Journal des débats 1994-déc-08 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Bill 209, An Act to revise the Members' Conflict of Interest Act and to make related amendments to the Legislative Assembly Act / Projet de loi 209, Loi révisant la Loi sur les conflits d'intérêts des membres de l'Assemblée et apportant des modifications connexes à la Loi sur l'Assemblée législative.

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet and Government House Leader): I made some comments when I introduced the bill, so I won't take a lot of time now other than to say some thank-yous, specifically to Judge Evans, who led a project to develop this legislation. It involved all three caucuses, and some of my colleagues across the way will be making further comments, but we wish to express our very sincere thanks to Judge Evans for not only all of the assistance he has provided over the last number of years to very many members of this place in terms of concerns they've come to him with, but in helping us to put this piece of legislation together, which hopefully will help make the process of dealing with our relationship with the Legislature and the outside world a little more orderly in the future in terms of those things that sometimes become problems.

With that, I'll take my place and hear from some of those who actually worked on the project.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Questions or comments? Further debate? The member for Renfrew North.

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I want to join the government House leader, and I hope and believe all members, in supporting this very important legislation governing the whole question of conflict of interest and ethics for members of the assembly.

I say to my peripatetic friend from Lake Nipigon, I'm quite aware that His Honour Judge Evans is in the gallery and I want to turn my attention to him shortly.

Hon Gilles Pouliot (Minister of Northern Development and Mines and Minister Responsible for Francophone Affairs): Turn left --

Mr Conway: Pardon me? Well, you know, Ponce de León went in search of the fountain of youth. Some people who might seek out perpetual motion might end their journey at the desk of the member for Lake Nipigon, because in parliamentary terms he is nothing if not active. He scarcely passes a quiet or stationary moment, and I congratulate him for that energy and that enthusiasm.

But I do want to take a moment to speak to the whole question of conflict of interest and I want to join the government House leader in thanking the members of the assembly who worked on this project under the very capable leadership of our commissioner, Judge Evans.

I think it is a very significant bill that we address today and it also speaks to very real progress that we can report on all sides.

Hon Mr Pouliot: You are too kind.

Mr Conway: I say that, and the member for Lake Nipigon says perhaps I'm too kind. No one has been more judgemental on these matters than I have over the years, so I have to be careful lest someone point out some of my past on these matters. I can think of the days when we fully expected the government would never change and I would stand over here excoriating those terrible Tories, save and except the member for Carleton, who was in reality what he appeared to be: virtue incarnate.

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): Thank God I wasn't here.

Mr Conway: The member for Willowdale says thank God he wasn't here, and the member for Willowdale, like my colleague the member for Mississauga West, together with the government House leader, has worked very hard with staff members to bring about this particular enactment that we will effect today.

Again, I think it is really important, because I understand that Judge Evans, should this bill pass, has the hope and expectation of doing some public education in perhaps the intervening months between now and when Her Majesty's writ of election is offered by the first minister. I think that's also very important. I don't know whether that's true, but I heard someplace in the last few days that that was the commissioner's hope, and I totally support him in that.

You know, we have gone in this last decade from being a province which was, I like to say in some of the classes I do, the Albania of the free world, where every election was one greeted by: "Well, the Tories will win, and the real issue of the election is, who'll be in second place? Will it be the Liberals? Will it be the New Democrats?"

Mr Norman W. Sterling (Carleton): That's the way it is this time.

Mr Conway: The member from Manotick says, "That's the way it will be this time." Well, I think it is a very brave, perhaps unwise person, who would make that declaration. I know I don't intend to. But we did have a situation where in this provincial political culture, only one party had been in government for over four decades.

In that wonderful book of his, Jeffrey Simpson describes the discipline of power and the converse, the kind of reckless disposition of the opposition, a permanent opposition, which never expects to be in government, has no memory of being in government, so then behaves in a way and offers policy that reflects an opposition mentality.

One of the really useful aspects of the last decade, painful though it has been for I think all of us at times, is that each of the major parties -- the Tories, the New Democrats and the Liberals -- have now all had their day in government. I think that has been a very important, useful and positive aspect of the maturation of the Ontario political culture. We have all made our mistakes, and what I like about this bill today is that it builds on the mistakes we have all made.

I can remember those days in the early 1970s when the dynastic Ontario then Progressive Conservatives were rocked by what we called scandal.

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): Gerhardt Moog.

Mr Conway: My friend Mr Murphy from St George says Gerhardt Moog. I mean, we think of it now as --

Mr Sterling: It's ancient history.

Mr Conway: Well, it is ancient history, but not that ancient.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Who did he play for?

Mr Conway: Not that ancient. Because I like to remind honourable members that in that case we had a Premier -- who's a fine fellow. In spite of some of what I might have said in the exuberance of my adolescence --

Mr Harnick: You can't take it back.

Mr Conway: And I can't take it back. I think Bill Davis was a fundamentally honest and honourable fellow, but he did some things that were --

Mr Bradley: Where's Bill when the Tories need him?

Mr Conway: He's now working for Bob Rae at the Ontario International Corp.

But I want members to reflect for a moment about what we had in the case of the so-called Canada Square-Moog affair of the early 1970s, and we had a select committee of this Legislature to deal with it.

We had the situation where a very generous government contract was let to a company headed by Mr Moog, I think on an untendered basis, but it was certainly on a very favourable basis. It was revealed in both the public press and in this Legislature through a select committee, I think chaired by John MacBeth, that at one point we had the then Premier, Mr Davis, and his friend Gerry Moog travelling around Europe together, and they ended up in a Swiss bank, together in a boardroom, with the Premier, as I think the testimony went, at one end of the table and Mr Moog and the bankers at the other end of the table, and of course ne'er the twain shall meet.

The official testimony of the government of the day was, "Well, there really wasn't any conflict." Well, there may not have been any conflict in the mind of the honourable Premier, but it certainly stretched the imagination of witnesses to imagine that those Swiss bankers didn't draw their own conclusions about the relationship between landlord and tenant, the landlord being Mr Moog, the tenant being Mr Davis in right of Her Majesty's loyal provincial subjects in Ontario. That was just one example from that administration.

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The Liberals were in office for five years. You all know we had our problems, and I'll cite a couple of examples.

Mr Sterling: Why not do more than a couple?

Mr Conway: Because, I tell you, I can lacerate just about anyone in here who wants to try to play the game of one-upmanship in this. So if anybody wants to start it, I guarantee you I will finish it in a way that the progenitor may not like. We are all of us not without sin.

I'll tell you, nothing is more painful than having to sit with friends and colleagues and tell them that it's over because, for whatever reason, they operated outside the rules as they were written and were generally understood. We've all been there, at least I have been there, and it hurts, because you know these people and to the best of your knowledge they're good people with good intent. Yes, there are cases. I'll get to that in a moment, but it was one of the most difficult and painful experiences I had in government to see good people walk out the door in the midst of one of these scandals.

Hon Mr Pouliot: The Ken Keyes story.

Mr Conway: Oh, the Ken Keyes story. In my retirement, I tell you, I will write that story.

Mr Bradley: There's more to it than you will ever know.

Mr Conway: Boy, if what I have been told is true, there is really a story there. My colleague Mr Keyes certainly did some things he ought not to have done, but I'll tell you, like most icebergs, there's a hell of a lot under that water line.

René Fontaine was and is a good friend of mine and certainly his problems are well known. That's why I particularly liked what I heard was the commissioner's intent, which was, during the period of the winter-early spring, to engage in some public education, because in the Fontaine affair, it wasn't all Mr Fontaine's fault. The government of which I was a part was also at fault, because the rules were clearly imprecise at the point when we formed that government in the spring-early summer of 1985.

Hon Mr Pouliot: Where were the lawyers?

Mr Conway: The trouble was, I say to my friend from Lake Nipigon, the lawyers were there and the bureaucrats were there. We were new to government.

I have to say this: It is easy for those of us who are single and impecunious, like moi-même, to skate through this channel. One only has to look at my colleague from St Catharines. You can't support a girth like that on stale bread and water.

Mr Bradley: Madam Speaker, on a point of privilege: My suits all fit, and second, I want to indicate that they're at least in style.

The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): The member for Renfrew North would like to continue.

Mr Conway: A point well made, I say to my friend from St Catharines. But it is easier for some of us to fit into these rules. If you are single, if you have no business interests, if you have no professional association, it is easier.

Mrs Joan M. Fawcett (Northumberland): If you've never had a job.

Mr Conway: My friend Mrs Fawcett says, "If you've never had a job." I fit most or all of those categories and it is easier.

My cousin-in-law Mr Yakabuski was for 20 years the member for the other part of Renfrew county. He was in public life for 25 years at enormous sacrifice to himself, his family and certainly the family business.

René Fontaine fitted into the same category, a very active businessperson in northwestern Ontario. In his case, he had a particular problem because his business involved crown timber licences. There is just no more delicate and sensitive area. In retrospect, I often think the great mistake we made with our friend Fontaine was not to say, "You can't serve in the cabinet, so stay home." I'm not so sure that's not advice I wouldn't give, and under these rules now, it's much more clear.

But people are recruited, and we've all done it. The former member for St Andrew-St Patrick got into that imbroglio over apartment units or whatever. Again, my advice to anybody: If any of you wants to be in politics and in this Legislature and in cabinet, you can't be in the rental business. Just get out of it. You'll never be able to escape the public impression that you're somehow player and umpire in the same game.

But I make this point simply because I remember the Fontaine problem and part of that problem was the imprecision of the rules and a very great confusion on the part of those of us who were in cabinet, the senior political assistants and certainly people in the Department of Justice at the time as to what the rules meant.

We had others. We had my old friend, Joan Smith -- not for the first time. I mean, I can tell you, Madam Speaker --

Mr David Winninger (London South): Nominated again.

Mr Conway: Nominated again, well, of course. Darcy McKeough made a mistake, left the government in 1972 and there was no question, none whatsoever, about the absolute inadvertence of what W.D. McKeough did that day in 1972. I've got to say to the old Duke of Kent, he, in the best traditions of the British Parliament, exited the scene immediately, accepted full responsibility and walked out at a time when his political career was very much in the ascendant. Peter Carrington, Lord Carrington, did that in Britain. There are not too many politicians who've done it, and certainly McKeough, with whom I didn't always agree, did something that was very courageous and gutsy; and, I want to say, so did the Minister of Housing that day a few years ago, Ms Gigantes, when she inadvertently -- we've all had our problems.

I should just take a word to talk a little bit about the NDP, because I think it's fair to say that the New Democrats do come, by and large, from a different tradition than the terrible Grits and the terrible Tories. They imagined that interest and conflict was essentially a matter of pecuniary interest -- money. You know, those Liberals and Tories must be in bed with some developer. Isn't that the way they operate? They must be in bed with some professional association that is somehow going to undermine the public interest. What we have seen, of course, in the last three or four years is that the prophets and the saints in the world of new democracy too have come to government, and gee whiz, they are apparently as human as the rest of us. Their sins are different in some respects.

Hon Mr Pouliot: Ah, no money involved here, never.

Mr Conway: Well, no money involved. It's just been interesting to me, when I have looked at good people in the NDP come to trouble because they too didn't understand what some of the realities were, what some of the language meant and what some of the judgements involved. I guess that's one of the things that I would offer, and it's simply this: No matter how you write the rules, there is absolutely no substitute for experience and judgement.

The thing that has always struck me about conflict of interest -- and again I want to congratulate our current commissioner, people like John Aird. Do we have anybody else? Am I forgetting anybody? John Aird and the current commissioner are the two who come to mind. They have done a wonderful job. They have given the lectures, and some of us also -- and we've all taken the lectures and there's no doubt in my mind that people understood what was being said. They understood it in a kind of theoretical and abstract sense, but some months later, you would find a colleague, a friend, an adversary in another party in trouble and you'd say, "Well, how did that happen?" Often the answer was that people didn't understand, by virtue of their inexperience or their particular world view, that that's what that rule meant.

I remember reading a few years ago in the Wall Street Journal, a major paper done, I think it was by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, about the problems that were afflicting the business community. How come, in the early to mid-1980s, so many American business executives were getting into "ethical problems"? One of the findings of that study -- I remember it well and I thought at the time, "It's a little peculiar," and after a little while in government and some of the problems we've faced, I understood what was being suggested -- as I remember it, was that again, people, in the daily discharge of their responsibilities, didn't recognize the fork in the road. They didn't even realize that there was a choice to be made. Of course, when it was pointed out to them that they had made the wrong choice it was too late.

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That's the point that has to be underscored, that we have very good legislation here that I'm proud to support, that we have all learned a great deal about the practical realities of public life. We have all lacerated each other about our failings, and to a certain extent that's got to continue, because there is a dialectic in the parliamentary system that expects and demands the government to do certain things and the loyal opposition to resist and to point out the failures and foibles such as we see them.

I think we now all much better understand some of the dilemmas, some of the problems, and what I like about this particular bill is that it contemplates, I think in the preamble -- I want to take a moment to read the preamble:

"It is desirable to provide greater certainty in the reconciliation of the private interests and public duties of members of the Legislative Assembly, recognizing the following principles:

"(1) The assembly as a whole can represent the people of Ontario most effectively if its members have experience and knowledge in relation to many aspects of life in Ontario and if they can continue to be active in their own communities, whether in business, in the practice of a profession or otherwise.

"(2) Members' duty to represent their constituents includes broadly representing their constituents' interests in the assembly to the government of Ontario.

"(3) Members are expected to perform their duties of office and to arrange their private affairs in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity of each member, maintains the assembly's dignity and justifies the respect in which society holds the assembly and its members.

"(4) Members are expected to act with integrity and impartiality that will bear the closest scrutiny."

I think that is a very, very good preamble and I want to underscore a couple of its points. It is contemplated that the assembly will represent the community at large, that we do not intend, by statute or regulation, to effectively disqualify people from coming here to represent their communities, whether it's west Toronto, northeastern Ontario or the beloved Ottawa Valley. I have worried in recent years that some of the rules that we have contemplated and that we have offered up effectively disfranchise a whole group of people, a whole class of people.

To give the current government its due, it has brought to this Parliament, to the assembly, some refreshingly new people. I look across and I see the member for Chatham-Kent and, you know, he has been a lively and spirited member of this assembly. There have been some different people in this assembly who I think have in fact enriched the environment.

Hon Mr Pouliot: You mean ordinary people.

Mr Conway: In a sense, yes. Quite frankly, what does "ordinary people" mean? We know, for example --

Mr Bradley: Ed Broadbent used to say "average."

Mr Conway: Yes, but seriously, we've had over the decades, and I think the sociologists would prove this point, by and large, parliamentary cultures that have been essentially given over to white-collar male professionals and farmers and business people. That's changing. We have more women, we have more people from other groups in the community, and that I think is a good and important thing.

As well, attitudes have changed. When I was first elected here, I think of it now, it was surprising how many people -- and I'm glad to have the inspector general of public finances now join us because he will remember perhaps even better than I -- when I was first elected in 1975, the mid-1970s, it was surprising the number of honourable private members who would confess to having chatted with the local constabulary on behalf of a constituent, a good person who had just perhaps blown a little more into the breathalyser than the law allowed, but, "You know, Harry was a good fellow and Harry just asked me to do it." Now, you realize I wasn't -- much less of this was ever reported than I sensed was the case just listening to the breakfast chatter downstairs. We had a couple of celebrated cases in the early 1970s that made the point.

We had André Ouellet -- remember him? -- calling the judges about, I forget, some case involving Atlantic Sugar or something, I think it was. Here's a lawyer --

Mr Bradley: What he did was he made disparaging remarks about the judge.

Mr Conway: That's right. He made some -- well, in the presence of Judge Evans. Then we had the Solicitor General of Ontario, a very fine fellow, George Kerr, call a crown attorney, I think, just to find a little something out about -- I think a constituent. George was --

Mr Winninger: Jean Charest.

Mr Conway: I'll come to that. That was --

Interjection: Moving right along.

Mr Conway: I say to honourable members, that was 20 years ago. I think with one notable exception, to which some reference has just been made, we have now, more or less all of us, understood, "Thou shalt not call the cops irrespective of who it is." Don't call the cops and never talk to the judges, save and except our esteemed commissioner.

Hon Mr Pouliot: That's because he knows us.

Mr Conway: We can all laugh because you think, "Well, we've all learned that message." I have never met a more estimable fellow than Jean Charest, a very bright, good guy. I was stunned a few years ago when -- I think it was 1990 or 1988 -- Jean Charest, lawyer, federal minister, good guy, from Tokyo phones a judge someplace. I said, "God." Now, if Jean Charest hadn't figured it out -- there may be more to this story, and there probably is, but it tells me that we still have to work at public education. Because what are Gordie Mills and I to make? Neither of us is an esteemed member of the Ontario or Quebec bar, but it does move along. We now realize, I think all of us, that you simply can't do some of those things.

The Starr affair, I think, certainly taught the Liberals a few things about what you could and could not do around fund-raising. That experience certainly left a legacy and left a message that I --

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): Cool your beer in your own fridge.

Mr Conway: My friend says, "Beer in your own fridge." That's true. Again, if you want and I'm not going to abuse the time of the House today, but that happened. It was unfortunate and it was regrettable. I never thought I'd live to see the day that somebody at the rank of deputy minister in the Office of the Premier would do what John Piper was reported to have done. I'm sure the current Premier was not very happy. And it happens, and you say to yourself, "How does it happen?"

That's the kind of body of common law that builds up around here that hopefully makes us all the wiser. We have, I think, learned some important lessons. I won't bore my friends with it because I'm always waving a book, but you could do worse over Christmas than to get from the legislative library a wonderful book, a great book, one of the great books on Ontario politics --

Mr Bradley: Rae Days?

Mr Conway: No, no, no. This book was published in 1990 by the University of Toronto Press and it's called the Beauharnois Scandal: A Story of Canadian Entrepreneurship and Politics. It's written by a very fine scholar named T.D. Regehr.

This book details a story of how Canada's most successful Prime Minister, W. Lyon Mackenzie King, together with a couple of very prominent Ontario premiers and including a former -- we had Mackenzie King, we had Howard Ferguson, we had George Henry, two very significant Ontario politicians, and Arthur Meighen. You ought to read this. You ought to read what went on here just 50 years ago. Talk about conflict of interest. By today's standard, it is incredible and unbelievable.

A Premier in the Depression with $50,000 worth of stock in a nearly defunct private power company that was rescued from the brink by the government of which he was the leader and he said, "You know, I didn't even know I had that stock." You can imagine what that message was like in the Depression in this province, and Mackenzie King, he never came closer to being run out of politics than, as he said himself, "My trip through the valley of humiliation that was Beauharnois."

So we've made progress. I think too few people understand just what it was like not too long -- and we continue to make progress. I simply want to say that it is a matter of learning from that experience, building on that.

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I want to take a moment to say that I don't think we have ever been more well and ably served than we have been served by Gregory Evans in these past years as our commissioner of ethics, because I think Judge Evans has brought to this deliberation -- and I know it has not been easy. My goodness, trying to arbitrate among three contending political parties about these questions is the stuff of Solomon and sainthood. Now, I don't want to elevate the commissioner to perhaps the level of sainthood, though his Timmins background might very well justify some of that.

Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance): You can leave me out if you do.

Mr Conway: The Minister of Finance says, "Leave me out if you do." But I know Judge Evans has brought his good sense, his great judgement, his wonderful experience and his humanity to this task, and that's so important, because we are so quick in the business of politics -- of course I as much as anyone -- to find fault and to point the accusative finger without understanding what the experience of government teaches, and that is the nuance of the situation. There is usually, almost always, more to this story than meets the eye.

I think it is fair to say, I say to my friend the Minister of Finance, that if the NDP had it to do all over again, it would substantially amend some of its initial offerings on this subject. In fact, they have done so by bringing forward this conflict-of-interest legislation today, and I think that is very commendable on their part. I know, and I said it a few moments ago, I wish we could redo some of what we did and didn't do in the mid-1980s, because some of my colleagues would not have been scarred to the extent that they were.

I want to congratulate and thank Judge Evans. I encourage him and I encourage all members of this assembly and those in each of the political parties who now seek to go out and recruit new people to consider contesting the upcoming general election, because one place where I think we have a lot more work to do is to do what Judge Evans wants to help us with, which is to educate people who are thinking about running for public office as to what's involved, what the rules are and what the application of those rules will be, not just to the putative member but to his or her spouse and family.

Who'll ever forget Jane Crosbie a few years ago saying defiantly, "Well, my husband is in politics, and I don't intend nor do I feel it right that I should be exposed in ways that infringe on my privacy"? I think Jane Crosbie had a point. Now, I'm not at all sure that that's a point you can win with today, but I'll tell you, it is a much easier thing to have that discussion and that debate before the candidate makes a final decision to seek office. Anyone here who has ever been in a cabinet will agree with me that it is a far better thing that you think this through before you accept the summons to join the executive council.

I want to say this, and it's not said often enough. There are some people in all parties who should do what the famous Toronto lawyer Arthur Slaght did 50 years ago. He looked Mackenzie King in the eye and said: "Prime Minister, your offer to join the cabinet of Canada is indeed a flattering and distinguished one. But upon reflection, I, Arthur Slaght, have decided to say no. My reasons are simple. To join the cabinet of Canada would cause me, would force me, to surrender" -- what he described very, very modestly as his bohemian lifestyle. He shocked Mackenzie King in a way that no one ever did before or after. He said thanks but no thanks, and he remained outside the cabinet.

There are some people in all political parties who should follow that advice, because we all have stallions who must ride alone or people who have associations, characteristics, qualities, bank accounts, who knows, that just probably make it wise and useful that they stay outside cabinet.

It's a serious point. Some of you who are again a bit older might remember that situation with Francis Fox, a very bright, capable young member of Parliament, who accepted a summons from the Prime Minister of Canada to be the minister of police for Canada at a time when the RCMP were every day in the news with barn burning and all the rest of it.

It's obvious, from what I know, that the putative Solicitor General, Mr Fox, did not volunteer to the Prime Minister, "There is something in my past that is a skeleton that is going to cause some problems." I don't mean to impugn the integrity of Mr Fox. I think he's a wonderful fellow. He came back to serve in other capacities, but it is inconceivable to me that somebody with a distinguished legal background would not have volunteered that information to a Prime Minister who was about to appoint him to a truly hot spot in the then government of Canada.

I think it is the experience of most first ministers, quite frankly -- I don't know what others' experience was -- that those days when you are preparing the cabinet and you order up the file on James J. Bradley, for the sake of argument, and you get the file and you say to yourself, "Is it possible that any 45-year-old could be this virtuous?" -- and the answer in that case is yes. But there are circumstances where the evidence is either incomplete or some of the background isn't volunteered; in that case there is a responsibility that falls on a member that is significant. If you don't level with the Prime Minister or Premier, there is a problem, not just for you but for the corporate good. But again I think, coming back to the point I was making earlier, experience is a great teacher.

There is, I am sorry to say, no substitute for judgement. When you think about some of the things that have happened -- we get into these debates from time to time and you think, "Surely the rules intend this," or "There should be a rule for this." But you draw back and, upon reflection, say to yourself, "Can you imagine anybody of sound mind actually doing this?" I found myself most of the time sitting there going, "I'd never write a rule for this," because I couldn't imagine that anybody would ever do this or do it in quite this way.

That's why I long ago gave up what I think for a while was an NDP predilection: Just write the rules tighter and tighter and more elaborate. As Chaucer told us in that great tale of the trip to Canterbury, humanity is a multifaceted wonder and it will do things in ways and places and at times that are completely beyond anticipation.

So I simply say to the assembly and to those who want to come here that there is a very significant role for just good sense and judgement. My own experience in these matters is that if your gut tells you that it's not right, don't do it and don't go looking for a rule. Coming back to some of the problems of the recent past, some people have gotten themselves into a great deal of trouble for not very much -- you know, a fridge, a few hundred bucks.

Mr Perruzza: A roof.

Mr Conway: Pardon me? A roof?

The literature is quite rich on this. I always remember that great line from the film A Man for All Seasons.

Mr Bradley: Isn't it nice to be so virtuous over there, though, eh?

Mr Conway: Well, no. I'm trying to be fair in this observation.

Mr Bradley: No, I'm not talking about you. I'm just talking about Mr Virtue in the front row with his interjections.

Mr Conway: Well, I say this from some experience, I want to say to the Finance minister: If I'm around again for another government, there's one thing --

Mr Perruzza: I want to hear the A Man for All Seasons quote.

Mr Conway: Well, let me just tell you. There's that great scene, if you remember, that Thomas More has been perjured by the foppish Sir Richard Rich, who sold his soul for a minor appointment in the King's giving. As the foppish Sir Richard Rich walks off the witness stand and he goes by More, played by the great Paul Scofield, Scofield, in the name of More, says, "To sell your soul and gain the world, perhaps, but to sell your soul for some junior office in Wales?"

I guess the point I make is that people have in fact seen their political careers, and to some extent their reputations as honourable men and women, undercut by some of the most trifling things. I simply say that judgement is very important and I think judgement is a function of experience and education.

