CROWN FOREST SUSTAINABILITY ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 SUR LA DURABILITÉ DES FORÊTS DE LA COURONNE
POWER CORPORATION AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LA SOCIÉTÉ DE L'ÉLECTRICITÉ
SECURITIES AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES VALEURS MOBILIÈRES
ASSESSMENT AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR L'ÉVALUATION FONCIÈRE
Report continued from volume A.
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CROWN FOREST SUSTAINABILITY ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 SUR LA DURABILITÉ DES FORÊTS DE LA COURONNE
Mr Hampton moved third reading of the following bill:
Bill 171, An Act to revise the Crown Timber Act to provide for the sustainability of Crown Forests in Ontario / Projet de loi 171, Loi révisant la Loi sur le bois de la Couronne en vue de prévoir la durabilité des forêts de la Couronne en Ontario.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Does the honourable minister have some opening remarks?
Hon Howard Hampton (Minister of Natural Resources): I speak in support of Bill 171, the Crown Forest Sustainability Act. Our forests play a vital role in our lives in Ontario. Ontarians produce industrial products worth about $12 billion annually in the province. Our forests are crucial to the health of our environment. They provide wildlife habitat, maintain biodiversity, sustain soil and water and help purify the air. We rely on our forests for jobs, for recreation and for spiritual and physical health. We urgently need to ensure that we can continue to conserve, protect and manage Ontario's forests so they will be sustained over the longer term.
The existing 1952 Crown Timber Act is out of date. It no longer provides us with the tools we need to meet the challenges of forest sustainability into the 21st century. We need an act that will allow us to make further progress in improving forest management and forest conservation. We need an act that will ensure that our forests are regenerated and we need an act that will ensure that we have truly sustainable forest management in the province. That is why this act, the Crown Forest Sustainability Act, is so important.
What is new in this act? The act includes a definition of sustainability right up front. Environmentalists, including the Federation of Ontario Naturalists, representatives of the forest industry, in particular the Ontario Lumber Manufacturers' Association, and members of the public told us a definition of sustainability is important and they helped us draft that definition. We listened to them and we made the changes to improve the act.
My colleague and my parliamentary assistant, the member for Cochrane North, will talk further in a few moments about the important role that consultation has played in the shaping of the new Crown Forest Sustainability Act. I want to deal with some of the details.
The act ensures that there is a comprehensive planning process that addresses a wide range of forest values, not just timber. The process will be mandatory and will bind all users of the forest, including the crown, to a high standard of forest management practice. The act ensures reliable funding for forest renewal, something we have never had before in this province.
The act puts more of the responsibility for forest renewal on the forest companies themselves. This will give those companies a strong incentive to practise forest renewal as efficiently as possible. At the same time, the act provides assurance to forest industries about tenure and about their capacity to use the forest.
The new act has a strong focus on accountability. There will be mandatory prescriptions for forest operations. Those prescriptions will be used as the yardstick for conducting future forest audits. Through the new act, we will strengthen reporting on the state of the forest. We will provide for ongoing, independent public audits of the forest. These improvements will allow us to prove to the world that we have renewed our forests.
Finally, the new act provides us with a new, flexible and effective system of enforcement when companies do not meet the act's requirements for forest renewal and forest conservation.
The need for this legislation is clear and it is great. This act is the cornerstone of the province's overall strategy for forest sustainability, natural heritage protection and economic development.
Many people have worked very hard to bring this act forward. Before I finish, I would like to take an opportunity to thank them publicly for their very hard work.
First, a number of the members of the core team who worked on the act are in the visitors' gallery today, and I'd like to thank them. In fact, I'd ask them to stand. Mr Ken Cleary, an excellent team leader.
Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): He's not here.
Hon Mr Hampton: He didn't make it here yet. Stuart Davidson, for his legal advice in drafting the legislation; David Balsillie, the ADM for policy and program at MNR; Mr Brian Blomme, for his communications advice; Mr David Gordon, for his work on cabinet submissions and his advice on forest matters in developing the act; Dave McGowan, for his work on legislation and drafting regulations; Frank Kennedy, for his advice on the class timber environmental assessment and his hard work with environmental groups; Anne Harris, for her policy support to the team developing the legislation; and, finally, a couple of people who haven't made it here yet: Clarke Kirkland, who was seconded from the Hearst office of the Ministry of Natural Resources; Patricia Harris; the deputy, Mr Bob Mitton, and a host of other folks. I want to thank them all for all the hard work they did.
Finally, I want to say that I think the province will be well served by this legislation. It gives us the tools we need to enter the 21st century.
The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): Thank you to the Minister of Natural Resources. Is there further debate on Bill 171?
Mr Michael A. Brown (Algoma-Manitoulin): I have listened on numerous occasions to the speech that the minister has just given now. It's the same speech the minister gave on second reading, it's the same speech the government used when they invoked closure and it's the same speech on third reading. I think if you listened to this, Madam Speaker, you would note a surplus of platitudes, a surplus of politically correct vocabulary, a surplus of rhetoric, having not much to do with the reality of Bill 171.
The reality of Bill 171 was the reality of going out on public hearings for three weeks in this province, going into northeastern Ontario, into northwestern Ontario, to large communities and to small communities, coming to Toronto to hear major interest groups, the major players from industry, the major players from environmental groups, the major groups that try to understand what goes on in Ontario's forests.
Now the minister claims that this bill is sustainability, and it seems to me sustainability involves a number of factors. First, there are the environmental concerns, the concern that our forest in Ontario is regenerated in a way that is consistent with renewable resource use in this province. In other words, it is good for the environment. This Bill 171 has much to say about that, but you can discern little of value from what it says.
The government, as you know, had 55 different study groups looking at issues in the forest at one point. One of the most important of those was the Diversity report. The Diversity report provided us with a definition of sustainability. The government spent a lot of money and a couple of years developing that report. The government spent a lot of money and time, a lot of people had valuable input into that report, and they've produced a definition of sustainability.
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We in the Liberal Party thought the government should adopt that definition of sustainability. After all, it had been approved by the cabinet of this province. The government, however, could not see fit to follow that. They could not, would not, put that definition in the purpose of the bill. Strike one. The government doesn't know what sustainability is. Its own definition, which the cabinet of Ontario had approved, was not put in the legislation.
There is not one environmental group in the province of Ontario that believes the government has a satisfactory definition of sustainability or that sustainability is actually achieved. We heard that in Fort Frances, we heard that in Kapuskasing, we heard that in Espanola, we heard that in Sault Ste Marie, we heard that in Toronto. There is not one group in the environmental community that believes this bill accomplishes what Milord Mr Hampton, the Minister of Natural Resources, believes is in this bill. There is not one group.
Who does it please? Does it please industry? I think you have to recognize the importance of the forest industry to Ontario. In Ontario, the forest industry employs about 60,000 people. The forest industry produces a surplus of over $2 billion in foreign trade, and I suspect last year it was far greater than that. It is an important player in the economies of all Ontario, but certainly in the economy of places I represent, places like Espanola, places that the parliamentary assistant represents, places like Kapuskasing and Hearst.
What did we hear from the communities of Kapuskasing and Espanola, for example? They oppose this legislation. They don't like it. What did we hear from the major companies, E. B. Eddy in Espanola, Spruce Falls in Kapuskasing, the parliamentary assistant's own riding? They oppose this legislation.
Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): They asked for some amendments.
Mr Brown: The parliamentary assistant says they asked for some amendments. He didn't give it to them.
They are opposed, both the town of Kapuskasing and the town of Espanola. Virtually every community involved in forest products that has people earning their living in it opposes this legislation. But it's okay, because the government says it's sustainability. As long as you say "sustainability" enough times, it'll happen. This bill is political spin. There is no substance to it.
This bill provides the most huge powers to the Minister of Natural Resources that could be imagined. The powers are so great that over 1,000 pages are produced in order that we can go through them. They are the regulations and the manuals and they're changing daily. The government has no idea what they mean about sustainability and they know that. This bill is a cynical act of an arrogant government that cannot define its own legislation.
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Order. We will have one debate at a time. The member for Algoma-Manitoulin has the floor.
Mr Brown: This bill was approached in a very responsible way by the two opposition parties. Both of us supported going to committee, because we knew there were important changes that needed to be made to the Crown Timber Act. The Crown Timber Act has been around since the early 1950s. It had not been significantly amended in some years and it needed to have some changes. But in this milieu, in this present circumstance, with the 55 studies and one of the most important events as far as forestry is concerned, the timber environmental assessment had just reported in the spring of this year. It had provided us with terms and conditions that governed the way companies had to do business in the forests of Ontario.
So there was a huge amount of information. At the same time the Canadian Standards Association was developing the standards so that we could ensure to the world that our forestry practices were indeed sustainable, and that is to happen within the next nine or 10 months, and the Minister of Natural Resources sitting here is one of the participants in coming up with those standards.
We in the opposition have been puzzled. Why do we have to be ramming this particular piece of legislation through? One of the government's arguments is that we needed the trust funds; we needed those trust funds to be set up and this bill does that. They don't seem to recognize that they passed a bill to set up those trust funds last June. The opposition parties agreed with it, it passed this House expeditiously. Trust funds are an irrelevancy in this bill. They're there, they have been there, they were an amendment to the Crown Timber Act some time ago.
So what is it we're talking about? There are some major issues after we talk about the sustainability issue, which the government can't define, doesn't know what it means, tells us to look at the manuals, tells us to look at the regulations. What is there that might be contentious? I'll tell you. Tenure is contentious. This may be a commercial aspect of the bill but very important. It means that communities either survive or communities die. It means that companies, because they have a wood supply, continue or it means they don't continue. Tenure is a battleground out there among industry and I'm sure that the minister and the parliamentary assistant would agree with me that that is one of the most important issues facing us from the commercial aspect of this bill.
There's no consensus around this. I had the lumbermen come in to talk to me. We had the lumbermen talk. A large number of the lumbermen are in favour of the loosening of tenure provided by this bill. Some of them don't like the way that tenure is described in this bill, but I think to be fair, by and large, lumbermen see this bill as an improvement. Those are the people that are involved in providing Ontario with sawlogs and the lumber from those.
The people in the pulp and paper industry take totally the opposite view. They have been very opposed to the way this bill approaches the tenure issue. To the last day of this committee they were opposed to the way the government has approached this. So as a legislator I'm to say: "Who's right in this issue? How does this work?" We asked the government to come with some standards for transparency, for making the public aware of what was going on so at least if they didn't like the decision they could understand how the decision was made. The government refused to address that. The government refused to consider even on the last day an amendment to section 23 that we'd proposed that would have made tenure clearer.
Tenure is not just a commercial issue because we've also found out during the hearings, as we went from town to town, city to city, village to village, that tenure also had a direct impact on how well the forest was managed and on how well the people in those communities made sure that there was regeneration. There was a direct correlation between the better tenure and the better forest, demonstrated particularly by Abitibi-Price, which operates a huge area of private land which most would say is a model of how it should be done. When it's their own land, which is the best tenure, the forest on that area was regenerated in a cost-effective way and in a way that produced the most fibre for future generations and the best ecosystem. There was no doubt about that. So tenure is not simply a commercial consideration.
The third question that was very contentious at committee was licensing. Licensing is also a major problem. We had the small, independent operators in front of us, and do you know what they told us? These are the small people, the little guys in the small towns and villages across northern Ontario and indeed into some parts of central and eastern Ontario. They said, "This bill is going to put us out of work." The government says: "No, no, no, that's not the case. You can form co-ops."
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One logger said to me, and I'm sure this is very, very true, that if you get 20 independent loggers in a room, you don't get a co-op -- this is an exact quote -- you get a fight. I think if the minister reflects on some of his constituents involved and I reflect on some of mine, I'm sure that this particular comment is exactly true. I'm positive that's exactly true.
The issue of how we operate on the crown lands that are not subject to forest management agreements: We have asked over and over again how this is going to work. The government is going to collect an additional $6 in stumpage from the people operating on these units, and in the case of the forest management agreements, that goes into a trust fund. Guess what? In the case of the crown units, the crown's going to manage it; the crown's going to look after the regeneration. That's what we're told. And guess what? The crown does not have a particularly stellar impact on reforestation in Ontario. As a matter of fact, they've done rather poorly.
Across my desk just recently, I think in the last week, came some paper from the northwest logging association. I've spoken with these ladies and gentlemen from this group on many occasions. I don't seem to be able to see it here in my pile of information, but as I went through that, they had a meeting with the district manager and the district forester, always a very interesting meeting if you're in the forestry business.
They asked questions like, "What reforestation will I have to do?" The answer from the district forester was, "We don't know yet." "Where will we get our seedlings? Where will we get our young trees?" The answer was, "We don't know yet." "Who's going to decide what kind of trees go on any particular land?" The answer from the district forester was, "We don't know yet."
In other words, the government is pushing through, through the mechanism of closure, a bill that the government has few if any concrete answers to. That might be fair because Mr Hampton, Milord Hampton, thinks he's a fine guy and he'll make all the responsible decisions, and there might even be some people who agree with that premise. But guess what? This bill will probably be binding on ministers for the next 30 or 40 years, and Mr Hampton, no matter what his electoral success may or may not be, will not be the minister for 30 or 40 years.
This revision of the Crown Timber Act presents Mr Hampton with the widest-ranging powers of any minister of the crown. We're talking about 80% or 90% of the crown land of Ontario. So we are trusting a minister of the crown without the benefit of any kind of legislative review. A minister of the crown, without any legislative review, can make regulations, he can change any manual, he can come up with guidelines which may or may not be consistent from one district to the next. You can have things happening in Renfrew North that are certainly not happening in Algoma-Manitoulin and maybe not happening in Kenora, and people will talk about whether that's the correct approach to reforestation or the incorrect approach, and we won't know.
Any minister, whether it is Mr Hampton, Mr Wood, the member for Cochrane North, Mr Mills, any of us; some member from the opposition may even in the future become a Minister of Natural Resources and that member, whoever he is, will be vested with a kind of consent that in my legislative experience has never been given to one particular minister. This is over a huge industry, a many-billions-of-dollars industry. It is over 60,000 jobs and growing in the province of Ontario, or hopefully growing. That is the kind of --
Hon Mr Hampton: Oh, it is growing, Mike; it is growing.
Mr Brown: The minister says it's growing. He doesn't talk about the number of jobs that have been lost in the forestry industry. He is now pinning his hopes, and we are as hopeful as he is, to the OSB plants, the oriented strandboard plants, which we think have great potential and will be of great assistance to many communities. Those plants use fibre from timber that some people even called weeds, birch and poplar and what not, that are valuable to that particular industry. But the fact is that we have so much poplar and birch because we have not done the kind of regeneration that needed to be done. So it is, I think, encouraging to Ontarians to know that there will be some activity related to those species that were formerly underutilized.
But what is of concern to communities is one of the concerns that I have raised time and time again. The concern that I have raised with the minister and the committee in particular is that there seems to be absolutely no thought being given to what kind of regeneration we need in this province. Are we talking about just making sure poplar and birch grow where we cut down poplar or birch? It seems to me that's what the government's saying. It seems to me that if there's a conifer species, whether it's jack pine or whatever, black spruce, that's what the minister wants regenerated. In other words, he is holding Ontario's forests static, which is not the natural state. They are always changing in their makeup. The minister is saying, "You must regenerate exactly what is there this minute and you cannot progress," in terms of what Ontario needs or what the natural environment would by itself produce. That is a serious concern. We have raised that issue.
