Journal des débats 1994-mai-09 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Mr Robert Chiarelli (Ottawa West): The Attorney General provides another example of the government's incompetence. Despite hiring five new communications managers last year, this ministry continually creates communications crises.

First there was the communications nightmare created by the new powers-of-attorney law. The minister created unnecessary distress for tens of thousands of affected Ontarians simply because she would not or could not communicate in a timely manner what the new law about powers of attorney did and didn't do and when it would be effective.

Now we hear that a program to divert mentally ill people out of our criminal courts has been established and it seems nobody, but nobody, was made aware of it: not defence lawyers, not judges, not crown attorneys and not even mental health centre administrators where victims are supposed to go for help.

The ever-increasing communications budget of the Attorney General does not seem to be enough to get the simplest of messages out to those most obviously affected by her ministry's policies. Surely the Attorney General won't have to follow the lead of Mike Harris and the Conservative Party and go out of the country to hire American communications experts to get her message out.

FOREST INDUSTRY

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): I'm pleased to have the opportunity this afternoon to introduce representatives of the Mattawa Communities Socio-Economic Task Force to the Legislative Assembly. Judy Skidmore, Fern Levesque, Caren Gagne, Sandra Beaudry, Steve Lamarre and Gary Bull are with us here today.

Many members will know that the media conference was held this morning. These people have travelled to Toronto today in order to meet with the ministers of Natural Resources and Northern Development and Mines to discuss the future of the wood industry in east Nipissing and northern Ontario.

An independent multistakeholder study was undertaken by the task force which clearly determined that a 10% decrease in wood supply would force at least one mill in the area to close. This translates into a loss of at least 160 jobs, which would devastate the Mattawa area. Conversely, a 10% increase in wood supply creates jobs in the same region.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that a group of communities has taken steps to ensure that its traditional wood supply, a public resource, remains accessible. This is a very proactive and responsible approach to the changes in wood supply and its effect on employment and income. The Mattawa area depends on the forest industry for approximately 80% of its existing business.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to meet with the ministers of Natural Resources and Northern Development and Mines in order to discuss the findings of the task force and its impact study, its recommendations and its efforts to protect the wood supply and the wood industry in Mattawa and area.

LINCOLN AND WELLAND REGIMENT

Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): I rise today to pay tribute to the Lincoln and Welland Regiment in St Catharines as it celebrates 200 years of service to the community and the country.

The Lincoln and Welland Regiment traces its history back to its formation as Butler's Rangers during the American Revolution. The regiment served with distinction in the War of 1812, the First World War and the Second World War. The current regiment continues its tradition of service. Examples are assisting the civilian authorities during the blizzard of 1977 as well as participating in United Nations peacekeeping missions throughout the world.

The bicentenary celebrations began this year with a New Year's levee. Other highlights of the bicentennial include the Freedom of the Town of Fort Erie Parade, the dedication of the Memorial Gardens at which our own Lieutenant Governor will officiate, and the regimental reunion this fall.

Over a week ago, I had the pleasure of joining regiment members and supporters like Lieutenant-Colonel Cliff Baker, who is retired, Major Ken Bettes and Major Brian Doucet at the annual mess dinner at the Lake Street Armoury. These men and many other men and women like them have dedicated a good part of their lives to the Lincoln and Welland regiment and I applaud their service.

The only sad note to the bicentenary celebrations comes with the decision by the militia's Hamilton district office to cut funding to the regimental band, affectionately known in Niagara as the Links and Winks, in order to meet a federal government order to cut support to military reserve bands. We in Niagara support the Lincs and Winks. They're one of the oldest military bands in Canada.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): That's like the Golden Helmets.

Ms Haeck: Let's cut fairly, Mr Bradley.

Interjections.

Ms Haeck: They have used a lot of partisanship, I have to say, from Hamilton --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The member's time has expired.

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BUSINESS REGISTRATION

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): I'd like to draw this issue to the attention to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. My constituent, Mr Zakrzewski, is attempting to establish a Canada-Poland Chamber of Commerce.

In February of this year he submitted an application for registration of the name, which he had already searched and paid for, to the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations. He was told it would take six weeks to process his application. Mr Zakrzewski was not satisfied that the application would take six weeks, and so he wrote a letter to the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

On April 7, he received a reply saying that due to the number of applications, it would take between eight and 10 weeks for his application to be processed. They said it had been the standard time since last summer. Mr Zakrzewski was understandably upset, so he contacted the ministry once more and, can you believe, Mr Speaker, he was told it might take up to 16 weeks to process his application.

Minister, that's four months to simply process applications to open new businesses in Ontario. Is that your idea of customer service, meeting the needs of businesses that want to do business in Ontario? Mr Zakrzewski has a right to know why it is taking so long and, Minister, you must know that new businesses are needed to help Ontario's economy grow. How do you expect people to start new companies if it takes up to 16 weeks to process the name of the company?

I hope to have an answer from the minister on this very important issue of Mr Zakrzewski, my constituent.

BUSINESS IN ONTARIO

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): For the past 10 years, we have created in this province numerous taxation and regulatory barriers which have caused employers who looked at Ontario as a prospective location for expansion or new investment to choose other jurisdictions. In the Common Sense Revolution, we have outlined our specific program for removing these barriers to economic growth, a program which offers hope and opportunity for all Ontarians.

We will eliminate the employer health tax for small businesses with payrolls under $400,000. We will save Ontario businesses an estimated $98.5 million by cutting WCB premiums by 5%. We will also institute a five-year freeze on hydro rates to give consumers, employers and industries stability in planning their budgets.

Every year, Ontario introduces up to 1,000 new regulations. In order to reduce this massive regulatory burden, we will appoint an arm's-length commission on red tape to eliminate every unnecessary regulation.

We will take immediate steps to reduce or eliminate interprovincial trade barriers which are costing each Ontario family as much as $1,000 a year in lost income.

Finally, we will replace Bill 40 with a labour law package that will restore the balance between labour and management.

These are just a few of the initiatives that will not only contribute to job creation in this province, but will finally provide hope and opportunity for Ontarians in the future.

SERVICES IN CHATHAM-KENT

Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): I want to draw people's attention to how organizations in Chatham-Kent are rising to the challenges government has put to them to reduce the cost of providing services and protect those services we have.

In Chatham-Kent, there is a group called the Kent Area Administrators' Group that has been saving money for the past 12 years. Consisting of the two school boards, Chatham's two hospitals, the community college, the city and the county, this group has saved $13 million.

By combining many administration and purchasing functions, these groups have found strength in numbers, working together to increase their financial independence. Reducing costs gives more flexibility to provide better service, and even new services.

Another group is the Kent Childrens' Services Council. It is in the process of developing a single-intake service that will make it easier for parents to find all the services needed for their children. Working with government staff, they are trying to do this within existing resources.

This statement is not just for the ears of the members present in here today but for all of Ontario on how, spending tax dollars, we can reduce the cost of providing services. In Chatham-Kent they are doing that and creating new services at the same time.

LEADER OF THE THIRD PARTY

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): Mike Harris has always said he's a big fan of Brian Mulroney's free trade agreement and today we have proof, even though he seems to be running and hiding from the name "Progressive Conservative."

This morning I woke up to hear that Mr Harris's slick, American-style campaign was exactly that: American. Mike Harris, in a desperate attempt to become governor of the state of Ontario, has hired Americans to run his gubernatorial campaign. I knew Mike was starting a revolution; I just didn't know it was the American revolution.

Mike Harris thinks that it makes common sense to spend $600,000 on political commercials produced and directed by Americans. Mr Harris thinks Ontario workers are simply not good enough for him to get the job done, and he thinks there is nothing wrong with cross-border shopping when it's for his own political gain.

Today he's in Windsor dropping boxes of tea into the Detroit River. Tomorrow he'll jump on Paul Revere's horse and ride through town shouting: "The Reform Party is coming. The Reform Party is coming." A modern-day Benedict Arnold.

I have a present for Mike Harris for his desk. He can put this on his desk in his office to show everyone in Ontario that he believes in buying American first.

ST GEORGE'S JUNIOR SCHOOL

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): I attended this weekend one of the finest functions, just outside my riding, as a matter of fact --

Interjections.

Mr Stockwell: Holy smokes.

It was the St George's Fun Fair school day, where a number of students got together to raise money. They tried to raise money for needy causes, particularly the school itself, for renovations and certain things to clean up problems within the area. They raised $5,000 last year, and this year they were setting their sights higher.

I want to compliment the students and the teachers, the principal, Mr McGregor, and the parents who took part in this particular function. They not only enjoyed themselves, and I enjoyed myself as well, attending this, but they also brought to the neighbourhood a sense of community when students have to be bused in from the outside because of education policies of this government of having to close certain schools within the jurisdiction.

I myself was proud to be a part of this. I know the students were extremely happy. The teachers enjoyed themselves just as much too.

I'd like to thank them at St George's public school in Etobicoke and wish them success in the future.

DEAF CHILDREN'S FESTIVAL

Mr Gary Malkowski (York East): On Wednesday, May 4, 1994, I attended the second annual Deaf Children's Festival, which was held at Sir James Whitney School for the Deaf in Belleville during Education Week.

The Deaf Children's Festival was to celebrate the uniqueness of deaf culture and to develop pride and self-esteem in deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Thousands of deaf students from the provincial schools for the deaf and school boards gathered for a day of art and drama activities, mime shows, American Sign Language storytelling sessions, hot-air balloon rides, and entertainment by deaf actors, actresses and other performers.

Another important event taking place in May, which is Deaf, Deafened and Hard-of-Hearing Awareness Month, is Mayfest, celebrating its 20th anniversary. The day-long activities of displays, contests and entertainment will take place at the St Lawrence Market north in Toronto. That will be held on May 13, Friday, starting at 10 o'clock in the morning and ending in the evening with a huge dance and party. This is a popular social event in the deaf community and is well attended by deaf, deafened and hard-of-hearing and hearing people alike, an event of deaf pride.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

CHILDREN AND YOUTH

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): I rise today to speak on a matter which affects the future of the people of Ontario more directly than anything else I could imagine; namely, the raising of our next generation.

This Legislature is in a position to issue a call to all the people of Ontario to take a new interest in and assume a new responsibility for the raising of our kids.

Today I want to present to this House a remarkable document that's produced by a group of dedicated volunteers working under the umbrella of the Premier's Council on Health, Wellbeing and Social Justice. The title of the report is Yours, Mine and Ours: Ontario's Children and Youth. This title is unmistakable in driving home the point that it deals with an issue that is close to each and every one of us.

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Seated in the gallery today are Dr Dan Offord and Mrs Marilyn Knox, who are co-chairs of the Premier's Council children and youth project, the team which produced this work, together with other members of their committee, Dr Colin Maloney, Dr Suzanne Zeigler, Dr Angus MacMillan, Jane Bertrand, Lucille Roch, Carol Cayenne, Monica Quinlan and Colin Wasacase. I also want to acknowledge the contribution of Douglas Maracle, David Walker, Dr Denise Avard, Dr Heather Munroe-Blum and Virginia Turner. Also in the gallery are representatives of organizations such as the Laidlaw Foundation, the Ontario Coalition for Children and Youth, the Royal Commission on Learning, and representatives of the children's services sector and the education community.

I would also like to acknowledge the contributions of my colleagues the Minister of Community and Social Services, the Attorney General and minister responsible for women's issues, the member for York-Mackenzie and the member for London North, who all served as working members of the various groups that made up the project.

On behalf of the people of the province, I would like to thank all those who participated in this important work, which is part of Ontario's contribution to the International Year of the Family.

Why do we need to be concerned about our children and youth? The institutions we've developed in this society to look after the raising of our next generation have been in place for a long time and they've worked well for most of us. But the world has been changing and our own society has changed a great deal, and it has changed so fast that our institutions -- all those arrangements, practices, traditions, rules and organizations through which we make things happen -- have not kept up to the changing needs. This process of change is becoming increasingly stressful for all of us, and it's very stressful for those who depend on us to help them find their place in our society: our children and our youth.

This report, Yours, Mine and Ours: Ontario's Children and Youth, is a call to Ontarians to renew their sense of responsibility for the wellbeing of our next generation. One of the fundamental beliefs stated in the report reminds us of that responsibility when it says: "Parents and those who take on parental responsibilities have the primary role in raising healthy children and youth. They must be supported by their communities in that role."

Yours, Mine and Ours addresses the needs of all children in Ontario. It doesn't single out any target group for special attention to remedy some earlier lack of attention. Instead, it deals with providing a firm foundation for the growth and development of every one of Ontario's children and youth into competent adults ready to take on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

What's in the report? It began by asking parents, children, youth and grandparents across the province what their hopes, dreams and aspirations were for their children. We learned that while there may be concerns about what the future holds for our children and youth, there is also interest and work under way across the province in providing well for the next generation. It included research: What are the determinants of healthy child development? Fortunately, our capacity to understand our human nature is growing, and science now helps to explain much that we previously understood only instinctively.

The report outlines four transitions in our development, four times when we enter a substantially different phase of our life when appropriate measures, which we would all take together, can have a long-lasting and positive effect. The first is the transition to life, the period before and shortly after birth. The second is the transition to school, to learning in a more structured and different social setting than the early childhood experiences within the home. The third transition is that difficult period of personal change that we call adolescence, and the fourth is the emergence into the world of work and the obligations of citizenship.

None of this is really a discovery. We have been helping children and youth through these transitions for a long time in ways that have been successful for most. What's new now is the extent and rate of change in the social environment in which this all takes place. The nature of the family has changed greatly, and efforts to meet economic pressures have taken away much time that people used to have for their children. We are all aware of this, of course, and many have adapted to deal with the new stresses. Many communities have been perceptive and imaginative in meeting the needs of their children, but few have been systematic about it.

