ANNUAL REPORT, PROVINCIAL AUDITOR
SUPPORT AND CUSTODY ORDERS ENFORCEMENT
MOTORCYCLE AND SNOWMOBILE INSURANCE
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
MISSISSAUGA SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING ASSOCIATION ACT, 1994
ONTARIO ASSOCIATION OF HOME INSPECTORS ACT, 1994
The House met at 1331.
Prayers.
ANNUAL REPORT, PROVINCIAL AUDITOR
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I beg to inform the House I have today laid upon the table the annual report of the Provincial Auditor of Ontario covering audits completed through 1994 and invite all members to welcome to our chamber, and seated in the gallery, the Provincial Auditor, Mr Erik Peters.
MEMBERS' STATEMENTS
4-H DAIRY SHOW
Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): Yesterday the Scotiabank Hays Classic, which is the penultimate 4-H dairy show in Canada, was concluded at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. It was indeed an extremely fine show, with close to 300 young people from eight of Canada's 10 provinces competing.
Each had concentrated time and effort over many months on selecting, feeding, maintaining records, grooming and training their cattle, and each competitor was selected from his or her own county or region on the basis of their success and accomplishment at local and regional fairs.
The competitors worked as a team with others from their areas and cooperated in ensuring that their county exhibits were the best they could be.
Caden Chalack from Calgary exhibited the grand champion heifer at the show, a deep and leggy summer yearling bred by Acme Holsteins of Carstairs, Alberta. The champion showman was Barclay Phoenix of Durham West county, with Connie Bennett of Halton being reserve champion.
The team exhibit of best of three animals in the show went to exhibitors from the Waterloo county 4-H club. The herdsmen exhibit was won by 4-H'ers from Lambton county, whose hard work on a continuing basis at the Royal won them the judges' nod.
I'm very proud that my own 4-H'ers from Halton county were presented with the overall championship club award for the calibre of their animals, their showmanship, their prowess as herdsmen and their teamwork. For us in Halton, it was once again a very proud day.
For young people from across Canada, the show is an extremely fine effort, and I hope that all members of the House will join me in honouring 4-H'ers from across Canada.
HYDRO RATES
Mr Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): I direct this statement to the Minister of Environment and Energy. I would like to draw his attention to an energy policy that is being considered by the Oshawa Public Utilities Commission. In keeping with our plan to freeze Ontario Hydro rates for five years, I think their plan is also a commonsense approach that could actually reduce the power rates of every customer in Ontario.
I am referring to a dual metering system which would measure power consumption during peak and off-peak periods. This type of meter would allow the utility to charge cheaper rates during off-peak periods. Much like the method used by the telephone companies, rates would be dropped in the evening and be further reduced during the night.
For a cost of $300 spread over two years on the customer's hydro bill, each customer could purchase a meter that would record off-peak usage. Instead of just providing a rate reduction to large industrial customers, this system would boost small business and give individuals much-needed relief on their energy bills. We can do this at no cost to Ontario Hydro.
CHINESE COMMUNITY
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): I rise today as the member of provincial Parliament for Fort York to honour some outstanding Chinese Canadians who have contributed greatly in helping to make Ontario a better place in which to live.
As legislators, it is important that we recognize special individuals who so willingly give their time and effort to community service, for without them our neighbourhoods would suffer from a lack of community, social and economic development.
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the following distinguished guests to the House: Afonso Chan, vice-president of the Toronto Macau Club; Wan To Cheng, chair of the Toronto Hong Kong Macau Fellowship Association; Willy Cheng, president, Shing Wah News; Yik Hon Cheung, vice-president, Hong Kong Association; Ken Chong, president, Ship Thoy Yuen Benevolent; Linda Fang, president, Chinese Women's Association; Hung Chow Fung, president, Hung Chow Fung Fine Arts Studio; Lee Shu Ham, director, Chinese Canadian Intercultural Association; Kenneth Keng, president, Chinese Community Centre of Ontario; Chan Yiu-Kuen, chair, Chinese Canadian Intercultural Association; Stephen Lee, director, Toronto Hong Kong Macau Fellowship Association; Philip Leung, president, Toronto Hong Kong Macau Fellowship Association; Wan Qoi Lim, president, World Kwantung Association; Jeffrey Lo, president, Chinese Artist Association; Moon Lum, honourable chair, Chinese Community Centre of Ontario; On Po Sze, president, Chinese Canadian Intercultural Association; Hin Cheung Tam, president, World Chu Lun Association; Peter Wong, director, Toronto Chinese Business Association and Bank of China.
It gives me great pleasure to rise in the House today to recognize these individuals and others like them who work so tirelessly in our community.
ANTI-DRUG STRATEGY
Mr Tony Ruprecht (Parkdale): We find it very strange that the minister responsible for the provincial anti-drug strategy is not acknowledging the importance of National Drug Awareness Week, November 13 to 19.
The Ontario Multifaith Alliance Against Drug Abuse and the Ontario Drug Awareness Partnership have kicked off National Drug Awareness Week this week. Normally, the minister responsible would address and encourage Ontarians to maintain and develop a strategy so that the human misery which is continuing in terms of drug abuse is somewhat reduced.
But we should not be surprised that there is no strategy and that there is no announcement. Where, we'd like to ask, are most of the recommendations? Were they shoved under the carpet? We all know the recommendations that were made by three reports to Ontario in order to (1) increase treatment centres -- where is the funding? (2) get tough with drug pushers -- where are the new proposals and the new laws? (3) educate our children against drugs -- where are the policies?
It seems to us that this government is bankrupt of ideas, and this is only one announcement of many that is not forthcoming. I hope that it will very quickly.
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MUNICIPAL LEGISLATION
Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): My statement is for the Minister of Municipal Affairs and concerns the seriously flawed attempt at revamping Ontario's planning and municipal statute laws. I spoke and voted against this legislation on second reading because the impact of Bill 163 is difficult to measure, due to the sheer complexity of the reforms.
Minister, you simply cannot deny that most of those appearing before the standing committee on administration of justice reflected the views presented by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. That organization initially welcomed reforms to Ontario's Planning Act, Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act and the Municipal Act.
AMO representatives told us Bill 163 contains some fundamental flaws and will not lead to any significant improvements. AMO also indicates that while the legislative amendments contained in Bill 163 are a step in the right direction, they fall significantly short of fulfilling the principles of reform.
You even agreed that Bill 163 is seriously flawed -- so flawed, in fact, that you brought forward more than one half of the more than 200 amendments introduced at the justice committee hearings.
I regret that the minister's urgency in rushing Bill 163 through this Legislature clearly shows he has little regard for the views or the concerns of Ontario. Can't you take the hint that more than 200 amendments prove your legislation is beyond comprehension?
The indications are it could cost up to $9 billion over the next five years to implement the plans in Bill 163.
SAULT STE MARIE BUSINESS
Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): I would like to personally congratulate all those individuals in my constituency of Sault Ste Marie who were elected to office yesterday, and I would also like to thank all those who participated by seeking office but were not successful.
Today, I would like to recognize all the small businesses in the Sault that have struggled and stayed viable through a very difficult economy. The Sault Ste Marie Chamber of Commerce has shown great leadership in our community by supporting, servicing and organizing events so that these enterprises might thrive and prosper.
On October 27, the chamber presented its annual awards honouring local entrepreneurs. I would like to extend my personal congratulations for their achievements to Tony Ruscio of the Ramada Inn and Convention Centre, David Cook of M&M Meat Shops, Brian Irwin of the Business Development Centre, Suzanne Thompson, Herbert Lash of H.R. Lash, Debbie MacDonald of Algoma Furniture, Linda Kulmala of Healthwares Medical Canada, Udo Rauk of the Queenstown Association and Rod Goodall of Aladdin Carpet Cleaning.
Thank you on behalf of Sault Ste Marie and the province for your efforts towards making our community stronger.
Tomorrow evening, the chamber of commerce, in partnership with the Jobs Ontario broker, as part of their business after 5 program, will hold an appreciation night in recognition of those businesses and workplaces in our local Jobs Ontario Training program. We want to thank everyone involved in Jobs Ontario Training in the Sault and Algoma for making it one of the most successful programs in the province.
LONG-TERM-CARE REFORM
Mrs Yvonne O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau): I rise today to express my deep concern with the NDP government's disregard for the value of service provided by non-unionized and volunteer workers in this province.
Yesterday, the government introduced an amendment to section 15 of Bill 173 which would mandate multiservice agencies, the cornerstone of the long-term-care reform presented by this NDP government, to choose unionized workers before considering any or all other classes of workers in this province when filling jobs in the future.
While we in the Liberal caucus recognize that excellent service is provided day after day and year after year by unionized workers, we cannot condone discrimination against any worker presently providing service in long-term care.
Amendments to section 15, as proposed late yesterday by the NDP government, will perhaps eliminate, will certainly place last in line, thousands of qualified, experienced workers who are today providing services in their communities.
With this latest amendment, the government is saying to volunteers and experienced, qualified, non-unionized workers, "You're not welcome in long-term-care reform." They are saying that regardless of the quality of care the workers are presently providing: "Quality of care be damned. The recipients of long-term care will no longer need your services or desire them."
MACCULLOCH DANCERS
Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): Today, I am most pleased to give tribute to the MacCulloch Dancers based in Glengarry county. The MacCulloch Dancers recently represented Canada at the China International Folk Art Festival in Beijing and at other folk festivals across China. This group of 20 dancers aged 15 to 19 and one piper from eastern Ontario was invited by the China Federation of Literary and Arts Circles after Cornwall's Worldfest/Festimonde in July 1993. Canada was one of 16 countries present from four continents. With a total of 19 performances, the MacCulloch Dancers had a combined live audience of over 360,000, as well as television coverage across all of China.
Under the direction of the group's founder in 1955, Mrs Rae MacCulloch, and her daughters, Helen Forbes and Deborah Wheeler, the dancers spent a year in preparation and fund-raising for this three-week tour.
It is only proper that we recognize their achievements here today. The dancers, musicians and directors are Tara Barton, Margaret Bush, Alana Cameron, Melanie Codie, Donna Downing, Heather Forbes, James Forbes, Kendra Forbes, Cindy Gillette, Shawna Hamilton, Laura Hill, Rae MacCulloch, Leigh Ann MacEwen, Melinda Main, Erin McIntosh, Kimberly McKay, Patricia McKay, Joy Nichol, Colleen O'Brien, Jennifer Ogilvie, Allison Stewart, Elisabeth Tauvette, Amy Wood and Jenny Wood.
Congratulations on a very successful tour as our ambassadors.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT
Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): I would like to congratulate all of the winners and challengers in yesterday's municipal and school board elections. In looking through the newspapers today, you readily see that local government in Metro Toronto and the surrounding areas is at a level that can no longer be supported. By my count, there are 11 mayors, 142 councillors, 164 trustees -- in total, 317 local representatives, many of them part-time positions with full-time pay. This includes only a fraction of the surrounding municipalities and does not include Hydro commissioners.
As a former councillor and trustee in the Metro area, I can tell you that this many representatives makes local government inefficient and costly, not to mention the massive amount of duplication.
I call on the Minister of Municipal Affairs and the Minister of Education to initiate a process whereby we review local governance in the Metro and greater Toronto area, with a view to streamlining the number of representatives and to making government more efficient, less costly and more representative. This is a debate that can no longer wait. It must begin now.
MEMBER'S PRIVILEGE
Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): I rise on a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: I believe that the privileges of myself and other members of the standing committee on social development have been breached in connection with information that is being put before the committee which now appears is incorrect.
Some time ago in the debate, through the intervention of the Senior Citizens' Consumer Alliance for Long-Term Care Reform, a document was placed before the committee, prepared by Price Waterhouse, entitled A Comparison of the Administrative Component of the Current and Proposed Home Care Systems in Ontario. That was placed before the committee on August 31.
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The government has based its arguments on the cost-efficiencies identified in the report and has continued to rely on the report and quote from it, in the absence of its own studies. Today, we have received a copy of a letter written to Mr Ted Ball of the Senior Citizens' Consumer Alliance which reads as follows:
"Several concerns have been raised about the approach followed in our report for the Senior Citizens' Consumer Alliance titled" -- and I have given you the title. "Our firm is withdrawing the report. We will review these concerns and reissue the report with appropriate changes to the cost-impact methodology."
The report was so significant in the deliberations of that committee that in my view the committee members have in fact been misled by the original report, and I would urge you to take into consideration how the effect of incorrect information which was included in that report would affect the deliberations of the committee, which of course is now deeply into clause-by-clause consideration of that bill.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): To the member for Halton Centre, while I appreciate very much the point which she has brought to my attention, she will know that this is, as she has correctly identified, a matter that is currently before a committee, and indeed the committee has a responsibility to deal with concerns that are raised by members of the committee. There is no particular role for the Speaker in this matter, but the member may wish to raise this at her first opportunity when the committee meets next.
ORAL QUESTIONS
FINANCIAL PROCEDURES
Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): Today, as I think members know, we have what can only be described as a damning report by the Provincial Auditor raising serious questions about the NDP's finances.
The auditor's report says that the government is using improper and incorrect numbers to report the 1994-95 deficit. The auditor has also said the NDP government is not giving the actual financial performance to the people of Ontario for 1994-95. The auditor says that if you used proper and correct numbers, the 1994-95 deficit would be $2 billion higher. The auditor is saying the numbers you are using are unrealistic. All damning comments, specific comments, by the auditor.
My question to the Minister of Finance is this: Will you commit today to provide the Legislature with a revised 1994-95 statement of the finances of the province, as requested by the Provincial Auditor?
Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): I guess that when the Provincial Auditor has a lot of good things to say about the government, all the opposition can do is exaggerate their own concerns, because I can tell you that I have read a lot of provincial auditors' reports over many years and I would rank this one up there at the top with any list that you'd care to draw up.
Let me remind the member for Scarborough-Agincourt exactly what the Provincial Auditor had to say about the audited financial statements of this government for the year ended 1993-94:
"In my opinion, these financial statements present fairly in all material respects the financial position of the province as of March 31, 1994, and the results of its operations and the changes in its financial position for the year then ended, in accordance with the stated accounting policies as set out in the 'Summary of Significant Accounting Policies' which forms an integrated part of these financial statements.
"These financial statements have been prepared, as urged by me last year, on an accounting and reporting basis which is in accordance with standards for good practice in accounting and financial reporting by Canadian governments."
So you can say all you want about the way in which this government prepares its financial statements. We are doing exactly -- exactly -- what the Provincial Auditor has requested us to do, and we will continue to do that.
Mr Phillips: The auditor couldn't have been clearer. This province has two sets of books: one the auditor will sign, one the auditor won't sign. The books that you're keeping, the auditor will never, ever, ever sign. He says in his report that it is $2 billion higher than you're reporting. We have two sets of books. It is crazy. I guarantee you that if this were a private company, there is not an auditor in this province who would sign the books, the company would be delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange, and the directors would be, at the very least, fired. We have two sets of books. It is ridiculous.
The auditor says you are incorrectly reporting about $1.9 billion worth of what you call loans receivable, but which are really grants. The auditor says that you are out by $2 billion. The auditor was very specific. The 1994-95 budget is out, according to the auditor, by at least $2 billion. You have a set of books, Treasurer, that the auditor will not sign.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Could the member pose a question, please.
Mr Phillips: My question is this: Will the government commit today to stop this charade? You're losing your credibility. It is a charade to have two sets of books. Will the Treasurer today commit to having one set of books, the set of books that the auditor will sign?
Hon Mr Laughren: The member for Scarborough-Agincourt is becoming silly, if I might say. I have here in my hand --
Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): There is nothing silly about those books.
Hon Mr Laughren: I have in my hand the Office of the Provincial Auditor 1994 Annual Report, which is what we're dealing with. The Provincial Auditor says, "For the year ended March 31, 1994," which is the year in which he's auditing the financial statements of this government, "this opinion" -- the auditor's opinion -- "which was expressed without reservation, is reproduced as follows...."
I just quoted from that in response to the first part of the member's question, and it's signed by Erik Peters, FCA, Provincial Auditor. The Provincial Auditor has signed off completely, without reservation, the books of this province. The sooner the member for Scarborough-Agincourt understands that, we'll all be better off, because I can tell you, there is only one set of books in this province. This is it.
The financial statements that we tabled last month are the financial statements for the Ontario government for the year ended 1993-94. We could hardly have a set of financial statements for the year 1994-95. That fiscal year isn't over yet. So what is the member for Scarborough-Agincourt raving about?
Mr Phillips: I'm sure the people in the province will understand that the 1994-95 books are cooked. The only reason the auditor signed the books was that he forced the government to change its reporting and increase the deficit by $1.6 billion. That was the only way the auditor would sign the books. He forced the government to do it. Now we see that this year the finances are being reported in a way that the auditor clearly will not sign.
I don't use this language very often, and I use it cautiously, but the set of books that you are presenting are cooked. The auditor can't sign them. The auditor won't sign them. The auditor says right here that the deficit exceeds the 1994 budget by $2 billion. The auditor says the 1994 budget that the Minister of Finance has presented is out by $2 billion. The auditor is saying, when he signs the books, the deficit will be $2 billion higher than the Minister of Finance is reporting right now for 1994-95.
I say it as strongly as I can: Your credibility, your trust as a government is at stake here. You are misreporting by $2 billion the deficit of the province.
Interjections.
The Speaker: Order.
Mr Phillips: Will you acknowledge today that your books are wrong, the Provincial Auditor is right and the 1994-95 deficit is, as the Provincial Auditor says, $2 billion higher than you are reporting right now?
Hon Mr Laughren: I don't know how many times I have to say it: The Provincial Auditor has completely signed off, without reservation, on the last set of financial statements that were presented by this government; completely, without reservation, on the only set of books that this government has. You can try and sow some kind of seeds of confusion out there but it's not going to work. Knowledgeable people know that the Provincial Auditor has signed off, and you can spread this nonsense all you like. It doesn't make it real.
At the request of the Provincial Auditor, we're moving to what's called an accrual and consolidation system of accounting. That's never been done before in the province of Ontario. I went back and I looked at what the deficit would have been when the Liberals were in office under this way of reporting. Instead of a $90-million surplus, which the previous government said it was going to report, there would have been a $1-billion deficit. Now I ask you, would you get your facts right for once?
Secondly, that was the last full year they were in government. When we took over for the year 1990-91, when the deficit was $3 billion -- and we took office well into the year -- under the new system of reporting, the deficit would have been not $3 billion but $5 billion. So I think the member for Scarborough-Agincourt better think twice before he starts throwing these silly accusations across the chamber when the auditor has completely signed off on the set of books.
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WATER QUALITY
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): My question is to the Minister of Environment and Energy and it concerns water. Minister, I can't think of a more important responsibility which the Ontario government has than to ensure the provision of safe and reliable water to the people of Ontario. Today's auditor's report indicates that in 1992 a million Ontarians were receiving water from water treatment plants that had, according to the auditor's report, significant problems.
Will the Minister of Environment, responsible for water quality, tell this House today where those troubled water treatment plants were and which million Ontarians were at risk because of these problems, and will he also indicate what the nature of the risk was?
Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy): I agree with my friend from Renfrew North that it is one of the most important responsibilities of the government to provide safe, reliable water for its citizens. That's why this government in the last three years has made an investment of three quarters of a billion dollars in funding through Jobs Ontario and the municipal assistance program to promote water conservation programs and capital expansions and upgrades of sewage treatment plants in the province, and water treatment plants.
The details of the report as provided by the Provincial Auditor we are currently studying, and we will be able to give the kinds of details that the member is requesting in future. I would say, though, that we are not certain from the auditor's report that all of the plants for these million residents to whom he refers were out of compliance on a continual basis. These might have been incidents. Some of them were, some of them weren't.
It's important to recognize that while this is a very serious matter, one that we take very seriously and we will act on, it's important not to give the impression necessarily that people were put at significant risk in all cases.
Mr Conway: The Minister of Finance properly asked the opposition to focus on the report, this auditor's report. Today's auditor's report makes plain that in 1992 nearly a million Ontarians were getting water from water treatment plants that were having significant problems. The auditor's report indicates that their follow-up audit done recently suggests that many of those plants were continuing to have those problems and that the follow-up inspection report showed that.