The minister looks puzzled. Look at him over there, shaking his head, looking very, very concerned that I'm saying the wrong thing. But I want to tell the House that the minister's involvement with this bill was a cameo appearance in his own home town of Fort Frances. We appreciated that brief interlude in our deliberations, but we wondered where the minister was through all this. I am sure he was doing important things and maybe at some time he'll report to the committee on what he was actually doing. But he certainly wasn't paying a great deal of attention to what was going on and what the presentations of his constituents were in Fort Frances towards this bill and what people in the northwest were saying at the very same time.
The opposition came to this bill knowing that we needed a new approach to forests in Ontario. The opposition came to this bill willing to work with the government to produce a bill that was good for the people of Ontario. The opposition worked very hard through this committee's hearings to incorporate what we learned from the terms and conditions of the environmental assessment, to incorporate the new fiscal realities of the province of Ontario, what the ministry can and cannot do with its limited resources, and what the world markets are saying with the industry, with environmentalists. At the end of the day, we came out of committee, under closure, with a bill that is premature, at least one year ahead of where it should be in terms of timing because there is much yet to learn, a bill that is opposed by both the environmental community and by the business community and by communities that are directly affected.
It is therefore, in the opposition's view, totally irresponsible for the government to be bringing this today on third reading, and I want to indicate that, on behalf of my colleagues in the Liberal Party, this bill will be opposed and continue to be opposed with everything we can do.
Madam Speaker, thank you for honouring me with this time for an intervention.
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The Acting Speaker: I thank the member for his participation in this debate. Further debate?
Mr Chris Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton): It's a pleasure to represent the PC Party, as their Natural Resources critic, to address third reading of Bill 171. I'd like to begin by just thanking, as the minister did, the MNR senior staff levels for the patience and the time they showed to me and to other committee members while we were on tour.
I'd also like to thank the Hansard staff and the Queen's Park committee chairpeople for making our tour and the public hearings go as smoothly as possible. I also want to make a sincere thank you to the people who took the time out of their busy schedules to come before our committee and tell us, members of the Legislature, what they felt were the strengths and the weaknesses of this sustainable forestry act, Bill 171.
I'd like to put on the record that the opposition parties agreed with the objectives of this new act, forest sustainability. In fact, when the objectives were read out on second reading we agreed to just one hour of debate. Over the summertime, we agreed on shortened committee hearings. We agreed in sustainability for jobs for the future, for future people who work in the wood industry or work in the forestry industry or work in the multi-use of our crown forests, the trappers and anglers and hunters and the naturalists who just want to enjoy this great resource that we share in the province of Ontario. We also shared in the objectives of securing markets for our wood products overseas and with our neighbour, the United States. We also shared in the objective to have a secure investment climate for growth in our forest industries.
But what's happened with this bill is very unfortunate. We had a consensus in this province that we needed to update the Crown Timber Act of 1952, and it's very seldom that the Minister of Natural Resources actually gets the legislative agenda to bring forward revisions to a section of this province that has been neglected for almost a generation but is a great source of wealth and quality of life to many Ontarians.
What is so disappointing is that this bill had so much potential to improve the way that we manage the crown forests and the crown forest lands as an ecosystem, not just as a place where we grow timber, but a place all Ontarians can enjoy. I think there was a closer consensus between environmental groups, the industry and anglers and hunters than what this bill actually reflects. In fact, this bill, as has been mentioned previously, has pleased no one, and that's not a sign that, because it's a compromise, that no one's happy and therefore it's good. It's a sign that there wasn't enough time taken to truly set some provincial objectives.
There's no benchmarks on what to measure, on how to measure the success of this bill. The concept of sustainable yield that has been in Ontario legislation since 1929 has been taken out. Instead, we're left with enabling legislation which is vague at best, gives a lot of ministerial discretion, and at its worst is hypocritical to the title of the bill.
What this bill incorporates are the over 20 recommendations from the timber environmental assessment. That had to be done. That could have been incorporated in the old Crown Timber Act. It also incorporates trust funds, and this party's been on record in the past in calling for trust funds. I think it's a positive step that this government has actually set them up. But let's be clear: The trust funds were set up under Bill 160, not under Bill 171. At the time the committee hearings opened in August, I asked if they had a trustee for these trust accounts and I was told that they were just beginning the advertising process. Trust accounts, for those who don't understand, are taken from the stumpage fees and from the area charges that come from the industry on certain areas of the crown forest and they go into a trust account to replenish that forest so future generations will have trees to enjoy and also the wood industry will have trees to provide jobs in that sector.
But overall, even with the setup of citizens' committees and local input, what's lacking in this bill are any benchmarks to judge its success, to hold the ministry accountable to the people of Ontario to say, "We're doing a good job in the stewardship and management of your crown lands and your resources."
There is no concept of a provincial objective on what area we want to secure the jobs in. Where is Ontario's natural advantage in the forest sector? Is it in the hardwoods or is it in the fast-growing aspens and poplars or conifers? If you think that we can compete with climates that are warmer than ours, that have a growth cycle of maybe 15 to 20 years, I think we're deluding ourselves if we're going to secure an industry that's there.
But the greatest weakness of this bill is tied in to the security that we were looking for, that the industry is looking for and that the environmentalists are looking for: that all products that come out of Ontario's crown forests are from sustainable forests. That's going to be a hard enough sell. Not only do international markets have trouble distinguishing between products that come from Ontario, BC and other places in Canada, but within Ontario we have wood products come off private lands as well as crown lands. I'm afraid that what we're seeing in this bill is just more spin. There are no benchmarks to judge it by. The only people we're kidding are ourselves. If this bill doesn't match the rhetoric, we'll lose credibility for our forest industry and that will make it so the investment climate isn't there. If we lose our markets, it will mean that the jobs won't be there in the future.
What we're really got is the government's attempt to spin out for an election year how they're sustaining our forests. No one is in objection to sustaining forests. What we're in objection to is a bill that really just holds the status quo; in fact, in some regards, takes us back to having more ministerial discretion than actual benchmarks which people can say, "Yes, the government is doing a good job," or "The government is not doing a good job in administering our crown forests."
This bill -- and we heard this from people who came before us, from the industry, from the environmentalists, from Lakehead University -- doesn't set the provincial standards, it doesn't lay out what we need in this province as a process to get to a land use that's accountable. Even the scaling audit manuals that are referred to, there are 1,000 pages of manuals that specify how local committees can set their priorities for their local region. I agree with that, but there should still be some provincial standard on top of that; some way that we can hold the crown accountable, the government accountable to the people of Ontario who own this land.
What we're seeing, as a result, is a government that should be proud of the fact that they were trying to improve our forests. Instead what they've done is invoke closure -- four times in the last two weeks, 20 times since 1991. Just to put that in context, in 43 years the Conservative government only invoked time allocation or closure four times. This government tied that record in eight days. They didn't want to have the public, through this institution, through this debate, see the effects of its policy upon the people of Ontario and hear what their concerns are.
In the last eight days, this government has invoked closure on Bill 163, a fundamental reform on how the Planning Act works and the rules and regulations that municipal politicians are under. The changes to long-term care reform are the most serious that we've seen in a generation. Here's a government that's locked into the ideology that the government can deliver this service the best. The VON, the Red Cross --
The Acting Speaker: We would like you to address your comments to Bill 171.
Mr Hodgson: This is all connected to Bill 171, Madam Speaker. I'm trying to point out that the people who run this government, the socialist engineers, have a plan to change the nature of how this province works. Their vision is clear but their souls are tormented. They don't want to have this exposed to the light of day through public debate in this Legislature. It's sort of like the movie Apocalypse Now; they have to hide in the bunker because they don't want to see the effects their policies are having on the people of Ontario, in communities such as Wilberforce, Harcourt and West Guilford.
People come up to me and they say, "How will this bill affect us?" You can't tell them. This has never been debated. There are no policies put forward by the MNR yet. This is enabling legislation with no provincial standards. In fact, what we've moved into is truly the land of spin. The minister today confirmed that his government's going to spend an additional $500,000 on advertising. At the same time, they don't have the resources to send conservation officers outside of their offices because they don't have the money in their gas allowance. Where are their priorities?
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This government's going to talk about how it's sustained its forests. It'll make a nice TV clip for 30 seconds; it'll be good on a brochure. But it destroys Ontario's credibility to show international markets that we are doing things in an ecologically friendly manner and a sustainable manner and that will ensure future jobs and future investment. Just two weeks ago we witnessed the Premier going about the province making announcements about $1 billion in new investment coming into Ontario, as if this bill had something to do with it, whereas common sense would tell you that the reason you're having an extra $1 billion is that the investment community, the business community realizes that there's going to be an election in six months, that the Conservatives will form the government and that this will be a better place to invest in jobs.
But basically, my number one complaint is that we asked for a cost-benefit analysis of this bill. A simple question was asked: "What impact will this bill have on the Ministry of Natural Resources staff?" I was told that it would take too much time to have a detailed response, yet in the estimates delivered by this government, under resource management and protection, it states here that the cabinet has received a cost-benefit analysis on this forest sustainability act, but it has not made it public to the Ontario Legislature.
I imagine that the cost-benefit analysis is like every other cost-benefit analysis. It has nothing to do with government spending; it has everything to do with government revenue. Under this bill, revenues will go up. You will have increased stumpage fees, increased area charges as well as what's called a fair tax or a new business relationship. They won't call it a tax because you don't want to share it with the federal government, so it'll be called a revenue enhancer or some other name.
Hon Mr Hampton: A stumpage fee.
Mr Hodgson: Stumpage fees are already going up. This is on top of this; this is the new business relationship I'm referring to. Under your own estimates, I'm assuming this is the cost-benefit analysis that was given to the cabinet. It wouldn't be on the revenue side to show what impact this legislation will have on the MNR.
Also, any time you change and you're trying to promote that you've got sustainability in terms of jobs, I think there should be some analysis of how this will affect our competitive nature with other countries. Will this hurt our chances to improve our competitiveness? The forest industry has gone through a severe recession in the last four to five years. They're just coming out of it. This affects thousands of workers. How will this act impact upon their competitiveness with markets in states such as Michigan and other jurisdictions that compete against our wood products coming out of Ontario? There's been no analysis done on that. In fact, I suspect the reason there's no analysis is that there is no change from the status quo other than the title of the act. As I mentioned in committee, I felt that section 86, the short title of the act, should have been included in the purpose of this legislation.
Hon Mr Hampton: Read the manuals. You're not doing your homework.
Mr Hodgson: I'm probably one of the few people who actually read them all; the opposition critics.
In conclusion, I want to thank the staff that helped the government side through those onerous committee hearings where we had some questions. The minister wasn't there those days.
I'm going to let my colleague have a few minutes to address his comments to this bill. But this bill is basically window dressing for the doctors of spin, window dressing because after 30 years of the Crown Timber Act, for all its inadequacies, Bill 171 is not enough of an improvement to warrant throwing out the old act. It's another example of trying to be all things to all people and defining nothing. I don't know how they've done it, but the environmental people, the people in the industry, the people who are concerned with research and development, are closer together in a consensus than this government is. For these reasons, we will not be supporting this bill.
Mr Bisson: I rise with great pleasure for third reading debate of this bill. I'm going to keep my comments to what was mentioned by the members of the opposition with regard to this bill, because the record needs to be clarified in terms of some of the comments that were made.
First of all, what the members of the opposition were saying for the last 40-odd minutes is nothing but doom and gloom, that this is nothing but spin and nothing but window dressing. I'd like to go back and review the record with regard to what's actually happened in the province of Ontario.
I think back to the 1970s, when the Conservative government of the day announced one waferboard mill opening up in the community of Timmins. I remember that day well, and how they ran through the entire province talking about the wonderful work they did -- which it was -- announcing one waferboard mill, one OSB plant, going up in the province of Ontario. There hasn't been another investment in this province when it comes to a new plant, when it comes to the forestry industry, since 1981; in that time, through the Liberal government and through the Conservative government, absolutely nothing when it comes to new investment in terms of the forestry industry.
Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound): What about you? Four years, six ministers from the north, and nothing happened. Give us a break.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Grey-Owen Sound, come to order.
Mr Bisson: Now let's take a look at what's happened in the short four years since we've come to government. In four years, through the initiatives of sustainable forestry development that were initiated by Bud Wildman, the Minister of Environment and Energy, and carried through by Howard Hampton, ably assisted by his parliamentary assistant, Mr Wood, and the rest of this government, we have announced not one mill, not two mills, not three mills, not four mills, but five brand-new, greenfield mills in the province of Ontario have been announced under this government.
We have, in Thunder Bay, Buchanan building a hardwood sawmill. That's brand-new investment in the province of Ontario.
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Co-ops, that's what they are. They're not mills. "Let's give them a subsidy."
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr Bisson: We have in Kenora, Tolko building a brand-new OSB mill. We have in Fort Frances, Boise Cascade building an OSB mill. We have in Wawa, Jager building a brand-new OSB mill; and we have, in Sault Ste Marie, Georgia Pacific with regard to the flakeboard mill. Those are brand-new investments in the province of Ontario under this NDP government.
Why? Because they have the confidence in the policies of this government. They want to do business in this province because they've found it's a great place to do business under the leadership of this government. That's the reality and that's what drives the opposition crazy. They can't stand to see this investment come to Ontario. They hate it, because every time you announce that, it means new jobs, it means new investment, and that means that their forces go down in the polls.
Mr Murdoch: Then call an election. You haven't got the guts to call the election.
The Acting Speaker: I call the member for Grey-Owen Sound to order. You will have your opportunity to speak.
Mr Bisson: On top of this brand-new expansion, we've also had additions to existing mills: in my own community, Malette waferboard, a brand-new OSB expansion in my community worth $60 million that will secure jobs well into the year 2000 as well as brand-new investment for new jobs in my community. For the parliamentary assistant in Cochrane, Mr Len Wood, there's an expansion at Norbord with regard to brand-new veneer being expanded within that particular plant. And that's only what we've done with this.
In terms of this government, who was there to help the people of Kapuskasing when it came to the question of that company wanting to pull stakes out of Kapuskasing? It was Len Wood, it was Bob Rae, it was Floyd Laughren, it was Shelley Martel, it was Gilles Bisson, it was the NDP government. And when Sault Ste Marie was going down the tubes, the federal government was running in the opposite direction. It was the leadership of Shelley Martel, Bob Rae, Tony Martin and all the NDP people to save that community just in that mill, not to mention what happened at Algoma Steel.
In Thunder Bay, when it came to Abitibi going down the tubes, who was there to help the workers? Who saved the jobs? It was the NDP that did it. Those characters on the other side of the floor, the Liberal government in Ottawa today and the Tory government at the time in Ottawa ran in the opposite direction because they would not take the responsibility when it came to the people of this province. Who did? It was the NDP. And that's what drives those people absolutely crazy.
But it hasn't stopped there. I've only spoken of $500 million of greenfield investment in this industry alone -- that's not including all other industries such as mining, automotive etc -- but we're looking at expansion in that industry still further, up to about $1 billion worth of investment. We're looking at two brand-new greenfield medium-density fibre mills that will be built in Ontario. We're looking at a brand-new veneer mill. We're looking at two brand-new sawmills. We're looking at expanding three more veneer mills, not to mention what's going to happen in pulp and paper in terms of expansion in that sector.
That is a record I am proud to run on in the next provincial election, and it is one that we will run on. I say to the Tory opposition and I say to the Liberals, the problem with you guys is that you just can't take it, because the reality is that our record has been exemplary. The leadership of this government through this Premier and through the minister and all of cabinet has been exemplary, and that is what has brought the investment into the province of Ontario.
With that, I would like to conclude by thanking the parliamentary assistant, Mr Len Wood, for a job well done in committee. I would like to thank the social ideologues within the Ministry of Natural Resources who are here now for their exemplary work in supporting this committee, and I look forward to the day when this bill is finally passed.