What Yours, Mine and Ours offers is a framework for organizing the way communities mobilize themselves to meet the important needs of all their children and youth. The framework points to the four transitions as opportunities where simple measures could have a significant effect. Many suggestions of what could be done have been assembled by four task groups of the children and youth project, the collective effort of more than 60 people, many of whom represented the resources of far larger organizations. The whole effort received ideas from an extensive process of consultation which involved children and youth themselves as well as many other groups and individuals knowledgeable in many aspects of the issues.

The report does not stop with a call to action. It insists that we should be able to measure progress. It proposes the development of a "report card" which will allow communities to monitor the condition of their own children and youth, to compare it with the children and youth in other communities and to assess the effects of their own efforts to make things better.

Yours, Mine and Ours is just the beginning. Producing the report was the first phase of the work. There must be a second phase, an action phase. The Premier's Council will spread the message in the report and will start work on the report card. But for the children and youth of Ontario to benefit from what has been done, the communities of Ontario will have to mobilize their resources and take action. Governments will be required to pitch in by removing obstacles and by helping wherever they can.

I believe that all members of this House have the opportunity to show personal leadership in providing for the wellbeing of our next generation. We can do so by bringing together the people in our own communities who will answer this call and will set in motion the appropriate local actions to improve and protect the condition of our children and youth. This wonderful document, Yours, Mine and Ours, shows the way. We must do this because we all know it is important and we also know that it's the right thing to do.

Mr Charles Beer (York-Mackenzie): I rise to respond to the Premier's statement on the release today of Yours, Mine and Ours: Ontario's Children and Youth, which, as indicated, was prepared by the Premier's Council. I too would like to offer congratulations to Dan Offord and Marilyn Knox and everyone else who was involved in this project. As the Premier mentioned, both myself and my colleague the member for London North were involved at different times in it.

We found both the process and the substance to be extremely challenging in the way in which very many people came together to try to deal with the whole question of children's and youth services and to try to find a way we could break out of some of the problems we have right now and really begin to make progress in dealing with specific problems children and youth have.

There are a number of very interesting things in the report, not the least of which is the way the council has dealt with the question of the four transitions, trying to zero in on each of those areas and, in the report, to look at what are some key specific things that are doable, that we can achieve.

What is perhaps most interesting is this concept they have of a report card. I'd like to come back to that in my comments, because I think it's there where, in terms of the communities in this province, we can try to determine more clearly precisely what it is we are doing on behalf of children and youth and how we are really helping them.

But it's important as well to say to the Premier that what we also wanted to see in this statement was something clearer about the specific actions this government ought to be taking. There is no question in my mind that when one looks at the present system for the delivery of children's and youth services in Ontario, it is less cohesive today than ever before and it is less coordinated today than ever before.

We can't expect that the Royal Commission on Learning or the Premier's Council by themselves are going to be able to come up with all the answers. It is critical that they are a part of it, but it is also critical that the government lay out precisely what it intends to do and how it's going to support the very excellent recommendations from the Premier's Council and to make sure that those see light and have a real impact.

It is interesting that the Treasurer, in his budget statement of only last week, made no reference to children's services. It is always said, I think with some degree of truth, that one finds how strongly a government believes in what it is doing by looking at what is happening in the budget. With limited funds, as we all know, this government ought to be turning its attention to questions of children's services and youth services and really, if you like, putting its money where its mouth is.

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I want to say to the Premier that while we welcome this report and welcome the statement he has made today, we would expect to see in the next few weeks, either from him or from the Minister of Community and Social Services, some specific initiatives that are going to take these recommendations forward and really ensure that we have a direct and clear impact on providing better services for children and youth.

The question of the report card is perhaps a place where the government, together with the Premier's Council, can really move to do some innovative things. We know that in many communities in the province, in London, in Thunder Bay, in Ottawa, in Kingston, and the member for Chatham-Kent was talking about initiatives in his own riding today, in a variety of places there are gathered together groups around children's services that are trying to better coordinate those services. We also know that in those same places and in many other communities there are groups, business and education people, that have come together to form learning foundations, learning partnerships, investment in education councils; there are various names for those.

All those people are tied into our communities and are perhaps in many ways best set to try to go forward with this whole concept of a community report card, where we sit down and say: "How well are we dealing with our children? What is it that we're doing on behalf of the youth in our communities?" What would be best to do, and perhaps the best advice one could give, is in effect almost to bypass the structures here at Queen's Park -- it needs political will and political leadership -- and go to those communities where those groups exist and sit down and say, "All right, how can we together develop a community report card that is going to be meaningful, and how will we be able to free up some funds to do it and to work with you?" If we can do that, I think we will see some progress.

But, Premier, to this point, I have to say again, we do not have the cohesiveness in the system that we need. We look to your government to provide some leadership so that the council can go out and develop the very excellent recommendations it has put before us today.

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): I'm pleased to rise today to respond to the release by the Premier's Council on Health, Wellbeing and Social Justice of the report on children and youth. I'd like to also congratulate the members of that council, including Dan Offord and Marilyn Knox, who are with us in the House today.

My leader, Mike Harris, met with the council a couple of weeks ago and was very pleased to get an inside look into what was going to be contained in the report and to share with them their concerns. He sends his regards from southwestern Ontario this afternoon; he couldn't be with them. I want to also thank my colleague from London North, who was an active participant in the council's task force on transition to work roles and community and family.

The report is a culmination of phase 1 of this committee's work, but the unfortunate reality is that it is unlikely that the NDP government will take the recommendations of this report seriously. After all, last week we did hear from the Treasurer, in his budget, setting out where the priorities for the government would be for the coming year. Unfortunately, children did not figure prominently anywhere in that lengthy document. In fact, the NDP record with respect to children is extremely weak. It's unfortunate that when, at the beginning of this government's mandate, it openly bragged it was going to spend its way out of the recession, children's services did not receive the kind of attention that they are receiving on paper today.

In fact, when that opportunity to spend, as the government chose to do, was before it, the largest single envelope of investment in children was to put it into bricks and mortar to convert day care centres from commercial centres into non-profit centres. We actually lost subsidized child care spaces as we poured money into that ideological conversion plan. Certainly, to look at the entire government's record, and put it in context with today's announcement, we in the Conservative Party have been pleading with the government on the other side to make adjustments.

It's well documented that all the children's aid societies have assembled in Hamilton, Ontario, for the next three days. They are looking at a crisis they've never faced before in their collective histories. They know that municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals all received greater increases in their budgetary area of attention than did children's aid societies in 1992 and 1993. There are a couple of CASs that are openly talking about having to close down their operations, because the law requires them to perform certain duties yet they can't provide those protection services.

I remind the members of the House that children's aid societies are not a social service; they are a justice service. They are a protection service and a justice service to protect the rights of children not to be victimized, not to be abused in any fashion in this province, yet their treatment, in terms of funding and protection, falls very low in the government's set of priorities.

We've indicated in this House as well the lack of support from this government with respect to private child care services. We openly were critical of the government's move almost a year ago to set up an additional $13.5 million additional into the system through the use of user fees. We argued that we believed very strongly that it was a contradiction, that to take that revenue out of those families was in fact punishing the CASs and parents of particularly vulnerable children.

Child care has been noted. We would also indicate that in this House recently our caucus has raised several issues about speech-language pathology services and children's mental health services that are all in retreat in terms of service delivery because of the way the government refuses to organize the three key ministries and to coordinate more effectively children's services in this province.

The challenge, of course, is to develop innovative programs to ensure that all the thousands of children who are locked into social assistance family situations are provided with opportunities for education and for employment and that the 30,000-odd children, young people, students who are receiving welfare, are addressed in terms of proactive employment opportunities and educational employments in this province, which we're not seeing either in the recent budget document or anywhere in the government's council statement today.

We hope that, upon reflection, the government will truly put children at the focus of its policy priorities in the coming year.

ORAL QUESTIONS

FINANCIAL PROCEDURES

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): My question, perhaps not surprisingly, is for the Minister of Finance. Minister, I have here a transcript of an interview you did which aired last Thursday, the night you presented your budget, on the TV show Fourth Reading. During the interview, you were very directly asked whether you believed your budget would get a passing grade from the Provincial Auditor. Your response was: "No, it's not."

You have been criticized by the Provincial Auditor for creative accounting in the past. Why in this budget did you continue to deliberately mislead and misrepresent Ontario's financial picture?

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I realize that the honourable Leader of the Opposition has a very serious question and I don't think she wishes to cloud the issue with unparliamentary language.

Mrs McLeod: Mr Speaker, I would certainly retract the word "mislead." I trust you would accept "deliberately misrepresent," since that is my understanding of the auditor's report.

The Speaker: I think what is most helpful is to simply withdraw the unparliamentary langauge, allow the question to stand as is and allow the minister the opportunity to respond.

Mrs McLeod: Mr Speaker, I shall attempt to rephrase the question in a way which would be considered acceptable in the Legislature.

Minister, I would ask you, then, given the fact that you clearly understood and stated yourself that your books would not receive the approval of the Provincial Auditor, can you tell us why you deliberately chose to use what the auditor has said to be non-acceptable accounting practices once again in this budget?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): The leader of the official opposition has been using a regrettable way to make her points in this Legislature in the last couple of weeks. I regret that.

I would say to the leader that I would want to take a look at the transcript. I remember very well the conversation I had with the TV station.

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My sense of the budget is that the budget is a document that lays out the projections and intentions of the Ontario government at budget time. I would say to the leader of the official opposition that the budget has been presented in a way that budgets have been presented in this province for ever. There is nothing unusual about the way the budget has been presented.

Interjections.

Hon Mr Laughren: Secondly, if you're prepared to listen, I have said to the Provincial Auditor -- I've said it and put it in writing to him and he understands, I believe -- that when it comes to the financial statements of this province, we will comply with all of the changes that he's requested in the way in which the financial statements are presented, which has never been done before.

Finally, I would remind the leader that the Provincial Auditor is requesting a change from the way in which you used to present the budget.

Mrs McLeod: The creative accounting practices were never used before. Therefore, they led to the fact that this auditor, for the first time in the history of this province, last year gave this government a qualified approval. He clearly directed them -- and the Finance minister acknowledges that -- to do their financial statements on what's called the public sector auditing and accounting board rules, which we have been calling on this government to do since well before that auditor's report. The government is committed to do that but for some inexplicable reason not until this fall and certainly not in this budget, and that's the issue.

Minister, it is the budget that's the public document. Supposedly it tells the people of Ontario what the financial state of their province is. Presenting financial statements next fall that will follow the auditor's rules is not going to be of much help to taxpayers who want to know where the province really stands right now.

You admitted in the interview that you did not follow the proper accounting procedures in calculating this year's deficit figure. It stands to reason, then, that the $8.5-billion figure that you've projected is not accurate.

I ask you, if you had used the auditor's accepted accounting procedures, what would the actual deficit be?

Hon Mr Laughren: I must say that the leader of the official opposition is depicting the scenario in a most unfortunate way. There is absolutely nothing disguised in the budget.

I have said to the Provincial Auditor that we will comply 100% with what he wants done. What we've done in the budget is what you did, what the Tories did, what every government has done for ever in this province.

I appreciate the fact that the leader of the official opposition is a busy person. I appreciate that. It takes a long time to be remade by public relations experts.

If the leader of the official opposition will kindly look at page 1, page 1 very clearly says this is our operating deficit, these are our capital expenditures, and says, categorically, that these numbers exclude "$854 million in alternative capital financing in 1993-94 and $1.6 billion in 1994-95." I don't know how much clearer we could possibly be.

I'll say it again: The Provincial Auditor --

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

Hon Mr Laughren: -- has asked us to present our financial statements in a different way than has ever been done before. We are complying 100% with the letter of his request; 100%. What --

The Speaker: Would the minister please conclude his response.

Hon Mr Laughren: A budget is not an audited set of financial statements. It's not, never has been and, I presume, never will be. This is presented the way budgets have always been presented in this province, and with the financial statements that come in the fall we are complying exactly with what the Provincial Auditor has requested; completely.

Mrs McLeod: Nobody is saying that the budget is the final, audited set of figures, but we would have hoped that this government's budget could at least be expected to lead to an audited and approved statement of this province's finances.

Minister, let me be as clear as I possibly can be. We've tried to calculate the off-book financing. We believe that it's in the order of $2.7 billion. We believe that if you add back in that $2.7 billion, you would come up with a deficit of more than $11 billion, and we believe that is a truer reflection of the way in which you are adding to the debt that you have already doubled.

Minister, will you confirm that the actual deficit projection, the total deficit projection, the amount of money you're going to need to borrow to make up what you're spending versus what you are raising, is more than $11 billion and not the $8.5 billion that you'd like people to believe?

Hon Mr Laughren: I know that it's not appropriate for me to ask the leader of the official opposition a question, but I hope she would remember how her government reported the budget along with Homes Now, for example. How did you report that? Did you report that on-budget or off-budget?

I know how you reported it. If the leader of the official opposition wants us to also roll in Ontario Hydro's debt, because we guarantee that debt too, I suppose that you could do that as well, but it doesn't make much sense.

We are presenting this budget the way it should be presented, with all of the numbers absolutely clear. None of the financial institutions have asked us the kinds of questions you are asking us since the budget was brought down -- none. They know. It's all here. Nothing is disguised, nothing's hidden, and we are doing exactly what the Provincial Auditor has asked us to do when we present our audited financial statements which come forth in the fall. That's the way it's always been done and that's the way we'll continue to do it.

Mrs McLeod: I continue to believe it is unconscionable for the Treasurer of the province to present a budget which he knows will not get the approval of the Provincial Auditor.

METROPOLITAN TORONTO HOUSING AUTHORITY

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): My second question is for the Minister of Housing. I want to turn to the disturbing reports of waste and mismanagement at the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority. It is very clear from the audits that have been leaked to the media that there is a major problem at the MTHA and that taxpayers' dollars are being wasted and abused. What is not clear, Minister, is what is actually being done to address the problem.

