that a member who has been not only been accused but also --

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. I'd ask the honourable member to maintain his attention on the bill and to speak through the Chair.

Mr Stockwell: Okay, I will talk about the rental situation the member's involved in if she's going to talk to me about poverty. Look, I know all about it and I don't need any lectures from you, because right now, today, there's nobody who has me before the rent review board with respect to gouging tenants.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please.

Mr Stockwell: We move on. Will private sector trainers be restricted from competing for a share of the training delivery business? Private vocational schools fear that they will be excluded in the future. I figure that if this minister had the two years with which --

Interjection.

Mr Stockwell: I'm sorry; I can't hear the member. If she wants to speak up, I'd be happy to enter into debate with the member for St Andrew-St Patrick. I'd be very interested in hearing the defence for that. I've been waiting for a couple of years to hear the defence for that.

The Ontario Federation of Labour has recommended -- get this -- that the private educators and trainers be --

Interjection.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member has the floor.

Mr Stockwell: I'd like to hear you get up and defend that situation, member for St Andrew-St Patrick. I'd be really curious to hear your defence. You've been very silent about it, I've noticed.

The Acting Speaker: Order. Would the honourable member please take his seat for a moment.

Interjections.

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The Acting Speaker: The honourable member knows he should be addressing his remarks through the Chair. He has the floor and he should be addressing the bill at hand. Please, all interjections are strictly out of order.

Mr Stockwell: I'm sorry, Mr Speaker.

The Ontario Federation of Labour has recommended that the private educators and trainers be excluded from membership on the boards and be prohibited from providing training to recipients of government funding. Here it is, Mr Speaker. We're now going to set up OTAB. Anyone else who's in the business is basically out of work and anyone else who is offering retraining is basically cut off from funding. What's equitable and fair about that situation? Who's saying that the delivery of service they're offering won't be as good, if not better, than what OTAB is?

I will say categorically that in two years, with the absolute burgeoning of this bureaucratic process, you'll wish you'd never thought of OTAB because of the economic mess it's going to leave this province in. You'll wish you'd never thought of it because it's going to cost so much money.

Finally, I think the most important process here is: Why has this government focused on OTAB when existing training programs are not working? I think what they should do is, rather than create a new bureaucratic process that will suck up $2 billion that taxpayers don't have, it would seem a little more acceptable to me that this government could look at what1it has in place today, refine it, roll it back, enlarge it, expand it, but deal in that process, which would be far less expensive than the process of establishing OTAB.

In conclusion -- I know I'm running out of time under the new rules -- this particular process that has been put in place will probably be one of the worst processes we establish. It will be a dumping ground for union executives and labour appointments. It will be an absolute black hole for taxpayers' money. It's success will be very limited, if any. It will deal in social programs and training and adjustment programs.

The government will find that it's going to have to introduce a payroll tax to fund this process. The government will lose control after it makes its appointments because, in its own legislation, it can't reappoint or change appointments. It's going to spread out right across this province and be out of control the further away it gets from Queen's Park. In the end, the business community will opt out, because it will have no serious input, because it will be outvoted by the membership that is directed by this minister.

I think you're making a very serious mistake, and time will be the proof. Time will prove who's right. I hope 10 years from today this group can get back together and see what a disaster it has created, a monster that won't be able to be corralled. It will be WCB2.

The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments?

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): I listened attentively to my colleague from Etobicoke West. I can tell you that on some days he generally is on the mark in terms of some of his criticisms and comments, and on those very same days, he even impresses me. I can tell you, I don't get impressed by Conservatives very easily, not lately. But I have to tell you, today he stood on his feet for a half-hour, he spoke for a half-hour -- I watched the clock -- to the very second, and essentially offered this government no ideas whatsoever; not one little inkling, itty-bitty idea, and not just to this government.

I wouldn't expect him to offer this government any ideas, any free advice. I understand the role of the opposition. The role of the opposition is simply to criticize and lambaste and hope as best you can that everyone around will believe what you say. What is sad more than anything else is that if you're sitting at home and you're unemployed or receiving social assistance and there's no prospect of your getting a job anywhere, what's really sad is that my colleague's speech offered nothing but cold comfort, cold, cold comfort indeed. In fact, it was just a takeoff on what we saw happen in the media today with the federal cuts: nothing for anybody, and if you're unemployed, you get even less.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): I would like to comment on my colleague's remarks. I think he had a number of very helpful suggestions.

I'll just say to all of us in the Legislature that this is fundamental to the future of Ontario, and in my opinion we are about to launch on a fundamental mistake. I'd urge particularly the backbench members on the government side to take a good look at this.

The fundamental mistake is setting this OTAB up as an independent arm's-length agency. It's wrong. It will be set up like the Workers' Compensation Board. I used to be the Minister of Labour, so I know that the minister cannot touch a board like this. They're independent; they're out of the hands of the publicly elected people, and it is a mistake of significant proportions to set OTAB up as an independent agency.

Not only that, the government can't appoint the directors. There are going to be 22 people in this province running this and the government will not appoint those people. They will be appointed by the Ontario Federation of Labour and by the business community. I would say to the people of Ontario that they don't speak for all of us, but we're going to turn it over to those 22 people and the government, the duly elected people, will not be able to have influence on that agency. It is a mistake.

What should be done? It's clear: Don't do it. Set it up as an advisory board. The member wants to know what the members are saying. There's the advice. That's what should be done. But I'm telling you, this is a fundamental mistake.

I will acknowledge that this came out of the Premier's report. The OFL argued like crazy to get it in there two years ago. I understand that and my name was on that report, but I've looked at it and it's a mistake.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mr McLean: Just briefly, I want to compliment the member on his remarks this evening and I'll tell you why. He talked a lot about the makeup of this committee and he went in depth to prove and to show what he felt was going to happen. The previous speaker just went over the same thing. I'm sure they're both right.

But what intrigued me the most was the member for Downsview, who got up and said he listened to every second of the speech and didn't hear a thing. Well, you know something? That's the problem. They don't listen to what's going on. It's a one-way agenda: "Don't ask us a question. Don't tell us what to do because we know how to do it." That's exactly what's happened here with these people who are going to be appointed and that's exactly what's going to happen when people are talking about another WCB.

Millions of dollars are going to be put into this before one job is created; millions and millions of dollars. When we look at the makeup of the 22 people, when we look at whether business and labour can get along, we hope they would. But I can tell you that labour is going to have the majority of the people on the board so it's going to be a labour-oriented board.

When he speaks, and the member spoke proudly, about the 70% of the workers who are not represented by unions, what say have they got? What people are going to be appointed to that board from that group? Were they not asked if they wanted to be part of it? No, they weren't.

The bill is flawed. This government is heading in a direction in one of the most important aspects of the whole industry about creating jobs, and I believe it's making a mistake.

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The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments?

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): I listened attentively to the member as he made his speech just now about this really important initiative of our government, an initiative that probably more than or as much as any we've done so far, reflects the intention of this government as it moves towards a new global economy, as it moves into the next millennium in fact, in an effort to create partnerships as they've never been created before, to bring people together in an attitude of hope and commitment and trust.

I guess I have to say, in listening to the member, that I was really disappointed that he still hasn't come to understand that most important piece of everything we do. It flows through every initiative this government has taken on in its mandate to date. Any of the responses to the tremendous crisis that we've faced in the last two years have always reflected an effort by this government to bring people together as they never have before, because we know that if there's going to be a future for any of us in this province, and indeed in this country, it has to be together. It has to be people talking and sitting down in trust, in faith, in ways that they never have before so that we can come up with common answers to these challenges.

In my mind, this initiative by the Minister of Skills Development to bring together folks from sectors that have worked in isolation over the last number of years in this province, in a way that will provide opportunities to people for training and retraining that they don't have now and that will contribute to the economy in ways we have never yet seen in this province, is to be lauded and congratulated. I am really disappointed that you haven't understood that point.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Etobicoke West has two minutes to respond.

Mr Stockwell: I guess that's where the disagreement takes place. You see, I think listening means more than sitting down across a table from somebody and watching his lips move. That's what you think listening is. If you were truly listening, you would have dealt with Bill 40 in a much different fashion. If you were truly listening, you would have dealt with this piece of legislation in a different fashion. Just because you sit and watch their lips move doesn't mean you're listening.

The business community came forward and very clearly, on July 14, 1992, said to your government: "You're not listening. You're not hearing what we say." You blindly went off and continued on your own process without any regard to their concerns. You bring forward this piece of legislation and you're shocked that the business community says, "No, this is not good." You said, "Well, we listened." They said: "No, you didn't listen. You just came to meetings."

In 10 years or five years, when you really discover that you haven't got any control over who's appointed to this board, when you really discover that it's blowing billions of dollars of taxpayers' money, when you really discover that nobody's getting retrained, and you really discover that this has been a complete ball-up, you're going to say at that point: "Maybe we should have listened. Maybe we weren't listening. Maybe we just pretended to be listening. Maybe we just sat at the meetings."

The business community has stood on rooftops screaming at you. The president of the small business community has said, "It's like talking to trees." That was the quote, "It's like talking to trees." And you tell me you've listened. This legislation is proof positive that you haven't listened to anybody but labour unions and your caucus, and that's a one-way ticket to disaster.

Mr Perruzza: As I listen and watch my honourable friend's lips move, I can understand why today in the province of Ontario we don't have a training system that people can relate to, that people can access. I'll tell you why: Because we had 42 years of Conservative rule, and after people got wise to the Conservatives in Ontario they elected the Liberals and we had them for five years. I tell you, Mr Speaker, after 42 years of Conservatives, after five years of Liberals, we have a training system that people don't understand, that people can't access, that people can't work their way through.

There is no rainy day fund in the province of Ontario. There's no rainy day fund that takes you from good times through bad times to good times again. There's no system that buffers the blow of a recession or a depression. There's nothing like that. It doesn't exist. People can't find it. They can't see it.

We don't have a training system in the province of Ontario. We have a system that reacts. We don't have a system that leads. What business is looking for is a training system that leads, that provides trained workers, skilled workers when that demand arises. We have no such thing in Ontario.

I just noted that my honourable friend the member for Etobicoke West left. He doesn't want to hear it, and I can understand why he doesn't want to hear it. I sat and I listened and I watched his lips move and he said nothing, but when we talk about OTAB, the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, when we talk about the meat of the matter, my honourable friend gets up and leaves. But that's fine because I'll speak to the rest who have stayed behind.

He asked the probing question, why has it taken so long? I'll tell you why, Mr Speaker. To get consensus on major initiatives, to make decisions on major issues, it takes time. You need to generate consensus because you can be the best general in the world, but if you don't have the soldiers who'll follow, you're going nowhere fast. You need to build momentum, consensus. You need to generate buy-in from the partners, from your labour market partners. That's why OTAB is reflective of our marketplace.

On OTAB there will be employers; yes, there will be labour; yes, there will be educators; yes, there will be trainers; yes, there will be social action groups, all represented at one place. What is their mandate going to be? To develop a training system to set up the training infrastructure that will guide this province through the rest of 1990s and well into the next century. That's what OTAB will do.

Is it a perfect model? We've heard many criticisms. There aren't enough educators, the member for Mississauga North said. The member for Etobicoke West said, "There are too many labour people." My honourable friend from Scarborough said: "Well, business isn't being heard. There's no place for business." I say that with any new major initiative you need to lay down the blueprint, the foundation.

The analogy that quickly comes to mind when I think of OTAB is that when you go out to build yourself a new house, you go out and you hire the best possible architect who brings back the best possible plans, but are they perfect plans? Maybe not. Because as you start constructing, as you move, you decide, "I want to move this wall or I want to make that window bigger," because you can visually see and feel the changes that you need and require.

Will that happen with OTAB? I suspect it will because we are humans and we build things in a human way. Do they change with time? Do the glitches get ironed out? Yes, they do. If enough educators are not represented at the board, will be the board be able to hire the expertise, integrate the educators it requires to move and to develop the training programs that are required in order to guide this province into the next century? Yes.

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Mr Martin: Absolutely.

Mr Perruzza: My honourable friend the member for Sault Ste Marie says, "Absolutely." Let me reiterate that: absolutely. That's the way, quite frankly, it should be.

We've heard many criticisms about a new bureaucracy. We have a training bureaucracy in the province of Ontario now. We have committees. We have a ministry. We have people in the business right across the province. It's a huge bureaucracy. It costs enormous amounts of money.

Will there be additional bureaucracy? There may be some, but we need to make some sense of what we've got now and, quite frankly, what we've got now doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense, because it's not helping a heck of a lot of people. Hence, it'll be an arm's-length institution, which was a criticism that was levied: We won't be able to control it; we won't be able to manage it; we won't be able to affect the business that it will conduct.

Many of the people we've spoken to -- business, labour, all of the labour market partners -- said: "Let us do it, because we understand training. We understand what's happening in the marketplace. We're the ones who should play an integral part of anything and everything that happens associated with this." You know that if you do not generate buy-in, if there isn't the movement to generate buy-in from the labour market partners, government can't do it alone.

Will government provide the direction? Of course it will. It needs to. It needs to continually provide the direction. Is there provision for government to provide the direction? Of course. There will be a minister responsible. Of course government will provide the direction. But who do you need developing the training programs? You need the labour market partners. You need precisely the people you have represented on this board.

People in our respective communities who are unemployed for whatever reason -- the GST, free trade, cross-border shopping, as a result of the naysayers who have affected both the consumer confidence and the business confidence in this province -- whatever reason, if you're unemployed and you're hurting through this recession, you're facing some very difficult times. I believe that people, our people, are hungering for opportunity. They hunger for hope, and that's what I see in OTAB. I see opportunity. I see hope, the hope that's so badly needed in all of our communities.

That's why I support and why I will defend this initiative, because the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board will provide the training infrastructure that will take this province, guide this province, through the 1990s and well into the next century and will provide a model for the rest of Canada.

The Acting Speaker: I thank the member for Downsview for his participation in the debate. Questions and/or comments? The honourable member for Scarborough-Agincourt.

Mr Phillips: I appreciate the member's comments. I think probably all three parties in the Legislature would agree that we need to coordinate our training programs. There's no question, zero question about that. All three parties agree we have to put far more focus in the future on ensuring that our skills match the needs in the workplace. There's no question of that. The Premier's Council report was all about that; it laid this out.

There is, though, the fundamental point that all of us have to come to grips with: Do we want to give up, do we want the public to give up its input in the running of this? We have to understand what we mean by this kind of agency. It's gone. I repeat myself, but as Minister of Labour you can't interfere in the Workers' Compensation Board. You've got to pass legislation to have an impact on it, because it's independent and it's free from the public body. That's what we're setting up here and even more so, by the way, is that the government doesn't select who sits on the board. The government simply appoints the people that have been nominated by the business community or by the Ontario Federation of Labour. So we have to debate this.

In answer to the comments, or to comment on the comments from the member for Downsview, there is a solution: Don't pass the legislation setting up this scheduled agency. Make it an advisory board for a period of time. Let it work its way through. See how that works, because once the legislation is there, it's gone and you, as duly elected people representing the public, have virtually no say in this fundamental future issue.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I'm very pleased to respond for a brief period on the member for Downsview's presentation this evening. I've just been speaking with the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, the former Minister of Labour in the Liberal government, and we have been discussing the matter that he has been trying to put forward to this government, the suggestion that it is a mistake to put this forward as a section 4 agency, I believe is the terminology that has been used. In this instance, we're going forward into an abyss, in a sense, without really understanding or realizing what's below us.

I think it makes good sense to look at this thing and suggest perhaps we should put it up as an advisory board, similar to what has been done at the federal level of government. Let it operate for a couple of years to determine if it indeed is the best way to go and then if it is indeed meeting the goals and the objectives the government is hoping, perhaps consideration could be given to put it into the situation, the arm's-length agency the government intends to do immediately, probably without thorough thought and with very little debate.

If we compare it to the Workers' Compensation Board, we've all had considerable dealings in our constituency offices with people in our constituencies who have very serious concerns about accountability, mainly at the Workers' Compensation Board. I find that's the main problem, that people find no one will assume responsibility for a decision taken. Of course, we as members try to advocate on behalf of our constituents who come to us and we find that particular agency, the Minister of Labour specifically, has somewhat limited jurisdiction in that it is an arm's-length agency he must administer from a distance. So we're losing accountability in that sort of an agency and certainly that appears to be what the government intends to do with training and we have concerns about that.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mr Gary Wilson: I'm pleased to commend the member for Downsview for a very insightful and, I think, forceful description of the virtues of OTAB. I think that by his remarks he shows he has a good understanding not only of the scope of this plan, but its necessity, which other speakers on this issue have shown as well.

I think we're all in agreement that something is essential to the success of OTAB: the focusing of the work of the 10 ministries now carrying out the 48 programs on training. This fear of including the labour market partners in the operation of the training of the province is a bit misguided and shows a lack of confidence in the very people who are expected to benefit from the training that is going to be developed.

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I remind you that the labour market partners are business, labour, women, racial minorities, people with disabilities, francophones and educators and trainers. They cover the spectrum of the people involved in training. So much of the community is there to emphasize the necessity for our society to have this kind of training, which we all agree is not happening now.

As the member for Downsview asked, who better than the people who are actually involved in the provision of training and the need for training to ask to come up with the kinds of programs we need? There's a long history to training, but it's always lacked this focus on the evaluation of what's happening there and to look for ways to improve it. Too often, it's been off-the-shelf kinds of programs that haven't benefited anybody for any length of time. Here again, by including all the partners, there will be much more scrutiny among the people it will benefit, to see that the programs do in fact meet the needs of the community.

Again, very good, member for Downsview.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I just want to make some quick comments about remarks made by the member for Downsview. I want to say to you that I don't think you have added any value to what the minister put forward. As the members on this side have pointed out to you, it's not that we don't need a training strategy or a training program or a board or an organization to handle that, but the way you're going about it is not the right direction.

Many of the colleges and universities have been wonderful ivory towers, and sometimes you hear the discussion inside those ivory towers, "If only there were no students, it would have run effectively." What you have done effectively now is start to build an ivory tower without any walls really: $2 billion to do that. You have not gotten the people who can make that kind of contribution and make a valuable addition to how training should go. You're running headlong into this, all to say, "My government put in place a training strategy or a training board."

Take a look very closely at what you're doing. The representation is poor. It's not wide. It is skewed just to the labour movement. It is skewed sometimes to big business. There's a tremendous amount of small business that can make a contribution and input in the direction it will go. The lack of an education process -- educators could make an added valuable contribution to establishing this. I think what we're saying to you over here is, "Slow down, take a look at it and try to put something better in process." Your contribution has not added in any way at all to making this a better Ontario Training and Adjustment Board. I want the minister to look at that.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Downsview has two minutes to respond.

Mr Perruzza: If I were in opposition, I would have made the same speech: "Don't take a full step, take half a step. Don't go all the way, just go part of the way." I say to my honourable friends, I'm not prepared to take half a step; I want to take a full step. I'll tell you why I want to take a full step. I want to take a full step because there are too many people out there who are hurting far too much for us to dilly and dally with a system that we all know at the end of the day will not work.

Maybe my honourable friends in the opposition don't understand. Our secondary schools, our colleges and our universities by and large have no relationship with labour, have no relationship with business, almost none whatsoever. In 1992 this is unfathomable. Every successful industrialized country in the world has an education system in place that has a relationship with business and with labour, because the two go hand in hand. They want to perpetuate a system which essentially generates no buy-in, which generally will keep everybody separate.

Well, I say to you that what we need to do in order to make our training systems work is to bring everybody together, get the buy-in, and that is precisely what OTAB does. We need to move now. Our people are hurting now; not five years from now, now.

M. Jean Poirier (Prescott et Russell) : J'ai l'honneur de pouvoir vous adresser la parole pour donner une dimension un peu différente aux débats sur le Conseil ontarien de formation et d'adaptation de la main-d'oeuvre.

Vous n'êtes pas sans savoir qu'il y a bien des gens de l'opposition qui ont voulu décrire leurs inquiétudes face à ce projet de loi présenté par un ministre des plus honorables. Mais ce qui nous inquiète a été dit souvent avant moi, et je vais prendre la période de temps qui m'est allouée, mais sûrement pas pour justement décrire et répéter ces inquiétudes-là.

Je voudrais plutôt m'adresser à l'aspect du dossier franco-ontarien en ce qui a trait à la formation, à l'alphabétisation d'une communauté qui a des traits très spécifiques. Vous savez que la communauté franco-ontarienne a été très impliquée dans le processus de consultation. Elle a été présente, elle a été active et elle s'est vivement intéressée à la mise sur pied d'un COFAM en Ontario. La communauté francophone a parlé. La communauté francophone a répondu très clairement et a dit clairement ses attentes et ses inquiétudes à voir un COFAM tel que proposé dans le projet de loi.

Ces inquiétudes, nous avons été surpris de voir qu'en 1992, le gouvernement de l'Ontario proposait un COFAM unique à l'échelle de l'Ontario, mais dont le projet de loi ne garantissait qu'une seule place pour un représentant de la communauté francophone et, je dis bien, garantissait dans le projet de loi, le ministre a dit clairement, la communauté francophone, sa bonne volonté, ses bonnes intentions de s'assurer que, parmi les représentants du monde syndical, il y aurait au moins un représentant francophone ou une représentante, et la même chose dans le monde des affaires, une autre représentation à ce niveau-là.

Ce qui est inquiétant, c'est que ça c'est laissé à la bonne volonté du ministre en place. Cette bonne volonté du ministre actuel, nous ne la doutons pas. Mais nous, francophones de l'Ontario, sommes habitués à savoir qu'à travers l'histoire de cette province et de ce pays, la bonne volonté, lorsqu'elle est présente au début, peut s'effacer, s'estomper d'une façon assez régulière à travers le temps à tel point que les successeurs à ceux et celles de bonne volonté peuvent plaider que non, ce n'était qu'un engagement formel du ministre en poste à ce moment-là. «Nous, nous ne sommes pas tenus à respecter les engagements antiérieurs.» Je veux répéter que je ne doute pas de la bonne foi du ministre actuel, mais l'avenir nous a toujours inquiété, comme nous en a fait foi l'histoire du passé.

L'Association canadienne-française de l'Ontario, les autres représentants de la communauté francophone a demandé la mise sur pied d'un COFAM spécifique pour la communauté franco-ontarienne, parce que justement, cette communauté francophone a une spécificité qui est très différente de la majorité. Vous n'êtes pas sans savoir que l'évolution des deux communautés, tant anglophone que francophone, a souvent pris des chemins différents. Nous avons toujours dit que c'est ce qui a fait la force de ce pays, pas seulement ce que nous avons en commun mais également ce que nous avons de spécifique, de différent.

Pour des gens comme le ministre actuel et certains de ses collègues, cette différence-là n'est pas une menace. Vous êtes des gens, je crois, où dans votre vie personnelle vous avez compris que cette spécificité-là ne nuit pas à l'évolution de la province. Je crois que le ministre a dit clairement à la communauté francophone qu'il était prêt à prendre en considération ses inquiétudes, ses suggestions, ses recommandations, à savoir comment modifier le projet de loi pour corriger les lacunes de manque de services à la communauté franco-ontarienne. J'espère que le ministre et ses collègues autour de la table des ministres et du caucus, vous allez revoir le projet de loi et qu'après la deuxième lecture, lorsqu'il ira en comité, que vous serez ouverts à accepter ces recommandations-là, qu'elles viennent peu importe d'où de la communauté francophone.

1850

Monsieur le ministre a également suggéré que, dans les cartes sur la table, il pourrait y avoir ce même genre de représentation-là nommé par le gouvernement : l'un du monde syndical et l'autre du monde du travail, ce qui pourrait faire un total de 15 francophones dans tout le grand groupe de la famille du COFAM. Si c'est le cas, pourquoi ne pas le formaliser dans le projet de loi ? Et tant qu'à y être, pourquoi ne pas formaliser dans le projet de loi un regroupement homogène, homologué des quinze représentants francophones de la communauté qui pourraient à ce moment-là, sous l'égide du projet de loi, avec la bénédiction du ministre, créer un COFAM et gérer eux-mêmes avec leur propre mandat, avec leurs propres contacts, avec leur propre réseau de communication, avec leur propre secrétariat francophone un COFAM qui va s'occuper, qui va se pencher sur la spécificité de leur communauté franco-ontarienne ?

Je ne peux pas m'imaginer que le ministre et ses collègues ne puissent pas comprendre ça. Je suis même surpris que le COFAM, tel qu'il est proposé présentement dans le projet de loi, n'a pas eu le bon sens d'avoir créé ce COFAM spécifique pour la communauté francophone. Mais j'ai toujours de l'espoir ; j'ai confiance dans le ministre qui va entendre encore une fois, lors des débats en plein comité, ces revendications de la communauté francophone. J'ai confiance qu'il va être capable de faire les changements nécessaires pour corriger le COFAM actuel, pour que celui-ci puisse mieux représenter les aspirations de la communauté franco-ontarienne.