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Mr Murdoch: I am pleased to have this opportunity to join in the debate on Bill 171, the Crown Forest Sustainability Act. I thank the member for Victoria-Haliburton for his excellent presentation.
This bill is nothing but a last-ditch effort by the Minister of Natural Resources to gain some credibility in the forest industry and control the damage his government has done in the north. While there may be some elements in this bill which are acceptable to Ontario foresters --
Mr Bisson: On a point of order, Madam Speaker --
The Acting Speaker: A point of order.
Mr Murdoch: -- as far as northern Ontario is concerned, this legislation is much too little and far too late. As co-chair of Mike Harris's northern focus, I had a firsthand opportunity to learn just how unpopular --
The Acting Speaker: Excuse me. I am recognizing a point of order. Just one moment, please, the member for Grey-Owen Sound.
Mr Bisson: Actually, it's a point of personal privilege.
Mr Stockwell: Come on, Gilles, it's time allocation. Sit down.
The Acting Speaker: I didn't hear your point of order. You do not have a point of order? Okay.
Mr Murdoch: At no time in the history of this province has an entire region ever experienced such a deep-rooted sense of betrayal by and mistrust of a provincial government. For the foresters and local politicians it is not a matter of how to deal with this government but how to get rid of it as soon as possible.
While this kind of message may sound harsh, I would like to assure this House that northern Ontario's contempt for this government is truly justified. The history of contempt can be traced back to the 1990 election and the NDP's Agenda for People. Investment in the north and expanding northern development were key components of the NDP platform.
They promised $100 million for the four-laning of the Trans-Canada Highway and $400 million for a northern development fund. But promises were all these people got, because we know the government has not spent anywhere near the promised amount. For this reason, northerners cannot trust this government.
The fact is that this government has done more to damage the economy of the north than any other because of the NDP's inflexible policies. The hope for 300 jobs in Kirkland Lake was destroyed. The NDP is incapable of incorporating a commonsense solution, such as rail-haul of waste, because the rigid, left-wing philosophy dictates that garbage must be dumped in your own backyard even if that backyard is prime agricultural land. Also to this government's credit are record tax hikes. Bill 40 and Ontario rates have driven away jobs and investment in Ontario's north.
The Minister of Natural Resources has put forward a bill that is supposed to promote sustainable forestry and to provide a future for forests, but the bill does nothing to ensure the long-term future for the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are directly and indirectly linked to forestry.
The minister spoke earlier about his government's responsibility to sustain communities that are reliant on the forest industry. The minister should tell that to the people in the village of Braeside, who lost 132 jobs and most of their tax base. These jobs were lost not because of lack of trees to harvest but because of the direct negative intervention by this minister.
While the Minister of Natural Resources tries to position himself as a friend of the foresters, I will remind him of the position the small, independent loggers were in when the NDP doubled the stumpage fees and the area charges. In a desperate attempt to find more revenue to feed their high-spending, high-taxing deficit machine, this government increased forestry taxes by 100% in one budget. The result was a large net reduction in jobs in the forestry sector.
Most of us will agree that Ontario's forestry policy should strike a balance between sustaining forests and managing those forests to sustain jobs. Unfortunately, the NDP does not understand this balance.
Instead of consulting local communities and economic stakeholders, the NDP forestry agenda is driven by urban or international environmentalists who have never seen the area they want to control.
I use as an example the Madawaska highlands proposal. Here we have a proposal which will effectively stifle the traditional multiple use of lands and resources. No one in the area has asked this government to move in and restrict use, yet the government is proceeding anyway. Why is the NDP proceeding to disallow traditional resource use in five eastern Ontario counties spanning an area of 4,000 hectares? Was this part of the NDP platform in eastern Ontario? No, this was an NDP promise to the World Wildlife Federation to meet the expectations outlined in the endangered spaces program. As anyone who uses resources in the Madawaska area will tell you, they are not endangered spaces. These spaces have been responsibly managed for over 125 years by the people of the local communities.
This relates in a critical way to Bill 171. It relates because we have to look at the way this government has handled Ontario's resources and how it has dealt with the affected people.
In section 12 of this bill, it appears as though the Minister of Natural Resources has found a way to address local citizens' concerns. I must add that our party has supported the principle of consultation and community-based management. However, Ontarians will be very sceptical of any committee or consultation process put forward by this government.
The Minister of Natural Resources' citizens' advisory committee for the Madawaska highlands has proven to be nothing but a smoke-and-mirrors sham. Last year, the warden resigned because he was misled into believing that the MNR would actually implement proposals put forward by the committee.
This government can waste as much time as it likes in the Legislature talking about what it is going to do for the forest industry and for the people who rely on that industry, but very few will listen or believe.
This is just another one of the lengthy bills this government has brought forward that is wrong and will not work for this province. Unfortunately, when they're thrown from power, when we're in the government next time, we will have to change these bills.
This government again has proven that democracy is not in its title. They call themselves New Democrats, but that word does not fit your title at all. Twenty closure bills -- 20 of them -- in four years. There were only seven since Confederation. This government does not want to listen to anybody. They promise they will consult and they go around this province consulting, but you've never once listened to anyone, just your own driven philosophy. It's all you do.
Madam Speaker, we will not be supporting this bill.
Mr Wood: I would just like to speak in support of Bill 171, the Crown Forest Sustainability Act. With this act, for the first time Ontario will have legislation that looks at the whole forest and will be better able to develop an ecosystem approach to forest management.
I've listened to both of the critics, especially the Liberal, a lot of gloom and doom over the 18 or 20 minutes he was commenting and saying he will not support it. There are a lot of workers throughout northern Ontario who were pretty happy when the government was elected in 1990. The Liberal government was going to let Spruce Falls go down the tubes. They had worked on it for a year and there were over 1,000 people the Liberal government was prepared to let go.
Mr Murdoch: You've had six ministers from up there and you have done absolutely nothing for the north. You've had six ministers and they're all brain-dead.
Mr Wood: I listen to the Conservative critic heckling from the other side. In 1983, they allowed Kimberly-Clark to shut down two Kleenex machines at Kapuskasing for no reason whatsoever. For no reason whatsoever, they threw thousands of people out of work right across the north.
Interjection.
The Acting Speaker: Order, the member for Grey-Owen Sound.
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Please take your seat. I have asked the member for Grey-Owen Sound to come to order, and I am waiting for the House to come to order.
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Order. The parliamentary assistant would like to conclude. I am waiting for the House to come to order. Please conclude your remarks.
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Mr Wood: It's understandable that both opposition parties are there to criticize, but with the piece of legislation we have, which is part of the $800 million that has been invested in northern Ontario to create new sawmills and new oriented strand board plants, the expectation is that there will be close to $1 billion in 1995 that will be invested in northeastern and northwestern Ontario to create jobs, to protect the single-industry communities that are out there.
We didn't see that support coming from the Conservatives, who were there for 42 years. As I said before, they allowed operations to shut down for no reason whatsoever.
In 1987 the Liberals allowed the sawmill to shut down in Kapuskasing. We're proud to say that in Kapuskasing right now we're able to work with the company, with the CEP, with all the other unions, with the management, and we were able to rebuild the sawmill that the Liberal government allowed to shut down. We're going to see number one paper machine come back on stream. And we're going to see them continue to grow, not only in Kapuskasing but in Cochrane. There's an expansion program out there. In Hearst, there's an expansion plan out there for an operation. There's nothing but good news out there.
Sure, we've had some critics who came forward during Bill 171 and said, "We want more amendments made." We made a lot of the amendments that people were looking for.
Mr Murdoch: Critics? Those people were just concerned.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Grey-Owen Sound, come to order.
Mr Wood: There are hundreds of thousands of workers out there who are supporting this, who have called us and said: "We're pleased with what you're doing. We're happy with what you're doing. Continue on the same course. We want you to continue to protect all of these single-industry towns. We don't want to see what happened over the 10 years before you came into government. We're proud of what you're doing. You're investing in the north, you're protecting jobs and communities, and we're looking forward to see new growth," which is happening. There'll be further announcements made from now until the end of January.
Prior to that, as my colleague from Cochrane South has said, there was no investment in 15 years. There were no new operations that were built in 15 years prior to us taking office. Now it is happening and it's happening as we're coming out of the worst recession we've had in 50 years. No other government in recent history has ever had to deal with what we dealt with as a government, at the same time protecting communities and creating jobs, and we're proud of what we've done.
If you look at the list of towns and communities and cities that are getting new operations, new expansions, they're not criticizing Bill 171. They're not criticizing the new agreements. Myself and Howard Hampton sat down in Kapuskasing yesterday and signed new agreements converting the FMAs over to silviculture 20-year licences. There have been close to 25 that have been signed and converted over the last number of months. There are a number yet to go, some large ones and some small ones.
It's a good piece of legislation. We're proud that it is finally in third reading and I'm proud to stand here and say that I support it 100%. Thank you very much.
The Acting Speaker: The time for debate has expired.
Honourable Minister Hampton has moved third reading of Bill 171, An Act to revise the Crown Timber Act to provide for the sustainability of Crown Forests in Ontario. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?
Interjection.
The Acting Speaker: Okay. By prior agreement, the vote on this matter will be held tomorrow.
POWER CORPORATION AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LA SOCIÉTÉ DE L'ÉLECTRICITÉ
Mr Lessard, on behalf of Mr Wildman, moved third reading of the following bill:
Bill 185, An Act to amend the Power Corporation Act / Projet de loi 185, Loi modifiant la Loi sur la Société de l'électricité.
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I don't intend to be too long on this. Indeed we had a discussion only last evening, but since I'm going to sit here till midnight and listen to some of the orations, particularly one offered by the member for Cochrane South, I think I have some right to at least release a little bit of tension.
I want to simply make a point about that part of Bill 185 which deals with the power that will be vested with the cabinet to choose either the president or the chairperson of Ontario Hydro to be the chief executive officer. I think, as I said last night, that is a sensible change of policy. The government recognizes that what it did three years ago in Bill 118 was wrongheaded, and I congratulate it for recognizing the error of that way and restoring the policy that's contained in section 1, I believe it is, of Bill 185.
I wanted tonight to take a moment to talk to this whole business about the chief executive officer's position because of reports today in the press about the testimony offered yesterday by Maurice Strong at the Ontario Energy Board hearings concerning the operations of Ontario Hydro International. I don't know whether anybody was struck, as I was, by what appeared to be the rather haughty attitude that Chairman Strong took at those hearings. It was just a little difficult for me to accept, as reported in today's press, the attitude of the chair of Ontario Hydro who went to the OEB hearings yesterday, hearings which the minister indicated in today's question period were initiated by the government to look at the whole question of what is the appropriate mandate for Ontario Hydro International.
I must say, I congratulate the minister for initiating the OEB reference, but I would like to believe that the government, and most especially the minister, has a view as to what kind of policy context should guide Ontario Hydro International. It is all well and good to ask the OEB for some advice, to hear submissions, but it seems to me it is the job of the minister, on behalf of the government, to set policy for Hydro, particularly in an area like this. I'll return to that in a moment.
But to read in today's paper that the chair of Ontario Hydro went to the hearings yesterday and basically said: "Listen, I'll not tolerate anybody looking over my shoulder. I am going to insist on the unfettered right of Ontario Hydro management to make those decisions" -- I thought I had brought those clips, but apparently I do not have them in my possession. But I remember well the direction of Mr Strong's testimony and it was, again, a little bit off-putting.
It is no secret to anyone that Ontario Hydro, both in its domestic and in some of its other operations, has not always succeeded to the extent that was advertised. I can't ever remember a venture which had, on the face of it, such risks as will be associated with the multimillion-dollar interest and investment that Ontario Hydro International has taken with this Peruvian utility. I think ratepayers from Walkerville to Cornwall will be anxious to know just how they are going to be saved harmless from that risk should it in fact produce losses.
A number of people in this province, both inside and outside the financial and the electricity sectors, are very concerned about not just this investment, but the kind of trend it speaks to, so to have Mr Strong go, as he did yesterday, and say, "Listen, I just will not tolerate the government or the Legislature looking over my shoulder in this kind of matter" -- I think Mr Strong needs a very clear direction from the government that this may not be the kind of activity in which the Ontario provincial electrical utility should be taking part in. I was not at all encouraged by the tenor of Mr Strong's testimony yesterday that he understands just what level of concern exists on Main Street Ontario about the potential risk and exposure that Ontario Hydro ratepayers and Ontario taxpayers generally face should this investment turn to be something other than positive.
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I have said before, I repeat now, that I do believe there is a role for Ontario Hydro International, or, put another way, I do believe there is today, as there has been for many years, a role for Ontario Hydro in the international marketplace. Personally, I don't have any particular expertise that would give me the final word as to what the nature and extent of that investment should be, but I know this: that we have an obligation, those of us in the Legislature and certainly those at the Ontario Hydro board, to deal with the concerns of Main Street in this respect.
My constituents, like, I suspect, everyone else's in the assembly, are aware that Ontario Hydro is essentially a provincial utility. It's a provincial electrical utility undergoing very substantial change at the present time. It has a debt of some $37 billion that is offset by some very substantial revenue-producing assets. It's fashionable for people, perhaps more fashionable for opposition members, to point to the debt of Ontario Hydro, and it is considerable, but it is a debt that is offset to a substantial extent by revenue-generating assets. But there is no doubt, certainly in my mind, that many Ontarians are very concerned about the fact that the utility is faced with as much red ink as it has seen in the past number of years.
I don't want to rethrash tonight because, as I said last night, this very quickly gets into matters of religion and theology, and we're too close to Christmas for that kind of debate. But there is, I think, a very great danger in this kind of activity, that is, spending X millions of dollars and taking an interest in the Peruvian utility. I haven't checked this lately, but I think one of our partners in the Peruvian venture is in fact a Chilean concern. Who would have thunk it? Who would have thought that the agents of Bob Rae and General Pinochet would be together investing in a Peruvian utility? It just tells me that we live in a world of great change and greater possibility.
Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): I think he is out of office now.
Mr Conway: Oh, I'm not so sure that the General is as far away from office in Santiago as perhaps my esteemed friend from Scarborough East suggests.
But it is my point that while there is a role, I think, for Ontario Hydro in the international marketplace, I have very grave doubts that the kinds of ventures we have seen -- and I mention two: taking an interest in this kind of Peruvian utility, or, as was reported earlier, buying a piece of the Central American rain forest -- recommend themselves immediately to, shall I say, the common sense of Main Street Ontario. I'm concerned about Main Street Ontario in this debate because we are going to have to explain to people on Main Street Ontario that significant change is going to have to continue at the electrical utility called Ontario Hydro.
We have seen rates go up considerably. I said last night, I repeat again, much has been said about the fact that the industrial rate's being reduced by 0.7%, slightly less than 1%, in the coming year, and that's true. But we've had some very substantial rate increases at Ontario Hydro over the last two or three years, and most people, most residential consumers and industrial consumers of Ontario Hydro's product, electricity, don't stop me on the street in Bancroft or Barry's Bay or in Glencoe and say, "Gee whiz, I'm really happy about the rates coming down." Their sense is that rates are very high and that the cost structure of Ontario Hydro has simply got to be brought down.
The government has embarked, or Hydro together with the government has embarked, on a number of measures to shed some of the cost and some of the weight at Ontario Hydro. Some 6,000 employees will be shed in the first round or two of "restructuring," at a cost of $1 billion, and again these are costs that will ultimately be borne by the ratepayers.
It is against that backdrop, then, of substantial rate increases, dramatic changes at the provincial utility, an ongoing tension between the Power Workers' Union and Hydro management around the current and future state of affairs at the corporation, that people pick up their Belleville Intelligencer or the Windsor Star and read on page 1 or page 5 that: "We're what? We're going to buy a Peruvian electrical utility? We're going to perhaps buy a piece of a rain forest in Central America?" It offends the common sense of many Ontarians.