On the weekend Pat O'Neill, the chair of the MTHA, said that although she apparently hasn't even seen all the audits, she is somehow sure that steps are being taken to correct the problems that are being identified. But then we have Anne Smith, the vice-chair, who says that the problems aren't being dealt with and that the whole board should be fired.

Minister, maybe you can tell us what's going on. When were you first made aware of the problems at the MTHA, and what steps did you personally take to put an end to the rampant waste and mismanagement of taxpayers' dollars?

Hon Evelyn Gigantes (Minister of Housing): The audits which were referred to in the Toronto tabloids over the weekend were audits undertaken at the request of MTHA itself. MTHA -- she might know this; she might not -- hired an auditor to do internal audits on a regular basis in 1989. The audits which were mentioned in the tabloids were audits which were undertaken in 1992 and 1993.

The ones which had been undertaken in 1993 have been filed with the finance committee of MTHA, and they have been also filed with the board, and there has been a report on the implementation of the recommendations that were made in those two audit reports. There are another two audits which were undertaken in 1992 and they will be the subject of discussion at the finance committee of MTHA at its next meeting.

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Mrs McLeod: Minister, we're well aware that the audits that were undertaken were internal audits, just as we were well aware that another issue of serious concern in non-profit housing, the Houselink issue, was the result of an audit that was undertaken by the previous government. That's not the issue. The issue is: What is being done about the very serious problems that those audits are revealing?

On the other issues you have already admitted to writing off at least $29 million for failed non-profit housing projects. So it's clear that there's something wrong. Surely that's not the question today. The question is your responses, Minister, and your willingness to both come clean with the public as well as to fix the problem.

The first step, I believe, Minister, is to make all the information public. You have said that you would release recent audits on non-profit housing, but you still have not done that. We have learned that the MTHA conducted audits, which its board members considered in secret. We have to get to the bottom of it, and to do that, the public must have full and complete access to all the information.

Minister, will you stop stonewalling? Will you release the non-profit housing audits today, and will you order the MTHA to release its audits?

Hon Ms Gigantes: I think the leader of the official opposition really goes a little too far when she asks me to come clean as if there was something being hidden. There is nothing being hidden.

When the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority undertakes its regular audits, the recommendations are made to staff and they are followed up through implementation reports to the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority board.

There is nothing secretive about this, and she's being wildly irrational in attempting to connect non-profit housing with the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority. These things are quite separate and distinct, and she will know that we have in fact changed the top management at the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority and we have a new chair, who began in that position in December of last year.

Mrs McLeod: I find it hard to believe that my question could be described as wild. Clearly, Minister, all of us want to be sure the problems are fixed. We're concerned about non-profit housing. We're concerned that the taxpayers' dollars that go to support non-profit housing be well used. It's clear there are problems, and we need to know exactly what the problems are so we all know what's being done and what needs to be done. I don't know what's wild or unreasonable about that.

It is so clear that there is growing evidence of problems with financial management in the non-profit housing sector. It's clear that your response as minister should be right up front, "What do I have to do to stop it?" and I believe, Minister, you are stonewalling. You have not released the audits, although you've been saying for weeks now that you will do so. You are also restricting what the public accounts committee of this Legislature is able to examine.

What is needed is a full public review. Minister, we will be moving a motion to expand the mandate of the public accounts committee to examine not only Houselink and the Supportive Housing Coalition but also the MTHA and any other allegations of financial mismanagement in the non-profit housing sector. Minister, will you support this motion, and will you direct the government members of the committee to support it?

Hon Ms Gigantes: I will repeat that the kind of suggestions the leader of the official opposition is making are just wild. They are utterly wild. She may throw around wild statements and hope somehow that she's going to hit a target, but that's just nonsense.

As I indicated in my earlier answer, the audit reports are brought to the MTHA board, and in fact there was a report on February 15, 1994, based on the audit which had been done of purchasing and stock control. There was another report at that same meeting of the MTHA which dealt with the implementation review on qualified contractors.

There is nothing out of the ordinary in these reports, and I know she will approve the fact that there is an internal audit system in place at the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority and that in fact it is leading to questions being asked about processes there which then the board requires a response on. That's the way the system should work.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): New question, third party.

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): My question is also to the Minister of Housing. It's really unbelievable to hear the minister saying there's nothing unusual in these reports. If the minister doesn't think it's unusual for MTHA staff to take cheques and cash home, then I don't know what she thinks is unusual.

Madam Minister, last week I asked you a number of questions on a number of days about MTHA. You said I was implying scandals and mismanagement. Well, I'd like the facts to speak for themselves today: a police anti-corruption probe of possible kickbacks; alleged tendering irregularities that include bid rigging, price gouging, overbilling and unfair competition; embezzlement by staff of tenants' rent cheques; allegations of racism, and staff withholding information from the board. If this isn't a scandal, if this isn't evidence of mismanagement, I don't know what is.

The minister would not answer most of my questions about MTHA, yet you have been kept well informed of the problems of the agency. Minister, I would suggest that you have withheld critical information from this House and the public. Will you finally tell us what you know about MTHA and when you received this information?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Over the course of the last two and three years, the internal audit process at the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority has identified system problems. Measures have been taken to address those system problems.

I'm not standing here to suggest that everything has been hunky-dory at MTHA. To my knowledge, it never has been. It's a very large operation and it has a very long and troubled history.

The fact is that we have brought in new management at MTHA. We have a new chair at MTHA. There are certainly some questions still to be answered as far as some board members are concerned, but those are being addressed in the way I indicated last week when I spoke about the equity review which is going on right now at MTHA.

I think the member will throw out things that happen here and things that happen there. If they've been addressed, and they have been addressed, then I should think she would acknowledge that instead of talking wildly -- again I'll say "wildly" -- of scandal.

Mrs Marland: The internal MTHA audits I have obtained cover periods going back to 1990 when this government was first elected. Poor management and lack of accountability were therefore serious problems at the MTHA under the previous Liberal government as well as the current NDP administration.

The former chair of the MTHA board, Jean Augustine, now the Liberal MP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore and, I may add, parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada, must also be held accountable for the mess at MTHA. She was in charge when most of the irregularities and alleged wrongdoing took place. She probably knows as much as, if not more than, frankly, you do about the problems at MTHA.

The minister and the government House leader have repeatedly refused my party's requests to include MTHA in the public accounts committee review of questionable practices at other housing agencies, and it's very interesting that today finally the Liberal leader has gotten on the bandwagon and is making the same request that we made five days ago.

Minister, will you consider again our request for a review by the public accounts committee so that former and present MTHA board members and staff can account for the practices under their administration, or are you going to continue to defend as a normal happening embezzlement, fraud, overbilling, racism and kickbacks?

Hon Ms Gigantes: That's pretty wild. As the member knows, the estimates of the Ministry of Housing are regularly before the public accounts committee. We are also reporting through the public accounts concerning the Provincial Auditor's report on non-profit housing. We're very anxious to provide whatever kind of information is available and can be shared with members opposite. She's never raised these kinds of questions before. The tabloids have spurred her on.

Let me point out that in all the years, the 42 years of Conservative government, and the many years in which they were responsible for management of the Ontario Housing Corp and the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority, there was never an internal audit system.

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Mrs Marland: It is interesting to hear the minister refer to our media in Toronto as tabloids. Nothing in this whole sordid mess, I would suggest, reads more like the National Enquirer than her own ministry's audits.

Do you know what is wild? Let me tell you what is wild. It is absolutely wild, unforgivable and totally unacceptable that you stand in this House and try to defend this mess. We've given you the opportunity to say, "It was there when the Liberals were there." We know it was there when the Liberals were the government. That's why we brought out the Common Sense Revolution. This tells you what we want to do about publicly funded housing in this province, and it isn't what you and the Liberals are doing.

We have learned that the minister met numerous times with MTHA vice-chairman Anne Smith, who sought this minister's help in dealing with the several problems with the agency. Ms Smith says the Housing ministry has known about the situation at MTHA for years, but in her words, "They chose not to act." The minister has failed to deal with these serious managerial and accountability problems at MTHA.

The Speaker: Could the member place a question, please.

Mrs Marland: Furthermore, you have withheld critical information from this House.

My question is this: Obviously, the only way to get to the bottom of this mess is a full inquiry.

Hon Ms Gigantes: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Is it legitimate for the member for Mississauga South to say that I have withheld information from this House? It is not.

The Speaker: From time to time, on both sides of the House, there are accusations about other members' behaviour or lack thereof. It is not out of order. I would ask that the member quickly place a question.

Mrs Marland: This is the fourth day I've asked questions. You haven't told us anything yet. I don't know what's a better example of withholding information.

Obviously, the only way to get to the bottom of this mess is a full inquiry into MTHA, complete with the Provincial Auditor and independent legal counsel and with the power to obtain any necessary documents and to subpoena witnesses.

Minister, will you recommend to the public accounts committee that it undertake this inquiry with the terms of reference I have recommended, or are you going to continue to defend the fact that --

The Speaker: Could the member complete her question, please.

Mrs Marland: -- you have rats in the hold of your ship?

Hon Ms Gigantes: Once again, I really do object to the terminology of the member for Mississauga South. It is no way to speak of people who are doing their job to the best of their ability. There have been incidents which are reprehensible. Those kinds of incidents occur in large organizations. There need to be systems in place to deal with them. There was no internal audit process under the Conservatives.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Would the minister take her seat for a moment.

Interjections.

The Speaker: The member for Burlington South, please come to order.

Hon Ms Gigantes: As the member for Mississauga South knows, the Provincial Auditor determines whether he wishes to initiate an audit. It's certainly not only on government direction that he does that. If she wishes to encourage him, by all means let her do so. But there was no audit system in place under the Conservatives, so I can just imagine what MTHA might have been like with no internal audit system in place.

We have changed the top management at MTHA --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. The member for Etobicoke West is out of order.

Hon Ms Gigantes: -- we have brought in a new chair. I know that the member for Mississauga South, for example, doesn't approve of having residents of MTHA sit on the board, but she's willing to raise comments from them when it suits her purposes.

I think that the member might well take a look at the Provincial Auditor's report -- does she remember it? -- in 1991. If she feels that he should undertake another audit, by all means let her encourage him.

ONTARIO ECONOMY

Mr David Johnson (Don Mills): My question is to the Minister of Finance. I have a copy of your budget, and in this budget you do tinker with some of the taxes, the employer health tax, for example. You do promise to reduce red tape, although you're not very specific on how that's going to happen. You do promise to balance the budget in four years, but who knows how that's going to happen?

I have another document in my hand, and this document is called the Lyn McLeod Task Force on Jobs. It promises to tinker with taxes, reduce them a little bit; it promises to reduce the red tape, but we don't know how; and it promises to balance the budget in four years, but who knows how? Does this sound familiar? It sounds a bit like a Liberal-NDP accord.

Minister, I guess my question to you is, in setting this budget, whose advice did you seek?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): May I first of all welcome the member for Don Mills as the third party critic on Finance. I suspect we'll have many interesting exchanges. I would remind the member that I think it was Mike Harris who promised to eliminate the deficit in four years as well.

You can see that in drafting the budget -- to answer your question specifically as to who we listen to, I can tell the member that when I went across the province during the pre-budget period and listened to people in different communities in this province, what they asked us to do, they said to me: "Do what you can on the jobs side. We know you can't do it all, but do what you can to encourage job creation."

Secondly, they said: "Do what you can to get the deficit going down. We know it's not easy to do that at the same time that you're doing something on the jobs side." Finally they said, "We know it's a tough time on the revenue side, but if you can do all of this without any tax increases, that is what we would like to see you do." I can tell you that's what we did, because we did listen to the people as we travelled across this province.

Mr David Johnson: Mr Minister, you mentioned Mike Harris and I'm glad you did, because we have the Common Sense Revolution. This is a document that tells you how to reduce the deficit.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Is it made in Ontario? I want to know that.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order, the member for St Catharines.

Would the member for Don Mills place his question, please.

Mr David Johnson: Unlike the Liberals, we have specific suggestions on how to reduce the deficit.

Mr Minister, to get to the deficit of $8.5 billion, there is a little bit of scepticism. You're telling us now that the deficit in 1992 was $12.4 billion, but that same year you borrowed $15.5 billion. You're telling us that the deficit last year was $9.4 billion, but last year you borrowed $11.6 billion. You're telling us that this year the deficit is going to be $8.5 billion, but you're proposing to borrow over $10 billion, to raise the debt in the province of Ontario over $10 billion to over $90 billion in total debt.

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Minister, my question to you is, how do you explain this and please tell us, what is the new definition of the word "deficit" in the province of Ontario?

Hon Mr Laughren: Since the member for Don Mills did refer to his revolution of common sense, I simply must make a comment on it.

When I looked at the document and saw some analysis that was done subsequent to its publication, it indicated that in the education field alone -- education alone -- there will be about 10,000 jobs lost in that sector alone. Secondly, your own economist, an economist who is referred to by you in your document, predicts that what you would do would be a drag on the economy to the tune of almost one half of 1%. That's a big drag on the economy.

You have to make up your mind whether or not you believe that there should be jobs created in this province or whether you want to go out there and decimate jobs in this province. It really then would be a revolution of despair, not a Common Sense Revolution.

Mr David Johnson: I thank the minister for raising the issue of jobs. Through the Common Sense Revolution we talk about creating 725,000 jobs in the private sector.

Minister, your own budget suggests that we can create jobs by cutting taxes and you did that through a holiday on the employer health tax. You recognized we can create jobs in the private sector by cutting taxes. The problem is, you didn't go far enough.

The Common Sense Revolution recommends a cut of 30% --

Interjection.

The Speaker: Order, the member for Mississauga West.