My question to the minister responsible for water treatment in this province is this: Which plants specifically are having those problems, which million Ontarians are at potential risk because of these ongoing problems, and what, sir, have you done to inform those people and their municipalities that there may be a problem? What action have you taken specifically to inform the million Ontarians who apparently are at some considerable risk?
Hon Mr Wildman: The member will know that the ministry regularly informs the municipalities, and as a result of the inspections that have been done, we have allocated significant amounts of provincial funding to assist the municipalities to upgrade plants.
The member will also know that with provincial assistance, three sewage treatment plants in eastern Ontario have been extensively renovated. These plants had been continually out of compliance but now exceed provincial treatment quality requirements.
Mr Conway: I ask for a final time, this report raises a very real concern that upwards of a million Ontarians, as recently as 1992, are getting water from seriously troubled water treatment plants that are not up to standard. You know who those people are. Will you undertake today to tell those million Ontarians what plants are causing the problem, what specifically is the nature and the extent of the health risk and what specifically you and your government are doing to put those million people at less or no risk?
Hon Mr Wildman: I described what we are doing to put them at less or no risk, as the member requested. As he will know, the auditor himself in his report pointed out that the provincial government and municipalities are working together to deal with this problem, and specifically cited one municipality that, because of water conservation programs, has been able to improve its situation and particularly save taxpayers' money.
I will make a commitment to the member that I will review the auditor's report and will be able to come back and indicate what areas were in continual out of compliance and which ones were not, and which ones we have been able to respond to since the problems were discovered.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): New question, the leader of the third party.
Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): I too want to follow up to the Minister of Environment. I think that the public of Ontario are entitled to know the million Ontarians, the 10% of this population that have been at risk. When asked today, the auditor said there could very well be. We didn't know; they didn't know. So what the auditor is saying is that you didn't know at a certain point in time.
What I would like to know now, Minister, is since this is not news to you, your ministry will have known full well --
Interjection.
The Speaker: The member for Guelph is out of order.
Mr Harris: -- that the auditor was making these investigations. I want to hear from you, since it is your responsibility to notify the public when there is a problem or a potential problem, when did you know that a million Ontarians were at risk with their drinking water, and why when you found out did you not notify those million Ontarians?
Hon Mr Wildman: The member knows full well that this government has made a commitment of three quarters of a billion dollars to upgrade water and sewer plants across the province for the very reason that we are meeting our responsibilities to provide clean water for the residents of Ontario. We don't do that on an ad hoc basis. We do it on the basis of inspections of plants and determining which ones have to be upgraded.
Mr Harris: Let me ask you this very short specific question: Do you know of any single solitary one of 10 million Ontarians that the auditor identified who may have been at risk? Do you know of one, any one, as a result of the auditor's investigations?
Hon Mr Wildman: We know which plants were not in compliance prior to 1992, and it is because of those studies that we know which ones had to be invested in in order to upgrade. It is a fact that as of 1992 we made decisions on investment of taxpayers' dollars on the basis of the need to provide clean water to residents in the province.
The member knows also that the ministry would approach municipalities, the representatives of the electors, to indicate which plants were not in compliance and which needed to be upgraded. That was not secret information, it was public information, and the province and the municipalities made investment decisions on that public information.
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Mr Harris: When the Provincial Auditor was asked today to identify what communities are at risk, the auditor said it was the minister's responsibility. We too in this Legislature think it is the minister's responsibility to notify the public when they are at risk or potentially at risk. According to the auditor, once a problem has been identified at a water treatment plant, it takes on average 17 months to follow up -- 17 months while somebody could be drinking water that is potentially not up to standards.
Can you explain why for up to 17 months, and even longer in some cases, you have kept up to one million Ontarians in the dark? Second, will you not today notify publicly every single Ontarian who may be at risk as a result of drinking contaminated water?
Hon Mr Wildman: The member is fully aware that if there is a serious health problem, the ministry notifies the residents, and on certain occasions, in certain municipalities in this province, we've on an emergency basis transported water and provided bottled water. Also, we put restrictions --
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): When we were in control, you used to flip if we let them swim in it, and now you are making them drink it.
The Speaker: Order. The member for Etobicoke West, come to order.
Hon Mr Wildman: We put restrictions on swimming where necessary, as the member knows, on a temporary basis until we can upgrade the plants and bring them into compliance.
The member across the way says that it would take 17 months, according to the auditor, in order to respond. If he carries out the kinds of cutbacks that he's proposing in the Ministry of Environment and Energy, it'll take three years before they'll be able to respond.
The Speaker: New question, leader of the third party.
Mr Harris: Never have I heard a more holier-than-thou attitude. You're the minister. They're entitled to know.
The Chair: Order. Would the honourable leader of the third party place a second question, please.
JOBS ONTARIO
Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): My second question is to the Minister of Education and Training, responsible for Bob's Ontario Training. The Provincial Auditor today, Mr Minister, confirmed what we've been telling you for months, that this program is not about creating jobs; this is about creating headlines for the NDP.
According to the auditor, you have no idea whether an employee under Bob's Ontario is eligible. You have no idea whether the people you claim to help are truly the ones who need the help. You don't even know if the people you claim to help have jobs. Minister, of the 60,000 people your propaganda blitz claims to have helped, exactly how many can you categorically account for and table with this Legislature who are actually being helped by this program?
Hon David S. Cooke (Minister of Education and Training): All the people who have qualified for this program and have been placed in work are on welfare or have run out of unemployment insurance. That's a fact. Those are the eligibility criteria. If the member wants to ask that question, obviously the answer to the question is, there are 63,000 jobs that have been created and people are being placed in those jobs. Those are the tens of thousands of people who are being helped in this province.
Even the Provincial Auditor indicates in his report, "Savings previously estimated were based on reasonable assumptions," and he's referring to the social assistance saving. The numbers we've been using, the facts we've been stating, have been confirmed by the auditor's report. Read the entire report. Read the praise in the report. Don't just make up your negative comments. Read the entire report, where there's a lot of praise for the responsiveness of our ministry when there were any criticisms that the auditor had levelled. All those criticisms had been responded to, and the auditor, I think, makes that perfectly clear.
Mr Harris: The auditor says you have no idea; he says you have no idea.
Clearly, one of the components of Bob's Ontario that requires attention is brokers. For example, can you explain why a broker -- this isn't the employer, this isn't the employee, this is the broker -- would have been given as much as $32 million as a cash advance, or nearly one 10th of the total program dollars spent to date? Why would you be shoving that amount of money into brokers' hands?
Hon Mr Cooke: I think the auditor made it clear that this was a problem at the beginning of the program. At the beginning of the program we were working with brokers, the program was being set up. The period of time this audit took place was at the beginning of the program and the implementation of the program. This was a legitimate criticism that the auditor has put into the report. He also indicated that we have responded to the criticism, so that doesn't happen any longer. It shouldn't have happened back when it did, and it doesn't happen any longer.
Mr Harris: According to the auditor's findings, this is not the case. On page 67, it says, "Only one broker visited had developed a formal strategy for acquiring and using its pre-employment funds in the most cost-effective manner." The auditor is clearly saying that not only was it a startup problem, it is an ongoing problem. According to the auditor's findings we might as well call this Brokers Ontario. Twenty per cent of the money you've spent to date has gone to pay for administration, $55 million to brokers, nearly twice the original projection, yet in many cases, brokers are not providing audits or their auditor refused to provide an opinion.
I would ask you again, given the inherent problems with brokers in your program, can you tell us what criteria were used for contracting with these brokers? Who are they? What did they have to provide? Did they have to account for how they would have the money? What systems were in place? According to the auditor, none, and none still. Can you explain that?
Hon Mr Cooke: There are two points on this. First, it wasn't that long ago that your Education critic asked in the House why the administrative costs were 35%. Now the auditor comes in and says the administrative costs are 20%, administrative costs that include client intake and assessment, employer outreach and job development, training plan development, job matching, contract administration, monitoring. He's lumped in not only administrative costs but other client services that have to be provided to get individuals ready to get into the workplace. That is a fact. The 20% is not all administrative costs.
Finally, and again I know the leader of the third party hasn't read the entire auditor's report yet, but when he does, I'd like him to read page 64 where the auditor says, "We noted several good management practices in place to assess broker performance and to share best practices among brokers." It was not all negative, by any stretch.
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SOCIAL ASSISTANCE
Mrs Yvonne O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau): My question is to the Minister of Community and Social Services. Minister, today the auditor released a scathing report on the administration of Ontario's welfare system. The auditor's report is clear: Welfare fraud is not the problem; your government's incompetence and mismanagement is. The auditor found that inadequate controls exist to prevent overpayment from going out. As a result, more than $90 million was overpaid in the welfare system. More than 150,000 people received overpayments and more than 40% of these have done nothing to repay them.
When my leader raised this question with you months ago, you suggested you had it under control. Today the auditor says you do not have it under control. Minister, will you admit today that the issues of fraud that plague us are there but that the issues of mismanagement and incompetence are greater? What have you done to prevent overpayment in the first place, and in the second place to recover those that have been overpaid?
Hon Tony Silipo (Minister of Community and Social Services): If there is one question a Liberal member should not be asking an NDP cabinet minister, it's on the issue of overpayments, and I'll tell you why. In 1989, we were keeping track of information centrally on the overpayments across the system. The Liberal government of the day removed the centralization measures from the system. Until recently, until we reintroduced those measures and put those measures in each of the area offices of the ministry, there was no way to keep track of overpayments across the province -- as a result of actions taken by the Liberal government of the day, so that's the last issue they ought to be raising.
We have put in place controls across the system that tell us now that there are 104,000 cases where people are making repayments to the system. The case file investigation process that I reported on a couple of weeks ago reports very clearly on the results of the overpayment situation and many other controls we've put into the system to make sure the system is protected for those who most need it. That is an indication of the kind of importance we place on both maintaining good controls and the importance of the benefits we need to provide to the people who need them.
Mrs O'Neill: The minister is talking about a long time ago. In five years, all we've got in answer in the ministerial response in this auditor's report are verbs that are in the future: "We will... We will... We will...." What have you done?
We have confirmed with the auditors that the fraud is 2% to 3%, yet $90 million is being misplaced, and that is verified in today's report. The auditor found that the average time between case file reviews in your term is 17 months in several municipalities. On the case files in four municipalities in this province, with 40% of the outlay for social assistance, $1 billion in social assistance, the review has not taken place in over seven years. You've been there for five of those years, Mr Minister. It's unbelievable and unacceptable that you are blaming others for something you have not done.
Each year, you announce more and more plans for fraud squads, fraud squads and fraud squads.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Could the member place a question, please.
Mrs O'Neill: I say to you that this is not enough and ask you: When are you going to put in real standardized training for front-line workers? When are you going to put in real standard program and evaluation reviews? When are you going to start preserving the integrity of the social assistance system in this province?
Hon Mr Silipo: The honourable member hasn't been listening. We've been doing these things. The case file investigation report, the results from the first five months which I released a few weeks ago, talks about actual results. It doesn't talk about things that are going to happen in the future, it talks about things we've done. It talks about the $66 million in additional savings that we found in a five-month period alone, which we expect will be $180 million over the course of the balance of the fiscal year. That's real money. That's real money we are saving the taxpayers of Ontario and we are saving for the benefit of those people who are entitled to receive social assistance.
The training the honourable member talks about is going on as we speak. We have put additional dollars this year, last year and next year into better training for our staff, again because the measures that were there from the previous Liberal government just weren't adequate. We've increased all of those things.
We know that the fraud squad the member talks about is the addition of people in the system whose job it is, yes, to deal with issues of fraud and abuse, but whose job it also is to make sure people are getting entitlements to benefits from Canada pension, from workers' compensation benefits and through the family support plan, from all other sources. Those things are working and those things are resulting in less money having to be spent from social assistance.
We're not talking about what we're going to do in the future. We're talking about what we've actually done.
SUPPORT AND CUSTODY ORDERS ENFORCEMENT
Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): My question is to the Attorney General on the family support plan. Attorney General, despite spending $25 million on the bureaucracy, more than half of all the cases in the plan have no money flowing.
When you brought forward your legislation to attempt to track down parents who owed support, you voted against our amendments to streamline the plan and increase the amount of money flowing to children in this province. We have consistently proposed that families who are not in arrears should be able to opt out of the bureaucracy of this plan in order to free up resources to track down deadbeat parents.
Minister, given that the auditor has confirmed that there is a need for changes to the system, will you today support our proposal?
Hon Marion Boyd (Attorney General): No, I will not, and I won't because the member is wrong in his assumption, as usual. In fact, we have increased the dollars per month collected by the family support plan since we put the measures into place from $14 million a month to over $30 million a month, and that is primarily because there is an automatic deduction for every single order filed with the court. Even those who initially opposed that kind of situation have since come to see that this is an effective and painless way of doing it. Because it's deducted at source, it does not depend upon the bounty of the payor or the begging of the payee in order for the payment to be made; it becomes an automatic deduction. So no, we would not support those amendments any more today than we did when the act was passed in 1992.
Mr Harris: I'm sorry to hear that, because what it means is fewer resources for those children who are not getting the money they should be getting. This is exactly what your stand is saying.
The minister says I am using the wrong assumptions. I am using the assumptions of the Provincial Auditor. They're not my assumptions.
As of March this year, over $700 million were owing to children in this province through arrears in the family support plan. These are the areas we want to get at, not the ones where we have willing compliances.
In the Common Sense Revolution, we propose a system of mandatory mediation that would move many families of divorce out of the courts and into a more conciliatory setting. This proposal would free up the courts and, more importantly, lead to much more amicable arrangements that would benefit children of divorce. I thought that's what we're after: benefiting children of divorce. It benefits them financially and it benefits them emotionally.
Attorney General, given the auditor's condemnation of the current plan, will you then support mandatory mediation to assist children of divorce in Ontario?
Hon Mrs Boyd: First of all, the auditor did not in any way condemn the plan. There are issues around our information technology that he raises and that we acknowledge. He indeed talked about the need for quicker assignment from MCSS to our ministry. We agreed with that and we have set those things into process.
The leader of the third party seems to be suggesting that the government is responsible for enforcing this, that it isn't the payors who refuse to pay. The issue is that those hundreds of millions of dollars are owed by individuals who are refusing to pay. If the member thinks those people who now refuse to pay are going to enter into voluntary mediation and suddenly voluntarily support their children when they refuse to do it now under court order, he is dreaming in Technicolor.
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LONG-TERM-CARE REFORM
Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): My question is for the Minister of Health, but first I would like to welcome the many members of the Senior Citizens' Consumer Alliance for Long-Term Care Reform, the United Senior Citizens of Ontario and other associated organizations who are visiting us today.
Many of these citizens have expressed frustration, saying that as consumers they have been relegated to the sidelines while other interests dominate the district health councils in developing local multiservice agencies. Minister, what guarantees of consumer involvement are you prepared to give? What recourse do consumers have if they have not been invited to the table?
Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): I'm delighted to have an opportunity to recognize how many people have come today to discuss the issue of long-term care and I'm glad my colleague raised the question.
Interjections.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.
Hon Mrs Grier: I'm surprised, given the interest of the opposition, that they didn't raise it today.
Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): You said there were 60 or 70.
The Speaker: The member for Simcoe West, order.
Hon Mrs Grier: The consumers are very clearly invited to the table.
Interjections.
The Speaker: Would the Minister of Health take her seat. Would the member for Simcoe West please come to order.
Hon Mrs Grier: The response of the opposition I think is symptomatic of their response to consumers. They don't believe that consumers ought to be on the boards of the agencies that are delivering long-term care. We do. We believe that consumers should be planning for the future of long-term care.
That's why we've asked district health councils to do that and why in many communities seniors are there. If they're not invited to the table, I'm today saying to them, "Knock on the door, come to the table," because long-term-care committees, district health councils, all represent consumers. We're committed to local planning and to local governance.
One of the amendments that we have made to Bill 173 is to require that a third of the members of the board of every multiservice agency would be consumers. That is very different from either of the other two parties opposite. That is our commitment to consumers managing, running and planning their own long-term-care system.
Ms Carter: Still in respect to long-term care, and in particular the orderly transition and continuation of current levels of service, there is scaremongering about the development of multiservice agencies going on in my community and elsewhere. Could you please elaborate on the time frame for integration of services and the process by which it will occur?
Hon Mrs Grier: Because the nature of the change that we are planning in consultation with district health councils is a fairly major change in the reorganization of long-term care is precisely the reason that we have built into the legislation a four-year transition period.
I agree with the member that there is a lot of misinformation. There is a misrepresentation of what we are doing. I think we heard that today in the response from the member of the Liberal party to our amendments to the labour side of the legislation, amendments that are designed to make sure that during the transition period both the clients and the people who work in the system have some guarantee that their level of services as well as their employment will be protected.
We have to remember what this legislation is all about. It's about consumers, it's about seniors, it's about the disabled and it's about the people who are here with us in the gallery today.
Making these changes has taken a long time.
The Speaker: Would the minister conclude her response, please.
Hon Mrs Grier: Previous governments talked about it. Our government has not only acted, we have put money behind our actions. We have increased the spending on long-term care by $400 million a year. No other government in this country is prepared to do that.
JOBS ONTARIO
Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): I have a question for the Minister of Education and Training. Thank goodness there's an auditor in the province of Ontario, because for years we have been trying to get the administrative costs of the Jobs Ontario program and today the auditor has stated that the cost of the program administratively is $70 million. That's 20% of the cost of that program, and that comes down to $2,000 a head. That's $2,000 for everybody you've placed in a job, and of course that doesn't count the money that was paid to employers to hire the employees in the first place.
It's no matter that the administration costs were so much, because of course the advanced money -- you had to borrow money at 9%; you gave it to the brokers who you charged 3%, and they in turn reinvested the money at 6%. So the brokers made a profit from the money. You advanced it not just in sums of 2 months' advance money, as your regulations had stated, but you advanced it in the sums of millions of dollars.
I'd like to ask the minister: Are you satisfied, administering a program that costs 20% of the total value, that costs the taxpayers of Ontario $70 million?
Hon David S. Cooke (Minister of Education and Training): I already responded to this question when the leader of the third party asked it, but I'll remind the member that in our view these are not all administrative costs. I indicated when I answered this question a few minutes ago that the brokers provide services other than just administrative costs. They're not just agencies that provide cheques.
These are our colleges of the province, these are some of the school boards in the province that deliver this program at the local level, and they deliver a lot of client supports in addition to the administrative costs. Client intake and assessment, employer outreach and job development, training plans that need to be developed, job matching, contract administration, monitoring and evaluation, systems and program support: Those are all part of the program that they deliver at the local level. Part of what they do is administration, but the 20% includes both, so I don't think it's fair to lump it all in one.
Maybe you still advocate the program your leader advocates, and that's the program they have in New Brunswick that costs $60,000 per person when they're on social assistance to try to get them back into the workplace and has a 60% dropout rate. That's not the type of program we're advocating. That doesn't work and costs a fortune. This is a program that works. People get back into the workplace.
Mr Ramsay: In March we talked about the high failure rate of this program and in April we questioned your decision to extend it. In October we talked about the high cost of the advertising budget that you put towards this, which is part of administration. Also, we were criticizing the fact that you've got now 90,000 people on a waiting list who have not been able to find jobs, and we look at that as being a 60% failure rate. Also, more seriously, most recently we said that we have raised concerns about consultants who are paid with Jobs Ontario money to secure grants for employers. This now is under police investigation and involves several companies.
I'd like to ask the minister if he really is satisfied with a program that costs so much to administer in the first place, has a high failure rate and now involves more police investigations?
Hon Mr Cooke: I don't agree with the assessment that because there are 90,000 people who have applied to get into the program, that indicates the program is a failure. We've created 60,000 jobs; 55,000 people are placed in those jobs. Your answer to the program is to kill it and throw 55,000 people out of work. If you think 90,000 people on a waiting list is a sign of a failure, what kind of failure would it be to throw 55,000 people out of work, as your party is suggesting?
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OLDER WORKERS
Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): My question is for the Minister of Labour. In December 1992, the Uniroyal plant in my community was closed. Prior to this closure, in March 1992, the manager of the program for older worker adjustment made a presentation to the workers who were about to be laid off and indicated that they could expect some financial assistance from the program.
Two years have passed since this plant closed and I have been contacted by the workers because for two years these workers have been waiting for an answer as to whether or not they are going to receive any help from your ministry. These people today are desperate. Their resources are almost used up. Minister, will you tell us why the Uniroyal workers are still waiting for the help they were promised more than two years ago?