Now, I think there is an argument to be made, as I indicated earlier, for an international presence. I don't particularly favour the two projects that I've mentioned on a number of occasions tonight, but even more worrisome to me is the attitude that is reported in today's press from the current chair: "Well, I'll not have my decisions watched to that extent. I'll not have the kind of oversight that some of these politicians are talking about. I'm either going to run Ontario Hydro International the way I see fit to run it or we'll just simply get out of the business altogether." I don't find that to be a particularly helpful or a constructive attitude.
As I said last night, and I repeat again, I think the choice of Maurice Strong as chairperson of Ontario Hydro was an interesting one, was, I thought then, a pretty gutsy decision for the Rae government to take. Mr Strong brings a very interesting mix of private and public sector experience over many years in many places, not all of those places Ontario or Canada. I have always been concerned that his reputation of not hanging around to see the job through might in fact be a problem here, and I remember raising that with him when we met some two years ago.
He has launched, in his tenure as chairperson of Ontario Hydro, a number of significant initiatives. I happen to be one of those people who believe that it is not just good enough to announce policy, that the real difficulty, the real challenge, the real test of executive leadership is program implementation. My own view is that what Ontario Hydro needs at the present time is the kind of creative energy that a person like Maurice Strong clearly has, but it needs to be applied over a sustained period of time, and in my view that time ought to be a minimum of four to five years.
The sense I have is that Mr Strong came; he, in quite a declaratory fashion, set out the problems and the challenges that he faced. I read some of that statement he made on December 9, 1992, to the standing committee of the Legislature, where he said he saw a public corporation facing a kaleidoscope of problems and a crisis of public confidence, and I think he was substantially right, and the reasons for that are many and complex.
This debate -- and I heard the minister again today. He basically would have us believe that it's really mostly the fault of Darlington. Well, that's his view. I was a critic of the Darlington decision back in the 1970s and in the early 1980s, and I accept that people in the current government might say that the Peterson crowd made a big mistake in 1985 in approving the completion of Darlington. I think that's a fair criticism.
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I suppose the response I might make to that, to my friends who now occupy the treasury bench, is that faced with the kind of growth pressures we faced in 1985, what was the alternative? There were alternatives, there is no doubt. But it is perhaps an interesting question to imagine, had we cancelled Darlington, what would we have done to secure for Ontario, as it really started to move through a very substantial growth period, alternative sources of megawattage?
I see the junior minister for Middlesex shaking her head, and she's now shouldering the very considerable burdens of office so I'm sure she shakes her head in the negative knowingly. But the fact of the matter was that by 1989 we were faced in this province with a situation where we had virtually gotten to the outer limit of our capacity to meet the demand that was then there. Now, it's true that we had a very precipitous decline in that demand from 1990 onward. I think all honourable members are concerned about the fact that we've had three or four years of very substantial economic recession, and that's no joy for anyone.
The fact of the matter is that there's a lot more to this than Darlington. I suspect that should we find in the coming months and years another spurt of activity, there will be some decisions around new capacity. It's all well and good to curse the darkness, but somebody is going to have to light -- metaphorically -- a candle.
I see with some interest that the Baie James project, the Great Whale project, has been cancelled for a variety of reasons. I happen to believe that those kind of megaprojects, that did materially add to the financial problems facing Ontario Hydro, are a thing of the past. How much a thing of the past will be, I think, for only history and the future to indicate, because, as my friends opposite will know, when one is forced to deal with the exigencies of the day and the burdens of office and the responsibility for keeping the lights on, sometimes you don't have the menu of choices that you would like. The people of north Hastings and west Middlesex will nonetheless expect you to have answers to, among other things, keep the lights on and the buses running.
Hon Elmer Buchanan (Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs): Cogeneration.
Mr Conway: My friend says cogeneration. There's no doubt that there's going to be very considerable opportunities in that area.
Hon Mr Buchanan: Wood waste in Renfrew.
Mr Conway: Listen, those are all perfectly good and attractive options. I know this: The kind of hydro-electric developments that have scarred the landscape of my part of eastern Ontario are probably more impossible into the future, as I see it, than perhaps small nuclear. If people think you're going to dam up the Madawaska or the Ottawa rivers like was done in the 1940s and in the 1950s and the 1960s to produce what we all agree is a relatively benign mode of generation -- not perfect, but relatively benign -- I have news for you: I don't think my constituents will tolerate it for a moment.
Now, we all imagine that there will be some outer frontier.
Hon Ed Philip (Minister of Municipal Affairs): Dam the Humber River.
Mr Conway: The member for Rexdale, the Minister of Municipal Affairs, says dam the Humber River. Maybe it can be dammed. I suspect more likely to be "damned" will be the proponents of such a project.
The point I want to make is that Ontario Hydro is facing some very substantial change and challenge, so if we are going to win the confidence of the people of Ontario, as they grapple with rates that are quite high, that will hopefully continue to come down, we are all, myself included, I think sufficiently politically correct never to touch on some of the really interesting issues around the cost structure at Ontario Hydro because that would be indiscreet, to say the least, in an election year. I know the managers of Ontario Hydro under the current regime have certainly come to understand just how it is that that utility has managed over the years to have the cost structure that it has, which it too high and must be brought down. But, boy, there are input costs there that are really interesting and not easily moved in the downward direction.
So as I say, I think it is going to be important, as we move forward, to deal with this, to make sure we bring along the public of Ontario. And as has been indicated by a number of people in the this Legislature this year, it is not on the top of everybody's list of good things for Ontario Hydro to be doing to be thinking about buying rain forests and actually buying pieces of Peruvian utilities.
I would simply say tonight that it is very important for the Minister of Energy, on behalf of the government, to accept his responsibility and to make plain what the criteria will be for Ontario Hydro's international activity. That has not been done to date. I think it is important for the minister, on behalf of his cabinet colleagues, to say, "Yes, we believe that there is an international role, and I certainly support it in that, but we expect Ontario Hydro's international activity to be guided by the following principles, by the following criteria."
My own advice would be that, in the early going, it is going to be extremely important for the government to proceed prudently and to expect that Ontario Hydro International will move forward prudently or conservatively. Let us say, for example, the Peruvian venture comes a cropper and turns out to be much less than advertised. I believe that will have a devastating impact on future activities by Ontario Hydro in the international sphere.
I think it is well and good that the Ontario Energy Board should be having these current hearings, but I think far more important, and far more urgent, is the need for the Minister of Energy, on behalf of his cabinet colleagues, to state clearly what the principles and what the criteria for Ontario Hydro's international activities are to be.
I would hope that the Premier and/or the Minister of Energy would convey to the chair of Ontario Hydro, colourful, idiosyncratic fellow he is, that the attitudes he revealed yesterday, which were almost, "How dare they question what we're doing in Peru?" are not helpful. I know that Ontario Hydro is a crown corporation which has some independence from government but not, quite frankly, nearly as much as political science and some of the statutes would have you believe, for obvious reasons. There are few activities carried on in the name of Her Majesty's Ontario government that are more important, more sensitive and more immediate in their impact on all of us than the mandate of Ontario Hydro.
My friend from Lanark isn't here tonight, but he likes to say that if you could just keep the politics --
Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): He was here last night.
Mr Conway: He was; he was very good last night. But people, the member for Lanark-Renfrew and others, sometimes say, "It would be just such a good thing it they could keep the politics out of Ontario Hydro." It's impossible. There hasn't been a government -- Liberal, Tory, New Democrat, farm labour -- that could keep its political interests apart from what Hydro is up to. That's not a surprise, and it's probably healthy. I don't think the politicians should be running the corporation on a day-to-day basis.
But there are fundamental political issues at stake here. Any of you who represent particularly rural constituencies -- we were talking just a moment ago about the resource sector -- if you've got sawmillers or farmers in your constituency, you'll know something about just how vital is the impact of electricity on the economy. If you've got a hospital in your community, you'll know only too well about how fundamental and how important is the hydro service to that part of the social sector.
I simply want to say that Bill 185 is legislation that I can support. I think the CEO should either be the chair or the president, and I think the flexibility is properly captured in this legislation.
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I will say again that what I had expected from the government was quite frankly much more than Bill 185, and I don't think I'm alone in this. I suspect that on this, Maurice Strong and I would agree. It seems to me that about a year, a year and a half ago, there was some expectation that the government would develop -- I called it last night a white paper. It could be called an options paper.
As all honourable members who know anything about this business are aware, there is tremendous change occurring across the continent and across the developed world in terms of electricity. We have had in this province a policy framework that's been fairly consistent since the days of Adam Beck. We have had a public utility, Ontario Hydro, that has been significantly monopolistic. In the beginning it was intended to be a municipally controlled cooperative distributing electricity produced by private generators. That's the Hydro the province launched 80-some years ago. Over the intervening decades, it developed into Mother Hydro, which was almost entirely a public monopoly, controlling almost all the generation, certainly almost all the transmission and distribution.
Technology and changing times have brought us in 1994 to the cusp of new realities. We are faced now with pressures to change substantial components of the existing policy. To be fair, the current government, like predecessor governments in the 1980s, has moved cautiously to begin that change. We now have something called non-utility generation. That's private power. That is privatization of a sort, and I think it should be encouraged to a certain and limited extent. People talk about, "Isn't the privatization of Hydro unthinkable?" I simply want to make the point that we have a growing part of the generation coming from private generators.
We have work that is currently under way between the Municipal Electric Association and others looking at how the transmission and distribution sectors might be realigned to provide greater efficiency and lower costs. Let me be clear that among the principal pressures driving the new Hydro will be the public's expectation that costs are going to come down and that new policy is going to accommodate new technology and new technological possibilities.
I would say that I expected some months ago -- it will not now happen in this Parliament, but a new government is certainly going to have to initiate this I think very quickly -- a set of options looking at these key questions in terms of generation, in terms of transmission, in terms of distribution. There is no doubt that Ontario Hydro, the giant utility of the 1970s and 1980s, is not on for the 21st century. It is going to shrink. That's going to be of great concern to people like the Power Workers' Union, and there's going to be a lot of tension and friction as we move through those changes.
Some people imagine a UK-style sell-off of significant assets. I don't think that's either necessary or desirable, though some of it may very well occur.
It's going to be important for the Legislature and the public beyond to understand to a far greater extent than perhaps any of us do now what the choices are, and what the costs, what the benefits and what the consequences of these policy changes will be.
I would encourage the department of Energy and the planning folks over at Ontario Hydro to bring forward or prepare to bring forward that kind of options paper so that a select committee of this Legislature can undertake not just a good examination of the choices we have in this area but, equally, that group of elected members can begin the important business of educating the public around these key questions.
So I say again tonight, Bill 185 is a bill that my Liberal colleagues and I can support, but I for one look forward to the day in the not-too-distant future when a government, a Minister of Energy, will bring forward the guts of significant policy change that are clearly about to present themselves, not just to Ontarians but certainly to just about everyone else across the North American continent and much of the developed world.
The Acting Speaker: I thank the member for Renfrew North for his contribution to this debate. Questions or comments?
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I really enjoyed the remarks of the member for -- is this remarks?
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments to the member.
Mr Bradley: But I see I have 59 minutes on the clock up there. That's why I'm asking. I think I have two minutes to make these remarks.
I was really impressed with the remarks of the member for Renfrew North, who has canvassed this issue with a good deal of zeal over the last several years. I was pleased to hear him mention the need for significant reform and his support of this bill. One thing we're finding is that there is a consensus that can build around a lot of legislation in this House and I was glad to see the very constructive role that the member for Renfrew North was playing in regard to this piece of legislation.
There is a consensus that does develop from time to time. We've seen some significant changes. Should I get an opportunity to make a few remarks later on, I would have wondered if the member would have dwelt considerably on the export policy of Ontario Hydro, because I can well recall that if you exported one kilowatt a few years ago, the environmental community would be bouncing off the collective ceiling of this province. The very thought --
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): It would be on Radio Noon, wouldn't it?
Mr Bradley: It would be on Radio Noon, CBC, for sure. I think they were talking about how to plant flowers this week. But it would be one of those hard-hitting shows on Radio Noon.
I can remember when it was almost sinful to contemplate an opportunity to export power to the United States. Today we find, of course, that there are a lot of advocates of exporting power to the United States and some of them are, I think, the same advocates who were advocating the sale of Candu reactors to China.
I saw the Premier of this province -- I think I have a photograph somewhere in here -- with Jean Chrétien, and they were both attempting to sell Candu nuclear reactors to what we used to call Communist China, Red China. When I saw that, I was indeed surprised, and I just wondered whether the member for Renfrew North had had an opportunity to cover that topic during his remarks.
Mr Stockwell: I would like to ask the member from Renfrew, who offered us some insight into his views on Ontario Hydro -- the Candu thing was something I'd like to hear his comments about.
China seems to have this kind of effect on people. For Richard Nixon, of course, when he went to China, there was a very real conversion of the man. I've noted now, with some degree of hopefulness, that when Mr Rae went to China there appeared to be a conversion as well. I'm not sure if it's the water or the level the planes fly at, but I was surprised when the Premier, the man I remember in his lumberjack shirt in Temagami, and the handcuffs -- I remember that fondly. There he was in China, with the great record they have of human rights, there he was, the protector of the people, fobbing a couple of Candu reactors. It reeked with irony, and I think it's important that the member from Renfrew touch on that. The communities around this province, with the irony dripping off that situation, would like to hear what he thinks about the Premier -- the tree-hugging, hand-cuffed, lumberjack Premier of ours, fobbing Candu reactors to Red China.
Now, the conversion took place. I did mention Mr Nixon, Mr Rae. It just was one of those situations where, when I picked up my morning paper and saw that picture of Jean Chrétien and the other premiers, including the Premier of British Columbia and Mr Romanow, the Premier of Saskatchewan, and of course Mr Rae, all good socialists, and those Candu reactors, holding that signed contract up, it sent chills up my spine, and I'm certain it sent a few up others' as well.
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The Acting Speaker: Further questions or comments to the member for Renfrew North? Seeing none, the member has two minutes to respond.
Mr Conway: I think we probably are a little outside the rules on this. It's a third reading debate. Are we allowed the two minutes?
Mr Bradley: Oh, yes.
Mr Conway: I didn't realize that. Well, that's good to know.
I simply want to say to my colleagues who've kindly passed on their observations around the Premier's recent visit to China, that it is a brave new world that hath such people in it, and I suppose we ought not to be surprised. The man who embraced public auto insurance in opposition and who fled it in government, the man who denounced Candu technology in opposition is now a kind of Stanley Randall of the 1990s, off in China selling its appeal.
I have stood in this House for the better part of 20 years proudly, as the member for Chalk River, saying this Candu technology is a good and positive part of the energy policy and the future of this province and country. I am not happy, quite frankly, about some of the problems that have arisen at Bruce and at Darlington, but that does not mean for me that the Candu technology is not essentially positive and viable.
Mr Bradley: What did Audrey say about it?
Mr Conway: I see where Audrey was chastising Mr Rae, and now I see some of the union movement is today chastising Audrey for chastising Bob Rae. It's clear that all is not well in the world of the New Democracy. But I want to say seriously that there are important questions of generation. I believe the nuclear option, which has been important in the past, will continue to be a part of the future. It's got to be balanced by other modes, cogeneration, some future hydro-electric, but I believe that the Candu technology can continue to be an important part of the energy future of Ontario and of Canada.
The Acting Speaker: I thank the member for his contribution to this debate. Further debate?
Mr Arnott: I am pleased to rise this evening to speak to Bill 185 at third reading. Our colleague the member for Lanark-Renfrew, who is our Energy critic, spoke at length on this bill I believe last night and outlined in detail the arguments of our party, so I will speak quite briefly this evening.