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As I take my seat, I simply want to say again that we have a very important bill before the assembly. It's not so much for our benefit today as it will be for the benefit of those who come after the next general election.

I want to congratulate the members who worked long and hard: the government House Leader, Mr Mahoney, Mr Harnick, and perhaps most of all Judge Gregory Evans, who has driven this process relentlessly but constructively and who, upon the passage of this bill, has agreed to move forward with what I think is an equally important aspect of this process, namely, a very good public education of the members of this assembly and any man or woman who will seek to join the place upon the return of the writs next spring or summer.

The Acting Speaker: I thank the member for Renfrew North for his remarks. Questions or comments to the member?

Mr Murphy: I'd like to briefly add my congratulations to his Honour Judge Evans, whom I've known some time and who has known members of my family for some quite longer time than that, exchanging courtroom antics --

Mr Conway: Conflict.

Mr Murphy: The member for Renfrew North says, "Conflict." I just wish I had something to be conflicted about. But I do want to say that I think this is a good bill and one that will advance the interests of an array of involvements by members and participants from all across the spectrum in politics.

I was involved this past summer with a committee in which we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money in a process that I thought could have been handled better and ably under the kinds of provisions this bill holds. I suspect I know what the outcome would be, and this bill provides the opportunity for an advance opinion, for the opportunity to seek from the commissioner, who is an able individual, the kind of judgement that needs to be brought to bear on those situations, who understands the role of politicians and politics to pursue the interests of the constituents and who, at the same time, understands the balance between the Legislature, the executive and the judiciary, those three branches of government and how sometimes they should intertwine and sometimes they should not. I think the provisions of this bill will be a help to whomever forms the government.

I wanted only briefly to pay credit to the individuals involved in drafting it: the members of this House, people like Rick Weiler from our legal brain trust, as well as the commissioner and his able assistant, Lynn Harris, who I think have done an excellent job and brought forward to us in this House a bill that not only will we all support but I think future prospective politicians will thank us for.

Hon Mr Laughren: I want to express my appreciation to the member for Renfrew North for his comments. They were, as always, interesting and thoughtful. Primarily, though, I'm on my feet to express my appreciation for the way in which this bill is going through the assembly -- I think it's an important piece of legislation -- and to express my support and gratitude to Judge -- I don't know why we still call him "judge," but Commissioner Evans. I asked him one time if we were still supposed to call him "judge." He didn't know why people did.

Interjection.

Hon Mr Laughren: There you go.

It's Commissioner Evans. I never thought I'd see the day that I would actually enjoy my annual visits to a Conflict of Interest Commissioner. I'm going to use a phrase he used to me one time to express the view as to why I perhaps enjoy my annual visit to the commissioner: It's largely because he's as delightful as a bag of hammers.

I want to express my appreciation to all members for the way this bill is being expedited and to the commissioner.

Mr Bradley: I would like to commend the member for Renfrew North on his remarks, which I think capture best the need for this legislation.

I am pleased that we have all three parties agreeing to move it through all three readings today. That's a clear indication that there is support among the members, and of course as we go into an election campaign, it will be important for whichever government is elected, whichever party comes to power after the next election, to have such laws in place and to have the commissioner be able to deal with these over the next few months.

I also want to remind the member for Renfrew North of another lesson that came from A Man for All Seasons, and that is a statement that I have tried to remember in public life that goes something like, "When a man makes a decision which is against his conscience for the good of the state, he is not true to himself or to the state." That is probably a good principle to follow when one is in public office, to make that judgement based on whether it is acceptable to one's own conscience and to the dictates of one's own conscience as well.

This is helpful legislation. What I like about it is that it's legislation which comes from all three parties, the support from all three parties, the ideas from all three parties, and no one is particularly laying claim to it as that party's alone. It is something for all members of the Legislature. I certainly appreciate and will support the speedy action on this bill today.

Mr Sterling: I want to use these two minutes, number one, as I think the member for Renfrew North has some considerable experience with regard to a number of breaches of conflict or perceived breaches of conflict which have --

Interjections.

Mr Sterling: Not experience. I'm sorry. I should have said knowledge. At least --

Interjections.

Mr Sterling: Excuse me. I didn't mean it that way, although he was getting serious at one point in his speech where I thought he was going to take out the knives, but at any rate he sheathed.

What I wanted to say was in terms of the people who worked on this bill. I know Judge Evans has been lauded for his efforts, but I wanted to mention that there were three other people, one from each party. Our party's representative was an MPP, whereas the other two parties had other designates. I think it's important that as a representative of our party I thank Charlie Harnick who worked, along with these other two designates, a tremendous number of hours, a tremendous number of meetings.

One of the comforts in passing this in three readings in one day is the fact that I can turn around to Mr Harnick with the knowledge that he and these other two representatives, I believe it was Mr Bennett and Mr Weiler, have gone through this with a comb, and therefore I expect that even though I haven't had the same kind of opportunity I would in a normal legislative process, I don't have to worry about it. I just wanted to congratulate Mr Harnick for all of the hard work he's done on our behalf on this bill.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Renfrew North has two minutes to respond.

Mr Conway: I want to thank all of my colleagues, and I want to associate myself again with the comments of all members and just add a word, that while Mr Mahoney was certainly our representative, Rick Weiler was supporting him, and I think that Eldon Bennett represented the government caucus and the esteemed member for Willowdale, and they did. They did very good work and I want to congratulate them for that.

The member from Manotick is right, I have had some experience and it's been very painful. If you've ever had a friend, a colleague you've had to see walk out the door because of inadvertence or miscalculation or misjudgement, it hurts. I don't care who you are, I don't care what party you belong to, it's not something in which you take a great deal of joy or pride. Sometimes you say to yourself, "God, I hope I wouldn't make that kind of a mistake."

I remember for a time being acting Minister of Government Services. There would be piles of these bloody documents that the minister had to sign, and that was the day I understood Darcy McKeough's problem and how that could happen quite accidentally. So I just simply want to say that I've had some experience; it is never pleasurable. Part of that experience leads me to support this bill because it does help to clarify the rules, provide for good education and leave some room for judgement and flexibility under the wise counsel of someone like our current commissioner, Judge Evans.

I just simply would say in conclusion that, on this subject, it is a useful thing to remember what someone once observed, that all saints have a past and all sinners have a future.

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The Acting Speaker: Further debate.

Mr Harnick: I am very pleased to be able to rise today to speak about a bill that I had a small part in drafting. This bill is very much a bill that belongs to the Honourable Mr Justice Evans, who I will continue to refer to as His Lordship. This is very much his piece of legislation and, as I said, I had a small part in helping to create the new Members' Integrity Act. I did this with the representative of the NDP caucus, Eldon Bennett, and with the representative of the Liberal caucus, Rick Weiler, and I just want to say a word about each of those gentlemen for the record.

It was, for me, an honour to be able to work with two such skilled counsel so truly learned in the law, and it made the sessions that we spent with His Lordship very stimulating, very interesting, very philosophical in many respects, to be able to delve into this and put the pieces of this rather large and, I suppose, complicated puzzle together. I very much enjoyed the opportunity to work with them and, as well, to work with Mr Justice Evans, who was truly a delight.

I can tell you that we used to start these meetings generally at 5 or 6 in the evening and at 11 o'clock we would finally have to ask Justice Evans if we could be excused because we were too tired to carry on. He would look at his watch and say, "It's only 11 o'clock," and there was more work to do. We would have to beg him to let us go because we couldn't think straight, and he was just getting warmed up.

I also want to say a word about his executive assistant, Lynn Harris, who really had to continue to record all of the thoughts that we had as we had them so that we could ultimately put them into some comprehensive form. Her work and her insight and her input, her suggestions, were invaluable.

To Mr Justice Evans, I don't know where he finds the energy, but truly, this is his bill. This bill is really a reflection of the judge and it's a reflection of someone who took an appointment and really looked at what his mandate was and said, "I can do better. I can make this better and I can make it better for every member who sits in the Ontario Legislature now and in the future." He accepted that mandate and very much completed it by the development of the Members' Integrity act.

My colleague from Carleton, who is, to say the least, one of the most inquisitive people that I have ever met, reads this act and with every section that he reads, he asks me a question. Fortunately, I was paying enough attention as we wrote the bill to know that the question was answered two or three sections down the line, so that as he's asked me and interrogated me, in order to win his support for this bill, I've been able to say to him: "We answer that question. We recognize that problem. That problem is dealt with." I think this is very much as a result of the process that we followed and the guidance we received from His Lordship.

This bill reflects his personality, his mandate, his particular nature and exactitude, the fact that this bill is so precise yet it is so benign in terms of the way it will treat members of this Legislature. I hope that everyone who is presently an elected member and anyone in the future who becomes an elected member will read this bill, because, yes, there is a certain element of legalese to it, but the bill flows. The bill answers the questions that we all need answers for so that we don't have to say at the end of the day, "There but for the grace of God go I."

Because what the member for Renfrew North said and the examples that he used were very true. It's part of an opposition member's job to scrutinize the government, and the NDP for many, many years did that very well in the opposition. I know that there is a level of resentment when you're now in government and you're the party and you are the ministers who are being scrutinized, but the fact is, from our point of view, it's not fun to be in the opposition hammering away at people whom you see in the cafeteria at lunchtime, whom you've sat on committees with.

I remember the discomfort that I felt during a time when the former Minister of Northern Development was involved with the particular issue in Sudbury with the doctor and there I was, after days of hammering away in the Legislature and trying to force this to a committee for further scrutiny, standing beside her in the line at the salad bar at lunchtime days before the Christmas break. It's a very, very uncomfortable feeling because, as far as I was concerned, we on this side of the House were doing our job and sometimes your job is unpleasant. The purpose of this bill is to help ministers and members avoid the pitfalls.

I'm glad the member for, if I can find it on the little map, York Centre is in the Legislature, because when I first arrived here, Mr Sorbara and I were on a committee together and almost one of the very first issues that we dealt with in the justice committee was the conflict-of-interest issue and the Premier's guidelines. We know the difficulty that those guidelines have caused a number of people sitting in the government benches and we really started off in that committee, the first committee that I was exposed to, discussing issues pertaining to conflict of interest.

The former Attorney General was also on that committee and he had some very grave concerns about the conflict-of-interest guidelines that the Premier had put before the Legislature and had imposed on his cabinet, because the former Attorney General, in his wisdom, recognized that those kinds of guidelines would be limiting to the kinds of people who would be able to serve in this place.

The proof of what the former Attorney General, Mr Scott, was saying was quite evident as the guidelines wove their way through the cabinet of Bob Rae. The cabinet of Bob Rae was really racked by the results of those conflict-of-interest guidelines because they didn't reflect the real world. They reflected Bob Rae's idea of running a government and a cabinet from the opposition benches.

I'm biased because I was one of the co-authors of this document, but I can tell you that what is in here is better than what was in Bob Rae's guidelines, seven days of the week, quite simply because it's understandable, it's fair and it reflects the real world that we as members of the Legislature and members of the executive council live in. I'm very hopeful that will be, really, the course of history for this particular piece of legislation.

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We wrestled with a lot of very difficult concepts, concepts about whether members could contract with the government, issues dealing with members who had contracts with the government at the time they were elected and entered this place; we wrestled with issues dealing with land holdings and corporate holdings; we wrestled with the ideas of divestiture versus disclosure. I can't tell you the number of hours we wrestled with the idea of disclosure or divestiture of family property because there happened to be a family business closely held. We talked about that hardware store someplace in Ontario that a husband and a wife might own and one of them comes to the Legislature, and the existing rules indicating that the one spouse partner had to divest of his or her interest in the hardware store yet come home to the hardware store every weekend and pretend they had no involvement or knowledge or anything of that regard.

We wrestled with all these issues and we attempted to come up with practical solutions. We attempted to come up with solutions that reflect the real world, and I believe we've done that. We've done that because in many ways and in many situations we have left some of the important decisions to the discretion of the conflict commissioner, now to be known as the integrity commissioner. That, we found, was probably the best way to deal with most of these issues. We have hard and fast rules, we have exceptions to those rules, and we have even further exceptions to those rules, when they fit and when they're practical, that leave certain issues to the discretion of the integrity commissioner.

I remind you of the former leader of the Liberal Party Mr Nixon, who owned a family farm and owned it in partnership with his wife. Eldon Bennett, who was on this committee with me, often told the story of Mr Aird, the then conflict commissioner, telling Mr Bennett that it would be his duty to call up Mr Nixon to tell him he had to put his share of the family farm that he came home to almost every night of the week in a blind trust. Can you imagine anything so absurd?

These are all issues and practical matters that we dealt with. We spoke at length about members such as René Fontaine who had extensive holdings when they came to this place and the necessity of dealing with those holdings in a way that didn't penalize the member but permitted the member to carry on in cabinet and have an opportunity to serve the public of Ontario. We talked about those kinds of issues at great length.

This project took I believe in excess of a year and probably closer to two years. We tried to leave no stone unturned and we tried to deal with all of the practical implications. We tried to deal with, and I don't want to name names, the different people who serve in this Legislature who have very unique backgrounds and very unique situations in which they came here, and you say, boy, they all make a very significant contribution to the life of this province when they sacrifice and leave their holdings and leave their businesses and come here to serve the public, regardless of the side of the Legislature they sit on.

We were very cognizant of that, we were very cognizant of the fact that we did not want to come up with a piece of legislation that would preclude anyone from serving the public.

Quite frankly, and I don't say this in any critical sense, Bob Rae's guidelines failed in that regard. They were, I think, having studied this area somewhat more extensively than I ever dreamed I would, a very dangerous precedent, a dangerous precedent for the future because of the limiting factor they imposed on whether you could ever serve in this place, and dangerous to the people who had to deal with them. Ask some of the cabinet ministers who had certain holdings, who had to divest, who got caught not understanding the rules and the intricacy of those rules.

This bill I believe solves those problems. I believe this is going to serve the public of this province exceedingly well and I think it will serve the members of this Legislature and legislatures in the future exceedingly well.

I really don't want to go through the act in any detail. I suspect my inquisitive colleague from Carleton will do that to some degree, because I've been watching him for the last several hours making notes in the margin and underlining and comparing sections with the existing conflict act to the new integrity act, and I know he'll have some interesting insights. It's interesting, as I said before, that he hasn't been able to stump me yet; he hasn't been unable to find an answer two or three sections later that answers some of his queries. If you can satisfy the intuitiveness of the member for Carleton, you're a long way to satisfying the intuitiveness of the public, I believe, when it comes to these kinds of matters.

I wish to close by thanking my leader for asking me to serve on this committee. I'd like to thank Mr Justice Evans for his guidance, for his leadership, for the hard work he displayed every moment of every day, pushing us along. I'd also like to thank my colleagues on the committee, Eldon Bennett and Rick Weiler, as I said earlier, two very learned members of the legal profession who made this experience, along with Justice Evans and Lynn Harris, an enjoyable, stimulating and, for me, a very productive time in my life. At least when I leave this place, whenever that may be, I can say that --

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): No, leave this speech.

Mr Harnick: My friend from York Centre is asking me to leave this speech, and I'm going to do that very shortly. But when I do leave this place, under whatever circumstances I leave it, at least I can say to my children and maybe my grandchildren someday that I had a small part in drafting what I think is a very important bill for members of the Ontario Legislature today and in the future.

The Acting Speaker: I thank the member for Willowdale for his remarks. Questions or comments to the member?

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): My good friend, who is a lawyer -- in our profession --

Hon Stephen Owens (Minister without Portfolio in Education and Training): I think that's guilt by association, Charlie.

Mr Callahan: Well, I think the highest aim of the legal profession is to have people who are of significant honesty. We attempt to do that.

In a perfect world, the member would know, having commented on it, we wouldn't require these types of rules, but we don't live in a perfect world yet, and obviously they're very necessary.

I would honestly say this to you: If people in this place considered the election to this office as being a sacred trust -- some people will say that's naïve, but many of us, if not all of us, as honourable members actually understand this is a sacred trust -- we would in fact deal with the issues and deal with the way we conduct ourselves, privately and publicly, in a way that would avoid the necessity, perhaps, of extreme measures of dealing with conflict.

Unfortunately, I think the other side of the coin is that the public out there is becoming very cynical about politicians. I think it's very important that these very clear guidelines be in place to allow the public to have not just the perception of justice but the actuality. It becomes very difficult for a person in this Legislative Assembly who happens to be a lawyer as well, because -- I don't want to say it in a high-sounding fashion -- we are committed by our oath of office when we become lawyers to make certain that everything we say, even in politics, is legit.

1820

Mr Sterling: I want to say to Mr Harnick, the member for Willowdale, in congratulating him on his speech, that I hope when he leaves this place it will not be as a result of the conflict commissioner making a ruling under this act which he's had such a big part in drafting. I know that will not happen, because he's so knowledgeable about it.

But I do have a question for him and perhaps a question for the Chairman of Management Board, under whose sponsorship this bill is put forward. It's a section that is already in the Members' Conflict of Interest Act, which we are now living under. That question relates to subsection 34(4). It says, "Despite section 46 of the Legislative Assembly Act, the assembly does not have power to inquire into the contravention, to impose a penalty if the commissioner recommended that none be imposed, or to impose a penalty other than the one recommended."

I objected to this originally, back when this bill was brought forward by the Liberals, because I had never come across an act which prevented the Legislative Assembly from looking into a matter. I'm intrigued by the section. Number one, I don't know whether we can limit ourselves within a statute to say we can never look at something in the future. It seems to me contradictory, and I'm going to ask my friend from Willowdale to get me an answer for it. I don't expect the answer in his two-minute reply, but I would like to know the answer to that because I know he has the eminent wisdom of Judge Evans to advise him.

The Acting Speaker: Are there any further questions or comments to the remarks from the member for Willowdale? Seeing none, the member for Willowdale has two minutes to reply.

Mr Harnick: I will be very brief. We talked about the section that the member for Carleton has referred to for many hours and over a couple of sessions, and I can't answer that question in two minutes. I've always wanted to say that in this place; I thought you had to be a member of the government to get away with that kind of answer, but that's my response. I keep hearing the Speaker say we don't have to make answers, we just have to make responses, and that's mine. But I will get him the answer.

I'm indebted to members taking part in this debate. I think it's an important debate. I appreciate the very kind words of some of the members who have spoken, and I really do believe this bill will be good for the people of Ontario and for everyone who serves in this Legislature in the future. Those are the remarks I have.

Again, my thanks to Justice Evans and to Lynn Harris and to my colleagues Eldon Bennett and Rick Weiler. I'm indebted to everyone here who's committed to giving this bill speedy passage.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate on Bill 209?

Mr Callahan: It's with great pleasure that I rise on this. I have a very short time to express my concerns. I remember in the old days, when we were in government, several of my colleagues were required to undergo what I could only say was the Star Chamber. I think the commissioner would understand what I'm talking about in terms of Star Chamber, and anybody in the legal profession would as well. It was a situation where you were placed in a position where you really couldn't defend yourself.

In fact, I remember telling former Premier Peterson, that if that was the situation I had to place myself in, "Thank you but no thank you for cabinet."

I felt that was a very unfair situation for people whom I respect. I'm an oddball. I like everybody in the House despite the fact we may be of different political persuasions. I don't believe any human being who presents himself for public life should have to experience what went on in this Legislature or in committees prior to any type of conflict legislation. Well, I suppose we had some conflict legislation, but it was not the type that would allow someone to really defend themselves.

I said before in my comments to the member for Willowdale, and I don't say this in any highfalutin way, that elected members who are members of the bar I think really can't just park their oath at the door and get involved in politics on the same floor as everyone else can. I found that very difficult in committees. I found it very difficult in various involvements in this House, because in our profession, as I'm sure in many professions, when you say something in the House, it has to be legit and totally honest.

I'm not suggesting for one minute that other honourable members do not do that, but I feel we can't even play the cut and thrust of politics without looking at that commitment we make and honouring it. Sometimes it's been very difficult, because there are times when you would like to be political to the extent that perhaps you'll deny in a committee or in the House that something happened for political purposes. I don't believe, as a lawyer, that any member of this Legislature who has been called to the bar has a right to do that, and that becomes a real difficulty.

I suppose the one admonition my wife gave me almost 10 years ago, or coming up to 10 years, was, "Bob, you can do anything you want, but don't find yourself on the front page of the Globe and Mail, the Star or the Sun." She never expected me to be on the front page of the Sun, nor on the second page of the Sun for that matter, but I think that's good advice.

I think it's a privilege to serve in this place. It's a privilege to have the trust of the people who have elected you to perform a duty on their behalf since they can't be here. I suppose in a perfect world, if the members of the Legislature were in that position, or members elected to whatever body, municipally, if every board and commission acted that way, we wouldn't need the commissioner, nor would we require conflict-of-interest legislation.

Unfortunately, it's not a perfect world and there are times when the obligations we swear to will be offended against. I would hope in the main, and I suspect in the main, they are obligations that are offended against innocently, without any, "malversation" I think is the word they use in the swearing in of municipal councillors.

I think it's important that the public have the ability to be able to look at their legislators and the people they've given their trust to, the same as in the judicial system. I think the actuality is not as important as the perception. If the perception is in some degree tarnished by someone doing something silly or doing something in a malevolent fashion, then our entire system, parliamentary and justice, suffers.

I think this is an important move. I must say that Rick Weiler, whom I know very well, is a very bright lawyer, a very caring lawyer. Certainly I commend him for the involvement in this. I know what he has done will be something that will prove to be very purposeful, not just for the members of this Legislature but for the citizens at large.

1830

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Questions or comments? Further debate. The honourable member for York Centre. Sorry, the honourable member for Carleton.

Mr Sterling: Sometimes it's hard to see me standing.

Mr Sorbara: Well, stand up now.

Mr Sterling: I want to talk a little bit about this bill because I've had, I'm not going to say experience with it; I'm going to say I've had some experience with the legislation.

I was on the committee that dealt with the first passage of our first act, the Members' Conflict of Interest Act, I believe it was in 1988, brought forward by the last Liberal government, and I also was a member of the then procedural affairs committee of this assembly when the Solicitor General, George Kerr, who was mentioned by the member for Renfrew North, resigned as a matter of principle over a call to an assistant crown attorney. I was involved with the René Fontaine inquiry before a standing committee of this Legislature as well. In the context of the some 17 years which I have spent in this Legislature, I've had two approaches to this.

When I first came here, we were controlled by an old act called the Legislative Assembly Act, and one of the good parts of this integrity act, which was not included in the former act, was the repealing of sections 10 and 11 of the Legislative Assembly Act. I was concerned back in 1988 that we were creating a new law but we weren't doing away with the old law and there could be some conflict between the two.

I'm of two minds on whether we should have legislation on conflict of interest or we should have the public make the decision as to whether or not we have acted in a proper fashion. I guess I would support some disclosure sections, but when you start limiting the activities of members and their close family members, and the disclosure of close family members' assets, you start to restrict the number of people who would come to this Legislature.

I want to point out to members of this Legislature who have not had an opportunity to read this bill, because we are agreeing to have first, second and third reading all in one day -- the bill has not been widely spread among members in this Legislature, so many of the members who will be voting on this bill today will not in fact have read it -- that under section 7, MPPs for the first time are restricted in what they can and cannot do.

In the former conflict-of-interest act, members of the executive council or members of cabinet were restricted in what they could or could not do. Under the Legislative Assembly Act, which is also in place, in sections 10 and 11, which I mentioned before, there is an attempt to restrict members of the Legislative Assembly, but it really is puffery and it's very easy to avoid in terms of the sections as written some long time ago. I don't know when the Legislative Assembly Act originated, but it probably goes back into the 1950s.

For the very first time, I think members should understand -- and I'm not only talking about members of the governing party; I'm talking about members of the opposition party -- who are in some ways deemed to have an influence on government policy or that they can have some kind of influence on what happens with regard to the government. That's a little contrary to the way many members view themselves in opposition because they don't picture themselves in any way, shape or form being part of the government. However, I think that anybody who has sat in this place for a period of time realizes that there is a perception by the public that even though Norm Sterling sits in opposition, somehow he could have some influence with regard to what the government did or did not do.

But for the first time I think it's worthwhile to note that members now cannot contract with the government to provide services. If I owned a construction company or I was part-owner or a minor part-owner, which I am not, but if my family owned a construction company and it was tendering on public projects, for instance, if I was a member of a paving company or my family company was involved in a paving company, I would, according to this legislation, be restricted.

I can go to the commissioner, Mr Evans, and say, "Mr Evans, can the company in which I am part-owner bid on this government contract?" He has the authority to okay that if it's unlikely to affect my performance or my duties in the Legislature. But I think it's important for us all to understand that there are further restrictions on MPPs, and as we further restrict MPPs who sit in this Legislature, we start to take away from them any alternative sources of income.

I don't have any alternative sources of income at this time, but I do know that there are other members of this Legislature who do have alternative sources of income. What we're saying here is that we're excluding some members who might have an alternative source of income which has, on the periphery, some contact with the government from further benefiting from that source of income, whereas other members of the Legislature who for instance are carrying on a law practice and are dealing with the public in general are quite able to carry on that law practice and earn that extra income. So there are some prejudicial sections in here as to what might affect one member vis-à-vis another member.