Je pense que j'ai mentionné tantôt, également, l'aspect d'un secrétariat francophone. Le réseau de communication dans la communauté franco-ontarienne n'est pas le même que le réseau de communication dans la communauté majoritaire de l'Ontario. Les communications ne se font pas de la même façon. Ce n'est pas le même langage, ce ne sont peut-être pas les mêmes philosophies qui gouvernent les communications. C'est pour ça que c'est important d'avoir un secrétariat francophone, rattaché à un COFAM des 15 francophones indépendants, pour gérer la situation particulière dans la communauté francophone.

Et ça se fait. Il faut que vous le fassiez si vous voulez sortir de ce projet de loi en disant clairement : «Nous avons écouté, nous avons considéré et nous avons mis sur place un mécanisme où les francophones vont dire, "Oui, ça va fonctionner pour nous, parce que nous nous reconnaissons et nous pouvons gérer, comme dans le dossier dans la gestion scolaire qui s'en vient, nos besoins nous-mêmes, en dépit du fait qu'il y a des gens dans la majorité anglophone qui ont compris la spécificité."» Mais il y en a d'autres qui la comprennent moins, pour ne pas dire du tout.

Mon cher collègue de Cochrane-Sud me regarde. Lui, au moins, comprend cet aspect-là. Je lui fais confiance qu'il va travailler main dans la main avec le ministre de la Formation professionnelle pour convaincre ses autres collègues du besoin de ce COFAM spécifique à la francophonie.

L'ACFO a dit au ministre ses inquiétudes, qu'elle ne peut accepter le processus du COFAM tel qu'on le connaît présentement. Je suis certain que vous également l'avez entendue, cette revendication. L'Entente bilatérale Canada-Ontario décrit en nombre de places les besoins d'avoir des services à la communauté franco-ontarienne, des besoins spécifiques de la communauté franco-ontarienne. Ils le disent clairement, mais lorsqu'on regarde le projet de loi provincial, ce n'est pas évident que ce même engagement se traduit dans le projet de loi.

Cela me rappelle un peu le débat constitutionnel, où on a traduit l'engagement anglophone à un attachement francophone. On dirait que la même chose s'est produite entre l'entente fédérale-provinciale et le projet de loi provincial. C'est ma perception. Mais soyez certains que je ne suis pas le seul à avoir cette perception-là. Vous les avez entendues, les revendications de la communauté franco-ontarienne. Elle voit exactement la même différenciation entre les deux dossiers.

Le ministre a bien dit qu'il y avait une possibilité de modification du projet de loi après la deuxième lecture. Qu'il prenne en considération cette demande-là. Dans le COFAM et dans ce COFAM francophone-là, il va falloir que vous respectiez la lettre et l'esprit de la Loi 8, garantissant des services à la communauté francophone dans la spécificité de ses besoins. Ce n'est pas en nommant un francophone sur 22 dans votre COFAM provincial et puis en se fiant à la bonne foi du ministre actuel, plus par crainte de ses successeurs, que vous allez respecter l'esprit de la Loi 8 de cette façon-là. Vous ne me convaincrez jamais de ceci, et vous n'avez pas convaincu les représentants de la communauté francophone non plus.

L'argent également, les fonds fédéraux-provinciaux qui seront mis et qui ont été mis dans le COFAM, si vous considérez que la population francophone de l'Ontario représente en 4 % et 5 % de l'ensemble global de la province, ça peut représenter une somme de 80 millions de dollars, à 5 % de 1,6 milliards de dollars par année. Quelle sorte de plan avez-vous pour prendre la tranche qui revient à la communauté franco-ontarienne dans les proportions de la démographie qu'elle occupe en Ontario, prendre cette somme-la et la remettre dans un COFAM francophone pour sa gestion exclusive ?

Quelle sorte de plan avez-vous ? Je n'en ai pas vu. Est-ce que je peux vous demander de le dire clairement dans le projet de loi, que la part de la communauté franco-ontarienne ça lui revient ? Et si vous êtes si fort à respecter le dossier de la gestion scolaire, mais aussi de la gestion de la formation et de l'alphabétisation, pourquoi bon Dieu vous ne le dites pas clairement dans votre projet de loi ? Cette part-là va être prise à la source et remise aux gestionnaires, aux 15 francophones qui géreraient le COFAM francophone. De cette façon-là vous seriez certains, nous serions certains et la communauté francophone serait certaine que les sommes qui lui reviennent seraient gérées par et pour eux. Mais, bon Dieu, comment pouvez-vous penser que vous seriez perdants avec ceci ? Au contraire, vous pourriez crier sur les toits à ce moment-là : «Voilà, on respecte nos engagements envers la communauté francophone.»

Également, vous avez mis sur pied en ce moment un comité consultatif pour les francophones et ils vous en ont fait des recommandations. Ce que je vous ai dit aujourd'hui, en ce moment, ça représente très fidèlement la lignée des recommandations qu'ils vous ont faites. Ils ont rencontré le ministre à plusieurs reprises mais ils ont un sentiment que le ministre écoute. Ils ont un sentiment que certains députés et certaines députées écoutent.

Je suis convaincu que mon bon collègue de Cochrane-Sud en est une, de ces personnes-là. Mais les autres, avec toutes les bonnes intentions que je vous prête, messieurs et mesdames du gouvernement, vous me dites et vous nous dites régulièrement que vous comprenez la communauté franco-ontarienne, que vous la respectez et que vous la voyez d'égal à égal. Est-ce qu'on peut vraiment compter sur vous tous et toutes pour comprendre et accepter cette spécificité-là, pas seulement dans vos discours mais dans vos gestes et dans vos projets de loi ? Messieurs et mesdames, la question vous est posée.

L'aspect qui concerne également la communauté francophone -- il y a un deuxième aspect sur lequel je voudrais me pencher, c'est le dossier de l'alphabétisation des francophones en Ontario. Pourquoi est-ce que je veux en parler ? Parce que là, encore une fois, la spécificité franco-ontarienne refait surface.

1900

J'ai reçu au mois de mai un superbe document, Monsieur le ministre, préparé par le Regroupement des groupes francophones d'alphabétisation populaire de l'Ontario. Ce document-là du Regroupement dit clairement, dit parfaitement, dit d'une façon très lucide cette spécificité de pourquoi ça prend un COFAM francophone, géré par et pour des francophones. Je ne sais pas s'il existe une version de langue anglaise, mais pour mes collègues qui sont francophiles, de l'autre côté de la Chambre, si vous pouviez lire et comprendre ce document, vous comprendriez immédiatement, dans 25 pages, pourquoi la communauté francophone vous dit qu'elle a besoin d'un COFAM spécifique francophone. Cela n'en prend qu'un, parce que la situation de l'analphabétisme chez les francophones est beaucoup plus poussée en moyenne que celle de la communauté anglophone.

Les programmes de formation en français ne sont qu'une fraction des programmes de formation en langue anglaise en Ontario, une petite fraction. Vous, mes chers collègues anglophones, à travers votre COFAM principal, voulez mettre sur pied de nouveaux programmes de formation pour la communauté anglophone. Vous voulez les agrandir, vous voulez les perfectionner et vous voulez qu'ils répondent mieux aux besoins de votre population. Bravo ! Mais nous, on n'a qu'une infime fraction de ce que vous avez déjà, de ce que vous avez, de ce dont vous rêvez, de ce que vous voulez refaire.

Quand même, si on pourrait alphabétiser toute la population franco-ontarienne demain matin, puisqu'on n'a pas ou presque pas les programmes de formation en comparaison de vous, comment est-ce qu'on pourrait former ces personnes-là ? Nous devons lutter sur des fronts beaucoup plus vastes que vous avez à faire. Notre taux d'alphabétisation reste à faire, parce que notre taux d'analphabétisme est beaucoup plus haut que le vôtre ; nos programmes de formation sont beaucoup plus rares que les vôtres.

En plus de ça, à travers votre COFAM unique que vous voulez faire en Ontario, vous voulez mettre un francophone pour représenter les intérêts de la population franco-ontarienne, un sur 22. Vous allez encore une fois nous noyer dans cette mer, auprès de gens qui n'ont pas les mêmes intérêts, qui n'ont pas les mêmes préoccupations et qui n'ont pas les mêmes problèmes et les mêmes volontés que la minorité francophone.

Tout votre COFAM unique que vous voudriez créer en Ontario pourrait remettre en question les six dernières années de travail des groupes d'alphabétisation francophones et le dû travail, également, du Regroupement.

J'en sais quelque chose, parce qu'en 1980, j'ai été l'un des premiers dans ma circonscription de Prescott et Russell à mettre sur pied une étude de l'alphabétisation, mais surtout de l'analphabétisme dans Prescott et Russell. Ce que j'ai vu, ce que j'ai appris a été une expérience que je n'oublierai jamais de ma vie. Vous, de la majorité anglophone, devez comprendre et accepter que vos collègues francophones vous disent que notre situation n'est pas comme la vôtre. Et nous espérons que le gouvernement de l'Ontario tiendra compte de nos préoccupations et de nos propositions afin d'assurer et de poursuivre l'épanouissement de l'alphabétisation en français, amorcée aussi récemment qu'en 1986.

La main-d'oeuvre franco-ontarienne a des besoins particuliers, comme on peut lire dans le rapport du Regroupement, très particuliers, parce que le taux de chômage est plus élevé et les francophones détiennent des postes dans le monde du travail, des postes parmi les moins formés, les moins exigeants en formation, donc plus susceptibles de perdre leur emploi.

D'ailleurs, le gouvernement de l'Ontario reconnaît cette situation, et je cite du rapport un texte qui vous est emprunté au gouvernement de l'Ontario :

«Dans la restructuration de l'économie mondiale, les Franco-Ontariens et les Franco-Ontariennes sont particulièrement vulnérables, puisqu'ils se retrouvent de façon disproportionnée dans les industries en voie de déclin dans le secteur primaire, les mines et les forêts, par exemple, et le secteur secondaire manufacturier. Pour leur part, les femmes francophones sont largement concentrées dans des secteurs d'emploi sous-payés et précaires. Les travailleuses et travailleurs franco-ontariens sont doublement désavantagés, puisque le taux d'analphabétisme est presque deux fois plus élevé chez la population francophone que chez la population non francophone de l'Ontario», et c'est une citation du gouvernement provincial.

Malgré la reconnaissance de cette situation très particulière pour l'Ontario français, le document de consultation du gouvernement ne semble même pas en tenir compte, Selon le Regroupement, il n'y a presque rien sur les points suivants :

-- la garantie d'une représentativité francophone au sein du corps dirigeant du COFAM unique ;

-- le rôle que pourraient jouer les francophones au sein du COFAM en tenant pour acquis qu'il y aurait une représentativité francophone adéquate ;

-- l'importance de connaître le dossier de l'alphabétisation pour les représentants au corps dirigeant du COFAM ;

-- l'absence de structures francophones de formation à travers l'Ontario ;

-- l'absence de structures d'identification et d'orientation des travailleurs et travailleuses francophones au sein des syndicats en Ontario.

Vous le savez, mon collègue, les travailleuses et les travailleurs sont dispersés partout dans les syndicats dans le monde du travail en Ontario. Où sont-ils ? Qui sont-ils ? Quels sont leurs besoins ? Comment va-t-on les desservir dans les secteurs majoritairement anglophones ? Qui va s'occuper de les identifier ? Qui va s'occuper d'identifier leurs besoins ? Qui va s'occuper de leur donner, de leur trouver des programmes de formation en français lorsqu'ils sont dans des centres éloignés ? Qui va le faire ? La question est bien posée.

On dit également plus loin que le corps dirigeant du COFAM fait peur aux Franco-Ontariens et Franco-Ontariennes parce qu'on est habitués, nous autres, d'avoir un représentant sur 22. On connaît ça, être un sur 22. C'est à peu près 5 % ; il y a droit un sur 22. Depuis le début de notre histoire, on est un sur 22. Pensez ce que ça veut dire à travers l'histoire, un sur 22. On sait de quoi on parle, parce qu'on a vécu une histoire qui nous a fait très mal dans le passé, et qui en grande partie continue de nous faire mal.

Le gouvernement manifeste son intention de laisser une bonne place aux francophones. Il sera à se demander, comme le dit le rapport, ce que signifie «une bonne place» ; un sur 22, tassez-vous, de ma connaissance de l'histoire, ce n'est pas ça une bonne place.

Étant donné le manque de garanties sur une représentativité francophone au corps dirigeant du COFAM, il est à se demander comment on s'y prendra pour assurer l'application de ce principe gouvernemental de maintenir les services ou les droits acquis au profit de la communauté francophone quand on transfert des responsabilitiés en matière de prestations de services à la population. La question est bien posée. Maintenant, c'est à vous d'y voir et de modifier votre projet de loi pour qu'il y réponde.

Je pense que le COFAM, comme le dit plus loin le rapport, a beaucoup de difficultés à répondre aux aspirations légitimes des Franco-Ontariens et des Franco-Ontariennes. J'y crois, et je partage cette inquiétude-là, parce que nous vivons dans deux mondes très différents. Ce n'est pas le même monde ; ce n'est pas pareil. Pour vous, les anglophones, mes chers amis, comme le dit le rapport, il s'agirait d'améliorer la qualité des prestations, alors que pour les Franco-Ontariens et puis les Franco-Ontariennes il faudra insister sur l'importance de structures répondant à leurs besoins, et j'ajoute spécifiques.

Il dit plus loin également : «Une étude plus approfondie nous permettrait de découvrir que les programmes de formation en français demeurent très déficients à l'échelle de l'Ontario.» C'est intéressant, ce tableau ici à la page 6 du rapport. Vous voyez les collèges offrant des programmes de formation en Ontario et la langue dans laquelle sont offerts les programmes : en français, une place, la Cité collégiale, point final ; bilingues, neuf places bilinques. Mais vous savez bien que dans ces places bilingues-là, pour la plupart des programmes de formation, je vous souhaite bonne chance de trouver quelque chose en français.

Pour les anglophones, regardez la colonne : une douzaine de places, et bravo pour la communauté anglophone, vous en avez des programmes, relativement parlant. Je ne dis pas que la communauté anglophone a tous les programmes nécessaires, mais si vous regardez le débalancement des trois colonnes, comme on dit en farce chez nous, «Rien qu'à voir, on voit ben que c'est pas la même chose.» Le problème n'est pas le même.

1910

L'absence de structures en français décourage les Franco-Ontariennes et les Franco-Ontariens à suivre des cours de formation. On va alphabétiser la communauté francophone, mais s'il y a une absence de structures en français, qu'est-ce qu'on va faire avec ces gens-là ? Comment allons-nous donner suite au travail d'alphabétisation ? Comment allons-nous former les francophones quand il n'y a pas de programmes ? Est-ce que ce seul représentant officiel-là parmi les 22, est-ce que cette personne-là va se lever pour dire : «Aïe, vous autres ! Vous les avez, vos systèmes de formation mais nous autres, on n'en a pas. Voulez-vous attendre un peu ? Pourriez-vous prendre un peu de temps de vos intérêts, de votre mandat, de votre mission pour voir ce que vous pourriez faire pour la communauté francophone ?»

Monsieur le ministre, mes chers collègues francophones et francophiles, croyez-vous que c'est vraiment le mandat des gens de la majorité anglophone de se pencher et de regarder qu'est-ce qui ne va pas et qu'est-ce qui manque dans la communauté francophone ? Peut-être, et je souhaite que la grande majorité des gens qui seront nommés au COFAM de l'Ontario pourront être sensibles à cette spécificité-là et aux besoins particuliers de la communauté. Mais il n'y a personne d'entre nous et d'entre vous qui pourrait me garantir cette sensibilisation-là acquise en permanence. Oui, une partie importante de la population franco-ontarienne est marginalisée par le marché du travail. Exactement.

Le taux de chômage chez les francophones n'est pas le même. Le taux d'analphabétisme est beaucoup plus élevé. Les francophones, comme je le disais plus tôt, occupent des postes qui sont plus susceptibles d'être perdus lors du désastre qui se produit avec les pertes d'emplois de ces temps-ci. C'est très inquiétant, ça. Çela démontre qu'une stratégie d'alphabétisation et de formation de la main-d'oeuvre axée en fonction du marché du travail uniquement risque de rencontrer de sérieuses difficultés quand viendra le temps de l'appliquer à la population franco-ontarienne, parce que votre COFAM que vous voulez créer est basé presque uniquement sur le marché du travail. Mais si vous essayez de trouver où sont les travailleurs et les travailleuses franco-ontariens, ils ne sont pas nécessairement dans le marché du travail. Et s'ils le sont, ils sont au bas de l'échelle. Vous risquez, si vous voulez faire votre COFAM de la façon actuelle, de rater le bateau.

Je vous connais assez bien, Monsieur le ministre, et je sais que ce n'est pas ça que vous voulez faire. Ce n'est pas ça que vous avez envisagé pour votre COFAM ; je vous connais trop bien personnellement. C'est pour ça que vous devez le modifier, votre COFAM, et créer un COFAM spécifiquement par et pour les francophones, avec des gens qui connaissent la spécificité, des gens qui savent où sont les francophones, qui ils sont, comment aller les rejoindre, qui vont être capables de les intéresser, premièrement, à avoir un programme d'alphabétisation, et après, leur trouver et leur créer un programme de formation en mesure de leurs besoins, de leurs connaissances et de leur confiance. Vous vous devez de faire ça, Monsieur le ministre.

Vous savez, la façon dont vous voulez centraliser le dossier, ça peut paraître très intéressant. Je suis certain que vous êtes de bonne foi. Mais je vous demande, je vous implore de repenser ce que vous avez fait et de vous poser la question à savoir, est-ce que ça répond vraiment aux besoins de la communauté francophone ?

La communauté franco-ontarienne vous le dit : la réponse c'est non, avec tout respect. Je pense qu'ils vous l'ont dit avec grand respect et qu'ils ont apprécié vos efforts de communiquer avec eux. Vous avez eu nombre de discussions avec les gens de la communauté. Ils ont été sincères ; vous avez été sincère. Mais vous ne pourrez pas me dire que vous n'avez pas compris, que vous n'avez pas entendu les représentants de la communauté francophone vous dire, «Merci, mais ça ne marche pas de la façon dont vous l'avez inventé et dont vous le voyez.»

Monsieur le ministre, mes collègues francophones, mes collègues francophiles, je vous remercie de m'avoir écouté. Je vous demande de continuer votre travail. Je vous demande de vous repencher encore une fois sur le dossier. Je vous demande de créer un COFAM par et pour les francophones et de lui accorder la part du financement qui lui revient.

Travaillons côté à côté au sein de votre grand COFAM, mais laissez la communauté franco-ontarienne s'autogérer, s'autodéterminer pour qu'elle puisse vraiment faire le rattrapage qu'elle a à faire en dépit du fait qu'il y a encore beaucoup de besoins dans la communauté globale en Ontario, chez vous mes collègues anglophones. Mais vous le savez, la communauté franco-ontarienne, à cause de ce rattrapage-là, a des besoins particuliers.

Je vous remercie de m'avoir écouté et je vous fais confiance que le projet de loi sera amendé, que vous reverrez la structure et que vous aurez prouvé que vous avez écouté la communauté francophone qui vous a fait des demandes bien spécifiques, bien précises, bien constructives et de très bonne foi.

Le Vice-Président (M. Gilles E. Morin) : Y a-t-il des questions que vous aimeriez poser au député de Prescott et Russell ou des commentaires que vous aimeriez faire ?

M. Gilles Bisson (Cochrane-Sud) : J'aimerais dire, premièrement, un merci au député de Prescott et Russell. J'ai pensé que ses commentaires ont été très à point et très saisissants. Je pense que les débats et les idées qu'il a mis dans les débats sont des affaires qui valent de la considération.

J'aimerais seulement souligner une couple de points, la question d'un COFAM séparé et total. Je pense, et je n'ai pas besoin d'entrer dans toute l'histoire, que le monsieur le comprend bien, que la communauté francophone le comprend parce qu'elle a fait partie du conseil de direction qui était responsable, jusqu'à un certain point, du modèle qu'on a en place comme c'est là.

Vous avez soulevé le point durant votre débat qu'il est important, premièrement, que le COFAM suive les concepts du projet de loi 8. Je pense qu'on le comprend. C'est extrêmement important et c'est quelque chose qui va arriver. C'est la loi de la province de l'Ontario.

J'aimerais porter à votre attention l'alinéa 1 d) qui lit comme suit :

«Veiller à ce que les programmes et services de mise en valeur de la main-d'oeuvre soient conçus et offerts dans un cadre conforme aux politiques économiques et sociales, notamment celles concernant le marché du travail, établies par le gouvernement de l'Ontario, promouvoir la dualité linguistique de l'Ontario.»

Je pense que c'est assez clair ce qu'on dit, qu'il faut prendre la reconnaissance que les besoins des francophones en Ontario, dans le marché du travail, sont différents ; et parce qu'ils sont différents, on a besoin d'être capables de s'assurer que le COFAM et la structure elle-même sont capables de reconnaître ça.

Je n'ai pas assez de temps dans le débat, mais l'autre partie que j'aimerais soulever, c'est qu'on sait sur le conseil régional, dans votre coin de la province, que ce sera un conseil qui va être totalement francophone, géré par les francophones pour les francophones de la région.

Notamment, dans le coin de ma province, dans le nord de l'Ontario, la représentation au conseil régional, où on retrouve la plupart des francophones, sera majoritairement francophone à cause de la démographie de notre bord de la province.

Mr Arnott: I'm very pleased to rise and comment on my colleague the member for Prescott and Russell, and I won't inflict my version of the French language on him -- maybe at a later date.

He touched upon a number of issues, and in his usual forceful and elegant way he put forward the concerns of his community, especially the francophone communities in his riding, and he touched upon the issue of cooperation between the federal and the provincial government.

As you know, the Charlottetown accord was going to devolve the responsibility for job training entirely to the provinces from the federal government. I would like to go away a bit from conventional practice here and ask him a question. Does he think there should be continued a very strong federal role in job training, and does he believe that's in the public interest?

1920

Mr Curling: I too would like to congratulate the member for his eloquent and thoughtful comments. He touched upon something and I'm sure the confidence, first, that he has in the minister -- and the minister will be listening to some of that input -- will be worthwhile.

One of the things he mentioned that is forefront in my mind is the rate of functional illiteracy within the francophone community. With any type of training programs or strategy you're putting in place, you must pay attention to that aspect of it. Setting up a separate board for the francophones is an idea that I think the minister must look at very seriously. If there is not a separate board, then within that present board that is set up, he should make sure that they are going ahead, and if he should not listen, which I think is the wrong direction -- make sure that the input of the francophones is there. There is great concern within that community about the education structure and system in Ontario which has been started by the Liberal government and also to address those issues.

When you get into training now, it becomes extremely sensitive, because training involves cultural aspects, it involves languages, and, very importantly, as I emphasized in my remarks a couple of days ago, the high rate of functional illiteracy, and special attention must be paid to that.

I want to commend the member for bringing out that part of it and that issue, and also his belief and his confidence in the minister, who he thought in the past had listened very attentively to the francophone community.

The Deputy Speaker: Any further questions or comments?

Mr Bradley: I appreciated the remarks of the member for Prescott and Russell because they did deal in part with the issue that the member for Scarborough North has just indicated, that is, people who have a problem with literacy. I think a lot of us don't recognize that many people who are unable to obtain employment in our society and in fact many who have a difficult time functioning in our society do so because they are not literate.

When I was Correctional Services critic for the opposition -- that's the first job anybody has when they come into this Legislature -- and I sat back up in the corner, I went with Ed Ziemba, who was the NDP critic at the time, and with Gord Walker, who was the Conservative cabinet minister, and we toured some of what you referred to then as "correctional institutes." I guess that's still the name. We talked to many people who had been convicted of various crimes and were serving their time in those institutions.

One of the things that certainly left a mark on me in terms of my observations of these people was their lack of education, their lack of literacy, which really meant that if they left the institution, in many cases they would not be able to function as well as they might. There were others who were very literate and were able to cope quite well, and when they got out into society, they had a different problem to cope with.

But many of these people had gone through a school system and had never had the opportunity to become literate. Therefore, when they went out into society, they were simply lost. It was a revolving door, simply coming back into the institution, because once they got outside, they didn't have the services out there and they didn't have as many of the services within the institution to equip them to survive in our society.

So I hope that as part of this effort we're talking about this evening, one of the things that will come out of it is the opportunity for those people to be adequately trained and to acquire the literary skills that are necessary.