From the outset, I want to say that the PC caucus supports the 52 municipal utilities that want to expand and we agree with the broad general thrust of Bill 185. It is unfortunate, however, that this legislation may be redundant in relation to Ontario's labour legislation and successor rights. We fear we may end up with a situation where the Power Workers' Union will automatically take over the labour jurisdiction, bringing higher wage costs and a major disincentive for the expansion sought by this bill. Bill 185 goes to great lengths to ensure fairness in the transfer of employees from Ontario Hydro to the municipal utility. Everything from wage entitlements to pension benefits and sick days are covered.
But these items in section 83.7 of the bill could be rendered worthless if it is determined that there has been a sale of business when a service area is transferred from Ontario Hydro to the municipality. When we consider the degree to which Bill 185 may be contrary, it appears as though the minister may have overlooked a very crucial factor, and in doing so, he may be opening the floodgates for automatic union takeovers in municipal utilities across this province. This would not only serve as a disincentive, but again, it contradicts the purpose and function of Bill 185 as stated by the government.
If we take, for example, subsection 83.7(33) of the bill, it stipulates a seemingly fair formula for assistance during the first calendar year after the transfer date. However, the formula may be very misleading. How does the minister expect the municipality to be compensated when the salaries of all its employees are raised to Ontario Hydro levels? How will Hydro or the Ministry of Environment and Energy compensate local commissions for losing the ability to contract out to small firms for services? If we look at the logic, to use the term loosely, it appears as though the minister has either not really considered the union expansion contingency or, worse still, is not concerned.
The 52 municipalities will be acquiring approximately one tenth of 1% of Ontario Hydro and, in return for this relatively modest transfer, the cost could be total unionization in each area and an increase in overall costs.
Municipal commissions that simply want to provide a good service at a good price throughout their jurisdiction have no true guarantee from this government. Furthermore, every financial assurance in Bill 185 appears to be deceptive in light of the fact that the Minister of Energy cannot stand in this House and guarantee that successor rights will not apply.
Those are some of the broad-based concerns we have with respect to the bill, although I have indicated that we do intend to support it in principle and at third reading.
I would like to give our critic credit for the work he's done in the last number of years on the Energy portfolio. I remember very well working with him on the last amendments to the Power Corporation Act that the government brought forward, Bill 118, and a number of the issues that were brought forward at that time. He's certainly done an outstanding job in representing the concerns of the people of Ontario with respect to Hydro and Energy issues, so I want to give him credit in closing.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Questions or comments. If not, any further debate?
Mr Bradley: I want to be very brief this evening in offering some remarks.
Applause.
Mr Bradley: That brought a round of applause from my colleagues.
I want to deal with a couple of issues that are dealt with in a peripheral way in this bill; that is, I wanted again, in a little more detail, to talk about the fact that we are now promoting the export of power to the United States and how sinful it was just a few years ago to do so.
I would expect to see a demonstration, as this bill passes, in front of the Legislative Assembly of all those who have been concerned over the years about exports to the United States. The member for Etobicoke-Rexdale, who has been in this House many years, since 1975, the member for Hamilton East, the same length of time, and the member for Hamilton Mountain since 1977, would all recall very well the suggestion that there be a major conduit put under Lake Erie for the purpose of exporting power to the United States, and how there was a hue and cry about the potential for Ontario producing electricity, with all of the negative impacts that come along with the production of electricity, that would go to the United States. The government House leader, who at one time was the Energy critic for the NDP, would particularly recall this well.
Hon Mr Philip: That was even before the Liberals were against NAFTA.
Mr Bradley: The member for Etobicoke-Rexdale talks about NAFTA. I well recall, because there must be some power implications in it, that his leader, the Premier of this province, was going to stop NAFTA in its tracks, "Legislation will be brought forward to prevent this from moving forward." Then of course I waited and waited patiently, as I am a very patient person, and found none of that legislation and none of those regulations. Yet Ontario seemed not to suffer from the lack of heated air in the province as the Premier made those speeches and we had no action.
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Going back to the power itself, there was a feeling that if Ontario were to spend money developing this capacity -- and we all recall, back in the old days when the New Democratic Party found nuclear power to be somewhat sinful, that in those days one would not certainly use power from those plants, the nuclear generating stations, to sell to the United States, and perhaps other provinces. Certainly, we did not want to dam up any more rivers, we did not want to cause any more problems with the waterfalls in various parts of the province so that we could simply export power to the United States, and we did not want to burn any more fossil fuels because we know the detrimental effect on the atmosphere of the burning of those fossil fuels. Yet today we have the government talking in very favourable tones about exporting power to the United States.
I guess one of the advantages that I see is if there were to be a change of government after the next election, if that were to happen, the New Democratic Party would not be in a very good position to be critical of many of the initiatives that it used to be critical of in opposition.
Another I want to speak briefly about is the nuclear generating program in Ontario. I used to watch the NDP conventions. They're always interesting; I would read the reports in the newspaper. My friends would come back from the conventions, my good friends, and tell me what had happened at each one of them and almost invariably there would be a resolution or six passed denouncing nuclear power for the generation of electric power. I was looking at a photograph I had of the Premier -- I have many of them. This is one which shows him in China and it's both in Mandarin and English, and here he is with Jean Chrétien. He is shaking hands and there's not a caption underneath but I was thinking that perhaps he must be saying, "Bring on the nukes."
I know the member for Peterborough was an individual who was very opposed to nuclear generating stations and I, like the member for Etobicoke West, have viewed some considerable changes in government policy. The greatest hope that the members on the governing side can have is that they be re-elected because in opposition, for at least the first few years, they will not be in a very good position to criticize a subsequent government for some of the policies that might be carried on, policies that the NDP has itself carried on.
I look at the government House leader, excellent Environment critic and Energy critic that he was, and I think I remember some of his speeches in committee and in the House that were denouncing the very policies the government is following today. He denies this emphatically today but I think if one were to look in Hansard -- I see the member for Etobicoke West is going under his desk to get the Hansard now to see what was said in those days.
I am pleased to see that we are moving forward with some legislation that has a consensus in this House. We in the opposition have always been pleased to accommodate the government with legislation with which we agree. There is no need tonight for a closure motion, although I kind of missed it this week when I looked on my desk and there wasn't a closure motion sitting there. The government was not cutting off debate. That is because we have consensus on this legislation.
Mr Stockwell: It's democracy. Two days in a row without a closure motion.
Mr Bradley: The member says two days in a row and we have not had a time allocation motion.
Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet and Government House Leader): Three days.
Mr Bradley: Three days in a row, says the government House leader. There was an auction earlier this evening and we're up to three days in a row.
I'm not one who ordinarily congratulates the government because I know that's its job. In fact, I stood in the House yesterday and suggested that the Minister of Health allow a new coverage in OHIP for cabinet ministers because I know they were having a very difficult time with their backs. They were getting bruised and they were quite painful from patting themselves on the back for various initiatives they had come forth with --
Mr Stockwell: Their ribs.
Mr Bradley: And their ribs, from hugging each other and having their groups that agree with them hug them.
Hon Elaine Ziemba (Minister of Citizenship and Minister Responsible for Human Rights, Disability Issues, Seniors' Issues and Race Relations): Boy, do you ever sound jealous. You just woke me up.
Mr Bradley: The member for High Park-Swansea intervenes. I well recall a member of the family served with him 1977 to 1981, Ed, brother --
Mr Stockwell: Brother-in-law.
Mr Bradley: Brother-in-law. Very colourful member of the Legislature and I know he made some of the same arguments that the member for Hamilton Mountain, who sits in the House today as government House Leader, made against many of the policies that are now being brought forward. So the world does change --
Hon Mr Buchanan: Let's go on to pensions.
Mr Bradley: The member for Hastings-Peterborough wishes to go on to pensions. I could speak about agriculture and its relation to power but I won't do that this evening. I will not get into that but I do have a couple of issues I'd like to canvass with him, perhaps during the supply motion. I do like to see a lot of discussion of these issues.
We used to have a select committee, members will recall, on Hydro affairs. I actually think select committees are very good in that there's a focus on a specific issue and some members can become expert. I substituted one summer on it and found it very fascinating. We were dealing with Pickering at the time and the nuclear generating station at Pickering and some of the problems that were there. I had someone who was supplying me with some considerable information that was very good for that committee at the time. My friends in the New Democratic Party were also discussing it; another government was in power then, the Conservatives. I thought that was a very useful committee. It got disbanded. I don't know whether it got disbanded under the Liberals or the NDP but it got disbanded. I think when you have those kinds of committees they can be very constructive. It also keeps Hydro on its toes. I think some of the work the government has undertaken today flowed, to a certain extent, from some of the investigative work that was done in committee in those days.
I join my colleague the member for Renfrew North in expressing support for this legislation -- cooperation, as always, from the opposition, in attempting to accommodate this kind of legislation and expressing a sense of relief that I have not had laid on my desk today yet another closure motion.
The Deputy Speaker: Questions or comments? Any further debate?
Mr Stockwell: I will too be brief as well with respect to this piece of legislation. I spent a brief period of time in this place as critic for Energy about a year or so ago and I found it to be very interesting and certainly enlightening -- no pun intended -- to me with respect to the operation of Ontario Hydro and the players involved in that operation.
In fact, I was critic at the time this government announced the appointment of Mr Strong as chair of the large utility. I want to speak primarily to that in this piece of legislation. Let me just say, Mr Speaker, through you to the House today, I think, and I will go on the record, that he has done what I would consider to be a very good job in certain sectors within Ontario Hydro. There's no doubt in my mind, and I'm sure other fairminded thinking people out there, that he had a very monumental task in dealing with the debt, deficits and costs incurred by Ontario Hydro, plus he had a huge public relations problem. That public relations problem stemmed from the fact that I believe, under the NDP government, pre-Maurice Strong, there were increases of up to 40% in Hydro rates.
Hon Mr Charlton: About 30%.
Mr Stockwell: Okay, maybe 30% -- in that 30% to 40% overall range. The difficulty was, during a recession, the businesses and private sector operators out there, and even homeowners themselves, were having a very difficult time making ends meet. They found it most unenjoyable and concerning to see Ontario Hydro whack up the price of hydro-electricity to them in the neighbourhood of 40%. Mr Strong went in there with a very difficult task at hand, I don't deny it.
Mr Arnott: He followed Marc Eliesen, too.
Mr Stockwell: Exactly, he followed possibly -- as much as I like Mr Strong -- he followed probably the worst chairman, I think, in the history of Ontario Hydro, Mr Marc Eliesen, who subsequently went off to British Columbia.
Interjection: What's happened there?
Mr Stockwell: They bounced him out of British Columbia Hydro and they've set up a little crown corporation for him to run with a group of small people and he got his membership for the fitness club out of that group instead of the government. But let me continue.
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Mr Strong had to face the very difficult task of dealing with the unions and cost overruns and the high cost of electricity, increased costs to the consumers and the private sector, and he took it on head-on. I remember sitting downstairs in the committee. I remember very well that day that the member from Renfrew quoted earlier. I was the caucus representative for the Conservative Party in that particular meeting. Mr Strong came in and I said: "Look, Mr Strong, I've got a question for you. The question is this. If you find these books aren't balanceable, if you find costs running wild and out of control, are you prepared to meet the union head-on and deal with the staffing concerns and deal with the cost of the payroll?" And he said to me, I will say, Mr Speaker, categorically: "Yes. If we have to lay off, I will lay off. If we have to reduce our payroll, I will reduce our payroll." And subsequently he did do just that. He dealt with the payroll, he dealt with the staffing concerns -- at a cost, I might add, upwards of some billion dollars. But he did deal with it.
Some would argue with his methods, some would argue with his process, some would argue with his costs, but you can't argue with the fact that he did do it. And I will tip my hat to him. That was a tough thing to do and he did it. It was something that needed to be done. Successive governments had built up an absolutely grotesque display of bureaucracy at that place and it was absolutely feeding on itself. It was something that was necessary and should have been done and still needs to be done and continues to be needed to be done. And I don't care who wins the next election, be it the Liberals or the good guys, the fact of the matter is, it's going to have to be dealt with at that time as well.
Hon Ms Ziemba: Or the good guys: us.
Mr Stockwell: Or the NDP; I'm sorry. It will have to be dealt with at that time as well.
Why am I making this long-winded tribute to Mr Strong? Because I want to tell you this: I don't come at this with a jaundiced view. I come at this very fairminded because I think he seemed to have done what I think is a good job until his most recent escapades. I fear, personally, for this province and for the next government because I fear that maybe he's getting somewhat too big for his britches. He's decided that he's his own one-man show and he's going to beat the band to get the work done and he now starts thinking the press clippings about him are right. I get some real concern about that.
When you read in a newspaper in the province of Ontario that they're at the OEB and they're going to measure whether or not we should be having the outside expenditures into the international markets, and you see things like this in the paper: "Ontario chairman Maurice Strong says the utility will abandon its international operations unless given greater freedom, such as power to make foreign deals without cabinet approval," doesn't that frighten you people? Doesn't that scare you a little bit? Here's a gentleman who sits at his office and says if anybody in this government, anyone at the cabinet, anyone in the corner office decides to question any of my deals, I'll quit; we'll shut it down. That's concerning to me. That was in the Star.
He goes on. In the Globe and Mail:
"Ontario Hydro chairman Maurice Strong has threatened to pull the plug on his $200-million international investment program if the utility's offshore activities are constrained by new provincial government regulations.
"'I am not prepared to be party to having Ontario Hydro limp lamely into the international market with clipped wings, hands behind its back,' Mr Strong told a regulatory hearing yesterday."
Now, government members, I say to you directly, because obviously this is something you have far more control over than, say, the plebes on this side of the House, I think possibly this guy is starting to think he's running the whole show. I think possibly this Maurice Strong guy thinks he can now make hundreds of millions of dollars of decisions of taxpayers' money and invest it offshore in Peru or Costa Rica or wherever he deems appropriate, and he says to we the elected sorts, "Whatever I decide, if you have the audacity to even question it, I'll pull out." I think this is dangerous talk, and it's dangerous talk from a democratic point of view. I think it's dangerous talk because we seem to be getting further and further away from those who are elected by the people and for the people to make decisions on behalf of the people. Because no matter how good Mr Maurice Strong happens to be or thinks he is, he wasn't elected. Those people who were elected, who must take responsibility for these offshore investments, still come to work here, still have a seat in this chamber and still, every so often, must go back to the people and defend their actions or inactions in hopes of being re-elected to this place.
This to me is dangerous talk and I think we should know this. I think when we have someone out there, as powerful and all-knowing as he may seem to be at times, suggesting that he is far more powerful and more all-knowing than those people who were elected and entrusted to be the stewards of the taxpayers' dollars, we may in fact have created a monster.
That's why I'm standing in my place today and that's why I started this debate off explaining why I think he is in fact a virtuous leader and a gentleman who could possibly carry through Ontario Hydro during one of the most difficult periods of time. But I will note: Be very, very careful, folks, because it seems to me he's decided in his mind that he knows better than you and us, the elected officials. And I'll make this point once again. No one knows better than the people. We represent the people. Mr Strong does not represent the people, and if this member were anywhere near the cabinet table and this person said what he said, I would slap him down in one big hurry.
The Deputy Speaker: Questions or comments? Further debate? If not, the parliamentary assistant.
Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Walkerville): There have been a number of remarks made on various topics somewhat related to this bill, I guess, this evening, but what I want to do in closing is really comment on what this bill actually does.
First of all, it makes it easier for 66 municipal electrical utilities to offer better service in their municipalities. This change is one of three that's included in the legislation. In most municipalities, local electrical utilities serve the urban areas and Ontario Hydro serves the rural areas, but there are 66 municipalities in which residents are served by both, because at one point the population density was too low for municipal utilities to provide service at reasonable rates.