Having gone through the process prior to 1988 when there were only sections 10 and 11 of the Legislative Assembly Act which really restricted the activities of anybody in this place, along with what they used to call the Premier's guidelines, and I think there still are Premier's guidelines but they've sort of fallen by the wayside now, David Peterson, the Liberal Premier, came out with a new set of guidelines, sort of rejecting what Bill Davis, the former, Conservative Premier had, and there were a whole bunch of problems with those guidelines. We went through five or six ministers who either contravened them or appeared to contravene them. I think that some of the contraventions, in retrospect, were pretty minor when one looks at it.

In 1988, we tried to write a law to deal with what we do as members and how we deal with our private life along with our duties as MPPs. It was a first attempt, but there were many holes in this first attempt. I think that, quite frankly, some of them have been closed by this new act. Under the old act, a cabinet minister could appoint a trustee or could put all his business assets in a trust, and there was no restriction on who the trustee might be. The trustee could be the husband or the brother or a nephew or a close relative or a close friend. Of course, the whole object of a trust is to have the person who is the member of cabinet put those assets in a trust and give them to somebody else who's not going to be influenced by the cabinet minister while he has those powers as the minister. Mr Evans and his committee have addressed that problem.

One of the problems which he has not addressed, as I read the bill -- and it's too bad that we didn't have more time to perhaps go out to committee in order to deal with that, but hopefully I'll have an opportunity to talk to Judge Evans about it because, as I say, this is the first time I've actually seen the legislation -- is that under this legislation, if I own a commercial piece of real estate, I have to tell the commissioner where that piece of real estate is or what it is and identify that asset.

However, as I read this legislation, if I have a corporation which owns 1,000 pieces of commercial real estate, all I have to tell him is that I am a director and a shareholder in that corporation. I do not have to tell him or anybody else that there are 1,000 pieces of commercial real estate or whatever owned by that corporation. I think there's a failure in the disclosure sections with regard to that particular section, and I'd like to be corrected if that's not the case.

1840

One of the good parts of having a well-defined act, as this is -- and as I said, I wasn't sure whether we would be better off having a very generic act and just stating an intention, for instance, that members should not allow their private business to conflict with their duties as MPPs, and that would be the end of the act and you could be dismissed from this Legislature if you contravened that act in the eyes of the commissioner or in the eyes of the committee or whatever you wanted to do in terms of judgement of that part of it.

But we've gone past that. The 1988 act started to define the different things that we had to do. We have to disclose our assets, and over the past seven or eight years we've got a form from the commissioner and we have to list our real estate and our mortgages and our debts and our bank accounts and whatever else we might or might not have. As I mentioned before, there were many deficiencies in that first act. This tightens it down and doesn't leave many questions unanswered as to what I must or must not do as a member. Therefore, in some ways it provides a protection for me as well.

I can't help but reflect back to the time we were talking in 1978 when Mr Kerr was Solicitor General. What happens in this place when a cabinet minister makes a mistake or what is perceived to be a mistake, a contravention of the trust that he has as a cabinet minister, is that immediately the opposition, regardless of which parties sit on the opposition side of the House, jump. They jump and they grab and the contest seems to be whether they can make that particular minister resign.

Over the past number of years, perhaps with the exception of one or two, I have felt that in most cases ministers should not have resigned over what I would call fairly menial contraventions, and I want to say that it appears so different to you when you're on the government side than when you come over to the opposition side.

I know George Kerr, who was one of my team, one of the Conservatives, one morning phoned the Milton courthouse and he said, "I'd like to speak to the assistant crown attorney about XYZ," a person. What happened was that they couldn't find the attorney and it went out over the PA system. It said, "Mr Crown Attorney, George Kerr calling." Of course, someone picked it up in the courthouse and then it got transferred into the public and the public found out about it and George Kerr was into the fire.

The unfortunate part was that the person for whom George Kerr was phoning was a member of a visible minority group who had had psychiatric treatment and George was concerned with the physical safety of this individual. For expressing that concern and phoning -- not phoning a judge, and many people mistook the incident for him phoning a judge, which is in my view very different from phoning for a crown attorney.

There's nothing really to prevent me as a person from going and being a character witness for an accused. There was, I guess, some impropriety because he was Solicitor General, in charge of the police, and it could have been viewed as intimidating this particular crown attorney, but the individual he was going to bat for was really having trouble coping.

I can't forget the procedural affairs committee, when I sat on that committee, and how the knives came out for George when they were dealing with that. It was something that I always remembered as we went through the hearings when I was sitting on the side where people were taking out the knives; I always remembered back when I was sitting on the side where we were trying to protect somebody who was being attacked with the knives.

The problem seems to have become more prevalent as time went on. During the time in my memory, in terms of the William Davis government, there was the McKeough incident as well as George Kerr, I believe, in the five years. That was a span of about 15 years. During the Liberal reign I think there were about seven or eight, and in the early part of this government there were about seven or eight as well.

I think, as we have tried to become more pure and with very ill-defined guidelines, we've left ourselves susceptible to, number one, not knowing what the rules are, where the lines are to be drawn, and number two, giving the press and the opposition the opportunity to attack in a merciless fashion from time to time. Unfortunately, that's part of the game. That's why I think, in terms of bringing forward this act and passing it, it is a step forward and the fact is that we can look forward to fewer incidents as a result of this act.

I want to say to Judge Evans that I hope that as he goes through this act in practice, he will continue to learn. One of the great parts of Judge Evans's experience has been living with an inadequate piece of legislation and experiencing it on a day-to-day basis over the past seven or eight years and being able to draw on that experience and put it together. I know Judge Evans is not planning to retire and I wish him many, many more years as a commissioner, but I am really happy to take advantage of his experience at this time in terms of using that experience and putting it down on paper and amending as many of the problems as he has seen with the guidelines as we go.

The only other thing I would say is that, as many of us from this Legislature reside close to this legislative building and many of us actually reside in the same large apartment complex as Judge Evans does, I know that on the passage of this act, each one of us, as we ride down the elevators and ride up the elevators, will have a much more pleasant Christmas spirit when we share that elevator with the eminent judge who has been asking us from time to time in a most gracious manner to help him along in the passage of this act.

The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I'm pleased to be here this evening and to have two minutes to compliment -- it won't take that long -- my colleague Norm Sterling with regard to the act that he's talking about, the integrity act.

I know there's been a lot of discussion that has gone on with regard to this act and I know that Chief Justice Evans has been very adamant about having this act passed to make his job that much easier. I've talked to Justice Evans on this act some mornings when we had coffee at Connor Tire, that great little familiar place. Bob Nixon used to call it Earl's Shell, but we in Orillia have Connor Tire that we meet at, and the chief justice will drop in there for a coffee the odd time. He thought it would be great if we could pass this act. So I compliment the government for bringing this act forward to make life a little easier for Mr Evans.

I know the title was intended to make sure the commissioner -- and the integrity commissioner means a person appointed as integrity commissioner, and it goes on and on and on with the reference. It means his or her spouse and minor children. I know that when we dealt with Bill 163 and we were dealing with the conflict part of that bill, when I look at the sample copy we got, it didn't seem to be nearly as complicated as the ones we fill out. I'm sure that this will not be either.

The House Leader has seen fit to bring this forward, and I think it's appropriate at this time. I'm sure that all members of this House will have it passed without very much further debate.

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Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): In the four and a half years that I've been elected and my experience with Judge Evans, I've always found that he was an extremely capable and sage adviser on the various questions that come up with respect to the bill which is in place. I know his ambition has been to have a good piece of legislation in place which would be more appropriate to the times that we're in and he has laboured very hard, along with my colleague Charles Harnick, the member for Willowdale, and indeed the representatives of the two other parties.

It's good to have Judge Evans in the House here to see this bill progressing tonight. I trust it will be passed and it will indeed be a lasting monument to Judge Evans, what he has wrought with this bill. I'm pleased to be supporting this.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions or comments? Seeing none, the honourable member for Carleton has two minutes in response. No response. Further debate?

Mr Sorbara: I am not going to take too long, nor do I intend to delay the passage of this bill at all. All of us are intimately familiar with its contents because it regulates, to a very large extent, our conduct here as legislators and the way we conduct ourselves as individual citizens charged with the public trust of representing constituencies and dealing with public administration and making laws and making regulations and all that stuff.

There has been great tribute paid to Judge Evans and the input that he has given to the next stage of the regulation of conflict of interest. I certainly want to add my own compliments to the commissioner, who has put up with all of us and listened to all our concerns about the way in which this bill should be structured.

This bill has a history, and my colleague the member for Renfrew North has gone through some of that history. I guess it was the Liberal government of David Peterson that introduced the first legislated legal standards for the regulation of conflict of interest. This bill represents the next generation of that bill and I think is a significant improvement on the bill that was first passed back in 1986, I think it was.

But I think, as in all things, there is a downside to this legislation. There are some things that should be noted that aren't so good about this bill that we're passing. Let me put that in context. I think it's a good bill and I think we should pass it. I think future members of this Legislature need to know the standards that they must live by if they are so fortunate as to be elected to represent constituents in one riding or another in Ontario.

But in the nine and a half years I have been here, having known probably about 200 fellow legislators through three parliaments, I don't think I have found one member whose integrity I could really question. That is to say that virtually every member of this Legislature that I've known has been a person who is of very high standard who would never knowingly prefer his private interest to his or her public trust and public responsibility.

If anything has disappointed me in the time that I've sat here, it is not that members of any political party have abused their public trust or public responsibility -- not at all. What has disappointed me is that it has become so easy now, in our parliaments, whether here or in Ottawa or elsewhere in Canada or perhaps any Parliament in the western world, to accuse another member of being a person of no integrity, of making accusations about the integrity of another member, of suggesting that another member is contemptuous or has violated the rules.

I remember back in 1985, when I was first elected -- I think it really started in 1986 -- the kind of accusations that used to come across from these opposition members to some of our members, some more prominent than others. I remember being the brunt of some of those accusations and being appalled at what I was being accused of. That carried through the full life of the Peterson era, and then coming into opposition, the facility with which we launched accusations about members of the government. Sometimes we brought ministers down and did it proudly. I just don't think that is a proud part of the history of this Parliament or the last Parliament or frankly of any Parliament.

There need to be standards. There has always been a standard for this Parliament. Years and years ago, it was the ad hoc standard of a Premier. As parliaments became more sophisticated, they became ad hoc guidelines of a Premier, and then guidelines of the Ministry of the Attorney General, and then, as I said, in 1986 a set of legal parameters to guide the conduct, and now a better bill which will better regulate and better set out the standard which all members must adhere to.

But, I ask, as we pass this bill and celebrate this bill, what about the other standard of honouring the integrity of members? I don't think we've done such a good job, and I confess that I have played a significant role in that when it was politically opportune to attack another member and when it was politically advantageous to suggest that a guideline or a conflict-of-interest guideline had been breached.

That, in my view, is the real crisis of the Parliament, because as we, with great facility, attack each other's integrity, the public at large watching the debate loses confidence and questions the integrity, not of the individual being attacked but of all of us who sit in this House or stand for office or sit in a local council or in any way try to discharge the responsibility of governance and public administration.

I don't have any solution for that. Certainly yet another bill will not help. An improvement in this bill won't make a difference, because those are standards of personality and those are standards of respect and those are standards of honesty that we need to somehow reincorporate into the way in which we do the public's business.

I just hope as I leave this Legislature -- and I should tell you, sir, that I personally believe that this is the last day this Parliament will sit and that we will have a campaign probably culminating in an election on April 27, but I might be wrong -- I hope for the next Parliament that they will realize the tremendous sacrifice involved in serving in this Parliament, that sacrifice made even greater as a result of the bill we are now passing, because one has to cut off so completely one's ability to deal with one's other interests.

That is a great sacrifice, and I hope that individuals from all across Ontario will understand those standards and yet be willing to serve, stand for election, be elected and serve in this Parliament. But, secondly, I hope that the next Parliament sees a resurgence in the respect for the real integrity that I believe we all possess and that ought to be respected in our day-to-day proceedings here.

I end by once again congratulating the commissioner, who regrettably had to spend so much time with my own disclosure statement because sometimes it was more extensive than he would have hoped, but he did an admirable job in guiding me and all the members of this House in the tricky world of politics, public trust and private interest. I congratulate him and I think that we are doing a good thing in passing this act for future members, for this commissioner and future commissioners as well.

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The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?

Hon Bob Huget (Minister without Portfolio in Economic Development and Trade): Just very briefly, I appreciate the comments from the member for York Centre, very interesting comments and I think very heartfelt comments as well. I will say from the beginning that my disclosure statement is a lot briefer than the member for York Centre's. That's to his credit, nothing I'm critical of.

I, newly elected to this place in 1990, was affected and impacted by the divesting provisions of the previous act. I know what a problem that can be and what a problem it continues to be for members like myself, who, after being elected, did their utmost to operate their personal matters in an arm's-length relationship and were very vulnerable to the fact that they were not able to manage their own affairs, and their families may not have been either. In my case, that was the case. I was an absentee, arm's-length operator of a small business that, due to my absence, lost money hand over fist. You couldn't watch it leave fast enough.

Mr Bradley: Sounds like the government.

Hon Mr Huget: Some would say we're still in that business, but my own personal circumstances would really point out clearly to me an aspect of something, and I don't know if it's been touched on enough this evening, and that is education, education to people who are considering accepting or running for elected office. We need to know what's expected of us going in before we make that decision to be candidates for this Legislature. I think there's a huge job to do to educate potential candidates and people out there who would want to serve the public in this House or any other elected office.

I also think the public really needs to understand, and I agree with the member for York Centre, the degree of sacrifice that people, from all parties, make to serve in this place. It is a tremendous sacrifice and one that I think the public needs to be educated about, that there are standards for us.

We try to live up to the highest standards and avoid situations where indeed there is personal gain attached to this office. I have not met a member in this place who didn't share that view. So I look forward to this legislation being passed and, more importantly, I look forward to a solid public education effort.

Mr Sterling: I just wanted to compliment the member for York Centre, who has been here I guess since 1985. I want to thank him for his contribution to the Legislature during that period of time if this is in fact the last time we'll have an opportunity to sit here, and some speculate that this is the case.

I think it was in 1989, after four years of badgering, that the then Liberal Labour minister, Greg Sorbara, brought forward a bill in this House dealing with controlling smoking in the workplace and smoking in public places. At that time, Mr Sorbara -- I don't know if he still is addicted to that habit or not; that is, the nicotine habit -- did bring that bill forward. I think that when he looks back, at least I believe, that act did a great deal in changing the social conscience of people who work together in this province. I criticized him very much at the time for the fact that the bill wasn't strong enough.

Notwithstanding the strength or the weakness of the bill, the fact of the matter is that it was a piece of legislation which for the first time in North America was brought forward by either a state or a provincial jurisdiction to deal with that matter. I think if he looks back in time he will think of that as probably one of his greatest accomplishments.

I want to congratulate him and thank him for bringing that forward at that time, because it was an issue of great importance to me. I'm really happy that as a result of what he did, there are many, many young people in this province who have not taken up the habit, and I wish him well in the future.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions or comments? The honourable member for York Centre has two minutes in response.

Mr Sorbara: My friend from Carleton is very kind in his comments. I should tell him it was difficult, not to say in the view of some hypocritical, to bring forth that bill. What I can tell him is, were I today responsible for bringing in its successor, the hypocrisy would be even greater given my predilection for tobacco.

In my response, I want to respond to my friend from Sarnia who referred to the responsibility he had when he was elected to separate himself from his interest, his small business in Sarnia.

The real debate in this integrity act or conflict-of-interest act, one of the real focus points of debate, was whether or not elected members who are called upon to serve in cabinet should have to sell what they have in order to serve. We call it divestiture but it's really simply having to sell what you own in order to take up a position in cabinet. It was a proposal brought forward I think rather naïvely by the Premier in his first few weeks in office.

The good news is that that has not been incorporated into the legislation. In fact, we have designed a piece of legislation in which those who serve in the executive council, in cabinet, can separate themselves from their interest, place it in a trust and be confident that that trust will be managed by others while that individual sits and does the public's business and carries on the responsibility of governing in the cabinet.

Had those early views of the Premier prevailed and we had a divestment provision, it would have been very serious and very wrong. I'm glad that we've reached a consensus that we have a way to manage our interests so that they are set aside, and when we leave this place, because politics should always be temporary, we can take up what we left.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate. Does the government House leader have some wrapup?

Hon Mr Charlton: Just very briefly. I'd like again to say thank you to Judge Evans and to all of the members who spoke here this evening for their support of this legislation. We should just get on with it.

The Acting Speaker: Mr Charlton has moved second reading of Bill 209, the Members' Integrity Act. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Shall the bill be ordered for third reading? Agreed.

Mr Charlton moved third reading of the following bill:

The Acting Speaker: Government House leader?

Hon Mr Charlton: No comments.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): I'd like to say a few words with respect to this particular supply bill.

Hon Mr Charlton: This isn't the supply bill.

Mr Tilson: This isn't the supply bill, Bill 204?

The Acting Speaker: We are on third reading of Bill 209.

Mr Tilson: I apologize.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate, third reading of Bill 209. Government House leader?

Hon Mr Charlton: No comments.

The Acting Speaker: Mr Charlton has moved third reading of Bill 209, the Members' Integrity Act. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Be it resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.

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SUPPLY ACT, 1994 / LOI DE CRÉDITS DE 1994

Mr Sutherland, on behalf of Mr Laughren, moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill 204, An Act to authorize the payment of certain amounts for the Public Service for the fiscal year ending on March 31, 1995 / Projet de loi 204, Loi autorisant le paiement de certaines sommes destinées à la fonction publique pour l'exercice se terminant le 31 mars 1995.

Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): I have a couple of comments. One, to accommodate the request of the member for Sudbury who wanted it noted on the record that Judge Evans is from the north, specifically from Timmins. So we'll have that on the record. We all know our northern members are very proud of anyone who comes out of there.

Interjection.

Mr Sutherland: County of Cochrane, okay.

I think we had extensive debate last night on the Supply Act, so I don't intend to take too much time. I just want to point out again the basic things: that I believe job creation is going well, that we are doing an effective job of maintaining services and that we are attempting to live within our means and reduce the deficit.

I would suggest that if anyone wants a more detailed account of those accomplishments of the government related to this that they review the Hansard from last night with the member for Port Arthur, who I think did a very effective job of outlining some of the many successful accomplishments of the government, how it has dealt with the very difficult challenges we've had to face in terms of declining revenues for three years in a row and a very difficult recession since the 1930s, and what we've been able to do in dealing with those issues of job creation, maintaining services, expanding services, particularly the expansion of services and job creation in the riding of Port Arthur and in other places. So I would ask people to review that Hansard to get some more details.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Questions or comments? Further debate.

Interjection.

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): Here I am to speak on Bill 204 on supply. It comes at a rather interesting time. It comes on the last day of the sitting of this House. I understand that we are proroguing, the House will prorogue, and I presume that the next time we sit, if we should sit, the government will then present a budget before the House, a throne speech and the works that tell us what direction it is going. But today, in speaking on supply, the government is now saying, "We need all this money to do all of our programs, to pay our staff," and to do the things that they should do right.

Of course, we have seen four and a half years of some very interesting times economically. We have seen that the economy has taken a downward dive in the sense that the people of Ontario have had to tighten their belts, and sometimes, of course, the government itself has tightened it for them and maybe made it worse for them to exist.

But I'd like to just focus a bit on some of the things that happened over the time, like Jobs Ontario, programs that were put in place that this government has touted so well, that this Jobs Ontario will really bring about a resurgence of energy and a resurgence of putting people back to work, bringing confidence into the system.

Each day, as the minister stands in here and says how well it's working, I'm hearing differently outside. I'm hearing that the government is throwing money at something that has not been effective. I'm hearing employers who are taking the opportunity of Jobs Ontario saying it's not working. I'm hearing employers who are stating that they have made commitments to Jobs Ontario, that they have now looked around and the government has said to them it will not fund them because the paperwork was not completed properly, even though they had commitments by this government.

In other words, they are saying Jobs Ontario, in theory, looks good; in practical form it's not working and has frustrated business people outside.

I've heard an extreme comment, that Jobs Ontario has now become Jokes Ontario, that they have been out of funds because they made a commitment to take on this government program that it put forward and it's just not working. So some of the programs that this government is throwing money at have not really in any sense brought about any confidence in the people to say that it's working.

The beautiful thing about democracy, or this process of parliamentary democracy, is that it does allow for four to five years and that the people again will look at the record of any government and decide whether or not they would like to give them another mandate to continue the things that they are doing. If the performance of Jobs Ontario isn't reached which they will judge this government by, I would say that the people are telling me they will not return a government which will continue programs like Jobs Ontario.

I've also heard from many people within the public sector, and let me start in the public sector in a sense that when I heard the minister this morning speaking on Human Rights Day, talking about the proud performance of the employment equity legislation they brought in -- it's not working. It is not working in the public sector, for instance.

There are ministries -- and I will name a ministry: for instance, the Ministry of Transportation. The morale in that ministry is so poor that there are concerns whether or not employment equity has brought about confusion and frustration within that ministry, because the process that's been put in place is just not working. Individuals are promoted with competence that they feel is questionable. Those who should be given the jobs are seeing that favouritism is used in transferring one bureaucrat over to another place in order to bump the others from getting a job. People are paid off in early retirement.

These are the kinds of things I am hearing, that the program of employment equity within the public service is not working. It's unfortunate that --

Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): Is that the reason you didn't vote for it.

Mr Curling: The member on the government side stated that's the reason I did not vote for it. So right, she is. I have seen this was coming, that the way in which it would be implemented would not be a program that would work efficiently. I have seen that when they started negotiating the deal -- you can't negotiate this kind of deal -- with the unions about seniority rights, that it would not work. As a matter of fact, fairness itself in that system must be based first, of course, in removing the barriers and making sure that people can perform properly.

But this is not happening at all and it has retarded the progress of what equity is all about. So that's another example of a program that is not working in this government. You know, it is not working, Mr Speaker.

The fact is that in many of the debates that have happened in this House or in committees, we have tried to convince the members of the government about what we're hearing outside in the constituencies. They are not listening. People who come before committees are sometimes cut short for presentation and, in the limited time in which they want to present their cases, are not being heard.

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Therefore, it's nice to throw money out at programs and feel that we are solving the problem. It's nice to give authority to pay for all these programs, but it's not working. We, as parliamentarians, must assess these programs, must say to ourselves, "Should one continue just saying yes to this government because they just need to spend the money, to give these interest groups a way to maybe demonstrate in a manner that will say we are addressing the problem, and we are not at all addressing that problem?"

I am saddened by the fact that a bold attempt by this government -- I give it the credit of bringing forward legislation of employment equity, but I don't give it the accolades of doing it in a very effective manner. The employment equity program has failed miserably. We have even seen the same government here which has had a program, the same employment equity program, advertising that white males may not apply for jobs.

What this has done to the program itself is that it made a joke of all of this. The fact is that employment equity, and I emphasize again, has nothing to do with the fact of whether one is white, black, woman or so; it is to identify those systemic barriers that are in the way of these designated groups, removing those barriers and letting everyone -- white male, black, woman, disabled -- perform. Then what we'll have is an equitable system for people to perform within.

The fact is, no matter how you say to this government, "You're going the wrong way, you're causing confusion within the people, you're pitting one against the other," oh, no, they feel they're doing such a great job of bringing equity into the system.

Ms Murdock: We are.

Mr Curling: You are not. None of these groups ask to be patronized. What these groups are asking for is to remove those barriers, because the women feel that they are quite capable of doing the jobs if you remove those barriers.

Hon Stephen Owens (Minister without Portfolio in Education and Training): What did you do about it?

Hon Ed Philip (Minister of Municipal Affairs): They're all saying you failed in your party. You failed, Alvin.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. The member for Scarborough North has the floor.

Mr Curling: I know how difficult it is for them to listen to reason and the truth. It's very difficult, when it faces them right along that it will not work in that kind of atmosphere. It will not work, because, again, let me make the point, while the Minister of Municipal Affairs continues to interrupt, that those designated groups have the ability to perform the job. What they don't have is the ability to remove those barriers. They ask for legislation and they ask government to do that and, having removed those barriers, they can perform, not then to say to the others about a level playing field, "Let's get women in, let's get the disabled in," and then tell the others to stay back. They say, "Remove those barriers and we can perform." On the basis of merit they shall be appointed and elected to the job. They want no patronization.

I could spend days talking about all the programs and money that this government has thrown around to interest groups, $100,000 here -- they talk about cheques. They openly say, "We walk around with cheques in the community," people's own money, taxpayers' money, handing it out and saying, "Here is $100,000, here is $200,000. Here is another $200,000," and really believe that we are bringing about change and participation.

Hon Mr Philip: That's better than the itty-bitty sandwiches you gave them.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please.

Mr Curling: Let me tell the Minister of Municipal Affairs, it will not get you any votes.