Hon Shirley Coppen (Minister of Labour): The information you've provided me with I find very disheartening, just the same as you do, that these workers would have waited so long.
You and I are both aware of the limited amount of money in the fund and that it is funded by the federal government to the tune of 70%. I don't know why that representative from the ministry made that commitment, but if you would provide me with the information that you have just brought to the attention of the House and myself, I would be very pleased to get back to you.
Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): Some of them have died. It's been two years.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.
Hon Mrs Coppen: I find this problem very serious, and I can understand why you are so interested in it.
Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound): It's happening all over.
The Speaker: The member for Grey-Owen Sound, come to order. Had the minister concluded her reply?
Hon Mrs Coppen: Only, Mr Speaker, that I do take this very seriously, and if the member would provide me with the information that she has brought to my attention, I would be very pleased to get back to her as soon as possible, and also for the name of the person who made that commitment. Again -- I'm repeating myself -- I take this very seriously, because those workers have gone without the money.
Mrs Witmer: Minister, these people, these workers, have been trying to communicate with your ministry for two years. Out of desperation they came to me. In a call, one woman said: "We feel we have been lied to. We do not have our calls returned to us." This is not an isolated incident in Kitchener-Waterloo. This is happening across the province.
Do you not realize these workers have exhausted their personal savings? They are desperate. They expected an honest, straightforward and prompt response from your ministry and they have not received it. Tell them yes or no. They want to get on with the business of planning their lives.
Minister, will you commit today to communicate with your officials regarding the Uniroyal program, and will you make a commitment that they will receive assistance before the end of 1994?
Mrs Marland: The answer's from Bob.
Hon Mrs Coppen: Excuse me, please. I am answering for myself as the Minister of Labour, again repeating that I can appreciate all the anxiety, all the desperation those folks are going through. I will be contacting ministry staff later this afternoon. I will get back to the member. Also, if those members have contacted my office, I am unaware of it. I would be very pleased to talk to the group, because there should be no one in this province who has to go through such a problem. Yes, I will deal with this as soon as possible.
FARM TAX REBATE PROGRAM
Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): My question is to the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. As usual, the opposition parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, have tried to spread fear among the rural community in regard to the farm property tax rebate. They're going around as much as saying that it's going to be eliminated or drastically reduced. Will the minister today assure this House that the farm property tax rebate is not going to be eliminated?
Hon Elmer Buchanan (Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs): I appreciate the question, because both of the opposition parties have made this issue one of their planks in terms of their policy on rural Ontario. The Liberals have talked about protecting the farm property tax program and the Conservatives -- at least the Michael Harris party has talked about retaining the farm property tax program.
We have in fact retained the dollars that were committed to that program. We understand, as a government, the importance of this to farmers in rural Ontario. We've recently moved back to 75%, because there was enough money in that particular portfolio to put 75% of the property tax back to farmers. We have retained it. We are committed to maintaining that program until there is property tax reform and we intend to deliver on that commitment.
Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): Ask him what Bob Nixon did.
Mr Hayes: The opposition would like to know what Bob Nixon did. Maybe you can relate to that when you get up, Mr Minister.
One of the issues, of course, when you're dealing with agriculture -- it's like any other ministry -- is that there's always a concern about the budget. I know that when we first came into government we looked at long-term programs, and that's when the minister had me do the agricultural review task force or study. What I'd like to ask the minister is, how many of those recommendations out of that task force on agricultural finance, the review task force, have actually been implemented as of today?
Hon Mr Buchanan: I think it's important, as we work towards the end of our first term as a government, to realize that early on in the term we sent a task force around the province asking farmers and rural Ontarians what they wanted this government to deliver on. There were a series of recommendations that came forward which talked about putting in place long-term programs for farmers and not looking at Band-Aid, short-term programs that lasted for two years and then ran out.
The task force came back with, I believe, nine recommendations and we've implemented every last one of them. We have an egg commodity corporation; we have a FarmPlus plan, which is a rural loan pool which was suggested; we've put in place safety net programs; we've arranged for private mortgage guarantees.
These were all recommendations brought forward and delivered on, and we're very pleased now to see that the Liberal Party has endorsed the things we're doing despite the fact that a former Treasurer, I believe it was Bob Nixon, tinkered and played with the farm tax program that was in place at the time. We have no intention of doing that. We believe in long-term programs to support people in rural Ontario.
DRIVERS' LICENCES
Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South): My question is for the Minister of Transportation. Statistics indicate that driver error is the primary cause of accidents in Ontario, and of course more accidents mean more claims, and under your flawed Bill 164 more claims mean larger premium increases.
The Provincial Auditor, in his report today, recognizes that there are problems with regard to driver's licence controls. "...we noted that controls to prevent individuals from obtaining more than one driver's licence were weak." The auditor goes on to say, "This could allow an individual who has a poor driving record or whose driver's licence has been suspended to obtain another licence."
Your ministry has known that the system has been broken for five years, and year after year the ministry has said that it is trying to fix it. The Provincial Auditor has made suggestions how to correct these problems now. Minister, will you tell the House and the citizens of Ontario who are law-abiding and good drivers how you will act to prevent the duplication of licensing poor drivers, which contributes to high insurance costs?
Hon Mike Farnan (Minister of Transportation): I thank the member for the question and for giving me the opportunity to present to the House and to the people of Ontario the extraordinary achievement of this government in terms of driver safety and our safety program.
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As you know, it is our intention to have the safest roads in North America. Indeed, I am proud to tell this House that we have fewer fatalities in Ontario than in 40 years. That is a fact and it's something we must be very proud of.
Not only have we got this record, but we are working to improve the record. We are working with graduated licences. We are working with safety measures on our roads. We're building those medians that provide safety.
The member is quite correct to bring to the attention of the people of Ontario that we indeed not only have safe roads, but we are continuing to implement those kinds of programs which will ensure that the roads of Ontario are the safest roads in all of Canada.
Mr Crozier: My point is that the Provincial Auditor has also pointed out that in addition to saving lives, the ministry estimates that a 1% reduction in accidents would save $69 million in health care, property damage and other costs. Mr Minister, you didn't answer the question. Poor drivers can get duplicate licences and be out on the road again. How are you going to prevent that?
Hon Mr Farnan: We are constantly monitoring compliance and, indeed, within our ministry we are taking those steps which will ensure that the kind of duplication the member speaks of will not be acceptable and will not happen. I say to the member it is absolutely clear that when you reduce accidents, when you reduce fatalities, clearly you reduce the costs of hospital bills, you save dollars for the taxpayers. So not only have we safe roads, we are reducing the cost for the taxpayers in this province. I know this member of the House would want to join me in commending the government on an outstanding achievement.
PETITIONS
GASOLINE PRICES
Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): Unlike the member for Cochrane South, I wish to read the entire petition today, not just the portion that he presented yesterday.
This is a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and it reads:
"Whereas the difference in gasoline prices between" --
Interjections.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Order, please. We will just wait until the House quietens down, then we'll be able to continue with our procedures. We'll stop the clock and start again. Just wait for a minute.
Interjections.
The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.
Mr Miclash: As I was saying, unlike the NDP member for Cochrane South who yesterday only read a portion of this petition, I wish to read the entire petition into the record. It's a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario which reads:
"Whereas the difference in gasoline prices between northern and southern Ontario has long represented a serious inequity between the two regions; and
"Whereas the difference in gasoline prices between northern and southern Ontario is often between 10 and 20 cents a litre; and
"Whereas residents of most northern Ontario communities have no access to public transportation options and are therefore dependent on private automobiles; and
"Whereas 1990 NDP election promises to 'equalize' the price of gasoline across the province have not been kept; and
"Whereas" I, as the member for the Kenora riding, have "called upon the NDP government to keep their 1990 election promises; and
"Whereas the elimination of the motor vehicle registration fees for northern Ontario residents does not compensate for the excessively high gas prices in northern Ontario;
"We, the undersigned, hereby petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:
"That the NDP government of Ontario fulfil its election promises to the people of northern Ontario by equalizing the price of gas across the province."
That's signed by many constituents from across the riding. I too attach my name to that petition.
LONG-TERM-CARE REFORM
Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly which has been signed by about 1,000 residents from my area, from Hanover, Meaford, Thornbury, Durham and Owen Sound.
"We, the undersigned, are very concerned that Bill 173, if not amended, will mean less service, more costly services, loss of volunteers and will prevent local communities from ensuring the system meets their long-term-care needs."
I have affixed my signature.
CHILD SAFETY
Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): Two children, David Lee Bushey and Tammy Lynn Lavallee, were killed in a school bus accident. As a consequence, David Lee's aunt Janet Bushey collected in six weeks 11,361 names stating:
"In loving memory of David Lee Bushey and Tammy Lynn Lavallee, we, the undersigned, do agree it should be mandatory to have seatbelts on every school bus to ensure the safety of our children."
I hereto affix my signature.
MOTORCYCLE AND SNOWMOBILE INSURANCE
Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
"Whereas we, the undersigned, are of the opinion that private insurance companies are exploiting Ontario motorcyclists and snowmobile operators by charging excessive rates for coverage or by outright refusing to provide coverage;
"Whereas we understand that those insurance companies that do specialize in motorcycle insurance will only insure riders with four or five years of riding experience and are outright refusing to insure riders who drive certain models of 'supersport' bikes; and
"Whereas we believe the situation will cost hundreds of jobs at dealerships and in the motorcycle industry and is contrary to the rights of motorcyclists and snowmobile operators;
"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:
"That the government of Ontario should study the feasibility of launching public motorcycle and snowmobile insurance."
This petition is signed by more than 240 of the residents in my riding in eastern Ontario.
ANIMALS FOR RESEARCH
Mr David Winninger (London South): I have a petition addressed to the Legislative Assembly sent to me by Florine Robinson and containing at least 1,000 names which reads as follows:
"Whereas every year in North America animals are used in cruel, outdated tests for cosmetics and household products; and
"Whereas these tests are not required by either provincial or federal law; and
"Whereas many non-animal alternative tests are available and already in use by many companies;
"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to bring forward the proposed regulatory amendments to the Animals for Research Act to NDP caucus for discussion and passage, so the amendments can be made law as quickly as possible."
TAX INCREASES
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I have a petition signed by several people. It reads as follows:
"Whereas the government of Ontario has consistently mismanaged its finances and failed to support the economy of the province;
"Whereas the government's new tax agenda has hurt many businesses across the province and killed tens of thousands of jobs;
"Whereas the government has lost over $2 billion in revenue even after imposing over $3 billion in new taxes;
"Whereas the government is raising non-tax revenue through raising fees on everything it can think of including toll roads, photo-radar, snowmobile fees, ferry fees, health service fees and children's service fees without consultation, without studying the impact of these fees on local communities;
"Whereas the government is camouflaging its deficit crisis by phantom sales of government buildings;
"Whereas the government is hiding its spending by setting up crown corporations to take on new debts;
"Whereas the government even after these questionable measures has still been unable to control its $10-billion deficit"
Interjections.
Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): He has a smile on his face. Look at him; we got him.
Mr Bradley: I'm being heckled by the opposition. I'm trying to get this petition out.
"Whereas the government is planning to introduce even more taxes which will only lead to further job losses across the province, reduce business confidence and prolong the recession;
"Whereas the government continues to waste money through tens of thousands of dollars in unjustified expenses on meals and hotels by senior political and ministerial staff;
"We, the undersigned, call upon the government to take action to halt any new tax increases, cut its own wasteful spending, take real action to support business and job creation and get the province working again."
This is signed by a large number of people right across Ontario.
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CITY OF STONEY CREEK
Mr Mark Morrow (Wentworth East): "We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:
"Whereas we, the undersigned, are of the opinion that the corporation of the city of Stoney Creek has improperly denied firefighters access to council and committee meetings and access to crucial reports;
"Whereas we, the undersigned, believe the corporation of the city of Stoney Creek has bargained in bad faith with the Stoney Creek Professional Firefighters Association, Local 2654; and
"Whereas we, the undersigned, object to the staffing and training decisions of Stoney Creek council that have threatened the safety of firefighters and the public;
"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:
"That the government of Ontario establish a commission of inquiry pursuant to section 178 of the Municipal Act to investigate these complaints against the corporation of the city of Stoney Creek."
FIREARMS SAFETY
Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): 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;
"Whereas we believe that the Solicitor General should have followed the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters' advice and grandfathered those of us who have already taken safety courses and/or hunted for years;
"Whereas we believe that we should not have to take the time nor 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 petition the Legislative Assembly as follows:
"To amend 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 is signed by several people, and I affix my signature.
DANGEROUS OFFENDERS
Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): I have a petition here to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
"Whereas the Ontario government recognizes the importance of protecting women and children from violent situations in the home; and
"Whereas the Attorney General has made this possible through court orders that protect women and children from violent perpetrators; and
"Whereas according to statistics, in 1990, 38% of all Ontario homicide victims were women; 98% of these women were killed by their male partners. Approximately once every week, somewhere in Ontario, another woman dies at the hands of her partner; and
"Whereas the Solicitor General, through the resources of the Ontario Provincial Police and other municipal police services, has the power to monitor the compliance of pre-trial conditions for violent perpetrators but may not have the financial resources to do so;
"Therefore, we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:
"To improve the monitoring of pre-trial releases and prevent the needless deaths of women and children. We demand that the Solicitor General place appropriate resources into police services and monitor the pre-trial release conditions."
I affix my signature to this in full support and it has been sent to me from women from Pefferlaw, Keswick, Richmond Hill, Sutton, Uxbridge, Maple, Thornhill, Aurora and right across the whole south Lake Simcoe basin.
LONG-TERM-CARE REFORM
Mrs Joan M. Fawcett (Northumberland): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
"We, the undersigned, are concerned that Bill 173, if unamended, will result in less service, more costly service, a decrease in volunteers, less flexibility for communities to develop a model that works for them."
I have signed the petition.
ANIMALS FOR RESEARCH
Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): I have a petition here:
"Whereas every year in North America animals are used in cruel, outdated tests for cosmetics and household products; and
"Whereas these tests are not required by either provincial or federal law; and
"Whereas many non-animal alternative tests are available and already in use by many companies;
"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to bring forward the proposed regulatory amendments to the Animals for Research Act for discussion and passage so the amendments can be made law as quickly as possible."
LONG-TERM-CARE REFORM
Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): I have a petition addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, which reads as follows:
"Whereas the Ontario government has given second reading to Bill 173, An Act respecting Long-Term Care, and clause-by-clause consideration of the bill;
"Whereas seniors and the disabled are entitled to accessible community-based care;
"Whereas we do not believe that Bill 173 will provide more cost-effective and accessible care;
"Whereas we, the undersigned, believe the government of Ontario must recognize and value the work of volunteers in this province;
"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislature of Ontario to ensure that amendments are made to Bill 173 to allow for provision of community care based on the needs of the local communities in Ontario and to acknowledge the role of volunteers in the delivery of care."
This petition comes from hundreds of people in Oakville, Burlington and Milton in Halton county, my area, and I concur with it and have affixed my signature to it.
MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
Mr Gary Wilson (Kingston and The Islands): My petition is to Bob Rae about the funding of mental health services.
"Dear Premier Rae:
"We, the undersigned, are citizens of Ontario who have personal experience in the mental health services of Ontario as consumers, family of consumers and/or service provider.
"In the name of health for people who have serious mental illnesses, we call upon your government to reinvest any money taken from provincial psychiatric hospitals and community mental health services and to not close hospital psychiatric beds until adequate community support services are in place."
That's signed by over 60 people in my area.
LONG-TERM-CARE REFORM
Mr Daniel Waters (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): I have a petition today that states:
"We, the undersigned, are concerned that Bill 173, if unamended, will mean less service, more costly service, a decrease in volunteers and less flexibility for communities to develop a model that works for them."
It's signed by about 40 members of my riding.
SERVICES DE SANTÉ
M. Gilles Bisson (Cochrane-Sud) : J'ai ici une pétition de la part de différentes personnes du nord de l'Ontario qui dit :
«Sachant que l'Hôpital Memorial de Sudbury a une longue histoire de budgets opérationnels équilibrés avec administration responsable ; et
«Sachant que l'Hôpital Memorial est le centre régional des soins cardiovasculaires du nord-est de l'Ontario,
«Nous, soussignés, donnons notre appui au maintien de l'Hôpital Memorial comme centre de soins aigus à Sudbury.»
REPORTS BY COMMITTEES
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Mr Marchese from the standing committee on administration of justice presented the committee's report and moved its adoption.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Shall the report be received and adopted? Agreed.
Pursuant to the order of the House dated November 2, 1994, this bill is ordered for third reading.
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INTRODUCTION OF BILLS
MISSISSAUGA SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING ASSOCIATION ACT, 1994
Mr Mahoney moved first reading of the following bill:
Bill Pr150, An Act to revive Mississauga Synchronized Swimming Association.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.
ONTARIO ASSOCIATION OF HOME INSPECTORS ACT, 1994
Mr Mills moved first reading of the following bill:
Bill Pr158, An Act respecting the Ontario Association of Home Inspectors.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.
PUBLICLY FUNDED HOUSING RENT CONTROL ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 SUR LE CONTRÔLE DES LOYERS DES LOGEMENTS DONT LE FINANCEMENT EST PUBLIC
Mr Crozier, on behalf of Mr Henderson, moved first reading of the following bill:
Bill 189, An Act to protect certain rent-geared-to-income Tenants in publicly funded rental units / Projet de loi 189, Loi visant à protéger des locataires de logements locatifs dont le financement est public qui paient un loyer indexé sur le revenu.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.
Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South): The purpose of the bill is to ensure that the rate of rent and utility increases for tenants 65 years of age and over who pay rent for units that are publicly funded is not greater than the rate at which their income increases.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
Hon Brian A. Charlton (Government House Leader): Mr Speaker, just before I call the first order, the House leaders have had some discussion. I'll be calling the 35th order, and the Conservatives have requested that their critic be able to stand down his opening statement until the next time we debate this bill. So what we would have this afternoon is the opening statement from the minister and the critic's from the Liberal caucus, and then just a regular half-hour rotation from the Conservative caucus, and we would return to their opening statement on the next day.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Is this agreed? Agreed.
BUSINESS REGULATION REFORM ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 PORTANT RÉFORME DE LA RÉGLEMENTATION DES ENTREPRISES
Mr Duignan, on behalf of Ms Churley, moved second reading of Bill 187, An Act to reform the Law regulating Businesses / Projet de loi 187, Loi portant réforme du droit réglementant les entreprises.
Mr Noel Duignan (Halton North): It's indeed a great pleasure for me to move second reading of the Business Regulation Reform Act. As members of the House will recall, my honourable colleague the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations introduced this bill earlier this month; I believe it was November 3. I'm indeed very pleased to be able to carry this bill forward, as I believe it reflects our government's commitment to cutting red tape for businesses in this province.
This bill also acknowledges the vital role played by small businesses in revitalizing the provincial economy. As you know, business confidence is coming back, investment is up and businesses are making investments in capital spending. In fact, some economic professors are now predicting that Ontario will be one of the leading industrial sectors in economic growth in the next few years.
If you look at the Treasurer's statement earlier this month, it's interesting to note that Ontario has led the country in economic growth in the second quarter of this year and is turning in its best performance since 1988, at a growth rate of some 8.4%.
It's also interesting to note that our Jobs Ontario Training program has now provided some 63,565 jobs, with over 20,000 employers taking part in this particular program. What this means for the taxpayers of this province is hundreds of millions of dollars saved in social service payments.
We have made it easier for our very important small and medium-sized businesses and firms in Ontario to get the funds they need to grow and to hire more people. Small business is a big reason behind the recent upswing in the province's economy, businesses that help spur the economy and indeed create jobs. However, as regulations and standards have changed and increased, businesses have found themselves forced to spend more and more time filling out forms and responding to inquiries from various levels of government.
So what have we done? We have listened to the small business community in this province, which identified government paper burden as one of the major hurdles to establishing new enterprises. We've heard this concern from small businesses; we've heard it from large businesses and entrepreneurs; we've heard it from the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, as well as from groups of small business owners.
We've also heard about the excessive costs of paper burden to businesses. As you know, it can take a long time to launch or expand a business in this province. An entrepreneur may have to deal with between seven and 10 different government ministries simply to get off the ground and get going, and I don't need to remind people in business that indeed time is money.