Some of those areas have developed and the local municipal utilities want to provide service, but they were hamstrung because under the previous act they had to expand their service areas to the boundaries in one costly step. The Power Corporation Amendment Act allows them to expand in stages.
This change with respect to municipal boundaries comes after extensive consultations with members of the Municipal Electric Association and the labour unions involved. The change will benefit customers by eliminating the inequity of some neighbours paying different hydro rates and it will help improve service as one, not two, electrical utilities will serve residents and local businesses.
The second change to the act permits the crown corporation to enact pension fund changes which were negotiated in the collective agreements with Ontario Hydro and the Power Workers' Union and the Society of Ontario Hydro Professional and Administrative Employees. The agreements also provided for increased job security for union and association members for the duration of their contracts.
The third change allows the government greater flexibility by allowing it to appoint either the Hydro chairperson or president as the chief executive officer.
This bill should be welcomed by all those concerned. It's a pleasure for me to be able to speak in support of it and I'm happy to see that the two opposition parties are in support as well.
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The Deputy Speaker: Mr Lessard has moved third reading of Bill 185, An Act to amend the Power Corporation Act. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.
Resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.
SUPERANNUATION ADJUSTMENT BENEFITS REPEAL ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 ABROGEANT LA LOI INTITULÉE SUPERANNUATION ADJUSTMENT BENEFITS ACT
Mr Sutherland, on behalf of Mr Laughren, moved third reading of the following bill:
Bill 107, An Act to repeal the Superannuation Adjustment Benefits Act and to provide for the transfer of assets and liabilities of the Superannuation Adjustment Fund Account to the Ryerson Retirement Pension Plan of Ryerson Polytechnical Institute / Projet de loi 107, Loi abrogeant la loi intitulée Superannuation Adjustment Benefits Act et prévoyant le transfert de l'actif et du passif du compte du Fonds d'indexation des pensions de retraite au Régime de retraite de Ryerson de l'Institut polytechnique Ryerson.
Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): I'll keep my remarks very brief on this. I think most of the key points did come out on second reading debate.
Basically what we're doing here is continuing a trend that was started with the teachers' pension plan by the previous government, to bring them into a situation where they will be fully funded and reduce the unfunded liability over a period of time. The longer we wait to do this, the more it will cost the government, so there are great benefits by moving forward on this bill at this time. It certainly has the support of the fine folks at Ryerson Polytechnic University to move forward on this.
I also want to thank the opposition members who have been extremely cooperative in dealing with this piece of legislation in terms of the comments they raised on second reading.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Any questions or comments? Any further debate?
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): Let the bill pass.
Mr David Johnson (Don Mills): I'll try to duplicate that effort, almost, simply to note that this issue arose back in the 1980s. There were two funds, an index fund and a main fund, for the people at Ryerson in terms of their pension. The Treasurer of the day, Bob Nixon I guess it was, in the Peterson government back in the 1980s -- what's that motion for? I'm not so sure I can interpret that -- attempted to bring them together. But I guess in the rush to the election -- there was an election somewhere around 1990, wasn't there, Mr Speaker? I wasn't here at that point, but they tell me there was an election in the province of Ontario.
Mr David Winninger (London South): The best thing that ever happened.
Mr David Johnson: The best thing that ever happened, say the members opposite. Well, there may be a difference of opinion on this side of the House.
At any rate, somehow it got lost. The government picked up the ball in 1992, and two years later we have now, with two days to go in the Legislature, the culmination.
We need to bring this index fund back into the fold, as it were. Otherwise, Ryerson will have to use operating funds to fund it or else they'll have to get more of a contribution from the teachers at Ryerson, I guess, a contribution beyond that which they should be compelled to make.
I'll simply make those comments and note in passing that we've had a number of issues to deal with in regard to pensions. I recall when I was in East York as mayor, this particular government attempted to set up a fund to look at economic projects.
Mr Sutherland: That's right.
Mr David Johnson: The parliamentary assistant says, "That's right." Boy, did that ever send a shiver down the spine of the employees who relied on that pension fund. What they could see was the funds from the pension fund being used to finance risky projects that couldn't be financed otherwise. All heck broke loose, I know, at the municipal level. The employees at East York took up a petition. All who had their pension in OMERS were really concerned because they depend on that money when they retire after years of service. They didn't want their money put into some kind of risky venture. The government wisely backtracked on that. So there was that issue.
There was the issue of the deferral of the teachers' pension payments to make the books look better a year or two ago and, most recently, the splitting of the OPSEU pension fund, over the protests of the OPP and the management members.
We've had a number of pension issues to deal with. Most of them have been rancorous, I must say, but on this particular one, I am happy to say, we have agreement on all sides of the House, and with that, I'll sit down.
The Deputy Speaker: Questions or comments? Further debate? If not, the parliamentary assistant.
Mr Sutherland: Just a couple of comments to close: First of all, I think I kind of led the debate in second reading with some impression that there were maybe some political reasons as to why this didn't get passed back in 1989. Subsequently afterwards, as I followed up on that inquiry, the reason this one did take a little longer of course is because the government was not directly funding the Ryerson plan, as it was with the teachers' plan and continues to do in terms of making the contribution, so there had to be some more ongoing negotiation. It wasn't a question that it just got overlooked by the previous government. It was a more complicated situation in terms of how the government was going to resolve its contribution in the process.
Let me just make one other comment about the Ontario investment fund, because the member for Don Mills raised that. There was a great deal of concern and scaremongering going on about what was going to happen to pension funds even before any proposals and negotiations took place on what type of returns would be guaranteed to the members of the pension plan or what have you.
We hear all the time about a shortage of capital in this province, and opportunities to create some new pools of capital through an Ontario investment fund of a significant nature might have been a great opportunity. However, that is in the past and the government did proceed with an investment fund of a much smaller nature that hopefully will create some new economic activity. With that, I close debate.
The Deputy Speaker: Mr Sutherland has moved third reading of Bill 107, An Act to repeal the Superannuation Adjustment Benefits Act and to provide for the transfer of assets and liabilities of the Superannuation Adjustment Fund Account to the Ryerson Retirement Pension Plan of Ryerson Polytechnical Institute.
Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.
Resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.
SECURITIES AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES VALEURS MOBILIÈRES
Mr Sutherland, on behalf of Mr Laughren, moved third reading of the following bill:
Bill 190, An Act to amend the Securities Act / Projet de loi 190, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les valeurs mobilières.
Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): Speaker, as you know, we did have a debate on this at second reading where different issues were outlined. Let me say as a general comment, I think there's overall consensus and support for the intent of this bill. The basic component of the bill is to give the OSC, the Ontario Securities Commission, the authority to establish regulatory powers. In the past, they have made regulations and rules but unfortunately, due to a court decision, it drew into question the authority of the securities commission to do that.
This legislation, for the most part, is trying to rectify that specific issue. It outlines specific procedures for public comment on proposed rules and regulations and sets out a schedule, I think, of some 46 items currently that will be, for lack of a better term, a kind of honeymoon for two years or whatever, a time that they'll go out for public comment and have some more input and decide whether we want to keep them in the exact same form.
There was one day of public hearings on this bill in committee. I think it was a good idea to have that one day. We heard from different people who had some concerns about the bill. Some thought the bill didn't protect consumers enough, some thought it gave the OSC too much authority, but I think the general consensus was that this was a good thing to go forward with.
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The securities dealers' association is a group that deals somewhat in penny stocks and it put forward a proposal called the equal rights amendment where the OSC would have to treat all dealers in penny stocks the same way. There was evidence put before the committee that both the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Investment Dealers Association of Canada are self-regulatory bodies, whereas the other bodies that have higher standards that they must meet, as set out by the commission, are not self-regulatory bodies and don't carry out their own compliance measures to make sure members are following the rules of the regulatory body. Therefore there's some sense that consumers need a greater deal of protection.
The "equal rights amendment" -- and I say that in quotation marks because of how it's proposed -- in effect, the evidence we heard was that the regulatory standards of the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Investment Dealers Association are far superior to anything the securities dealers' association has, and while they have a code of ethics and they have a customer's bill of rights, there isn't really any compliance component to those two things that the security dealers have.
I think it was good to have that one day and, again, I appreciate the good spirit of cooperation and support that's been demonstrated by both opposition parties and the critics on this bill. I look forward to their comments here on third reading.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Any questions or any comments? Any further debate?
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): My colleagues have, I think, spoken to this bill on an earlier reading so I just simply wanted to make a couple of comments. I profess no expertise except to say that I'm informed by my colleagues that this is good legislation that we support and that its speedy passage is in the public interest.
I guess there are just two points I would make tonight. One has to do with the regulatory environment of the mutual fund industry. I know that in recent times some of my constituents have presented to me some cases that gave me some pause as to just what kind of oversight there was of some of the behaviour in the marketplace. I presume the securities commission is going to, with this improvement and other reinforcement, be able to ensure that consumers out there are -- and my primary concern here for the moment is the mutual fund sector; Mr Speaker, you know it a lot better than I --
Interjection.
Mr Conway: There may be more interesting conversations going on that I should defer to. But the constituents that I have had come to my office were very concerned about some of the activity in the marketplace around mutual funds. I know, in pursuing a couple of those constituent complaints, I didn't feel that there was, quite frankly, the kind of oversight that I would have expected.
I know there is a tradition of "Let the buyer beware," but when mutual funds were performing as well as they were last year, there certainly was a great deal of interest in perhaps some relatively unsophisticated consumers, new consumers of mutual funds, and the cases that I had brought to my attention gave me some pause as to some of what was going on out there in that marketplace.
So I'm hopeful that the securities commission will be emboldened to discharge all aspects of its mandate to ensure that Ontario consumers are, to the best of our ability, protected against practices that we would not condone.
I guess it also gives me tonight an opportunity just to rant a little bit about the press reports in recent days about the joyful activities at Confederation Trust. I see in the Star an ongoing series about just what was going on at yet another Canadian trust company doing business in Ontario. I say it because it's, what, now 20 years. We've had Greymac and we had Seaway, we had Crown and Astra/Re-Mor. I know it's a big world out there and you can't guard against every contingency. But when I read Jonathan Ferguson et al in the Toronto Star, I just thought to myself, some of this conduct just looks outrageous.
A good friend of mine had some involvement with that whole Royal Trust situation of a couple of years ago. I say, perhaps to the delight of my friends on the treasury bench, that, you know, there are responsibilities in the marketplace. We're always getting lectures from the captains of finance. How many times have bank presidents and trust company presidents come to standing committees of this Parliament or to our national friends up in Ottawa and beat their breasts about the need to impose a kind of private sector rigour on the affairs of Parliament? That's always interesting. I've been so advised by a number of these people.
What's always struck me about the rape of Crown Trust or the pillaging of Greymac and Seaway and what I read recently about Confederation Trust, is that you'd say it just seems to be highway robbery in broad daylight. Some of these characters are well-known to be of questionable virtue, and the beat goes on.
I thought today, as I was reading some of this material, what it would be like to be an unemployed or an underemployed Canadian living in Hamilton, Ontario, or the Ottawa Valley and reading that the Royal Bank was about to report $1 billion worth of earnings, and these characters at Confederation Life and Confederation Trust had almost joyously, pig-like, indulged in flagrant conflicts of interest, clearly not in the public interest.
I wonder, will there be an editorial? There might have been, and I'll stand corrected, but I fully expect that the Globe and Mail will soon, in an ex cathedra judgement, denounce the misconduct at Confederation Trust. I expect the Financial Post and people like what's her name, that wonderfully neutral --
Interjection: Diane Francis.
Mr Conway: -- Diane Francis -- I expect that they are going to want to point with great upset to this sort of misconduct. It is, I think, relevant to Bill 190 because there are a lot of people out there who expect that regulators, whether they be provincial or federal, are going to discipline, to the best of their ability, pirates from the kind of misconduct that we've seen too much of, quite frankly, in some elements of the trust sector, for which we have significant regulatory responsibility.
I know there'll be some of my colleagues who will say that I should go home and have a Valium, and I'll do that later, but I don't think we get indignant enough around here about that kind of thing. I remember looking at that Royal Trust business -- when was it, a year ago, two years ago? It's the poor old taxpayer who gets stuck and stuck again for this behaviour.
And it's not just here. The savings and loan scandal in the United States represents one of the most pathetic failures of the US Congress and its regulatory instruments that we've ever seen in the free world, so-called. Generations of American taxpayers are going to be paying billions of dollars' worth of bailout to patch up and repair what was in many cases just an unbelievable rape and pillage of savings and loan, so-called thrift, financial institutions.
We like to believe in this more conservative Canada of ours that that's just the fast and loose American way of doing things, that we are just more small-t tory, particularly when it comes to our money. I remember those days when we were picking through the entrails of Greymac and Seaway and Crown Trust -- in fact, one of the great memories I have of that situation --
Interjection.
Mr Conway: Have you got a problem?
Mr Sutherland: Keep going, Sean.
Mr Conway: Because if you do, I'd like to facilitate in any way.
I remember in the Greymac situation, we had in my town of Pembroke the Province of Ontario Savings Office selling Greymac paper well into the public controversy. I remember it was amazing that government officials at the time didn't think there was really anything they could do. Can you imagine? I remember I had a group of senior citizens coming into me wondering about their situation because they had a GIC from Greymac or Seaway Trust they had bought at the Ontario savings office. You know, Main Street, not wrongly, assumed that if the government of Ontario bank sold it to them, surely the government of Ontario must have been relatively comfortable with it. That was a great revelation to people in the Ministry of Revenue at the time. They had some very interesting arguments about it.
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I remember when poor old Bob Elgie was picking through the entrails of the rape of Crown Trust by some really interesting characters. I mean, you talk about the Pirates of Penzance. I think it was about 40 days. That's what it took to really clean out the great dowager of the Canadian or Ontario trust industry, Crown, and when you went in and looked at it after the fact, it was unbelievable what had happened. That was 10, 12, 15 years ago.
On the weekend I was reading in the Toronto Star what had gone on at Confederation Trust and Confederation Life, and, you know, times are different. The poor old taxpayer's had it to here with people who get paid a big buck to perform an important function, regulate and oversee the behaviour of banks and trust companies, and I do not nor do my constituents expect perfection, and maybe the Toronto Star series on Confederation Trust and Confederation Life is just all a fiction, but I rather believe it isn't. I must say that I, as one member of this Legislature, and a growing number of my constituents are getting fed up with people who are being well paid to perform this kind of regulatory function in a vital and sensitive area, like the securities business and the trust sector, and they are then told that the unbelievable seems to happen.
Again, we've always got to make allowances for those situations that every so often you read about. Good old Harry has been at the bank for 30 years and he's apparently of unimpeachable character. What nobody seems to know is that Harry's had a real gambling habit that nobody knew about and Harry was sort of stealing from the till, and he's found out after hundreds of thousands of dollars have been pilfered. We've all read those stories. They don't happen very often, and they do happen. It's humanity. You've got to make allowances for that kind of human failing.
But what I always marvel at, and it was struck again on the weekend reading about Confederation Trust and Confederation Life, conflict of interest all over the place, people clearly abusing their positions of responsibility and positions of trust. The former federal regulator, Mr Mackenzie I think his name is -- is it Mackenzie? I can't remember. Sounds right. John Palmer's predecessor, at any rate. You now see, after the fact, oh, yes, all kinds of memos to file, trouble, trouble, toil and trouble, more trouble, a pattern of these shady characters up to their standard works. The only people who don't seem to ever hear about this are poor old Joe Q. Public in Owen Sound or in Wiarton or up there in Marmora, and you know, they're not laughing any more, because they are the ones who pay the bills.