Hon Mr Philip: Just wait and see.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Curling: It will not change the landscape of the things that are happening right now.

Hon Mr Philip: Give us one grant that you disapprove of.

The Acting Speaker: Order. The Minister of Municipal Affairs, please, will have the opportunity later.

Mr Curling: I know it's so painful for the Minister of Municipal Affairs to hear the truth itself.

Hon Mr Philip: It's not painful, it's for you selling out.

Mr Curling: You see, it is painful.

Hon Mr Philip: You sold out your own community.

Mr Curling: My community is Ontario. Your community is those interest groups you are buying in order to get votes. It will not happen, because the fact is, it will not change the landscape of how things are done. People want to be part of the mainstream --

Hon Mr Owens: What's your contribution --

Mr Curling: Not at all. Not at all to be getting $200,000 to do little side jobs here and creating more or less confusion in the system.

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. It is happening in front of them all day.

Mr Ron Hansen (Lincoln): Who received the cheques? Give us the name.

Hon Mr Owens: Name names, Alvin.

The Acting Speaker: Please. The member for Scarborough North has the floor and interjections are out of order. Members know that.

Mr Curling: I know how painful it is. I understand that. I was a minister once when criticism was coming my way, but what I have done is listened. I know it's hard for you to face the truth of what's happening out there. It's very, very difficult.

All these programs that are put in place, that you want money to continue to fund, will not in themselves change things the way you're doing them.

The community is coming to us and saying, "Do you think we'll continue to be funded in the same way?" I'm telling them no, it will not be funded again. I'll go even further than that. I will say the same kind of people you're funding along the way with these programs, even if you should return -- my golly, I hope the people have seen the light and will not return this kind of government -- you would not continue to fund those groups in the same way. It cannot be done.

Mr Hansen: What groups?

Mr Curling: Many, many of those groups out there that are getting this kind of money.

We're looking at funds to pay for all of these programs, and I am saying to the government, look at it seriously. Look at what changes you're bringing about with this kind of funding. It's not going to work. Walking around with cheques in your pocket, dropping them off to interest groups, does not change things very much. You have to have some sort of vision of where it's going to change, how you bring people within the mainstream, and not in itself feeling that $200,000 is about bringing them into the mainstream.

Our judicial system is one that denies many people or delays justice for many people. We must fix that kind of system and tell people they do have access to it, to eliminate those barriers. Those are the kinds of changes people want. We are legislators who make laws so that people can have access to those programs and not have most of these programs being funded on the side or creating new bureaucracy.

If you want me to name some of those, as you said, I want you to take a look at the Advocacy Act. Some very important changes came about and I think they will be very helpful, but the way we're staffing with those individuals, watch it. They are quite political appointments coming about. Anywhere they can find New Democrats who are not working, what they will do is they'll slide them into positions in order to get jobs. Do you know what that breeds, speaking from a non-partisan point of view?

When the next government comes in, if it should not be this group, an exercise will start to replace all those political appointments.

In the standing committee on government agencies -- I know at times, Mr Speaker, you sit there -- we go through the exercise of people coming before us to serve. Some wonderful, intelligent, competent people have come before us and will serve on some of those boards and agencies. Others don't have a clue of what they've come to serve, what the job descriptions are all about. It pains us to know that the opposition parties sit there and have to go through this exercise of interviews when they have already been approved by the cabinet.

It's not an interviewing process to say, "We reject this individual because this one will not make a proper contribution to this board or agency," no matter what we do. Up to now, for the four years that this process has been in place, not one has been turned down. Not one person who came before the government agencies committee has been turned down. Is that a coincidence, or is that efficiency on the part of government itself?

1930

We start seeing people who are coming in on government agencies that don't have a clue about what they're serving, and we have to start to take a serious look. This is the same government that talks about political appointments, that speaks in terms that we have to clean up the place to make sure the competent people, not from a partisan point of view, are being appointed. When I look around at all the members -- some of the members, quite competent people who were in this House -- all have been appointed as head of some commissions of some boards or so, yet this is the party that stated, "If we should ever get in, we will never follow that trend."

That has been followed. That has been followed and, as a matter of fact, in the worst light that I've ever seen. I don't have any great experience in politics, just 10 years, but I've seen enough to say that nothing in itself ever convinced me that this is a competent government that should be spending the taxpayers' money in the way it is being done.

It hurts. It hurts deep and in a frustrating way, because the fact is that people who come to my constituency office are asking us, "Could you make a difference by telling this government that this way they're going is wrong?" We come here, we try to speak and we are shut down by closures and we are shut down by all kinds of strategies to limit our performance as a Legislature, the same democratic government that needs a lot of money to spend on a lot of programs that I feel are going nowhere.

We're looking forward to another five years, and I know I said when I started my speech that we may not be here the next time as this Parliament, but maybe a new set of bodies, of people, are coming here to legislate. Should the Premier himself find it within himself to call the election by May or June or so, what we will see is that the people will respond in the manner in which I'm confident will make a selection of sending people to the Legislature who can conduct their affairs in a manner so that they can be satisfied and feel they are competent. I don't feel this government was competent, but I don't want to be too negative, because within that cabinet over there, there are competent people, people who have tried their best.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Name names.

Mr Curling: I can name names, as my colleague has stated. I think that the Minister of Finance has tried his best in which to do a competent job. He tried. I wouldn't give him an A, neither would I give him a B. If I was marking in my old days as a teacher I would give him a C+ because it's a tough time and he has tried. He has tried very much. But the fact is that there are few, and you can count them on one hand, competent ministers. You may ask me what is a competent minister.

Mr Bradley: What is a competent minister?

Mr Curling: I think a competent minister is one who understands the portfolio in which he or she performs and understands the people he or she is serving. I find many so unapproachable, because we are all here to serve the people; I find a competent minister is one where I, as an opposition, can walk across the floor and say, "I have a concern in my constituency," and that minister sees beyond partisan politics and sees the issue in which to address that concern. I'm not quite sure there are many over there I'm confident in approaching and feel that I can get that response. That saddens me a lot.

Hon Mr Owens: Are you looking at yourself?

Mr Curling: It saddens me a lot. I see the Attorney General here and she was one whom I approached, not as Attorney General, but I think she was Community and Social Services, and yes, she was receptive. We sat down and we talked about the issue and she was receptive. That's two ministers I would say I can approach. I can't say I can approach many over there.

No, I'm speaking about that the government performance itself has overshadowed even one or two of the good ones over there. But the people must be able to say to themselves: "I have to throw this body out because they have made this province one of the most difficult places to live in." They have made this province a place that they themselves would like to say, "It is a province that I'm proud of." Even the unions, those that are strong supporters of the NDP, found it difficult most of the time to support this government.

They want us to come forward now and support the supply bill and say: "Here you are. Continue to do the programs you are doing." You can even see, Mr Speaker, you and I watched here just a few minutes ago how the Minister of Municipal Affairs had to get up and leave. When you have to face the facts about what's happening out there, it's difficult. I know it's difficult. I've been told many times in my constituency riding that I must be able to do something for the people and how frustrating it is in order to deliver because there is only so much I can do.

Let me talk a little bit about my constituents who are concerned. When the bankruptcy rate and the folding of companies are pretty high, and many of the empty industrial buildings stay there for years, we suffer because of the community not getting the taxes. Where we suffered also was for people who were laid off their jobs because of the tough times. We suffered many times when many of the companies approached the government for support and help and it was slow coming and many uprooted themselves and went to the States or went out of business. So Scarborough suffered tremendously. I see a little turnaround now in the sense. It's not to blame the government in its entirety. Of course, the world economy, especially in North America, had taken quite a beating. We did not escape that. Scarborough got beaten out in that process too. So we suffered.

I noticed yesterday there was a program that the Liberal government of the day announced about the removal of radioactive soil. An initiative like that was very good for the people, because the fact is that they felt that government must have legislation act for them to feel that they can be supported in a manner that, if they have obstacles in the way, a government can help. The Liberal government of the day had decided to move the people and buy their homes. Yesterday, I noticed they announced that radioactive soil will be removed from McClure Crescent into a temporary site until it can go to Chalk River. It's a very important point. It's an important point because they believe that government can do things if it wants to.

My colleague the member for St Catharines will tell me, "Don't compliment the government too much." But the fact is that I was happy to see that they followed through on what we had begun in moving the radioactive soil. Now that the final stage of it is there, that tells me we should have some more confidence in the representative. Of course, I was quite vigilant in the process to make sure that this happened.

In speaking on this supply bill, it heartens me again to know that at the end of an era, the end of a mandate of this government, the people may feel completely left out and feel cheated in some respect that it has not given the kind of programs and the support that were needed at the time. The programs that were put in place were done sometimes in a partisan way. We have seen social housing and co-op housing run in such an awful way that I will predict in a very short time we will be bailing out many of those co-ops that can't really find the money to pay the mortgages on those co-op homes. The management in many of the co-op homes is questionable.

I would say to this government, or whatever government comes in, that we have to have a serious look at how we do our social housing programs. Maybe we have to, as I said, move to some other strategy than building more social housing and maybe giving funds and support to the individuals who need it to find accommodation, seeing that we have, of course, rent control or rent review.

1940

In summary, I just want to put on record my feeling about this government and how it funds its programs and how the administration has been run in such a sloppy manner even though, as I said, I could find a couple of ministers who have tried their best.

My last point I want to make is about our policing -- our community a safe community. I want to commend the police officers who, with limited resources, have done, I would feel, an excellent job. I want to say to the police officers out there who are saying we need more resources and the government on the other side said we have limited resources; the short staff of police officers, as they have indicated to me, has made their job more difficult. Therefore, I would encourage the government to take a very serious look at how we fund our police forces, how we give them those resources to do the job effectively.

Training is one of the most important parts of policing, to sensitize those police because of the diverse multicultural community which we have and how we respond to the calls and domestic crimes or what have you. Police officers have got to be sensitive in how we treat those communities. Of course, we put them on the bicycle or foot patrol and we feel that will resolve the problem. It will not resolve some of the problems we have. We need to do much more sensitizing programs for the police officers; in other words, money and resources are needed.

Of course, as soon as we say to spend anything, the government over there would say some days we are saying don't spend and some days we say spend, and that's true. We are saying to you, get the priorities right, redirect the money where it's needed most and where we can have a better impact and get more value for our dollar so that our society can be a better place to live, that is secure and safe.

Mr Speaker, I just want to again thank you for the opportunity to speak and hope that we can see a better government and more sensitive programs in the future.

The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?

Hon Shirley Coppen (Minister of Labour): I would just like to make a few brief comments, especially when the previous speaker from the opposition was up talking about employment equity, I think one of the most important programs this government has brought forward. I find it very strange that this member, who voted against employment equity, would also stand on the same podium with me at an event and let the crowd know that he supported employment equity. I find that very strange -- or amnesia -- that he forgot the way he voted.

When we talk about employment equity, it's the type of legislation I think all of us want to see in this province. I want to live in an Ontario, and I'm sure you and thousands and millions of other people in this province do, that embraces all people and allows them, if they have the qualifications, to be able to reach out for employment, whether they be man, woman; whatever religion they worship, whether they have a disability. I think that is so important. That's the kind of Ontario I want to live in.

When he talks about programs, I think he has to remember the Jobs Ontario program that we have, where we no longer just give out grants. We get communities to work together, to set what the priorities are in their community and, yes, they have to raise their own funds. We are being careful with our money, but also working with communities to make sure that it's well spent.

Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): I just want to make a couple of comments on the member's speech as well. I think we would be well served to remember that on the principle of employment equity, which was second reading of the bill, all of the opposition members voted against it. That's a very important point to remember. It wasn't against the content; it wasn't against the format; it was against the principle.

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): Quota.

Mr Wiseman: The principle was that they are opposed to it. I just heard the member for Dufferin-Peel say that it is a quota. Maybe he should read what comes out of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. That group has not traditionally supported the NDP, but it says: "There has been a great deal of misinformation in the media concerning employment equity. Therefore, it will be important for all employers to make sure employment equity does not become misrepresented to the employees as a system that dictates employment decisions."

They go on to say -- the difference between numerical goals and quotas -- and I quote: "The difference is, if I determine what I am willing to commit to achieve, I have a goal. If someone else tells me what I must achieve, I have a quota." This is from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which has written an excellent pamphlet on employment equity. They go on to say, "Persons in the employer's entire workforce or in the geographic area" -- and they've underlined this -- "who have the necessary skills for employment in positions within a given occupational group -- this is the group -- this requirement extends to those employers with whom the employer could reasonably be expected to train." What they're talking about here is not quotas. The leader of the third party and the member who commented were incorrect and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business says that.

Mr Bradley: I commend the member on his speech, canvassing many of the ministries and what he feels has been their performance and, of course, casting it all as part of this legislation which is before us tonight.

Specifically, on the issue of employment equity, I think what the member has said consistently over the years has been that a person should get a job based on merit. He has been one who has defended that position for a long period of time. There have been people in our society who have been disadvantaged in years gone by, in terms of their opportunity to compete for jobs, both in the public and private sector.

Successive governments have provided encouragement to those responsible for employment to ensure that those who are seeking advancement or seeking employment from groups which traditionally have been excluded from the public service or the private sector -- that those people have the opportunity to be considered for employment opportunities. But when it comes down to it, I think the sense has been that merit shall be the compelling reason why someone would hire or promote an individual, whether it be within the public service or the private sector.

Indeed, there are many out there who are concerned today that they do not have that same opportunity. One was because of an ad which ran in the Globe and Mail, or in the government newspaper -- I can't remember which it was, the government one called Job Mart or Topical -- which in fact suggested that people who were white males should not apply for the position at all. I think everybody should be given consideration. People from all backgrounds should be encouraged to seek both employment positions and advancement within their job opportunities, and it should be based on merit.

Hon Mr Owens: I listened quite carefully to the member for Scarborough North and I was wondering quite frankly whether we were living in the same province. I think that if the newly released diagnostic and statistical manual 4 from the American Psychiatric Association listed the word "bummer," that's exactly what would be describing the member's speech.

He claims that Jobs Ontario, Jobs Ontario Training in particular, is not working. I challenge the member to tell that to the 64,000 people who have currently been employed by Jobs Ontario Training and the 20,000 employers who have taken up the program.

As a matter of fact, I was at a plant not too far from the riding and it may even have actually been in the member's riding, Ford Electronics, which is a division of Ford Motor Co. This very significant plant in Ontario has hired 85 new employees as a result of this program called Jobs Ontario. If the member has allegations that this program is not working, if there are people making accusations, I challenge the member to bring those names forward and we'll investigate and straighten out whatever real or imagined problems there are.

On the issue of employment equity, as my colleague said, I find it passing strange that a member who votes against it on second reading and is absent on third tries to associate himself with that concept. I ask the member, as a former senior cabinet minister in the Peterson government until a small accident befell him with respect to a cheque he cashed, why didn't he and his government bring in employment equity? In terms of the work he did as Minister of Housing, what did he do with respect to access to housing? What did he do in terms of kicking his program, the P-10,000 program, into action?

1950

The Acting Speaker: This completes the time for questions and comments. The member for Scarborough North has two minutes in response.

Mr Curling: I won't even bother to give a comment to the last member who talked about my checkered past. You must know more about myself than I do. I have no checkered past.

Let me just say this too: I've always committed to employment equity, equal access to all jobs. I still say that legislation must be put in place to remove those systemic barriers so that everybody can participate. It's very difficult; I will say that consistently. I don't think you will ever get the message. I have given up trying to --

Hon Mr Owens: What did you do about it? Show me your track record.

Mr Curling: I allowed the member to make his speech and make his accusations, which are false, to me. Would you give me the courtesy of responding in my one minute.

I am saying to you that I am a strong proponent of employment equity. I believe in fairness and access to all. I say to you that as legislators, we must have legislation to remove those systemic barriers that are placed there, to let everyone participate equally. Therefore, why should I or my party support legislation that continues to put more barriers in the way and then call it employment equity?

Madam Speaker, I know that you as a woman are quite as competent as any man, but if someone put a barrier in the way and said to you, "Because you're a woman, you may not get this," you'd need legislation. You'd need the big stick, the clout to move those barriers so you could participate, because you're just as good as any man sitting in that seat. But you don't need to be told that because you're a woman, you may not get that. You would not support legislation that patronized you as a woman or patronized any designated group. So you get your facts and your definition right.

The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): Now we will have further debate.

Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): Hi, David.

Mr Tilson: Hi. How are you doing?

The Acting Speaker: Directed to the Chair.

Mr Tilson: Yes, thank you, Madam Speaker. I will address my comments to you.

I'm standing today to speak with respect to the supply bill. I'd like to comment about a couple of matters specifically in my riding which affect the overall development of this province; some good news and some bad news.

One of the local newspapers in my riding, specifically the Caledon Citizen, in each edition prints a little column on its editorial page and it talks about the number of Rae days. That's not the Rae days from the social contract but the number of days left in which this government can legally stay here. Of course, we have no idea when this election that we're going to have sometime in 1995 is going to be. I suspect only the Premier knows that and I'm sure he'll tell us at the appropriate time, but we do know that the newspaper each week expresses -- right now, I think, as of today there are 291 days, which is the longest that this government can possibly stay in power in this province. It says: "The next provincial election must be called no later than September 23, 1995, and that means that Ontarians will have to endure 291 more Rae days. Good luck." That appears in all of the editions of the Caledon Citizen. That probably expresses what many people in my riding feel. They have lost confidence in this government, with almost all of its policies.

Hon Mr Owens: Is that why Manac came to your riding?

Mr Tilson: I'm going to talk about Manac. We do have good news. The Premier was in my riding quite recently.

Hon Mr Owens: Jobs Ontario grant.

Mr Tilson: It's not Jobs Ontario, the reason why Manac came to the town of Orangeville. Manac is a Quebec company that decided to invest in the province of Ontario. It decided to invest specifically in the town of Orangeville. It opened last week, with much fanfare: the mayor, myself, the Minister of Transportation and the Premier of this province, and I think Mr Owens was invited but for some reason wasn't able to attend.

Hon Mr Owens: The company didn't want me there.

Mr Tilson: Didn't want you there? In any event, I would have welcomed you. I welcome everyone to Dufferin-Peel. It's a wonderful riding and obviously that's how the people from Manac felt. This company produces semi-trailers, which are essentially the longer trucks. Currently it employs about 150 people and will ultimately employ 200 people. This is part of Quebec-based Canam Manac Group, which has spent $8.5 million renovating a plant in Orangeville which will begin producing 16.2-metre trailers. The company has secured $30 million worth of contracts to build and deliver 1,350 trailers for Ontario and Canadian markets.

As the member pointed out, there is good news in my riding, and there's good news for the province of Ontario, as the Premier quite rightfully indicated when he gave a speech in my riding. The member will probably wonder whether he would mention Jobs Ontario. Jobs Ontario wasn't any part of it at all. This company saw that Orangeville was a good place to invest and it came to this town to invest in the town of Orangeville, and we of course need that because we've had some bad times. We've had some bad times in this recession and there's no question that we are not going to be blame -- at least, I am not going to blame -- the NDP government for all of our woes. There's a whole pile of things that we could blame, different people. But there's no question that with the policies of this government, in my view, it's taken longer for the province of Ontario to start moving out of this recession than any other province, if you look at the economic statistics and forecasts of other provinces.

That is one piece of good recent news which we specifically in Dufferin-Peel are proud of. It's going to mean hopefully some spinoffs and will help the economy of the county of Dufferin and the town of Caledon.

All of this does lead to investing in this province. I think we are optimistic, whether it's because we hope this government will be gone in hopefully a very short period of time, because certainly its policies haven't done very much to improve investment in the province of Ontario.

There have been statistics put forward that Ontario's debt load has hit $150 billion. If a family of four were required to pay that back, that would be about $54,000, almost $55,000, that each family of four would be required to pay back if we were obliged to pay that debt. That's just an idea, a comparison, to show you this debt that we have on this province. And this is just Ontario's debt.

All of this has an effect on all of us, all of our ridings, because there are other things that have an impact with respect to Ontario's debt. If you add in the total debt from across Canada, and then our various unfunded liabilities with Canada pension plan, the workers' compensation and the government-owned utilities, we are in the hole in this country $1.765 trillion. I can't even comprehend how much that is, but it's an astronomical amount of money.

2000

I think one of the fears that all of us have, as have had different countries around this globe, New Zealand being one, is, will the bond raters come in? We look at the downgrading of our credit rating. The bond raters have come into certain countries, New Zealand being one, and simply said: "If you don't do this, this and this, we're going to do it for you because we simply won't give you investment. We won't allow you to have the credit." That's a fear, that the debt in this province is going to get so out of hand that the bond raters will start ruling our country and our province.

That debt of $1.765 trillion for Canada, that's $60,862 for each Canadian. If you compare it to a family of four, that's $243,448 for a family of four. That's across the country. But we are in this country and that's something that we need to look at.

Canadian households are certainly starting to get out of the recession somewhat. I don't accept the comments that have been made by the Finance Minister in past weeks where he starts talking about how we are out of it, we're out of the recession, everything's fine, we've got all kinds of jobs.

I don't accept that. The debt is very deep and the debt continues to mount, and the debt in this province, the deficit in this province, whatever set of bookkeeping you're using, whether they're using the proper bookkeeping or the bookkeeping of this government, is an unbelievable debt and it's a debt that we're going to have to deal with or the bond raters are indeed going to come in and do something about it.

When you start adding the compounded interest on this debt, Canadian and Ontario interest, that makes things worse. So middle-income families who pay to keep social programs like unemployment insurance and welfare alive keep getting hit with higher taxes. Again, and obviously it's come out more and more, we keep asking the government for welfare reform and there has been no welfare reform. There must be welfare reform on some of these social services. It's not just the provincial government that needs to do this, to be fair to this current government. The federal government is going to have to do something and it's going to have to do something now: all of our governments. We have been spending beyond our means and it's got to, quite frankly, a crisis situation, so that we have unemployment insurance, we've got welfare, and the higher and higher taxes.

The Fraser Institute says that households earning $44,900 or more a year are now paying more in taxes than they get back in government spending. That's rather astounding, that the services that they're paying for, they're getting back less than what they're paying out in taxes. It's something that I think is on everybody's mind, particularly when you get your paycheque and you look at the series of deductions that come off your paycheque or you see that you're having less and less money to spend than we have had a number of years ago. We start worrying whether our children will have a lesser standard of living than we've had. And why? Because we're spending beyond our means.

All of it gets to the issue in this current election that's going to come some time in 1995: What are we, whatever political party that you represent, going to do to deal with that debt? That will be one of the major issues and it will be interesting. Our party has put forward this view and of course we've had catcalls from the other side saying, "It can't be done." We really haven't heard too much policy prepared by either the Liberals or the New Democratic Party. In fact, the Premier simply said that there can't be any cuts, that we can't make cuts. So he has no intention of lowering taxes. He has no intention of reducing the spending. That's the statement he made last week.

Ontario borrows $1 billion a month just to pay interest on the debt. I can tell you that we have got serious problems when our debt has got to that crisis in this province.

One of the other issues as we look at the shifting of government's problems, from federal to provincial and provincial to municipal, is everybody blames everybody else. Mr Premier and Mr Finance Minister start criticizing the federal Liberals and before them the federal Tories for cutting back on transfer payments. The municipalities complain that they're being cut back, that they can't do the programs they have been mandated to do by the province without more financial assistance. The problem is the taxpayer. They don't care about this. All they know is that they've got too many taxes and that the services are coming fast and furious from all levels, whether it be municipal, provincial or federal, and we don't have the money to pay for them because the taxpayer has less to pay with.

Again I emphasize that the crisis, in whatever riding you're in -- certainly in my riding it's talked about, the debt that this province has and how we're going to pay for it. They're worried about taxes. They groan about budgets. I mean, we're really worried about what the federal government is going to do come next February or whenever they're having their budget. We worry about the RRSPs. I don't know. I hope Mr Martin doesn't touch our RRSPs.

The total debt for Ontario has been estimated at $76.7 billion for debt already issued; $16.9 billion in other liabilities; $4.5 billion for debt issued for Ontario Hydro; $34 billion for contingent liabilities guaranteed by the province; $11.8 billion in the unfunded liability of the Workers' Compensation Board. The total is therefore $143.9 billion, which is prorated to include the $10.2-billion growth in net new financing.

That's a crisis that all of us are going to have to deal with. We're all going to have to explain to our constituents around this province, and certainly in my riding I intend to tell my constituents how our party intends to deal with that issue, and I trust that the rest of you will as well and that the rest of you will be developing policies. I wait eagerly for the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party to put forward their views on how they're going to deal with the debt.

I want to talk about one other issue which has bothered me, really, since I came to this place almost four years ago, and that is the subject of Teranet. Teranet developed probably from a policy that was created in the early 1970s by the then Progressive Conservative Party and it was called Polaris. The purpose of that was to computerize our land registry system in this province, and I think anyone who has been in a land registry office knows that this system cries out for computerization. It's one of the last confusing things that exists in this province. It's looking through old, dusty books. It's a most difficult situation.