This government understands the importance of small business and entrepreneurship throughout the province. Since 1987, small business has generated some 75% of all the new jobs in Ontario. A full 34% of the province's labour force is employed with firms of less than 100 employees. The fact is that small and medium-sized businesses play a vital economic role.
It was awareness of this important sector that led our government to introduce the Business Regulation Reform Act, which is designed to streamline and simplify the business regulation and reporting process, thereby lessening the paper burden for businesses.
This act will overcome hurdles in specific program legislation. It will allow the government to change the old requirements for paper forms and signatures, thus paving the way for electronic registration. It will also provide the authority for registration and reporting service expansion.
The regulatory burden placed on small businesses in Ontario has grown over a very long period and has been created by many governments of all stripes. However, this government has shown initiative by introducing legislation and streamlining the numerous processes involved in starting a small business. Our government takes its regulatory responsibilities very, very seriously. This bill will ensure the regulations necessary to maintain a fair and safe and informed marketplace that supports a very competitive economy and which will be administered in the most efficient and effective manner that causes the least amount of paperwork for businesses.
What have we done to date? As a first and initial step, the government has launched the government-wide initiative called Clearing the Path for Business Success. As many of my colleagues already know, our government improved the registration process in September with the Ontario business registration access, part of the Clearing the Path initiative.
Beginning this fall, in fact September, self-help computer workstations, the foundation of the improved registration service, are being introduced in 16 business self-help and land registry offices. To date, the workstations are located in Timmins, Smiths Falls, Windsor, Barrie, St Catharines, Belleville, Huntsville, in the Timiskaming district, that is, in Haileybury, and also in North Bay and Sault Ste Marie.
It's interesting to note that the self-help office in Timiskaming, which opened on November 2, is unique by virtue of its nature: It is a portable workstation. The portability of this workstation allows for the more northern communities to have access to this registration process. In other words, business owners in select communities such as Kirkland Lake, Englehart etc are currently being identified in order for them to have access not only to the workstation but to a business consultant as well.
The next four sites to be installed will be London, one in the Halton region in Vaughan, and two in Ottawa. Of the two in Ottawa, one will be in the self-help office and the other will be in the land registry office. The 16th workstation will be installed in Toronto in January of next year.
It's also interesting to note that the technology used in this workstation is the very latest in computer technology and has very user-friendly software. I encourage all members of the House to visit one of the workstations to see how easy it is for people to get access to this workstation and fill out the necessary forms to start a business; to see how successful it has been.
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These workstations allow entrepreneurs across the province to electronically complete up to four application forms most commonly required to start non-incorporated small businesses. They are the business name registration, the retail sales tax vendor permit, the employer health tax, and the Workers' Compensation Board application forms. The application forms can be printed and reviewed, the on-line searches will also be available at that office, and all the applicable fees can be paid at that office, and then the completed forms will be couriered to Ontario business registration access in Toronto for processing -- we call it the clearinghouse -- for which they will be given priority processing.
If you don't live pretty close to one of those workstations or self-help offices, entrepreneurs unable to visit those workstations can still save time and travel costs by calling a toll-free help line. This help line provides businesses with general information about business startup registrations, and the status of any registration application submitted at a computer workstation or indeed mailed to the Ontario business registration access.
The help line will eventually be able to supply information regarding other necessary federal, provincial and municipal licences and permits. Entrepreneurs calling the help line will be provided with general business information and mailed a customized registration kit to be returned to the single-address clearinghouse.
We are also continuing to develop improvements to the business registration access program. Thirty-five additional workstations will be introduced to Ontario communities throughout the province between April and July of next year. Also in April of next year, through the OBRA, businesses will be able to make payment by credit card for name search and business name.
People have said to us, "Why this legislation?" As you know, we were able to introduce these initial improvements without legislation because we are basically an overlay on existing processes. However, we cannot reach an optimum level of service to our business clients without clear legislative authority to do a number of things. This legislation, for example, will provide clear authority for such things as combined registration forms; overcome roadblocks and consolidate requirements in individual program areas; provide authority for anticipated service expansion such as links with the federal government.
The legislation will provide specific immediate solutions to small business concerns and issues, including combined business form registration, electronic filing of business names, retail sales tax permits, employer health tax and Workers' Compensation Board application forms. Completed registrations at workstations will take place electronically, eliminating the need for paper forms and applicant signatures. There will be the sharing of basic information; for example, business name and addresses required by all business-related programs.
There will be unified reporting to make it possible for businesses to receive consolidated monthly account statements and remit taxes in a single payment. This service will be introduced in September 1995 for businesses making retail sales tax and employer health tax payments. In January 1996, businesses paying the retail sales tax and the employer health tax and corporation tax can start paying in a unified manner. Also, unified reporting will be extended over time to include other filing frequencies such as, for example, quarterly and annual programs.
Systems will also be linked to permit the issuance of the federal business number through provincial and federal outlets. This number is designed to replace the multiple numbers that businesses once needed to deal with both the federal and provincial governments.
We are also looking ahead to what we want to do with the anticipated service expansion of this particular initiative. We will be giving businesses the support they need, and indeed this is what the Business Regulation Reform Act is all about; that is, to create a single-window, one-stop service that will integrate the registration and reporting requirements of all three levels of government, municipal, provincial and federal. Just imagine being able to walk into one government office where a businessperson can electronically complete all the forms necessary and required by all three levels of government, and just think of the advantages of being able to remit business taxes with just one single payment.
Our government is committed to providing equal access to services across Ontario. Businesses throughout the province will have access to the level of service that up to now has been available only to those living in, or prepared to go to, Toronto.
I recently had the pleasure of visiting the workstation at Smiths Falls and seeing this particular program in action. The very first client of that particular workstation the first day it opened -- I think it was on September 23 of this year -- was going to spend two days in Toronto visiting the necessary government departments to fill out the forms required. In 22 minutes she did the necessary work, and the whole process was complete in a couple of weeks, and indeed her business is now up and running in the Smiths Falls area. Also recently in Smiths Falls, a client came in on Monday and had all the necessary forms back by the end of that week. So the service is there; it's good news for the small businesses of this community.
The government, as I said, is committed to providing equal access to services across Ontario. We are also committed to reducing the regulatory overlap and duplication that currently exists among Ontario, Canadian and other jurisdictions, thereby providing taxpayers with more cost-efficient and cost-effective government, informing the government only once about any change in information instead of going to many different ministries to advise them of the same change.
It's very interesting to get client feedback right now, and that client feedback is indeed very encouraging and very positive. I'm sure we all agree in this House that small businesses are one of the foundations of this province's economy, and I'm delighted to say today that the response has been extremely positive. Now they will have to spend less time, considerably less time and effort, registering their enterprises in Ontario. By our helping them reduce time they spend on paperwork, they can do what they do best: expand and create jobs to help put our people back to work in this province.
In our meetings with small business people, one of the things we heard over and over again is the frustration they face with government red tape. When we looked at the registration process for new businesses, for example, we found that setting up a small business, as I said earlier, required an entrepreneur to deal with an average of seven to 10 different ministries, and that's just at the provincial level. The Business Regulation Reform Act will lessen this burden by eventually permitting businesses to consolidate many of their requirements into one single process.
We are also working with the federal government. I just noted that to establish their businesses, entrepreneurs have to visit between seven and 10 Ontario ministries. Then they have to complete the federal registrations, and that includes the GST, UIC and CPP applications, and much of this has to be done by mail to Ottawa. They also have to visit their local municipal office to obtain other licences and permits, depending on the nature of their business.
To the taxpayers, it's all government regardless of what level it comes from, and they cannot and do not distinguish between the three levels of government. The longer goal of Clearing the Path is to merge registration and recording requirements of all levels, starting with the federal government. This legislation is required to permit sharing of core information applicable to all government programs -- for example, business name, business address -- and we have to do that at all levels. I must point out that business information is already public information, but ministries need the authority to share and consolidate this information for efficient processing.
The MCCR has developed the Clearing the Path initiative with a working committee made up of other government ministries: the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Labour, and the Workers' Compensation Board. The advisory committee, comprised of our private sector partners, including new entrepreneurs, representatives from business associations and indeed the academic community, was established to provide us with feedback on our policy and program concepts.
The minister and the ministry have also held a number of focus groups to test our vision for Clearing the Path and to suggest some priorities for future enhancements. The bottom line on this consultation was indeed twofold: (1) to improve the services to business and (2) to simplify the ongoing reporting relationship between government and business. An earlier pilot program in Kingston and London confirmed the demand for a consolidated registration process.
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In 1994, business self-help offices across the province were invited to participate in the Ontario business registration access service and were asked to submit a proposal if they were indeed interested. The selection criteria reflected a wide variety of issues, including geographic location, community size and the ability to rapidly implement the workstation concept. As a result, the 16 workstations I talked about earlier are being delivered in a partnership with municipal business self-help offices as well as land registry offices and the retail sales tax office.
What we're talking about right now basically affects those unincorporated businesses. For those businesses that need incorporation indeed it's a very, very different process from registering basically a sole proprietorship or indeed a general partnership.
Currently, entrepreneurs setting up a business under the Ontario Corporations Act or the Business Corporations Act will have to use existing procedures to register. However, the foundation being built under the umbrella of this particular legislation will act as a stepping stone for the future.
Incorporated businesses will benefit from the introduction of a unified reporting system in September of next year. Businesses can then elect to make retail sales tax and employer health tax payments with a single cheque each month. The incorporations tax payments will be added in January 1996, and large businesses which are required to make payments at different times during the month will be able to receive consolidated statements and again make single payments. We believe this will simplify and streamline the reporting process for all businesses.
In closing, I believe the adoption of this bill is a very, very important first step towards re-engineering business regulation and reporting in Ontario. I believe it's also an example of our government's commitment to streamline all of its operations and procedures.
It is crucial that we continue to improve the overall business-government relationship. The Business Regulation Reform Act will allow us to continue to improve the registration and reporting processes and ensure more efficient government services to the businesses in Ontario, and that's what this act is all about.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Any questions or comments? Are there any other members who wish to participate in this debate?
Mr Carman McClelland (Brampton North): I say to the parliamentary assistant, thank you for that introduction of the legislation we're discussing today, Bill 187, An Act to reform the Law regulating Businesses. Indeed, I say with sincerity that often in this place it's difficult to cross over the partisan chasms that are sometimes built, and I want to, at the outset, congratulate the government for taking this initiative. I will qualify that somewhat. I want to simply say that I think it's a good measure, albeit slow in coming, and quite frankly not taking a large enough step at this present time.
Let me touch base on some of those matters as we talk about this for a while. This particular legislation is the product of the work of the Clearing the Path project under the direction of Mr Evans from the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations, who was charged with the responsibility, together with a very able group of individuals in the ministry, to look at the climate in which business operates in the province of Ontario.
The parliamentary assistant for the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations, Mr Duignan, has indicated and quite ably put on the record the importance of small business for the province of Ontario and indeed our country. It is no secret that emerging businesses in the small to medium-size sector are the lifeblood of the economy in the 1990s and doubtless into the next decade.
As we move with almost blinding rapidity into the era of electronic communications and the electronic highway, the nature of business and the way that business is done will change at a pace that perhaps only some people whom I would describe as visionaries can actually contemplate at the present time.
By way of a bit of an aside, I had the opportunity of hearing Mr Ted Rogers a few weeks ago. His prediction -- he has been reasonably accurate in terms of his business predictions of late -- indicated that by the turn of the century over 70% of the households in the province of Ontario will have interactive abilities in terms of electronic communication. In point of fact, many businesses are already at that place. Businesses operate on virtual instant transmission of information and databases, unlike, I say, government.
It is no secret that governments, generally speaking, have been slow to respond to the marketplace. I think in part that's the nature of the parliamentary government that we know, and in point of fact in some US jurisdictions under a different system. Governments tend to do business as usual. It has often been said that if governments were in business, they would have been broke a long time ago because they just don't adapt and they don't change quickly enough.
It's no secret that ministry to ministry can't communicate effectively electronically. There's really only one jurisdiction that does that adequately, that has been, so to speak, wired for communication, that being the jurisdiction of New Brunswick, albeit the province of Quebec certainly has advanced in terms of communication, department by department and ministry to ministry.
What does that tell us? It tells us, on the one hand, that business has moved very, very quickly to embracing and utilizing electronic communication. In point of fact, most businesses would not survive. In point of fact, in most new businesses, a virtual requirement of an entrepreneur is that she or he be literate or certainly functionally able in terms of using electronic information processing systems. I hasten to add my own personal deficiency in that respect. I recognize that younger people, young women and men in our educational institutions today, are being equipped to deal with the reality of communication in the 1990s, in the year 2000 and beyond.
What this initiative is trying to do is to mesh the reality of the business place with the reality of business trying to do business, if you will, with government. I hope I explained that well. Business to business seems to interact quite well electronically; business to government has some difficulty and, as I think would be admitted by members of all three parties, government, within its various jurisdictions and bureaucracy, is not yet up to speed with respect to electronic communication.
We know the importance of small business to the economy. That's been touched on. We know the impact it has on job creation. Certainly those who are entering the workforce for the first time have the best prospect of job opportunity in the small business sector. Indeed, many of the jobs will be from the entrepreneurial spirit that has been engendered in young women and men across this province and this country to build an economy for the future and for the next generation in the next decade.
There lies within the business community a general frustration, a frustration that has been expressed by small business, some reference being made to it by the parliamentary assistant, a frustration that government doesn't understand the plight they are in, a frustration that government is slow to react and slow to respond to their needs, a frustration that is indicated by chambers of commerce and boards of trade which say that this current government doesn't understand that when it increases taxes by $4 billion, it is hurting job creation; that when they have tax hikes of an unprecedented order, it slows down the economy and makes it hard for them to do work; that when they have a paperwork burden that has increased dramatically over the past four years, it makes it more difficult to start business and indeed to sustain business.
Incidentally, I had an opportunity to meet with a young woman today at noon, a friend of mine who was trying to establish a small business. She indicated that she went through the process of beginning to look at filing papers, went to a government office at the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations to do so and ended up having to return another day when she noticed that her day was being used up waiting in line. There were still 10 people ahead of her and she wanted to get on with filing her business so that she could begin.
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I'll give you another example anecdotally that represents the difficulty that businesses have. A number of months ago I was in Ottawa with my colleague Mr Phillips, the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, and we did an open-line phone-in show for a couple of hours on an Ottawa radio station.
A gentleman called and recounted the following story. He said: "I have" -- what to him seemed a relatively modest amount of money to me seemed like a great deal of money -- "$300,000 and I want to start a business. I'm ready to go. I have my product, I have my personnel, I have everything in place, but the problem is that I can't get the appropriate documentation from the government of Ontario."
He went on to indicate that he had in fact sent in documents and they had been returned because he had failed to complete an appropriate box of information. They were returned to him by mail a number of days, perhaps weeks, later, I forget exactly, but it was a frustrating time period for him in any event. He subsequently completed the appropriate box and sent in the information, but by now it was dated and because it was dated it had to be sent back again and reprocessed entirely.
He had begun that in late November, I believe, of 1993 and we were speaking with him in early March 1994. So a number of months had passed by where he had begun the process of filing the paper to get a business going and he wasn't able to get that business under way because the paper transactions hadn't been done correctly.
Very clearly, a solution for that situation would have been what's being envisaged with electronic filing. He would have sat down at a computer terminal at an appropriate location, he would have punched up the information and somebody or the program in the computer itself would have flagged the fact that the information wasn't complete and would have identified the problem.
He would have remedied the problem, pushed a button effectively, had the business filed and would have been ready to go a number of months earlier, injecting money into the economy, employing people and doing what he wanted to do, to get on and make a profit, which is understandably the appropriate motivation for being in business, and make a gainful contribution to the community in which he lived and indeed the province and our country. That wasn't what he was able to do. He went through the process of some delay, as I described. The concept that's being envisaged by this legislation would deal with that.
I hasten to add that the legislation that is being brought forward today does virtually nothing in the immediate. I think we've heard that. I'm sure the parliamentary assistant may want to comment on that. What this legislation does is effectively set the table for some initiatives that are going to take place about a year down the road, perhaps September or so of 1995. Less than a year, 10 months or so from now, we'll begin to see the product of what is possible to come out of the legislation that's being put forward today.
What has been done in the short term has been done administratively. It's a function of policy deciding that the kiosks that you spoke of, the travelling filing system in Timiskaming -- it moves around -- can be done immediately. It's really an issue of the government will to get on with the task of making it easier to do business. What this piece of legislation does is set up the next step where we will be able to move into, effectively, the electronic age for doing business and hopefully provide the opportunity to bring other levels of government on stream.
We know that small business is important to our economy. We know that there are countless frustrations. We have seen evidence of that with the billboards that have appeared in downtown Toronto that have given the leader of this government the dubious distinction of being Buffalo's businessperson of the year, the current billboard that indicates very graphically this government's policies in terms of their tax-hungry initiatives, the fact that they have paid lip-service to some extent to businesses but, on the other hand, go and do things that are counterproductive.
Whether it be in the hard and heavy-handed way that they've implemented some of their policies contrary to the interest of business, they none the less come now as we are approaching what I think is the perhaps early preparatory time for an election and say, "Hey, now we want to start to listen to business." A project that has been in place for some four and a half years is now being pulled off the shelf and being brought forward and they're saying, "We're going to move with it."
Hon Frances Lankin (Minister of Economic Development and Trade): Excuse me?
Mr McClelland: The Minister of Economic Development and Trade looks at me kind of quizzically. In point of fact, the director of the project team would indicate that this initiative had its genesis a number of years ago, began and was effectively detoured around a number of roadblocks and has only been given the freedom to move and be brought forward, with the initiative that we're discussing today, in recent months.
Hon Ms Lankin: I am going to go apoplectic in a minute if you continue this. Holy mackerel.
Mr McClelland: Minister, you'll have an opportunity to respond and you can do your "Holy mackerels" or whatever else you want. In point of fact, you know very well, and I think that the reality in the business community across this province will speak very, very plainly and abundantly clear whenever we have the next election, that the sentiment that is being expressed by business everywhere any one of us goes in this province lately is that the best thing that can happen for clearing the path for business in the province of Ontario is to have a change in government.
There is no question that we need to move electronically in some of the initiatives that we have here, but at the same time there is also no question that there has been a sense that the government of the day is anti-business and is not interested in the realities of business in the workplace.
Hon Ms Lankin: Oh, come on, look at all the statistics.
Mr McClelland: I suggest to my friend opposite that maybe one of the reasons business confidence is up is they're looking at it and saying, "My God, we only have about six months left." That's probably one of the reasons that there is a sense of business opportunity, that maybe there will be some fresh air at the end of the tunnel and that there is some light and that there will be an opportunity to breathe again and to flourish in this province.
The particular initiatives of this bill I'll make some brief comments on, particularly with respect to section 4. I note in section 4 of the act that there is effectively a veto power for other ministries that would be brought on board. I suppose one could read a lot into this, and I can only speculate.
It seems to me that what we would have wanted was an opportunity where an initiative was being taken forward with a sense of unfettered direction. I suspect what happened was something to the effect that the project team and the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations would have said that we want to be able to move in a direction across ministries and departments of government and bring this initiative to fruition as quickly and as cleanly as able. Doubtless what would happen in a discussion like that, it seems to me, is that there would be people who would say: "Wait a minute. Would that mean I would be giving up part of my turf?" I understand that dynamic takes place in government. I understand that's the reality of human nature.
What we have is a situation where, certainly hypothetically, a minister of the crown could override this initiative in his or her respective area of responsibility. I think that's probably one of those issues that is not to be made a great deal of, save and except to say that I think in an ideal situation it would have the, if you will, full endorsation of the government of the day to be able to move and say: "This is the direction we're going in. We have confidence in the direction we're going in and we don't need that ministerial override ministry by ministry."
On the other hand, I recognize the reality that some ministers would want to have that indeed in terms of their responsibility. I throw that out for consideration, not to be abundantly critical in that respect but simply to say that I recognize that dynamic and that tension.
I hope there would be, over the implementation of this, a full-hearted endorsation and acceptance of the initiatives that are being undertaken and that this particular section, section 4, would not be utilized to override what ultimately I think would be the harmonization and the integration of systems that will benefit everybody in the long run.