M. Poirier : Je veux remercier mes quatre collègues pour une contribution et pour leurs éloges à l'égard de ce dont nous avons discuté, je répète : un COFAM distinct, même si le projet de loi parle de promouvoir une dualité linguistique. Ce sont de belles paroles, mais je ne veux pas que les parlementaires, les parlements et les gouvernements soient jugés par les paroles mais plutôt par les gestes.

Interjection.

M. Poirier : Oui, justement. La constitution, entre «engagement» et «attachement». Moi, qui suis un ancien traducteur, j'ai perdu les quelques cheveux qui me restaient sur la tête quand j'ai vu cette divergence de traductions. Donc, promouvoir la dualité linguistique, vous avez de la bonne foi, mais peut-être que vos successeurs en auront moins. Faites un geste concret qui ne pourrait pas être démoli par d'autres qui vous suivront, qui auraient peut-être moins à coeur cette communauté francophone-là.

J'ai parlé d'un COFAM distinct, mais je ne parle pas de travailler à côté, au loin, sans consultations. Au contraire, ce COFAM francophone serait rattaché à votre COFAM central. Il aurait dialogue et concertation, mais il serait distinct quand même. Conseils régionaux : vous me parlez de majorité. Pour le moment ça peut l'être, mais avec les démographies changeantes, qu'est-ce qui arrive ? Ce ne l'est plus.

On en sait quelque chose ; on a bien des exemples à l'échelle de la province. Pour mon collègue de Wellington, les besoins sont tellement grands. Si, présentement, ça prend des ententes fédérales-provinciales pour venir à bout du monstre de la formation, je n'ai pas de problème. Si l'entente constitutionnelle revient un jour à donner exclusivement aux provinces la gestion, tant mieux ; je n'ai pas de problème. Mais le problème demeure, la spécificité demeure, les besoins demeurent, les demandes demeurent et puis votre demande de compréhension demeure quand même. Je n'y ai aucun problème, que ce soit fédéral-provincial ou uniquement provincial. Merci de votre collaboration.

The Deputy Speaker: Are there any other members who wish to participate in this debate?

Mr Arnott: I'm very pleased and privileged to rise this evening to speak to Bill 96, the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board Act, 1992, on behalf of the people of Wellington county who have sent me here to represent them.

This act, if it is passed by this Legislature, will establish a crown agency, the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, or what is known as OTAB. The government is telling us that it will provide shared, cooperative leadership of Ontario's labour force development system, that it will assume responsibility for the "promotion, funding, coordination, design and provision" of provincial labour force training and adjustment services, including workplace and sectoral training, apprenticeship programs, labour force adjustment, labour force entry and re-entry programs.

We are being told that it will pursue labour market training and development programs that are equitable and accessible to all the people of Ontario, that it will pursue labour market development and research and that it will respond to the broad policy and priority directions set by the government. We're also told that the government will remain responsible for setting social and economic policy, including labour and market policy, and for federal-provincial relations on labour training matters, I assume.

The bill is fairly complex. I'm only going to speak for about 15 minutes, Mr Speaker, but I want to express the concerns that the people in my riding of Wellington have expressed to me with respect to this bill.

They're concerned about the composition of the board which has been put forward in the bill. As we know, the agency will create a board of directors, which is also a governing body, that's comprised of 22 representatives. The breakdown is as follows: There will be two cochairs, one representing business and one representing labour; seven directors representing business; seven directors representing labour; two directors representing educators and trainers; one director representing francophones; one director representing persons with disabilities; one person representing racial minorities; one director representing women. So they've got a certain number of seats here for certain groups that they want to have represented on this board. That's very, very clear.

I have a problem with that fundamentally. I'm concerned that we're setting certain groups of people and we're looking at this board in terms of putting certain people, certain groups -- every time we do that, I believe we step one step back from excellence. We're saying that we don't need the best people for the job; we need a certain type of person to fill a certain seat which is allocated for that type of person on the board. I have a fundamental problem with that, and I don't think that's the best way to assign seats to any organization. So I would express that concern from the outset.

This legislation raises a number of fundamental questions for people when they look at it. One question that is very, very important in people's minds is, can business and labour work effectively together? In my view, they can. I've seen it in many, many different workplaces. Many plants in my own riding of Wellington have very cooperative atmospheres in their place of work.

GSW, for example, in Fergus, has an outstanding record of cooperation between labour, represented by the Steelworkers union, and management. They were recently given credit on the change page of the Globe and Mail's business section a couple of weeks ago, informing people of what excellent things were going on in an excellent plant in Fergus.

I've seen in my own riding, in my own communities, the excellent cooperation that can take place. But I've also seen the opposite, where a confrontational structure that is imposed by government can create friction that wasn't there before.

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We've seen in the workplace health and safety organization, which I believe is administered through the Ministry of Labour, significant friction between the organized labour representatives and the business representatives. There seems to be friction built into the structure, meaning that there have been a number of different instances where the body has not been able to respond effectively to challenges that it's faced.

We're concerned about what OTAB will cost once it's established, and no one seems to know. There doesn't appear to have been a cost estimate that the Minister of Colleges and Universities is willing to present to the House of exactly what it will cost. There are various estimates.

We find the government is indicating that the various training programs, the whole amalgam of training programs it presently administers and undertakes, will be given over to this board and the board will have to administer it. So you can take the cost estimates of the present training programs that we do and try to see if that's going to be the cost. But I suspect, given the fact that it's a totally independent body that will want to undertake its own programs, you'll find the human dynamic will lead this new organization to expand considerably within three to five years from what they are doing presently.

Of course, if all these programs are wonderful programs, if they're all training people -- that's important too -- we have to question what it's going to cost, especially in this day and age, in 1992, when we're looking at a provincial deficit in real terms of $12 billion this year, and the federal deficit as well going through the roof. We have to be concerned about that.

There is some speculation that this budget will eventually be $1.6 billion, and from that we wonder how the program will be paid for, if we find what the cost is going to be.

There's been speculation and the argument has been presented and the question has been put to the government: Do you intend, government, to undertake some sort of payroll tax to pay for this program? Of course, there hasn't been a denial of that. We find that clearly is where the government is going in terms of the next couple of years. Once the agency is set up and running effectively, over time a payroll tax is probably within the government's plan to give that funding mechanism to the agency such that it can be self-sufficient.

As our party's small business advocate and knowing the small businesses in my riding -- I've met some people from larger businesses as well in the last few years -- they're very concerned about the prospect of another payroll tax. It's very difficult to compete in today's economy as it is with the various taxes that businesses are forced to pay right now. Ontario is becoming less and less attractive as a place for investment, and one of the problems we have is high taxation.

That's one of the considerations, as we know, that business people look at. If they have a choice to locate an enterprise here or anywhere in North America, if they look at the tax structure, they're going to find that Ontario's taxes are significantly higher than in many of our competing jurisdictions. So we have to be concerned about a new payroll tax on top of the one the Liberals inflicted on business.

Beyond that, we know that payroll taxes are taxes on jobs. If a company has to look at the cost of employing more people, if it's looking at expanding and it sees a percentage levy on its total payroll, it's going to see if it can keep things as small as possible and as efficient as possible, and it's not going to be as interested in hiring new workers. In today's economy, we have to be concerned about that. Unfortunately, I don't think the government is, and that's one of the problems I have to recommend to the government.

The board, as I said, is composed of a certain number or people representing certain groups. We also see that of the labour appointees there will likely be none representing non-organized labour. Approximately 70% of our workforce in Ontario is non-organized -- is non-union, in other words -- and we have to wonder whether those people who are not card-carrying union members and who don't pay any dues to a union shop are going to be represented. How is this OTAB board going to respond to the needs of those workers? Is the government saying to those people, "You'd better get into a union, you'd better organize your workplace or there aren't going to be any training dollars available to you"? Is that the message the government's putting to these non-union workers?

We have to ask that question because I feel, quite frankly, that the government is making an effort to give special preferential treatment to organized labour at the expense of non-organized labour.

We have a question about the relationship between the OTAB board, the big board, and the smaller boards, the regional boards that are going to be across the province, because this bill of course puts forward the view that there should be a network of local boards that will be established in the future by regulation.

I'm not sure if that is the best way to do it, really. You're putting forward this bill and you're not indicating how the local partnership is going to work. That is a very important issue, a very key issue, especially with a government that has indicated on many occasions that it believes in local decision-making. We wonder exactly how that relationship is going to work, how that will impact upon the board.

I've met with a number of individuals who are from private vocational schools. They're private businesses, but over the years they've done an outstanding job of training workers. These private vocational schools, I believe, have a legitimate place in our training system. It appears that the government of the day, the NDP government, does not agree and that it's doing what it can to make it difficult for private vocational schools to undertake their respective responsibilities.

The private vocational schools are very concerned about OTAB because it does not appear that there is a role for them to play in the OTAB system. They appear to be frozen out. In the next five years from now you would wonder if there are going to be private vocational schools in Ontario, because of the policies of this government. If that is the case, and if they do eventually disappear over the next couple of years, or whatever, I think all Ontarians will suffer a loss. I think it's very important that we have a balanced system.

Another question that's very important is, why focus on OTAB when existing job training programs are not working? I talked earlier, in response to one of the members' speeches, about the Workers' Compensation Board and how this schedule 4 agency will limit the accountability that the government is willing to accept, is willing to maintain over the training programs in Ontario.

Right now there's a program, as you know, called Transitions, which is in effect for older workers who have been displaced to have an opportunity to retrain. I've had many, many complaints in my riding office in Wellington about this particular program. The program is a joke, as far as I'm concerned. It's helped very few people. I would like to know anyone whom it has tangibly assisted in in any meaningful way. I've found that it raises workers' expectations that there is a program out there that's going to help them, and the program is a joke. It doesn't help anybody, as far as I'm concerned; at least, I've not encountered anyone. I've heard nothing but problems from constituents in my riding.

I've spent quite a few minutes here suggesting my concerns about the bill. In other words, I've been expressing my concerns to the government about what it's doing. But I want to conclude with something a little more positive because I feel that as an opposition member, it is part of my obligation to put forward the concerns my constituents have about bills in as forceful a way as possible, because we know that in the parliamentary system of government the government will never tell you the downside of what it's undertaking. It's the responsibility of the opposition to do that.

Beyond that, we have a very important responsibility. We have a responsibility to present to the government positive, constructive suggestions for actions that it should be taking. Our party has done that with this Blueprint for Learning in Ontario, part of our New Directions series. We put a lot of work into this. This is an important document that we've presented for the government's consideration.

Opposition parties, in practice in the past, don't normally do this, because the parties are always concerned that if they give out their good ideas the government will just adopt the good ones, put them into policy and take all the credit for them. We're willing to risk that prospect because we are so concerned about today's problems. We think it's very important, and part of our responsibility, to put forward the best ideas we can come up with, based on our philosophy, based on our understanding of the economy, based on our understanding of the needs of workers. We have done that with our New Directions volume. I would commend it to anyone who's interested in learning what I would say is a more comprehensive response to the training needs in Ontario's society today. It has a far broader focus and scope than what this single bill is intending to do.

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I'd like to conclude with a few brief points. When we look at training we have to look at whose responsibility it is. I would say that in the past number of years business has looked to government to look after many of the training needs. I think, frankly, that business has relied too much on government. Government can't do it all. Business has a very important responsibility in terms of training workers. Business benefits from well-trained workers. Individuals who are trained benefit. If they themselves are trained, they receive a considerable benefit because they have skills they've acquired that they can market. They can find a job that's maybe in a more advanced skill than what they were previously trying to market their skills with. Everyone benefits with new training initiatives.

We have to look at the proper balance of who is responsible for training and I think we've got to find that government has a responsibility, but business should be doing a lot more than it's presently doing as well. You might be surprised to hear that from a Conservative, but I believe that very strongly.

I think we need greater cooperation in our workplaces. As I say, we've got to undertake, and I believe we can undertake, mechanisms that will create greater cooperation in our workplaces. I don't think Bill 40's part of that; I think it's the opposite. I don't think this OTAB initiative is part of it; I think it's going to be the opposite. I think you'll find that some of these mechanisms you're putting forward as solutions are going to be more divisive and create more friction than has existed in the past, and I'm very concerned about that.

But most of all, the bottom line in today's economy is that people need jobs. When I talk to people about job training in my own riding, they say: "Well, that's fine. It would be nice to be trained, but for what? There are no jobs available." A constituent will say: "I've been looking for a year. There are no jobs." So that's another thing you're going to have to address. The government is going to have to address the job creation problem it in part has inflicted upon Ontario, because it doesn't matter what it says; a number of different initiatives it has taken have had a direct, inhibiting effect on job creation, and it knows it very well. It's something they're going to have to address.

This bill in and of itself does not create jobs and there are going to have to be a lot of other complimentary policies come forward from the government of a totally different direction than what it has undertaken over the last couple of years, if we're going to create any jobs at all.

The Deputy Speaker: Are there any questions or comments?

Mr Gary Wilson: I want to commend the member for Wellington for his presentation. He certainly raised a number of issues that I think many of us have thought about over the course of this debate.

The important thing to remember, though, is that the two things that have to be said about training in the past is that it hasn't been adequate and we certainly need a lot more of it. Now he has raised the issue, I think quite rightly, of the responsibility of both government and business in this regard. I think it's fair to say that business hasn't in the past been as supportive as it should have been on the training issue. The balance he's looking for is seen in OTAB in the governing board where the representation from business and labour is combined.

He also said he's concerned about the expertise, which I think he'll find in this board, which puzzles me a bit, partly because the expertise seems to have been missing in the past; otherwise, why are we in the situation we are? Secondly, we are turning to the people themselves: the labour market partners, the people who should most directly know what kinds of training issues there are. What better experts can you get? Again, the cooperation should be forthcoming because we all have so much benefit to derive from this system. I think thst by setting up the board to represent so many interests in the province, we will achieve that.

He mentioned some things, though, about the cooperation that should exist. I think we all realize there has to be a much greater role for both labour and business in the design of the various projects we're trying to achieve, both in the workplace in general and specifically with training. Of course, our view is that things like Bill 40 will address this issue. The people on the work floor have to be given the voice that will articulate their interests and this will show up in the training.

The Deputy Speaker: Any further questions or comments? The member for Wellington, you have two minutes.

Mr Arnott: I don't think I need two minutes to respond, but I would like to thank the member for Kingston and The Islands for responding to my comments.

I don't accept what he said. I find there's a very serious concern out there in the community about the mechanisms the government is setting up in terms of trying to promote cooperation and harmony in the workplace. I don't know if the member opposite has heard about it, but I certainly have in my riding.

The fundamental problem we still have to address no matter what the government says, if indeed this will create cooperation, is the accountability issue. The accountability issue is very important. With this bill, the government is devolving accountability to a great degree to an unelected body. I can see questions on OTAB two years down the road. I can see someone from the opposition asking the Minister of Labour a question and I can just hear him. He'll say, "I can't accept responsibility for that because this is a schedule 4 agency, it's an arm's-length agency." I can just hear him and I know that's going to be the answer. We're going to lose accountability. Once again, elected individual members will no longer be able to be held accountable by the people for programs that are very, very important.

Hopefully later on in the debate one of the government members will address that particular issue in a forthright way. Apparently, there's going to be a motion put forward later on this evening that will shut off this debate, so I doubt very much we'll hear it. I will conclude with that.

The Deputy Speaker: Are there any other members who wish to participate in this debate?

Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): It's my pleasure to stand here tonight and speak about Bill 96 and the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board.

I hear the current announcement made by the federal government -- Mazankowski -- reducing unemployment insurance from 60% to 57%, trying to save $2.4 billion. I hear the announcement today in St Catharines, with another tombstone lying under the free trade agreement, with the Canadian content going. I hear members opposite laughing. There was an indication that we brought forward back in 1988 that a number of tombstones will lie in communities where industrial restructuring will take place, where competitiveness will be the issue -- and you try to find the definition of "competitiveness."

When I look at the issues around OTAB, I hear members opposite say, "It took two years to develop this." I remember back in the early 1980s when we were fighting for training programs to be more centralized for people who were unemployed. I happened to be one of those individuals in the early 1980s, and the only time training was available was when you were unemployed; not while you were employed, because they didn't bother training.

I think what we're seeing here is an ability for government to allow focus. The taxpayers are saying, "Stop the duplication of programs." This will do it. "Put more community involvement in place." This will do it. "Make sure the community partners are in place -- labour, business, social -- the community as a whole being part of the decision process."

They are saying we have to create diversity in our communities. My community is an example. It's dominated by agriculture, and we all know what's going on with agriculture. Agriculture has been hurting for 10 years, and it's hurting even more. It's dominated by the auto parts sector, and we all know what's happening in the auto parts sector. It's being devastated as a number of tombstones lie in my community from plant closures because of the loss of Canadian content.

When I listen to the members opposite start talking about OTAB, I guess they're either not expressing true feelings about what's going on or maybe my community is so much different. Maybe that's why I refer to it as God's country. It is very different. I have leadership in the community, leadership in companies. As an example, Union Gas is putting forward over $5 million to its training centre to retrain employees. How are they doing it? They've put their own money in place without government assistance in place, making sure that transition is there for them to be competitive into the future. Not only have they spent that kind of money in that facility, they also went one step further and involved themselves in our local area to make sure we could establish a local board that was up and running and one of the first ones in the province to show how it's really done and how OTAB can be effective.

It's very important to see boards of education on stream. I've heard comments tonight that boards of education are not even on with this. The director of the Kent County Board of Education made an announcement in the media that OTAB is the direction for us to go in the future. I've even heard professors from the United States talking about what the year 2001 is going to bring. According to their estimates, 2001 will bring a 15% unskilled labour force and an 85% skilled labour force. That tells us we have to do something fast and immediately to streamline our training system, not only when people get laid off, but while people are working, to improve skill added value so we can be competitive in our marketplace. That's one of the important areas that we have to focus on.

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I've heard the issue about our community colleges. My community college is involved. It's there at the local level, talking about its role in developing, because it currently provides programs. So what they're going to do is take the expertise that our community college has. I heard the member for St Catharines talk about how our adults who are currently in workplaces may not have the basic skills of reading and writing. Well, I know the school boards in my own community want to take that expertise and put it in with OTAB because there are individuals who have worked since being out of school, maybe since grade 8, grade 9, grade 10, and need those basic skills to upgrade themselves so they can be competitive in the marketplace.

As we do some of this training that is currently going on today and that will go on in the future, we need to accredit that training, accredit it so that an individual, when making a résumé, has the information before him so that employers can look at progressive changes that are happening in our workplace, because the future is talking about skill added value and that's what we have to focus our energy on.

We talk about public input. The public has input. We hear them they say, "Well, there are no non-unionized workers represented on there." I can talk from past experience, and I'm talking 10 years of experience speaking on behalf of organized labour, and I also spoke on behalf of unorganized labour. I also know that the people in the business community who live in that community speak about their own interests, but they also speak about the unorganized worker because they're looking for a potential market. I also know our boards of education speak about the non-unionized workforce.

But we're talking about changing a structure, and I'm sure the member for St Catharines would agree with me that when he first got his new computer he sat there and he looked at it and he said, "Which way do I go with my new computer?" It was a little scary.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I still ask that.

Mr Hope: He says he still does it. It's a little scary because it's new, it's creative and it's simple, but if you don't read the instructions of what goes on, you're going to be lost. The instructions with the OTAB will allow direction, direction so you can make a community prosper.

It's very important for us to allow diversity in our community so that when an employer comes to the local board through the OTAB system, he can say: "I need this requirement to help me keep competitive. Can the community group supply that program for me?" They react fast to the community's need. Instead of going to Toronto, waiting for legislation or waiting for the Minister of Skills Development to make a program, they can react quickly to the community's needs. That's business, that's labour, that's even the social groups that are out there, because we're talking about long-term unemployed individuals returning and upgrading their skills to return back to the marketplace. Each community has different statistics of unemployment and we have to address those statistics.

So when I sit here and I listen to the members opposite make comments about it and they say it took the minister two years, yes, we're not going to doubt that. It took two years to develop this package, but it also took since the early 1980s for a government to recognize this. It took from the early 1980s. It took 10 years of previous governments. It took us only two years to develop. It took the Liberals five, and they never did anything. The Conservatives took six, and more, and they never did anything. We've got to compliment the minister for his efforts in what he did. He put together a program which will streamline us into the future.

It's not me who's saying about the statistics; it's saying our education system must change in the province of Ontario. Education is not just in our school system. It's in our training system also. The professors around the country and all over the world are talking about skill added value and how it's the business community and the labour community that drive the training mechanisms. The educators don't drive it because they're the same as Mr Bradley around a new computer: a little scared about change.

I remember being afraid of change, and I know the member opposite used to be the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology. When we heard the new word about technology, we got a little petrified because we might have lost our jobs around new technology. But we adapted and we changed. We adapted and we changed the process.

I know there are some small areas in this that we have a problem with. I know in my own community, I'm not saying it's picture perfect, because in order for us to make it picture perfect, there's a little boundary between Essex and Kent county that has got to develop a line.

When we develop that line, the people who are involved in the skills development program in Kent county, the people who are involved in the Wallaceburg area, the programs that they currently provide, if I utilize those resources, the resources with the education community, the resources with the business community and the resources that have been neglected for so long by previous governments, the workers themselves, the organized labour which has been representing people for so long, if I look at those individuals and I pool those resources in one room, we're going to walk out with Utopia in Kent county, because there is a positive attitude.

Yes, there's fear. There's always fear around change, but I'll tell you one thing: I can guarantee a lot of people will say: "Get training out of government's hands and let the business and labour and social groups run it because we know what's best for the community. You people in Queen's Park do a lot of arguing, points of order, everything else, calls to adjourn the house. You don't make progressive changes to deal with our communities."

I compliment the minister for what he's done. He's finally taken on an initiative that's very important. With that, I say to the members opposite, quit monkeying around, because there are people in St Catharines who need help and we've got time to do it. There are people in my riding who desperately need it. Quit monkeying around. Get the legislation passed so we can get on with progress.

The Deputy Speaker: Are there any questions or comments?

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): I'm rather surprised. I listened to the member's remarks and I learned very little about OTAB, I learned very little about what's good about the act. All I learned was that this member has nothing but disdain for debate, for opposition, for constructive criticism. I'm rather surprised at the member's attitude towards debating an issue, towards listening to all sides, because I know the minister is listening and I know the minister will want to consider amendments that might be presented and might want to consider ways to make this a better act. He knows he has 74 members, he knows it's ultimately going to be passed and he knows that we have rules here that limit the amount of debate. He knows that it's going to be passed and I know that as a reasonable-minded individual, the minister is looking for suggestions to make this bill better.

I am little surprised that the member can stand here and not debate the bill but criticize the opposition for standing here and doing just that and for making those suggestions. It surprises me, the disdain that he has for the opposition, when his party toiled for so many years. Fortunately, he's going to have his opportunity in the next couple of years to test this side of the House. But I think that when people stand here and legitimately try and debate a bill, that is not a reason to criticize them.

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. Any further questions or comments?

Mr Monte Kwinter (Wilson Heights): I just wanted to make a couple of observations. The member for Chatham-Kent thinks that rhetoric can overcome reason or information. I should point out that for him to condemn what happened in St Catharines today on free trade illustrates an ignorance of what has been going on in the automotive industry for the last 25 years.

I think any neutral observer would look at the auto pact, which is, in a sense, free trade in the automotive industry, as, on balance, a plus for Canada. It is what has allowed us to prosper in the automotive industry. There's no question that the automotive industry in Ontario has been the engine that has driven this economy. To portray the province for the last years, whether it be 50 or 100, as being a desolate desert of no opportunity and no technology is absurd.

Sir, I want to tell you -- and I'm not taking credit for it; we were the beneficiaries of a burgeoning economy -- that in the period 1984-90, Ontario had the most vibrant economy in the industrialized world. I will be speaking in a few minutes to tell you what went on and what the whole genesis of OTAB was. You guys didn't invent it. It came out of the Premier's Council, and I'll be telling you about what that is

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I just want to point out that there's an opportunity here for us to do what we all want to do. What we want to do is to help the people of Ontario cope with the global economy, to cope with the competitive situation out there, and I think to impute motive and to blame people for things happening just doesn't make any sense. We're all here to try to reach the same goals. We are all here and we're interested in making sure this economy prospers.

Mr O'Connor: I want to compliment the member for Chatham-Kent because he talked about real issues. Too often we get into this place and we get the rhetoric. He talked about the fact that yes, there's a restructuring going on at General Motors, but he talked about OTAB as being a need for that to come on board for those workers. There's no better place than to have workers involved in some of that.