In principle that sounds fine, but the difficulty is that this policy has developed into a project known as Teranet, which has resulted in the remapping of the province of Ontario, a joint venture or partnership with a company called Real/Data, which is a partner with the province of Ontario, and it is called the company of Teranet.

I have asked questions to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations throughout the whole issue of this thing. I think many of us are concerned about our private rights being trampled on, the fear that there will be unusual fees to be charged with respect to this process once it gets working, the privilege of contracting out some of the surveying work and legal work that is being done to privileged surveyor firms and legal firms with respect to the work that's being done in developing this project.

As you can imagine, Madam Speaker, because you and I have been on committees several times where I've discussed this -- I don't intend to spend too much time other than to read a recent letter just to tell the members of this place that the issue is still alive, that I'm still receiving letters from concerned citizens of this province with respect to this project. They're generally people who work in the system, whether they're surveyors or lawyers, because they are the ones who it's first going to hit, until the fees start increasing or until there has been an effect with respect to their personal property.

2010

The one letter I'm going to refer to, and I'm only going to refer to a couple of paragraphs, is a letter which I received in the early part of last month from a surveyor in Elora, which is just west of my riding, but he deals in my riding constantly as a surveyor. He does work in my riding and I meet him periodically at the Orangeville registry office and other registry offices.

He talks about this program of Teranet. He calls it "a waste of money, effort and time. Its mapping function is being based on unreliable information. It appears that for much of the 'platform' on which this mapping is based, it is prepared on uncertain and unreliable information. As well, satisfactory mapping information already exists for the object of Polaris.

"Privately, for they fear for their jobs, time after time, civil servants who are with the MCCR's real property registration branch have agreed with my belief that the Polaris program is not user-friendly, particularly to those who are concerned with the extent of title."

One of the examples, of course, is his own profession of surveyor, but there are all kinds of other people who look at titles, whether they be real estate agents, whether they be surveyors, whether they be lawyers, whether they be individuals who simply want to come in and look at their titles.

"While the concept is good on the face of it, the designers of the system seem to have provided a smokescreen of apparent proficiency of the system for those who may have been in the position for the approval of the system. I would be highly suspicious of a knowing user who would honestly say that Polaris is of any substantial benefit to the people of Ontario, given the tremendous costs in its preparation and the potential use by unscrupulous possessors of the database it purports to be reaping with the assistance of the public purse....

"Polaris is foisting upon the people of Ontario an economic nightmare where the cost of research to perform an adequate professional opinion will be a minimum of 20 to 50 times the present-day cost in many instances. In many areas of Ontario, we lose up to 10% of the physical boundary information (ie original or replacement monumentation in the form of bars, building reference ties etc)."

In fact, when I received that letter I made a recent question to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations referring to when this program was first introduced by the member for Welland-Thorold, when he was the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, with respect to the fact that there will be a cost of 20 to 50 times the present-day cost. We have to keep looking at that.

This individual continues by saying, "This program is changing the methodology of searching extent of title from a unit search (ie by the lot and concession/registered plan) to become a 'by the parcel' search," and this is where he gets into the issue of costs. I'll tell you, this is where it's going to affect the public, and that is when the public goes to buy or sell or mortgage a house. They're all of a sudden going to start finding costs in their legal bills, because they're responsible for those disbursements that the lawyer makes when he or she makes the search or the work that the surveyor does. The costs are going to increase when this program has been implemented.

He says, "The search within the three concessions that we were involved in October 24 was $5 per lot. With the Polaris system and the requisite search of over 40 parcels at $5 per parcel, one need not be a rocket scientist to see what a 'cash cow' is being slung at the unsuspecting public. As well as a 'cash cow,' is this fee for service not a tax on users? It would appear in the last published report to the House that I have seen that the MCCR's real property branch actually made a 'profit' if its revenues were considered as would be a private concern's if accounted for in a year-end statement. Does this 'profit' not go to the consolidated revenue, thus indicative of a tax without sanction of the House?"

We've all seen these fees. The Liberal tire tax, of course, was the worst, most flagrant example, which this government fortunately withdrew, a tax that was designed to solve the problem of our collecting tires around this province. They put a $5 tax on it, and when this government and ourselves, the Conservatives, were in opposition, we, for the life of us, couldn't figure out where this money was going. Of course, where it was going was to the consolidated revenue fund. Quite rightfully, the New Democratic government took away that tax.

He continues and says:

"As a surveyor, I must try my best to render an opinion to the level of standard expectations.

"Polaris, if not truncated and the personnel involved reallocated to less sensitive areas, will introduce an economic facet in the rendering of opinions that is certain to lead to the diminution of respect for boundaries in Ontario and the retracement thereof. This system has been described to me by other civil servants in other ministries who have to use the system as being inaccurate, unreliable, poorly conceived, unilateral-interest-designed with other non-printable expletives included."

He's obviously quite annoyed with the Polaris project, as am I -- perhaps not to the same extent. I introduced a bill in this House which asked essentially for Teranet to become more accountable. That passed second reading as a private member's bill. It went to the justice committee and there it sits. It's been sitting there since 1993 and there has been no real progress. The committee doesn't seem to want to deal with it, mainly because it's controlled by government members. Quite frankly, with statements like this, I think it almost cries out for some sort of hearing where individuals such as this individual, who has had some experience with respect to Teranet, and others can come and tell us exactly why they are making these statements.

He concludes by saying, "Polaris is good in theory in only unrealistic minds and is ill-conceived, tremendously more costly, leading to 40 to 50 times the present cost of researching and will be responsible for greater boundary problems arising over future years, long after the proponents of the system will be gone from their position of trust and responsibility."

A most damning statement on a development that is in the works. It is not upon us yet, but it's a most damning statement that really there has to be more accountability from Teranet, not just the private part of it, but the government part of that company, which should come to a committee and perhaps allow the auditor to go into that and do a complete investigation as to whether any of these allegations are founded or not. This is an experienced surveyor who's making these allegations. I have heard stories from surveyors and lawyers all across this province who are most concerned with the development of Teranet.

That is the second issue I had to get off my chest at this particular time on the last day of this House.

The government takes great delight in talking about Jobs Ontario. Everything is Jobs Ontario, absolutely everything. What used to be grants for development of cultural things is now called Jobs Ontario. We have in my riding of Dufferin-Peel, just recently opened in October, a most beautiful museum. It's a country museum which collects the history from our past, and we are most proud of it. It cost the province of Ontario about $4.5 million. I congratulate -- I think there were a number of ministers involved: Mrs Haslam, I think, when she was minister, and I am not too sure whether Ms Swarbrick had any handling of that as well. But we in Dufferin county appreciate the government assisting the people of the county of Dufferin in developing this museum.

I am simply saying, let's be honest about it. It's not Jobs Ontario; it's the creation of a museum. Yes, there were jobs in the construction of it, but it's as if it was creating all these wonderful jobs. It did. I'm not taking away the credit; I'm giving credit to the government for providing that financial assistance to my riding in developing a museum that we're all proud of. But I simply say, don't call it something that is something else.

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I must say we were all concerned when we read the Provincial Auditor's report, and one of the things that he talked about was Jobs Ontario. The Provincial Auditor was quite critical of the waste that has existed in the development of the Jobs Ontario program.

Hon Richard Allen (Minister of Housing): Quite complimentary also.

Mr Tilson: I can tell you, I'm just going to read a summary and you can tell me whether he was complimentary about it. He simply said on the Jobs Ontario program, "We found that large cash balances ranging from $2 million to $32 million were held by some brokers between March 31, 1993, and September 30, 1993." The influence of these brokers around our province is still rather strong. If you're a broker and you have all this money hanging around and all this power hanging around, what a wonderful thing. This is what the Provincial Auditor is saying. He said this was costly to the taxpayer and unnecessary and that brokers should only be given cash when they need it for the program.

This is the most damning statement by the Provincial Auditor: "To March 31, 1994, administrative costs amounted to some $69 million, or 20%, of the total program expenditure of $342 million, and while this included startup expenses, it is nevertheless necessary to reduce the administrative costs of the program. As well, the efforts to assess the nature and quality of training provided through the program need to be more effective."

I'll read that final sentence because that seems to slip by everybody. I think we're all looking at the administrative costs that it took. Can you imagine the jobs that we can have in this province? We could give it away and we could create jobs. Almost $70 million was in administrative costs, just to set this thing up, and I suspect a lot of it was bureaucrats and paperwork. I'm not so sure that was the right way to go about it. But I'll read the final sentence and then I will finish my comments with respect to Jobs Ontario. I'm simply saying -- it's a twofold criticism of the government -- that they're saying everything's Jobs Ontario. Even when you get into tourism, for example. What used to be grants to develop tourism is now called Jobs Ontario.

The final statement of the auditor was, "As well, the efforts to assess the nature and quality of training provided through the program need to be more effective." He challenged the actual operation of it, as to how effective it was.

My main purpose in standing here this evening at this particular time is to expand on some of the criticisms that I've had in the past of this government with respect to its waste management policy. Not only am I the critic for the environment with respect to the Progressive Conservative Party, but also I have the misfortune of having in my riding one of the three superdumps, which is just outside of Bolton, just outside a large population on the very southern tip of my riding. It is known as the Bolton dump or the Caledon dump or the Peel dump. Anyway, it's the second-largest of the three dumps.

I must say, I watched the process from the very beginning, long before I was the Environment critic. The former member for Markham I think was the member. I watched him and his frustrations at the development of Bill 143 and how Bill 143 was sort of rammed through this House. Prior, I think there were 57 sites that were chosen ultimately by the IWA, and you got a lot of people upset around this greater Toronto area, with the fear that they were going to have a superdump in their backyard. There were 57 sites; I may have the number wrong, but it was approximately that. I think it was then whittled down to 15 sites. Then those people said, "Oh my goodness, it's going to be one of us." Then finally it was reduced to three sites, of course, one in each of Durham, York and Peel.

I'm going to keep at the government because I must say that this waste management policy -- I simply say the government has none -- is a serious, serious issue. I can remember, before I even thought of getting down to this place, reading of the former Leader of the Opposition, who was Mr Rae, standing at Whitevale and saying, "There will be no dump on these farm lands, no dump in Whitevale." He criticized the Liberals. He went to great extent and stood on this place and said, "There will be no dump in Whitevale." Well, guess where one of the dumps is. Guess.

I remember Mr Rae was in the House, the Premier was in the House, some time ago and he made it clear. He said, "Oh well, I said that, but I said that on the understanding that there wouldn't be a full environmental assessment." I guess what he calls a full environmental assessment and what the rest of this province calls a full environmental assessment are two quite different things.

I must say from the very outset, when the cabinet made a decision to reduce the time for the government review of the plan of the IWA, I think it was down to 60 days, without any consultation of other agencies, without any consultation of the federal government -- I'm frankly surprised the federal government hasn't got involved in this issue, because it's now being established that there are aquifers under all three of these superdumps -- aquifers.

Of course the government says, "Well, we have developed liners that will stop the leachate, forever." Do you believe the government, Madam Speaker, when they say that, that they have liners that are going to last forever and that these dumps are going to be maintained forever and that there will be no leachate down into these aquifers that provide us with one of our major commodities in this province, and that is water? I'll tell you, that goes down into the rivers and streams and ultimately into Lake Ontario.

I would hope that if there are any members of the federal government who are watching out there, you would consider asking the federal Minister of the Environment to get involved in this process. It does fall under some of your jurisdiction, because it's being charged from Keele Valley that some of the leachate is getting down into the water and ultimately going into the rivers and streams, which affects who knows what. At the very least, the federal government should be a party to these proceedings and for some reason has chosen not to.

The major criticism that I have and which all opponents of the government have is that the government will simply not look at all alternatives. So when Mr Rae stood on Whitevale and said there will be no dump in Whitevale unless there is a full environmental assessment -- a full environmental assessment at least says: "Well, let's consider other alternatives. At the very least, let's consider them."

I had a fellow in my office the other day who started talking about a whole process of composting that has been developed in Denmark and Germany. I don't know too much about it, but it's something that could be looked at. He talks about how of the garbage that comes into this plant, 70% of it would be composted, one third of it would go into recycling and the rest -- and of course the composting holds the wet stuff, the stuff that creates the leachate and gets down into our aquifers and goes down into the ground. That would be disposed of through composting, and the remainder of it would go to a dump. Now, that may or may not be a good alternative, I don't know, but this government simply won't look into those things. They are determined to have three super --

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet and Government House Leader): We're building composts all over the province.

Mr Tilson: Of course you have composting all over the province, but I'm telling you of a process that has been developed in Germany and that has been developed in Denmark that can get rid of much of the major garbage you're talking about in this province. I suspect you haven't even heard of this. Of course I know about composting around this province. I'm talking about major composting developments, which quite frankly I don't think you've looked at.

The other issue is with respect to energy from waste. Somehow the former Minister of the Environment, Mrs Grier, who's now the current Minister of Health, got it into her head that energy from waste, or incineration, is a bad thing. We really haven't had an adequate debate about incineration in this place. Yes, members of the opposition, including myself, have mentioned it. I even took the time; I travelled to Virginia and I travelled to Pennsylvania to look at two energy-from-waste facilities.

A lot has happened since the former Minister of the Environment sat on municipal council, when she was so opposed, where I suspect she got it into her head that incineration was bad. I don't know how many years ago. I'm guessing it might have been -- I have no idea how many years ago. My guess is 20 years. Perhaps that's too long.

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In any event, a lot has happened since she's been on municipal council. A lot has happened, and they have now developed baggers and scrubbers and all kinds of technology that dispose of the gases that come out of these incinerators, very modern plants that need to be looked at by this province. Everyone in the world is looking at energy-from-waste facilities: Europe, Japan, the United States, other parts of this country of Canada. Are we the only ones who are right, or is everybody else wrong?

Mr Wiseman: Yes.

Mr Tilson: You think everybody else is wrong.

Mr Wiseman: Yes.

Mr Tilson: Well, good luck to you, because quite frankly I don't. I think you have an obligation to look at this type of development.

Hon Mr Charlton: What about your baghouse scrubber technology in Hamilton? You put in the latest. It doesn't work.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Tilson: You can criticize it, but I'm simply saying that you haven't even taken the time to look at what's happened, even while you're in office. There has been no investigation of energy-from-waste facilities with respect to this province since you've been in office. There's nothing. In fact, you passed a regulation that said no more incineration in this province. You won't even let people talk about it.

The IWA has come forward to Dr Kingham at the preliminary hearings and has said, "We don't even want people to talk about it," where they've made an application: "No, don't look at those alternatives. Don't look at the long rail-haul to willing-host communities. Don't look at incineration." That is what your puppet IWA has said, and I remind you who the sole shareholder of the IWA is. It's the Minister of Environment.

Yet you've continued to stand there and allow these dumps to go, at a cost currently -- I don't know what we're up to now, $75 million. We've just started the preliminary hearings. I don't know how long they're going to go. I can tell you, they're going to be dead stopped and they're going to be out of here once you people are out of office. But I can tell you, that's even before we get into expropriation. That's even before we get into the whole preliminary hearing process -- $75 million; unbelievable.

The other issue of course is the willing-host community. I know you've all heard, because they've been raised in this House and I'm sure you've all had presentations with respect to the willing-host communities. They're prepared to consider waste.

I'm not saying that these are the answers. It may be not using them. It may mean looking at a combination of these things. But this government says: "No, thou shalt have dumps and thou shalt not have anything else. Thou shalt not have incineration. Thou shalt not have long rail-haul to willing-host communities."

We've had the mayor of Kirkland Lake down to Toronto begging you to consider taking their waste. That's in the Adams mine site. I've been up there. I don't know how many of you have taken the time to go up there. I don't know, because you won't even allow an environmental assessment to be considered. There was a referendum by the community up there where they indicated that they were a willing host to consider at least looking at it.

Mr Drummond White (Durham Centre): No, they did not.

Mr Tilson: But you won't even consider it.

Mr White: The referendum said they wanted an environmental assessment.

Mr Tilson: But you won't even consider that, my friend. That's the point I'm trying to make. You have ruled that out. You have ruled all those things out.

Interjection.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): You are crazy, Wiseman.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Tilson: You have ruled out the alternative.

Interjection.

Mr Tilson: I'm sorry, Madam Speaker.

Mr Stockwell: You could say you can let them have an environmental assessment, but you won't let them through here. What's the point?

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

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Dufferin-Peel has the floor.

Mr Tilson: It's been an amazing experience sitting in Caledon and outside of Bolton and watching the frustrations that have been going on by this IWA. They're difficult to talk to; they won't allow us to get into other considerations -- the whole process.

I attended the first day of the preliminary hearing in Bolton, and Dr Kingham -- I don't intend to be critical of the joint board, which was chaired by Dr Kingham. I don't intend to do that. I will say I sat there and watched 25 lawyers; you know, just paying the fees of 25 lawyers. There's that many interest groups, and this is going on in each of the three regions, these hearings, and they're all going to all of these hearings. Some of them only go to one set of hearings, another goes to another. Now, right as we speak, there are hearings going on in some hotel where all three hearings are getting together to talk about such applications as, "Well, should we proceed with these hearings when we know there are legal proceedings to stop them going on in the courts?"

The IWA wants to make a motion, and I'm only listing a couple of them, that says, "No, we don't want the board to consider these other alternatives." The board is going to be ruling on an application to deal with that.

Can you imagine, Madam Speaker? I can tell you that people in my riding, and I'm sure it's no different than York or Durham, they own a house there, they own a business there, and they walk into a room where there's 25 lawyers and they want to speak. Well, first of all, you can't speak unless you're a party, and you can't be a party unless you've got the financial resources to do that. Then we get into the whole subject of intervenor funding. The money that's going to be involved: It's a wonderful place for consultants and lawyers, an absolute wonderful place, and it's out of control. All the government has to do is to look at other alternatives, tried and proven other alternatives, but they refuse to do that.

I can only say that the people of Bolton and the people of Caledon, there are ratepayers who spend hours and hours and hours on this topic, and I can tell you that they are frustrated. They've asked questions through us, through members of the opposition to the government side. The two ministers of the Environment we've had have simply given vague answers and simply said, "It's not our fault." It reminds you of no-fault insurance. "It's not our fault, it's the IWA." It doesn't matter that the Minister of Environment is the sole shareholder of the IWA: "It's not our fault. You go and see them."

I made a presentation to the IWA, as did a whole slew of other people. I doubt very much whether they listened. I made two presentations. One was up in Caledon and one was down by the lake. How do you get them to listen to you? Because they're not listening to you. They say, "Well, we can't look at these other alternatives." Why? "Because our political masters" over here "won't let us look at these other alternatives."

We're only asking what Bob Rae said when he stood on Whitevale and said, "No dump in Whitevale unless there's a full environmental assessment." That's all we're asking for, a full environmental assessment.

Then, of course, you remember the lifts. Remember the lifts?

Mr Stockwell: Keele Valley?

Mr Tilson: Aren't they wonderful? We have these lifts going up, but nobody knows anything. Those places were supposed to be closed. Britannia was supposed to be closed. No environmental assessment.

The waste management policy of this government is incomprehensible, unexplainable and most difficult to explain to people in my riding.

I am frustrated. Members of this House are frustrated. Members of the opposition are frustrated. I suspect there's at least one member of the government who's sitting right here now who's frustrated, because he's got a dump in his riding as well, and he doesn't know how to handle it. So we're sitting here trying to tell the government to be a little bit more environmentally friendly, and it's not.

I have a lot of grave concerns about these dumps, which range from, what, 500 acres to 350 acres. I forget. There's a lot of land. And they're all on prime, A1 agricultural farm land -- all of them.

I remember asking the Minister of Agriculture why -- you have these food land policies. My riding is semirural, and we're proud of our farms. Yet we've watched this government, we've watched the Liberal government, talk about their food land policies of how they want to protect farm lands, and of course their answer to that is they're going to put a dump on farm lands.

Then there's the whole health issue. Can you imagine putting a dump within a short stone's throw of the town of Bolton, where you can actually on a clear summer's day get the smell of garbage? Can you imagine?

Madam Speaker, I thank you very much for allowing me to speak. I hadn't intended to go on so long, but I must confess I get letters and I could read scads of them into the record. I'm not going to because I'm sure other members of this House have got the same letters, simply letters of bewilderment, whether you're talking all the issues I've raised, such as health. I can tell you that you're never going to elect a New Democratic member in these specific three ridings and the surrounding ridings, ever.

The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments to the member for Dufferin-Peel?

Mr Wiseman: Two minutes is hardly going to handle this one.

To start with, in terms of incineration, the member is saying that they're going to go to incineration. Well, you still need a landfill site with incineration. It's going to be a toxic landfill site that you're going to need. The other thing is that all those resources you're going to put into that incineration are going to be jobs that they're going to burn, throw right up the flue. I do not support this notion of burning jobs.

The other point that they try to make is that they've got all these scrubbers and everything. The most efficient incinerator in the world captures 98%; 2% it doesn't. On Metropolitan Toronto's garbage, which they would burn, which would be over one million tonnes a year, you would still be putting 20,000 tonnes of garbage into the air every year, which would be spewed over a wider area, which would contain heavy metals and all sorts of toxins.

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On expropriation, from this party, this party talking about expropriation, 23,000 acres in north Pickering, the difference in this bill is that they cannot expropriate until they have a certificate of approval, which is different.

Rail-haul: These people would spend thousands of municipal taxpayers' dollars trying to pay for it.

The agricultural land: Now, here's the joke of the day on the agricultural land. In the Toronto Star, Lorna Jackson got a dart because instead of putting a landfill site there they want to put huge subdivisions and roll them out over this land. They've been zoned for this. In Durham, for example, EE11 is on land that has been zoned industrial-commercial. They're going to destroy it anyway. So let's talk about that.

The alternative to this is green industries, is jobs and recycling and reuse and the creation of jobs through the use of materials that other nations in the world are getting a competitive advantage over us on because they reuse them and we don't. We can become more efficient, we can create jobs and we can create green industries.

Mr Bradley: I notice that the member for Dufferin-Peel made reference to many items that are contained in a book that should be on everyone's Christmas list, a book that's called Rae Days: The Rise and Follies of the NDP. It's by Thomas Walkom. It's Key Porter Books, and the price is --

Mr Stockwell: It's $29.95.

Mr Bradley: -- it's $27.95. I'll be interested to hear whether the member was quoting substantially from this book from the prominent and distinguished author Thomas Walkom, columnist for the Toronto Star, or if he was quoting from the book Giving Away a Miracle: Lost Dreams, Broken Promises and the Ontario NDP by George Ehring and Wayne Roberts. Now, these two are strong New Democrats.

Madam Speaker, I know you're neutral tonight as the Speaker, but you may even have met Wayne Roberts and George Ehring, because they have been strong supporters of the NDP in years gone by. I know this was last year's, but there are special prices available this year, and I would recommend both of these. I'm wondering if the member thinks that both of these books would contain some of the material that he's been talking about tonight.

Mr Tilson: Excellent books. They tell the whole story.

Mr Bradley: So that's Giving Away a Miracle by George Ehring and Wayne Roberts. This is Mosaic Press. The last one, just in case people missed it, was Rae Days: The Rise and Follies of the NDP by Thomas Walkom, and it's Key Porter.

Then there's one by the member for Renfrew North, Sean Conway, the -- how do you pronounce that?

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): Beauharnois.

Mr Bradley: The Beauharnois Scandal. This is certainly bedtime reading for anybody. It doesn't have as nice a cover -- in fact, it's upside down -- but some of the contents are very relevant to what the member has referred to in his speech this evening; a very good speech, I might add.

Mr Stockwell: Because I only have two minutes, I want to comment very briefly on this government's expansion lifts at Keele Valley and Britannia.

The member from Durham, being the fine environmentalist he is, the true saviour of the earth and all the good things that happen, like trees and no landfills and all those wonderful things he always speaks about, it's kind of strange, isn't it, that one of these people who, as an environmentalist, came to Metro council on many occasions and told us how terrible we were for looking to put in landfill sites and only allowing 15 or 20 years of environmental assessment hearings -- that was never enough, they always said. I thought, "Well, there's an upstanding, fairminded, evenhanded gentleman, Mr Wiseman from Durham."

Mr Wiseman: I never said that, and you never listened because you were sitting behind your newspaper.

Mr Stockwell: Now, son of a gun if we don't get down here and who's sitting across the room from me but that same Wiseman fellow from Durham. That same gentleman in this House was part of a government -- and I know he thinks environmental assessments are very important, they should be 15, 20 years long and you've got to investigate and analyse, can't do anything without an environmental assessment hearing. But there's this environmentalist, this friend, I thought, of the earth, of the trees and of the people, he approved expansion lifts to Keele Valley and Britannia. You know how much time he spent on environmental assessment hearings? You know how much time the government spent?

Mr Tilson: How much?

Mr Stockwell: None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch. This environmentalist, as I sat across from him, I said to myself, "My God, he should have taken the bottle in front of him" because it was clear from what he said before he entered this august chamber and what he said as a member of the government that one was a good environmentalist and one simply became a good backbencher.