As I mentioned, I would just make some quick reference that much of what is being brought forward in Bill 187 will establish a framework and a foundation to bring on stream in September 1995 implementation of many of the initiatives that we're contemplating. I think you can safely say that what's being done immediately does not in point of fact require this legislation.
I understand the need for planning. I understand the need to set up the systems and to have some long-term lead-up times. I think it's also safe to say that when all is said and done, there's a sense -- whether you want to debate this issue, and I'm sure there'll be some comment -- but there is a sense that the government is really tinkering at the edges of what needs to be done. I think of the countless examples of bureaucratic red tape that has grown over so many years that really needs to be cut, that impedes business in so many ways.
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This summer the Niagara wine growers, by way of example, wanted to have a special wine-tasting festival. They required some 44 separate approvals, thousands upon thousands of dollars, for a very vital, dynamic industry in our province just to go ahead and do something as simple as a wine-tasting festival. That is illustrative of the way in which governments, not just this government but all governments, must begin to think more businesslike and get rid of the impediments to doing good things.
While we're bringing in Bill 187 on the one hand and saying we want to make it easier to do business, at the very same time we have the government with Bill 178, the Unclaimed Intangible Property Act, leading to costly compliance for the private sector, really leading to what is simply another $50-million monetary grab.
It's necessary for us to define very quickly in government -- and we have said that we are prepared to do that in the opposition -- and define very clearly a list, a menu, if you will, of regulatory burden that needs to be cut. My leader has made a commitment to address and really take on with absolute commitment the goal of cutting the regulatory burden on small business by 50% over the term, should we form another government. It seems to me that's the kind of goal we need to do.
It is not sufficient to say we are going to move a little bit in one direction with electronic filing, when on the other hand we continue to pile regulation upon regulation, paperwork upon paperwork, filings, and tax hit after tax hit. We in government need to get out of the way of business in many respects and allow them to do what they need to do. We need to look at some fundamental reforms in the area of workers' compensation. We recognize this, it seems to me, by paying lip-service to those issues, but we fail to take the initiative.
I would suggest that when we look at this legislation, to say we would be opposed to it would send a very, very bad message to business. It would say that the opposition is not prepared to work cooperatively with government to move in step. I hasten to add that it is only one small step and that much, much more needs to be done.
I would hope this would be the beginning of a move in the province of Ontario that will clear the path in a very real way, not to come up with some slick slogan that says we are going to throw some legislation on the table that will tee things up for late 1995, but to move definitively with some initiatives that can be done now that will ease the burden financially and from a regulatory point of view for businesses to operate in the province of Ontario. I would hope that as we engage in this debate the government will do more than say, "We're clearing the path," that it would, in point of fact, do what it says it wants to do. Paying lip-service is, quite frankly, not good enough.
I know this initiative has been the product of the hard work of many people. I know there are discussions taking place with the federal government, and I know there is built into the legislation the opportunity for integrating electronic filing with municipal governments as well. That yet needs to be negotiated and is indeed a significant task for any government, to sit down with all the various levels of government bureaucracy and pull together all those pieces to make it clean and efficient.
I think the parliamentary assistant was the one who said, quite rightly, that in some cases a dozen or more pieces of paper need to be filed for an individual to operate a business or to begin a business in Ontario. This is a step, a small step -- I don't want to take anything away from that -- but I hasten to add that we need to do an awful lot more.
I say again to my friends, if you really want to clear the path for business, have an election. Put your financial plan, your record, on the table for discussion and for judgement by the people of Ontario. Allow the people of the province and businesses to measure you in the court of the ballot box. I think that will do more to clear the path for business than anything this legislation can do. I trust that will happen sooner rather than later.
The Deputy Speaker: Questions or comments?
Mr Duignan: I listened intently to the remarks by my colleague the member for Brampton North. While I can agree with him on some of his comments, some of them I certainly cannot.
Basically, what this legislation does is begin the process. As you know, right now you can go into the small business office and do your business name search directly on a computer, right into Toronto. You get your main four forms filled out and they're checked out and returned in a very short time. Of course, he's right that by 1995, everybody will be able to do that electronically.
I have a hard time listening to the member from Brampton talk about how we've taxed small business -- this comes from the Liberals. Let me see what the Liberals did. We had a concentration tax, we had a tire tax, they brought in the health tax, and we could go on and on. Actually, I'm looking forward to the election. I'll be glad to pit our economic platform against the Liberals' platform any time, any day of the week, when people compare what we have done and the decisions we have done to what the Liberals are going to do and what they've done.
I draw members' attention to the little article in the Toronto Star today. For example, when the Liberal leader is pressed about unemployment, her primary goal is to reduce it to 6%. When pressed, she seems to be "a bit fuzzy," according to Thomas Walkom. "After the speech, reporters asked her about the 6%. It would be a target, she explained, but not a definite one.
"After all, she went on, provincial governments don't have much control over job creation so a McLeod regime couldn't be held entirely responsible if the target wasn't met."
You can't get anything more vague or more fuzzy on job creation, and I suspect it will be the same on taxation and I expect it will be the same on social policy and labour policy by a Liberal government.
Mr Norm Jamison (Norfolk): Listening to the member across the floor, I'm encouraged in one sense, that he realizes the importance of this initiative to the small business community, and the importance, therefore, for the legislation to go forward.
When the speaker across the floor mentions what has been done in the small business community, I think this piece of legislation, this initiative, Clearing the Path, really deals with that crucial issue of paperwork burden for small businesses, and businesses in general, for that matter. Beyond that -- and the member across the floor should understand and the reality should be presented rather than the rhetoric -- the reality is that taxes on small business have been reduced from the level when we entered office. We've provided training funds for small businesses now, in the form of tax credits, to a maximum of $10,000 through Jobs Ontario. We have introduced the Community Economic Development Act that further enhances small businesses' ability to attain financing tools. All these things are very important.
As we go farther down the road, I just have to say again that when in reality you compare what this government has done for small business as opposed to what previous governments didn't do, I can tell you that the record would be very clear indeed and a record that I'm very proud of.
The Deputy Speaker: Further questions or comments? If not, the member for Brampton North, you have two minutes to reply.
Mr McClelland: My friend, and he is indeed a friend, the member for Norfolk, leads with his chin when he talks about small business and Jobs Ontario. Countless businesses will tell him, and I know they have, "Hey, it's not worth the trouble." The paperwork, the nonsense you have to put up with to create the sham of trying to fit somebody for a job that just has no meaningful training for them is absolutely absurd and is a total waste of money. Yes, from time to time you hear somebody, "Hey, I scored a job with Jobs Ontario," but five or six to one, people will say: "It's not worth the hassle. You put more money and more effort into jumping through bureaucratic hoops and trying to make the government happy instead of having the government providing service to the business of Ontario."
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Interjection.
Mr McClelland: He knows as he smiles, and the member from Durham who's chirping away as usual knows it as well, that to throw out those kinds of things proves how very, very much out of touch you are with the realities of business and small business in the province of Ontario.
If I were the parliamentary assistant for Consumer and Commercial Relations, I would be very, very careful about quoting Thomas Walkom as the authority for what a wonderful job his government is doing. Mr Duignan, the member for Halton North, is not here. I will buy for him a copy of Rae Days and highlight some of the fiascos in terms of the cabinet sitting around and wrestling with some of the decisions, where a principal secretary says, "We didn't know what we were doing and we still don't know what we're doing after four years." The government says: "Hey, we've learned, we've trained for four years. Give us a chance. We've got it right now." Surely, if we're going to do something for business, let's get this government out of the way.
Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I'm pleased to have an opportunity this afternoon to speak in response to the government's Bill 187, the Business Regulation Reform Act, 1994, which we're doing now at second reading.
As our party's small business advocate, I'm fortunately going to have the privilege of leading off on behalf of our party, but our critic for Consumer and Commercial Relations, the member for Parry Sound, still has his 90-minute opportunity, and I understand that's been cleared by the House leader. Personally, I wish to put some of my thoughts on the record about what the government's doing with respect to attempting and endeavouring to eliminate some of the regulations that have been negatively impacting on small business for the last number of years.
This bill, if we listen to the minister, is responding to the calls of small business owners in the province: the Clearing the Path initiative the ministry instructed the civil service to look into about a year ago to deal with small business complaints of red tape. The minister of course introduced this bill for first reading on November 3, 1994, and when introducing the bill, the minister indicated that the bill "reflects the government's commitment to cutting red tape for business."
Beginning in September of this year, Ontario businesses are able to register in a more simple way at certain access points. I believe there are 15 business self-helps and land registry offices which have been set up to be sort of one-stop shopping for businesses to register with the government so they can fill out all the required forms in one stop. As well, I believe there's a toll-free assistance line to enable entrepreneurs to order a free business registration kit which includes four of the same forms found in the computer workstation. The government has plans to establish a number of these workstations around the province; I think about 35 is their long-term objective.
The minister and the parliamentary assistant today have indicated that the purpose of the bill is to simplify government processes for starting and operating businesses. I would like to indicate I'm supportive of that in principle and this bill I support in principle, and I will be voting in favour of it at second reading. But I must say it's a very, very modest first step, and I think in a fair world even the government members would recognize that. It's a very modest first step that goes to address a major, major problem we've heard about from small business for the last number of years.
As our party's small business advocate and as the co-chair of the Mike Harris tax force -- task force on small business, consulting with small business people over the last --
Interjection: Tax force? Was that a slip?
Mr Arnott: No, task force. We're eliminating all the taxes, many of them, anyway; we hope to eliminate many of the taxes if we get the opportunity to form a government.
I've had the opportunity to meet with a number of small business people over the last year and a number of the chambers of commerce in my riding in the context of these consultations. Regulation and paperwork is a very serious issue, and it's especially important for the smaller businesses. We talk about "small business." I'm not sure what the government uses as a working definition for small business. When I think of small business I think of single proprietors, I think of people with 10 employees. That's small business to me.
In my riding, in Wellington county, there are a great number of people employed in that size of business. Those are the ones who find the paperwork burden, the regulation burden, the red tape burden to be the most pronounced, simply because the owner-manager in many cases does a lot of the legwork himself. He or she is forced to fill in all the government forms, the forms the government expects small business to comply with, so they feel it the most.
I'm glad the government's bringing forward legislation which will make it easier for businesses to start, because generally many businesses, when they start, could very well be single proprietorships at that point. That will make it easier, but I think we also have to recognize that as these businesses grow they need help with respect to eliminating red tape and excessive regulation.
Over the past year, as I say, we've consulted. We've heard a lot of specific complaints about different programs that this particular government has undertaken, as well as programs that the Liberal government, between the period of 1985 and 1990, brought in. Many of these things I'd like to highlight very briefly this afternoon because I think it's important that the government recognize that this just isn't as far as we can go. We've got to go a lot farther with respect to eliminating unnecessary duplication, regulation and so forth.
We consistently heard that the $50 corporate filing fee was a major impediment to doing business in Ontario. We've heard that it ought to be eliminated, and that's something that I support. I've had more mail from small business people on this issue than probably any other. They don't understand the reason for it. They don't accept the government's claim that the information has to be compiled, they don't accept the government's claim that it costs $50 for them to maintain that information. I think it's something the government has brought in as a sort of minimum corporate tax, a simple way to collect quite a bit of money from business people generally. It's something I feel the government ought to address and it's something that it shouldn't be collecting.
As I say, I've received a lot of mail on this. I'd just like to briefly read a section of a letter that I received from a constituent on this. This was addressed to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations:
"Dear Minister,"
"I must conclude that this is nothing more than a blatant tax grab. The information on this corporation is consistently kept up to date and I have no objection to submitting more paperwork to your ministry. I strenuously object, given the heavy tax burden that your government is imposing upon small business, combined with the absolute total incompetence of your party's administration of government, to the additional $50 fee.
"Frankly, I and many of my colleagues had wished your new government well when you took office over two years ago. Notwithstanding your public posture on government auto insurance, we were looking forward to a change and, along with individuals and many other businesses, were willing to work with you. To say that you have shattered this residue of goodwill would be an understatement. You have destroyed it."
That's an excerpt from one letter I received. I also received a letter that was addressed to me complaining about the $50 corporate filing fee from another constituent, and I'd just like to read an excerpt from it, Mr Speaker, if you would indulge me:
"It is my opinion that, should legislation be in place or not, and a corporation is inactive, it should not be required to pay or give information. The intent of the NDPers appears to be to extort money under as many different guises as is possible."
I think that most members of the opposition would agree with that statement and I think most members of the government, if they were being honest, would agree with that statement as well.
Another consistent complaint and concern we heard, and this comes under the issue of regulation and the regulatory burden, is the way the government is administering the employer health tax. We saw in the spring budget the Treasurer brought forward an indication and recognition that the employer health tax was killing job creation.
This is the tax the Liberals brought in in response to a commitment they made to get rid of OHIP premiums. They didn't tell us when they were campaigning on that issue that they were going to bring in another tax to replace that to recoup the money that was lost through OHIP premiums. They brought in the employer health tax. Again, it was a tax on jobs. It's not a tax on profitability, it's not a tax on your ability to pay. It's just a flat tax on your level of payroll, and it means that for new hires, it's an incremental additional cost that you probably don't need. I think it's one good reason why many employers have tried to keep their number of employees as low as possible.
The government of course responded with respect to new hires saying that there would be a temporary holiday on the employer health tax for new hires. We think the government should go further than that and we've suggested that the employer health tax should not be paid by the smallest of businesses. Any business up to $400,000 in annual payroll should not be paying the employer health tax, and we'd like to continue to urge the government to implement that policy. Should they not do that and should we form the government next time, that's something I expect we would pursue.
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Workers' compensation was another persistent complaint. I hear from injured workers on this at our constituency office and I hear from employers about the problems with respect to workers' compensation and the difficulty in getting through to workers' compensation and getting an answer on workers' compensation issues. I raised this issue during the course of Bill 165 hearings. We're still, I understand, in that process, in clause-by-clause. That's an issue that is still being dealt with by this Legislature, but it also is relevant, I think, to this point of discussion today.
A couple of examples: The Guelph Utility Pole Co Ltd is a company in Wellington county that is a good small business. I think they employ around 40 people. I've been in a couple of times to meet the people who work there and I know the owner as well. He gave me some information about what they've paid in terms of workers' compensation premiums since 1990, roughly the time the NDP took power.
They've paid about $242,000 in workers' compensation premiums over that four-year period. They've had a pretty good safety record. They've had $21,000 in actual claims. So they've paid almost a quarter of a million dollars into the fund and taken out as a result of their operations about $21,000. Something like 8.9% of the amount of money that they paid in was taken out because of workplace injuries.
You would think that if you're taking out less than 10% of what you're paying in, that would be a pretty good safety record. That's not the way the government interpreted it. In fact, their rate went up by 30% the first of this year. There's an example of how workers' compensation is not serving the needs of employers.
I have another example. A constituent has written me very briefly on Bill 165, and I'd like to read very briefly one section of his letter. He says:
"An insurance system such as the Workers' Compensation Board must adjust its costs in response to the performance of the customers. Employers in the past eight years have reduced accident frequency by 30% and employers in my industry, construction, have reduced injuries by 61% over the same period. However, instead of lower costs, our average premium per employee has soared from an average of $982 in 1983 to $2,508 in 1992." In about 10 years, it's gone up 261%. "The costs of Workers' Compensation Board coverage for the construction sector are particularly sad."
That's another example where government policy is making it very difficult for small business to survive.
Another persistent complaint that we heard during the course of our consultations was the Workplace Health and Safety Agency. Of course, the enabling legislation was passed under the Liberal government, Bill 208. This agency has been up and running now for a couple of years. Their main objective is to try to promote workplace safety, they tell us. They want every business over 20 employees to have safety training, generally speaking, outside of the workplace.
I've had quite a number of small business people come to me with a number of employees roughly on the margin, say, about 25 employees, and they've told me that they are going to reduce their number of employees to 19 so that they won't have to go through the rigamarole of this Bill 208 and the Workplace Health and Safety Agency.
The Liberals were the ones who introduced the legislation which set up the Workplace Health and Safety Agency and the New Democrats have been administering the government for the past four years. So I think they're both culpable on this.
I think we all agree with the objective of increased workplace health and safety. The question is, how do we get to that objective? I'm not sure that the Workplace Health and Safety Agency is meeting its own goals for achieving enhanced workplace safety. I find again letters continuing to come in from constituents complaining about the level of red tape and regulation.
This is one example of a form that was sent to a constituent of mine. It's a survey that they have to complete to conform, I guess, to the requirements of the Workplace Health and Safety Agency. It's about 18 pages long. They've got specific, detailed questions. It might be nice for the government to have all this information; I guess the government feels that it needs to have it. But the reality is, I assume, just as an estimate, this would take a small business person a good hour to fill out. If he's a single proprietor, he doesn't have the time to do that obviously, but when he gets close to 20 employees, it's still a very small business and I think it would be very, very difficult to continue to fill out this sort of information.
Our consultation process also heard another big issue out there, and that's the issue of the social assistance system. The way it comes into effect in terms of small businesses, many small business people see the social assistance system as being in competition with them. They have to keep their wage rates at such a level, because of the competition from the social assistance system, that it becomes very difficult for them to pay their employees.
We've put forward a number of specific suggestions about how the social assistance system ought to be reformed.
We've said that there should be mandatory workfare and learnfare for able-bodied recipients. We've said that 170,000 elderly and disabled recipients should be taken out of the welfare system entirely and their benefits should not be altered in any way. We've said that Ontario's welfare benefits should be about 10% above the average of other provinces and they shouldn't be higher than that. We've said that enabling current welfare recipients to earn back the difference from their old and new benefit levels would be desirable.
We've said that we need new programs for literacy, nutrition, parenting and child support. We've said that eliminating an existing system which grants benefits to 16- and 17-year-olds who simply choose to leave home ought to be done. We've said that the government should end direct deposit for benefits and require in-person pickup of cheques by recipients.
Again, I think these are concrete suggestions that the government ought to follow up on, and if these were brought into effect, in some way small business would be assisted.
Another complaint that we've heard, and this is probably the last one that I want to talk about before I get into my conclusion, is the issue of the government's so-called employment equity program. We call it something different. I support the idea of employment equity in principle. I think there should be fair hiring practices and I think the government should encourage that in every way that it can. But I don't believe the answer is bringing in a system of job quotas.
Now, the government gets excited when we call it job quotas and they call it not job quotas; it's numerical goals. But I think most of us would agree that they mean one and the same thing. It's something that is making it difficult for small business. It's another level of regulation and asking small business to fill out forms that they don't have the time to do. And still we're seeing a government that's I think quite insensitive to the needs of small business overall.
We need jobs in Ontario. Our unemployment rate has gone down significantly. The government is talking about that now and quite happy about that, I'm sure, as we all are, that the unemployment rate has gone down significantly. It was interesting, though, that when the unemployment rate was high the government wouldn't admit any responsibility for that. It was always somebody else's fault. But now that the unemployment --
Hon Ms Lankin: Wait a minute. That is what you say: It's all our fault.
Mr Arnott: No, no. You said, when the unemployment rate was high, that it wasn't your fault, and now that the unemployment rate is lower, you are taking credit. That's clearly the message that the government is trying to put out in advance of the election. That's clearly what's happening.
In our area, in Wellington county, our unemployment rate is down to about just over 6% and we feel quite proud of that and we're quite pleased with that. There are still too many people looking for work who can't find it. There are still too many people who feel a sense of job insecurity even though they are working, and that influences their spending habits, which has an effect on the economy. We still need to really work hard to try and eliminate the unemployment problem and we're not there yet.
Business confidence is up, as one of the members across the floor indicated, and I think there are a number of factors for that. But as to the involvement of the government in this issue, to the extent that business confidence is affected by the knowledge of the NDP in power in Ontario, it's still a negative influence, and I think you would recognize that if you were being fair. It's still a negative influence towards business confidence.
Two years ago I surveyed my constituents on quite a number of issues. It's another form that I asked them to fill out, so it's similar to what we're talking about here and I think it's helpful. But I asked them a direct question. Which approach did they think would create more job opportunities in Ontario: direct government job creation -- and I tried to illustrate what the government was doing with respect to Jobs Ontario -- or less government regulation? Which approach would likely encourage more job creation? This was a general survey to all constituents, not just to business people, so it sort of gives you an impression of what the average person's thinking would be on this issue.