I go back to the savings and loan fiasco in the United States. The Bush boys and the Keating five, that gang, some of them are still in elected office, if you can believe it, but it's the poor old taxpayer who is stuck for more and more.
I know you, Mr Speaker, did very well in the financial services industry because you brought not only your industry and your humanity but your unassailable integrity, and there is an expectation that while not everyone is going to reach the Everest of your standard, there is going to be good behaviour and good intent.
I resume my seat by simply saying I'll support Bill 190. I'm told it's a good and proper thing to do, and I'll expect these good men and women at the securities commission, just as I would expect these men and women who are supposed to be regulating the likes of Confederation Trust and Royal Trust, are in fact going to improve upon a not very good record in the face of some very powerful evidence that something wrong was afoot in the state of Denmark and the province of Ontario and that governments, employees' regulators, who do not live up to the standard will perhaps exact -- will; not just perhaps, but will exact -- a higher level of accountability so the public might actually get, once in a while, a sense that heads will roll, and not just uphill.
The Deputy Speaker: Questions or comments? Any further debate?
Mr David Johnson (Don Mills): I don't know Harry who works at the bank so I'll have to defer on that particular analogy, but I do know that the one-day public hearing we had on this particular issue, Bill 190, was most instructive to me. I appreciated it and I was considerably enlightened.
One issue that I think came to the fore concerns the fees charged by the OSC and the regulatory power, or perhaps I should term that the enforcement power, of the OSC. This came forward as a great concern during the course of the day. I just want to speak to that for a little bit, and a couple of other items, and then I think we can dispense with this bill.
The Toronto Stock Exchange, for example, made a deputation and perhaps quoting from the TSE, they indicated that the TSE wanted an opportunity to make one vital point, "the crucial need to increase the resources of the OSC enforcement branch, which is currently seriously understaffed. If the OSC is granted the power to establish rules and standards of conduct, it must have the ability to enforce these rules."
This bill, Bill 190, is granting the Ontario Securities Commission the power to make those rules.
"Currently" -- and now we're getting into the meat of the issue -- "the commission can only deal with its top enforcement priorities -- the most egregious cases. The TSE only has jurisdiction over its members. When other parties are involved in violative conduct, we rely on the OSC to take action. Many investigations conducted by the TSE dealing with significant problems such as insider trading and market manipulation and forwarded to the OSC for action simply cannot be followed up due to lack of investigative and enforcement resources."
What is being said here is that the Ontario Securities Commission does not have the enforcement power today through its funding to follow up on issues such as insider trading and market manipulation. That is a real concern to me, and I hope that's a concern to all the members of this Legislature, and in particular to the government. I think that's an issue that should be addressed.
What's happened is that there was a particular problem brought about by court cases, and the Ontario Securities Commission has found itself powerless to make rules. The government has reacted, after dealing with this problem through a study, the Daniels study, which was instituted in 1993 and is now being implemented through this particular bill, but there are broader issues that the Ontario Securities Commission is facing.
Those broader issues involve the enforcement of issues such as market manipulation and insider trading and other problems within the capital marketplace. Those are obviously very serious problems and should be dealt with. This bill that's before us today does not propose to deal with those broader issues. However, the deputants at the hearing have clearly indicated to us that those issues need to be dealt with and they need to be dealt with quickly to maintain the confidence of the market.
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The representative of the TSE went on to say:
"It is scandalous that Ontario investors are paying a fee of 50 cents per securities transaction, which was supposed to provide revenue to support the OSC in its role of protecting investors" -- and protecting investors is the issue at hand -- "and acting as the policeman of the marketplace, but notwithstanding the need to increase enforcement, to catch violators and prosecute them, the money is not being earmarked for this purpose."
Then the question would be, well, where is the money going? The OSC is charging fees. The OSC, through those fees, is raising some $49 million in this year. Through the fees, the Ontario Securities Commission will raise some $49 million. It has an expenditure budget of some $19 million, and the question is, where does the other $30 million go to? That other $30 million that's raised in fees: Where does that money go to?
Well, the answer is that the money is flowing into the consolidated revenue fund of the province of Ontario. In other words, it is raising funds for the province, the province is spending those funds on any sort of service, I guess, that's delivered by the province of Ontario, whether it's health or welfare or education or whatever, but the money is not all being used for the securities commission to tackle the problems it has.
I don't know if the securities commission would need all the $49 million that is raised, but surely there is a problem when $49 million is being raised and only $19 million is used for enforcement and the rest is going into the general revenues of the province of Ontario.
I might say that that particular problem is not only noted by the Toronto Stock Exchange but that problem is noted by a number of individuals. I received a letter from the former executive director of the Ontario Securities Commission, a Mr Joseph Oliver. He actually wrote to the Financial Post to express his concerns on this issue, and in that letter he indicated, "The Ontario Securities Commission revenues, in the form of fees imposed on participants in the markets, including individual investors" -- and that's a point perhaps to pause at. We're not just talking about companies, we're not just talking about large institutions, we're talking about individual investors as well. We're talking about people who buy mutual funds, people who buy bonds or common stock. Through their transactions, they're contributing fees, and those fees have increased by 133%, from $21 million to $49 million, in the past two years.
When the schedule was introduced, the current schedule introduced in 1993, the objective was to make the commission self-funding. In other words, the commission would pay for the money it needed to finance itself. However, obviously we've gone well beyond that to the position today that the securities commission is subsidizing the province of Ontario, and at the same time it doesn't have enough money to apply the proper enforcement techniques to tackle some of the issues that many people are concerned about.
Mr Oliver goes on to say, "As the government is doubtless aware, there is substantial doubt as to whether this level of profit is within the legal authority of the province, or rather is a form of illegal, indirect taxation."
What he's saying is that the $30 million in surplus is a form of indirect taxation and may in fact be illegal. My suspicion is that if the government doesn't address this issue in the near future -- and I feel fairly confident that this government isn't going to address it because we're probably going to have an election next spring before this issue will get addressed -- the new government next year will have to address this problem or the question of whether this is simply an illegal indirect tax will become a major concern.
This problem has been also noted in the recent copy of -- and I don't suppose members are too interested in it -- the Investment Executive. The editor was kind enough to send me a copy, the editor who was involved or, I guess, was following this particular issue. It's interesting that, just by coincidence, the issue on the front page of the December edition of the Investment Executive is this very same issue. The article starts:
"All across Canada there's increasing concern among investment dealers, lawyers representing issuers, the mutual funds industry and securities regulators that zooming compliance-related fees bear an increasingly remote relationship to the revenues funding securities commissions. The problem is most acute in Ontario where the fees greatly outstrip the expenditures of the Ontario Securities Commission."
Again, the rest of the money goes into the coffers of the province of Ontario to help offset, I guess, the $10-billion deficit that we have this year; it makes a small dint in that $10-billion deficit.
The article goes on to say that the origin of this problem lies in the mid-1980s when actually at that point the Liberal government here in the province of Ontario proposed a sharp hike in the fees to make the Ontario Securities Commission self-financing. At the same time, it promised to make the OSC self-standing -- in other words, that it would balance the revenues against expenditures -- but the understanding was not lived up to by the government and consequently we have the situation that occurs today.
I think that is the one key aspect, in a general sense, that came out of the one-day hearings that were held just this past week on the Ontario Securities Commission, that we frankly need to look at the financial ability of the OSC to regulate, to be able to deal with issues that come up, violations, accusations of insider trading, that sort of thing, because if the enforcement powers of the OSC are not able to address that and confidence is lost in the capital market system of the Toronto Stock Exchange here in Ontario, then this will have a great impact on the economy of Ontario, a great impact in terms of job losses. The capital market is so important to the financial viability of Ontario that this begs for action, and I do hope that the Ministry of Finance staff are listening to the message.
Although I think that was the main issue, I was very impressed with a number of delegations at the hearings. There were primarily two issues in terms of Bill 190 that we needed to deal with and amendments were considered for the two particular issues.
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One issue was put forward by the securities dealers. Securities dealers are traders who deal in penny stocks. I guess their history has been that they have raised a lot of money for what's called junior issues or resource issues, what we think of as the penny stocks. Many of the mining exploration companies have apparently had funds raised through securities dealers. There's been a service provided in that sense, but then the history is a little bit coloured from the point of view that, particularly back decades ago, some of the practices were deemed illegal. They were what I guess would be called boiler-room tactics. Pressure was put on people to invest. Investors perhaps didn't know what they were getting into. There were accusations that people lost money, which I am sure is true, and there was a great hue and cry to clean up the securities dealers industry, which the securities dealers claim has happened over the years.
However, notwithstanding that, just more recently the Ontario Securities Commission implemented policy 110, which in the view of the securities dealers imposed more strenuous guidelines on the securities dealers than it did on the investment dealers, the investment dealers being the larger brokerage houses that deal in the broader market and the larger investments. Consequently, the securities dealers took the securities commission to court on that particular issue and won that case. That case has brought us to where we are today.
The securities dealers have attempted to implement in the legislation what they call the "equal rights amendment," and the equal rights amendment says that whatever policy or rule or regulation is imposed on the securities dealers also has to be imposed on the investment dealers, the dealers in larger transactions, the mutual funds and that sort of thing. All of the legislation has to be equal.
It sounds fair enough, but I was interested, not having great background in this issue, to hear on the other hand the investment dealers and the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Ontario Securities Commission give the opposite point of view, that there should be no amendment to Bill 190 to incorporate that equal rights amendment, that indeed there is a public process, there is an open and transparent public process and the bill itself should not be fettered.
Interjection.
Mr David Johnson: I'm being told by the member for York Mills to cut my deputation, but he can sit down and relax because frankly this issue was put forward. It may be dry, it may be dull, but its very important to the securities dealers, so relax, Mr Member from York Mills.
I do want to put on record that the securities dealers are very concerned about having equal legislation, that they should be dealt with equally. On the other hand, the investment dealers and the securities commission feel that the legislation allows for that to happen through the public process. Through the approval process up to the minister that could happen. In addition, the investment dealers feel that their industry is regulated to a higher standard; it's self-regulated and they have higher standards.
Those were the two points of view and I think both parties put them forward quite well. The only other point of view that I think bears discussing at this point late at night when everybody's anxious to get home is the point of view put forward by Philip Anisman, who is a solicitor very involved with this whole issue. His point of view was that the Ontario Securities Commission achieves too much power through Bill 190 and that indeed there should be a provision for an appeal to a Divisional Court. He requested that we put that amendment forward.
I might say that there was one other deputation, from a Mr Bruner who supported Mr Anisman in that. I guess their concern was that the Ontario Securities Commission could not only make the rules but would enforce the rules and that there should be a separation between an entity that can make rules and enforce rules at the same time. They felt that at the very least, if that couldn't be accomplished -- and that is accomplished in the province of Alberta, I might say, or was at one particular time, although now I understand Alberta's looking at combining the two back into one aspect -- there should be the opportunity to appeal the Ontario Securities Commission rulings to the Divisional Court. However, it was felt that with the transparent process, with the fact that there needs to be efficiency in the Ontario Securities Commission, the system the way it stands made the most sense.
Those were, I think, the main issues that came up. It was very instructive. I must say that all parties put their views forward most eloquently, much more eloquently than I'm able to do here this evening. But Bill 190, in its present form, is the outcome of that debate and the important thing. I don't think Bill 190 is perfect, but we need to go forward with legislation because we need to ensure that there's confidence in the capital market system here in Ontario. Having that confidence in the market system will ensure maximum investment in our economy and that will ensure jobs. That is the best way I can think of to a bright future in the province of Ontario. When all is said and done, I am going to be supporting Bill 190.
The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): I thank the member for Don Mills for his contribution to the debate. Are there questions or comments to the member? Is there any further debate on Bill 190? I'll ask the parliamentary assistant for any final comments.
Mr Sutherland: I just want to take a couple of minutes to respond to some comments that were made. First of all, I thank the member for Renfrew North and the member for Don Mills for participating in this debate and their positive comments towards the piece of legislation.
Let me make just a couple of comments. This piece of legislation, as I think we heard before committee, should be seen as a consumer protection piece of legislation, but it also shouldn't be seen as a complete review and overhaul of the role, the mandate and the principles of the Ontario Securities Commission, because this legislation isn't designed to do that. There are other issues around the securities commission. Some type of further review in the future may want to deal with and examine some of the issues that were raised by some of the people who came before the committee.
The member for Renfrew North talked a lot about Confederation Trust and Confederation Life. I just want to say, of course, that is a federally regulated area. But I think his overall comment was that as much as we hear that there needs to be less regulation so that the private sector can get on with doing its job of making money and therefore creating jobs, once again we've seen that there is a need for regulation because, time and time again, the private sector fails to regulate itself. Therefore, when it doesn't regulate itself in an appropriate way, what happens is that there are many victims out there, there are many people who get taken advantage of, who get hurt. Then they come to government, seeking the government to do something about it after the fact.
That's really the reason. It's not because there are lots of bureaucrats just sitting here in Toronto who've got nothing better to do than, "Gee, I'm going to think up a new regulation today to make life difficult for business." That isn't the way it works. Regulations and legislation come about to respond to situations that have occurred, and I think the member's comments on that are well taken. Let me just say that I have personal experience with some of the problems the failure of Confederation Trust is going to be causing for people in terms of accessing some of their funds.
With respect to the comments from the member for Don Mills, I think those comments I just made about regulation are good for not only the member for Don Mills but his entire caucus, which constantly talks about how we've got to unregulate everything. There's still a strong need to have good legislation and a good regulatory framework and rules.
With respect to his comments about enforcement by the Ontario Securities Commission in the collection of fees, it's my understanding that the securities commission worked out a deal with some of the folks with regard to the collection of fees and fee increases, worked out a five-year deal. The fee increases would come at the beginning, and yes, the money does go to the consolidated revenue fund, but in terms of service and enforcement, those types of things would improve over the five-year period of the deal. I believe we are probably ending the second year of that five-year deal. So that provides a little bit of history on that.
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Again I want thank everyone for their participation, and I want to make special note of Mr Philip Anisman, who made a presentation on some changes. I've not sat on as many committees as others, but for an individual to come in and provide as detailed an analysis of the pros and cons of a bill as this individual did, I've never seen anyone do that. I've seen organizations do it, but I've never seen an individual do it, and it was very impressive. I want to compliment Mr Anisman, who is very clearly a very articulate and very knowledgeable person on the whole issue of the securities legislation, and he needs to be congratulated.
But overall I think the key point here is this: that this legislation will allow the OSC to continue with its authority to make regulations and rules to protect the consumers out there and ensure that there is order to our securities market. That not only protects individual consumers but also continues to make our markets an attractive place for people to invest and put their funds, and that is very important for the long-term economic health of not only this province but, I would suggest, given the size of the Toronto Stock Exchange, the entire country. I appreciate the members who spoke, their support for the piece of legislation.
The Acting Speaker: Mr Sutherland, on behalf of Minister Laughren, has moved third reading of Bill 190, An Act to amend the Securities Act.
Is it the pleasure of this House that the motion carry? Carried.
Resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.
ASSESSMENT AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR L'ÉVALUATION FONCIÈRE
Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 197, An Act to amend the Assessment Act / Projet de loi 197, Loi modifiant la Loi sur l'évaluation foncière.
The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): We are resuming the adjourned debate, and I believe at the time we adjourned the member for York Mills had the floor. Please continue.
Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): Is my mike on? Okay, here we are; we have power. I'm somewhat amused inasmuch as I was up for two minutes of debate on this subject last Thursday night, immediately before the midnight adjournment, and so I had to adjourn the debate, and then last night we only got around to continuing this debate with five minutes left on the clock, at five minutes to 12, and so I was absolutely astounded when somebody phoned up today and said, "What on earth are you doing holding up this bill?" Well, I've had seven minutes of debate. I think the whole reason for having this House is to get things on the record. So I will attempt very briefly just to summarize what I said before and then just add a little more.