Mr David Johnson: -- in taxes, to do away with the employer health tax for small businesses, to cut the workers' compensation by 5% and to freeze Ontario Hydro.

Minister, why not do it right? Why not create some real jobs in the province of Ontario and cut the taxes in the province of Ontario which are hindering job growth?

Hon Mr Laughren: The member for Don Mills has the old, and I'm becoming repetitive in this regard, Reaganomics theory that if you slash taxes infinitely, you'll create an infinite number of jobs. What happened in the United States when they used that approach is the annual deficit went from $40 billion a year to almost $300 billion a year. I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that when we cut the employer health tax --

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Come on. Reagan spent. We're not going to spend. We're going to slash.

The Speaker: The member for Etobicoke West is out of order.

Hon Mr Laughren: When we reduced the employer health tax, that cost the treasury of this province $200 million. So it's not free; it cost $200 million.

I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that what we've done is, we are getting the deficit going down, we are doing some job creation and we are not raising any new taxes; we've cut that one tax. But I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that I very much believe that what the province needs is our balanced approach, not your shock treatment that you would apply to the economy of this province.

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I have a question for the Minister of Finance of Ontario in his capacity as the chair of treasury board.

The member has been in the Legislature some 23 years; I've been in the Legislature 17 years. I can't think of a more blatant piece of partisan propaganda put forward, fully paid for by the taxpayers of Ontario, than what your government put out in newspapers of Ontario at a cost of about $270,000 in this province.

My question to the minister, for whom I have a good deal of personal respect because I recall what he used to say in opposition, when he and I were in opposition: Does the minister not believe that a document of this kind, while you're certainly entitled to put it out, should be paid for by the New Democratic Party and not by the taxpayers of Ontario?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): I do appreciate the question. This is the budget document itself that was presented to this House last Thursday. It is, as all budgets are, relatively complex: a lot of numbers in it. It is not, as no budget is, particularly user-friendly. I think it's in the interests of democracy as a whole that people in the province understand as clearly as possible, in a language that everybody can understand, what it is, what the highlights are, what the priorities are of the government that they've elected to govern.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Why don't you use it on the NDP?

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The member for Etobicoke West, please come to order.

Hon Mr Laughren: I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that this tabloid simply reflects the priorities of the budget. It doesn't extol the virtues of the New Democratic Party. It simply says these are the priorities in the budget, these are the highlights of the budget, in a language that everyone can understand. I think that's a responsible way for the government to move. It cost us less than nine cents a copy, certainly a lot less than it would have cost us to mail it, given the federal postal rates.

Mr Bradley: My quarrel isn't with a political party, the New Democratic Party, putting out a piece of literature that it considers to be its point of view on matters of this kind. But clearly I think any objective person -- and I can't consider myself to be that; I'm obviously a partisan as well -- who looked at the headline and who looked at the content of this would say it's clearly blatant partisan propaganda.

I ask the gentleman who is the chair of the treasury board if he will not review this once again -- and I don't think he personally put this out -- if he will not review this with his own people in cabinet with a view to having it paid for by the New Democratic Party. It's quite legitimate to put out your point of view, and I quite agree with you that everyone should be aware of it. My objection, sir, is that this is paid for entirely with taxpayers' dollars and it is not objective.

Hon Mr Laughren: I just want to make one thing perfectly clear. I saw this before it went out. I approved every word in it. I approved the cost of putting this out. I believe it was very much the correct thing to do. There is nothing in this flyer that was put into the newspapers that does not directly come from the budget itself.

If this was a document that had a box in it that said, "Because of good government, we want you to join the New Democratic Party," then I think the member opposite from St Catharines would have a good argument. But there is nothing in there -- nothing -- that is partisan. It simply reflects what is in the budget: 147,000 jobs, no new taxes, no tax increases, government spending under control, and the deficit down 30%. Those are the highlights in this budget --

Interjection.

The Speaker: The member from York Centre, please come to order.

Hon Mr Laughren: -- and I think people in this province have a right to receive this in a language that everyone can understand.

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DANGEROUS OFFENDERS

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I have a question for the minister responsible for women's issues. Last week, members will recall, Minister, you were the defender of vulnerable women when you reminded us that May is Sexual Assault Prevention Month.

Minister, I want to tell you about Mr Daryl Jones, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted murder and rape of an 18-year-old newlywed. The woman suffered a collapsed lung, stab wounds to the back, ear and left elbow and fractures to the right hand, arm and elbow. Doctors did not think she would survive. She had to have three operations over the course of a significant period of time.

Mr Jones was subsequently released without conditions from a psychiatric hospital, a decision appealed by the crown and overturned by the appeal court in January of this year. In its decision, the court said that hospital staff had engaged "a complete abdication of responsibility."

Minister, in your role as minister responsible for women's issues, have you followed up on the court decision to ensure that an appropriate response by government officials has occurred, and if not, why not?

Hon Marion Boyd (Attorney General and Minister Responsible for Women's Issues): We certainly have been very mindful of this issue. As the member pointed out, we did appeal the decision, and I have had ongoing discussions with our colleagues in the Ministry of Health as well as the federal Justice ministry about high-risk offenders and the kind of issue that he has raised here.

It has to be of great concern to us and continues to be. There are a number of different ways in which such a thing can be handled, but I would remind the member that the kind of situation he describes is a situation which has depended very much upon the actions of different people in different places at different times. Part of the action we want to take is to coordinate the decision-making in such a way that high-risk offenders are dealt with in a different way.

This was a major topic of conversation among the ministers of Justice earlier this year. It is one that needs to be done in conjunction with both the medical and human rights of the accused. But the member is quite right that public safety has to be the major concern in trying to come to solutions to this kind of issue.

Mr Runciman: I don't see how the minister can have the gall in the future to get up here and make statements like she made last month in respect to concern about sexual assault and sexual assault victims.

Here's something that occurred four months ago: a decision by the Court of Appeal. It's been ignored by the Minister of Health: a scathing indictment of people who turned an animal on to the streets who's subsequently been charged with the murder of a 79-year-old widow. This minister, who is also in the joint responsibility of Attorney General and in an excellent position to do something about this sort of thing to ensure it's followed up by her colleagues around the cabinet table, who have ignored the issue, ignored me, ignored the city council, ignored concerned citizens, and are simply doing absolutely nothing -- these are weasel words from the minister. She will not deal with specifics. Will the minister do something about this and do it now?

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order. The member for Leeds-Grenville has a very serious question. He would improve things if he would simply withdraw the unparliamentary comments.

Mr Runciman: Mr Speaker, if something is unparliamentary I will indeed withdraw it. This is a major concern. This minister has prided herself in standing up for vulnerable women in the past. Here's an issue she's had four months to do something about --

The Speaker: Would the member place the question.

Mr Runciman: -- and has done absolutely nothing.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I have made it very clear to the member that we are indeed working very hard to try and find solutions. There is no easy solution to this kind of situation and the member is quite aware, as he himself reminded this House, that the crown took very strong action and did all it could to try and resolve this particular issue.

Mr Runciman: What's the good of having a court decision if you don't work on it.

The Speaker: Order, the member for Leeds-Grenville.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We are working extremely hard to find solutions that are respectful of the rights of all the parties. The member doesn't like the answer. He would like a magical solution to these very severe problems.

What we are saying is that these require the action of all players to resolve and that they have our full attention. We are not in any way ignoring the situation.

The Speaker: The Solicitor General has a reply to a question asked earlier by the member for Brampton South.

CORRECTIONAL SERVICES

Hon David Christopherson (Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services): In response to that member's question, let me say this: The two issues which the member raised are in fact areas in which the ministry has upgraded in the last few years in order to enhance the safety of our employees and the public.

Management Board secretariat upgraded the existing locking systems at Vanier by replacing all the lock cylinders during fiscal 1992-93 and 1993-94. This project improved the operation and security of the institution. The quality and function of the new cylinders met the specifications of Management Board secretariat and the Ministry of Correctional Services and improved the efficiency and security of the Vanier Centre for Women.

The total cost of the project was $131,600. Staff at Vanier were consulted during the design and implementation of the lock upgrade project. The current issue surrounds the function of only four locks on four unit control offices.

In an order to comply issued on April 22, the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services was ordered to convert the four doors to self-locking. The order was met by April 29, 1994, by converting the four locks in question to self-locking. The appeal of the order to comply was issued to ensure this type of modification is accepted by the Ministry of Labour.

The existing fence at Vanier was upgraded in fiscal 1991-92 and is considered adequate for the security requirements of the institution. A small portion of the fence is being upgraded in the fiscal 1994-95 year. The ministry continues making improvements to all facilities as resources become available.

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): Thank you, Minister, for the comments. It's interesting, though, that the occupational health and safety people were into the jail and they in fact are the people who required your ministry to take the action it took.

It seems to me that you say the ministry is constantly vigilant about the security of these prisoners and the safety of the workers as well as the residents who live around these facilities, yet I seem to recall Mimico reformatory, where they put in bars that virtually were declared to be penetrable by the most inexperienced prisoner, perhaps using a butter knife. That may be a bit of hyperbole, but I have a great problem understanding how a properly tendered and inspected and supervised program, particularly in a correctional facility, can result in the possibility of having another agency of this government come in and tell your ministry that the locking mechanisms are not safe to the extent that an order was issued against your ministry, as I understand it, to ensure that these locking facilities were changed.

I suggest to you that all you've said to me is simply tell me that you're taking steps to remedy the situation. In the future, recognizing the Mimico experience, recognizing the Vanier experience, are you concerned about the safety of the residents in my community as a result of having these institutions there and ensuring that these prisoners remain where they should be?

Hon Mr Christopherson: I appreciate the ongoing concern of the member for the inmates and staff at this facility as well as the residents who live nearby. Let me again emphasize that I think that all the governments that have had management of this particular ministry, whether it's ours, whether it's the previous government or the Tories, have made safety an absolute priority, and each of us has tried to enhance our ability to do that.

I believe and continue to believe that the safety level that we have in all our institutions is what it needs to be. We have the checks and balances that are in place with regard to the specifics the member mentions. He knows very well that the two issues are totally unrelated and have nothing to do with each other whatsoever and that action was taken to remedy that and that at no time was there any serious threat to the security of these facilities.

The matter I've addressed here today is one where there was a difference of opinion with regard to detail, not substance, to the best of my knowledge, and I also believe the matter has been rectified to the satisfaction of all involved. I expect that we will continue to give security and safety the very high priority that it deserves and needs to have in my ministry.

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I would like to give the member for Mississauga West an opportunity to correct the record in his member's statement in the Legislature this afternoon. The member for Mississauga West incorrectly stated that --

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): You can't correct -- Mr Speaker?

Mr Eves: Ms Poole, are you the Speaker or is he?

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Mr Eves: I'll listen to him.

The Speaker: Would the member for Parry Sound quickly address his point of order to the Chair.

Mr Eves: The member for Mississauga West incorrectly stated that an ad done by Mr Harris's party, or by Mr Harris, had been directed and produced by Americans. That is a totally inaccurate and incorrect statement. The fact is that a Toronto-based producer hired an Ontario, unionized crew --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Would the member for Parry Sound please take his seat.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Would the member please take his seat. The member knows that only the member for Mississauga West can correct remarks which he made.

Mr Eves: I am sure he would want to do that.

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Since the member for Parry Sound seems to have suggested -- I don't know what he's suggesting -- that I've made a statement that is not correct, it is my understanding, and if you want to read the Hansard, Mr Speaker, I'd be delighted to read it again, that Mr Harris and the Conservative Party hired Americans to design their slick, American-style campaign procedure, and I stand by my statement.

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CHILDREN'S SERVICES

Mrs Yvonne O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau): My question is to the Minister of Community and Social Services. Mr Minister, I am concerned about the serious matters of cuts to the mandated services that fall under the Child and Family Services Act: cuts to group homes for young offenders in open custody; cuts in counselling for troubled children and youth. The impact of these cuts on children at risk is already serious. In a letter of last week, you stated that you would not meet with the children's aid societies of either Peel or Halton, and I have the letter in my hand.

These agencies provide mandatory services. They do not determine the children who are presented to them. Are you really committed to providing the children's aid societies in this province with a stable source of funding, including the exceptional circumstances review?

Hon Tony Silipo (Minister of Community and Social Services): Yes. The answer is essentially yes. We continue to provide, and there will be more funds available under exceptional circumstances funding this year than there were last year. Those funds will continue to be there to help children's aid societies to deal with year-to-year pressures.

I can also tell the member that I have scheduled for tomorrow afternoon a meeting with representatives, not only of the children's aid societies but of all other agencies that we deal with in the ministry, to discuss with them some thoughts that we have and some proposals that we have for how to deal with the ongoing funding problems we have in the whole array of services, children's services and others. We obviously have been doing some work over the course of the last year in dealing particularly with the children's services issues and the cuts that were announced last year. There are some issues around this that I will want to discuss with the agencies.

We also believe that there are some things that we need and can do to help agencies restructure the way in which they are providing services. Those are also things that I will outline for people tomorrow. I will be very happy to share at that point the information with the member opposite.

Mrs O'Neill: To this point -- and indeed, many have brought it to the House today -- children are not even mentioned in budget '94. We have additions to waiting lists for young parents requiring support, waiting lists for children in foster care who need counselling, and children who are suspected of being abused, and the list goes on. Adults do not seem to be in as much jeopardy in these circumstances as children.

Agencies such as the children's aid society are mandated. They are mandated and given certain responsibilities. These are serious circumstances I bring to your attention, Mr Minister, and you continue to suggest very general solutions.

When will you really guarantee that child welfare is priority number one for this NDP government? When will you walk the walk, not talk the talk? I heard the Premier this afternoon, I'm sorry I have to say, in a very mealy-mouthed manner suggest that government will pitch in and help where it can. This government must take a leadership role, Mr Minister. Are you willing to do that?