Eighty per cent responded that less government regulation would be a better way to create new jobs, as opposed to direct government job creation. That tells me that the vast majority of the people in Ontario understand that we've got to have this as an objective, to reduce the level of regulation and red tape, that this should be an objective of the government, and that direct government job creation such as the Jobs Ontario program is just not going to be as effective, plus it's very costly.
As the government knows, it costs, I guess at a maximum, $10,000 per worker hired, so it costs the taxpayers something to create the jobs that you're creating for the Jobs Ontario program. It's very costly, notwithstanding the advertising campaign that you've undertaken to try and enhance awareness of the program. Clearly, less government regulation would be the main objective and the main way to go.
I'll conclude my remarks by reiterating what I said earlier in my introduction. This is a bill that I can support in principle at second reading, and I look forward to hearing more of the debate in this Legislature this afternoon to see what other members are putting forward.
I would have to say once again it is a very modest first step to solving a large complex problem of overregulation, and I would encourage all members of the Legislature to view that as a priority and put forward whatever ideas they may have, such that we can work together collectively to address the problem.
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The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Questions or comments?
Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): I appreciate the remarks made by the member for Wellington. I wanted to comment on a couple of things he said. Once again, he brought up the issue of WCB and he talked about the impact on small business. I agree with him, there's no doubt that there is a significant impact there.
Every time the opposition parties bring up the issue of WCB and its problems, particularly the issue of the unfunded liability, I am constantly amazed at how short their memory is because, as you know, in 1980 the unfunded liability of the Workers' Compensation Board was $400 million. By 1985, the unfunded liability was about $5.5 billion and by 1990 it was up over $10 billion. So the vast majority of that unfunded liability that is resulting in some of the premium increases that are impacting small business -- Tory and Liberal governments, but they won't take ownership for it.
On the issue of employment equity, the member said, "I consider small businesses 10 employees or less." Well, read the employment equity legislation. It clearly says that small businesses with less than 50 employees are exempt from the legislation. So I don't see how you can use the example of employment equity as being a detriment to small business when they've been exempted.
Let me say too that I appreciate his comments that this is a good step. He's right, it is a good step. But the other thing the opposition parties have been saying is, "We're going to cut the red tape," but they haven't identified what they consider red tape to be.
Is it environmental regulations that protect people? We heard the leader of the third party today making his concerns about, "I'm concerned about the drinking water in the province of Ontario." But is he going to cut those regulations? Well, come on. If you're going to say you're going to cut red tape, you've got to be very clear about what the areas are. It is this government that is making dramatic steps to cut the red tape and help small business in the province of Ontario.
Mr Duignan: I want to commend my colleague from Wellington and indeed my colleague from Brampton North. I appreciate the kind comments they made about our legislation and I look forward to working with them over the coming weeks on this particular piece of legislation.
However, there were a couple of points made by the member for Wellington. One, the member for Wellington pointed out that Clearing the Path would assist in setting up a business, and indeed he's correct. However, it goes beyond that as well. It will help the ongoing running of business, which is a very important point. It will streamline all forms that businesses use, like tax payment forms etc. We're talking about a unified reporting system, and it will also allow for easy payment of existing taxes.
He also raised the fact of the filing fee, and we keep hearing this about the $50 filing fee, Mr Speaker. You know that the filing fee in Ontario is in fact very comparable to that charged in other jurisdictions and that 80% of our business records, when we took office, were incomplete and incorrect and our filing system -- what we've done has improved that. When you consider in fact that the police and lawyers etc do approximately 300,000 searches a year, it's very important that the information is up to date and indeed is correct. Again, I believe the filing fee is reasonable and comparable to other jurisdictions and in fact it leads to good management of the filing system.
Mr McClelland: The small business advocate for the third party mentioned the filing fee, and the parliamentary assistant picked up on it. It seems to me that we should take a good look at that corporate filing fee and maybe reference it somewhat to the act, section 6(2), which says this particular piece of legislation includes the authority to adjust "the amount of fees that businesses are required to pay under designated acts," and for filing fees.
I hasten to remind the parliamentary assistant of the numerous cases whereby businesses found themselves being deregistered for not having paid a $50 filing fee -- countless cases where businesses have operated successfully for many years. You'd almost have to think it was a conspiracy, to hear them, because they claim, legitimately I believe, that they didn't receive any notice. They say, "It's funny that the government can find the business for the filing of taxes and for the demand of other forms, but when it came to touching base with me in terms of the failure to pay my $50 registration fee, I didn't find out until it was too late and had to go through all the hoops to re-register and pay hundreds upon hundreds of dollars." That again is indicative of the fact that you're out of touch with what's happening in the real world.
Over and over again, businesses have called from all over the province to find themselves having been deregistered because they weren't properly advised and didn't know they were being deregistered. They found out only when they went to engage in some other activity or interaction with the government that they no longer existed. The government saw it had created a problem and in fact did away with the automatic deregistration and allowed them an opportunity to remedy that. But there were a whole lot of people caught in the middle, in between the creation of the problem and the solution, and those people have been left hanging. If you want to do something about business, deal with that kind of problem as well.
Mr Paul Klopp (Huron): I'd like to thank my colleagues for the work they're doing to help small business and getting on with Clearing the Path. This bill is going a good step forward.
The $50 filing fee is something that seems to come up a lot, and it's been very interesting. When people phone my office to complain about it, my first instinct was to say, "Why do we need it?" This process was put in place years ago by I think the Conservative government because the business community needed this to protect the shareholders and the people who made the companies. I also found out at the time that there was a filing fee. The government at that time believed that the general public shouldn't be paying for someone's own personal needs, and in this case the filing fee was put in place. I believe it was 1983 or 1984 that the filing fee was dropped. So be it. That meant that the rest of us taxpayers who don't have companies were paying that bill.
We came in and one of the things we said we had to do was to be more fiscally responsible, to have people who want something to pay for it, which I do. I understand that. If there's something I want to have, I'll pay for it. We looked into the situation. We found out that in most provinces, as was pointed out, it's somewhere in the neighbourhood of $100 to $200 filing fees. We said, "We don't want to go out and just completely go from nothing to $100." We said $50, we picked $50.
Many people in my community then all of sudden got whipped up by opposition members, which is fine. We did the same thing when we were in opposition, said, "Oh, jeepers, this is the worst thing since sliced bread." So I put it to a number of people: "Why don't you say we don't need that program at all? Let's cut it out completely." Well, I haven't heard any chamber of commerce or anybody write in and say, "We don't need the program to protect me." Unless someone wants to come along with that, I'm willing, as a small business, to pay that to help the administration costs so the rest of us don't have to pay for that.
The Acting Speaker: This completes questions or comments. The honourable member for Wellington has two minutes in response.
Mr Arnott: I'd like to thank the member for Oxford, the member for Halton North, the member for Brampton North and the member for Huron for responding to the comments I made this afternoon.
I'd like to respond very briefly to the member for Oxford's observation about workers' compensation. He talked about the unfunded liability. I don't believe I raised that particular issue with respect to my comments this afternoon, although it is a major concern. He has to recognize that as premiums go up, as the cost of employing people goes up, it makes it more difficult for small business people to hire new employees. As premiums go up, it probably diminishes our opportunities for new job creation in Ontario.
He mentioned employment equity and, yes, I do think of small businesses being 10 employees, but I wouldn't say that's the absolute ceiling. Certainly, businesses employing 50 people, which comes under the employment equity requirements of the government, would be small businesses as well. Without question, that is a new level of regulation that did not exist before the New Democrats took power that is a major, major impediment to small businesses operating their affairs efficiently and directly without excessive direct government interference and regulation.
The member for Halton North talked about how this bill is going to make it much easier for small businesses on an ongoing basis. Our critic, the member for Parry Sound, responded to the minister's announcement last week -- I guess two weeks ago now, because of the break -- that the government expects businesses to fill out about 43,164 forms. This will consolidate four forms, so there is still a lot of work to be done in that respect.
The $50 corporate filing fee: An interministerial committee came up with that number I think in 1992 under your government. It's still a major, major irritant to small business, and the government has to move on that.
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The Acting Speaker: Further debate? The honourable Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology.
Hon Ms Lankin: Economic Development and Trade. There's been a ministry name change there, Mr Speaker.
I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this debate. I'm going to keep my remarks brief today. I think the member for Halton North, who is the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, has set out in adequate detail the nature of this legislation, the initiatives the government is pursuing, both directly as a result of the legislative initiative and on other fronts. What I want to do is talk about some of the reasons we are pursuing this and how we got here, and I think respond in brief measure to the opposition members on some of the points they have raised.
I would like to begin my comments by paying tribute to the member for Norfolk, who is a parliamentary assistant in the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, and his parliamentary assistants' committee on small business. The member for Norfolk, in his role as parliamentary assistant responsible for small business, led a parliamentary assistants' committee that consulted with small business, that did a great deal of work in developing the proposals which have resulted in the legislative initiative and some of the administrative changes that you are seeing coming about through this Clearing the Path project.
Listening to some of the opposition's comments, I think there is support for the legislation. I think I heard that in there, and I look forward to seeing them voting in a positive manner on this bill. I heard a number of gratuitous additions to that, saying, "But it's only a small step; it doesn't go far enough." I'm reminded of some of the old conventions I used to go to, where you'd have people at the pro mike who really were in opposition to something, who'd get up and say, "You know, this is good, but it doesn't go far enough."
We are on a course for reforming how we do business, in the government of Ontario, with the small business community, because we recognize that the small business community is one of the most important generators of jobs and economic activity in the economy of the province, and we are committed to working with it to make it easier to do business. The less we impose on them, the less burden they have to bear of filling out government forms and responding to government imperatives, the more time they can spend in growing their businesses, doing what they do best, running the businesses, creating economic activity in those businesses, increasing sales and hiring new people in to meet the demand. That's what we want to see happen out there.
I don't think, actually, if you were to be truthful in this House, that there is any difference of opinion in the three parties with respect to the value of moving in that direction. When I came into the portfolio of Economic Development and Trade, which was a year and a half ago, I found the Clearing the Path project, that the parliamentary assistant was leading and pushing and trying to get a response from all the various ministries on, in such shape that we had to sit down, he and I, and decide we were going to push this through ministry structures beyond the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, which saw the value of this and was supportive of this, in order to make it happen.
I think the members opposite truly, truly are undervaluing the importance of this kind of initiative to have the legislative framework in place that allows us to override years of consumer protection legislation, in one area, that says you need to have this form done this way; business registration legislation in this place that says you have to have this form filled out this way, some of it filed on microfiche; and in order for it to be legally challengeable in court, there has to be this version of it that's on file in legal offices.
All those myriad legislative requirements we delved into, like peeling the layers of an onion one after another, to determine all the problems that existed in the bureaucracies in coming to some simple solution. We determined that the clearest and simplest way was to cut through that with a piece of legislation that said: "We can override that and we can simplify and through electronic filing have one single-window access for businesses to come to government. Enough of small business having to go to this ministry, that ministry, this office, this office, fill out that form, meet this requirement. You bring it to us, to one place. You fill it out in one spot. You give it to us, and inside government we'll do the running around to meet all the bureaucratic requirements instead of wasting your time as a small business owner." That's the premise of this legislation and this initiative.
While members opposite can say it's only a small step, it is a remarkable change of course from the way in which bureaucracies, in the neutral sense of a bureaucracy, operate and need to maintain their own operation. This is breaking with tradition in a tremendously important way, and I credit the tenacity of the parliamentary assistant for his work on this and feel proud of the way in which I was able to support him to bring this project through to fruition.
On the value of businesses being able to register in a simple way, may I say we're not just looking at the present-day situation; we're looking to the future. We're negotiating with the federal government to get it to buy into our approach so that we could have a single business registration number that applies to doing business with the federal government and the provincial government. We would like to eventually bring municipalities into this. We are cleaning up our own house but we're providing a framework and a leadership for other levels of government to join with us in simplifying the approach for small business to do business in this province.
I've talked about registration forms and getting permits and fees and licences, and the importance of our initiative with respect to that. The second aspect of this is the direction we're moving in with respect to unified reporting. That's the ability to remit taxation like the employer health tax, the retail sales tax, eventually corporate income tax and workers' compensation premiums, through one form and one filing.
Right now, each of those provisions for remittance to the provincial government on these various areas occurs at different times of the year. Some of them have filing requirements of twice a year, some have once a year. They don't coincide with each other. Small business is running around and calculating its returns of this quarter or that quarter to meet different government program requirements. We are going to change that. We are going to say: "We're the ones who can change what our requirements are. We can bring this all together so that there is an easy way to file your remittance when you're dealing with bureaucracies within the provincial government and you can do it through filing of a single return."
That is quite revolutionary when you think of the way in which governments operate. I would like to see down the road that the federal government and municipal governments would join with us on those initiatives as well. These are very important milestones, I think, in underscoring our commitment to trying to work with small business in a different way.
Members opposite can continue to shrug their shoulders and say: "Big deal. This is not important and you're not really committed." I can tell you the hours of work that the parliamentary assistants, myself and the staffs in our office personally put into seeing this project come to fruition, and that now the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations and the minister herself and their staffs are putting into seeing it through in its implementation. There is a commitment here and there is a political will. If there wasn't, let me tell you, the inertia that exists in large organizations like the government would have killed this initiative. It wouldn't have been happening here today.
I ask members to reflect on their rhetoric at certain points in time and to give credit where credit is due, and the ability we have to have broken through this tough bureaucratic logjam to bring this initiative forward. I'm proud of it. I think they support the intent and I look forward to how they vote on this.
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I'm going to conclude my remarks, because I know the member for Norfolk will be speaking on behalf of our party and will be talking more extensively about his consultation and the advisory committee we pulled together from small business that helped us design this initiative.
I just want to say that this is only one of the areas that we are addressing with respect to small business. We are dealing with issues of access to capital, which is very important for small business in terms of accessing the financing they need to grow their businesses. We are dealing with issues that affect their taxation levels, like controlling health care costs and bringing government deficits under control in order to bring about a fairer tax system out there overall.
I can tell you, if you look at our corporate tax rates in comparison with the majority of our border US states, we are more competitive on our combined corporate tax rates than any of the US states at this point in time, and that's very, very important.
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Take WCB and the employer health tax.
Hon Ms Lankin: That's when you include all payroll taxes. I can show you the competitiveness reports, to the member who is raising questions about that.
The steps we are taking on WCB in terms of avoiding the kind of unfunded liability that was there and reducing that out into the future so that we'll be able to help control the increase in rates that employers are going to be experiencing, these are all very important steps.
We're also working with small business in terms of helping them look outward to the international market. Our support for exporters working with small, innovative growth firms, to help them grow or improve their technological capability and their international capabilities, to focus on the skill levels they need in their workforce and the managerial and technical expertise they need to grow those companies, those are all concrete actions that we have taken, programs that are in place now and programs that are paying off as we see small business growing and generating the jobs that we need for now and generating the jobs that we need for the future in this province.
I'll be supporting this bill. I'm very proud of this initiative. It is one of a number of things we're doing with respect to small business and it underscores the commitment of this government to working with the small business community to create jobs in the economy of Ontario.
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?
Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South): I say to the minister, if everything is working so well and, as you know, 80% of the jobs are created by the small business sector, then how come businesses are leaving this province in record numbers under your management? You've had one philosophy in this province: Anything that moved, we taxed it; if it still moved, we regulated it; and then ultimately when it goes out of business, we turn around and subsidize it.
This is a minister who has done nothing but go around and cut ribbons in the province of Ontario and bail out companies that are failing because of the fact of their policies. What about the high taxation? What about the hydro rates? What about the overregulation? What about Bill 40, the job-killing labour legislation? What about the message you sent with the private sector day care people? The private sector, which does the job faster, better, cheaper and at no expense to the taxpayer, has been thwarted, penalized and shut out because of political ideology. We've lost more jobs than anywhere else.
I don't blame this all on this government. Governments at all levels and of all political stripes have been overtaxing, they've been overspending, they've been overgoverning, they've been overregulating, and we've been oversimplistic in our whole approach to public policy in the last 10 years in the province of Ontario.
This minister stands up and says, "It's okay, we're going to help you." With all the forms out there, she says: "Don't worry, we'll run around and do it. We'll run around and pass all the forms." She couldn't even tell me where these forms go.
If we were in the private sector and we followed this through on what is going on in setting up a business, the people in the private sector would say, "You've got to be ridiculous to be spending this amount of time." Everywhere else, everybody's got to do better with less. Not with the government. More forms are coming out here, 43,000 pieces of forms that are put together by the interministerial committee. They said that half of the communications that go on in the province of Ontario go through paperwork. All this stuff would be piled higher than the Speaker's chair and, quite frankly, it is absolutely useless because of the small start --
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. The member's time has expired.
Mr Carr: It's going to take a new government to really change and bring back jobs and hope to the small business sector in this province.
Mr Jamison: We've heard here how important this bill is to the small business community and to the economic wellbeing of the province. I think it's important to stress again that in this place, in this House, from time to time, we hear a tremendous degree of what one might consider to be rhetoric rather than factual statements. The factual statements that are given here are ones that I think are well-intentioned and ones that in fact are fact.
The last time I stood in this House to speak, as I said the last time when I spoke about the economy -- certainly there's a question here on whose facts are correct and whose fiction really is being heard here. It's fact that at this present time 50% of all new jobs created in this country are being created here in Ontario -- that's fact -- and that we're leading the way. That should be the headline every day in the newspaper, that Ontario is leading the way.
When I hear the rhetoric that takes place -- and of course one tends to get under one's skin depending on whose side of the House you're sitting on at that particular moment. The facts are clear: Ontario is leading. This bill will directly help small businesses in their dealings with governments and, again, we're going to lead the way in that aspect of economic growth by helping businesses compete.
Mr Stockwell: In commenting on the comments made by the minister, let's just deal with a few facts I think we can all agree on: This study was commissioned by the government, parliamentary assistants travelling the province led by the, I'm sure, able member for Norfolk. It's at least two years ago, if not more, maybe three years ago that the member took up the challenge to travel the province and write a piece of legislation that would be brought to this House and have great debate on how we can -- they've got a catchy phrase -- clear the path for small business in the province of Ontario.
So for a number of years the member for Norfolk and his parliamentary assistants travelled this province getting input on how we can clear the path for small business so they can operate more efficiently in Ontario. Here we are, some three years later, and we got an eight-page piece of legislation. It's not even a decent private member's bill, but eight pages of legislation. The key component of this legislation -- I can't believe the minister could speak so long about it, there's not enough in it -- but the key component, the spearhead, the foundation, is, "We're going to consolidate four forms on a computer so when the business people go in they can fill out four forms at the same time."
That is the beachhead that this government is banking on to clear the path so small business may prosper in the province of Ontario. I'm not making this up. You've got to read it. When the minister stood in the House, that was the framework, that's what she spun it out on. "We've amalgamated four forms out of 43,000."
Those are facts: eight pages, four forms. I don't know about the rhetoric, but it's rather implausible for me to believe this minister, these members, can stand for so long and comment so long on this paltry bit of legislation.
Mr Sutherland: Once again I want to compliment the Minister of Economic Development and Trade for her remarks. It is unfortunate, though, that some of the opposition folks didn't actually hear what she said. Once again we see that the opposition party's math is not working very well.
This legislation is about setting out a framework. It doesn't just allow you to combine four forms. It sets out the framework not only for registration, which we already know -- I think there are more than four ministries you have to go to. There are far more than four forms that are being reduced here. It's not only the initial registration, it's later on in the unified reporting mechanisms, the different forms there. There are all kinds of forms that are going to be reduced. I don't know where they came up with the 43,000 figure, but it is not just four forms and I think the members on the other side know that.
I want to repeat, though, how this is a very, very positive initiative because it's setting out a longer-term framework so that small business will be able to do things much, much easier.
We've heard about how this piece of legislation is killing jobs, that piece of legislation's killing jobs, something else our government's done is killing jobs. Well, the facts of the situation today don't jibe with that. It's clear the opposition is out of touch with the reality.
Our unemployment figures are down. We're going to lead the country in economic growth. We're going to lead all the areas in the OECD countries. Business confidence is up. I was reading more articles day after day saying how Ontario is going to lead the country in the recovery. So the opposition can't keep saying, "It's all doom and gloom. You've done everything wrong. You're driving jobs out of the province," when we're leading the country in economic growth and job creation. They've got to get back in touch with reality.