The compromise that has been reached by the large and the small tenants of some 22 shopping malls in Metro is a compromise which is something between breaking down the assessment in those malls based on a square footage basis and on the market value basis. So it does demonstrate that indeed some sort of compromise along those lines can be achieved.
The fact that the compromise contemplates using square footage runs in the face of what, frankly, we have been told by many, many people in the past, "Oh, you can't use square footage as the basis for assessment." I would put it to you that perhaps it is a better way of assessing buildings, because it is constant. The only reason that you have to change assessment is if the building is increased in size, and so it is a much less costly way in which you assess, because the present market value approach -- and indeed we are theoretically on market value at this time, even though we're on a 1940s market value, which is very flawed -- the present system is incredibly labour-intensive. Because of that, I would suggest that is probably the reason the civil servants in the Ministry of Revenue are so attached to market value as a method of assessment, because indeed it ensures their jobs for a very long time, as long as we're on that system, because indeed you need to constantly reassess what the market value of buildings is.
I'm reminded of the fact that during the time the Liberals were in power a lot of smaller communities around the province went on to a new assessment on market value. In fact, many disruptions occurred because of this. In the Muskokas, indeed, the Liberal government at the time passed a bill which mandated that Muskoka must do a reassessment after four years, which moved a substantial amount of the tax base from the existing dwellings to some of the cottage dwellings, which in fact were already paying more than half of the taxes, and they ended up paying a lot more.
That kind of volatility existed in Metro with the 1988 assessment, whereby if we had gone forward with the 1988 assessment, we would have seen enormous changes in some areas of the city. Those areas of the city that went up the most in that time frame in fact came down proportionately greater than the other areas that hadn't seen such great increases. There is the rub: It's too volatile. We find that we destabilize neighbourhoods, because as taxes go up, you will force people away from those properties.
This is what we saw as the danger that existed with shopping centres: that because taxes were going to rise so astronomically because it was going to be based -- because of the court decision that I mentioned in the previous day's debate, we were going to see a huge amount of assessment going on to the small tenants, based upon the so-called market value of those rents.
Presumably, they were capitalizing the value of the rent as if notionally you could separate out the various components of that shopping plaza and sell off individual units, and that indeed would be the market value, by capitalizing the rent stream from the small tenants, which, on a square footage basis, was substantially higher than the large anchor tenants, which had the benefit extended to them by the landlord of lower rents as an inducement to get those anchor tenants there.
I argued the other night that we should not have a tax system that further seeks to compound that benefit and should be completely neutral to what the landlord is doing with such inducements. So, having established that you can in fact base the assessment or the apportionment of taxes to some extent on square footage, I would urge the government to do the right thing and look at the possibility of implementing a unit assessment scheme which would be completely stable and would be in fact, in administrative terms, a very inexpensive vehicle with which to administer the property taxes of this province and would not lead to the kinds of movements that we have seen of commercial tenants out of Metro to such places as Vaughan, which is very detrimental to the economic activities of Metro.
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I just wanted to get these few thoughts on the record. The government campaigned in the last election with a promise that it was going to start funding 60% of education through the province. They have failed to live up to that promise. Indeed, I think it can reasonably be said that they hit rather bad waters which were not all of their making and they inherited a mess from the Liberals. But nevertheless we still have this problem that we have not come to grips with, and that is that the property tax system existent throughout Ontario is out of date. It is very volatile and causes huge disruptions in business activities when you have these kinds of changes that were envisaged by the court decision.
We've proven with this compromise which was reached between the landlords and the tenants, the small tenants and the large tenants, that we can have some sort of compromise. Isn't it time that we move forward and try and extend that kind of spirit of compromise to all of the property tax system so that we can introduce a streamlined property tax system which will be less volatile and will indeed help the economic growth of this province rather than hindering it?
The Acting Speaker: Are there questions or comments to the member for York Mills? Seeing none, we're looking for further debate on this bill.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I wanted to comment that while this bill does deal with Metropolitan Toronto, it doesn't deal with other parts of the province. Many of us have received letters from people in the various malls in our parts of the province who are concerned about the fact that they believe they are significantly overtaxed and that they will have a hard time continuing to be in operation in a successful way if they are adversely affected by future changes in tax policy.
The Pen Centre in St Catharines -- that's spelled P-E-N, for Hansard purposes -- is a place where people have written to me, smaller businesses, and said that they are having a potentially difficult time, that they wanted to see some changes in either regulation or legislation which would assist them in remaining viable as businesses. They've come through a very difficult recession, the worst recession we've faced since the Depression of the 1930s. Some of them did not survive. Many of them have survived, and they've done so, to their credit, through using their own genius and cutting some corners and doing some things that are rather innovative.
As you would know, Madam Speaker, being from Niagara Falls, there are people in Niagara Falls, no doubt, who are feeling the same concerns in the malls there. The shopping malls have their anchors, the Bay and Sears and Eaton's and the major stores like that, and they are surviving, albeit they have also faced some difficult restructuring as well. But some of the smaller shops look at the horror of some potential changes in assessment and say that they would not be able to survive.
I would hope that the government -- I would have hoped, putting it in the past tense -- would have initiated legislation to deal with those problems as well and not simply the problems of Metropolitan Toronto, which certainly are acute. The member for Oriole, as the Liberal spokesperson in that particular field, has raised on a number of occasions the concerns of those people. Indeed, she introduced a private member's bill which would deal with this -- the government subsequently introduced a bill -- because she was eager to see the government move quickly.
We have had some discussions taking place, somewhat of a consensus reached within the community that is involved in businesses in shopping malls in the province, particularly Metropolitan Toronto, and as a result we have this bill which, while not acceptable to everyone, is probably the best compromise that we can come up with at this point in time.
It really gets to the question and the issue of assessment, municipal property assessment in particular. Increasingly, there is a resistance in our communities to increases in property assessment. What many communities are finding, and this is something that isn't widely known, is that a large number of businesses and individuals have simply been unable or unwilling to pay municipal property taxes. That has had a significant impact economically on various municipalities in this province, the city of St Catharines, the region of Niagara among those. In addition to that, there have been people who own businesses particularly who have appealed their assessment and in some cases have been quite successful in that appeal, and as a result again the municipality is left without the revenues it needs.
I notice that the Treasurer, now called the Minister of Finance, made an announcement this week on transfers, the reaction to which I found to be rather interesting, to say the least. I can recall when, being in government, if you gave anything less than 5% to the hospitals, the boards of education, the municipalities and various other transfer agencies, you were as a government being stingy, and there was often a hue and cry from these organizations which represented groups of municipalities, groups of boards of education, groups of hospitals, groups of other transfer agencies. As I say, 5% would be considered to be miserly. They were looking for 8%, 10%, 12%, and the members who now sit on the government side would rise dutifully to bring forward to the House the cause of those organizations and the government would have to recoil at the criticism that was directed at it.
Now, the Treasurer announced that they're getting nothing more this year, and I think I heard on the news the head of AMO saying he was relieved that he was getting nothing from the government, that there wasn't going to be a further cut. Of course, the Treasurer looked further. He wanted to find an enemy in Ottawa, and I have the photographs. It's really unfortunate that I have the photographs that were taken in China.
The Power Workers' Union wrote a letter to Audrey McLaughlin, and I think they were concerned about assessment as well. They said, "We are outraged at the attack you levelled at Canada's Candu program during your speech at the ONDP convention." I'm sure they were as concerned that John Murphy -- by the way, I admire his public relations firm. He has excellent commercials. The political parties should look at those.
The Acting Speaker: We are getting back to this bill?
Mr Bradley: He has become a folk hero and I certainly admired him when he came before the committee. Perhaps you sat on the committee, Madam Chair, at that time. This particular committee was government agencies. I said to him at the time he came before the committee, and I wanted to ask him questions about assessment: "Mr Murphy, do you think that by appointing you to the Hydro board, this government is trying to buy your silence?" He said, of course, that was impossible to do, and I believed him. Subsequently, we have seen that he has certainly not been silent at the words of Audrey McLaughlin, the federal NDP leader. But I don't want to diverge from my discussion of this bill, because I know how important you think it is.
I have a photograph here. It has a smiling Bob Rae. I don't like using the words, because we're supposed to say "the Premier, the member for York South," but he's known popularly across Ontario -- that is, widely across Ontario -- as the Premier of this province. He is shaking hands with the Prime Minister. So I wonder, when I hear the Treasurer say, "Well, of course, everything that happens will depend on what the federal government does." I see a scenario coming. Perhaps you do as well. And that is the scenario that: "We will wait for the federal budget and then, instead of running on our record," that is, the NDP government, "we will run against the federal budget, or run against Jacques Parizeau, or run against the Americans or somebody, whoever's the enemy of the day, but we won't talk about assessment reform. We won't run on that issue of assessment reform."
If they did, they would know that they would want to do it in Hamilton. The member for Hamilton Mountain is sitting across from me. He has to be concerned about the merchants in the malls, in Eastgate mall and the new one, Maple Leaf mall, I think it is, in Burlington, in his general area. He has to be concerned. Niagara Square, Madam Chair: You would be concerned about that and the assessments in those areas.
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So while the consensus developed by this bill will assist those in Metropolitan Toronto, it will not assist those who reside outside of Toronto. I know the member for Welland-Thorold, at his folksy best, rails on against the Toronto-oriented government of which he is a part. I heard him refer to -- I don't know what this means -- pinheads or something in the Premier's office. I don't know what that would be. I know some of the people are fine people. They're former colleagues of mine in the House. But I remember he used that terminology of "pinheads." As I said, I don't know what that means. But his concern would likely be as well that in Welland at the Seaway mall they are not addressing the problems of assessment faced by small businesses in the Seaway mall through this particular bill which is before the House tonight.
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): Which mall did you buy that new jacket at?
Mr Bradley: I was asked where I purchased this --
Mr Conway: No, no, the blue one. Or were you given it? That would be even better.
Mr Bradley: I will give a plug to Harold Nash of Jack Nash in St Catharines where I purchased that. But he is in a plaza; it may be somewhat different. The malls are really the ones facing the problems.
The Speaker's husband was a distinguished member of the regional council up to this year, a person I admired on regional council, many of the stands he took on regional council. He's in business now. I wish him well. I could give him a plug for his business. It's called Play It Again Sports, on Ontario Street in St Catharines, and I know that Dick Harrington will appreciate that plug this evening. But I know if he were at a mall, he would feel that he was being assessed inappropriately and would be looking for some action in that regard.
But municipalities are facing a tough time, and I must say, with admiration, to the members who sit opposite: All the years I listened to whining, all the years I listened to criticism -- the member for Don Mills, who was the mayor of East York at the time, I'm sure never felt the government was providing sufficient funds to assist his municipality, though I must say to his credit that I found him a good person to deal with as a municipal mayor. I must say that to --
Mr Conway: But you liked Hazel more. You and Hazel made a wonderful team.
Mr Bradley: Yes, well -- but I must say he was not overly demanding. He was a reasonable person to deal with. But I'm sure he felt that the government of the day, because of the assessment problems he was facing, was not providing sufficient funds for his particular constituency, in that case the constituency being all of East York, of which he was the mayor.
That's my problem. I had a friend of mine, Dr Joseph Kushner, economist at Brock University, say to me one day: "The problem with you people is you believe that if you give them lots of money, they will love you, and they don't. They don't support you. They don't feel that you've done the right thing by giving them a lot of money, and you know if you give them nothing, they will appreciate it more." I think Dr Kushner was correct. Now, I know he will write to me if I am incorrect in quoting him, but he would probably say that is the case.
He is on St Catharines city council, so he sees that from the perspective of an alderman, as they still call them on St Catharines city council, and he sees it as a professor in the university. He's watched the transfers over the years and no one was ever satisfied.
The Acting Speaker: Would you relate this back to our bill tonight?
Mr Bradley: Well, that precisely deals with the bill, and the reason it does is because all of this is based on assessment. I believe there has to be an updating and improvement in assessment. The one thing people will tell you about municipal taxes is this. I used to make the argument in favour of putting more and more on progressive taxes. One tax lawyer once told me the one thing about municipal taxes is they're hard to evade. The rich people, the rich and privileged people who will be supportive of the -- what do you call that revolution?
Mr Conway: The Common Sense Revolution.
Mr Bradley: The Common Sense Revolution. They would be the people who would know how to manoeuvre around the other taxes, but it's pretty hard to manoeuvre around municipal property taxes except by simply not paying them, and I know the people I represent would dutifully pay those if they had the wherewithal financially to do so.
So I say to you this evening that we will support this legislation, and I only implore the government House leader, who is a man of considerable influence on the other side of the House, that he persuade his Treasurer, now the Minister of Finance, as he is called, to implement legislation of this kind outside of Metropolitan Toronto, and certainly we would welcome it, this specific kind of legislation, for stores within malls in the Niagara Peninsula.
The Acting Speaker: Are there questions or comments to the member for St Catharines? Any further debate?
We will call upon the parliamentary assistant for any final comments.
Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): I want to thank the member for York Mills and the member for St Catharines for participating in this debate. Also I know the member for St Catharines was doing a very good job this evening at the press gallery function supporting the local charity. They raised $2,700 for the United Way this evening at the press gallery auction, and I want to congratulate them. I think the member for St Catharines probably made the most significant contribution of any member, and he's to be congratulated for that.
Let me just thank the members for their participation and particularly the member for St Catharines, who seems to have a great knack of always tying in whatever the issue is, or attempting to tie in whatever the issue is, to points of concern in his riding or whatever. I was pleased to note he didn't ask for anything for any of his hospitals this evening. That must have been an oversight. At any rate, we appreciate his participation on the issues of assessment and his concerns in his area, and the member from York Mills.
To summarize again, this bill is something that has come about out of concerns that are due to specific situations here in the city of Toronto because a market value assessment has not been done in a long, long time. Certain factors came together where changes were being carried out in the assessment between large anchors and small anchors, and as a result of that, that was going to create a big burden for small anchors, some of whom were going to see up to 800% increases in their tax assessment.
The Ministry of Finance and its revenue people got involved and helped to facilitate a deal. This legislation is securing that deal, and I think most people think that's a good thing as a way of helping the small business and a good compromise in the short term, and some issues will have to be dealt with in the long term.
The Acting Speaker: Mr Sutherland, on behalf of Minister Laughren, has moved second reading of Bill 197, An Act to amend the Assessment Act. Is it the pleasure of this House that the motion carry? Carried.
Shall the bill be ordered for third reading? Agreed.
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet and Government House Leader): The business which we had agreed to pursue today has now been completed, and after reading the business for tomorrow I will move the adjournment of the House.
Pursuant to standing order 55, I wish to indicate the business of the House for Wednesday, December 7.
On Wednesday, December 7, we will give second and third reading consideration to certain bills, which will be listed in the business paper for tomorrow.
Following that, we will give committee of the whole consideration to Bill 174, the Endangered, Threatened and Vulnerable Species Act; Bill 152, the Loan Brokers Act; and Bill 183, An Act to amend the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto Act. We will also give second reading consideration to Bill 179, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act, and Bill 192, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act respecting Firefighters.
Following that, we will give third reading consideration to Bill 197, An Act to amend the Assessment Act. We will then give second and third reading consideration to the Supply Act.
Business for the remainder of the week is under discussion between the three parties in the House and will be announced each evening for the following day.
I move the adjournment of the House.
The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): Mr Charlton has moved adjournment of the House. Is it the pleasure of the House that this motion carry? Carried.
This House stands adjourned until 1:30 pm tomorrow.
The House adjourned at 2201.