When I was 16 years old I worked in a foundry and, let me tell you, I walked down the aisle to this dirty, dark-looking foundry and all of the men there -- because it is pretty well all men -- had back braces on. If people were to stop and listen to them, they wouldn't be wearing those back braces because if they had talked to the workers they wouldn't have had to.

Last week I had a meeting in my riding of injured workers. The reason we had that meeting was to get those people in to talk to them. They're injured workers and if somebody had talked to them somewhere along the line, they may not have been injured workers. They were angry. Why were they so angry? It's because the Workers' Compensation Board is not responding to those needs.

If, when the Workers' Compensation Board was set up, it had workers' representatives on there, perhaps we wouldn't have had the same problem. Perhaps then the workers would have had a chance to say something from the beginning that might not have put all those people on workers' compensation. It wouldn't have injured all those people. Those are people. There are human lives there. There's injury there that was absolutely not necessary.

It's easy for people to sit back and take a look at the textbooks, at the way things could have been, the way they might have been, but you know that isn't going to help unless you actually do something. The member for Chatham-Kent talked about doing things. It's a responsible way of doing things. He was very progressive in the way he presented it and I compliment him.

The Deputy Speaker: Further questions or comments?

Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): I'm very pleased to get up here and respond and make some comments and really compliment the member for Chatham-Kent. I think he was trying to point out some facts and some of the history that really brought us to some of the problems we have today. If members want to take that as a personal attack on them, I guess that's too bad.

But one of the big problems -- and Mr Hope, the member for Chatham-Kent, has mentioned that and alluded to the lack of training in the past -- one of the examples is that a lot of the large corporations actually imported skilled trades people into this country and there was a reason for that. For too long now they've been doing that and they did not have to invest a lot of dollars to train those people.

In fact what happened is that they brought those people from Great Britain, Germany and various other countries that actually started to train people to deal with the various trades and new technology. They started to train them at a very young age. They did not wait until they were in the workplace or wait until they got laid off, for example, or until they became adults and it's very unfortunate.

Then we talk about small business and how we're all concerned about small business. A lot of these multinational corporations, when the well ran dry in importing skilled trades people into this country, went to the areas where there were family-run or family-operated tool-and-die shops, for example. Those people invested four and five years in those people, and of course the large corporations also took them. Then the smaller business people said: "We can't afford this. People are stealing our tradespeople away from us and we can't afford that investment." So what's happening here --

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you.

Mr Hayes: I would like to talk a little longer, Mr Speaker, but we'll do that later.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Chatham-Kent, you have two minutes.

Mr Hope: I'll respond to the member for Willowdale. I think it would be important that he read his own critic's comments instead of listening to Mr Phillips over there, the member for Scarborough-Agincourt. Instead of his comments, you'd better read your own critic's comments, the critic to this ministry.

To the member for Wilson Heights, we understand what the Canadian content rule is, because we played an important role as an independent parts supplier in the Canadian content aspect. When I used the issue about St Catharines and talked about a tombstone, let me tell you that a lot of those members understand what the Canadian content rule is all about. Those individuals are losing their jobs because of corporate restructuring.

We need to move fast enough to make sure that community -- and it's even in the press release from GM, which talks about reacting fast to help that community out. I don't want to play any rhetoric games. We can do that elsewhere, at election time, come 1995. Yes, I will prove myself to my community in 1995, because that's what I spoke about today, my community instead of the rhetoric that's also out there.

To the member for Durham-York and my colleague the member for Essex-Kent, who shares the same concerns because the riding I was talking about is also adjacent to Mr Hayes's, we have a community that has a lot of community solidness behind it. It's solidarity. It's called brotherhood and it's called respect for one another. We don't have the 1,000 jobs, the big plants in our community; we have small businesses, we have dedicated workers and we probably have more awards than anyone else.

But this OTAB will take us into the future. As I indicated, 85% of our workforce in the year 2001 is going to be skilled labour, and we need skill added value. If you want to play your rhetoric game, play it somewhere else, but the people we represent need a training program that's centrally focused on the people and the consumers. That's an issue to us.

To the minister, we want to thank you very much. Don't forget that line.

The Deputy Speaker: Are there any other members who wish to participate in this debate?

Mr Kwinter: I'm delighted to participate in this debate because I had some role to play in the genesis of this whole OTAB initiative. I'm sure members will know -- some of the newer members of the government's side may not know -- that the Premier's Council was formed by the Liberal government. I'm not saying that because it was great; I'm just stating historical fact.

One of the interesting things about the Premier's Council was that for the first time in memory when a government commission/board of this kind was set up, members of organized labour were invited to join. I can tell you, because I was the vice-chairman of the Premier's Council and the Premier was the chairman, that one of the most difficult things Leo Gerard and Gordie Wilson had to come to terms with was whether they would be considered as having gone over to the enemy.

If they joined the Premier's Council, would their constituencies ask: "Why are you getting into bed with those guys? They're the enemy. They're the guys who are against us." To the credit of Gordie Wilson and Leo Gerard, they felt that if they were going to effect change they were going to have to do it from within. I'm sure there were some mighty heated meetings among their colleagues when the decision was made, "Yes, we will join the Premier's Council."

I can tell you that over the three years that I was involved with the Premier's Council -- it's a known fact and you can talk to either one of them -- Leo Gerard and Gordie Wilson and I developed a very close personal relationship. We disagreed on lots of things in a general sense, but it had nothing to do with our own personal relationship. We would debate some very serious issues of the day.

I think it's important that I lay out in this debate the environment in which the genesis of OTAB took place. Let there be no mistake. A Premier's Council report recommended the creation of OTAB, but I also want to add, and I think it's important, that the Premier's Council was a report to government and not a report of government. The fact that the Premier himself chaired it and that some of the senior ministers in the government sat on it indicated that, in most cases, whatever came out of the Premier's Council would in fact shortly become government policy.

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When the Premier's Council looked at our competitiveness -- as a matter of fact, the major report of the Premier's Council was entitled Competing in the New Global Economy -- I want to tell you that in that period, 1987 to 1990, as I said earlier to the member for Essex-Kent, Ontario was enjoying the most vibrant economy in the industrialized world. Our problem was an incredible shortage of skilled labour. As the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology, I had a steady stream of manufacturers coming to me and saying: "There are not sufficient skilled workers in Ontario. It is going to impact on our ability to compete. What are you going to do about it?"

It was with this that a subcommittee was struck. There were representatives on the council from organized labour; I apologize, there was another member and I just can't recall his name, but certainly Gordie Wilson, Leo Gerard and George Peapples -- remember the president of General Motors -- sat on that subcommittee, and the subcommittee came forward with the OTAB report and the recommendations.

At the time, we had situations, and I want to give you an example of Magna International. Magna International, I'm sure you know, is one of the largest auto parts producers in the world. Notwithstanding that they had some serious difficulties in the last couple of years, they've turned that around and are now one of the brightest lights in our industrial sector. One of the things that Frank Stronach did was to realize that if he was going to be able to compete and to be successful, he had to have trained people. He set up one of the most innovative training programs in the industrialized world.

We had a steady stream of foreigners coming to Ontario to see the Magna training facility. I can tell you that when Lothar Spath, the premier-president of Baden-Wuerttemberg, one of our Four Motors affiliates, came to Canada, the one thing that he raved about was that particular training program.

There were two problems from Magna's point of view. As a matter of fact, the minister referred to it; I think it was him. It may not have been him. Someone referred to it. The two problems were: It was extremely expensive for one company to sustain, and the second problem, which was even more serious, is once these people got trained, they became marketable so what they would do is get a higher salary offered to them by another company that didn't have to make that incredible investment in training and they would then move off.

To the credit of Mr Stronach, and he certainly understood this, he was prepared to continue it as long as he could, because his attitude was, if these people go out and work in industry, then that's great because it's going to raise the level of the competence of our industrial workforce, and if that was what the role of Magna was to be, he had no problem with that. Unfortunately, with the downturn of the economy and with some of the problems that Magna encountered, they had to abandon that training program and that in itself was unfortunate.

But again, you have to think of what the conditions were at the time. The unemployment rate in Ontario was hovering around 4% to 5%. Those of you who know anything about unemployment figures will know that when you have 4% unemployment, you have full employment. There is always 4% of the population who, although they claim they're unemployed, either aren't available for work, don't want to work or whatever, but 4% is considered full employment.

In Metro Toronto, the unemployment rate was hovering somewhere around 1.5%. In London, Ontario, they had the lowest unemployment rate in the country. If you walked around in any mall in Toronto or in London and some other communities, every single shop had a sign in the window, "Help Wanted." It was a workers' market as far as getting a job was concerned. That has changed dramatically.

What is our problem? Why are we suddenly confronted with this issue? The issue that spawned the OTAB initiative was that we had to produce our homegrown technicians and people who were technically trained. I'd like to spend a bit of time talking about what I think is the real problem. I have no problem with OTAB as a concept; I have some problem with the way it's structured.

Our problem is that we as a society, we as Ontarians and we as Canadians have never given any real credit or any sort of prestige to people who work in trades. Most parents look to their children and hope they will become professionals, whether it be a lawyer, a doctor, someone with an MBA, an accountant or whatever it is. That would be the ultimate. The people who do these technical jobs, unless they're engineers -- then of course they are also professionals -- are not considered to be achievers. As a result, there is no incentive and there are no rewards for people to get into those particular avenues of employment.

Compare that to our major competitors. I sit in this House and from time to time I hear the rhetoric of the other side. I'm not just trying to blame it on the other side, because I hear it from people on the street who have no particular political affiliation. All they do is wring their hands and moan about the terrible competition we are going to suffer from places like Mexico, Taiwan, Thailand and Hong Kong.

I say to you and I say to them, that is not where our competition is. If cheap labour was the only criterion for success, Haiti would be the industrial capital of the world. It doesn't work that way. Our competition is coming from Germany, it is coming from Japan, it is coming from Sweden, it is coming from England, it is coming from places that have high wages. There is no problem with high wages. The higher the wages the better, as long as those wages are matched by productivity. If your output and your contribution to the value added is worth $50 an hour, fabulous. Pay them $50 an hour.

Where we have the problem is that we have people who think they should be paid for being alive. If I was alive last year and I'm still alive this year, I should get paid even more, regardless of what my productivity is, whether or not we are competitive. That is what we are missing in our competitiveness.

What we have to do is take a look at how we are training our people, but not once they're in the workforce. It's too late to suddenly take somebody and say: "You know what? We're going to take you and change you into something else." It's laudable, it's necessary if someone becomes obsolete, but that is not going to solve the problem.

Let me give you an example as current as today. The 800-and-some people in St Catharines surely cannot be classified as unskilled labour. I am sure they are very skilled. I'm sure they have been well trained. What are you going to do with them? Are you going to detrain them and say, "Sorry, you can no longer make rear axles; you now have to be trained to do some service job." That gets you into a vicious circle where you have to decide what you are training. How do you decide what you are training for?

I used this example in the debate the other day. I don't mean to cast aspersions on the people who make candles, but I've used this illustration for years. You have to be careful that you're not training somebody to be a candle-maker, and the day he finishes his training, somebody invents the electric lightbulb and he becomes obsolete. What you have is a make-work program to train somebody, but he hasn't been trained for anything.

Let me give you another example. It doesn't do much good, other than bragging rights, to train someone if he doesn't have a job. I can just imagine the conversation: "I used to be an unemployed worker, a labourer, but now I'm an unemployed technician. I've stepped up in the world. I now have a better title to be unemployed doing." You can't have that kind of situation.

When we give money -- I'm talking about grants, not guarantees -- to companies, there is a reason, and I want to give you an example. We have a situation with the Ford Motor Co. When I was the minister -- I've said this before -- the announcement of the van plant in Oakville was initiated during my tenure in office. I'm not saying I was the cause of it; it just happened that I was the minister when those negotiations started.

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Ford came to me and said: "We have an opportunity to put a $2-billion investment into Oakville, but we are competing with St Louis, Missouri, and we've got to go to our board in Michigan and we've got to convince them to put that facility into Oakville. Now, before we can even start, we need a level playing field."

To suggest that Ford Motor Co is coming to Ontario to get a handout so it would put their facility in Oakville just isn't true. It doesn't make any sense. What they are saying is that: "If we have to convince our board to put that investment into Oakville, we have to be able to show that it is going to be as competitive as the alternate possible location in St Louis, Missouri. We've taken a look at the facility. We need better infrastructure because it isn't there. We need additional water lines. We need additional electrical lines. We need additional roads and we also need a better-trained workforce."

When they talk about a better-trained workforce, they are not talking about training people to work in their particular company, because it changes. What was great technology yesterday could be obsolete. It's new technology. What they need are people who have been trained to be taught or taught to be trained, which is really more like it. Most companies will say to you: "We don't want the community colleges or universities teaching people to do the specific jobs that we do, because if you do that, that's all they'll be able to do. We want you to teach these people to be able to be trained so that in six months, three years or whatever it is, when a new technology comes along, we will be able to build on it."

I want to tell the story, and I think it's very, very significant, and again because many of you were not here at the time, you may not have heard it, but it is the classic story. That is the story of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. We had a situation in Ontario where Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co had been on the lakeshore for nearly 90 years. When they shut the plant down, there was a bitter, bitter labour dispute. Those of you in the labour movement, I'm sure, will remember it, and it had to do with severance and it had to do with a whole range of things. When Goodyear left Toronto, it left with a very bitter feeling.

The automobile industry is dependent on tires. At one time, we had a whole range of tire production facilities in Ontario. I would mention to the member for Essex-Kent, when he said I might be afraid of technology, that I graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I'm not afraid of technology. My first job was the head of design for Dunlop Rubber. We had a huge plant out in Whitby. I had some input into designing the foam rubber part of it. Firestone had a huge facility in Hamilton. Goodyear had a huge facility in Toronto. All of them gone.

We were then in a position where it made no sense that Ontario, as the largest producer of automobiles in Canada, should not be in a position to have the tires that go on those cars produced in Canada. So we went to Goodyear and we said to them, "Would you please consider putting another plant in Ontario?" They said, "We will consider it."

What they did is quite interesting. They said, "You select the site for us that you think would suit our needs." Again, I'm not telling any tales out of school, but first of all, they had some criteria. They said, "We want to be east of Oshawa." The reason for that is they didn't want to get their supplies coming through the congestion of the Golden Horseshoe. They said, "Get us a facility that is east of Oshawa. We want it to be on Highway 401 and we want to be able to be within an hour and a half's drive of Oshawa."

We went out and started to work on that particular project. The people at MITT came back and said, "We have what we think is the best site for Goodyear," and it happened to have been in Morrisburg, Ontario. As I say, I'm not telling any tales out of school when I say that was the recommendation.

We forwarded that to Goodyear and Goodyear came back and said, "No, we're going to Napanee." And we said: "Napanee. Why would you go to Napanee?" Not that we had anything against Napanee; we just felt that Napanee, in our opinion, was not as good a location as a site in Morrisburg. No matter how hard we tried, because we believed -- as I say, rightly or wrongly -- that this is where they should be. They said, "No, we're going to Napanee."

When the deal was finally completed and the chairman came from Akron, Ohio -- I remember it as if it were yesterday -- and we signed the agreement in the Premier's office and I signed on behalf of the province of Ontario, I said to the chairman, "Now that we have signed this deal, could you tell me why you went to Napanee?"

He said, "Mr Minister, it is very simple. As soon as we decided on this project, we got a team of people together and we sent them out into eastern Ontario and we said, Here, draw a circle with the centre being in Oshawa, going east 150 miles, and canvass every high school in that area and report back to us as to what community has the best technical high school in eastern Ontario.' Our reports came back and said that Napanee has a program that is the best in all of eastern Ontario."

They said: "That is where our plant is going, because that is where we are going to get the kind of workers that we can train. We want these kids coming out of high school. We will teach them what they have to know in our business, but we will train them."

The plant is now in Napanee, it's up and running, and I have told that story for the last four years, and it's an indication of what our major problem is.

OTAB has got lots of problems and I don't have time, unfortunately, to go into them, but I think that it can only work if it is done in conjunction with a look at how we train people, how we provide the incentives, how we provide the motivation for young people to say: "You know what? I can make a meaningful and productive life by doing something at a very young age that will allow me to prosper in an area that will give me some satisfaction as a person working in industry."

That is where it's going to have to take place. If all you're being is reactive and you're worrying about people who are being laid off and you're saying, "What do we do with these people," then you get the problem that we're in right now. We have no shortage of skilled labour at the moment, relatively speaking. I can tell you, the 11% unemployed of the population of Canada -- and the same numbers in Ontario -- there's a significant proportion of those people who are highly trained. Their problem is not skills training; their problem is, they don't have a job. There are not jobs there for them. You can train from now till the end of time, and unless it is done in conjunction with jobs, you're really not resolving your problems.

I admit that there are lots of people who need training and should be trained. I think OTAB could provide that particular aspect of the whole chain. There are problems with it that can be resolved, and hopefully we can make some amendments that will do it. But I think that to fool yourselves to think that OTAB is going to solve all of the problems, that it's going to make this a workers' Utopia, is short-sighted, it's irresponsible and it's not going to work. I think it's got to be just one of the initiatives in conjunction with a whole series of others, and I commend all of us to put our minds to that.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): I thank the honourable member for Wilson Heights for his participation in the debate. Questions and/or comments? The honourable member for Willowdale.

Mr Harnick: That was, indeed, a speech that I think we can all learn something from.

The member for Wilson Heights points out very clearly that jobs do not come directly from training programs; they come from business and industry and labour being competitive. If business and labour are competitive within the marketplace, then there will be jobs and there will be the need to train people for those skilled jobs. I think the member very clearly stated that. When I look at this bill, I see very little that connects what's going on in the technical schools, in the community colleges and in the high schools to what is going on or should be going on in the labour market.

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I see in this bill the creation of a huge bureaucracy. I see in this bill all kinds of questions about how OTAB is ultimately going to be funded. Is it going to be funded ultimately by payroll tax? Is it going to make our industry and labour less competitive? What's going to happen to the 70% of people who are not unionized? Are those non-unionized people represented on OTAB? What is the connection between educators and those 70% of non-unionized workers? I don't see a great deal of impact that educators have in the OTAB process. I see two directors representing education.

Where is the connection between the education system and jobs? Where is the connection between competitiveness? Is our impact and focus here going to be on social change, or is it going to be on competitiveness? Those are some of the questions I'm left with.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mr Derek Fletcher (Guelph): It's a pleasure to join in on this. Talking about what the member for Wilson Heights was saying about having relationships with Gord Wilson and Leo Gerard, I have a relationship with my chamber of commerce, and yes, I can debate with it and I can talk with it. But do they agree with me? Do they listen to me? That's the point, and not so much a relationship. A relationship is fine. You have to be listened to and they have to take you seriously, and that's the point a lot of people miss. We have to be taken seriously and I don't think that's there.

As far as having jobs that are geared to the training program is concerned, I remember that when the minister was in Guelph at the Traxle plant, Mr Hasenfratz said that had it not been for this program, this company would be relocated in Ohio, not in Guelph. There are 200-plus jobs that are going to be created through this program in Guelph, because of this program. I'm very happy for this program. I'm glad the minister did finally get something going.

That's what Mr Hasenfratz was talking about. The training is not only important, but when you look around the world, especially in the United States, they're not spending enough money on training. He praised this program. He praised what the government was doing and he said that it was about time a government finally was doing something serious about the training program.

As far as people who work in trades not being given the credit is concerned, we can look back through our education system and understand why people who go into the trades and into technical programs are always looked down on. That's why I think we also have to take in conjunction with what the Minister of Education is saying about destreaming. That will help to wipe away the stigma that's attached to going into basic courses, and let's face it --

Interjection.

Mr Fletcher: To the member across from me who is heckling, let's face it, there are a lot of people who have been streamed into programs that they should never have been streamed into. That's why I agree with what the Minister of Education is doing, and also with this minister.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mr Bradley: I want to commend the member for Wilson Heights on an extremely thoughtful speech. He is a person who has maintained his interest in matters of business and training and education, despite the fact that he is in opposition where he does not have the direct ability to make those changes. Actually, there are some people in this province who are under the impression that he is still the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology.

I was walking through the hall today and I saw a large delegation of people with him from one of the republics that used to be part of what we called the Soviet Union -- Kurdistan, in this particular case. He's known for meeting with people from all parts of the world in all parts of the world, and brings a very wide experience to this Legislature. I think it's extremely important to have that kind of person in this Legislature, and I certainly appreciated the remarks he made.

I was taken particularly with the remark he made -- as a former teacher, I can recall this, and all of us, I'm sure, have made this observation -- that we in our society, unfortunately, in Canada tend to relegate technical education to the bottom rung of the ladder where it should not be.

It was always discouraging when talking to parents who wanted their sons or daughters to become doctors, lawyers, politicians or something that involved wearing a shirt and tie all day long and not working with their hands, but rather, supposedly, working with their minds. I always thought we had lost an awful lot by parents who would not allow children who had very good technical skills, the same people who have to fix so much of what I am unable to operate with my limited knowledge of these technical things -- I always thought that was a tragedy and I hope OTAB elevates those kinds of jobs to something higher than what they've been in the past in the minds of Canadians.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? The member for --

Mr Paul R. Johnson (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings): Prince Edward-lennox-South Hastings, Mr Speaker. I want to respond to the member for Wilson Heights' comments and say that I find it very interesting to hear him speaking about eastern Ontario and the high school in Napanee, a high school that certainly had some qualities that Goodyear thought were advanced enough, proficient enough for it to establish its plant in, actually, Richmond township, which Reeve Howard Cuthill would think was probably his baby. But let's be honest and say that Neil Lambert, the mayor of Napanee, would think this was very important for his town as well. Indeed, Goodyear says it is located in Napanee.

I understand that they hired locally, and it's true that as a result of the technical expertise of Goodyear, the high calibre of the students -- I might add as well that it's Mike Breaugh's alma mater, Napanee, so it doesn't just produce good technical students; it produces good politicians as well.

In spite of that, Goodyear is a plant of excellence. I understand it is the number one tire manufacturing plant in the world with regard to the quality of product it produces. I think that's what the member was saying.

I've got to add this as well: When you're looking at jobs in the job market, it's all fair and well for the employer or the manufacturer to train its employees, but I think in times of great unemployment, which we have right now, we have to look at what the manufacturers on the global scale are looking for and produce people with the training and the skills that will cause those manufacturers, those industries, to locate in our province. I think that's what OTAB is designed for and that's the reason OTAB is being established, to train these people for those needs in particular.

The Acting Speaker: I thank the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings and I apologize for my reticence in remembering his constituency. The honourable member for Wilson Heights has two minutes to make a response.

Mr Kwinter: I want to thank the members who have commented on my address.

I just want to tell you one other story if I have the time to do it. When Honda established its facility in Alliston, Ontario, it decided consciously that it didn't want to hire people who had been trained in making automobiles. They hired locally. They went out and literally got people off the farm and trained them. They trained them in the way they wanted them to be trained, to produce the Honda automobile.

A couple of years after they had finished the facility, trained their people and started producing cars, Honda in Japan said to them, "We want you to take two cars off your line at random and send them back to us." They went to Marysville, Ohio, where they have a huge Honda facility and they said, "Take two Honda Accords at random and send them back to Japan." They went to their Japanese facility, took two cars and said, "We're now going to analyse them as far as quality, finish, tolerances are concerned, all of these things," and after their evaluation, they determined that the two best Hondas built in the world were being built in Alliston.

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I told that story to the president of Toyota when it established itself in Cambridge. They said: "We have exactly the same situation. We have American dealers specifying on their orders that they want a Cambridge Corolla. They want the car to come from Cambridge because of the finish." I spoke to the president of the Cami operation in Ingersoll, and he confirmed the same thing.

What we have is the ability to train our people. There is no question about it. We have the people who can be trained. We have to make sure that it is done properly, and if the OTAB initiative will do it, God bless, but I'm saying, to just assume that some kind of bureaucratic structure is going to solve the problem, is shortsighted.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Jordan: It's a privilege this evening, on behalf of my people in Lanark-Renfrew, to have the opportunity to comment on Bill 96.

The member for Wilson Heights has really, you might say, taken part of my presentation, because in touring industry in Lanark-Renfrew, they're not asking for trained personnel. In the high-technology industries that we have, which aren't that many, they're very well run, they're very well managed, they're not that large, and I might say, they're not unionized; unions in the riding of Lanark-Renfrew are a very low percentage of the work force.

The point I want to make, relative to what the member for Wilson Heights has been saying -- he has given us a very informative talk and I'm sure everyone agrees -- from his experience and his general business experience, is that we might be moving into something here that's going to be very, very expensive and maybe not that successful.

Coming back to my tours of the industry in my riding, of which I'm more comfortable to talk about, they would like to get good grade 12 or grade 13 students from our education system, and they will do the training. They really appreciate the government assistance that they are getting to do that training. There are no administration costs there. There are none of the buildings and all that's required in what we're talking about in the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board that is going to be set up.