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The Acting Speaker: This completes questions and/or comments. The honourable Minister of Economic Development and Trade has two minutes in response.
Hon Ms Lankin: It's always enjoyable to hear the member for Etobicoke West. He is amusing and entertaining, and sometimes accurate. But today I want to take him on on a couple of points that he raised in response to my comments.
I do think it's interesting, and the viewers might like to know, that his considerable study of the bill included asking the member behind him to send it over as he was preparing to stand up in response. He flipped at it, he counted the number of pages, and based on that he has this very articulate criticism of the government's bill.
Mr Stockwell: Oh, come on.
Hon Ms Lankin: It's also very interesting that the party which is the most interested in easing regulations on small business and burdens on small business --
Mr Stockwell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: If the minister's going to suggest that the first time I looked at this bill was when I asked the member from Wellington to pass it over, I would ask her to withdraw it. It took me 10 minutes to read the bill last night.
The Acting Speaker: Sorry, that's not a point of order.
Hon Ms Lankin: It even underscores my point more. Here is the party which suggests that we should lift all regulation and have no burden on business in terms of heavy government legislation and regulation, reams of paper and rules and whatever, and what are they complaining about? There's only eight pages in the legislation. It's too short. There isn't enough for them to debate to keep them busy in here. There isn't enough regulation to place on business.
I want to move away from the guys who sit in here and debate all day long. Quite frankly, I'm glad they're here and that they're not out there in the business world. If they were, I'm not sure they'd be making it.
Let me tell you what the people in the business world are saying about the initiatives that we've put in, whether it be our sector strategy, our international strategy, the investment service or Clearing the Path: the Ontario manufacturers' association, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, the Ontario exporters' association, every one of them on the record saying this government is doing the right thing in these initiatives. They support what we're doing, they've been there and helped us design it. They're with us all the way on this. That's a lot more credible comment on this legislation and this initiative than what I hear from the Tory benches.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): I'm pleased to join the debate on the bill. The Minister of Economic Development indicated earlier that perhaps not everyone has had experience in the business world. I'll just say that my background is business.
Hon Ms Lankin: I was talking about the Tories.
Mr Phillips: I appreciate that. She said, "I was talking about the Tories."
Just so the viewers realize it, there's a diversity of experience in the Legislature. I'm not the only one with business experience, but my background is business. I left one firm and joined another firm of 10 or 12 employees and then became president and it ended up with perhaps 40 employees. Then I started up two businesses literally from scratch, and I have some appreciation of what it takes.
One Boxing Day, I remember very clearly, another person and myself got together and kind of sketched out an idea on a piece of paper. That company actually in the end went, in less than 10 years, from those two people sitting around with a piece of paper to 300 employees. I joined the Legislature and my partners bought me out and did very well with it. Good for them. I'm happy to be here.
Interjection: We're happy you're here.
Mr Phillips: You're happy I'm here and they're happy I'm here.
Mr Sutherland: They're in Florida.
Mr Phillips: They're in Florida perhaps, yes. I started a third company up, the same thing. So I have some appreciation of the challenges of small business.
Someone said to me actually just earlier today that government is still in what they called the mainframe era when the rest of the world is in a laptop era, and I do think that we --
Mr Stockwell: Can I steal that?
Mr Phillips: Someone said, "Can I steal that?" or "I wish I'd said that." You will, Mr Stockwell.
I don't think there's much doubt that our small business community is dealing with governments at all levels, but certainly a large provincial government that perhaps doesn't appreciate that when you're in small business 98% of your time is spent trying to figure out how you serve your customers.
You really do have very little time to figure out how to deal with government. Frankly, your primary worry is how you deal with your customers, how you build your business.
We do need a sense of thinking around here to try our best to realize that small businesses are often one, two, three people; that the less time they have to spend trying to figure out government, the better for them and, frankly, the better for us, because they'll grow their business and develop their business.
I just want to say a couple of things about the environment they face. A couple of members opposite indicated that things are just fine. Well, things aren't just fine out there. I looked at the employment numbers, and it is true that Ontario is seeing good job growth right now, and we're happy about that, but we have to realize that in Ontario we still have 100,000 fewer jobs in 1994 than we had five years ago -- 100,000 fewer jobs. This, in spite of the fact that there's probably about 300,000 more people in the labour force: 100,000 fewer jobs. I might add that while we have 100,000 fewer jobs, the rest of Canada has about 230,000 more jobs. So, yes, 1994 is a period where we're beginning to see job growth, but we're not even back to where we were in 1989. We're still 100,000 fewer jobs in Ontario, and the rest of Canada is up roughly 235,000 jobs.
That's serious. There is no doubt -- we all know this; it's a cliché, but it's true -- that job creation occurs in our small businesses, so it is important that we create a climate where small business can create jobs. Over the last five years, as I say, we have actually 100,000 fewer jobs in the province of Ontario.
I might add -- I happen to live in Metropolitan Toronto, as many of the members do -- that it is particularly acute in Metropolitan Toronto, as I think we all know. Metropolitan Toronto has lost about 200,000 jobs over the past five years. Obviously the rest of Ontario has gained close to 100,000 jobs, so that's the net 100,000 job loss.
The second thing our small business community faces, without a doubt, is that we can't escape the fact that the financial and the fiscal environment we have in Ontario has changed dramatically. We have seen that we have had four straight years of deficits well over $10 billion.
Interjection.
Mr Phillips: I appreciate the member across, from one of the Scarborough ridings barking, but I think the small business community realized the difficulty they are facing when the debt of the province has gone from roughly $40 billion to, when this government's term expires, over $100 billion. That means 17 cents of every tax dollar the small business people in this province pay will go just to pay the interest on the debt, $100 billion worth of debt.
I might say that the confidence of the business community is not enhanced at all when we get a report, as we did today, where the auditor is saying that the way the finances of this province are reported is "improper and incorrect." Those were his words, "improper and incorrect." The auditor is saying that the deficit is actually $2 billion higher than the Rae government is reporting for 1994-95. The auditor could not have been more specific, saying the way the finances in this province are reported does not give the public the information they require to assess the fiscal picture of this province. There is no doubt. He would not sign the books last year, forced the government to change the way it reported the numbers, forced the government to correct incorrect reporting, and I say to the Provincial Auditor, thank you.
The problem is that for 1994-95, the fiscal year we're in right now, the auditor has made it very clear in this report that the books aren't the right books. We have two sets of books in this province, one that the auditor will sign and the other one that the government is reporting. It's out by $2 billion. I will just say that as the international financial community looks at Ontario, they can't believe we have two sets of books in this province.
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Interjection: What are we debating?
Mr Phillips: The member across the aisle is saying, "What are we debating?" We are debating the environment that the small business community faces. As many of the earlier comments reported, this is the environment the small business community faces. This is the environment they are facing, in which they are trying to create jobs for the province.
I would also say that part of the plan in this bill is for a substantial increase in the use of electronic filing and reporting. I say to the members of the Legislature that we have had due warning from the privacy commissioner, and the Provincial Auditor in this report, about the need for safeguards of that information.
One of the more troubling things we've seen in the past few weeks around here is the abuse of private, confidential information the government has access to and is being used against the citizens of this province. To me, it's a fundamental issue: the government using confidential, private information to attack private citizens. I will use three or four examples.
There was a mining executive in this province whose private, confidential business records were reported publicly, and a cabinet minister was forced, as a result of that, to resign. There was a doctor in Sudbury whose private, confidential records were disclosed publicly, and a cabinet minister was forced at least to apologize. There was the case of a private citizen's records being divulged actually by someone in the Premier's office in an attempt to discredit an individual. Then, just two weeks ago, apparently another individual's private records were being used by someone on a political staff in the government to discredit the individual.
The reason I raise all these issues is that both the privacy commissioner and the Provincial Auditor have raised them. The strength of this bill is that we are going to use technology and we are going to, I hope, dramatically improve the efficiency of individuals trying to do business in this province. But at the same time, individuals in this province, both doing business with the government and in their private records with the government, have to have an absolute assurance that those records will be treated confidentially and that they will not be allowed to be used publicly to discredit people.
I will welcome the comments of the parliamentary assistant as we move through the legislation to provide the assurances to the public that the necessary safeguards are built into this.
As the government itself said, it is cutting across ministries, allowing for much easier access to information, making sure it is simpler to gather the information, but in several places there are clauses which -- for example, on page 6 it says:
"Despite subsection (1), a minister shall not disclose personal information under that subsection unless the disclosure,
"(a) is authorized by the minister responsible for the administration of the act under which the information was collected;
"(b) complies with the regulations made under this act...."
In other words, the minister is allowed to make regulations under this act that at least run the risk of allowing for much broader disclosure than was previously permitted, and perhaps circumventing the protections that the individual had under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
That is a second issue about which I think it's important for the parliamentary assistant to address the Legislature. Can you assure the House that we have the safeguards built into this legislation that the individual's private information will have the necessary protection?
The need to cut red tape is obvious. We're in a whole new era of doing business. We know the clichés: that the information era is here, technology is here, the use of technology will very much drive our ability to compete globally. We are in a race with virtually every other country in the world now for trade. We certainly are very supportive of developing our international trade. One of my concerns is that we're doing very well in trading with the US right now and, thank goodness, particularly in the auto sector doing extremely well, but our trade with the rest of the world is lagging. There's no doubt that we have to create a climate where our business community is able to compete and deal effectively globally, and one of the ways you do that is to allow them to move more quickly, allow them to be more flexible, allow them to adapt the techniques that successful businesses around the world use. I think members of all parties are supportive of that.
However, for it to work we need, as I said earlier, a climate where small business can thrive, and that climate for small business thriving is as much, or more so, driven by the government getting its fiscal house in order, by creating a climate so that the international business community has some confidence in the business environment here in Ontario. I might add that we're not helped at all when we have two sets of books in this province. We must be the only jurisdiction certainly in North America, maybe in the industrial world, where the independent auditor would refuse to sign the books, where the auditor is saying the books are out by as much as $2 billion. That will undo all the good that can be done by facilitating and making it easier for small business to incorporate, for small business to register itself and for small business, as we move down the road, to deal with government.
I might also add that we're very supportive of increasing the cooperation between the levels of government. If there's one message, among other things, that I got from Prime Minister Chrétien's successful trip, the Team Canada trip, it's that Canada wants to see its levels of government working together and working cooperatively. There is no doubt that there is only one taxpayer, so the time when we can say, "The deficit, the debt there, is federal, and this is provincial," or vice versa, is gone. In fact, the international community is clearly looking at Canada in totality, and one of the things it's looking at very closely, I might add, is not just the federal debt but the aggregate of the provincial debts.
Increasingly, and at a very rapid rate, the public is saying, "Let's get rid of the bickering, the inefficiencies of bickering among levels of government, and the complications of trying to deal with different levels of government." If you're trying to run a business you do not have the time, the energy or the resources to be trying to wade your way through three or sometimes four levels of government and trying to figure out: "Where does this form go? Where does that form go? Who do I owe what money to? Where does this tax go? Where does that tax go?" We're very supportive of making it easier to register new businesses and working cooperatively with other levels of government to make it much easier for businesses to do business with government. That aspect of the bill has our support.
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There is no doubt that this is a worthwhile step, but that it is, frankly, as the member for Etobicoke West said, a small step. It in many respects has as much to do with wanting to make sure there's a line in the NDP's campaign about cutting through the red tape, eliminating, paving the way, whatever the right jargon will be. This is frankly a small step, but a step that's worth taking, a step we are supportive of. But much more important than this are the issues I raised before: demonstrating we can get our fiscal house in order, dramatically accelerating our ability to do business globally, getting the finances of the province properly reported, acknowledging that our job situation continues to be very critical and crucial.
I might add once again, as I don't like to miss this opportunity, it is particularly critical among our young people. If you look behind the numbers on youth unemployment, and some may know this is an issue I've been interested in for a long while, there is no doubt that while we are seeing job growth among the over-24 age group, and fairly good job growth, we actually are still losing jobs among young people. Actually, year to date -- we're 10 months into the year now -- we are seeing job losses among our young people; they're actually losing jobs. If you were to do an analysis of the employment situation among young people, I think the real unemployment rate among young people is close to 30%.
The reason I say that is, if you look at the population 15 to 24 and you look at that over a five-year period, look at the number of young people who are in school and take that into account, you find that about 140,000 young people have simply dropped out. They're there, but they're not at school and they're not in the labour force, and they're not recorded as unemployed. You put those together with the reported unemployed, and the unemployment rate you will get is close to 30%. As I say, as the job situation improves, unfortunately I think the young people are still being left behind. If you read the report by Statistics Canada, that was one of their key conclusions.
In trying to create an environment where our small businesses grow -- frankly, often it is young people who are starting businesses up; we have some naturally very entrepreneurial people in the province. Hopefully, if we can create the climate where they can create their own small business, we can be very helpful to them on the unemployment front. Our young people face a crucial situation without jobs, and I don't think it is exaggerating to say we are sowing the seeds of a substantial problem if we don't focus on that, if we don't realize that in a growing trend of job creation, those young people are being left behind.
And there's the other point I made earlier, which is that the Metropolitan Toronto area continues to really lag on job creation. So we have to appreciate that this will be a small drop of what's going to be required to get our small business community rolling again. They face an enormous problem with trying to operate in an environment where our fiscal house is in such dire straits that we still have not seen job creation occur to a level where we're even close to back to where we were five years ago. The rest of Canada, as I said earlier, has seen job growth of roughly 230,000 more people working now than there were five years ago; Ontario, 100,000 fewer jobs.
We will be, as I said earlier, supportive of this bill. We'll put it in the proper context of what impact it will have and recognize that it is merely the first step towards really helping our small business community deal much more effectively and much more easily with governments at all levels.
The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): I thank the member for his contribution. Now we have time for questions or comments to the member.
Mr Duignan: I appreciate the comments of the member for Scarborough-Agincourt. As to his question with regard to the disclosure of information, as you know, the key element of this proposal is reduction of undue government process to development of a master business registry containing core information on each business, basically names, addresses etc, to be used for internal administrative purposes only. That's done by all partner agencies and government departments. This database is indeed quite separate from the public database system.
The proposal also is mindful of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and the legislation includes rules governing the maintenance, control and use of information in the database and on the type of information to be shared by participating organizations. Business information is indeed already in the public information and, as the member is quite aware, any personal information will only be disclosed in accordance with the FOI act and ministry policies that are in place at the time.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I would like to compliment my colleague from Scarborough on an excellent speech this afternoon, an excellent contribution, and do so before the member for Etobicoke West gets up, the member who has never known a television camera with a red light on that he didn't like.
He is an individual, by the way, who managed to be on all the television programs last night, even on the CBC, which he considers to be left-wing. I wonder if he's moving to the left, with much of his constituency.
But back to the speech, because I was really impressed with his speech. I was concerned that he did not mention one thing in his speech, and that was a magnetic resonance imager for St Catharines or the Niagara region. I would think that would be coming to St Catharines, and he did not say that in his speech, but I know he thinks it should.
On the issue he was dealing with, and I should compliment him on that, he was really pointing out something which many people have pointed out over the years, particularly the last few years, and that is the need to make it easier for business to operate in the province of Ontario. Everybody else is doing this. It is not as though we are in a position where we can simply carry on as we have in the past, because other provinces, other states, other jurisdictions are making it easier for business to operate.
With the new technology available out there, a lot of things can be done much more quickly today. One of the complaints we all get as individuals representing the people in our community is a complaint about the number of forms that have to be filled out, the amount of paperwork that has to be done by people who are in a relatively small business and really can't afford to hire the financial people required to do that.
I compliment the member for Scarborough-Agincourt on yet another stellar performance in this house.
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The Acting Speaker: Seeing no further questions or comments, the member has two minutes to respond.
Mr Phillips: I'm not yet satisfied with the answer the parliamentary assistant gave in terms of the confidentiality. I'll perhaps talk to him privately later. As I said in my remarks, as I read the bill, in the interests of making it easier to register, of sharing information, of crossing over many pieces of legislation, there is at least the danger that we will see information that businesses would regard as private and confidential being accessible where it shouldn't be accessible. I go back to the point I made earlier of the several examples we've seen recently where private citizens' personal, confidential information was available. I appreciate that both the privacy commissioner and the Provincial Auditor are signalling to us the need to watch that.
I appreciate the comments of the member for St Catharines, who is one of the most experienced members in the Legislature and also one who is able to represent his whole constituency, including the small business community. I very much appreciate his comments on small business and the needs of small business. Certainly, the St Catharines area that he represents has benefited from his role both in government and in opposition, constantly reminding us that it is small business that will create the jobs, it is small business that has struggled in the last five years, and it is small business that I hope will see us move from 100,000 fewer jobs in this province to some real job growth in the next few years.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate on Bill 187?
Mr Stockwell: First off, I'd just like to say in comment to the member from Scarborough's remarks, I was speaking to a person in the small business industry not long ago and his analogy was really interesting. He felt the government was still in a mainframe computer program when small business was in the laptop PC age, and they can't seem to mesh because they're so much more technologically advanced than the government itself. I thought it was an appropriate kind of --
Mr Phillips: I said that.
Mr Stockwell: Oh, I was talking to Gerry. Sorry. Anyway, I thought that was an appropriate analogy.
I would like to start by saying that we in this party are going to support this piece of legislation.
Mr Bradley: Are the cameras rolling?
Mr Stockwell: Yes, and I will comment later to the member for St Catharines on the CBC. I want to save that comment, because I know that if I do, the member for St Catharines will stay here.
I want to comment first that we will support this piece of legislation. There are little, if any, reservations we have with respect to the piece of legislation. I suppose what I would like to comment on is my disappointment with the thinness of the legislation, the little in-depth analogy and work that I thought would have come forward. Really, it's a rather painful response to a very large problem, in my opinion.
This committee was formed under the member for Norfolk, Mr Jamison, who I think ably represents in that caucus, as well as could possibly be represented, the small business sector. I don't think there's any doubt that they sometimes have a tough time hearing the voice of business, period, in that caucus. I don't think anyone would disagree with that, considering their views on the political spectrum. I think he ably went out with his parliamentary assistants, in good measure and in a fairminded way, to survey the small business community in the province of Ontario.
Let's be clear about this. I don't think there's a party in power or in opposition, sitting in any Legislature or House in this country, that isn't making the same argument about business having too many forms to fill out and so on. But their answers seem to be very, very different. This government's answer to the concerns of small business and the amount of work they must entail to satisfy government's need to know is Bill 187.
Even the member for Norfolk, in his quieter moments and in a non-partisan way, would probably admit that this didn't go as far as he or his committee would have hoped it could have gone. This is a piece of legislation that encompasses eight pages -- if you didn't have the translation, it would be four pages -- of changes to the way small business needs to operate in this province.
I can't believe that after three years and half a dozen parliamentary assistants and a travelling committee around the province and probably, I think safely said, tens of thousands of dollars spent on the committee in travelling and in costs of meetings and so on, the best we could come up with was a four-page report, calling it legislation, that's spearheading the reduction of workload for small business or business in general.
The other concern is that this piece of legislation says we will set up one-stop-shopping ventures across this province, and the key component or the linchpin or the foundation and building block this government's going to use to get itself re-elected and inroads made into the business community is, "We're going to take four of the most commonly filled out forms of the 43,167 that are on the books today, we're going to take four of those forms and amalgamate them and make it easier for you to complete those four forms."
It's hard to say I'm opposed to that. Anyone would be in favour of amalgamation of forms and a reduction of workload. But it's been years and thousands of dollars and hearings and parliamentary assistant committees and meetings with the boards of trade and so on around this province, and the best we get is a few workstations around this province that amalgamate four forms.
Another point they wanted to make -- this is a selling point of this piece of legislation; this is Clearing the Path -- is that small business will be able to use credit cards to pay for the cost of these forms. After the number of years, I don't think any newspaper's going to stop the presses and hold page one for that.
It's noble, I suppose, and it certainly is more convenient, but the concerns we've heard in this party and that I'm certain all of us in this place have heard go well beyond the amalgamation of four forms and a few local one-stop-shopping stores to satisfy government regulations. That seemed to be a far broader public issue than what these four pages are detailing before this Legislature today.
I listened intently when the minister got up and outlined her ministerial announcement with respect to the introduction of this. They gave it a nice name: Clearing the Path. They said it "reflects the government's commitment to cutting red tape for business," and they used a lot of nice phrases and a lot of nice words, but the tangible benefits? That's what we have to ask the government members, and maybe in their response they can respond.