Hon Mr Silipo: I think the member opposite will be pleased with some of the information that, as I said, I will be sharing with people tomorrow. She would be the first, I hope, to acknowledge that the solution to these very real problems is not one in which we can simply add more money to the pot. We have a limited amount of money.

What we have to do is to work with our agencies to see how those funds can be better spent. We are going to be suggesting tomorrow some very specific ways in which that can be done. I hope the member will respond to those suggestions and that the discussion can continue.

We believe that's the way in which we can plan not just how to best deal with the pressures we have now, but indeed that's the best way we need to plan for the forthcoming future and the issues, because these issues will not go away and the funding problems are going to be with us for some time. What we need to do is to therefore focus our activities to see how we can use the dollars we have in a much better fashion.

ADOPTION

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): My question as well is to the Minister of Community and Social Services. Minister, today representatives of over 206,000 persons who've been adopted in our province, including 35,000 adopted persons who don't even have their own name in their birth records, but are actually codified by a number, were here present to meet with you earlier and to conduct a rally and a press conference to talk about adoption disclosure amendments.

I want to cast you back five months ago, when you met with that group and myself. You indicated that it was a priority for your government, but that your place at the cabinet table was filled with welfare reform legislation and day care reform legislation, and that although you were committed to that, you unfortunately didn't have space.

In the last four months, your government has seen fit to cancel and not proceed with any of that legislation, so I ask you: Why is it that you told that group this morning in your cabinet boardroom that this amendment to adoption disclosure for so many Ontario residents is no longer a priority for your government?

Hon Tony Silipo (Minister of Community and Social Services): I want to be very clear with the member, because he heard what I said this morning and I want to repeat it here this afternoon, because he was part of that meeting he referred to. I made it very clear last year that I was not then in a position to say that proceeding with government legislation to deal with the issue of adoption was a decision the government had made. I made it very clear there had been no decision made by the government. I said that last year and I said that throughout the period. I stated my views on the issue very clearly, and that I felt this was an important issue.

I still believe that, and that's why the government at this point has not decided to proceed with government legislation, but as the member knows, and we discussed this this morning, there is a private member's bill that's being discussed later this week in the name of the member for Sault Ste Marie. I've indicated this morning and I can indicate publicly here again that I personally will be supporting that legislation and encourage members to support it, and I hope that through that legislation we may be able to seek a solution to this important issue.

Mr Jackson: This morning, the groups referred to your commitment as an abandonment, a copout, abandoning the interests of adoptees in this province. I remind you, Minister, that this is a serious issue. Thousands and thousands of individuals in this province are affected. Their compromise solution, with consensus, has been approved.

But what is threatening about this is that thousands of jobs around this province for social workers will be protected under your attitude and your approach. Millions of dollars can be saved if we allow for this legislation to proceed and allow for these adoption reviews to be done by adoptees who have permission from their birth parent to do the investigations.

Will you overcome the interests of the government employees in this regard and reach beyond that to help save taxpayers some money and do something humane and fair and sensitive for adoptees in this province? Other jurisdictions have succeeded, yet there's no political will from you to do so and you've sloughed it off as a private member's bill when there's time on the legislative agenda to complete this bill by the spring.

I ask you if you'll bring that in and make it government legislation and not leave it to a private member's bill.

Hon Mr Silipo: I think we could spend a lot of time debating the question of whether there should be government legislation or not, but I would say to the member, as I indicated again this morning, that personally I'm very supportive of the bill the member for Sault Ste Marie has put forward. I think it addresses on a consensus basis the kinds of issues that I know have been close to many people's hearts and that I think address the basic issue at the heart of this matter, in terms of giving people access to their original birth certificates once they are adults and at the same time protecting those birth parents who do not want to be contacted.

If there is the kind of support that obviously the member's question implies there is from him and other colleagues in the Legislature, the important issue is to see how this issue can be addressed in an effective manner, rather than belabour the point or get into arguments about what is the best course to proceed. The substance is what matters. I've indicated publicly and in a continuing way my continuing support for this direction, and I'm glad to restate that today.

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PETITIONS

KETTLE ISLAND BRIDGE

Mr Gilles E. Morin (Carleton East): I have a petition addressed to the Parliament of Ontario.

"Whereas the government of Ontario has representation on JACPAT (Joint Administrative Committee on Planning and Transportation for the National Capital Region); and

"Whereas JACPAT has received a consultants' report recommending a new bridge across the Ottawa River at Kettle Island, which would link up to Highway 417, a provincial highway; and

"Whereas the city and regional councils of Ottawa, representing the wishes of citizens in the Ottawa region, have passed motions rejecting any new bridge within the city of Ottawa because such a bridge and its access roads would provide no benefits to Ottawa but would instead destroy existing neighbourhoods;

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

"To reject the designation of a new bridge corridor at Kettle Island or at any other location within the city of Ottawa core."

I will affix my signature to this petition. I also have two packs of cards that will go to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and the Minister of Transportation.

GURDEEP NAGRA

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): I have a petition from a number of constituents in my riding, several of whom are here today in the members' gallery. It's addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"Whereas Mr Gurdeep Nagra, Mrs Nagra and their lawyer may have defrauded some 50 Torontonian Sikhs over a period of five years, starting in 1988, by way of shady deals, false promissory notes and bad cheques; and

"Whereas Professor Uday Singh, a senior citizen and pensioned university professor, lost half a million dollars to Mr Nagra; and

"Whereas Satwart Kaur, a widow, lost a quarter of a million to Mr Nagra; and

"Whereas the Metropolitan Toronto Police, the Attorney General, the Solicitor General and the Premier have all failed to make Mr Nagra accountable for his actions;

"Now therefore we, the undersigned, petition the government of Ontario to prosecute Mr Gurdeep Nagra and obtain restitution of all defrauded moneys to their rightful owners."

TOBACCO PACKAGING

Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): I've got a petition here to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in support of plain packaging of tobacco products.

"Whereas more than 13,000 Ontarians die each year from tobacco use; and

"Whereas Bill 119, Ontario's tobacco strategy legislation, is currently being considered by the Legislative Assembly; and

"Whereas Bill 119 contains the provision that the government of Ontario reserves the right to regulate the labelling, colouring, lettering, script, size of writing or markings and other decorative elements of cigarette packaging; and

"Whereas independent studies have proven that tobacco packaging is a contributing factor leading to the use of tobacco products by young people; and

"Whereas the government of Ontario has expressed its desire to work multilaterally with the federal government and the other provinces, rather than act on its own, to implement plain packaging of tobacco products; and

"Whereas the existing free flow of goods across interprovincial boundaries makes a national packaging strategy the most effective method of protecting the Canadian public;

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

"That the government of Ontario continue to work with and pressure the government of Canada to introduce and enforce legislation calling for plain packaging of tobacco products at the national level."

Mr Speaker, you can see it has been signed by hundreds of people and put out by the Coalition for a Smoke-Free Uxbridge.

FIREARMS SAFETY

Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"Whereas we, the undersigned, strenuously object to the Ministry of the Solicitor General's decision on the firearms acquisition certificate course and examination; and

"Whereas we should not have to take the time or pay the costs of another course or examination and we should not have to learn about classes of firearms that we have no desire to own;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Premier, the Solicitor General and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to change your plans, grandfather responsible firearms owners and hunters and only require future first-time gun purchasers to take the new federal firearms safety course or examination."

It's signed by 19 constituents.

HEALTH CARE

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): I have a petition that's been signed by over 500 people, the Coalition for Access to Preventative Medicine.

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

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

"On December 13, 1993, the Parliament of Ontario passed Bill 100, which was originally supposed to deal with sexual abuse of patients by physicians, an important piece of legislation. However, also under Bill 100, Bill 43, the Regulated Health Professions Act, was amended, giving the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario the authority to develop a quality assurance program, parts of which severely limit the choice of preventive health care in Ontario.

"We, the undersigned, demand that the Legislature of Ontario immediately repeal section 27(2) of Bill 100 to ensure citizens of Ontario of their basic rights as individuals to choose appropriate medical health care best suited to their individual needs."

TOBACCO PACKAGING

Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"Whereas more than 13,000 Ontarians die each year from tobacco use; and

"Whereas Bill 119, Ontario's tobacco strategy legislation, is currently being considered by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario; and

"Whereas independent studies have proven that tobacco packaging is a contributing factor leading to the use of tobacco products by young people; and

"Whereas the government of Ontario has expressed its desire to work multilaterally with the federal government and other provinces rather than act on its own to implement plain packaging of tobacco products; and

"Whereas the existing free flow of goods across interprovincial boundaries makes a national plain packaging strategy the most efficient method of protecting the Canadian public;

"Therefore, we, the undersigned, hereby petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

I have the pleasure of adding my name to that petition.

SALE OF AMMUNITION

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): I have a number of petitions from my riding that I'd like to read into the record.

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas it is imperative that we make our streets safe for law-abiding citizens;

"Whereas any person in Ontario can freely purchase ammunition even though they do not hold a valid permit to own a firearm;

"Whereas crimes of violence where firearms are used have risen at an alarming rate;

"Whereas we must do everything within our power to prevent illegal firearms from being used for criminal purposes;

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

"To immediately pass Liberal Bob Chiarelli's private member's bill, Bill 151, to prohibit the sale of ammunition to any person who does not hold a valid firearms acquisition certificate or Ontario Outdoors Card."

I agree with this petition and have affixed my signature.

JUNIOR KINDERGARTEN

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario which reads as follows:

"Whereas the previous provincial Liberal government of David Peterson announced its intention in its budget of 1989 of requiring all school boards to provide junior kindergarten; and

"Whereas the provincial NDP government is continuing the Liberal policy of requiring school boards in Ontario to phase in junior kindergarten; and

"Whereas the government is downloading expensive programs like junior kindergarten on to local boards while not providing boards with the funding required to undertake these programs; and

"Whereas the Wellington County Board of Education estimates that the operating cost of junior kindergarten will be at least $4.5 million per year; and

"Whereas mandatory junior kindergarten programs will force boards to cut other important programs or raise taxes; and

"Whereas taxes in Ontario are already far too high;

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

"We demand that the government of Ontario cancel its policy of forcing junior kindergarten on to local school boards."

I support this petition.

PENSION REFORM

Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): I have a petition to the Legislature of Ontario which reads as follows:

"We, the residents of Ontario, draw the attention of the Legislature to the following:

"That long-service employees are being released from their jobs more and more frequently;

"That more and more people are finding jobs unavailable;

"That this harms the economy and increases social benefit budgets.

"Therefore, your petitioners request that the Legislature change the Pension Benefits Act, 1985, revised 1990:

"That a provision should be put in place to coincide with the economy in the 1990s for displaced workers with locked-in pensions;

"That this money should be released and accessible due to (1) financial hardship, (2) loss of job, (3) starting a business, (4) no job available, and the LIF age should be reviewed and lowered."

This is signed by about 185 residents of Ontario.

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GAMBLING

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

"Whereas the New Democratic Party government has traditionally had a commitment to family life and quality of life for all the citizens of Ontario; and

"Whereas families are made more emotionally and economically vulnerable by the operation of various gaming and gambling ventures; and

"Whereas the New Democratic Party government has had a historical concern for the poor in society who are particularly at risk each time the practice of gambling is expanded; and

"Whereas the New Democratic Party has in the past vociferously opposed the raising of moneys for the state through gambling; and

"Whereas the citizens of Ontario have not been consulted regarding the introduction of legalized gambling casinos despite the fact that such a decision is a significant change of government policy and was never part of the mandate given to the government by the people of Ontario;

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

"That the government immediately cease all moves to establish gambling casinos by regulation and that appropriate legislation be introduced into the assembly along with a process which includes significant opportunities for public consultation and full public hearings as a means of allowing the citizens of Ontario to express themselves on this new and questionable initiative."

I've signed it myself.

FIREARMS SAFETY

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"We, the undersigned, strenuously object to the Ministry of the Solicitor General's decision on the firearms acquisition certificate course and examination; and

"Whereas we should not have to take the time or pay the costs of another course or examination and we should not have to learn about classes of firearms that we have no desire to own;

"We, the undersigned, petition Premier Bob Rae, Solicitor General David Christopherson and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"Change your plans, grandfather responsible firearms owners and hunters and only require future first-time gun purchasers to take the new federal firearms safety course or examination."

This petition is signed by some 95 constituents and I have affixed my signature thereto, in addition to hundreds of constituents, I might add, who have submitted similar petitions in the past.

EMERGENCY SERVICES

Mrs Irene Mathyssen (Middlesex): I have a petition from Middlesex constituents who utilize emergency services at Four Counties General Hospital in Newbury. Approximately 16,000 people are dependent upon the services at Four Counties General Hospital and petition the Legislative Assembly to call upon the Ministry of Health and the Ontario Medical Association to resolve the issue of emergency medical coverage in rural emergency departments and ensure that rural residents have the adequate emergency care to which they are entitled.

I have signed my name to this petition.

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

Mr Tony Ruprecht (Parkdale): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, which reads:

"Whereas the NDP government is hell-bent on establishing a 20-bed forensic facility for the criminally insane at the Queen Street Mental Health Centre; and

"Whereas the nearby community is already home to the highest number of ex-psychiatric patients and social service organizations and hundreds of licensed and unlicensed rooming houses in all of Canada; and

"Whereas there are other parts of Ontario where the criminally insane could be assessed and treated; and

"Whereas no one was consulted, not the local residents and business community, not leaders of community organizations, not the education and child care providers, and not even the NDP member of provincial Parliament in Fort York;

"We, the undersigned residents and business owners of our community, urge the NDP government of Ontario to immediately stop all plans to accommodate the criminally insane in an expanded Queen Street Mental Health Centre until a public consultation process is completed."

I have affixed my signature to the names.

LEADER OF THE THIRD PARTY

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): I have a petition here to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): Chris, I only have two of the 10.