This Ontario Training and Adjustment Board is going to absorb, I understand, right off the bat, about 800 civil servants who are already employed in the different agencies, plus all the bricks and mortar and the directors and everything that goes with a corporation such as this. The other scary thing is that even though the minister, the member for Hamilton West, has, I'm sure, put a lot of thought into this in bringing it to the Legislature, I'm sure he too realizes the cost and the fear that it could go astray and become very administration-heavy, and reach the point where he, as minister, or his government is not really going to have the input or control that he would like to have as the corporation develops.

I know that Ontario Hydro, for instance, is a different type of corporation but it too got away to the extent that the government saw Bill 118 as being necessary to try and get a grip on it. I have the same fears that when we establish this body, it too could become a very expensive item for the taxpayer, and maybe not produce the finished product in personnel and workers that the manufacturers, businesses and industry require. The last plant I was in last Friday is very high in technical requirements in education and, as the manager and the instructor explained to me, two years from now it'll be all changed again.

They have an ongoing continual education system there. It's almost a school in itself. They give freedom of research, they give freedom of development and they give general guidance to the finished training that they want from that individual. They know after three months if that individual does have the understanding and the basics to develop through their program and it works out to be a two- or three-year program. The young fellows I met there that are actually in charge of departments are between 25 and 35. They started in there about 21 years of age and some of them at 18 as they came out of high school.

This act establishing the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board gives me a little concern that it appears now to be orientated to labour, and when I say labour I mean organized labour. That's only about 30% or 40% of the workforce, and it's far less than that in my riding. So there's the concern that if the manager and director of the company that I'm referring to were not going to have some input on that board to give direction as to the type of training and the level of training they were expecting to see before that student, if you will, would come to their plant, then all of our money, all of our good intentions could be in vain.

We might think we're doing a wonderful job, we have a wonderful corporation set up here and we feel it's representative of the business, labour and workforce and that we are going to have in the end exactly what we need as the economy picks up and high-tech industry moves into Ontario. I'm afraid at the rate that the high-tech equipment in these plants is changing that we're facing a very expensive system that is not going to adapt itself to the actual workforce.

I really believe that the plant that assumes and takes on these people is going to have a real training exercise to do still. They tell me that they can do that from a grade 12 education base. They would prefer that the individual didn't have this other technical training, because he comes in there assuming he's ready and can take over and go to work. It creates unrest, it creates a relationship there with management that we're not spending this money to create.

I know the government is sincere in its intention, and the minister for sure, that the work he has put into establishing this is to create a well-trained technical group in Ontario that is ready to go as the economy picks up. We know the jobs aren't there. We know the policies that the government is using today are not being successful. Jobs are disappearing every day. We may be creating jobs in one pocket and, on the other hand, we're losing three to one on the other side. So the jobs just aren't there.

I go back again to the member for Wilson Heights. In his presentation he tried to make clear to us that companies know what they want. He pointed out that he had a delegation that went across eastern Ontario looking for a site for Goodyear. They were going to have the expertise from government to tell Goodyear where its plant should be.

But who had the money invested? Who was going to be investing the money? The Goodyear company was investing the money and the Goodyear company had the common sense to send its own people out and do a survey of eastern Ontario. What did they base the criteria on? Not on how many pre-trained people there were. They went to the high schools to find which school in eastern Ontario had the highest rating in technical training for the people coming out at the grade 12 level.

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The member for Wilson Heights has considerable experience, not only in business but in government and in cabinet. I was quite impressed with his presentation, because it ties into what I'm being told as I talk with people in the constituency office and visit industry and manufacturing in my riding.

We talk about disentanglement of government from the private sector. If we form this corporation as it's laid out, there are going to be two cochairs, seven directors representing business -- I understand business has already indicated that the layout is such that it doesn't feel comfortable in taking part -- seven directors representing labour, which appears to be an even pitch, but let's go on. There will be two directors representing educators and trainers -- these people can be from the government -- one director representing francophones, one director representing persons with disabilities, one director representing racial minorities and one director representing women.

We've got a mix here. We've got away from training. Now we've got a mix in here of who we're going to train and what mix of people we're going to train. If you're running your own business, just stop and think. You want to train the person regardless. You're not going to look at any of these social factors. You're not going to discredit anybody because of some social disability, whatever it might be. Surely you're going to treat everyone fairly and you're going to have the best you can acquire to come on to your production line, to come into your plant, to be part of your business, part of your manufacturing or industry or whatever it might be.

There's pressure put on governments on an ongoing basis. We talk about unemployment and we keep shouting, "Why don't you do something?" We talk about the training of personnel and we tend to holler to government, "Why don't you do something?" But every time we talk about that, we're talking about taking money out of my pocket, putting it through the government, with all the administration costs, and bringing it back to my riding with only about a third of it left.

I would prefer to see the government disentangle and withdraw from this and make money available to my plants, to my people who say they are capable of training them from high school. We're spending a fortune now on education, for God's sake. We can't afford what we're doing in the education system. This is basically an extension of the present education system.

I say it's time to ask ourselves whether there an overlap here, when we have people coming out of high school with a good grade 12 or grade 13 base and they're not interested in going on to one of the professions, as the member for Wilson Heights mentioned, whether it be lawyer, doctor, school teacher or whatever, they're interested in entering the workforce.

I see the Minister of Energy yawning over here. I think perhaps Ontario Hydro is a good example of training. They have an excellent training program at Ontario Hydro. They bring them in from grade 13. They make them number one tradesmen here at Pickering and they've also trained them there now to bring them on to Darlington. I don't think the government helped them, that I know of, to train those people and we wonder why maybe our hydro rates are high.

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Minister of Energy): Ontario Hydro's an agency of the government.

Mr Jordan: Right. These are some of the things that Hydro's been doing for years, but it's out of control and you're afraid to issue a directive, you see. I'm afraid, Mr Minister, that you're going to create another corporation that in three years' time will be out of control. It'll be like the Workers' Compensation Board.

The Treasurer said this afternoon, "I can't do anything about it. They've given me the evidence here. It shows that it's approved by their board. They're going to build this new building. They're going to occupy part of it. They're going to become landlords. They're going to occupy part and they're going to rent part out," and we've got millions of square feet downtown that aren't occupied.

I would ask the government, in all sincerity, to go slow on this act to establish this Ontario Training and Adjustment Board. If you do establish this board -- and I hope this goes to committee where we can have some input from some of the people I'm talking about in my riding, that they can come to that committee and explain to you the success they're having with the young people in Canada coming right of our high school system. We've been very critical of our education system. We're saying we should judge the teachers on their results, which are the students coming into the workforce.

I don't like to see the teaching profession just blanketed as being not of successful rating because a minority number of the graduates of school are not measuring up to what we expect them to be. I think, generally speaking, Ontario has an excellent education system, and with a little direction from the ministry it can be easily improved without too much cost.

From that education system I would like to see the responsibilities of this group that you're establishing reduced considerably. I would certainly ask that this government give a sincere opportunity to private enterprise to be on this board, to be part of this corporation. The representation that you have here is not sufficient. It's not sufficient.

We're starting out with a very unbalanced base. I can understand that, because you're coming from the base as a government that labour can do this and labour will do this and labour will supply trained people, but that doesn't say they're going to be trained, as I said before, to suit me, the business that's going to use them. I'm going to have to spend the same amount of dollars as if I got them right from high school and retrain them for the position I want.

I don't have the time and I'm sure others have more that they would like to contribute to this debate. I would sincerely ask the minister to just think about the future two or three years down the road, should this become law, the costs involved and the duplication that's going to be there. Even though we think we have a finished product that we've trained through this corporation, when it hits the actual floor of the plant, you're going to find that the student is going to be very disappointed, management is going to be very disappointed and management is still going to be looking for some assistance to retrain, which sometimes is very difficult.

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Sometimes it's very difficult to retrain someone who really and truly believes that he came there well trained for the job in high tech that was advertised. Technically he might be, but for the equipment that plant has, from my experience, it's that two to three years of training that he gets on the job with that company that makes him part of the company and makes him an employee who's going to be there for a long time, not somebody who's going to be in and out and on and off of unemployment or welfare.

The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments?

Mr Ron Hansen (Lincoln): I have listened to the member for Lanark-Renfrew and I would say that 20 years ago I might have applauded his speech. But today I wouldn't applaud the speech. Last May my office set up an OTAB meeting at Niagara College, bringing together labour, business and educators to put input into what this bill is today. I can tell you one thing: If we have to depend on McDonald's to train somebody how to flip hamburgers, that's all he'd be able to do, is flip hamburgers.

We're talking about high tech today. We're not talking about bringing somebody in with grade 12 and trying to teach him just one trade, maybe running a drill press. All of a sudden that company changes. They've got an automatic drill and they don't know how to operate an automatic drill press. What we will be able to do in this training program is to talk to business and labour, to come together on what type of trades and what type of high tech are needed in that particular area. That's why there are 22 boards -- because it's around the province; there are different industries in all different areas -- so that people are trained in that particular field.

A company will locate if it's already got the trained workers. This particular rubber company was looking for an area with qualified people to a certain point, grade 12. They did train them, but they were looking for the best area. There were some other elements also, such as the cost of property in that particular area. It wasn't so much education; there were a lot more factors there.

I believe there still has to be a combination of on-the-job training, and the colleges, universities and the high schools involved in the training coming up.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Questions and/or comments?

Mr Harnick: I'd just like to commend the member for a fine presentation, because he touched on, in a very limited time period, all the things that really had to be said about this bill. One of the things that really concerns me is the fact that I know, from the past performance of this government, that when this becomes law, its members are just going to be breaking their arms patting each other on the back. They're going to say: "Boy, we've solved all the problems. We have a training program in place that's just foolproof." But the fact of the matter is, we're going to have as few jobs in this province as we do right now if this government doesn't start to believe in allowing business here to be competitive.

We asked the Treasurer today, "Are you going to be raising taxes?" The Treasurer wouldn't give us an answer. We asked the Treasurer today a very straightforward question: "How big is the deficit? What is the deficit in the province of Ontario right now?" The Treasurer wouldn't give us an answer. As long as that's the climate that the government is creating, as long as it's not willing to be candid and as long as it's not prepared to embark on a direction that is going to permit business to be competitive, then we're not going to have business wanting to locate in this province.

You can have all the training schemes in the world, but you're not going to be training anybody for jobs if the jobs are not there and available. I have some real fears that the government is just going to be patting itself on the back but, at the same time, neglecting the real problems that have to be solved in order to create jobs. Bill 40: That's not going to create any jobs in this province. High taxes: That's not going to create any jobs. High deficits: That's not going to create any jobs. You can have the best training scheme in the world, but it isn't going to work.

The Speaker: The member's time has expired. The member for Essex-Kent.

Mr Hayes: First of all, I'd like to make one short comment on the remarks the member for Willowdale made, that this government is going to be slapping itself on the back after we get the OTAB into play. However, the way I see it, the member, and other members across the floor, like the member for Willowdale, are going to be coming back and saying: "I didn't believe it. You guys actually were able to do this, the things we couldn't do for many, many years."

The member for Lanark-Renfrew made comments in regard to how employers wanted people who had grade 12 or grade 13 and how they would train them the way they wanted to train them. That all sounds just dandy but, at the same time, the member says we shouldn't go through with this kind of program because it's going to cost us too much money. Then he says: "Let's give it to a corporation that wants to train workers exactly the way it wants. Let's give them the money. Let's not let the workers or the workers' representatives have any say in how this works." I'm sorry, I really have to disagree with that.

If you talk about OTAB, the member for Lanark-Renfrew speaks as though it's just a one-shot-deal OTAB system, "You're going to get one bid at training and then, sorry, we can't train you any more." The whole idea of this process is to train and continue to train workers to meet the needs of the changes in technology, to be competitive in the workforce, the thing we have failed to do many, many times.

It's also in conjunction with our education system. I think that's very important for the member for Lanark-Renfrew to understand. It's going to be in the colleges and also on the work floor, in the workplace, and I think it will work very, very well.

The Speaker: The member's time has expired.

Mr Curling: I listened very carefully to the member for Lanark-Renfrew and the only credit I can really give the Conservative Party is for developing community colleges. I think the infrastructure was there. I think they were rather lacking in proceeding and getting training developed at that time.

Mr Harnick: Not a minor accomplishment.

Mr Curling: No, it's no minor accomplishment. It was one of the backbones, as I said, the main structure of dealing with some other students who were not able to go on to university. Today, many of the community college students stand very proud because they were very practically trained.

So I would say that although some of the comments he made -- I would not take everything word for word, but I'm sure the minister is listening very carefully to what you have said and will take that into consideration. Some of the members may feel differently about that.

It is important that the contribution of the opposition here will make a better OTAB. We still have great concern about how it is structured. I have great confidence in the bureaucrats who will put it together, because they are quite flexible individuals. They are listening too, and I'm sure to convince the bureaucrats, the minister would not take such a long time to do so. They are listening and the minister is quite receptive to some of the changes put forward.

I'm looking forward to our next speaker, who will comment in much more detail on the direction in which this OTAB program should go -- this is like all of his introductions -- a man who has known this place, how it works; who knows about training, a previous teacher. Quite a few of them are here today. I want you to listen very carefully to one of the best parliamentarians and one of the best speakers in this House.

The Speaker: The member for Lanark-Renfrew has up to two minutes to respond.

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Mr Jordan: I appreciate the remarks from my colleague from the government side here, from the riding of Essex-Kent. He is saying, I believe, and my friend from Lincoln is telling me, that what I'm saying might be all right 20 years ago. I take objection to that, because the people who trained people 20 years ago trained them on the equipment that was the most modern at that time.

I can assure you, if you come to the riding of Lanark-Renfrew and come on tour of the plant with me, and I take you into the classroom -- for these students are being taught how to design, operate and run the equipment in that plant -- you won't say that was all right 20 years ago. You'll scratch your head and say to yourself, "I better go back to grade 12 and grade 13 because I don't have the basic education that these young people have who are coming forward and accepting the training from these industries."

I think these members should spend some time going out to these high-tech plants, especially the ones that have their own education system there. You can actually, in this one plant, obtain a university degree through that plant with a few night courses from one of the universities just to qualify you for the degree. All the basics are right there in that classroom. The companies are very happy, they told me, with the assistance from government.

The Speaker: I thank the honourable member for Lanark-Renfrew for his contribution to the debate and ask if there is any more debate. The member for St Catharines.

Mr Bradley: I appreciate the opportunity, limited as it is this evening, to participate in this debate. It is now 10 after 9, and I understand this debate must terminate at 9:30 by agreement of the House leaders, so I won't be able to be as effusive in the praise of the legislation as I'd hoped. I may have to dwell more on the negative aspects, as much as that pains me to do so.

I want, first of all, to indicate the concept is one which I think has some universal support in this House. There is a genuine need out there, despite the fact that we have a lot of trained people and well educated people, to further train many of the young people who are coming into the work force so that they will be able to compete in the years ahead.

I think a lot of people of the present generation out there, perhaps most of the people in this House at least, came out in a time when it was relatively easy to get a job, even if one didn't have a good deal of skill in terms of technical or academic skills. That has changed dramatically. Those who are working, for instance, in industrial plants find that just as a way of eliminating, I suppose, a lot of people from potentially being employed, they now say you must have grade 12. It's a way of paring down the long list of people who may be looking for a job in a particular area. It has its other benefits as well. Those who do not have that find themselves in a position where it's difficult to get employment.

There's also a need for the retraining of people of all ages. It's been said on many occasions that most people who are coming up through the system today will have, in their lifetime, perhaps five or six jobs, whether it's within one operation or whether it's with different employers. For that reason, there will be a continuous need for retraining and re-educating of people in our society.

The director of student services at Seneca College sits beside me, the former director, and also the former president of the World Literacy Council of Canada. I was reading through his remarks in the House the other day and noting how perceptive he was of the problems that exist in our province -- and I suspect in many provinces today and that have existed for some period of time.

There is a need out there. A lot of it can be done within the school system, within the community colleges, within the high schools and so on, but there is a need for a lot of on-the-job training because industries tend to have the most up-to-date equipment, they have the resources to purchase that equipment and they have specialized people there to deal with the specialized equipment that is in existence.

The role that traditionally the community colleges can play and the high school technical colleges can play, for instance, is one of a general technical education, not as specific as perhaps employers would like. So there's a need for on-the-job training and there's a need for input from various people in society who in the past, perhaps, have not had the kind of input they should.

People in the trade union movement have had some experience with those who have lost jobs. They know much of what has to be done in terms of training. People in business itself know what they want, and there are a number of other people who are represented on the board who certainly would be able to provide some valuable input.

I also recognize, however, that there's a potential problem with the bureaucracy. It's always dangerous, risky -- some would say it's a risk worth taking -- when you establish an agency at arm's length from government. Particularly, I would think the people such as the treasury board chair would be concerned about this, because the ability to control the expenditures in a way that the government of the day deems appropriate is limited by the fact that there is a good deal of independence on such a board. While to the board itself that is an advantage, and perhaps to some who are supportive of that concept that's an advantage, certainly those who sit at the Management Board of Cabinet, and now as it's called, the treasury board of cabinet, would be somewhat apprehensive that those expenditures cannot be controlled.

The other problem you have is in terms of appointments. It's my understanding, and the minister will correct me if I am not correct on this, that the government will not be able to appoint the specific people, but will take nominees from the various categories we see here. That works sometimes, and I suppose those of us in opposition could say, "Well, that's good, because the government then cannot control it."

On the other hand, if the government has a model it wishes to implement -- I've never been one who's felt that the government doesn't have the right to do this -- it may well want to put people who it feels have a philosophy that is in keeping with what OTAB is all about, as opposed to some people who may have another agenda. I hope that doesn't happen, and I suspect it may not happen, but that's always a danger out there when the appointment isn't directly controlled by the government.

Some people would look at the WCB, the Workers' Compensation Board, and say, "There's an example of a lot of problems economically right now," and there are a lot of reasons for that. But there are a lot of people, I'm sure, who sit in the government today and say, "I wish we had more direct control over the WCB than we have at the present time," and when they look at OTAB they say, "Here's another agency outside of government with a big budget that we cannot control." There may be a worry about that, and I'm sure members of the cabinet and the government caucus will discuss that appropriately.

There is the development of a new bureaucracy, which is always a danger as well. We know how they grow, although the Treasurer at the present time is ensuring that they don't grow any more, in fact that they're contracting considerably, much to the chagrin, I'm sure, of most of the ministers who sit around the cabinet table, who would like to see their ministries developed in terms of new personnel, not because they want to build an empire, but because they feel it will allow them to carry out their responsibilities in a better way. Certainly, that's a justification I always made to the former Treasurer of this province when I was attempting to elicit more funds for the Ministry of the Environment.

I do think there is a need for a training model, and I think this has some potential. The member for Scarborough-Agincourt, Gerry Phillips, has identified some of the problems that we in the opposition have with this and caution about it. I don't know the degree of support it has from the business community. I think there's some support out there in concept. I would think the government today, whether it likes it or not -- any government, frankly, whether it likes it or not -- would have to ensure that there is considerable business support; if not unanimous, then considerable business support.

It must be difficult for an NDP government particularly, but for any government, to know that business has the upper hand in terms of being able to dictate things that business in the past wouldn't have been able to, and it's because of the economic circumstances and the competitiveness we face. I would find that a difficult position, were I sitting in the position of the minister responsible for training in this province, the Minister of Colleges and Universities.

I want to identify some of the people who have not been entirely happy with this and whom I have chatted with. Those are people in the education system, who I think have felt that this all belongs within the domain of the education system. Indeed, the community colleges and the high schools, the secondary schools, can play and should play a very significant role. I do not accept the fact that they should play the entire role.

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I have talked to some people in the trade union movement who say: "We have to have people who know what is happening on the plant floor, as well as people who have an academic background and some expertise they learned out of a textbook. We believe there is a necessity to have that kind of input," they will tell me and others, I'm sure, and I think there is value in that.

However, I can't believe that Liz Barkley is entirely happy with the model that has been developed. She is unhappy about a lot of things right now with the government, and I don't understand why, but apparently there is some unhappiness in the ranks of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation. I see Larry French out in the hallway now. Someone told me his NDP card is fading, but the minister assures me it's not. I was thinking if Wendell Fulton were out there now, that may pose a problem for the government.

But I do want to alert the minister, and I'm sure he's aware of it, that some people in the community college system and some people in the secondary school system are concerned that the role they play will be diminished considerably. Even though the funding is attractive, the role they play will be much diminished by the number of seats they have on the OTAB board, and they would certainly want me to advance the case for more of those seats. I will advance the case because I know how supportive the OSSTF can be of governments over the years and of good things in education, as well as the Ontario Teachers' Federation and others. I think they recognize as well that it's a matter of lifelong learning that we have and they feel they have a role to play in lifelong learning.

One of the reasons we need some of this retraining -- and I'm going to diverge a bit with the indulgence of the Speaker, because I don't have that much time -- is circumstances such as my colleagues and I from the Niagara region are facing with General Motors in St Catharines. We were all extremely saddened on February 24 when the news came forward that the foundry in St Catharines would be closed, or at least the announcement was made that it would be closed, and one of the lines on the engine plant would be discontinued.

We were of course hit with a double whammy today, the news that 800 jobs would be disappearing if there was not a buyer found for the axle plant in St Catharines. All of us share a great concern about that, because each one of us -- I know the minister has responded to the member for Lincoln and the member for St Catharines-Brock and I in one way or another -- he or staff -- about apprentices and the position they're placed in when we have a situation where there is an announced closing and we see the layoffs start to take place. There is a relationship there.

We are in the dilemma in St Catharines -- I was speaking to the member for Chatham-Kent about this a while ago in the House -- a lot of people would be aware, of having a highly efficient plant, a highly efficient foundry, and certainly the axle plant is very competitive, a well-run plant. The equipment we has been good equipment and certainly the workers have been well-trained.

There has been excellent cooperation between the CAW and General Motors in terms of the training of those people to ensure that the plant is competitive, and that's not easy. It's not easy to go to workers and say, "We're going to make these technological changes and, by the way, it may result in five people being able to do the job that it used to take 10 people to do." That's very hard. For a company, it's a business decision. For members of a trade movement union to have to convince those they represent that this is essential to keep competitive in a world market is mighty difficult.

We face a situation in St Catharines where we have very competitive plants, yet the people were told today that there are 800 more jobs to go. I'm very apprehensive, because we've seen the blood-letting that's taking place at the top echelons of General Motors, and we can anticipate there will be further closing that will be announced in the future.

We're also concerned, and I was discussing this with some of my colleagues from the Niagara region, about the fact that GM appears to be dismantling the plant piece by piece: engine plant, foundry and axle plant. Although we're hopeful that with some good luck, good management and some hard work on the part of many people, we might be able to recover some of those operations.

I'm sure the government will be working in that direction and I, as an opposition member, will be continuing to draw to the attention of the government the need to do that, as I can as an opposition member in a very public way, and the government members in a more private way are able to do directly to the Premier, members of the cabinet and those in authority.

When you look at a situation where we have a lot of pride among our workforce -- again, I was discussing this with the member for Chatham-Kent, who's experienced some closings in his community -- there's a lot of pride in Canada. The member for Wilson Heights, Monte Kwinter, said earlier that people overseas were impressed with the kind of work done by Canadians and I can certainly confirm that in our community. There's a lot of pride among workers in our community.

If there's an open house at the plant, they're proud to show you what they're doing and they're proud of the quality of product that's produced, and so they are popular in other places in terms of the items they produce in the components industry in the automotive industry.

But we have now 750 people who are indefinitely off. A lot of those people are going to require retraining and the question they ask is -- and I'm sure the minister runs into this constantly -- "Well, if you're going to retrain me, what are you going to retrain for? Is there a job out there?" That's another role and responsibility that senior levels of government have, to try to build a good climate for investment and get the economy going again so those people will have jobs to go to.

But that doesn't mean we should abandon a retraining program simply because there are no jobs to go to. The minister has indicated in the material he's provided that the local training boards, for instance, will be identifying where those needs will be. They'll be evaluating the programs there and they'll be removing the silly duplication that used to exist between federal and provincial programs that sometimes will be competing with one another. I think that's a positive outgrowth of this piece of legislation.

The concern of all of us who represent the Niagara region and others dependent upon the automotive industry is a fear that some day the whole plant might go, and that's easier to do the more components that come out of the plant. The more parts of the operation that are tugged away, the more people become apprehensive that we will not have a plant in the future.

That would be extremely damaging to our community where I would estimate now -- and I'm sure my colleagues would agree -- about $140 million a year is being lost, counting this latest layoff, in terms of yearly salary and wages as a result of the announced closings; that to our community.