To the members opposite, I don't want to know what you propose to do or what would be beneficial at some future date. I want to know what the small business sector can expect from this government in the very immediate future with respect to cutting the red tape and clearing the path. From what I can see, they don't expect any of these places to be operational at least until the new year. Potentially, knowing government's record, you're probably not going to see these things implemented until after the next provincial election. So what are we looking at in terms of the immediate benefit to small business with this legislation?
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I'd like to hear from the members opposite, but what I see is that you're not looking at anything, nothing that's going to make their lives in dealing with the government any easier than it was yesterday. They're going to be no easier tomorrow, and probably none of this stuff is going to be implemented until after the next provincial election.
I think this probably has more to do with public relations --
Mr Bradley: You would know.
Mr Stockwell: Yes. I know I've shocked the member for St Catharines, but I think this piece of legislation has more to do with public relations and the general election that's coming up than it has to do with tangible, realistic and reasonable benefits that the small business sector can look forward to.
It is thin gruel. As I said before, I would ask any of the viewing audience today and those members opposite who haven't read it to take the time, take the 10 minutes it's going to take to read this piece of legislation and really determine in your own minds if they think this is the kind of thing that the small business sector has been calling for.
Interjection.
Mr Stockwell: This is another point. I heard the response from the Minister of -- and she has a lot of titles. I don't want to get it wrong so I'll just refer to her riding, which is Beaches-Woodbine, I believe. I heard the response of the minister, who is the member for Beaches-Woodbine, to my comments with respect to regulations. Her comment is, "Well, this party doesn't believe in regulations, it doesn't believe in red tape and now we've written a very short bill," and we're calling for it to be larger and a little more comprehensive.
Well, we are. If you're going to write a piece of legislation that is going to cut the red tape and cut the cost of doing business in this province, if you're going to actually do something tangible and beneficial, I would like to see a 100-page, a 200-page piece of legislation. I'd like to see 400 pages of legislation if that piece of legislation is going to deregulate all kinds of processes small business has to go through just to operate in this province.
There are another couple of points. The small business sector has been talking about the form filling-out and the in-your-face kind of government it has had at all levels. But that's just one in a series of complaints that small business has levied on all governments, specifically I would say this one, but all governments in general. They are still talking about taxes. They still talk about the heavy, burdensome, awkward tax rate that they're asked to fulfil from this government.
There was some comment with respect to a rollback in the last budget. I think that rollback was something like 10% to 9.5%. It was so minor that it really didn't come into play.
The taxes are killing small business as much as red tape is, but not any taxes, not even a tax was commented on; you didn't even address one single tax relief measure in your Clearing the Path subcommittee of parliamentary assistants to certain ministers across the floor.
Interjection.
Mr Stockwell: Maybe you did, but none of them made the legislation in the four short pages we got to read. None of them made the legislation. Nobody gets a tax break. They still have to pay all the same taxes tomorrow, when this bill gets adopted, that they had to pay yesterday.
Mr Bradley: I'm going to watch you on TV, because you're always on TV anyway.
Mr Stockwell: The member for St Catharines can't wait, and I was going to wait till the end, but I'm not going to talk about it now.
Those were some of the concerns they asked about. As much as they want to see you clear the red tape, they want to see you clear out some taxes as well. I was very disappointed that Mr Jamison and his subcommittee of parliamentary assistants didn't comment on that, because I can't believe, Mr Jamison, that you didn't hear all kinds of interesting stuff on taxes, all kinds of interesting ideas from people across this province. Nowhere in this legislation is that addressed -- really disappointing.
Another thing they're talking about with the small business sector is minimum wage. The minimum wage is a killer in the small business sector, in the service industry particularly. The minimum wage under this government has been consistently raised, year after year after year, and the small business sector out there, and I know members opposite know this on that subcommittee, year after year has taken hits on the minimum wage increase.
The argument always is that you have to provide a decent living. But how in these recessionary times, how in these awkward economic circumstances that small business finds itself in -- and I know the members in my party will tell you in the service sector, the tourism industry, these last four or five years under the socialists have been very tough years, and every year they're faced with another increase in minimum wage, and a goodly number of their employees work under the minimum wage plan. Nothing was even talked about by this parliamentary assistant's subcommittee to various ministers on clearing the path to red tape. That's not addressed in here, and small businesses have been talking about that since the day you got elected.
They also talked about other issues. They talked about the labour legislation. They talk about the employment equity program. They talk about all these other programs. You talk about small business being 10 people. I know small businesses that are 50, 60, 70 people large and they're in fact faced with meeting the requirements of some of these pieces of legislation that do nothing but cost them money, and that's very difficult. It's very difficult when you talk about the employment equity etc.
Another issue that small businesses have been asking for relief on is the payroll taxes. Now this parliamentary assistant and his parliamentary assistant cohorts -- these are issues I can't believe you didn't hear about. I can't believe they didn't talk about the payroll taxes. Frankly, I can't believe they didn't talk about minimum wage and I can't believe they didn't talk about the WCB. But why I get the impression that this is nothing but a campaign bit of fluff is because none of those issues that people are talking about day after day to elected officials at all levels, nowhere in this four-page piece of legislation are they addressed.
As I said, I get the impression that this is made out for the next provincial election so this government can stand in its place and say: "Look, we understand the concerns of small business. We respect the problems within small business and we passed Bill 187."
Everybody in the audience could stand up and say, "Well, what does Bill 187 do, prospective candidate for the NDP?" The member of the NDP says, "Well, we amalgamated four forms out of 43,167." "Well, big deal." That's the kind of response you're going to get, but they're packaging it up.
They don't talk about Bill 187, an amalgamation of four forms. They don't talk about making it easier to pay your bill because we're going to take Visa or Mastercard now. They don't talk about that. Do you know what they talk about? They just talk about Clearing the Path. They just gave it a nice name. They had their deep thinkers in the back room saying: "Okay, we got a slim-picking, four-page piece of legislation on trying to help small business in this province which basically and fundamentally doesn't do a whole bunch for these people. We're going to have to give it a good name if we're going to be able to sell this."
One of them said, "I know what we should do. Let's call it Clearing the Path," and they all got excited and said, "Sure, that's a good idea." So when they talk about it, they talk about this piece of legislation. They don't even call it by the number. They say Clearing the Path. This is what the spin doctors in the NDP have decided: "We'll just say Clearing the Path, because if we say it often enough, somebody's going to believe it." So that to me is of great concern.
The other point I want to take exception to is the minister from Beaches-Woodbine and her comments. This is another fantasy that keeps erupting across the floor and this is another eruption that I take great displeasure in hearing. They consistently say that they have the lowest corporate tax rates or competitive corporate tax rates of the surrounding regions, and they say, "We have the numbers to prove it."
I'm fed up with hearing that stuff. I'm fed up with hearing that pulp. Prove it. Show me a study, comparatively speaking, between Ontario and New York or Michigan or Vermont or whatever, that says, including payroll taxes and corporate taxes, ours are competitive. I want to see that study. You've claimed this all along, but every time I ask for the study, it's never around. It's never there.
Hon Ed Philip (Minister of Municipal Affairs): It was sent over. You can't read it.
Mr Stockwell: There's Mr Ed. He's here and he's operational.
These are the questions that need to be asked. Where is this study? I looked to the Treasurer. I asked him. I've heard him say it. I now hear the minister from Beaches-Woodbine say it but I never get to see the study that says we have competitive, if not lower, corporate taxes and payroll taxes than the surrounding regions in the United States. I fundamentally don't believe it. I want the study, for the 15th time. If you don't have it and you're not prepared to bring it forward, then I wish you'd stop saying that. I think that's a reasonable thing to request. If they don't have that study, I wish they'd stop saying that.
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I want to just touch on a couple of other issues briefly, and the auditor's report is certainly one of them I'd like to talk about today. I know what the Treasurer is trying to spin out today. His philosophy is that we are changing the way we construct our deficit, and I think there is some merit in what he has to say. It's a new auditor and he's demanding that certain rules and requirements be met when determining how much of a deficit we operate.
I'll say this: I am in firm and fundamental agreement with the auditor. I think the requests he's making are reasonable and I think the requests he's asking are accurate. I think they're more accurate than the way we used to do business and I'll tell you why.
I'm not saying that the party I belong to in the past was not to blame to some degree. We, in power, tended to operate where we would try and show the deficit in the best light. There were sometimes discrepancies between what the auditor wanted to see and what we reported due to certain auditing processes, but the most you would always come up with is maybe, at tops, a couple of hundred million dollars' discrepancy. It's a lot of money and I'm not suggesting it isn't, but at the end of the day a couple of hundred million dollars was not going to affect your credit rating one way or the other.
When the Liberals got elected, the Liberals -- under Mr Nixon, the Treasurer, and Mr Peterson, the Premier -- started really jumbling the books and they started taking advantage of the situation. I know the Treasurer today outlined -- two numbers that I know he used today are accurate. The two numbers you talked about were the $1 billion and the $5 billion had they left office. I will make a quick point. The $5 billion I think is somewhat unfair because of the costs that you applied to the deficit that year that I don't think were necessarily year-end costs of the deficit, but $5 billion is going to be close enough to argue about.
I like the idea that the auditor is telling the Treasurer that we now have to come in with a deficit figure that is going to be $2 billion higher. What I don't really like is that when they started the process to give us the budget deficit numbers, the Treasurer was told this was the case. I'm not saying the Treasurer would ever mislead this House; don't get that impression. But I remember standing in my place saying, "Mr Treasurer, in some way you've understated the deficit." I think to some degree I feel redeemed or proven right by the auditor coming out and saying, "Yes, the deficit is in fact $2 billion higher."
How does this relate back to Bill 187? Bill 187 is supposed to be an act to help small business. When businesses come forward to government, they do so in a spirit of cooperation and honesty. Business wants to know the financial viability and stability of the provincial government and I think this government to some degree has knowingly understated the deficit in hopes of buying itself better publicity. I think it's incumbent on them in the future to report the deficit as accurately as they need to report it.
Do you know what the test is going to be? The test is going to come in March. I say to the Treasurer directly, the test is going to come in March, because in March or April when he reports out the final numbers for that year, we're going to have an election right around the corner and we're going to find out at that time whether this Treasurer truly believes in the new accounting methods offered up by the auditor or if he's going to start spinning the books again.
I will tell you quite frankly and I'll say this quite publicly and I won't get a lot of argument. I may get some catcalling, but certainly not any argument from fairminded individuals. This Treasurer's ability as a prognosticator is very, very bad. His ability to project the deficit year in and year out has not been a gold medal standard. Let me just put it that way. He has somehow miscalled that on a few occasions.
I respect the auditor for bringing these recommendations forward and I look forward come April and come May, Mr Treasurer -- when you report out this year's budget I'm really going to be interested in seeing what those numbers are. It's going to be the most important report you make because in a matter of 30 or 60 days we're going to be into a campaign and those numbers will be even more important. I have full faith in you that after four years and meetings with the auditor -- endless meetings, I'm sure -- that you have a full understanding of exactly what he's looking for when you report those numbers out.
The Acting Speaker: Can you relate this back to the bill, please.
Mr Stockwell: I just said small business when dealing with the government.
Interjection.
Mr Stockwell: Well, small business too. We can talk about the auditor's report and the drinking water in Ontario. That's the same kind of issue we're faced with here. We've a million people drinking bad water in this province.
Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy): That's not true.
Mr Stockwell: Mr Wildman says it's not true. I remember the day I told him that Ontario Hydro was looking to buy into Costa Rica and he told me that wasn't true either. Apparently it was true. As I understand it, there are a million people who are drinking water that is not up to standards that we have set in this province.
Hon Mr Wildman: That's not true.
Mr Stockwell: The member said it's not true. I'll be interested in hearing what the --
Hon Mr Wildman: Plants not in compliance.
Mr Stockwell: Well, plants not in compliance.
Mr Jamison: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I'm listening very carefully to the comments and I will have a terribly difficult time if I'm to abide by the rules of this House and stay on topic, because I'm finding that the present speaker has wandered completely off topic.
The Acting Speaker: I thank you for your comment. I would ask the member to more directly address Bill 187.
Mr Stockwell: Madam Speaker, I will. It's tough, though, when you get this Legislature sitting and you've got four pages --
Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): I thought it was eight.
Mr Stockwell: It's eight, but if you take out the translation, you're down to four pages of clearing the path for small business.
The member for Norfolk, with all due respect, I'm not really sure you should be asking people to maintain debate on your piece of legislation. As I said earlier, this is pretty thin gruel. When you spend years out across this province with your pals and parliamentary assistants to bring forward a piece of legislation that talks about amalgamating four forms at the taxpayers' expense of tens of thousands of dollars, and that's the best recommendation you can come up with, it seems to me that maybe the taxpayers in this province didn't get their money's worth out of the committee that the Premier struck to deal with the small business regulations they're faced with.
I say to the member for Norfolk, I was greatly disappointed with respect to this piece of legislation. We will support it. If you're going to amalgamate four forms, we'll support that. I'm not really sure you had to write a whole piece of legislation and bring it through the House to amalgamate four forms, for heaven's sake. You probably could have just ordered that to be done. It would have been a lot less time-consuming.
But we know why they wrote a piece of legislation four pages long to amalgamate four forms. Because they had that title sitting in the closet, Clearing the Path. They had to use it. A campaign's coming up. They've got a whole private sector business out there saying, "What are you doing for us?" They didn't have anything to offer up, so they've written eight pages, four untranslated, about clearing the path, where they're going to amalgamate four forms out of 43,167.
The last point: I took exception to the comments made by the member for Oxford, if he's here. He's not. The member for Oxford stands in his place, as well as others, including the minister from Beaches-Woodbine and others, and they are seeming to take great credit. Actually, they're probably going to break their ribs with the group hugs they're having over the improvement in the employment sector.
I am very pleased to see the employment sector doing well. I guess what I find a little unusual is that when we were losing all the jobs in the province of Ontario, every time someone on this side of the House asked somebody a question about how come we're losing jobs, they stood up and they said "Brian Mulroney," they said "free trade," they said "world recession," they said anything. "But it's not my fault, for heaven's sake. There are so many people out there working against me, they're costing us the jobs."
Very shortly, we have a minor blip and an improvement in the employment sector. I'm not arguing; it is an improvement. I'm happy about it. But when we get a small improvement, the first thing the member for Oxford does and the first thing the member for Beaches-Woodbine does is jump up and take full credit for the increased employment in this province.
I see. They take no credit when somebody loses a job and they take all the credit when a job is created. It's a little bit hypocritical in my opinion. I would ask the government opposite that if you're not going to take any of the heat for the job losses, I think it's a little unseemly of you to take credit for job increases. You can't tell me you had nothing to do with the hundreds of thousands of losses but everything to do with the tens of thousands of increases that have taken place in the last couple of months.
I think that's only a reasonable response, because I remember very vividly, "Brian Mulroney, free trade, the dollar was too high or the dollar was too low, interest rates were too high, free trade was a huge problem, worldwide recession," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
They create half a dozen jobs and they're all over there giving each other group hugs. I think that's a little unfair.
Madam Speaker, I'd like to thank you for the time. I'll tell the member for Norfolk, regardless, I'll support your amalgamation of the four forms, I'll support the fact that you're going to pay some of these things on credit cards. But come on: Three years, parliamentary assistant meetings, travelling the province, Clearing the Path, cutting red tape, growing stuff, and all you can come up with is four pages. It's pretty thin gruel.
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The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments to the member?
Mr Jamison: That's an interesting speech delivered here today; we are always amused when the previous member gets up in the House and speaks.
There's something I have to clarify here. Certainly we can move forward on the amalgamation of some forms. The four in particular that he's mentioned we can do without legislation, and in our first phase that's exactly what we are doing, moving forward without legislation. Now we can go much further with this legislation. I'd like to clarify that in particular, because I can understand how there may have been a misunderstanding when the member would speed-read the bill.
Giving business the support it needs is what the Business Regulation Reform Act is all about; for an example, to create a single-window, one-step service that will integrate the registration and reporting requirements of potentially all three levels of government, municipal, provincial and federal. Just imagine for a moment being able to walk into one government office where a businessperson can electronically complete all the forms required by those levels of government. Just think of the advantages of being able to remit business taxes with a single payment.
The government is committed to doing all of this, and I can tell you that there have been other proposals put forward and accepted by the Minister of Finance regarding the reduction of taxes in this province for small business, the employer health tax, for one: No employer health tax in the first year of a new hire is just an example, and reducing the tax rate from 10% to 9 1/2% is another. There are many others that came from that committee.
The Acting Speaker: Further questions or comments? I'll first recognize the member for Brampton North.
Mr McClelland: If the current Finance minister, bless him, is sitting there contemplating reducing taxes, maybe there's an election in the offing.
Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound): I just want to congratulate the last speaker from Etobicoke on his response to this bill, which is truly an election bill, as you can see; as he said, four pages of nothing. This government has taken at least 20 steps backwards to help small business. Now they think they can come ahead by taking one small step.
We congratulate you for trying, but if you're just trying to win an election on the back of small business, you'd better shake your head a little, because there's no small business that's ever going to support the government on that side. You could do whatever you want from now until election time and they're not going to come around and like you people at all. You've done nothing but crap all over small business since you've been in power. That's all you've done. You've given them more trouble than anyone. You've raised taxes, you've put us in a deep deficit that the small businesses have to --
The Acting Speaker: The member for Owen Sound, please rephrase your comments.
Mr Murdoch: This government has done nothing to help small business. As we've said before, they've taken 20 steps backwards, and this little step forward will do nothing to bring small businesses on their side. As the member pointed out, they've raised taxes, they've put more WCB costs upon them, they gave them a $50 fee every year now to stay in business.
They've even taken some incorporation status away from businesses, just in the name of raising more money for their coffers to try to bail themselves out of all the trouble they've put us in.
As I say, they've come up with a bill that means absolutely nothing. If they think for one minute that small business will come around, they are certainly dreaming and they're in a world that no one else is in. They've proven this ever since they've been in government. I support what my member has said.
Mr Duignan: Listening to the member for Etobicoke West, I always enjoy a little bit of light entertainment late on a Tuesday evening. In my part of the world, where I was born and raised, he would be known as "long on wind and short on substance." Indeed, that's what his speech was all about: short on substance.
The member is well aware of the fact that the physical size of a piece of legislation does not reflect its significance or its potential. This piece of legislation allows for amalgamation and reform under dozens of pieces of legislation. The member failed to mention that. The member also mentioned the fact there were some 43,167 forms to fill out. I don't know where the member gets this magical figure from, but I can tell you if they're there, with this piece of legislation we'll have them down to one piece of paper and one form.
The Acting Speaker: I thank the member. We have completed questions or comments. Now the member for Etobicoke West has two minutes to respond.
Mr Stockwell: I thank the people for their comments. To the member from Halton, if I had any idea of what you did, I'd probably come back and give you a response of some sort; I don't.
Where did I get the figure? I got the figure from a 1992 report that your government released on the number of forms it takes to operate the province of Ontario. I went and looked it up and gathered that information. That, I guess, is a little bit of substance. You can write that figure down and use it in the future if you like.
With respect to the comments made by the member for Norfolk, the difference of opinion I have with where you're coming from is that you're talking about amalgamating all the forms in the whole country and putting them together at these one-stop form fairs across the province. All businesses will go in, you're saying, and they'll remit one cheque. I know what the cheque is: "How much money did you make last month? Send it in." But you're telling me you're going to have all these form fairs.
There's a bit of a credibility gap here, because what you've come forward with is four forms out of 43,167 -- ask the member from Halton; he knows about that figure now -- and you're going to put this together. You're not going to have this thing on stream at least until the new year and it probably won't be in place until after the election.
There are cynical people out there, there are cynical people in the population. They're saying: "Gee, they're going to amalgamate all the forms in the country at one-stop form fairs. Pay the cheque here." But we're going to start with four forms out of 43,167 and we're not going to implement it until after the next provincial election. They won't have anything in tangible evidence for small business. Some of those cynical sorts are saying, "Maybe these are just purely crass political attempts to buy my vote for the next election." Yes, that's what they're saying.
The Acting Speaker: As it is very close to 6 o'clock, this House will now stand adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, November 16, at 1:30 pm.
The House adjourned at 1759.