Mr Wiseman: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I know the member wouldn't want to put words in my mouth. All of what he said is incorrect. The context of what I have said today is exactly what I said seven years ago, and I have the tapes to prove it.

The Acting Speaker: That's not a point of order. We definitely have a difference of opinion here.

Mr Wiseman: You're damn right.

The Acting Speaker: We do have time for one more question or comment. I will recognize the member for Brampton South.

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): If you're talking about the old-world philosophy of burying stuff, I think to myself, someone will land on this planet about 100 years or maybe 50 years from now and they'll look at our landfill sites and they'll say, "My God, those people were growing refrigerators, stoves and all this stuff."

In essence, the government is reluctant to talk about the scenario that was put before us of Kirkland Lake, which was a marvellous idea. But for some reason they're so committed to the three Rs they're afraid if they look at an alternative that people will stop recycling, reclaiming and whatever that other one is. Yet Ontarians have done that religiously.

When we talk about incineration, I remember trying to talk to my council about 20 years ago about incineration.

Mr Wiseman: Talk to the doctors in Orillia. If incineration is so good, why is every doctor in Orillia opposed?

Mr Callahan: We have an incineration plant in our riding that is eminently safe, receives a certificate for safety. We burn about 65% to 70% of our garbage. The balance of it has to be done in the recycling process, and then the ash is buried in the landfill. But, my God, are we going to continue to use good agricultural land in this community, in this province, that is becoming more and more scarce every day, in terms of burying refrigerators and all this other nonsense?

If this government doesn't wake up and realize you can't get rid of the garbage problem through ideology, you have to deal with it intelligently -- once they do that, this province will be safe environmentally and in terms of dealing with its waste.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Dufferin-Peel has two minutes to respond.

Mr Tilson: First of all, I'd like to comment on the two books that have been referred to by the member for St Catharines. I have read one of them, and I'm in the middle of reading another. They're certainly an excellent example of pathos and humour. I do, as well, recommend that all members of this House take the time to read both of them.

On a more serious note -- actually that is a serious note -- I would like to say to the member for Durham -- what?

Mr Bradley: West.

Mr Tilson: West.

Interjection.

Mr Tilson: Yes, it doesn't matter where he's from, he's gone. But I would like to say to the member for Durham West, all we're asking on this side is to do away with Bill 143; you know it hasn't worked. Do away with the IWA; you know it's a joke, you know nobody understands it and you know it's costing the taxpayers of this province too much money -- $75 million at the last count at least. Let the municipalities make the decision. They've always made the decision in the past.

For some unearthly reason, the current Minister of Health decided to come in and say: "We're going to decide everything. We're going to be Big Brother. We're going to make the decisions. The province is going to say where the waste in this province is going to go. We're not going to let" -- what was traditional -- "municipalities make those decisions."

They won't let us look at all of the alternatives. They won't let the municipalities look at all of the alternatives. They won't let the municipalities look at anything. All they're saying is, "You're going to have superdumps." They won't let us look at incineration. No, I'm not saying that the answer is incineration; I'm simply saying, "Look at it." It may be inappropriate in some places, it may be appropriate in others. Yes, there's no question that with incineration you need dump sites, but it may be inappropriate in some areas. Look at this new development of composting. I was quite impressed with it. It may need to be examined further. Look at the long rail-haul to the willing host communities. There are at least two who are prepared to take all of the garbage in this area.

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The Acting Speaker: Further debate on this supply bill?

Mr Bradley: I want to put a few things on the record this evening. I had an opportunity to speak for a few minutes last night. I want to complete those remarks tonight, only this time on third reading, because, of course, we wanted to see second reading take place last night and be completed.

First of all, I would like to report that the Premier, if people wonder why -- we're not supposed to make reference to who's here or not, but I am just explaining why the Premier would be unable to be with us this evening; that is because he's on Studio 2 tonight of TVO with Steve Paikin.

Mr Sorbara: The other government network.

Mr Bradley: The member for York Centre says "the other government network," other than the CBC. Anyway, that's where he is tonight, and I just want to report that because I know he would want to be here for this debate, and that's quite legitimate.

I want to deal with a couple of items that have come to our attention. With Consumer and Commercial Relations, for instance, I want to again implore the government to look very carefully at continually rising automobile insurance rates. As we are in this House this evening, I'm sure there are people trying to get through to our constituency offices to ask questions about why their insurance rates are increasing, and I believe that the insurance companies should be called to account. They may have a good enough reason for doing so, they may not have a good reason for doing so, but certainly to those who are seeing their premiums increase at a very significant rate, they are not pleased, and I am most sympathetic to their case.

I mentioned last night that it would be nice if we had an American-style committee where you call the people responsible for automobile insurance before the committee to explain what is happening out there and to justify the increases in a general sense, as opposed to a particular sense where people have a driving experience.

I also want to say that I served many years ago -- I think Mr Ed Philip at the time, the member now for Etobicoke-Rexdale was the Chair of this committee. It was the justice committee dealing with the Re-Mor/Astra collapse that you, as a resident of Niagara Falls, will recall, Madam Speaker. We've seen something similar happen with Confederation Life. It seems to me that despite all of the instances we've had over the years of problems with financial institutions, here we are into another problem with financial institutions. It means we must be ever vigilant in that field.

If I can go briefly to the field of labour, those of us who represent the Niagara area -- I can speak for St Catharines -- have been perturbed by the length of time it takes to have cases processed by the local office. They do their very best to deal with people, for instance, who are not getting their rightful severance pay or feel that they've been dismissed inappropriately or something has gone wrong with a situation related to the Ministry of Labour. The waiting list is substantially longer than it should be, and I hope when the minister is allocating staff in various areas, establishing his priorities, in this case now her priorities, as one of the members from the peninsula, that St Catharines will be looked at as a place where we need additional staff to deal with the workload that is existing in the Niagara Peninsula.

In terms of education, I'd like to briefly touch on education this evening and say on behalf of the school boards in this province and teachers and administrators that one of the problems they are encountering is governments continuing to place a new onus on them each year, to assign to them new responsibilities without providing new and additional funding to meet those responsibilities and with an anticipation that they shall continue on providing the other services that are expected in education.

Those who have been in the classroom, and I have, always felt that the Minister of Education of the day, whoever that is, should have to spend about a month on the front line, in the classroom teaching, and then recognize the implications of provincial policies which are sent down to the various boards of education.

I know the core curriculum is a big issue with them, I know the exit from the social contract is a very significant issue with them, but I always suspected that the party that said it would do nothing to education for the next five years would be a party which would get considerable support within the teaching community.

In terms of transportation, the member for St Catharines-Brock last week had a forum in her constituency where she invited people to comment on transportation.

Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): Over 80 people.

Mr Bradley: She reports that 80 people showed up, and that's a good crowd, in my estimation, for a forum of that kind. Some of them were elected officials, some were community activists --

Ms Haeck: And some of them were from your riding.

Mr Bradley: And some were from the riding of St Catharines. I encourage people to attend these kinds of forums because I think they're useful. The point was made at the time that there is an emphasis primarily on the construction of highways and trying to accommodate vehicular traffic as opposed to looking at other options.

The member for St Catharines-Brock and I, and I'm sure others in the Niagara Peninsula, you included, Madam Speaker, would want to see the province and the federal government look at other options as well. I think the VIA train option, with provincial and federal cooperation, more frequent trips between the Niagara Peninsula and Toronto, would be very useful. I don't know whether we can justify a commuter operation, such as GO Transit, at this time, but certainly an enhanced VIA service, perhaps cost-shared by the province and the federal government, would be very useful to us; it would take some of the load off the highway. The member for St Catharines-Brock has mentioned, and I am supportive of this concept, that when the Ministry of Transportation is looking at options for the Niagara Peninsula and the future of transportation, it should look well beyond simply the construction of highways.

Enough said on that. I simply say that if people are interested they should contact the member for St Catharines-Brock, who no doubt has made an evaluation of the forum she held in St Catharines. I'll be interested in receiving from her a full report that I know she will be sending to me.

I won't get into the Attorney General's department because there's a bill coming up later on that will allow me to address that, and I don't want to take up too much time this evening.

I want to look at the field of Community and Social Services for a moment. One of the issues which has come forward more frequently now than in the past has been the issue of children being born into poverty. It is said on many occasions that we have a problem with children in poverty. It is an increasing contention of a number of people in our society that those children are being born into poverty.

One of the changes we've all seen in this House is the change in the number of people, particularly unwed youngsters of 14, 15, 16 and 17, who in years gone used to place their children up for adoption when they felt they were unable to look after those children and are now in very great numbers opting to keep the children. This presents a special challenge to our society, a challenge which is costly in terms of dollars spent, a challenge which is very difficult for the children born into these circumstances. I know the Minister of Community and Social Services, were he to consult with his staff, as he does, would understand that one of the real increasing costs within his mandate is the cost of children born of teenage youngsters, in other words, often children raising children, and the consequences of that.

In terms of the counselling that takes place, I think it is time to return to counselling options other than simply retaining the children, because it makes it very difficult, it's a really tough challenge. I admire the people who are able to handle that challenge, but so many people are not. I think in our society people are now asking that we as legislators address that problem, and we will, no doubt, in some time to come.

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I wanted to mention the Canadian Mental Health Association because the member for St Catharines-Brock and I, and I suspect the member for Lincoln, have made representations to the government, and continue to do so, for continuing funding for the Canadian Mental Health Association office in St Catharines, the services provided. It's been almost a last-minute emergency service, in some cases, through the intervention of local members. We believe there is a need for it. We believe that ex-psychiatric patients particularly benefit from the services that can be provided by that organization, and I hope the government will give it favourable consideration.

Also, the member for St Catharines-Brock and I -- we've raised a number of issues mutually, in this House and elsewhere -- have dealt with the issue of Design for a New Tomorrow and funding for an operation there which would counsel the men who have perpetrated violence upon women in our area. It has been determined by those who operate Design for a New Tomorrow that this is a useful expenditure, that it is sometimes a preventive expenditure and certainly worthwhile of an investment of money from the government in that operation.

I hope the minister's evaluation of that program will be a rapid one and that we will see the funding forthcoming, because one of the issues we really have to confront in today's society is that of violence against everyone, and in particular we've seen some horrid examples of violence against women in our society.

I also want to deal briefly with the fact that there are a number of people in our society who do not have available to them benefits that others do in terms of health care benefits and insurance benefits. I believe, on a comprehensive, all-encompassing basis, that there's need to address that particular issue.

We've all been contacted by people and the government has announced an initiative -- I'm not certain of the details -- for instance, on prescription drugs that might be provided to people. It's very unfortunate when we're contacted by people who have to spend $300 a month to try to get those drugs that are needed to maintain their lives or their health, while others, such as members of the Legislative Assembly and others, have the opportunity to have those covered by an insurance plan. I hope we can look at all people who are in the circumstances of not having appropriate benefits and try to extend those benefits to those individuals in our society.

The Acting Speaker: To the people having private conversations, I wish they would keep their voices down.

Mr Bradley: I also want to give an evaluation, briefly, because I've had a chance to look at it for four years, of the government agencies committee review of government appointments. I think what we have seen, essentially, is a change of the methodology with the results being substantially the same. Perhaps the member for Etobicoke West can, but I cannot recall the government agencies committee turning down one appointment that has been proposed by the government of Ontario, not one appointment.

I believe there's a need for careful scrutiny of those. Some of the appointments have been good; some of them have not met with the same degree of support from the opposition. But until such time as you have at least equal representation by opposition and government on that committee, you're simply going to see it as a rubber stamp of the existing situation.

I know there may be other members of the Legislature who are eager to make representations this evening in the field of supply, and I indicated, because I had an opportunity to speak for about 15 minutes last night, that I would complete my remarks tonight on the third reading instead of the second reading so that the bill could pass -- just to show what an accommodating individual I can be, on occasion, especially when the table informs me of the consequences of carrying on in perhaps years to come. I won't elaborate on that.

I congratulate Tom Stelling as well, our Sergeant at Arms, for the excellent job he has done over the years. I didn't get the chance to do that earlier and I appreciate that opportunity. I would now like to yield the floor to any other member who might have an intervention this evening.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I thank the honourable member for St Catharines and invite any questions and/or comments.

Mr Callahan: I listened very attentively to the member for St Catharines, who always brings a very local flavour to his comments. One I wanted to pick up on was the question of the orders of day, now that we're going to prorogue tonight, hopefully; that the only two committees that are sitting are the pre-budget committee and the approval of appointments.

That gives me cause for concern because I wonder if we're coming back: If you look at it from a political standpoint, what better thing could you do if you were not coming back, if there was going to be an election, than to appoint as many of your friends as you could to all those choice appointments that are available through the government? As the member for St Catharines said, and the member from Etobicoke would say, these appointments are just a rubber stamp of the government's friends who are being appointed to all these plums that cost tax dollars of the citizens of this province.

I say to the citizens of this province, you're not going to see another coming back of this august group -- and some of them are probably out there applauding. In fact what you're going to have is probably an election on April 27, and that's why there are no committees sitting. Very important committees like the public accounts committee, that was going to sit on issues that the auditor, a person who is independent of this body, who has no political affiliations whatsoever -- they are not going to have the opportunity to have public hearings. The Treasurer and the House leader say we were given the option of whether we wanted to sit or not. I say that's balderdash. As the Chairman of the committee said, that was orchestrated by the House leader in terms of giving his marching orders to the members of that committee, who heretofore have been non-partisan.

Hon Mr Owens: Just very quickly, I want to associate myself with the comments the member for St Catharines made with respect to the Sergeant at Arms' 25th anniversary, as I didn't have an opportunity to present Mr Stelling with cigars either.

In terms of his comments with respect to education, I would like to inform the member that the Common Curriculum is receiving broad support from educators and from parents, and we look forward to the report on the Royal Commission on Learning to ensure that its implementation receives broad consultation.

Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): One point the member for St Catharines raised was the appointment process brought in by the current government, that it was brought in under the guise of something totally new to clear up what was perceived to be not the right process, that was perceived to be appointing only those who were familiar to either the Conservatives or the Liberals.

But the reality, frankly -- and this government has gotten too much away with it, so we have to put it on the record -- is that the system hasn't changed at all. In fact, when I look at the appointments that were made in my riding, the affiliation of the people who have been appointed, not all of them but quite a few, is very directly NDP.

Personally, I do not criticize the government for that. I do think there is a role for the people who think similarly to the government to be appointed to various positions in the province. In my opinion, that's reasonable, as long as the people are qualified. In my riding I don't have any major problems that way: These are qualified people; they happen to have NDP associations. But the NDP should clearly say, "We didn't just appoint on the strict basis of qualifications; we also appointed people we know, and the people we know are NDPers." In terms of a change in that system, we haven't seen any change, and I think that should be made clear and that should be put on the record.

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The Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? If not, the honourable member for St Catharines has up to two minutes for his reply.

Mr Bradley: I appreciate the opportunity to respond to some of the interventions which have been made this evening. I just wanted to inform members that some of the ideas that I had for this evening came from a book called Rae Days: The Rise and Follies of the NDP, by Thomas Walkom. It's $27.95. It is by Key Porter. It would make an excellent Christmas gift.

Mr Sutherland: I hear it has been discounted.

Mr Bradley: No, it has not been discounted, but this one has: Giving Away A Miracle, by George Ehring and Wayne Roberts, two prominent New Democrats, two supporters. This one can be discounted this year because it is a year old, but it's still very good and I'm just suggesting that if you've not purchased a gift yet, I'm sure that the authors would endorse your book, and I'm sure Thomas Walkom, because you're in the Legislature, would be prepared to sign the book, to autograph it for anyone. So those were some of the places I got these ideas.

I don't want to be accused of trying to sell books on TV. I don't want to be accused of that, because I know there are other books that could come out. Who knows? So you always have to be careful when you're selling those books. What could be out next time?

I appreciate the comment made by Mr Owens tonight because I think a lot of people are wondering what will come out of the Royal Commission on Learning. One of the things that happens with many royal commissions is that the report comes out and it's put on a shelf. I think that more than ever this time, people will be looking at the contents of that and looking for implementation of those which are positive and which have consensus in the community.

The Speaker: Is there further debate?

Mr Stockwell: Supply means you can basically talk about anything you want. So that kind of narrows the field a little bit for me really.

What I did today is, I noticed just a little while ago -- I kind of like investigating little things that go on in this place and just finding out how much they cost because it's always enlightening.

When we talk about supply we always talk about billions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars for this and $55 million -- and it's really hard for people to put that in perspective because they never have that kind of money at their own disposal. They go to a football game or something and they'll see 50,000 people and think, "Holy smokes, look at all the people," and then you try and quantify $50 million. So it's really tough for them to get it in perspective. Of course buying a house today, it's a few hundred thousand dollars of something -- that's a lot of money. So when you're talking 20, 30, 40, hundreds of millions -- billions of dollars -- you're way out of their league.

So you know what I did? I noticed just outside the Legislature here -- and the member for St Catharines would like this; it's not in the books he was flogging earlier, but it's kind of an interesting thing. We have a little stairway that comes up into the chambers here.

Mr Bradley: Stairway to Heaven?

Mr Stockwell: Stairway to Heaven, I remember that. Anyway, it was about six feet wide, roughly, maybe a little more -- seven feet, and it had carpet on it. So the government decided that -- you'd know about this, Mr Speaker, because it's in what they call the precinct and you're the man in charge of the precinct.

Hon Mr Owens: It's the Legislative Assembly.

Mr Stockwell: So -- or maybe it's the Legislative Assembly, you're right. But anyway, they decided, "Okay, it's got carpet on the stairs on that's six-foot-wide, three-step entranceway to the chamber. So we should probably take the carpet off" -- and being in supply it's pretty appropriate -- "and revarnish it and put up a railing so that people can hold on the railing coming in." That's what it is -- it's seven feet wide, three steps, take up some red carpet and then varnish it and put in a new railing. So I went and checked to see how much somebody would pay to take some carpet up and varnish and put a railing in.

Mr Bradley: Forty-seven dollars.

Mr Stockwell: You see, people would understand this at home because they probably refinished some stairs or a hallway and they've had carpet taken up. So I went and checked to see how much it would cost the provincial government to do just that. Well, you're never going to believe how much it cost. I asked a few people I know. I said, "What do you think it would cost?" They said, "Oh, 2,500 bucks, 3,000" --

Hon Shelley Wark-Martyn (Minister without Portfolio in Health): Thirty-two thousand.

Mr Stockwell: -- and there's the correct answer from Thunder Bay; it's right. It cost the taxpayers, to lift some carpet, varnish the steps and put a railing in, $32,000. You could have a down payment on any fairly decent home, buy some homes in this province, and just the seven-foot-wide, three-step entranceway with a railing, $32,000.

Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): No wonder the province is bankrupt.

Mr Stockwell: Exactly. The member for Brant-Haldimand hits it right on the head. If we're going to pay somebody 32,000 bucks to do that, no wonder we're $90 billion in debt. It's really not that surprising.

So here we are at supply today and I thought that would be just a nice little bit of information the public could have. When they go to their Christmas parties, they can say: "You know what? At the Legislature I was hearing the other day that a seven-foot-wide, three-step entranceway that had carpet on it was taken up, revarnished and a railing put in, cost $32,000." I just think that's awful, just shameful.

But that's not what I want to talk about -- and that only took five minutes, but 32 grand, that's a lot of money, don't you think, Mr Speaker? I think you should look into that. I think there's something wrong there. Maybe not you; maybe the minister of overpayment possibly could have a look to see why it cost $32,000 to do that. A guy like Thomas Walkom could write a book on just how much it costs to do things or get things done in this building. Anyway, that was $32,000.

Interjection: Why are you attacking the Speaker?

Mr Stockwell: I didn't mean to attack the Speaker. There it is, Rae Days: The Rise and Follies of the NDP. That's 27 bucks -- $32,000; $27. This is the private sector; $32,000 is the public sector. A lot of money. But it's supply, so we can talk about pretty much anything we want, right, Mr Speaker?

So the next thing I wanted to talk about was: You know, I've enjoyed my years here; I've enjoyed the last four and a half years and I found this to be a really interesting place to work.

Interjections.

Mr Stockwell: No. Could be. But I think what I want to drive at is it's been about four years and a bit and we're now going to prorogue the House.

Mrs Ellen MacKinnon (Lambton): So?

Mr Stockwell: Just hang on. We have really no major pieces of legislation sitting out there on the books.

Mrs MacKinnon: So?

Mr Stockwell: Just hang on. We really have no committees meeting; we really have only sat 20 days in the last nine and a half months, and you know what I think? I think it might be time for us to have an election. I think it's time that the people --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Mr Stockwell: I didn't hear them, but I think it's time for an election, because you know, whether you agreed or you disagreed with this government and its legislation, it always had something coming through and there was always a reason for this place to be in session. But this last session, you basically finished up, no new pieces of legislation on the books, you moved closure on the four pieces that you had and you really only needed 20 days this session to get your work done. It seems to me that maybe they're out of ideas and maybe we need a mandate. Maybe we need a new mandate for a new government in this province. Because you know, when I speak to the constituents around my riding --

Interjections.

Mr Stockwell: Because I think today --

Interjections.

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Mr Stockwell: You know, I was only going to go 15 minutes.

Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): Mr Speaker, let him speak.

The Speaker: The member for Etobicoke West has the floor.

Mr Stockwell: I was only going to go 15 minutes, so it may be a little bit longer if they keep interrupting me, Mr Speaker.

Mrs Karen Haslam (Perth): You've never spoken for 15 minutes only, ever.

Mr Stockwell: Only, ever. I want to get back to the point I was making. We've only had to sit for 20 days this session. Nine and a half months will mean 20 days of sitting. In those 20 days, four major pieces of legislation came before this House. All four of those pieces of legislation closure was moved on. This government doesn't have anything else in the works that they would consider major pieces of legislation. Committees are not going out in the intersession to meet. There are going to be no public hearings on any substantive issue before the Legislature. The government has little, if anything, on the agenda to deal with today.

It would seem to me it's about time for this government to do the honourable thing and call an election. Why I think they should call an election is because obviously they're at a low point in the polls, but that's to our benefit and to their negative. But what gets to the point I'm trying to make --

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): Nice steps.

Mr Stockwell: Thirty-two thousand bucks. Did you see those $32,000 steps you just came up? Here they are.

Why I say this is because when I go across this province and speak to people in this province they ask one question and one question first: "When's the election?" They ask when the election is because they are absolutely obviously fed up with the government in hand and, really, any of the pieces of legislation they brought forward have not been accepted by the province as a whole. So we're sitting here, 20 days this Legislature, and we have to painfully work through, after coming five weeks late, get closure motions on four pieces of legislation, one of them a very important forestry bill that you gave one hour on second reading and one hour on third reading of debate. We have to listen to members opposite --

Interjection.

Mr Stockwell: Sorry? Oh, you're not talking to me. No, okay. Thanks.

Mr Sorbara: You are easily distracted, Stockwell. Just get on with the speech. It's really not very good, but get on with it.

Mr Stockwell: Well, I got the Speaker going like this to me. I thought this was a new sign. Little did I know this is a cabinet submission. Stop sending these over. Yorkview and Downsview clearly have nothing better to do. Sign your Christmas cards, for heaven's sake. I mean, that's all you've been doing for the last three weeks. Just sign your Christmas cards and stop sending me this stuff over; let me finish -- and Fort York. My God, you'd think anybody who would sit in this chamber and sign Christmas cards for three weeks would go underground, but they in fact stand in their place and brag about it.

Now the member for Downsview's got a point of order, no doubt. He's standing up, doing up his vest. Hide your Christmas cards before you do your point of order, member for Downsview. Jeez. Are you ready?

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): No.

Mr Stockwell: As I was saying, it seems to me that the people of this province are ready for what I would call a general election in the province of Ontario. They have received little, if any, direction from this government; little, if any, direction.

Is he standing to be recognized, Mr Speaker?

The Speaker: The member for Downsview, a point of order?

Interjections.

Mr Stockwell: I will note the member for Yorkview did send me a Christmas card and the ink isn't even dry. So it's fairly clear that he has in fact just signed this. Thank you. And it's obviously personalized because it says, "All the best." So it's fairly clear, for all those people in Yorkview who get one of these and if it says, "All the best," you know he sweated over this maybe in the Legislature. It's in two languages, neither one an official language.

Anyway, as I was saying -- and I can't possibly be done in 15 minutes. Getting to the point, the point is, in all seriousness, the people of this province are requesting, asking, begging for an election. This government's run out of ideas, it's run out of plans and it's run out of hope. They've run out of any thought process that they had about changing this province for what they believed was to be the better.

They went into government talking about a whole bunch of issues that they were attempting to deal with. They talked about common pause days, which was Sunday shopping; they talked about insurance; they've been talking about casino gambling; they've been talking about revitalizing the Workers' Compensation Board; they talked about the health plans that they were going to do; they talked about walking the halls of this place -- people would be allowed to walk in the halls of this place like never before. The corridors of power would be open to groups and institutions and people who have never been able to seek the corridors of power.