Mr Stockwell: Tony only has two of the 10.

"We, the undersigned, object to the May 9 statement in the Legislature by the Liberal member for Mississauga West, spreading false and malicious gossip about the next Premier of Ontario, about the outstanding document just released by the Conservative Party, the Common Sense Revolution."

This has been signed by a number of people, and I will include my signature as well.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

HAMILTON AND REGION ARTS COUNCIL ACT, 1994

On motion by Mr Abel, the following bill was given first reading:

Bill Pr96, An Act to revive the Hamilton and Region Arts Council.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

1994 ONTARIO BUDGET

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government (1994).

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): We were not expecting much from this government in its fourth budget, so we were not surprised that there was not much there. There was not a great deal of damage that was done, as many of the commentators on the budget have already recognized, but then you wonder just how much more damage this government could do than it has already done.

But if there wasn't any more damage done, it is also a fact that there wasn't anything else in this budget either. There certainly were no jobs, there was no vision, and there was no hope. It was, according to many people, a nothing budget. You might then wonder why I called it, in responding to the budget last week, "a cynical manipulation by a dying government in an election year."

It's rather strong language, perhaps, to describe what many see as being a non-event, a nothing budget, but if it is a last gasp -- and we hope it is -- it might have been more appropriate to describe it in the poet T.S. Eliot's phrase,

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

But I suggest that this is not a nothing budget, even though it offers virtually nothing. It is a budget that is full of fine, optimistic phrases, a budget that is full of words of false hope, a budget that is full of myths, a budget which does cynically attempt to camouflage the reality of what has happened to this province under almost four years of the economic and the financial mismanagement of the NDP.

It is a cynical attempt to manipulate the voters of this province, hoping that they might forget just a little of what has happened over the past three and a half years. Usually, you ask to forgive and then forget. But the voters of this province clearly cannot forgive the New Democrats for what they have done to this province, and so the government just wants with this budget to help them forget a little.

I'm reminded a little bit of what my kids used to do when the mess in their room got to the point where they just couldn't hide it any longer, couldn't avoid having to clean it up. They would shove as much of the mess as they could under the bed, hoping that maybe nobody would notice. But just as when my kids shoved the mess under the bed, the NDP mess is all still there, and there is nothing in this "Make them feel a little better" budget that has taken any of it away.

But this isn't a kid with a messy room. This is the once-strong province of Ontario reduced to hoping that the credit agencies won't notice how bad our financial situation is, reduced to hoping that our big, strong brother in the south will solve our economic problems and bring us along, because we have a government that has destroyed the world's confidence in us, but worse, we have a government that has destroyed our confidence in ourselves.

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We needed leadership at this critical moment, when we have had enough of feeling beaten, when we want to seize the opportunity to build an economic recovery that would get this province and its people working again. That is the kind of leadership the people of this province are looking for and that is the kind of leadership that is nowhere to be found in this budget.

The Finance minister tries to talk a good game in describing the budget, but reality in every case undermines the myth that he's trying to create. So let us look at the myths.

Myth number one: This budget creates jobs. Let me state at the very outset that my view is that government does not create jobs; real economic growth creates jobs. It is hard to explain why in this budget the economic growth the Treasurer himself is predicting will occur is not going to produce the jobs we need.

There were 80,000 net new jobs created in the province of Ontario last year. This budget predicts that there will only be 62,000 net new jobs created in Ontario this year; almost 20,000 fewer new jobs this year than were created last year, and this at a point in time at which we all believed and all hoped that we were on the verge of a real economic recovery.

You have to ask why. When all the projections for the coming year are optimistic, why is Ontario producing fewer jobs? Why is our unemployment going to stay at 10.3%, barely moving, a fraction down from the unemployment that we saw last year? In fact, if this government is right in predicting that there will only be 62,000 net new jobs next year, and if we get the 75,000 new entrants to the workforce which we would normally see in the course of a year, our unemployment levels at the end of this year will be higher than they were last year, and that is completely unacceptable.

Why is that? The answer is that in the first quarter of 1994, January, February and March, when the rest of Canada gained 151,000 new jobs, we in Ontario lost 4,000 jobs. While the rest of Canada was moving ahead, Ontario remained in full retreat.

This is one of those places where the budget tries to cover over the reality. In the budget they talk about 350,000 new jobs being created over three years, and if you go all the way to page 50 you will find that the government says there will be 100,000 net new jobs created in the next 12 months. That conveniently allows the government to just take that loss of 4,000 jobs in the first three months of 1994 right out of the calculation.

The NDP's budgets in the past were based on something that we've called a wish and a prayer rather than any kind of sound planning, and when it comes to jobs and economic growth in this budget, nothing has changed. You can't escape the reality of what's happening by simply pretending it's not happening.

I would suggest that people not be fooled by another of the job numbers the government puts into its budget in the hope that nobody will notice that there will be fewer new jobs this year than last. On page 2 of the budget, the government talks about 166,000 jobs that are going to be created and sustained. "Sustained" is an important word, because about 145,000 of those jobs are exactly the same jobs that have been in the budget year after year. They come from the same capital spending that the Liberal government put into the budget, and that, yes, indeed, the New Democrats have maintained.

We are glad of that, although they actually haven't maintained it in its entirety. This is another one that's a little bit difficult to figure out, because budget after budget they keep planning to spend that amount of money on capital, they keep promising to spend that amount of money on capital, on the infrastructure that we need, but then they cut back every year in mid-year to be able to try to hit their budget targets, and that's another part of the myth. In fact, there have been, over three years, over the three previous budgets of this government, $1 billion in cuts in promised capital spending.

So let me talk about myth number two. Myth number two is that the province is creating more jobs by expanding its commitment to infrastructure. I'm going to leave it to my Finance critics to explore, or perhaps a better term is to expose, all of the manipulations of the capital funds: what they say they're going to spend and then don't spend; what they say they're going to pay for and what they're actually planning just to put on the credit card, which is a real concern for us.

I do want to note, in passing, the rather interesting fact that in this budget the dollars from the federal Liberal government's infrastructure program, which I think all of us would agree is one of the most significant job encouragement programs that a government has put forward -- a real stimulus to job creation across this country -- those dollars from the federal government are somehow taken and shown as revenue for the provincial government.

It's a little bit like taking the federal dollars and putting them in your pocket so that you can then turn around and spend them as if they were your own. In fact, this government cuts back on its commitment in many areas, its commitments to roads and capital maintenance at a municipal level, and in Metro alone we see they have been told that they will be cut back by at least $2 million in support for roads and capital maintenance. That is just a little more of the cynical shell game of a budget which is much more about politics than it is about economic renewal or a real government commitment to jobs or to good financial management.

That brings me to myth number three. Myth number three is that the budget deficit is $8.5 billion. The auditor has already expressed his concern about the way in which the provincial finances are reported by this government in its budget, and this is where the Minister of Finance himself is openly cynical about the way in which he's presenting his figures.

The minister has acknowledged that he knows that the Provincial Auditor will not approve his budget's presentation of Ontario's financial picture and he knew that his budget would not get the auditor's approval when the budget was developed. I consider that to be absolutely unconscionable.

The government has continued the practice of deferring its pension payments, it has continued its practice of moving spending off book and it does even more of it in this budget. They still are using revenue from one-time-only sales of its assets -- this year we see ferries and planes -- $267 million worth of one-time-only sales of assets that are being added to the revenue as a way of making the deficit seem lower, while they face future governments and future taxpayers to pay the cost of leasing back those same facilities year after year.

We believe that there would be about $2.7 billion more in the deficit figure if the auditor's recommendations to follow standard accounting practices were being observed in this budget. If you take the $8.5 billion that the government reports its deficit to be and you add to that the $2.7 billion that we would be looking at if they followed standard accounting procedures, we see the real deficit to be not $8.5 billion, but more like $11.2 billion. I ask you, is this what the Premier of this province tells us is solid progress being made on the deficit -- $11 billion?

Again, I'm going to let our Finance critic dissect all of this smoke-and-mirrors accounting in its fine detail, but I want to take a moment and express my very real concern about what all of this means. It's not just a matter of coming clean with the taxpayers about the true state of our province's finances, as important as it is that there be a clear picture of the reality of this province's finances; it is even more a matter of the way in which this government is building up a legacy of absolutely unmanageable debt.

They've engaged in something called loan-based financing, which is really a way in which you buy now on credit. That loan-based financing, that credit card financing, has gone from $800 million in last year's budget to $1.6 billion in this year's budget. If this government were to continue this kind of spending at this level of expenditure, it would add $8 billion to the debt of this province within a five-year period of time, just for this alone.

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It's difficult for us to understand what this loan-based financing, off-book financing is and why it should matter, so try to think about what it would mean to you or to me, how we could relate to this. I think it's a little bit as if we were to go out, you or I, and take a brand-new mortgage out on a brand-new house, not just once, but year after year. We would ask ourselves how much longer we could begin to handle just the interest that we would be paying on those new mortgages year after year.

We have raised our concerns with the accounting procedures. We have asked the auditor, once again, to look at this government's books, not at the end of the year, but now, today, when people want to know what the reality of our finances is. We don't want to have to wait for more than a year, when the bad news has already come in, to understand what new problems this government is creating.

Normally, of course, the auditor looks at the books only at the end of the budget year, when the accounts are finalized and when it's too late to persuade the government to stop the damage that's being done. We think it makes more sense to persuade the government to look honestly and realistically at this province's finances when they bring their budget in. The hope-it-will-get-better approach to the economy is exactly the same approach that this government brings to setting its spending and its deficit targets, and that brings me to myth number four: the myth that this government has reduced its spending.

I suppose, actually, in a way it has. It plans to reduce its spending from what it actually spent last year. Of course, the words in the budget speech don't mention the fact that the government spent $1 billion more than it planned to spend last year, and that it is spending $10 billion more than it spent in 1991. Of course, the budget doesn't even begin to talk about its failure to cut spending in areas where dollars are clearly being spent inefficiently.

I was amazed that this government continued its financial commitment to the Job Ontario Training program, apparently in full, when by any measure of evaluation, including this government's own criteria for how this program was to work, this program has failed to provide any permanent long-term jobs or any effective training.

I'm surprised that this budget boasts of all the added dollars in non-profit housing, which certainly ignores all of the concerns about the inefficiencies in the non-profit housing program.

Of course, there's nothing clearly stated in the budget about where this government has increased its spending. What are the costs, for example, of setting up the new Ontario Training and Adjustment Board bureaucracy? What are the costs of setting up the new bureaucracy for the advocacy legislation? What is the government going to spend to set up the bureaucracy to administer its employment equity legislation? What are the costs of driving the private sector out of child care and out of home health care? What's the brand-new cost of setting up a new, high-profile jobs program which is now to be called Job Link?

Then you might wonder, when we think about the government cutting spending in this budget, when do we find out where they have actually cut the spending and what the impact of those cuts will be? For example, where in this budget does it talk about the impact of the cuts in agriculture spending? Where in this budget do we get past the numbers game and find out what this government's priorities really are?

How do we know that this government is going to save $350 million on welfare fraud, which they do say in the budget they're going to do, when we don't know how much fraud there is in the welfare system and when there is surely no question that dealing with the problems that we face by hiring welfare police to go over the welfare records is the wrong way to go about making sure that the people who need the support are the ones who are receiving that support in the first place?

It's interesting that the budget actually didn't even mention the cost of the new health cards or how much fraud the new health cards are going to prevent. I wondered, when supposedly this was an important budget measure -- it was certainly an announcement that the Minister of Health made just days before the government was to present its budget -- why would it not appear in the budget? You actually begin to wonder whether one minister in this government ever talks to the other minister.

Did the Minister of Finance know that the Minister of Health was about to make a significant budget announcement to deal with health care fraud at the same time as she was introducing a new program with costs attached to it to take the steps to deal with fraud? You might have thought that was important enough to figure somewhere in the Minister of Finance's budget.

I guess, rather indirectly, that brings me to another of the myths: myth number five, that any of the figures in this budget are believable anyway. The NDP has consistently failed to meet its budget targets. They have made in-year additions to their deficits for the last three years. Why should this year be any different?

In the first budget, the NDP missed its deficit target by $1.2 billion. In the 1992 budget, they missed their deficit target by $2.1 billion. Last year, they missed their deficit target by $1.1 billion, even after they promised to get their finances under control. In total, the NDP deficit projections have been off by over $4 billion. The $4 billion in missed deficits comes also after, as I was suggesting earlier, they tried to manage their deficit problems by cutting more than $1 billion out of their promised capital spending over the past three years.

The media have already reported leading financial experts doubting any of this government's budget projections for this year. The Globe and Mail recently quoted George Vasic, who's the chief economist at Bunting Warburg, who complains that the NDP missed their target so much that when the NDP bring out this year's numbers, no one is going to believe them anyway.

Then there's the matter of the social contract. I'll confess that I didn't know where to put the social contract in my list of budget myths. Is the social contract a spending restraint that wasn't realized? Is it a deferred debt that doesn't show in this year's deficit and debt figures? I believe it is probably both. It is a failed restraint measure and it is also a deferral of debt liability. It is certainly not what the Treasurer claims that it is in this budget, for he says that the social contract saved $2 billion last year and avoided 40,000 layoffs. It is certainly not, as the Finance minister claims, about finding ways to provide services more efficiently for the long term. Every one of us who is talking to people in the public sector understands that the social contract has gotten in the way of people sitting down and working together to find ways to provide services more effectively and more efficiently.

Interjections.

Mrs McLeod: Well, I had trouble finding where I could fit the social contract into my list of myths because I realize that it's not just part of another myth; the social contract has a whole mythology of its own. Trying to follow what is happening out there in the various public sectors with the social contract has proven to be more impossible, not only for opposition but for the government itself, than finding your way through the mythical labyrinth.