That means we should be advancing the rate at which the Ministry of Transportation is moving to St Catharines; the Ministry of Tourism and Recreation is moving to Niagara Falls. All those things, all these new jobs, all the diversification is good for a community and is helpful, but the minister knows, through the OTAB program and other training programs, that it's essential we maintain our present industries as well.

I resent people who tell me that somehow we should abandon the old industries, that automatically, "We can't compete industrially and you know you're foolish to try to continue to be in the automotive industry," or whatever: heavy industry, the smokestack industries they're talking about.

Well, I'll tell you that the smokestack industries have produced a lot of jobs: well-paid jobs, good jobs, important jobs, jobs that brought pride to people in our province, and I think we can continue them if we can change and adapt quickly.

I know that's one of the goals of the board. I hope in its functioning, as it's established, that it will allow us the versatility, the flexibility that's needed, so that people within the plant can be assisted in changing to new ways of doing things so the plant can stay open, not simply so they can say, "I've left General Motors and I now have to find something else" -- some will have to be in that position -- but so that within the corporation, within the auto sector, they will be able to make the kinds of adjustments that will keep us competitive in a world that is extremely competitive today.

That's the hope I have. I want to be somewhat optimistic in a very pessimistic time. I want to be somewhat optimistic that this is one of the tools that can be used to get us back on track. I want to say to the minister that one of the positive things, because we in opposition tend to be negative and that's our responsibility -- the government pats itself on the back all the time, so we know we can count on you to praise yourselves -- but I want to tell the minister one of the things I think that all members of the House would agree with. You made an announcement that probably didn't get that much play. Some of the announcements do and some don't, but I thought that your retraining announcement made by your government, the money that was going into retraining in the automotive sector, was a very important move.

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I think you recognize, as we all do, that there is a need for that out there. A lot of people don't understand that one of the things companies look for is a well-trained workforce and a government that's prepared to assist in that. One of the initiatives was at the Ford plant in Oakville, and there's a general initiative that was announced, I believe by the Minister of Colleges and Universities, which I think has potential to be helpful in dealing with this particular problem.

All of us will want to work together on this. We can be critical, and I have my wishes when I ask questions of ministers that they had done as I had hoped they would do and cancel trips and meet with high officials and so on, but I have to look at the fact that we're here now. So what do we do now? We can learn from the mistakes of the past, if we believe governments had made mistakes in this regard, and I could list those but I'm not going to tonight, but I have to look forward to the future.

I think that one of the avenues to the future is found in OTAB. If it is properly implemented, if it is carefully implemented, if some of the suggestions from the opposition and from government members are adopted and if some of the suggestions the member gets from outside government circles are implemented, I think it has some potential to be one of the components to bringing us out of this recession or at least preparing us for the future when we come out of the recession, because people are going to want to invest somewhere. One of the things they're going to look at is, what is the potential for a well-trained, well-educated workforce? If OTAB can accomplish that, it will have been a benefit to this province.

I'm pleased to have had the opportunity to participate in this debate and to wish the minister well in this and to express the hope that, as I'm confident he will -- he's been a member for a long time and he and I have been friends in this House, even if we haven't agreed on some occasions, for a number of years -- he will show the flexibility necessary to make this the best possible piece of legislation that we can place before the House and have passed ultimately by the House.

The Speaker: I thank the honourable member for St Catharines for his contribution to the debate and invite questions and/or comments.

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): I think the biggest irony about OTAB, the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, is the fact that it seems to have ignored that there are already in existence something like almost 200 community industrial training committees in this province, and the other thing that really upsets me is the fact that OTAB will be putting out of operation these CITCs. If that is wrong, I would appreciate the minister clearing it up once and for all.

Minister, if you are planning to have community industrial training committees continue their work, then I hope that you will have somebody in your caucus have the opportunity in this two-minute rebuttal period to stand up and say that, because it's my understanding that CITCs are out of business within a year.

When you look at the mandate of CITCs -- I'll just read you briefly what their mandates are: "To increase private sector involvement in training, to promote and ensure the development of a fully qualified workforce, to identify training needs within regions, to develop solutions to support required training, to implement training through partnerships and to promote competency-based training."

I think all of those areas can be interpreted as now coming under this new government bureaucracy called OTAB. I simply say, if OTAB doesn't work better than the Jobs Ontario $1-billion fund to produce 10,800 jobs in two years, where we already have only 683 jobs --

The Speaker: The member's time has expired.

Mrs Marland: -- we're really going to be in a lot of trouble.

Mr Hope: Before I make a comment, I believe there are 57 CITCs, not 200 CITCs, in the province of Ontario.

But to Mr Bradley, the member for St Catharines, I enjoy his comments, because he did reflect on an important value. I also know that the member comes from a teaching background, and he made reference to the teaching profession. As we deal with one element of the retraining program in making us meet the elements of the year 2001, I'm wondering what his views may be about education reform in making the major transition that has to happen in education in order to take us to that, because we can deal with OTAB with our current situations and the continuous situations.

But I'm looking at the future growth, the future of our society, with our young people and changing the education system under major reform to put more hands-on training to get us into the year 2001 to develop those training programs. He mentioned the teaching professions. I'm wondering if he wished to comment about those individuals, what their viewpoints are about education reform in being a partner with OTAB and with their education reform system.

The Speaker: Further questions and/or comments. The member for Scarborough North.

Mr Curling: I just want to maybe comment about my colleague the member for St Catharines that I am not at all disappointed in his remarks. As a matter of fact, I'm extremely impressed, and he did not disappoint me.

I just want to make a comment how well Parliament can work. When you have an excellent parliamentarian who contributes very objectively, an excellent minister who will listen and good bureaucrats to whom, after listening to the member for St Catharines, the minister will pass on these very objective remarks, all those changes will come about.

It is really a wonderful time to be experiencing that. It's a part of history for me to sit and hear that. I want to commend the minister for listening so attentively, and I look forward to proper legislation because of the contribution of my colleague the member for St Catharines.

The Speaker: Further questions and/or comments.

Mr John Sola (Mississauga East): I would like to congratulate the member for St Catharines, especially for tempering his remarks in adding a positive note to them as well.

But I would like to comment on some of the opening remarks that the minister made in his statement. He stated that the present system has a confusing, fragmented array of programs, and it's confusing because of overlaps. It's confusing because of gaps.

I agree with that, because those are the questions that I get in my constituency office all the time, whenever there are programs that are administered by several government agencies or several government ministries, because it seems to me that that gives everybody in government -- the bureaucrats and everybody else -- a convenient excuse to fob it off on another level of government or another agency.

I would hope that OTAB would not add to the confusion and not add to the overlaps and not add to the gaps by giving the government another reason for abdicating responsibility, by giving it another excuse for inaction, and by giving it another body on which to fob off decision-making. I would hope that OTAB would work as expected, so that we can get away from our present habit of importing our expertise from overseas because, when you take a look at most of our skills in Ontario and in Canada, they have been developed in eastern Europe, in western Europe and in other countries. These people are getting long in the tooth, so to speak, they're getting elderly, and we're not producing our own, native, Canadian skills and people to take over in our economy. That will be the essential ingredient for turning things around.

The Speaker: The member for St Catharines has up to two minutes for his response.

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Mr Bradley: I hadn't intended to take this much time, because of course there's another bill to come before the House. But I want to thank the members for their interventions here this evening.

I want to specifically answer the member for Chatham-Kent about the challenge we have of bringing the education system into a circumstance where it understands the problems that are out there in society. I think one of the things we have to do is expose those of us who are teachers to the reality of the workplace on many occasions. The students have that opportunity to a certain extent through cooperative education programs, which are promoted by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. Students invariably will tell you how valuable it is to be able to go into the workplace to experience hands-on the circumstances that are faced by employees in various industries and businesses and perhaps departments of government.

We were just discussing how important it is to have teachers exposed to the need for change in certain areas, that, while many of us were trained as teachers a number of years ago, it's important as well to know what the changes are in society, because what we're preparing students for in 1992, as the member for Chatham-Kent mentions, in the year 2001 may be significantly different from what people had to be prepared for in the 1960s or the 1970s or perhaps even the 1980s.

The only way we can do that is to tap into the workplace, tap into people who have that hands-on experience in the workplace, and I hope that our education system is able to do that. There's always a resistance to change. I can recall, when I was in the classroom, how difficult it was to move me out of my old ways, but it did happen from time to time. I think if it's done in consultation with members of the teaching profession -- this exposure to the realities of the workplace -- it can be beneficial ultimately for the students and for those who are being retrained from industry and business.

The Speaker: Further debate? Does the minister wish to wrap up?

Hon Mr Allen: I want to thank all members for their contribution to the debate this evening and the other evening when we spent a good deal of time on the same subject. Carrying people through to midnight and getting home after the midnight hour had struck, and some of us having to get up very early the next day, I'm sure we weren't in the best of humour the day afterwards. But in any case, I've appreciated the remarks that have been made all around and, like every debate in the Legislature, it has its moments. It's a little bit uneven. But I thought that the member from the opposition who concluded the opposition's contribution concluded that side of the debate on a very high note and struck some very important emphases for us all.

Given the need to move on to another piece of legislation, I am not going to spend as much time as I had originally contemplated in responding to each of the major thrusts and themes that have come forward in the course of the debate. But I cannot ignore one or two of them.

In the first place, the emphasis and the notion that we are about to create, on the one hand, a highly privatized, and on the other hand, a highly bureaucratic structure in order to deliver training in Ontario is, I think, a misreading of where the discussion is at and where the structure in fact is pointing.

All of our parties in the 20th century have contributed in one way or another to the growth of big government and big bureaucracy. All of us, I think, have an obligation at this point in history to begin to move self-government back to people, back to the roots, back to the levels of organization that can handle those issues and affairs most effectively, close to where the issues reside, and where decisions can most appropriately be made. That is essentially the objective that we have in mind in bringing together the kind of partnership that we have.

With regard to the size and scale of things, surely when the consumers of the service in question, such as the employers, such as the workers, such as the equity groups, such as the educators and trainers even, have a major say in the operation, they will want to see the resources deployed in as maximal a fashion as possible to the end product. They will ride herd on bureaucracy if it starts to creep into that structure, and that is why I think it's critically important that they have a very important say. At the same time, that does not mean government is simply spinning this thing off into a privatized affair. This body will be handling major public resources.

In the theory that underlies parliamentary government, representative government, that there must be no taxation without representation and all that implies and therefore the taxation has to be used for public purposes and governed by elected officials, it's critically important that there be clear accountability mechanisms that maintain this instrument functioning on behalf of the broad direction of government policy. We will have put in place a body governed not only by legislation and not only by a memorandum of understanding but also by annual business plans and operational plans that will have to be approved.

This agency will have to go before estimates. It will have to be approved. It will have to table long-term developmental plans. Unlike the Workers' Compensation Board, it will not have indirect, independent fund-raising ability and therefore the control over revenues and expenditures that allows the WCB to have significant potent independence of government. There are about 10 accountability measures one can list that will keep this agency under significant legislative and governmental control, so I'm not substantially worried in that regard, but it will need to be watched, like every agency does.

With regard to the resources that will be disposed, people have used figures of $2 billion, $1.6 billion and $300 million to $400 million. In the first instance, taking on the responsibilities of some 48 programs in 10 different ministries, this agency will have at its disposal somewhere in the range of $400 million to $500 million. The other figures people are referring to come from federal-provincial agreements that relate to the total input of dollars from the provincial government and the federal government into all and every aspect of training in Ontario. Those dollars and those programs will not all be at the disposal of OTAB.

I can, for example, refer to the training activities the colleges undertake, but those dollars are expended through MCU and they are not going to be at the disposal of OTAB. There's the training that the school boards undertake in terms of school board budgeting. They will not be delivered by OTAB, but they will be delivered by school boards and under the broad direction and supervision of the Ministry of Education. So there are lots of dollars out there going into training that will not be OTAB's responsibility. I think it's important to remember that and keep those other figures in the background. It's critically important for the overall federal provincial agendas in terms of training in Ontario, but not specifically OTAB's responsibility as an agency of training.

With regard to representation, this organization -- this board -- will speak on behalf of all Ontarians for Ontarians for the training of all Ontarians. That will be their charge, not to function as individual members and as single constituencies who will be there only to represent this group or that group or another group; not at all. They will be charged with a broad public service responsibility, and in that sense everybody on that board will be functioning on behalf of each other and of all Ontarians who need the best training possible.

There are a variety of ways in which that will happen and I won't try to go into that. We can all discuss that in other forums at other times. This bill will be going to committee in order for there to be some more systematic discussion at that point. But I want to make it clear that where we are at this point in time is the result of a very substantial consultation, not just simply a very quick back and forth, a few minutes here and there in some public meetings in various places around Ontario, but long, drawn-out debates, meetings, countless in number, between my officials, myself and each of those constituencies and between each other. There have been innumerable meetings between labour and business, between each of those and the equity groups. There have been countless meetings in the French community, including French businessmen, French labourers and French equity groups -- you name it. That debate is all out there, has been taking place and feeds into this bill.

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At this point in time there is quite a substantial consensus that lies around what we have got. It's important for all of us to understand that if we are to move this forward as a creative agency for us in the future, we must respect the fact that there is that degree of consensus there now. People have said that the business community doesn't support it or that the educators don't support it. I'm sorry; there is a steering committee of representative business people which lies behind this bill. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, for example, sits on that committee. The Canadian Manufacturers' Association sits on that committee. The chambers of commerce sit on that committee.

Mr Bradley: Friends of your government.

Hon Mr Allen: Friends of my government? Well, of course. We listen and they tell us important things. In fact, as you know, recently the Premier's Council business group advised us on how to reconstruct the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology so it can serve Ontario better, and we're doing it. Friends of our government? They want this government to function well and we want their advice in doing it. We're getting their advice on OTAB, as we are getting it from the francophone community, from the labour community, from all the equity groups, and as we'll be getting it, if it chooses to participate through its recognized representative organizations, from the aboriginal community.

I just simply want to say to everybody again that I very much appreciate the input we've received and recognize the fact that people have bent their thinking along the lines of a structure to come that will oversee the development, in a new way in Ontario, of a new training culture that will create a new quality of workforce, a new quality of product and, as people have said, including the member for Willowdale, an agency that will spur the competitiveness of business in this province as few things otherwise might possibly do.

That is critical and that is the end point. There's no question about that. Pulling together a cooperative structure that can promote that kind of competitiveness is the purpose of this bill. But it is also, by virtue of doing that, contributing to the improvement of the lives of working people, of equity groups in this province and so on. One cannot separate those two goals because the ultimate efficiency requires that there also be equity and the ultimate equity also requires that there always be efficiency. Otherwise the morality of both is lost.

I just want to conclude by again thanking the contributors.

Mrs Marland: How many are there?

Hon Mr Allen: I'll only say to the member for Mississauga South that it is absolutely important that, in the development of OTAB and the local boards that follow, everyone who is involved or has expertise can contribute to the training culture of the future, can stay in place, can be there, can contribute and can play a role in the structures that the local level, the federal government and the provincial government together have decided will need to be there in the future.

Mrs Marland: Are you doing away with CITCs?

Hon Mr Allen: That will mean that the CITCs indeed will change as formal structures. There will be local boards that I hope will catch up all that expertise and local energy and help us work together for the betterment of our communities and our industries all across Ontario.

Mr Speaker, with that, let me resume my seat. I formally once more move second reading of this bill.

The Speaker: It has already been moved.

Mr Allen has moved second reading of Bill 96. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

The motion carries.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Oh, you're voting --

Interjections.

The Speaker: All right. Members were not perhaps quite as quick to their feet as they should have been, but there were five members at the appropriate time.

Call in the members; there's a 30-minute bell.

Interjections.

The Speaker: "Pursuant to standing order 27(g), I request that the vote on the motion by the Honourable Richard Allen for second reading of Bill 96, An Act to establish the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, be deferred until Monday, December 7, 1992, at 6 pm.

"Shirley Coppen, chief government whip, member for Niagara South," and signed by her own hand.

The vote, accordingly, is deferred until that time.

LONG TERM CARE STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1992 / LOI DE 1992 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI CONCERNE LES SOINS DE LONGUE DURÉE

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 101, An Act to amend certain Acts concerning Long Term Care / Loi modifiant certaines lois en ce qui concerne les soins de longue durée.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Where we left off last night, the member for Hamilton Centre had the floor and indeed she again has the floor.

Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): Mr Speaker, the people in Halton Centre will be, I know, interested that I be identified correctly for the record.

As we began in this debate last night, addressing Bill 101, I indicated that it is virtually impossible to separate the discussion on Bill 101, An Act to amend certain Acts concerning Long Term Care, from other announcements which were made by the Minister of Health, subsequent to her introducing this bill, with respect to other aspects of the long-term care reform program.

The issues which I have already touched upon include those which are of some serious concern in terms of the minister's actual plans and the timetable for implementation of those plans. We note that while this particular bill is on the table and spotty other announcements have been made in her next most recent statement, the minister is also looking forward to three or four additional announcements in January and then subsequently in the early spring, followed by another conference in March, and presumably this bill will be going to committee, or at least we certainly hope it will be going to committee. We believe that there's much in it that requires examination at the legislative level.

In the meantime, given the timetable on long-term care reform as espoused by the minister, we're concerned that, even though it appears that discussion involved with the actual implementation of factors associated with the linking of homes for the aged and of nursing homes, as presented in Bill 101, the level-of-care funding, comments which are made which will affect other aspects of the long-term care reform may well not be adequately considered because of the timetable the minister has presented to us.

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We certainly expect and hope that if there are additional pieces of information which come forward or additional concerns which are raised, the minister will take those into account as new issues are being placed on the table, since most of the aspects of long-term care reform will not be dealt with by this chamber. They will simply be announced by the minister in the House as policy positions and program delivery issues or will be presented through the regulations associated with this bill.

The regulations to this bill are indeed significant. Maybe I can just, for those who perhaps weren't watching the coverage of the debate last evening, walk through some of the issues that this bill looks at and then where the regulations fit in.

The first aspect, of course, relates to providing a new level-of-care funding to even out and provide more equity in the funding of extended care and other services for seniors and disabled people in nursing homes and in municipal and charitable homes for the aged. It presents new rules in association with admission to those facilities and indeed requires that the home itself will have no involvement in determining who may or may not be resident in that property. It sets up a new system whereby potential residents are assessed on a basis that I will be discussing further tonight, a new classification system which will look at their nursing and a few other needs, and designates an individual, or perhaps a corporation or an agency, which will in fact place the person, determine where that person can go and when that person can go there.

If we look at those aspects of the bill, what we see, what's written in the bill, is a broad policy statement. The implementation issues, the application of those policy statements, are included only in the regulations. Now, we know how the development of regulations works. I think this is a matter of some concern because regulations aren't developed in this place, where there is major public discussion and debate. In fact, they are developed within the ministry and one day they appear in the Ontario Gazette.

Let me just walk through what will be included in the regulations under this bill.

The regulations will prescribe, first of all, the payments -- that is, the operating subsidies from the province -- and the timing of those payments and the method of determination of those payments to nursing homes and homes for the aged.

The regulations will prescribe all the provisions relating to service agreements.

The regulations will prescribe the amounts which can be charged by any of these facilities for basic accommodation; the amounts which can be charged for preferred accommodation; the care, the services, the programs and the goods which must be provided to residents; the amounts which can be charged for the care, the services, the programs and the goods; the grounds for refusing admission to a home for a person; the specifications that must be followed in applying for admission; the eligibility criteria for admission; the process for determination of the eligibility for admission -- that's the patient classification; the classes of approved charitable institutions, and specifying the classes of persons that may be cared for in each class of institution; the specifications for discharge from a nursing home or a home for the aged; the placement coordinators to whom applications may be made; the frequency with which applications for admission may be made; the requirements that the minister will specify for the treatment, care and discharge of residents; the provisions concerning consent by or on behalf of a person for admission to a home for the aged or to a nursing home; the process for the collection of information and investigations regarding financial and other circumstances of residents or people who are simply applying for admission; the requirements for the assessment and for the classification of residents; the requirement that portions of a bed capacity will be reserved for basic accommodation; for various classes of preferred accommodation; for short-stay accommodation; and the amount of capacity for each type of that particular accommodation.

The regulations will even define "accommodation," "basic accommodation" and "short-stay accommodation." They will determine and put forward the requirements for audited financial statements, for proofs of costs, for information about the levels of occupancy and any other information the ministry requires. The regulations will prescribe the methods for recovery of excess payments which may have been made. The regulations will prescribe what extraordinary events may occur for which additional grants from the ministry to the home can be made available. The regulations will prescribe the specifics regarding the records and the accounts that must be kept in these places.

The regulations will even prescribe how documents must be posted and specify which documents must be posted and the information that those documents must contain. The regulations will specify additional duties of supervisors and inspectors; that is, additional duties brought under this bill, additional to those now included, by example, in the Nursing Homes Act or in the regulations to that act.

The regulations will prescribe rules governing short-term stay payments. They will specify the rules governing plans of care, including the content of those plans of care, their development, implementation and revision. The regulations will prescribe any rules regarding quality assurance plans, including their development, implementation and revision, and the regulations will prescribe any other matter which the minister deems the regulations should prescribe.

It seems to me that this list of issues which will be prescribed by the legislation, which will not be debated on an individual level in this House, is a substantial proportion of what people are going to be facing and looking at as they are perhaps assisting in the selection or looking for a placement for a parent, a spouse or, in some cases, for a child or for oneself. These are issues which will directly affect one's own involvement in one's own care.

We know, by example, if we look at the Public Hospitals Act, that if people are interested in what the obligations of a hospital are, they will look at the Public Hospitals Act. It's rare that the average person would think to consult the regulations. Yet what we see here is that these regulations will lay out how people can apply, how they will be tested to determine if they're eligible -- the tests of eligibility. They will even prescribe the person who will make those tests and will also prescribe how a person can be discharged from a home.

It seems to me that each one of those issues should be discussed in substantial detail. I hope they will be addressed in committee, because there are some issues that aren't simple issues that have to be looked at; by example, the question of the determination of how one is eligible to get into a home. Clearly, the eligibility criteria are going to make an enormous difference to the kinds of decisions that are made in a community, to volunteer efforts in a community, as well as to the individual families looking at placement.

I want to address particularly the role of the placement coordinator. In my community, we have a placement coordinator who is an extremely efficient and positive person. We also happen to have in my community, of course, as I indicated last evening, the lowest level of long-term care facilities available for those who require them. We also have very pressured community-based agencies.

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The placement coordinator, in the case of the minister's proposals under Bill 101, will have quite extraordinary power, because the placement coordinator can determine precisely who can be selected and how they can be selected under rules that are set out in the regulations, and we don't know who they're going to be or how they're going to be trained. The only information that we have on the placement coordinators is that they will be designated by the minister. That's included in the bill. In a statement, the minister said they could be individuals, they could be corporations or they could be agencies, but that's all we know.

We don't know what their training will be, what their qualifications will be or what areas the work that they do will apply to. When I say "areas," I mean the geographic areas. In fact, there's no definition of the community, whether their mandate will be limited to one geographic area, whether because they will have the power to determine whether or not a person can enter a nursing home or a home for the aged -- and the nursing home or the home for the aged must accept that person -- whether in fact the results of their determination will be limited to the local community.

In the 14 offices in my area, which frankly I'm glad to see go, the geographical jurisdiction of those offices included Halton and Peel. Halton residents don't see Peel as a part of their community. I think that's one issue that --

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): And vice versa.

Mrs Sullivan: Well, exactly, and vice versa. There's a very different demographic and structural social base in those two areas, and yet we were lumped together. There's a very different approach among our agencies to the way social services are delivered. It's very clear that this would not work for our particular community, for my community, and I suspect that's the case elsewhere.

Additionally, you will recall last night that I raised the issue of the availability of facilities in geographic areas. Will the placement coordinator in Halton, by example, be able to determine that a person from Halton who may in fact have grown up and spent his life in that community be required to be placed in Sudbury, where there are four times as many available long-term beds per population than there are in my own community? I think there is confusion and a lack of information about those issues, and I hope that when the minister speaks in this debate she will clarify some of those issues.

The other aspect where there is confusion, and I suppose it comes because of statements the minister has made with respect to the placement coordinator coming in first and then the service access agency coming in latterly, is what the role of the placement coordinator will be in --

Mrs Marland: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

The Speaker: Point of order, the member for Mississauga South.

Mrs Marland: Mr Speaker, if the House is sitting till midnight and we have the kind of information the member for Halton North is bringing to this debate, which I think is critical, I think at least there should be a quorum in the House.

The Speaker: Clerk, will you count for a quorum, please.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees (Mrs Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present, Mr Speaker.

The Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is present.

The Speaker: There is a quorum present and the member for Halton Centre can continue with her remarks.

Mrs Sullivan: I was speaking to the issue of the role of the placement coordinator and I think that one area where there is initial confusion that should be cleared up, and indeed I think that there should be discussion, is that while the reform is moving along, will the placement coordinator be limited to approving the admission of people only to nursing homes and homes for the aged, or will there be a role for the placement coordinator in placing people in other parts of the long-term care continuum? In other words, will the placement coordinator in the initial stages be the single access agency?

Another question is, because the bill provides that the placement coordinator may be located in each long-term care facility, will the placement coordinator be able to be an employee of the nursing home or the home for the aged? What about the question of conflict of interest? I know that issue has been raised, by example, through the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and through other presenters who appeared or submitted recommendations, not only to the minister but to the seniors' alliance in terms of its consultation with respect to the long-term care.

I think another question that is of importance, particularly as we look at urban areas -- we know that the Ottawa area, by example, is seen to be an area, but the communities there are quite different. Nepean is a very different community than the downtown core of Ottawa, and I can't remember the particular riding name. But how will the placement coordinators be linked within a metropolitan area such as that, or will there simply be one placement centre, placement coordinator office, for an entire metropolitan area? How will Metropolitan Toronto be dealt with in this approach? Will Scarborough have a separate placement coordinator and Etobicoke have a separate placement coordinator system, or will Metro be looked at as one entity?

I think that those issues, which will all be defined, of course, in the regulations, require additional discussion and we should know what the intent of the minister is in those areas.

I want to make one point about which I am pleased to see a reference in this bill. Once again, I am concerned that the reference to this and the discussion on this particular area is again prescribed by the regulation. When we go into the discussion on the bill, I hope again to hear more from the minister on this area, but I am pleased to see in the bill the reference to the quality improvement programs, the quality assurance plans. I think that's a valuable addition.

We've certainly seen the experience in the hospital sector of increased efficiencies and increased care in the delivery of health care to patients in hospitals as a result of the introduction of quality assurance plans, which by themselves assume a multidisciplinary team whose emphasis is on continuously improving the delivery of service to the residents in a cost-effective way.

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My concern is with respect to the reference in the bill to the quality assurance plans. My concern is that the quality assurance plans may in fact become a technical proposal that may be limiting rather than expansive. It seems to me that these quality assurance plans should be quality improvement plans, and that should be the emphasis and the policy and regulatory surround.

In terms of that, then, that requires a flexibility in the drafting of the approach, because if the regulation is so defined that it becomes inflexible, then a quality improvement plan will not work. By definition, a quality improvement plan is a moving plan. It moves to one stage and then other targets, and a revised team approach certainly in the hospital situation and in the corporate community means there is a rolling target. I'm not sure, from the approach I see in this bill, if that kind of rolling target and the emphasis on quality improvement are fact associated with the intent of the bill, but I was glad to see the word "quality" at least included in the bill.

I want to move to the patient classification system. In the course of reviewing documentation over three, four or five years, as the discussion on long-term care reform has proceeded, with respect to the adoption of the Alberta patient classification system as a base for assessing the eligibility of residents, in the first place for admission to a home, and then later, on an annual basis, for assessing the way care is delivered to them, what additional care requirements they have and what the funding to the institution or the facility would be for that patient, several organizations, not the least of which was the seniors' coalition, but the Council of Chronic Care Hospitals of Ontario and the Ontario Nursing Home Association of Ontario, commented on the use of the Alberta patient classification system as a base for measuring Ontario residents.

I found their commentary rather interesting, as my mother is in a long-term care facility in Alberta and has benefited from their patient classification system. In my view, having looked at that and having, in visits to her, had the opportunity to examine this with people who use the Alberta tool in their circumstances, I concur with some of the reservations with respect to the application of that tool in Ontario.

As you know, it was our government that suggested the application of the Alberta tool, and subsequent to that there has been much discussion and review of the applicability of that tool here. One of the things the Council of Chronic Care Hospitals did in March of 1991 was to prepare a useful document, in association with the University of Toronto, with respect to an analysis of the use of that tool. I just want to sum up some of the comparisons that were made with respect to that tool and its applicability here.

They pointed out that because the tool hadn't been, before the classification occurred in the fall, specifically adapted first of all to Ontario's health care delivery system, and secondly to the demographics of the province, the classification tool was perhaps less than satisfactory.

They talked about it being less than satisfactory in several areas -- in fact it comes to mind when we look by example at the constitutional debate -- and attitudes and experiences that flow from cross-country demographic and geographic differences. In the demographic area itself Alberta is smaller and its population is younger than that of Ontario. In languages, which have to be taken into account in delivery of long-term care services, Alberta is less culturally diverse than this province.

The approach to delivery services themselves is one where Alberta has used, over a period of years, a centralized delivery system. Ontario has some 700 delivery agencies. As we know, as the approach to long-term care reform proceeds, it's clearly the intention of the government that this number of delivery service agencies will be reduced. But in terms of the use of the tool in the beginning period, that's clearly one area we have to be looking at.

We have to look at the rural and urban mix. Alberta has a more rural population, with only two major population areas, as we know: Calgary and Edmonton. I suppose that Red Deer and Lethbridge and Taber would say that they too are major population areas, but I'll tell you they are smaller than my home town, which is still called a town.

In terms of the continuum of care, and I know this from personal experience, Alberta has a more limited mix of services available throughout its system. In terms of bed supply Alberta has, on a population ratio, a higher bed supply than Ontario does. In other words, they have more long-term care facilities per thousand population than we have in Ontario, and that comes from an approach taken by the provincial government, not an awfully long time ago, to boondoggle space just before an election. New beds went into every community and they certainly are there to choose from.

The multidisciplinary approach: Ontario, I think, has really concentrated -- and it's actually a mark of our excellence, even in a system which we acknowledge needs to be reformed, that there are multidisciplinary teams that work with people who need long-term care. Alberta's approach tends to concentrate on nursing services, and I think that is a substantial difference. It's a strength for Ontario, but in terms of the adoption of a classification tool, it tells a lot about what's missing.

The other aspect is the case mix difference between our province and Alberta where there is a substantial difference related to the availability of home supports. We have older patients entering homes in Ontario and we have increased chronicity in those patients who are entering our long-term care facilities.

On that last point, I just want to bring to the attention of the House a report that was prepared by the Ontario Nursing Home Association in March 1992, and this recommendation was placed to the Senior Citizens' Consumer Alliance For Long-Term Care Reform.

It struck me that as we're looking at the chronicity of patients, one of the things we know is that over a period of time all three of the last governments, including this one, have recognized that there is not a difference in terms of the needs of residents, whether they're in a nursing home or whether they're in a home for the aged. That's why we're doing the level-of-care funding in the first place.

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But what the nursing home association did in preparation for its submission to the seniors' alliance consultation was to survey 5,360 residents of 50 randomly selected nursing homes and a director of a nursing consensus conference.

In that survey, they discovered that 75% of residents in nursing homes are moderately to severely cognitively impaired; 31% are immobile, bedridden or bed-to-chair; 70% are incontinent; 71% require some degree of assistance with mobility and transferring; 76% require some degree of assistance with feeding, 100% require some degree of assistance with daily living activities; 54% have behavioural problems -- aggression, they may be wandering; with Alzheimer's patients you certainly have the screaming, the hoarding; 34% of residents' families require ongoing support; 8% of residents in nursing homes are unresponsive -- they may be uncommunicative or they may be semicomatose; 60% have difficulty with communication; 23% are residents who refuse to participate or are unable to participate or attend activities; and the average number of prescriptions per resident per day is 6.9. That includes over-the-counter and prescription drugs.

I raise that to speak to the issue of chronicity of residents in nursing homes. Certainly the nursing home sector, because it's an older population -- the average age of entry is over 80 -- is very concerned about the services that will be delivered, and we know that homes for the aged don't differ from that profile substantially.

In terms of the patient classification system, the documentation that I have received from Alberta indicates that chronicity is not as severe. Now, the approach we have taken here in dealing with long-term care patients is a multidisciplinary approach. As I've indicated, I believe that's a strength, but because the patients are older, they are more sick, if you like. The treatment approaches should and must be different. If we are measuring what those treatment approaches should be, we should be using a made-in-Ontario tool.

I will be very interested in discussing with the minister, now that the first round of patient classification has been completed, what the results were and how the needs for services other than nursing and personal care were addressed. I suggest to you that the need for recreational services, occupational therapy, nutritional counselling, for other service delivery, is something that has always been taken into account in defining the role of nursing homes and homes for the aged and in fact what they do, and in classifying patients as to whether they should even be there. Those issues should be taken into account.

We understand that the minister intends to freeze the number of nursing home beds. I do not have that on paper; that is clearly an understanding out there in the community.

In dealing with that issue of the freezing of nursing home beds, I again want to turn to, first of all, the urgent issue identified by the seniors' alliance itself, which said that the most urgent priority facing the ministers responsible for long-term care is to bring some stability to the existing system of community-based services. If there are fewer facilities available, if there aren't beds for people who are ill, many of them immobile -- and I've read the list to you of the chronicity associated with those residents -- where else are they going to receive services?

We know from demographic projections that the population over 65 in Ontario is expected to increase by 15% over the next two years. Once again, the nursing home association, in its response to the consumers' alliance consultation, made some projections with respect to the need for facility beds if there's no change on the ground in terms of services. In 1991 there were 5.86 beds per thousand and 49.2 beds per thousand over 65. I'll move on to the 10-year to match the population progression. In the year 2001, 10 years later, with a 15% increase in the target population, there will be 39.88 beds available per thousand versus population needs. That's a 10% decline.

How are we going to make up and what are the assumptions with respect to expansion or alternatives to facility care when we haven't seen any action to date? I think that's a key question. Last night I spoke to the issue of the one-time hit in terms of funding and the building of support services at the community base if this is going to work at all and if we are not going to be leaving seniors in an at-risk situation, as they are now in my own community.

I'd like to hear from the minister on that because it seems to me that when we look at the funding issues, we're looking at, as the minister has announced, $647 million over a five-year period. She had indicated that some $100 million would be spent in this fiscal year. We have not seen that money spent. What we're worried about is that the minister may indeed not apportion that funding at the appropriate time, that rather than putting the funding where it ought to be heaviest -- at the beginning of the program -- to ensure that the infrastructure is in place for the entire system to work, the flow of the money will be delayed to the end of the period.

We've seen that clear evidence with the minister's announcement of the new funding for the integrated homemaker program, where the full effect of, I think it was, $133 million to that program will not be seen until 1996, the end of the five-year program, when in fact those are the exact kinds of systems and the exact kind of support where the funding should flow early rather than late.

Statutorily, under the Nursing Homes Act, the Minister of Health is required to announce in this place what portion of for-profit versus non-profit nursing homes there should be. I don't recall precisely when that was put into the act. It's an unusual statutory requirement for a minister to be required to make that kind of a statement in this place, but it is an important one. We have not heard from the minister with respect to the place of the for-profit sector.

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The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): The honourable member for Mississauga South on a point of order.

Mrs Marland: The government hasn't been able to get its legislative agenda together. We are sitting until midnight and we do not have a quorum because the government members do not have sufficient members in the House.

The Acting Speaker: Call the members in. No, I'm sorry; we need the count.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Journals (Mr Alex D. McFedries): A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: I thank the table. Call the members in.

The Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Journals: A quorum is now present.

The Acting Speaker: A quorum is now present. I would ask the honourable member for Halton Centre to continue her remarks.

Mrs Sullivan: I was speaking about the issues of funding, and in addressing that, requesting information and confirmation from the minister about what her intentions are with respect to the balance of profit versus non-profit delivery within the long-term care reform system.

Let me give you two examples of why there is concern about this area. In the minister's statement of the other day, there is no reference to that issue at all. In the backgrounder accompanying the statement, there is no reference to that issue; that is, the non-profit versus profit delivery.

In a news release, however, that went not to this place but to the media, there is reference to the non-profit sector as they would be involved in the service-access agency. If the minister had intended for information to be placed where it should have been, in this House, she should have done so. We all would have appreciated that information. The fact that it was not brought here but was circulated in a hidden line in a news release outside tells me that the minister didn't want it brought to the attention of this place.

Let me also refer you to the latest issue of the OPSEU newsletter, which we all receive in our offices. The major bottom-line story of this publication says:

"There should be no expansion of the for-profit sector in health and human services, OPSEU says in a brief on long-term care services in the province.

"The brief expresses alarm that businesses have a growing foothold in institutional and in-home health and support services."

It goes on to say:

"'The government must make a clear commitment that all new services will be provided by public and non-profit organizations. This must include a ban on further contracting out to commercial operators,' says the 16-page brief entitled Building Health and Independence.

"Instead of bailing out private nursing homes, the government should convert them to non-profit organizations."

There have been realistic appraisals of the cost of taking over the for-profit sector in nursing homes alone. I haven't seen those estimates for the home care delivery services, but the estimates on the nursing home sector are over $1 billion. The minister hasn't even committed that much to the entire long-term care reform. Indeed, there have been suggestions that the minister has underestimated what the real costs of long-term care reform will be. Even the seniors' alliance suggests that the costs of long-term care reform will themselves be $1 billion.

But we saw what happened in the child care sector, where money that could have been used to provide subsidized spaces for children in child care was in fact moved aside and put into a fund to take over the private sector which was delivering capably operated and creative child care services within communities.

Once again, with reference to my own community, the major part of our child care spaces are indeed in the commercial sector because that's where the services exist. We need to know what the government's intention is and how many more businesses will close down and how many more operators will take their capital and their operating funds out of this province.

I want to move in the last few minutes to an issue once again that comes from my own community. To do that, I'd like to read into the record an article from the Spectator of August 28:

"Frustrated with delays to the province's plan for long-term care reform, local officials are considering taking action themselves. In the coming weeks, Halton agencies dealing with care for the elderly plan to meet and discuss ways of coordinating respite care services. Respite care is temporary relief for families who care for the elderly in their own homes. It's considered an important service in light of the provincial government push to deinstitutionalize care for the elderly and provide more community care.

"'Long-term care seems to have lost momentum so we are looking at what we can do,' said Judy Donnelly, director of the Halton Placement Coordination Services. 'If we are going to be keeping more people in their homes, we will need improved respite care.'

"Under the umbrella of the Halton District Health Council, agencies such as the Alzheimer Society, the Red Cross, the Victorian Order of Nurses, nursing homes and local hospitals will be asked to meet and discuss options. Some agencies and institutions now offer respite care, but the service is scattered, uncoordinated and hard to take advantage of. In some cases, it is expensive.

"Mrs Donnelly said it might be difficult coordinating respite services, particularly since the agencies have different mandates and come under the jurisdiction of different government ministries. Still, she said something has to be done.

"'We're on the front lines getting calls from people who are desperate for help,' Mrs Donnelly said. 'So, at the very least, I feel it's important to inform the people in charge of planning about what is going on.'

"Local officials have been waiting for more than two years for some concrete policy decisions on long-term care reform. Last winter, the province held public meetings to discuss its consultation paper, titled Redirection for Long-Term Care and Support Services in Ontario.

"According to Halton statistics, more than 300 seniors are waiting for one of the 880 nursing home beds in Halton. In Halton there are 112 nursing home beds for every 1,000 people over the age of 75, one of the lowest ratios in the province."

I wanted to read that in because while it speaks to a specific issue in my own area, it's not unique to my area, and I have not yet seen the minister come forward with any discussion on respite care.

We know that the family is a key part of the delivery system, and last night I spoke about many people who require long-term care services who don't have families, but there are people who do. When they do have families which are providing that support and that delivery, you can bet that a major part of the support either falls on an elderly spouse, if it's a marriage situation, most frequently a woman who may also be frail, or it's on a child who also may have other obligations in terms of work and family and that the burden still falls usually on the woman. There is no address of that situation nor of other supports to family care givers.

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In the estimates debate, we asked the minister if she saw compensation for family care givers as an option. She didn't answer that question. I raised it because, while we have seen one portion of the long-term care plan, level-of-care funding -- which was announced as policy, as I indicated last night, by Charles Beer in 1989, and he was at that point ready to proceed with legislation -- we are only now seeing it come forward.

We are only now, as my colleague the member for Northumberland indicated in her response to the minister, seeing the entire issue of long-term care reform come in bits and pieces. We do not have a picture of the package, a picture of what they can expect for themselves and for their parents and for their children if there's a disability involved.

There are all sorts of other things left out. I hope, as we go through this discussion, there will be attention paid to these issues. I have mentioned the chronic care beds and the chronic care facilities issue. That is absolutely key, and we must have some answers in that area.

We have not had answers on what the role of rehabilitation institutions and facilities will be. We don't know what the role of the residential care facilities will be, of convalescent care, where dental care and laboratory and pharmacy services and assistive devices and transportation fit in for the long-term care resident; the enhancements that are going to be required for community-based services, whether they will come up front or whether they will lag behind.

We haven't seen an adequate, in my view, exposition of where the municipalities will fit in in terms of the mix of care. We haven't seen any announcement with respect to supportive housing, and further, one of the most important areas, we haven't seen any discussion at all with respect to how we're going to judge this system in its entirety and on a continuing basis.

I look forward to committee discussion of this bill and to participation in other debates on long-term care reform as the issue proceeds.

The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments?

Mrs Marland: Obviously, for those of us that have enjoyed listening to the member for Halton Centre, we have heard her point out very clearly some of the gaps that exist in Bill 101. Some of those gaps I hope to address in a little more detail in a few minutes when I have a little longer to speak, about 10 minutes from now.

I see one of the minister's parliamentary assistants here tonight. I guess both of them are here: the member for Durham-York and the member for Simcoe Centre. It's very interesting because it was the member for Durham-York who said, in response to something that the member for Halton Centre said, that if there was a little less rhetoric, the government could get on with this legislation. I have a great deal of concern for those kinds of comments being made about the input by a member of the opposition.

If the government really believed there should be a little less rhetoric from this side of the House, then maybe what we should do is do away with opposition altogether, let the government have full autonomy and in no way at all be accountable to the public in this province. Of course, that kind of attitude is well demonstrated in a number of the directions of this current government. I'm not surprised to hear a parliamentary assistant say, "We wouldn't have to sit till midnight if we didn't have listen to this rhetoric."

The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments?

Mr Paul Wessenger (Simcoe Centre): I certainly always enjoy listening to the member for Halton Centre. She always makes some comments that are provocative to some extent. Certainly one comment she made the other night I just couldn't let go by, and that is the comment that the only real change in this long-term care policy is a shift from the Ministry of Community and Social Services to the Ministry of Health. I'd like to add that this is still a partnership between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services; it was under the previous Liberal government and it is under our government. That's the same, but there are major differences.

First of all, with respect to the whole question of planning for long-term care, we've chosen the district health councils as the planning lead for long-term care. In doing so, we have also seen the need to change the long-term care subcommittees of the district health councils so they incorporate not only health but also social services and also include municipalities, providers and consumers.

In choosing the district health councils, we have also adopted a different planning perspective. Long-term care must be planned as a system including a full continuum of long-term care, health and social services, from wellness and prevention through to palliative care. Palliative care is itself a significant new approach that promotes individual choice and community focus.

Also, the comprehensive multiservice agencies differ fundamentally from the service access organizations proposed by the previous government. We've decided to break down the organizational barriers between access to the system and the provision of service inherent in the brokerage model. We have also decided to broaden the range of services accessed so as to include home support and other community services which are so critical to keeping people in their homes.

On facility resident charges, we have rejected a means test. We have only a test based on income, not based on income as assets.

The Acting Speaker: I thank the honourable member. Further questions and/or comments?

Mrs Joan M. Fawcett (Northumberland): I too want to congratulate the member for Halton Centre, our Health critic, who has really touched on all the very important aspects of this bill, Bill 101. As always, she has been very, very thorough in her constructive critique of an extremely far-reaching bill that will reform the manner in which seniors, disabled and anyone who really needs to access levels of care receives it.

I think that the key to success of this bill, as the member has pointed out, is the total coordination of this whole change. The coordination is so very important. I think we have to realize that before hospital beds are slashed and chronic care beds are frozen, the community home care services have to be in place; they just have to be there for people. It seems to me that right now in a lot of areas they are not; the services are not there. It's almost like the government has been doing this backwards. It's sort of the cart and the horse syndrome. They have slashed the beds; they're making those cutbacks before those services are ready.

I know that Charles Beer, the former Minister of Community and Social Services for our government, was ready to start flowing the funds, the first moneys of that $2 billion that had been allocated to long-term care implementation, before the hospital beds were to be cut back.

The minister did say on Wednesday that it's so important that the government get this right. I sincerely hope that they do, because seniors and everyone out there are really counting on them.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): I want to thank the critic from the Liberal Party, the member for Halton Centre. I think she added quite a bit to this debate and I look forward to sitting on committee with her. She raised a number of different areas.

She did talk about the Alberta classification system, and of course the Alberta level of care right now marks a considerable improvement over the current levels-of-funding system that they have there now, which of course bears no relationship to the needs of the residents. Last year we concluded a very successful pilot study of the program and application of the system. We concluded, based on the study and the unanimous view of nurse classifiers, that this system would work in Ontario.

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We're aware of a couple of different studies -- one by the U of T, one by Lakehead University -- that I'm sure we'll take a look at and discuss a little bit further when we get into committee. I guess you'll learn and take a look at some of these areas.

One thing, too, that the member for Halton Centre talked about a little bit was the need for support for community agencies, and of course the government has already committed $440 million to expansion over the next several years. In fact, the minister just yesterday stood in the House and made an announcement of $133 million, I believe it was, for the integrated homemaker services, which of course is going to be an immense improvement and expansion to this sector.

When the members talk, quite often we talk about needing to move on with things now, and of course this is exactly what we're talking about: trying to make sure we get the funding in place so that we can make the movements that are necessary.

I'll just leave it at that. I look forward to sitting on committee with the member for Halton Centre and getting into further debate.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Halton Centre has two minutes to respond.

Mrs Sullivan: If I can deal with the last comments first, I will try to go quickly. First of all, with respect to the funding flow, hospital beds are closing. There are a lot of people who suffer from cognitive impairment, who suffer from the problems of aging, of illness, of injury, of congenital disability, who are now housed in acute facilities, for whom there is no place else to go. There are not the community supports in place, and without an injection of early funding there will be no place for them to go. As I indicated last night, no ethical health professional can move those people out unless there is something on the ground for them to go to.

The funding line you have talked about -- and, as I've indicated, I believe there are questions with respect to the adequacy of the funding -- appears to be based at the end of the term of implementation of reform, rather than where it should be, which is at the beginning, now, putting the things on the ground that have to be there, the alternative to which is leaving seniors at risk.

I remind you that your study of the Alberta patient classification system and its applicability to Ontario was done by nurse classifiers. It did not meet the particular objections which I had and which have been raised by others with respect to that classification tool, in that it did not involve the multidisciplinary approach or the complex care requirements that we face in Ontario, given an older population with increased chronicity as they're entering the institutions or as they require services in their homes or through a community-based agency.

Clearly, Mr Speaker, this will be a lively debate.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate? The honourable member for Mississauga South.

Mrs Marland: I am glad at this late hour of 11 o'clock to at least have the opportunity to speak to the second reading of Bill 101, An Act to amend certain Acts concerning Long Term Care.

I think part of the problem that arises in the entire area of the subject of long-term care is what it really encompasses, what long-term care really means and who the people are who require it.

I think, sadly, what has been missed in Bill 101 so far is that it does not encompass all the people who require long-term care, and it doesn't identify the fact that for the majority of those users, those people who need long-term care, there's simply no option to it. There are no other choices.

I think that's one of the reasons I'm so terribly concerned about the fact that Bill 101 appears to be drafted, at least in the legislation, explicitly for people with physical disabilities. There's almost no mention at all, at least that we can find, of people with developmental disabilities. Also, as far as we can see, they're not even mentioned in the list of what is coming.

We recognize that the minister has said there will be further studies beginning next year and there are regulations yet to be drafted, and we also, thank goodness, recognize that this bill will be going out for public input through the committee process, but there is a whole group of people that is simply being ignored at this point. They are people for whom long-term care is not a choice but an absolute necessity.

The other area that is of major concern for us is the fact that, in any of the material that we have been given so far to read by this government about its policies and its direction with long-term care, there is no direct reference to children. Whether this government recognizes it or not, and I think I made this comment last night, children are not small adults. They're totally different people. The only thing they may have in common with some of these adults, of course, is that they too require long-term care. But they cannot receive their long-term care in the same environment as adults. They cannot receive it, nor should they.

I think the whole question of how the existing form of long-term care is phased out, namely, chronic care hospitals, is something this government has to look a lot more closely at before it steps headlong into some very drastic decisions.