On a daily basis we hear from across the floor members like the member for Oxford or the member for Durham Centre or Durham East, Yorkview, Downsview. We hear from Fort York and Scarborough and Windsor, St Catharines and Lambton. We hear about the record of this government. They stand in their place and they talk about how good a government they've run for the last four and a half years. They talk about the proud accomplishments that they've made. I understand fully, as a government, they believe in their heart of hearts that they have in fact done as good a job as they possibly could have done.

So I think it's time to allow the people of this province to measure this government and measure it against opposition parties that have been fighting this government every step of the way. It's time for this government to stand on its record of deficit increases, to stand on its record of tax hikes, to stand on its record of public spending. It's time for this government, and Bob Rae, to stand on its record and go back to the people and let the people decide whether or not they think this government has carried forward and whether they think this government has done a good job in the last four and a half years. Because as a member of one of those opposition parties, I am more than prepared and very ready to allow the people to pass the ultimate verdict. I would suggest to you, not wanting to be too arrogant about it, what they think has been a good track record and a good government will not necessarily be what the people of this province believe.

In closing, it's a shame that this government could only sit for 20 days this session. It's a shame that we could only deal with four major pieces of legislation. It's a shame that they moved closure on those four pieces of legislation. It's a shame that nobody will work in this place for nine and a half months, that we'll will only work in this place for 20 days. It's also a shame that this government is going to the very end of its mandate, because I think it would be reasoned and acceptable to expect that when we have elections in this province, they're generally held every four years. As my member for Leeds-Grenville said, it's almost to the point that you're becoming an illegitimate government.

In my opinion, after four years, you are pushing the envelope with your mandate. Your popularity is very, very low --

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): Six per cent.

Mr Stockwell: -- at 6% of the decided vote. We are now closing in on four and a half years. You are now going to prorogue this session and ask us to come back in April so you may in fact put forward a new throne speech and a budget --

Mr Turnbull: With no committee work.

Mr Stockwell: -- with no committees in between. I suggest to you that you've pushed the envelope, folks. You've got about a four-year mandate. You haven't got any significant piece of legislation coming forward. There's no new thrust coming through. It seems to me that any fairminded, reasoned individual in the province of Ontario, if they were sitting on the other side of this House, would say, "It seems obvious it's time for the general election of 1995."

And I say this with full value: that the vast majority of Ontarians in this province want an election and they want it fast. They're tired. The economy has not continued to pick up, and you know what else? The Ontario public knows the economy is not going to pick up until this government leaves office. There's a pent-up amount of money out there, pools of it, that is waiting for the next election. They're not going to reinvest until the socialists are out. This economy is not going to make any recovery until the socialists are gone.

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It seems pretty clear to me, considering the pent-up amounts of money out there -- the entrepreneurial, the free enterprise, the capitalist market -- they're not going to free up this money until you people have called an election and the people of Ontario have decided your fate. I would say, the best thing that you can do for the people of Ontario, the best thing that you could for the economy of this province, the best thing that you can do for job creation in this province to help out people on limited incomes, to help those who need the help the most, the best thing you could do for every citizen around is call an election, get it over with and get a new government that will begin to restore the faith in the people, restore the faith in this province and finally turn the corner on the economy.

In closing, and I didn't go much over my 15 minutes, I want to say, if you've got any concerns out there about $32,000 to fix these steps, you can write to my office or phone me at 416-325-7535. I'd really like to have a private contractor come in and tell me how much it should've cost to fix three steps, seven-feet wide, take up the carpet, varnish it and put a railing up, because I think $32,000 is somewhat outrageous.

Mr Callahan: It's Jobs Ontario, though, that did it.

Mr Stockwell: That's right; it's Jobs Ontario. But you know, the other day, the cabby I was driving along with said, "Jobs Ontario? If you give me a tip, you create another Jobs Ontario job."

Mr Speaker, I'd like to thank you for allowing me this time to comment on that. I'm glad I found out about the $32,000; I think the people would know. And I want to ask the government, Jeez, if you can do the people one favour, just call an election, because I think they're waiting for this election like they've never waited for an election in their life.

The Speaker: Questions or comments?

Mr Callahan: We have been looking for ways to save money in this Legislature, and I want to thank the member for Etobicoke West, who just saved $32,000. We'll just close the front door of this place. It probably wouldn't matter anyway.

In terms of the member for Etobicoke West, he's wondering why we're proroguing tonight after 20 days. Well, the Premier knows and everybody else knows: We're not coming back.

Interjections: You are not coming back.

Mr Callahan: In fact, I have to compliment the Speaker. The last question in this House was the question by the last member of the New Democratic Party government who will ever ask a question in this House for many, many years to come, until the people get rid of the hangover of having elected a socialist government.

Let me tell you, though, in terms of the member for Etobicoke West, we have heard common sense. If his leader only had as much common sense, they might have a chance of winning 12 or 13 seats. But he is not the leader of the third party. Mr Rae? No, no. I'm sorry, Bob. Mr -- what's his name? I've forgotten him already. In any event, that was common sense, but the slash-and-burn tactics of the Conservative Party are things that just are not going to be bought by the people of this province.

So I say to you, get your signs ready. I think it's in the air. People are looking for an election. They're fed up with what's happened in this chamber, they're fed up with what has happened in this province. I think the member for Etobicoke West puts it very well: that until this government is defeated and until there's an election held, the enormity of the problems we have in this province will not be solved and the benefits of business will not come back.

Premier, you're shaking you head, but it is true. And you will not be back because you wouldn't dare come back with a throne speech, because you'd have to defend and it would be Agenda for People II.

The Speaker: The member's time has expired. The honourable member for Downsview.

Mr Perruzza: I don't know how, in two minutes, you could possibly do justice to many of the exaggerations that basically have been tabled on the floor of the House tonight. Now, my honourable friend the member for Yorkview says that the member for Etobicoke doesn't exaggerate. Well, I say to my colleague for Yorkview, you are wrong.

Mr George Mammoliti (Yorkview): I'm wrong?

Mr Perruzza: You are absolutely and completely wrong, because the member for Etobicoke West seems to have made a practice in this Legislature of doing nothing if not exaggerating what has been going on over the last little while.

Mr Speaker, you know the Conservatives were in power when we came to power. We all of a sudden fell in the throes of one of the worst recessions ever, and what did the Conservatives do when people asked for help? What did the Conservatives do when people asked for help? Well, I'll tell you what the Conservatives did when people asked for help. I'll tell you what the Conservatives did: They simply walked away from the table. They walked away. They turned their backs on them. They absolutely turned their backs on them.

He talks about the deficit. Well, they are like the kings of the deficit. The Progressive Conservatives are like the creators of the national debt and the national deficit. Look at the books, look at the books.

I think Donato here of the Toronto Sun has captured the essence of the modern Conservative Party in the province of Ontario and that's a golf pro with a golf club through his head.

Mr Norm Jamison (Norfolk): My comments will be short. The member for Etobicoke West was indicating that he would call an election now. I would just like to remind him that we have a leader here who will call the election at the appropriate time. He has the integrity as a leader and the honesty to do that, and also has vision and integrity built into one.

I would say that there was proof in the House today that spoke directly to integrity in this House during question period. When I, who seldom gets on his feet in this House to complain about the opposition parties -- I can tell you the fiasco in this House dealing with integrity about how a leader would react to something in this House that certainly should not have been brought forward, if at all, in that manner. It was certainly not indicative of any leader or person that would hope to be the leader of a government in this province in the future.

I can tell you that what we've heard from the member for Etobicoke West has been much the same tonight, and I would just like to remind him again that he's not the one to call an election. The Premier of the province will be the one to do that.

The Speaker: Questions or comments? The honourable member for Leeds-Grenville.

Mr Runciman: Mr Speaker, I wasn't going to participate, but the member for Norfolk prompted me to with the comments about my leader, comparing him to his leader, and I just simply want to review some of the history with respect to your party and your leader.

We can talk about the Agenda for People that was the platform your party ran on in the last election --

Mr Stockwell: Full of integrity.

Mr Runciman: -- full of integrity, full of promises that you completely failed to keep.

We can recall the 1990 election. Bob Rae, then the Leader of the Opposition, calling then-Premier David Peterson a liar. That's how the campaign began, by calling the Premier of the province a liar. That's your interpretation of integrity.

We can talk about Peter Kormos standing in this House for 17 hours in a filibuster on auto insurance, and your party coming into power and bringing in closure -- closure -- four times in the last 20 days. And you talk about integrity, you talk about democracy.

A more serious issue raised by my leader today was the stand your Premier has taken in opposition on human rights and his visit to China and the fact that this government is selling nuclear reactors to the government of China, a government responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people. And you describe that as integrity?

The Speaker: The member for Etobicoke West has up to two minutes for his response.

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Mr Stockwell: I wasn't going to get too riled until the member for Norfolk stands in his place and starts listing off the concerns that he has with the Conservative Party. (a) I know the Premier's going to call the election; (b) I can't wait; (c) I think you better check the history books and review your party's stands in opposition and some of the things they did, because the member from Leeds is very accurate.

Let's talk about Temagami and the fact that your leader went up there and got arrested with Mr Drainville. Mr Drainville went to jail. Your leader didn't go. He had the integrity to get elected. He didn't have the integrity to stand trial. Don't start lecturing us about whether or not we have integrity. You don't really appreciate the way we handle things. That's the difference in this House. You have one complaint about what took place today and you start lecturing us on integrity.

The best one is Agenda for People. You went and campaigned on this, talking about these promises that you made that you have no intention at all of fulfilling.

The negative advertising, another example: You went on TV and you said the Liberals were selling Ontario Place. That's what you campaigned on. That was your advertising. Your Premier stood down there in the press room downstairs and called Peterson a liar five times because he didn't implement his auto insurance plan. You people talked about full government auto insurance run by government and you had the nerve to back off on that. He sat down there calling Peterson a liar because he didn't go ahead on his plan.

I was here to debate whether or not we'd have an election -- and a $32,000 cost to fix some stairs heading up here -- and I have to listen to the member for Norfolk starting to question our integrity when the integrity of your party is so bloody awful it's unbelievable.

Mr Sorbara: I have quite an act to follow. One doesn't often want to have to follow the member for Etobicoke West. One generally doesn't have enough voice to meet the kind of "standards" that might apply to a speech from the member for Etobicoke West.

Like the member for Etobicoke West, I tend to think that today is the last day this Parliament will be sitting and, frankly, that's why I'm here. I just wanted an opportunity to put a few last words on the record as I look around this room from this marvellous vantage point probably for the last time. Let's be clear about it.

Applause.

Mr Sorbara: Well, there's some applauding that it's going to be the last time. Let's be clear about it. We don't know whether this is the last time. My friend from Norfolk was right. The Premier will call the election; the Premier will decide when the election is going to be; the Premier, in his wisdom, will walk down the hall, perhaps on March 20, perhaps on April 17 -- it'll be a Monday so that 37 days will pass to the election which must by law be on a Thursday. But the Premier will call that election.

I guess I'm going to start on that point because I think probably that's as good a symbol as any to indicate what's wrong and what needs to be fixed. I remember when the Premier was in opposition, he called this right of the Premier to fix the date of an election "the divine right of premiers." He criticized it, I think appropriately and brutally, and suggested that maybe if he were the Premier, we would put those kind of reforms in place that would take away the power of the Premier to call an election and invest that in some legal mechanism so that we could have regular, timely elections in the province of Ontario.

The Treasurer's shaking his head, but I remember the words so carefully, I say to the Premier. This was when you, sir, were in opposition --

Hon Bob Rae (Premier and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): When was that? That was a long time ago.

Mr Sorbara: It was all of your life. To be more specific, it was early in 1990, and you referred to this power of the Premier, the divine right of premiers, to call an election at the Premier's will. It didn't go well for us and I think perhaps it's not going to go as well for the incumbent Premier when he finally makes that decision.

We don't know whether we're in the last day of this session. We don't know whether our work is over. All of that power is vested in the Premier and I point to that as a symbol because if we could address ourselves to a simple thing like that, I think that some day we might get on the road to some sort of healthy reform in Ontario.

I remember when I first ran in 1985 -- and I think probably I'll remember a few things in the course of these few remarks tonight, because again I think it's my last address to this Parliament. I remember in 1985 as I was considering my candidacy and we were waiting for Frank Miller to decide whether or not he would call an election. No one knew and I thought, "I would love to get into that Parliament to help us change the rules so we could have a set time for an election, to take that power away from the Premier and to put it in a law to give it back to the people to let the people's law decide when elections would come, rather than have premiers decide when it might be most convenient for a government to go back to the people."

When I heard the Premier, when he was Leader of the Opposition, suggest that he might actually change this and give us a standard election period every four years or every five years -- but it comes automatically. It comes at the end of the term. When I heard him say that, I thought, well, after the election, now that he's elected, maybe those sorts of reforms will come. They didn't come and all of the other things that seemed to be promised, not just in the Agenda for People which was the campaign document, but all those things were promised. The promise of a New Democratic Party government never came to pass.

Now this government's life is coming to an end and as it comes to an end, I think I have to confess it hasn't all been bad. Those who say that the economic circumstances of the province must all be laid at the feet of the Treasurer, or the Premier, or the New Democratic Party or its cabinet -- it's just political nonsense. It doesn't make any real sense whatever. These have been, as the Premier has said, very tough times in Ontario, really tough. They would have been tough for anyone.

But when you look at the four and a half years this government has been in power, and you look at it really carefully and perhaps with some objectivity, I think the conclusion you have to come to is that this government has been horribly erratic in its behaviour; horribly inconsistent with its principles and horribly unpredictable. Of course, in government, the lack of predictability, the lack of having a sense of what's down the road, makes it very, very difficult indeed for the people who live in the jurisdiction to have confidence in what's coming tomorrow.

Perhaps some of those things that the government did were inevitable. Perhaps it was inevitable that we would have casinos in Ontario, but it was with some surprise and shock that a New Democratic Party government brought us casinos in Ontario. The easy money economy as the Premier used to describe it when he was in opposition.

Perhaps it was inevitable that we wouldn't have public automobile insurance. I for one lived in British Columbia when public automobile insurance was brought in by Dave Barrett in 1973 and it worked very well there. I thought, maybe this government when it brings in public automobile insurance will have hit on something that has worked elsewhere in Canada and it might be time in Ontario.

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I remember, as vividly as I can remember anything, Bob Nixon, the former Treasurer of Ontario, saying to me after the election but before the cabinet was sworn in and before we began the first day of sittings of this Parliament, "It seems to me that their very first bill has got to be automobile insurance." He expected that we'd come back here and that would be the first thing on the agenda. Of course, we never saw the bill.

The whole thrust of the Peter Kormos filibuster and the determination to do away with the Peterson Liberals and their insurance scam; maybe it was inevitable that we didn't have it, but somehow it's significant of the lack of predictability and the general sense of dismay that this government has left this province in.

It hasn't all been bad. Perhaps it was predictable that in this province we would go from fully subsidized roads, free highways, to a system of tolling. Perhaps that was inevitable. It's right throughout the US; we see more and more toll roads being built. Perhaps that was inevitable, but it was so inconsistent, in my view as a student of political history, that it would be an NDP government that would launch us down the road of electronic user-pay highways.

Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance): Nonsense. You don't know your history, then.

Mr Sorbara: The Treasurer says I don't know my history and I don't pretend to be a scholar. It just seemed to me, as I as a Liberal understand the major themes of the New Democratic Party and its predecessor, a little bit surprising, a little bit inconsistent, a little bit ironic.

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): It's all my fault.

Mr Sorbara: The Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations leaves and says it's all her fault. Well, of course, it's not her fault, but she's the one who gave us casinos.

I remember when I was in her ministry, when I was the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, that the very same folks who have wanted casinos in Ontario for a long time came to me as minister and said, "We have a proposal to present to you, Minister, for state-run casino gambling in Ontario." My response was simple. I said: "I don't want to be the minister who brings casino gambling to Ontario. Maybe it's going to come one of these days, but I don't want to be the minister who does it." I think that if Bob Rae had been asked in opposition whether he would be the Premier who would bring forward casino gambling in Ontario, I think in opposition he would have said no.

All of that gets papered over in one way or another with the Premier's favourite expression, I think, "That was then and this is now." In a sense he justifies, and I think in some cases appropriately, the fact that government is very, very different than opposition, you have to meet the demands of the day. Yet it just seems so inconsistent that it would be the NDP that would, by law, breach and modify and amend every single public sector agreement in the province of Ontario.

Hon Mr Laughren: What would you have done?

Mr Sorbara: Again, the Treasurer said what would I have done. I'll tell you what I would have done, I would have not taken the approach that your government took in terms of the social contract.

I think my views were on the record then and I'll put them on the record again now. I would have had a rollback of 5% of everyone that receives salary from the public treasury in one form or another -- not a social contract. I would not have had a social contract, I would have had a legislated rollback.

Hon Mr Laughren: What's the difference?

Mr Sorbara: The Treasurer says, "What's the difference?" He knows very well what the difference is; it was a very different thing.

Hon Mr Rae: That wasn't your leader's position; that was the opposite of her position.

Mr Sorbara: My friend the Premier says that was not my leader's position. I think that is obvious. I'm not here tonight as I say goodbye to say I've agreed with everything my leader has advocated. The fact that the Premier thinks that in this Parliament we should all be of one voice is --

Hon Mr Laughren: That is not what he said.

Mr Sorbara: Well, if that's what the Premier is arguing rhetorically by way of his questions, so be it. That wasn't my leader's position; that was my position, that there should be that kind of rollback.

The point I'm trying to make is that it just seems so inconsistent that a New Democratic Party government would breach and set aside and strike down every single collective agreement governing almost one million employees in the province of Ontario. I just think it was inconsistent. I mean, we know there's no consistency between what this governing party offered in 1990 and what it did throughout this period, and still the message hasn't gotten through.

I tell the Premier that I tuned in for a few moments to his TVO session with Steve Paikin on Studio 2.

Hon Mr Rae: Why didn't you call in?

Mr Sorbara: The Premier says, why didn't I call in? Because every single staffer in every single minister's office was calling in with all these planned questions, talking about what a wonderful job the Premier had done. Why was I not surprised? It was quite a program. Tapes are available for only $5.95 from the Office of the Premier of Ontario.

The theme of that program, and the theme of all of the speeches over the past while, has been, "Well, this is really a tough job, but somebody's got to do it."

Hon Howard Hampton (Minister of Natural Resources): Greg, you were going to phone, right? But, like a Liberal, you changed your mind?

Mr Sorbara: My friend from Rainy River says, "Greg, you were going to phone." Frankly, I was tempted. I'm lobbying the Premier very hard right now to follow through on some of the good commitments: to get the damn subway built to York University before he leaves -- he says he's going to do it, and I think he's a man of his word and he's going to do it -- and some of the other things as well.

But all of this will just sort of go down in the history books, and it'll be a pretty rough time. The government is going to get defeated. It's not going to be re-elected, and it's not for one particular thing or another. It's not the social contract, it's not the casinos, it's not the cut in services. In my view, it's that quality of inconsistency, that lack of reliability.

Hon Mr Laughren: You are saying that?

Mr Sorbara: The Treasurer says I of all people was saying that. We were defeated in 1990, and I think perhaps with very good reason, and you will be defeated for reasons that are similar in nature.

Hon Mr Laughren: Really?

Mr Sorbara: Yes, I say to the Treasurer, really.

Hon Mr Rae: I think it will be for a different reason.

Hon Mr Laughren: Yes, I think it will be a different reason too.

Ms Murdock: We didn't call the election early.

Mr Sorbara: My friend from Sudbury says she didn't call the election early. After about a year and a half of this party being in government, lots of my friends around Ontario were saying, "Maybe an early election is a good idea; maybe we should have elections after three years."

I'm reminded of when another government came to its final day, and this was really a great day in Ontario. It was June 18, 1985. That was the day, I remind you, Mr Speaker, when a non-confidence vote was taken in this Legislature which brought to an end 42 years of Conservative government in Ontario.

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I think of that day because, again, I believe this is the final day of this Parliament, and that was a day when the Parliament continued but that government came to an end and there was a transfer of power. And unlike this evening, when we've heard a lot of sort of raucous noise, sound and fury signifying you know what, I remember my friend Bob Nixon --

Hon Ms Churley: What?

Mr Sorbara: Signifying nothing, my friend. Nothing, I say to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

Hon Mr Rae: You're the one who's talking.

Mr Sorbara: Well, you know, I'm just saying goodbye. There's not a whole lot to say when you're saying goodbye, and with this degree of heckling, it's rather difficult, I'll tell the Premier, to carry a consistent theme.

But when that government came to an end on June 18, 1985, the then Treasurer, Bob Nixon, gave a truly magnificent speech. Anyone who cares much about the quality of the debate in this Parliament would be well advised to read that speech.

I remember Mr Nixon saying that 42 years of Conservative government are coming to an end, not all of it bad, and the great thing, he said, was that the mantle of power was going to pass to a new party and a new government, and no school buses would be blown up and no one would riot in the streets and no one would take up arms and there would be no bloodshed and there would be no civic disorder, but that our system had provided an orderly, peaceful way for the true essence of democracy to express itself in the transfer of power from one political party to another, even after 42 years.

I just want to remember that speech tonight, because it seems to me that this is yet another moment when the life of one government is coming to an end, its legacy not all bad, its record not all one of mistakes, what it left the people of Ontario after four and a half years not all of it bad and not all of it good.

But the great thing that is about to happen is that the central theme of a democracy -- that periodically governments will put their record before the people and the people will decide and the people will choose a new government -- that great event, just like the seasons coming again, will come again in Ontario. What will happen is, all of us soon will be asked to leave our seats and clean out our desks, and some of us will go back to the people and ask again for support and some, like me, will say, "Thank you for the support and the opportunity" and go back to private life. To me, that is the great, great thing about a democracy and the great thing about this place that has 130 desks in it.

This place to me is really the sacred sanctuary of free speech. We have the freedom to express great thoughts and the freedom to heckle and be as irrelevant as a casual conversation on the street corner. But it's this place here. This is the symbol of democracy. This is the place that expresses our system of government, based on the right of the people every four or five years to evaluate a government and change a government and renew the membership in this wonderful and glorious place.

I just want to say that after nine and a half years in this place, in what I think will be my final remarks, I just consider it a tremendous privilege to have served here, a tremendous honour. I think the greatest calling of all is to be chosen by the citizens to do the citizens' business, and in this province, the way in which we do that is to stand for election and, if elected, to come and debate issues of public policy in this House.

Most of the time, the debate is managed and shaped and determined and driven by the government agenda. I frankly hope that changes somewhat in the next Parliament. I wish for the next Parliament that we would completely rewrite the rules and reduce the iron grip that the government now has on the parliamentary process.

This was another issue of terrible inconsistency, the record of the NDP in changing the rules of this Legislature. After some, I don't know, 25 years of liberalization of the rules, driven primarily by NDP leaders and NDP government House leaders, a 25-year agenda of liberalization and more power and responsibility for opposition members, an NDP government that came to power seized all of the power. In my view, I should tell my friends frankly, this place lost much of its relevance on the evening we changed the rules to allow government to use closure at will. For me, it was all over then. There was no more opportunity. We had virtually nothing left in parliamentary terms in which to hold the government to account.

But we come and go, and rules come and go. My hope is that in the next Parliament there will be a refreshing new approach to this Parliament and that we can change the rules so that once again we start engaging in real debates about real issues of public policy. I think we've deteriorated here over the past three or four years. Question period is almost intolerable.

Hon Mr Rae: Tell me about it.

Mr Sorbara: The Premier says, "Tell me about it."

Hon Mr Rae: That's a great admission on your part. We reached a new low today.

Mr Sorbara: And the Premier says we've reached a new low. I don't think so. I think we've been on that same track for quite some time. But these are passing trends, and what remains and what is permanent is the system itself.

I believe that the system needs attention. The system is on the critical list, and I hope that those of you who return here in the next Parliament pay some small attention to that, to start to look at the way in which this sacred sanctuary is governed and how the day-to-day activities of this place play out during the life of a Parliament.

This Parliament I believe is about over. Some of its work will stand as a tribute to the government. Much of it I think will be changed and revised and reworked for the greater good of the people. For me, it's been, as I said earlier on, a tremendous and great honour to have sat in this place and served the people of this great province.

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

Mr Perruzza: I'm going to do this very briefly, since we're speculating on the date for an election and whether or not we're going to be back in this place. I tend to hope for a long campaign period, because I believe the public should have a real opportunity to take a look at all the platforms put before them at election time and to really have a good look at all three parties, and I tend to believe that one should happen some time in late summer.

I believe that we're going to be back in this place, so I suspect we're going to have an opportunity to do this again, but in the event that the member for York Centre is correct and we don't come back to this place, I just want to, as an opposition member, put my comments on the record as well with respect to the member for York Centre in his goodbye to this place.