We have now reached the first anniversary of the social contract. The reality is that in spite of all of the chaos that the government has created with it, the taxpayers are not getting the savings that were promised. No one knows exactly how much of the reported loss of $1 billion in savings is a result of the failure of the social contract. We have tried to estimate it, at least, at $600 million but we will have to wait for the government to attempt to unravel the mysteries of what is saving and what is not saving to know exactly how much of a failure the social contract has been to achieve $2 billion in restraints.

Over the past months we've seen cases where employers were forced to hire temporary staff to fill in the Rae days that were taken by their permanent staff, which didn't make a whole lot of sense to us. We've had reports in the media of the corrections staff working extra days to cover Rae days taken by the salaried employees. We have ambulance operators being forced to hire temporary staff to cover the Rae days of their full-time workers. We have Metro Toronto spending $800,000 for temporary child care workers to come in to replace the staff that are taking Rae days, and the public is left wondering how hiring temporary workers to cover the Rae days taken by the full-time staff actually saves the taxpayers any money at all.

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Then, in addition to the lost savings from hiring temporary workers, we've been told by government officials that their own social contract savings will be off target by at least $250 million. That figure includes the mistransfer cuts and missavings from pensions.

In the meantime, the government has managed to set up new offices with 50 employees to implement the social contract and spent more taxpayers' dollars doing that. The empire-building for the social contract includes a secretariat, a productivity-saving office, and it cost taxpayers at least $2.5 million on salaries alone, and only the NDP would build a new bureaucracy in order to bring about spending cuts. But the bottom line is that the government continues to refuse to give the public a full accounting of how much money has been saved under the social contract and how many new costs it has created.

The budget talks about finding "efficiencies" to ensure that the $2 billion in restraint, which has not been achieved yet, is going to be maintained after the end of the social contract. We have no idea what that means. What kinds of efficiencies are people being asked to put in place? Do the efficiencies that the Finance minister is talking about in this budget mean that there will be no catch-up on salaries? Is that what he would call an efficiency? Does it mean that there will be no reinstatement of the increments in salaries, so that there will be absolutely no response to the inequities that have been created by the arbitrary imposition of the terms of the social contract legislation?

There is only one thing that we know about what will happen when the social contract expires in 1996 or when it can be removed by a change of government before 1996. The one thing we know for certain is that the NDP will not be around to clean up the mess they created. But unfortunately for taxpayers, the social contract's problems will not be over.

Well, back to the myth that we can at least try and sort our way through, and I'll set the social contract aside for now and come to myth number six. Myth number six is that there are no tax increases in this budget. Technically, in terms of a new tax or a newly increased tax, again I suppose there is some truth to the statement. But the reality for taxpayers out there, the taxpayers that have to spend those dollars each year, is not what is in this budget; it's what is still hitting them from last year's budget.

Most of the $500 million more that the Treasurer is planning to collect in increased retail sales tax revenues comes from the taxes that he put in his last budget, comes from the tax on auto insurance. If you want to see a group of angry taxpayers, you just need to look at the thousands and thousands of responses from angry taxpayers who have written to us about last year's tax on auto insurance.

The increased revenue is going to come to the Treasurer from the tax that was put on home insurance and the tax on health insurance; $475 million dollars of the $500 million in increased revenues from sales tax in this budget will come from the tax increases that the government put into last year's budget, and surely that is still a tax increase. Then you've got the $100 million more from the surtax on higher-income earners, which is now in effect for 12 months, and that too is a tax increase in this budget, certainly for the people that are paying the tax, even if it is not for the Treasurer.

In case anyone is inclined to forget even a little what this government has done to taxpayers over the past four years, let me remind you that the average family in this province, with an income of about $48,253, is paying about $663 more in taxes because of this government's increase in taxes, budget after budget.

Let me remind you that in its first three budgets the NDP raised 43 taxes, taking $4 billion out of Ontario's economy, and that in addition to that they raised fees by $400 million. I have here five pages, in small print, line by line, of tax and fee increases brought in by the New Democrats budget by budget. I glance at the clock and wonder whether or not in the balance of time this afternoon I can even get through indicating and reminding people of the sheer list of taxes that have been raised by this government.

I think we also have to remember that even with $4 billion in tax increases, the NDP's tax revenue has actually dropped by $1.8 billion. We know that at least $4 billion has been lost through the underground economy, and the message the government had received when it went to put together this fourth budget had become clear even to the New Democrats: that we are overtaxed, overtaxed to the point where taxes are killing jobs and hurting this economy, and common sense said even to the New Democrats that they had to hold the line on taxes in this budget.

Common sense and concern for the economy also suggested to them that in fact they had to look at selected tax reductions. We've supported a reduction in the employer health tax. In fact, in our economic policy statement that we released last month we called for a 5% reduction in taxes over five years and we particularly looked at the importance of a reduction in payroll taxes, because we talked to those same people the Finance minister talked about earlier this afternoon. We went out and talked to people in communities and in businesses across the province, and they said to us very clearly that payroll taxes are indeed a killer of jobs.

So we believe that the government, in bringing about some reduction in the payroll tax, was taking a step in the right direction. I'm not convinced that they have presented that tax reduction in a way which will be equitable or fair or easy to implement, but I believe it is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, it is much too little much too late.

This budget offers too little much too late for young people in this province as well, and I want to focus for a moment on what is a real tragedy, and that is the tragedy of unemployment among our young people.

The unemployment among young people between the ages of 18 and 24 is reported to be something in the order of 19%. We believe that the real unemployment level among this group of young people is actually much higher, that it's probably closer to 30%, because there are so many young people, not just between the ages of 18 to 24 but well beyond the age of 24, young people who have gone on to complete their high school programs, have gone into training programs, have gone on to colleges and universities, young people who are graduating this spring and looking for jobs and the jobs aren't there, so they have simply stopped looking. They have given up in complete discouragement because they feel there is little hope for them.

There is nothing in this budget for those young people, nothing to speak to their sense of desperation and despair and their lack of hope. There is a line, I think it's in a paragraph on page 7 of the budget, that is a rather feeble attempt to say that this budget provides funds for youth employment. But there are no new funds for youth employment. There are just fewer dollars for fewer hours of work for a few more young people this summer, and that is not good enough to give the young people of this province some reason to believe their talents are going to be used to make a contribution and they are going to have some sense of hope and security in their future.

What is not in the budget is the decision to raise tuition fees for students in the province of Ontario by 20% over the next two years. It is perhaps not surprising that in a budget which offers nothing to young people, the budget would also just conveniently ignore a significant announcement made by this government only a few weeks ago on tuition fees for students.

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This is a budget, as I suggested before, that perpetuates the myth that there are no new taxes this year. But I say to you that 20% increases in tuition are a tax indeed; they are a tax on the financially vulnerable people of this province; they are a new tax, an increased tax on the students of this province. The government just forgets to mention that. The government forgets to mention that it increased its tax on students when it says there are no tax increases in this budget. They forget that they made it even more financially difficult for students who can't find jobs to at least stay in school.

When they talk about investing in training for young people -- what wonderfully fine words: "Investing in training for young people" -- where is there anything in this budget that shows that there is a real investment in training for young people? Just the opposite. That is myth number seven, and it's a rather sad myth. It's the myth that this budget offers anything for young people. But at least the Finance minister has the decency to be a little quieter on this one, because young people get left out of the minister's conclusions altogether.

Lastly, I come to myth number eight, and this is a myth which we've heard often in this Legislature in the last weeks and I suspect that we will hear often in future weeks as this government desperately tries to blame the problems of this province on anybody else that it can find to blame. Myth number eight is, "The feds did this to us."

Again, I have to acknowledge that this is only partly myth, because a federal Tory government did cap the transfer payments in a unilateral and arbitrary way to Ontario and to Alberta and to British Columbia.

Interjections.

Mrs McLeod: Our friends in the third party find that a matter for some humour, but I can assure you that the government of the day, when those transfer payments were capped by the Tory government, did not find it quite such a humorous matter as they tried to deal with the deficit that they were finding in their government.

As we go back and recognize that a federal Tory government did cap the transfer payments and that Ontario is now not getting its fair share, and we acknowledge that, it is because capped transfers don't work when the province is facing the kind of economic problems that this province has been facing for the past three and a half years, when the provincial government is presiding over an economy that it has helped to shatter and an unemployment level that has doubled since the New Democrats came to office.

Where the claim that the NDP can blame the federal government for its problems becomes particularly mythical, however, is when you look at the specifics of this year's budget, where the Treasurer received exactly what the previous federal government had indicated that the province would receive. We can certainly argue that it was not fair, that what the federal Tories were going to give Ontario was not a fair allocation, and we would agree with that. But it is totally wrong for the government of Ontario to say that what it expected to receive was cut back by the current federal government.

There was no bailout for the Ontario Treasurer in this budget from the federal government, apart from that $253 million in infrastructure payments which he conveniently put in his pocket. Apart from that, I will agree that there was no bailout for the Ontario Treasurer in this budget from the federal government, but there was no decrease either. Suggesting that they have budget problems because of decreased support from the current government is simply not true.

In fact, if I stretch a little bit to attempt to put the whole thing in perspective, even recognizing that under the federal Tory government the transfer payments to Ontario for education and health care actually increased by something like $775 million during Bob Rae's term in office, I would be presenting a true picture and perhaps a fair perspective.

It's also interesting that those increases in transfer payments for education and health care, two of the top priorities for people in this province and, I would have thought, two of the top priorities for the government of the day, were not passed on in full measure to those who provide the health care and the education of this province. You wonder what it says about this current Ontario government's priorities when it doesn't even pass on what it does receive from the federal government to serve the purposes of quality education and quality health care.

I think the myth becomes even more ludicrous when the NDP government, the government that has been in office for some three and a half years now, tries to blame the kinds of problems that it has created for this province, tries to blame the problems created by three and a half years of economic and financial mismanagement, on a new federal government that has been in office only six months. That is truly ludicrous.

It is a reflection of the complete failure of this government to accept the reality and the responsibility for the mess the government itself has made. They will blame anybody but themselves. They will blame the opposition parties, they will blame the world recession, they will even blame the media and now they will blame a federal government that has only been in office for six months. They will blame everybody but themselves as they continue to refuse to take responsibility for this province's economic problems.

There is one myth the budget has actually destroyed, and that is the myth that this government was ever committed to social assistance reform or to child care reform. For months and, indeed I would say, for years we have had pronouncements from the government about social assistance reform and child care reform and we have had no action at all. We have had announcements even about social assistance reform and child care reform, but we've had announcements with no costing at all. Now it is clear that there is no money for social assistance reform or for child care reform.

Now that this budget has destroyed that myth of commitment to social assistance reform or child care reform, maybe now this government will stop making its campaign-style announcements across the province when it has no commitment to ever putting those new programs in place. Perhaps, just perhaps, we can stop some of the political rhetoric and finger-pointing and blame-laying and we can get on with the job of actually working in real cooperation with the federal government to bring about real reform in our social programs, because that's what's needed and that's what the people of this province are looking for.

This budget is a sorry attempt to offer a "Make them feel a little better." It is a budget of a dying government. It is a budget of a government that has simply stopped trying. It's a budget that offers no bold new ideas, no vision of what this province can and must be. The bottom-line reality is that this government cannot camouflage its own legacy. They cannot hide from a made-in-Ontario recession that has given us record unemployment, skyrocketing deficits and debt and $4 billion in new taxes.

This government cannot and will not ever be able to escape from the fatal mistake of trying to spend its way out of a recession in its first budget. They cannot escape from the reality of their record. The record is 200,000 more people out of work. The record shows that the welfare case load in this province has doubled during the term of this government. It shows that Ontario has gone from having the lowest unemployment rate in Canada to having the sixth-highest unemployment rate in Canada. The province that used to lead this country's economy is now trailing its recovery. It is a record that shows that 145,680 manufacturing jobs, once the strength of this province's economy, were lost from September 1990 to July 1993. And our deficit is still almost three times what it was when it reached the previous historic high, which we experienced in the last budget of the Tory government in Ontario. It is a record that shows that in spite of $4 billion in taxes, the four Bob Rae budgets have spent 25% more money than they have actually raised.

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This record cannot easily be erased, and real confidence will not be restored in this province while this government remains in office. This Finance minister has said he would be proud to go to the polls with this budget. If he believes this budget is good news, then let's go to the polls and let the public decide.

That is my analysis of what I have called a cynical budget, a budget with no jobs, no vision and no hope, a budget that tries, and fails, to make people forget how bad the years of the NDP government have been.

But I will acknowledge that while the budget presented by the government is full of myth, not fact --

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Now it's our turn.

Mrs McLeod: Yes indeed, as the member from the third party says, it is your turn, because the NDP are no more guilty of avoiding reality than the Tories are in the Mike Harris plan.

I could expose a whole new set of myths as we examine the proposals for the so-called revolution, the plan to make the party of John Robarts and Bill Davis into Ralph Klein-Preston Manning wannabes. We see today, of course, that this is not a Common Sense Revolution; it is indeed a new form of the American Revolution, and we see that it is complete with a new invasion of Canada by the Americans, well orchestrated by the leader of the third party.

But let me return to the myths in the Mike Harris proposals.

It is certainly a myth that this revolution could produce some 225,000 more jobs than the current government believes can be created, when the economy, during this so-called revolution proposed by the leader of the third party, is actually for some reason going to grow more slowly than it would in NDP Ontario. It's hard to know how you can create 225,000 more jobs with even slower economic growth than this province has experienced under the New Democrats.

And it is definitely a myth that you can expect to balance the budget -- not just the operating budget, but the operating and the capital budget -- within four years without better economic growth, with a 30% cut in income tax, and without cutting services in health and education and community safety and municipal transfers, and of course the debt payments, which inevitably are going to have to go up while this miracle of budget-balancing is under way.