Some of those decisions will honestly have to do an analysis about whether home care is the choice of the individual and whether what we understand is true, that home care is more costly than hospital care, and if the individual requiring that care prefers to be in a hospital setting for a number of reasons, very often reasons revolving around security and being free of other impediments that home care brings, some of those choices still have to be there. Not everybody can live in a home setting, and in that description I use group homes or community facilities. Not everyone is able to do that.

We have, in the city of Mississauga, a number of different facilities, everything from institutional settings that are non-profit, operated by the region of Peel, to our extremely well-run private nursing home facilities, and we also have some school settings for people with very special needs.

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One of those schools is Erinoak. Erinoak is one of many long-term care facilities in its level of care that has a lot of concerns about the areas that are not mentioned in this Bill 101.

They share my concern that children are not mentioned. They also share my concern that these kinds of white paper documents and ultimately the legislation itself create artificial categories. These artificial categories label people, pegs and labels them, so that suddenly this person is one of these or one of those.

Frankly, we're concerned that Bill 101, as it is presently drafted, is not looking at some of the very costly conditions that exist today in long-term care, and those are areas of duplication and areas of outright waste.

Obviously, I feel very strongly not only because I'm the shadow cabinet person for people with disabilities; I feel very strongly about children with disabilities.

Erinoak is a facility that provides a wonderful opportunity for children with disabilities, but these disabled children need a continuum of care. Frankly, presently those services are quite fractured. These children with disabilities will require services for ever. It's not that they've become frail in later life or they've developed the frailties associated with aging or work-related injuries. They're children today who require long-term care. They're children today who will require care for the rest of their lives.

I think it's terribly important that government simply stop labelling these people. Does it really matter if people are physically disabled or intellectually disabled? They still need care. They still need care whether they're under 21 or over 21. Yet so many of these government programs are so fractured that they may be looked after in a certain program until they're 21 and then, bang, there's nothing for them, and particularly at the moment with the decisions of this current NDP government about sheltered workshops, as an example. Sheltered workshops do not fall under the category of long-term care as described in Bill 101, but they are a level of care, they are a level of opportunity for young people who have disabilities.

I don't think that it's good enough, frankly, for a government to have different categories of care at different stages in life and yet there's no connection, there's no linkage where there's a guarantee of that continuum of care, even though it's needed very much by those individuals who require that type of care.

I met last summer with a group of parents in the Belleville area who are aging. They were all in their late 60s, early 70s. They had cared for their children with their special needs, both physical and developmental, all of the lives of those children. Now, as aging parents, they were quite frightened about the future for their children.

They were frightened on a number of scores. They were frightened about the fact that their own health was failing. In some cases they were physically being weakened. Because they were aging, they were perhaps no longer able to carry or bathe or otherwise in a physical sense assist these children they had cared for all their lives. Recognizing that these children may well now be in their mid-30s and early 40s, they are still their children. They still live with them at home. Those people have never once asked a government or a government agency for a single penny. They've never once asked them for any help.

And now what? What is the future? Where are the programs for these children when these parents, who are elderly themselves, become either ill or eventually die? Their concern is, who is going to look after their children? The last thing they want is the thought of those children being institutionalized and not being looked after properly. These aging parents have dedicated their lives and spent years and years of hard work to keep their children at home. Yet now when they need a little help because of their own individual physical conditions as aging adults, there has been no help available to them. There have been no programs for their children outside of the home and there's just no opportunity for them to be cared for.

Long-term care for children -- and children at any age who need help -- has to be a priority for any government. Before a government starts talking about phasing out one kind of care, they had better be sure that the next level of care is available.

There is one area in the minister's announcement this week that, in fact, we were pleased to hear about and that is where the ministry is now going to give the funding that is available directly to the disabled persons. These people will be able to purchase their own care. They will be able to choose their providers, the locations etc. We feel that is a good step in the right direction.

When the white paper on long-term care was circulated earlier this year, there were a number of organizations that did a great deal of work and a very thorough analysis of exactly what was being proposed in the white paper. That document, which I can't put my hands on just at the moment -- which I now have -- Redirection of Long-Term Care and Support Services in Ontario: A Public Consultation Paper, came out in October 1991. When this document was circulated, these many organizations and agencies that formally and informally studied the proposals in this document were really to be congratulated for the amount of effort they put into analysing exactly what changes were being proposed by the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Citizenship.

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I know that the ministers are not able to study personally many, or perhaps any, of these responses and it was up to their staff to bring the content to their attention. One of the many responses they received came from the Mississauga Hospital, in particular a group in the Mississauga Hospital which calls itself the residents' council. The prime mover behind their response from the Mississauga Hospital residents' council is a young woman whose name is Kathy Harvey.

Kathy is a registered nurse. She is a quadriplegic as a result of multiple sclerosis. Kathy has a very long list of community involvement and has been recognized provincially, nationally and internationally for her service and her ability in spite of being a quadriplegic. I have actually talked about Kathy Harvey before in this chamber, when she has been named Person of the Year and other similar recognitions.

Kathy Harvey chaired this residents' council at Mississauga Hospital. They held a number of meetings. At one of the public meetings that they held to discuss the redirection for long-term care they actually had a panel, and I was one of the people on that panel. I was very impressed when I received the final report of their response to the redirection that the government was proposing. I won't read all of the responses. I simply want to read a few of their responses, knowing how hard the members of this group worked and the fact that they came at all aspects of this subject, they came from people who themselves actually require different levels of long-term care. Of course, if they didn't require it in the hospital, they wouldn't be there. These are some of their responses and areas of concern. One was:

"The combining of the elderly and disabled, assumes a similarity of needs of these two groups. Their differing needs must also be recognized.

"There is a frightening 'grey area' regarding the qualifications of the proposed new home health care workers. The existing lack of standards of competency/reliability of service to the elderly/disabled is seen as escalating under the new proposal.

"The decision-making process for placement in a long-term care facility is unclear. The placement committee responsible to the service coordinating agency introduces another level of bureaucracy.

"Nowhere in the paper are there any cost breakdowns of community-based services. We need to see cost comparisons with the services provided in long-term care facilities."

Those were four of their responses and areas of concern. I just want to read you their four recommendations:

"(1) The standardization of qualifications, education and evaluation of all health care workers must be carefully formulated and, only then, implemented;

"(2) The establishment of six pilot projects in the province, ranging from high-intensive to low-intensive care, for a duration of one year. This would allow a realistic assessment of dollar cost and quality of life of long-term care users and care givers;

"(3) Need to recognize that health care users with the ability to contribute towards their health care services should be encouraged to do so;

"(4) Sufficient funding for chronic care beds must be maintained to improve the quality of long-term care within the institution."

Those are the comments from the residents' council at the Mississauga Hospital, and I draw attention to them. I hope the minister's staff will review this brief again as we go into the public process of the committee hearings, and pay very close attention to these excellent and very important recommendations. I think the best way for the government to really understand the importance of making any changes at all in long-term care is for it to listen to those groups that are responsible for providing those services in the community today.

I think the fact that this NDP government legislation which results from its consultation paper is in fact a replica of the Liberal plan, with a few minor differences, is rather interesting. The Liberals had planned to charge a copayment for housekeeping services; the NDP plans to generate the revenue elsewhere. In addition, the Liberals proposed 14 service-access organizations to coordinate long-term care services; the NDP have proposed 40 service-coordination agencies. It's disappointing that it took over a year to brief a new government on the former government's initiatives, and a year longer before proceeding with any of the legislative changes required to carry out the reform.

I believe this legislation is by no means a complete response to reform of the long-term care system. The government will undoubtedly come under fire once the seniors' organizations and organizations providing long-term care services realize that most aspects of the long-term care system remain unchanged.

There are a number of concerns that we have, and one area that was actually announced only yesterday by the minister was the establishment of comprehensive, multiservice agencies. These agencies apparently are to be developed through the district health councils. Case management and service delivery are to be brought together through this new bureaucratic structure, but what is really a scary thought is that the ministry has no idea what the costs associated with multiservice access agencies will be. A ministry that is so desperately short of money that it's cutting back and requiring hospitals to shut down hospital beds cannot talk about introducing any new bureaucracy without knowing what the price tag is that's attached to it.

There are a number of groups that are sceptical about the genuineness of the government's consultation process. The response to the NDP consultation document has been overwhelmingly negative. A number of groups and individuals have expressed concern that persons with disabilities and children have been ignored in the report. I said that a few moments ago, but now you're hearing that there are a number of groups that have expressed the same concern.

Three groups, representing one million seniors, formed a coalition to review the NDP long-term care paper. The group, which is called the Senior Citizens' Consumer Alliance for Long-Term Care Reform, released an extremely critical response to the NDP paper in early July. The Senior Citizens' Consumer Alliance fears that the closing of chronic care hospital beds will trap them in the same way that psychiatric patients were trapped when institutions closed in the 1970s. They have asked that closed chronic care beds be reopened.

The Ontario Association of Non-Profit Homes and Services for Seniors released a report in July that showed that more than 4,300 Ontarians are on waiting lists for long-term residential care. At the same time, six homes for the aged have closed since 1987 because of deficits, creating a huge burden on families that have to care for ailing relatives. The survey also found that the average age of people entering homes for the aged is 84, compared with 74 a decade ago.

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The Ontario Hospital Association is frustrated with the staying-at-home rhetoric which is often used by the provincial government to justify drastically downsizing of Ontario's hospitals. The Ontario Hospital Association has widely distributed a study concluding that home care is more expensive than hospital care. That too is a point that I referred to earlier.

A number of groups have expressed concern that hospital services are being curtailed at a time when services are not yet available in the community, and I think that is one of the biggest worries. Almost everyone commenting on the NDP long-term care paper has exposed serious flaws with the proposed 40 service coordination agencies. Many believe that the service coordination agencies will duplicate existing services and set up yet another costly level of bureaucracy.

Some concern has been expressed that the government does not plan to increase the overall number of long-term care beds. Primary care givers are concerned that instead of being rewarded, families which take care of their elders at home as long as possible could be penalized because when they eventually need such facilities, there could be a long waiting list.

Nursing homes and homes for the aged are not at all happy with the government's announcement. Only $209 million has been allocated to go to the residential facilities over five years. This amounts to less than $42 million a year.

Chronic care hospitals are also unsure about their future care role. They are still reeling from a senior bureaucrat's remark in 1991 that they are to be phased out. The Ontario Nursing Home Association has asked that the government treat private sector nursing homes as it does other highly regulated institutions and sectors. The government could determine an appropriate rate of return and monitor it annually, much like telephone and cable companies and gas and utilities etc.

We have almost a paranoia with this Bob Rae socialist government, where it doesn't want anything to do with the private sector, whether it's the provision of child care, whether it's the provision of housing, whether it's the provision of care for the elderly. They have this incredible obsession with the fact that everything has to be government owned and operated. I simply have no idea how the future taxpayers, let alone the present taxpayers, in this province can afford to make that kind of ideology a reality. It's absolutely an impossibility.

They are admitting already that they are 25% over their expenditure in non-profit housing. That's been confirmed by the auditor's report. We know that what was predicted to be an $8-billion deficit is probably going to be 50% higher, as a $12 billion deficit, next year, and yet they still believe that they should buy, own and operate everything.

I don't know where "private sector" got such a bad name. For years, private sector facilities have been giving excellent care to people with disabilities, the elderly and the frail of any age, and the fact that this government seems to be only interested in "this non-profit sector," which has to be the biggest misnomer possible -- "non-profit" simply means that it's subsidized by the taxpayers.

If we can provide care for the elderly, long-term care in nursing homes, with the help of the private sector, and the care is standardized -- I'll tell you something, Mr Speaker, that you might be interested to know. Private nursing homes today in this province have far more inspections and are held far more tightly to the licence regulations under which they operate than the non-profit ones. Talk to any in your riding, and I ask you, find out when the last inspection was of a government-run, non-profit home for the aged or nursing home and you will find that it's the private facilities which are inspected far more frequently.

Now, the private facilities don't mind that. I don't mind that. I'm simply saying that I don't understand where this paranoia has developed, that private sector provision of nursing homes beds is not the direction to go in. If this government thinks that it can afford to build and operate everything from the cradle to the grave, then it is totally out to lunch. We cannot afford to own, operate and subsidize every aspect of care from the cradle to the grave for the people in this province, nor should we want to.

If the suggestion is that people are making money on the elderly or on the sick or on children who require child care and therefore it's a profit business, then we should look at that. We should look at how much it costs the user. Of course, as soon as you do that you find out that for the users, the parents who require that child care or the families who require the nursing home beds for their family members, it does not cost more in the private sector than in the non-profit sector to the users, and very often the care can be better and always it certainly is as good, if not better, as I say.

This question of non-profit everything in the provision of all kinds of services in this province has to go, because there is simply no way that we can afford it. We cannot afford those policies in this province.

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The Council of Chronic Hospitals of Ontario, in a release that it issued in February of this year called "Chronic Hospitals Vital To Long-Term Care," stated the following, and I'm just going to read a few of their paragraphs:

"The government's 'Redirection of Long-Term Care' fails to recognize the health care needs of the elderly and people with disabilities, the Council of Chronic Hospitals of Ontario said today in releasing its response to the Ontario government's reform proposals.

"In its push to develop stronger in-home care services, the government has stated it will downsize chronic care hospitals. 'By putting at risk the specialized care programs and services provided by modern chronic care hospitals, the government shows it doesn't know what we do and who we look after,' said CCHO chairman, Michael Boucher.

"'The strength of Ontario's long-term care is its diversity -- we need a balanced system of different kinds of facility care and improved services for care at home,' Boucher said. 'It appears totally unrealistic to believe our unique type of care will be needed less in face of the dramatic increase in the number of elderly which is on the horizon. In fact, the very opposite is more likely true.'"

He goes on to say:

"'We think the government is off base with its "either/or" scenario -- that facility care has to be cut back drastically to improve in-home care services; or even that chronic hospitals should become nursing homes. We are far more medical and specialized than nursing homes and homes for the aged, and we take a different approach to different medical needs from the acute care hospitals. Ontario needs the range in type of care if we are to look after our citizens properly.'"

I think those comments from the Council of Chronic Hospitals say it all. I think it's blatant common sense that we need to continue a diversity of care. You can't arbitrarily say, "Well, we're going to phase out chronic care hospitals." Where there are specialized medical needs, I'd like to know how they are going to be provided in the community in a group home setting or at home with support services.

Another organization that I think understands better than most the importance of any future plans for long-term care is the Alzheimer Society of Ontario. In particular, I have a letter here from the Alzheimer Society of Peel, and this is over the signature of Julie Morris, the president. I just want to read you some of this letter because I think it expresses better than I can what it is that we're dealing with and what it is that people in this province are facing today in terms of long-term care.

It's far better that I read somebody else's letter, and then I can't be accused, as I was earlier by the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health, of using unnecessary rhetoric, or whatever his description was. This is not rhetoric, I say to the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health; this is somebody who works with families and patients all the time who require long-term care. It's dated January 1, 1992:

"Dear Mrs Marland:

"Since we last wrote to you in May of 1991 regarding the issue of long-term care reform, our government has issued the revised document entitled Long-Term Care Redirection.

"We want you to know how the Alzheimer Society of Peel feels about long-term care redirection.

"January is Alzheimer Awareness Month: there are an estimated 120,000 Alzheimer patients in Ontario. Their illness directly affects their families who care for them, and it impacts on the community in which they receive their care.

"In Peel region, we have 46,200 seniors; by 2001, we will have 90,000 seniors; up to 10% of seniors have dementia, 75% of dementia being Alzheimer disease; we do not have statistics on the under-65 population.

"As you know, there are 1,184 beds (all full) legislated under the Nursing Homes Act in Peel region. There is no chronic care hospital. There are no special Alzheimer units. There are over 1,300 people on the waiting list for long-term placement; the waiting period ranges from six months to 18 months. Plans for our fourth home for seniors are on hold. Our hospitals all house Alzheimer patients in beds that cost the taxpayer $600 per day. Long-term care in Peel region is in a crisis situation.

"We earnestly request that you examine the issue of long-term care redirection and work with the Alzheimer Society to ensure that the people of Peel region will be properly served by this proposed new legislation.

"The new document admits that certain areas are underserviced in terms of long-term care facilities. We need to ensure that Peel receives a substantial increase in the number of beds available.

"Long-Term Care Redirection continues to view community-based services as an alternative to institutionalization. It also views such services as less costly than institutional care.

"While this may be true for many kinds of health and social problems, it is most assuredly not true for Alzheimer patients, their families and our community.

"In the early stages of the disease, families can be assisted to cope with the help of community services such as vacation relief, respite care and counselling."

Interjections.

Mrs Marland: Mr Speaker, I can hardly hear myself speak. I don't know how you feel about the level of noise in this House. I think it's unfair.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please.

Mrs Marland: If the members don't want to listen to this subject, maybe they could take their conversations outside of this chamber.

The Acting Speaker: Honourable members, it is quite true that the honourable member for Mississauga South has the floor, and secondly, we cannot hear what she is saying. I would ask the honourable members to pay the respect due the honourable member who's speaking. Please, if you want conversations, perhaps outside the chamber would be best.

Mrs Marland: I will continue reading Julie Morris's letter, the president of the Alzheimer Society of Peel.

"Unfortunately, due to the progressive nature of Alzheimer disease, the care burden increases continually, sometimes suddenly, and the patient's needs outstrip the family's resources. As the patient loses cognitive functioning, neither he" -- or she -- "nor the family can appreciate home care as can, for example, a stroke victim.

"This problem shows very clearly in the case study developed in Long-Term Care Redirection, where part of the community-based services is a nurse showing the man how to manage his wife's incontinence. Is an elderly man the right person to change an adult's diapers? How does this enhance his quality of life? An interesting omission from this case study is any reference to a local Alzheimer society. There are 35 chapters of the Alzheimer Association in Ontario, and every one of them would probably counsel the care giver in this case that a patient as demented as this belongs in an appropriate institution, not at home.

"The amount and quality of the kind of respite services required to keep middle- and later-stage Alzheimer patients at home would far outweigh the cost of institutionalization in the appropriate facility.

"We reiterate to you our earlier concerns about the proposed long-term care reform. For the thousands of Alzheimer patients and their families whom we represent, community-based services, while helpful to early-stage patients, are not an alternative to institutionalization.

"We need special Alzheimer care units in Peel; we need to double the number of beds legislated; and we need to be proactive with this work before our entire care system is swamped with the 'baby boom' of 40- to 50-year-olds.

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"We are also interested to know how the new service access agency boards will operate, how they will fund those of our agencies already providing community-based services, and how they will avoid red tape and bureaucratic overlap with the current services in Peel. Who will serve on these boards and how will they have the expertise to assess the continually changing and ever-increasing needs of our Alzheimer patients?

"We ask you most sincerely to work with us on these concerns which are critical to the citizens of Peel region.

"Julie Morris."

I think that letter lays out very clearly for this government, and particularly for the ministers involved in this long-term care redirection legislation, that it's not as simple as saying: "We do not need institutions. We can help people stay in their homes if we give them the home care support services."

Of course, there are many, many patients who can manage to stay at home longer with community-based services, but when people today can't even get Red Cross homemaker service with the number of people who need it today, once you talk about bringing people out of facilities where they've had intense care, there simply will not be enough help in the community to give these people the kind of care they need and, quite frankly, the kind of support the families need.

I think we've got to remember that families whose health begins to fail because they're struggling to maintain someone who needs specialized care in their home also can become ill, and when those families themselves become ill and deteriorate earlier in their life than they would if they had not been care providers in the home, then we've actually expanded the need for care in the long run than with a single, original patient.

Frankly, I think all our care providers through all our institutions are facing tremendous difficulties. Hospitals are worried because their transfer payments are being limited, beds are closing and staff are being laid off, and the government is using home care rhetoric to justify the drastic downsizing of our Ontario hospitals, even though home care is not necessarily less expensive than a chronic care hospital and even though, the costs aside, the reality is that for many patients, it simply is not a realistic option.

The government is now poised to raise user fees for residents in long-term care facilities to unprecedented levels. More than $150 million is to be generated through new "accommodation fees" on the backs of seniors. The government contribution will be $50 million. The government has not released details of the new funding arrangements, and in June 1991 the Minister of Health promised to increase funding to institutions by $200 million. Ironically, $150 million of that promised funding is to be raised through user fees.

Long-term care facilities have been promised by the NDP, that the new levels of care funding formula would be in place by January 1, 1993. That's less than one month from now. It is unlikely that the new levels-of-care funding formula would be in place by January 1, 1993. That's less than one month from now. It is unlikely that the new levels-of-care funding formula will be in place in the new year, as the minister has indicated that the details of the implementation framework will not be available until the spring of 1993. The future role of chronic care hospitals, as I said earlier, is still in question.

The funding allocations are extremely vague in the NDP long-term care document. Redirection never explains how much money is currently spent on long-term care. Isn't that interesting? While it mentions that $647 million will be spent on long-term care by 1996-97, it is not clear whether this is new money, and the total is never broken down. There is also no breakdown of the current spending on long-term care. So $647 million by 1996-97 may sound great, or it may sound worse if you knew what the real costs are that are currently being spent.

I think that all of these announcements without the costs attached end up being -- I hate to use an overused expression, but it's one everybody understands, and I do compliment the Treasurer for being in the House five minutes before midnight to hear me say this because, unfortunately, a shell game is something that everybody understands.

Every time a government makes an announcement without dollars attached or says, "It's this many dollars and it's going to be over the next five years" -- I remember the Liberal government making these multi-year announcements. It sounds great if you say, "We're going to give $150 million." You think, "Oh, that's marvellous." Then you find that's spread over five years.

Then what you find is that by the second year, which is what has happened with the Treasurer's announcement a few days ago --

Hon Floyd Laughren (Treasurer and Minister of Economics): Haven't you ever made multi-year commitments, Margaret? I've heard you make multi-year commitments.

Mrs Marland: The Treasurer said, when he gave the transfer payments out for this year at 1%, "It's 1% this year and 2% next year and the following year." Sadly, we learned two days ago that in fact that is not going to be the case. So I think when the government makes these announcements about how much money it's going to spend on long-term care, our question is, if you really want us to believe how good it is, tell us how much it's costing today.

Hon Mr Laughren: Margaret, long-term implies multi-year. Come on, get real.

Mrs Marland: I say to the Treasurer in response to his interjection that I'm talking about long-term care. I'm not talking about long-time budgets. But the good news, Mr Treasurer, is that we probably won't have to worry about more than a couple more of your budgets, and then we'll have somebody else doing the budgets for this province. I would probably guess, with the kind of poll results that are rumbling around this province, that we may be fortunate enough to have a Progressive Conservative Treasurer next time. That's something I think everyone can look forward to in this province.

I just want to say one more thing, recognizing the hour and recognizing that my colleagues in the House are sitting with bated breath. It's kind of interesting because I'm standing here and the clock is over to my left, and most of the eyes are on the clock and it's quite --

Hon Mr Laughren: It should be on you. You're right, Margaret, all eyes should be on you.

Mrs Marland: Yes, as the Treasurer says, they should really be on me.

I think the concerns of the providers of long-term care are the most important point I want to make. I do have more comments yet to make and I notice in my time allocation I have 33 minutes left. Since this is Thursday evening and it is almost midnight, with respect to the Treasurer who still has to commute to Sudbury and other members in this House who have to travel to ridings a little further away than Mississauga, I will move adjournment of the debate.

The Acting Speaker: I thank the honourable member for ending her remarks. There is no need as it is practically 12 of the clock to move the motion at this point in time. The House will rise. I would ask the honourable Minister of Financial Institutions to give a report of our work for next week.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Minister of Financial Institutions): Pursuant to standing order 55, I'd like to announce the business for the next sitting day.

On Monday, December 7, 1992, we will deal with third reading of the advocacy bills 74, 108, 109 and 110. At 5:45 pm the Speaker will put every question necessary to complete these four bills. At 6 pm the House will deal with the deferred division on Bill 96, An Act to establish the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board.

Following the divisions, the House will continue with the adjourned debate on Bill 101, An Act to amend certain Acts concerning Long Term Care, followed by second reading of Bill 80, An Act to amend the Labour Relations Act.

The business of the House for the remainder of the week will be discussed with opposition House leaders and communicated to members by way of the daily business sheet.

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): Just very briefly because I think it should be noted, this is a very, very precedent-setting week because, as has been observed earlier, for the first time in the history of this Legislative Assembly, we will as a matter of preordained course be meeting on a Saturday and a Sunday. I think it is a brave new world that hath such possibilities in it.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): I thank the honourable member for his comments. It now being midnight, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 of the clock Monday next.

The House adjourned at 0003.