If I can follow the Mike Harris plan, if I can understand it, if the revolution does what it actually says it's to do and cuts 20% of the total budget spending -- I draw people's attention to page 1, point 2, where it says, cut 20% of the total spending of the budget -- you might come close to balancing a budget. But of course you can't cut 20% of the total budget by dealing only with what the Harris plan calls "non-priority" areas, so it seems to me that this would mean much more devastating cuts in non-priority areas. If we take the plan as what the words say it's all about, the non-priority areas make up only about 40% of the budget. That means that to get a 20% cut in the total spending of the budget, using only 40% of the budget as a target for your cuts, you have to think about what would happen if you actually tried to make cuts of 50% or better in children's services or in agriculture, or in tourism, or in forest generation, which is the basis of the economy in my part of the province.

None of this is possible. It is not common sense; it is absolute nonsense. But then, it is all myth anyway, because the Harris plan and its numbers simply don't add up. I've tried looking at the fact that "20% of total spending" means cutting more than $6 billion, yet $6 billion is what the Harris plan says they need to cut, even though they intend to cut 20% of total spending, although elsewhere they say that it's only 20% of non-priority spending that they want to be cutting, and 20% of non-priority spending is actually only $4 billion in cuts, which is less than what they say they need to cut, which is $6 billion.

The bottom line, if there is a bottom line, would seem to be that they want to cut $5 billion in taxes and only cut $6 billion in spending and still balance the budget within four years. Again, that is not common sense; it is absolute nonsense.

But then, when I try and wind my way through the figures in the Harris plan, it starts to read a little bit like something Alice in Wonderland would have encountered at the Mad Hatter's tea party, and it makes my head spin. I will leave it to others to figure out what it means.

The Tory numbers are more complicated to follow than the NDP's budget statements about how many jobs are going to be created this year, or at least in the next 12 months, or at least will be supported or sustained over the next year, or in the next three years. All I know is that the Tory numbers don't add up any better than the numbers in the NDP budget. The rhetoric and the unrealistic, unachievable promises have just flipped from one ideological extreme to the other. They remain unrealistic and completely unachievable, hollow, empty promises, and people have had enough of that.

Mike Harris and the NDP are also somewhat similar in wanting to build a little bit of selective memory into their rhetoric, and that is yet another place where reality undermines the myth that the Tories are trying to create, just as reality undermines the myth that the NDP budget tries to create.

One of those myths we have is this myth of "Mike Harris the tax fighter," and we've all heard that one. But I wonder if anybody with a little less selective memory actually remembers that when the Tories were last in office, Mike Harris the tax fighter supported 16 Tory tax hikes which actually totalled more than $1.8 billion.

I didn't take time to read my five pages in small print of the taxes that the NDP has raised over the past three and a half years, but I am going to take time, because memory is kind of a short thing, and I think it's important for us to go back and remember the kind of taxes that Mike Harris supported while he was in government. Those taxes included, in the 1981 budget: income tax raised 4%, for $450 million in revenue; OHIP premiums raised by 15%, for $120 million in revenue; fuel tax raised by $135 million; tobacco tax raised by $50 million; alcohol taxes raised by $32 million.

It's an interesting fact of history, reality, that provincial Ministry of Finance staff have confirmed that the 1981 Frank Miller budget -- supported 100%, apparently, by Mike Harris -- was the largest tax increase in Ontario's history when you take into account inflation, even larger than the increases of the NDP government.

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But Mike Harris and the Tories didn't stop there. They raised taxes again in their 1982 budget, and those taxes included another $170-million increase in OHIP premiums. They broadened the base of the provincial sales tax -- broadened the base of the provincial sales tax? -- to generate another $230 million, and increased alcohol taxes by $27 million.

Then, in 1983 Mike Harris and the Tories raised taxes again, a third increase in OHIP premiums totalling $60 million; another $31-million increase in alcohol taxes -- don't we have a problem with alcohol taxes today? -- a $70-million increase in corporate taxes -- Mike Harris the tax fighter supporting a raise in corporate taxes -- and surprisingly, Mike Harris the tax fighter, about to bring in a 30% reduction in income taxes, supported in 1983 Ontario's first income tax surcharge, to gain $170 million.

In 1984, Mike Harris and the Tories brought in what was to be their last budget before the 1985 provincial election. They were facing the same kind of situation the Minister of Finance and the NDP government face. They wanted it to be a good-news budget, but they didn't succeed in doing what at least the New Democrats did with their fourth budget. They didn't succeed in bringing in a budget with no new taxes, because their 1984 budget, their pre-election good-news budget, included a fourth increase to OHIP premiums worth $69 million and water power charges increases totalling $44 million.

So much for the myth of Mike Harris the tax fighter. I think the record of Mike Harris the tax fighter puts him right up there with his federal friend of goods and services tax fame.

I am critical of budgets that offer no vision and no sense of reality, and that is what the NDP's fourth budget has given us, no vision and no sense of reality, and I will be critical of proposals from the third party that are equally unrealistic and unachievable.

I happen to believe that the people of this province need and want more than that and that they deserve more than that. I believe that the people of this province want real leadership, leadership that is based on a vision of the strengths of this province and a conviction that we can indeed become North America's leading economy.

We in our party have offered that kind of vision and we have set that kind of goal. Our goal and our commitment is to reduce the unemployment levels in this province to 6% within five years, because we cannot and will not accept the NDP's predictions that a 9% unemployment level is good enough for the people of the province of Ontario.

But the people of this province want even more than vision, they want even more than clearly stated goals -- ambitious, yes, but achievable, yes. They also want balanced and realistic plans to achieve the goals, and we have presented those as well. Unlike the hollow promises and the rhetorical approach of the Tories, our plan is a realistic plan to create jobs and indeed to get this province working again.

As I indicated earlier, we, like the Treasurer, I suppose, went out earlier this year. We went out with our jobs task force. We talked to people in 15 different communities about where they saw the jobs of the future coming from, because we became truly concerned that we would see in this province what we see reflected in this budget: that even with economic growth, the economic growth would not come with jobs. We were truly concerned that the economic growth that we all hope is around the corner, in spite of this government, would not actually get people back to work again.

We went out and we talked to people about where they saw the jobs in their communities coming from in the future, and our jobs task force came back and made a report. The report of our jobs task force led clearly to one inescapable, indisputable conclusion, and that's that Ontario's unemployment situation is nothing short of a crisis, and it requires in response nothing less than a full-out war on unemployment.

It is that war on unemployment, that refusal to accept the fact that we remain content with 10% or 9% unemployment levels, that is absent in this budget that this government has presented.

The work of our jobs task force led us to put together a plan that we truly believe deserves the commitment, the total energies of government in order to make Ontario North America's leading economy. We have set a goal of creating 150,000 more jobs over the next five years than the government has anticipated, and that would reduce our unemployment levels to 6%.

We have proposed, as part of our five-point plan, to reduce the overall tax burden in this province by 5% over five years, which we believe to be realistic and doable without driving the deficit of this province up.

We have proposed and are committed to reducing the cost to business of paperwork and regulation, the cost of red tape by nothing less than 50% over five years, and that is well beyond a statement in this budget that this government is going to bring in some kind of legislation to cut red tape that it has built up over the last three and a half years.

When there is legislation presented that cuts red tape, I will be a little less sceptical about this government's intent.

Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): What did you do for five years?

The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): The member for Oxford, come to order.

Mrs McLeod: We have recognized in our five-point plan, that we have 1960s tools and structures of government dealing with a 1990s reality. We have committed ourselves to reform of government programs, a real reform of social assistance and to real reform of the Workers' Compensation Board and in fact our Labour critic has presented proposals for truly radical reform of the Workers' Compensation Board without cutting benefits to injured workers in this province.

We have recognized that in order to be North America's leading economy, we must have the best-trained workforce in North America, and we are committed to a quality education and training program. I say that the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board and the Jobs Ontario Training program are not part of our approach to having a quality education and training program.

We have heard from small and medium-sized business, where the jobs of the future will be created, that they need access to financing, that we do need to challenge banks to improve their services to small and medium-sized businesses, but that we need to go beyond that.

What we heard from small and medium-sized businesses was that for the small business to grow larger they have to be able to export. This is a global economy. It is not the kind of free trade economy in which we invite the Americans to come over and run our advertising campaigns, but it is nevertheless a global economy, and Ontario can be a strong and successful participant in the global economy but our small and medium-sized business people need support to know how they can become exporters, how they can get information about export markets, and that is part of our commitment to creating the kind of climate in which we can have real economic growth.

The response to our plan for job creation and economic renewal in this province has been overwhelmingly supportive.

Lloyd Atkinson, who is the chief economist for the Bank of Montreal, has said, "It is reasonable that reductions in taxes and reductions in the regulatory burden would all work in the direction of improving the jobs environment."

Paul Oliver, who's the president of the Ontario Restaurant Association, has said, "With the jobs task force report, Lyn McLeod recognizes that government can't unilaterally drive the economy, but can build labour-management consensus to get Ontario working again."

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Joe Mancinelli, who is the subregional manager of the Labourers' International Union of North America, said: "This is a creative, commonsense document that addresses all of the components of the job issue in Ontario. It sketches a plan all Ontarians should be happy to review and implement."

Bill Hurst, who is the counsellor for Metro Youth Job Corps, said: "I'm happy the JTF took youth unemployment seriously by addressing it in a formalized way. It's important that they have included youth concerns in a real position paper...which indicates that they have listened to some degree about young people's frustrations."

Jerry Kinsella, who's the business manager of Local 172, restoration and steeplejacks, said that the jobs task force plan is "solid work that brings a balanced and reasonable approach to the job creation debate. The JTF has retained a human dimension in considering competing public policy options."

Philip Buxton, who is a senior member of management for Credit Suisse Canada, says the task force report is "a good paper with clear economic growth vision. There are options spelled out here that can be translated into clear steps whose success can be measured against the vision."

Alasdair McKichan, the president of the Retail Council of Canada, has said: "Employment levels have a direct bearing on retailers' health...they recognize their future is bound up in imaginative solutions to the jobs crisis. The JTF report offers a number of positive solutions, particularly in the realm of simplifying the role of the employer."

This kind of vote of confidence is the kind of confidence that the province of Ontario is seeking. People in this province are seeking confidence that there is a vision and that there is also a realistic and workable plan to achieve it.

They're looking for confidence that government is ready to commit all of its resources to achieving the goal of getting this province and its people working again. What people want most of all and what they need most of all is the confidence that they can face the future with optimism and with hope.

It was a shocking fact that in a survey which we recently did of people living in the Metro Toronto area, with over 2,000 responses, two out of three of the people responding believed that they could lose their job within the year. I am convinced that kind of anxiety about the future would be reflected in every community across this province. That is not good enough for the people of Ontario and not good enough for this province.

The budget that was presented last week does not establish that sense of confidence. I would suggest to you, to all members of this House, that a four-page supplement in the daily newspapers of this province to try to convince us once again that "Ontario's Budget Plan Is Working" is not adding anything to the confidence of the people of Ontario that their future is secure and that they will be working again.

Because this budget does nothing to establish that desperately needed sense of confidence about our future, I would therefore move that the resolution moved by the Minister of Finance on May 5 "that this House approve in general the budgetary policy of the government" be amended by deleting the words following the words "that this House" and adding thereto the following:

"Recognizing that the budgetary policy put forward by the Minister of Finance offers no news, no jobs and no hope to get Ontario working again; and

"That the NDP budget fails to respond to the 590,000 people in Ontario who are unemployed, and accepts that high levels of unemployment will be part of our future for years to come; and

"That this budget does little to offset the NDP's legacy of $4 billion in new taxes and $400 million in fee increases, which are the highest tax increases since the Tories were in office; and

"That the budget does virtually nothing to address the $40 billion in new debt added by the NDP, which is the largest increase in the provincial debt since the Tories were in office; and

"That the NDP's refusal to pursue a fiscally responsible plan for the first three and a half years of its mandate has created a fiscal crisis which has resulted in job losses and hampered the economic recovery in the province; and

"That the NDP have refused to recognize the job-killing economic impact of their anti-business legislation; and

"That the NDP's more than $2-billion hidden deficit plan of hiding debt through loan-based financing, debt-financing capital corporations, delayed pension payments, and the one-time fire sale of government assets are short-term solutions which do little to restore business and investor confidence; and

"That the NDP have refused to implement the Provincial Auditor's recommendations to fully account for the real deficit of the province; and

"That at a time when the people of Ontario were looking for bold new ideas and leadership, the NDP decided to throw in the towel and release a stand-pat budget that is clearly the last gasp of a dying government; and

"That the NDP budget is as full of empty rhetoric and as unable to put the people of this province back to work as the Tories' economic framework; and

"That the NDP refuse to implement a realistic Liberal plan to bring unemployment down to at least 6% by:

" -- Cutting the overall tax burden by 5% over five years;

" -- Reducing the cost of dealing with red tape by 50% over five years;

" -- Achieving a balanced operating budget within a Liberal government's first mandate;

" -- Keeping a firm lid on WCB premium increases;

" -- Improving businesses' access to financing, through challenging banks to improve their service to small and medium-sized businesses and requiring financial institutions to prepare and publish codes of conduct for such financing;

" -- Renewing our commitment to global trading and improving our infrastructure; and

"Failing to implement this realistic plan,

"We therefore propose that the House has lost confidence in this government."

Mr David Johnson (Don Mills): As I understand it, at this point it is the tradition that the debate be adjourned and be picked up tomorrow, and I move adjournment of the debate at this point.

The Acting Speaker: Is it the pleasure of the House that the debate be adjourned? The Chief Government Whip.

Hon Fred Wilson (Chief Government Whip): Madam Speaker, I move adjournment of the House.

The Acting Speaker: Do we have agreement that the House be adjourned at this time? Agreed. This House stands adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, at 1:30.

The House adjourned at 1643.

9 mai 1994