I met him earlier on in the mandate, Mr Speaker, and I guess from the outside you hear a whole lot of things about a whole lot of people, but I can tell you that after having gotten to know him a little bit over the last four years, I guess as well as a government member can get to know an opposition member, I've come to respect his good judgement and on many occasions we've exchanged views. Quite frankly, I've come to believe he has represented the people of York Centre to the best of his ability and with utmost integrity, and I'd like to wish him well, if we don't happen to come back to this place, in his future endeavours.

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Mr Daigeler: I don't quite share the view of the member for York Centre that we may not be back in the spring. That's perhaps the variety of views we have in the Liberal Party, and that's great. In fact, I think that reflects the identity and the idiosyncracy that perhaps the member for York Centre has and myself and other members of this caucus. I happen to feel the election is going to be sometime early June and that we will come back for a throne speech and a budget sometime in April.

But be that as it may, clearly the member for York Centre -- who I hope will have many more opportunities to speak in the House before he gives up his seat finally, because he has said he does not want to run in the next election. I do want to use this opportunity to indicate that clearly the member for York Centre has and has shown a deep passion for the political process. Whatever he has done, he has done with great intelligence, with great commitment and with great honesty. I certainly have appreciated that tremendously. And he has always enlivened not just the debates in the House here but, I can tell you, the debates in our caucus, and always with a very significant and very special contribution, a special understanding of the issues.

Again, I have not always agreed with him -- although on many occasions I have, but not always -- and it has always made for a very lively debate. I think, as he rightfully said, this is what this House should be all about, this is what the process should be all about, and it is very unfortunate that the NDP government has put rules and regulations in place that stifle this process. I think this is why the member for York Centre is looking with some regret on the past five years. Again, my thanks to the member for York Centre.

Mr Callahan: I think this sums it all up in terms of what government's all about: "I really believe the fundamental test of any government is how it treats those who are the most vulnerable in its society and in its midst." I think the member, my colleague who spoke earlier, sums that up; that's a very true test.

Some of the members over there are shaking their head. Well, I want to tell you that was a quote from Hansard of March 2, 1989, and guess who the speaker was? The Premier of this province.

I have to say that the true test, to the people watching tonight, is whether the Premier has lived up and his government has lived up to that statement, that he believed "the fundamental test of any government is how it treats those who are most vulnerable in its society and in its midst." I wonder if you really believe, as you leave this place and go home for Christmas, whether those very eloquent words of the then Leader of the Opposition and now Premier of this province have been met.

Applause.

Mr Callahan: The Minister of Municipal Affairs is applauding himself and his government. I have to suggest to you that on this side of the House, I think for the benefit of the people of Ontario who are the most vulnerable, they would probably answer no. They would probably answer that the Premier of this province, in making that eloquent statement on March 2, 1989, when he had the ability to do it as the Leader of the Opposition, has not fulfilled that as Premier of this province, nor has your government.

The vulnerable of this province are still vulnerable, they have still not been dealt with, they are still being treated as second-class citizens. Certainly the Agenda for People that I read during the election spoke to that issue. You have not fulfilled it. You may as well call an election, because if you come back with Agenda for People II they won't believe it.

The Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? The member for York Centre has up to two minutes for his reply.

Mr Sorbara: Mr Speaker, I wanted to save these final two minutes for you, sir, in particular. In the main body of my remarks, my argument was that the government record on the whole has been horribly inconsistent. Your record has not been like that. I've sat here for about a year and a half and sparred with you quite vigorously, and I must say, sir, that you really have turned out to be a marvellous Speaker, and I mean that sincerely, particularly given the fact that when you first assumed the Chair you were awful, you were terrible, you didn't know a thing about the job.

I remember that early on in the session someone raised a point of order, a rather inappropriate point of order, and you actually sat there and said, "I am going to let anyone who wants to speak on this point of order speak on it." The debate lasted of course most of the afternoon, as people took advantage of your rather novel approach to points of order to eat up and consume the time.

But I have been very impressed with the way in which you have handled your responsibilities in an increasingly competent and professional way over the course of the years, in a Parliament that isn't that easy to control, with a membership not that easy to control.

I know, and I'll put it on record here, that when you were invited to be the Speaker, it wasn't your first choice, but I suspect that, should you happen to be re-elected, you would aggressively ask to be returned to the Chair. Now, I don't want you to be re-elected, because underneath that silly little white thing you're wearing, there's the heart and soul of an NDPer, and of course I want all of them to be defeated.

But I just want to end my time here by congratulating you on the marvellous way in which you have conducted yourself in the Chair, sir.

The Speaker: Further debate?

Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): Tonight we're dealing with the question of supply, and of course the tradition of supply is that the Legislature votes money for projects and programs and that the assembly has a measure of control over the spending plans of the government of the day. Tonight we will be voting supply to ensure that orders in council, government actions alone, will not determine the availability of funding for the government agenda, and that is a proud part of our parliamentary tradition.

As I address the question of supply, I want to tell my constituents in particular that today was not a proud day, for other reasons, in the parliamentary tradition in this place. I believe and want to say quite specifically to my own constituents that the question and the interventions of the leader of the third party were degrading and reprehensible and that they served only to bring this place into disrepute. Is it any wonder that people believe that politicians are frivolous, not to be trusted, and people to whom little esteem ought to be given?

Yet to some of us, Parliament is to be a place where debate and discussion and compromise and determining the art of the possible in public policy is a way of replacing the unbridled power of the sword on the battlefield of decision-making; where major issues of the day are brought forward and the representatives of the people comment on government proposals and perhaps bring changes to those proposals. That is a noble thing, and it follows the tradition of "The government proposes and the assembly disposes."

One of the means of disposing of issues is by granting or withholding supply, and that's what this debate is all about. But some issues haven't come before the House, and there are several issues in health care I want to include in this supply debate because I believe they are a matter of extreme public importance and should have been addressed before this House in the normal course of things and not left merely to a supply debate in the closing hours of a closing session.

One of those is the question of nurse practitioners. Our understanding is that next week, the Minister of Health will announce an entire new mechanism for the licensing and practice of nurse practitioners in the province: that nurse practitioners will be given five controlled acts; that they will be allowed to prescribe medications; that there will be, in the beginning, a little educational surround for those who are entering what in fact is a new licensed profession in health care.

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We believe that the issues surrounding the question of nurse practitioners should have been brought before the House. Indeed, none of the processes that have been required in the Regulated Health Professions Act were followed in this case, and we think this is a major error. There are serious issues that should have been looked at, where there should have been cross-professional consultation.

That did not take place, nor was the entire question of utilization and cost management associated with the introduction of what is a new subprofession, I suppose, brought before the House.

Another issue that has not been brought before the House is the hospital reallocation formula. For more than two years, hospitals, at the urging of the Minister of Health, have worked to bring forward a plan that would ensure that allocations would be changed from within the hospital budget, the hospital portion of the Health budget, and that those hospitals which are working efficiently and effectively would be rewarded and those hospitals which are working less effectively would see moneys removed from their budget to those places where there was a need and fewer resources.

Unfortunately, after two years of work, including the development of an appeal process in this area, the minister, at the very last moment before this policy was to be implemented, changed her mind. Hospitals are now left in a position where they don't know whether an equity formula will be put into place or whether indeed there will have to be another measure of cross-hospital cuts to ensure that those hospitals which are in greatest need of funding and who are most efficiently operating now will be able to serve the patients who come to their doors.

Last week we heard, on another topic -- the Premier announced in a scrum he called that there would be a catastrophic drug program in this province. Interestingly enough, the officials in the Ministry of Health knew nothing about this program. The Minister of Health had no details to provide to this place or to any of those affected by that new policy announcement, no details with respect to that program.

As you know, my party has been active in the support of a catastrophic drug program and a program that would move on to ensure coverage of the working poor and people who work in fields such as the retail trade and seasonal work who have no coverage at all and who are left in highly vulnerable positions.

Unfortunately, the government has no other information. The work is not done. The only detail the government has available or has announced is the start date, yet nothing is in place. There is no indication, for instance, of who will be fully covered, of what diseases or illnesses will be allowed to access this drug program, of where the private sector and its plans fit in. So much hope is being raised now and so many hopes can be dashed because of this premature announcement simply for a headline and to be in response to a measure of lobbying that was perhaps more effective than it ought to have been.

About a year ago now, my party was engaged in completing its report on proposals in cancer, and the government responded by setting up a cancer network headed by Dr Les Levine, who is and has been working very hard with a number of other people from other sectors of cancer care to develop a cancer strategy for the government. The work of that committee will end in something less than three weeks, and we have had no indication from the Minister of Health of either whether that work will continue or what resources will be available to the cancer network and what follow-up will occur later.

Bill 173 we've had enormous debate on already. Once again it's very clear that the government had not done its homework in terms of cost analysis with respect to the implementation of that bill, and as we vote supply, we may well be looking at a bottomless pit, an abyss that this government has not analysed and has not taken into full account the implications of.

The last area that I want to raise is the issue of the health cards where the government is plunging $110 million into a health card system which will add two new pieces of information, a photograph, an expiry date, and add nothing in fact to increasing health care and providing greater health services to people in Ontario.

There is a measure of accountability required of government in bringing its public agenda forward. In my view, because the government has not addressed these questions, it has let down the people of Ontario and in fact has not been truly accountable.

I'm going to conclude my remarks now by thanking two of my colleagues whom I've had the honour of serving with in this House, the member for York Centre, Mr Sorbara, who spoke earlier, and the member for Quinte, Mr Hugh O'Neil, who will be retiring from this place at the end of this Parliament. Whether it ends now or whether it ends within a few short months, I believe the place has been enhanced by their participation and it has been a great pleasure and honour to serve here with them.

The Speaker: I thank the honourable member for Halton Centre for her contribution to the debate and invite any questions and/or comments. Further debate?

Hon Mr Laughren: I just wanted to express my appreciation for the contribution that members made in this debate. I found it most fascinating. I find, as usual, that at the end of a session, particularly when members are anticipating the possibility of an election, it does focus the mind and focus the debate and therefore it does make the debates much more interesting. I very much appreciate the contribution of all members.

The Speaker: Mr Laughren has moved third reading of Bill 204, An Act to authorize the payment of certain amounts for the Public Service for the fiscal year ending on March 31, 1995. 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.

Mr Philip moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill 198, An Act to amend the Liquor Licence Act, the Municipal Act and the Regional Municipalities Act and certain other statutes related to upper tier municipalities / Projet de loi 198, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les permis d'alcool, la Loi sur les municipalités, la Loi sur les municipalités régionales et certaines autres lois ayant trait aux municipalités de palier supérieur.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Does the minister have any comments?

Hon Ed Philip (Minister of Municipal Affairs): In light of the hour, I'll say only a few words. But on behalf of my colleagues the Solicitor General and the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, I rise to present third reading of Bill 198, legislation that will control after-hours clubs and other late-night businesses.

The member for Fort York particularly should be congratulated since it was on his bill that we built this broader piece of legislation that of course will apply to all municipalities across the province.

The bill received many accolades when it was introduced. We believe that this is a reflection both of the urgency of the problem and the wisdom of the community approach that it is based on.

Frank Parkhouse, the president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, said, "This package will give police the tools we need to take action against establishments which pose a threat to public safety."

In a letter to me, Bill Mickle, the president of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, also supported the legislation, and in his letter he said, "AMO is pleased that your government has taken a comprehensive approach to this issue by providing municipalities across the province with authority to deal with these issues."

I want to thank the members of the opposition who involved themselves in the committee and in the committee hearings and the fact that they of course are supporting the bill.

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The bill, I believe, sends a strong message to the drug dealers, to the thugs, to the criminals who want to take charge in our communities. It will give the police and municipalities and community groups new tools that they need to return control to communities of the people who live in them. I urge all members to support this bill.

The Speaker: I thank the minister for his contribution to the debate and invite any questions and/or comments.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): I'm not going to speak to this bill. I'll just try and sum it up in the questions or comments for two minutes.

I know our caucus supports this piece of legislation. I myself don't. I think if you fund the police properly and in fact ask them to enforce the laws that we have on our books, these kinds of problems can be dealt with the proper funding and enforcement that we have in place today.

The reason these things have taken off, in my opinion, is the cutback in policing and the costs associated with funding the police departments. It's a problem that I think is going to be far more difficult to handle than with this piece of legislation.

I don't honestly believe the minister or any member in this House thinks that this is going to cut down on the drug dealers, the thugs and the bad people out there in our society. I don't believe anyone in the private sector or public sector out there thinks this is some kind of panacea and will resolve the issues of the day with respect to violence and crime and the basic uncertainty and insecurity in the neighbourhoods that are in Metropolitan Toronto today and the area.

Having said that, I understand that some members believe this is a very small step in a long journey that could in fact help --

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): The police, the communities.

Mr Stockwell: The member says the police are in support. You know, I spent a number of years on council dealing with the police on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes, in my opinion, the police ask for things and ask councils to do things, and provincial governments, that I don't think necessarily are in the best interests of all parties concerned. The police may want it in some instances and they sometimes want more money, they sometimes want more staff, but I think we have the laws, to the member opposite, on the books today that could stop this.

We don't have enough police officers. It's not laws that are the problem today, it's the number of police officers on the street who have to deal with the crime and lawlessness in our neighbourhoods, and this piece of legislation isn't going to stop one crime from happening. The only thing that's going to stop that are on-the-beat officers and enforcing the laws that are on the books today.

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): I took part in the second reading debate on this bill and at that time I said, and I still believe, having read this bill several times, that the bill will help and it'll make a minute difference in perhaps allowing police a little easier enforcement of legal establishments that might be breaking the law.

The problem is that people are going out on Saturday nights and shooting one another in booze cans, and booze cans are, plain and simple, illegal. They exist for only one purpose, illegality, be it drug dealing, be it the consumption and dispensing of alcohol, and the fact is you can't legislate rules for something that is purely illegal. You can't do it, and no matter how hard you try, booze cans that operate in one factory plaza on one night and in a different one a week later can't be legislated against.

The only way you can deal with booze cans, which is where people are killing one another, because that's what they go there for, among other things, is to give the police the enforcement capability to find these places and to get rid of them. If you don't do that, people are still going to go to these places on Saturday night, in spite of the fact that you've legislated on top of legislation that you already have and that you already aren't enforcing, and they're going to kill one another. That's what they go there for. They take their guns and they shoot one another. That's the purpose of illegal booze cans. When you go there you get yourself all tanked up, and then you start shooting, and then you go out to do a drug deal.

The fact is you can't legislate these places. You can't try and take something that's illegal and only exists for an illegal purpose and try and create legislation. You have to give the police the powers to enforce the law that already exists and the resources to get rid of these places.

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): The Conservative Party speaks of the problems that exist that are trying to be remedied by this bill. They would in fact exacerbate that. They'd cut dramatically the moneys available to people. I think part of the problem is it's a malaise. There are people out there who are street people, there are people who feel that there's no hope in society. They're going to go someplace at night. You can shut down the after-hours clubs, you can expand, as I think the government has said, the drinking hours. They're going to be there.

I think what we've got to do is address the entire problem we have in our society in terms of trying to get to the root cause as to why people will seek that type of entertainment that late in the night. Obviously, it's because they're lonely, they're poor, they're people who are looking for some way of giving hope to their lives. I think until we do that, all the legislation in the world from this government or any government that succeeds it is not really going to get to the root cause of the whole problem.

I feel sorry for the police officers. The police officers are the people who have to go out there at night when we're asleep and take the dangers of protecting us from that type of environment. I suggest that all the answers from the third party, with their Common Sense Revolution -- and I applaud the government for bringing this legislation in terms of its solving a problem, but really, we have to get to the root cause of the problem, and the laws in terms of shutting down this, that or the other thing are really not going to solve that.

I go back to the Premier, who was then the opposition leader. I quoted what he said very eloquently when he was in opposition. I think it's time to look at the root causes of a lot of these problems. In terms of just throwing money at silly things, we should be looking at the root causes and dealing with them.

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I simply want to put on the record once again that this initiative could have been undertaken a number of years ago when the Liberal government and the then parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, Mr Offer, chaired a task force and looked at liquor laws in the province. One of the areas they made recommendations in was this specific area, after-hours clubs or illegal booze cans. They made specific recommendations to the Peterson government of the day and it failed to act upon them.

The other thing I want to put on the record in respect to this is that we are supporting it as a caucus. We have some reservations, and those reservations are shared by the Ontario Restaurant Association and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business as well.

We do think there are some modest improvements here that are coming forward. What offends me about it has been some of the political rhetoric by the Minister of Municipal Affairs, who is suggesting that this is such a magnificent piece of legislation. He said, "We're going to give back the communities to the people." He said this evening what a message this sends out to drug dealers.

The reality is that this isn't going to have any impact in any meaningful way on the very serious crime problems in this province. They're going to continue. We're going to continue to have deaths in illegal booze cans. The significant problems that are underlying all of the crime in this province are not being addressed by this government and were not addressed by the previous Liberal government. Those are the issues this government continues to fail to take initiatives to deal with.

I've expressed those concerns. My colleague from Etobicoke West just mentioned one of them, the lack of adequate police manpower. Metro Toronto is 600 under strength right now. The OPP in many areas of this province simply doesn't have the manpower to adequately patrol rural communities on a 24-hour basis, significant areas with virtually no coverage in the late hours of the evening.

The Speaker: The Minister of Municipal Affairs has up to two minutes for his reply.

Hon Mr Philip: I'm fine, Mr Speaker. The bill stands on its own. The police and the community have spoken. Let's take the vote.

The Speaker: Further debate? The member for St Catharines.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I simply want to indicate the support of the Liberal Party, the official opposition in the House, for this legislation. Several of our members stood in the House, the leader of the Liberal Party, the member for Lawrence and the member for St David-St George all stood in the House, among other members, asking for legislation of this kind. We obviously have the support of the three parties in the Legislative Assembly for this legislation, so it's not as though we're going to have a significant divide on it.

It is not going to solve all the problems we have in terms of certain kinds of crimes that are committed, but it's a step in the right direction, and whenever we take one step, it is of some significance. I know Frank Parkhouse from St Catharines, who is the president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, and he is a person whose opinion I respect on matters of this kind. I know this initiative will not be one which will be costly to the government in terms of the financial outlay; some of the other measures that are recommended, such as adding significant numbers of police officers, would incur some significant new costs. Some members of this assembly may wish to see that happen, but we all know that would incur significant new costs in the province that all of us would want to justify one way or another.

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We've had a good committee, I think, on this. We had some hearings that were permitted on that day. We've had members of the committee from all parties making a contribution. Some expressed some concerns about the legislation, but we in the official opposition will be supporting it on the consensus basis that seems to be developing over some of these issues in this House.

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

Mr Callahan: I have to go back to the very issue that I spoke on before: How did we get here? How did good, old Ontari-ari-ario and Toronto and other areas, how did we possibly get to the stage where we require this type of legislation? We have allowed the consideration of our young people to get to the point where after-hours clubs are their entertainment. I mean, maybe you should be looking at the root causes of this.

I agree with all the members of my caucus. We'll support this because this is an effort to try to put a curb on this, but it's a Band-Aid approach and it's something that has a root cause that we as legislators have to determine. Why have we allowed it to happen? Ontario was not like this before. In fact, if anything, Ontario was Victorian Ontario and suddenly it's become the Times Square of Ontario. I mean, Torontonians and Ontarians didn't see this kind of nonsense before. We have allowed it to happen. We've sat back on our hands as legislators and we've allowed it to happen, and now we're suddenly trying to put our finger in the dike to stop it.

As I said before, my colleagues and I will support it because it has to be supported, because we are now in a crisis situation. But I have to say that this government has not done much. Certainly it has to be looked at in terms of the root causes of why this problem exists and trying to put our finger on it so we can stop having to react this way in terms of bringing legislation forward to put the finger in the dike.

Let's try building the dike. Let's try understanding why we have these problems and deal with them in a rational fashion, rather than trying to deal with them in this piecemeal way.

But we are supporting it because it needs support from the community, it needs support from the police, it needs support for our young people who are probably out there in those dangerous situations.

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I go further and say that I have to commend the government for moving on this issue. It is something that is a very, very difficult issue to deal with. They had to do something and it was done. Of course, the police will need all the resources they can. At least, they need legislation. They need more. They speak about house parties that they have no right to go into, and sometimes booze is being sold at these house parties, which creates a lot of problems thereafter.

I want to say that there are not many times I agree with the government. I think they have moved on this one. It's important. People are concerned about it. It's a very difficult thing to do. I have strong support for this kind of legislation.

Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): Just briefly, I want to stand in my place and offer my support to the bill too. I don't think there's a claim that's it's going to solve all the problems with after-hours clubs and booze cans, but it is providing tools to municipalities and police forces that have been asking for them for some time. It will indeed help control late-night businesses and will give power to police forces and municipalities to shut such facilities down or limit the hours they can stay open. It's providing tools to the police and municipalities and therefore is very important and certainly is requested and supported by the citizens of this province, who believe very strongly in law and order.

The Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? The honourable member for St Catharines has up to two minutes for his reply. Further debate? Seeing none, the Minister of Municipal Affairs has the opportunity to conclude the debate.

Mr Philip moves third reading of Bill 198.

Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

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

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it. I declare the motion carried.

Resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.

VICTIMS' RIGHT TO PROCEEDS OF CRIME ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 SUR LE DROIT DES VICTIMES AUX GAINS RÉALISÉS À LA SUITE D'UN ACTE CRIMINEL

Mr Jackson moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 210, An Act to provide for the payment of money awarded in civil law suits to victims of crime / Projet de loi 210, Loi prévoyant le versement aux victimes d'actes criminels des sommes adjugées dans les poursuites civiles.

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): I'll reserve my comments until the later part of the rotation.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Debate?

Hon Marion Boyd (Attorney General and Minister Responsible for Women's Issues): For too long, victims have felt marginalized in our justice system. This government supports this bill today standing in the name of the member for Burlington South because it will assist Ontario in its goal of making the system more sensitive and acceptable to victims, while improving the service and the assistance they receive.

Our party is particularly pleased to support this measure, based as it is on work done many years ago by our late colleague Jim Renwick. Jim had a similar bill before this House for a number of sessions, and when he was no longer here to speak on behalf of victims himself, our colleague Bud Wildman took up the torch by reintroducing a similar measure.

Our party and our government have always maintained that the victims of crime must be treated with fairness and sensitivity within the justice system. Ontario has initiated, over the last three governments, a number of very excellent programs geared to help victims of crime, and the bill introduced today builds on that progress.

All of us in this House should feel proud to participate in the speedy passage of the private member's bill. The government would have liked to see earlier movement on this bill, but we had policy reservations and we needed to ensure that the honourable member's design of his bill was as sound as possible, as effective as possible, before proceeding.

The bill presented today is the result of a lot of very hard work by a large number of people who, in conjunction with the presenter of this bill, worked to ensure it became a reality. In particular, I want to recognize the work of legislative counsel, the Ministry of the Attorney General staff, and the staff of the House leaders' offices. They worked hard to ensure that we came to this point.

As a result of this hard work, and with the goodwill of all members in this House, we have before us a bill that will allow the victims of crime to recover the money awarded to them in lawsuits against the accused or convicted persons. The purpose of the bill is to ensure that any money that the accused or convicted person receives as a result of his or her crime is first used to satisfy awards to the victims of the crimes committed.

We can and must do everything we can as a Legislature to restore the trust of victims in our justice system. This is one step we can take together tonight, and I urge members to support the bill brought forward by the member for Burlington South.

The Speaker: I thank the honourable Attorney General for her contribution to the debate and invite any questions and/or comments.

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Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): I agree with the Attorney General that this is a very broad step forward. You see in the United States where, just with the O.J. Simpson trial, I'm sure that with the large contingent of lawyers he's got, they're not acting for free. They're obviously looking forward to payment from the proceeds of whatever comes out of that. I think that's outrageous, that victims of crime have to stand by and see moneys being paid out by various organizations which are really trading on the grief of other people. If anybody is to achieve beneficial results from that in any way which will go a short way towards trying to relieve their anxiety from losing a loved one, it should be the people who are left behind. I concur with the Attorney General that this is the place where the money should go.

Having said that, I have to say that I've looked at the original bill, where the money would have gone to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. I couldn't concur with that because, as we know, the Mahaffy family received, I think, $25,000. That's hardly adequate to cover even their transportation expenses to Ottawa or wherever the trial is moved. I would prefer to see that this money would be specifically earmarked -- and I understand it's now payable to the public trustee -- to look after all of the needs of the people who are left behind from tragic events that take place, particularly in a violent criminal crime where a person is not just a subject of something that's accidental but it's a deliberate murder.

In fact, if that's the nature of the bill, I can find nothing wrong with supporting it, because for too long we've allowed that money to hang out there to be absorbed by people who were just nothing more than pariahs on the fringes of the tragedies of other people. I think the bill is worthwhile.

The Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? The Attorney General has up to two minutes for her reply. Is there further debate?

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I want to indicate my strong personal support and the support of the Liberal Party for this bill which has been initiated by the member for Burlington South and has been assisted by the Ministry of the Attorney General.

I had a chance to speak on October 21, 1993, in a debate which dealt with this subject, again initiated by a private member's bill of the member for Burlington South, and on that occasion indicated how repelled and repulsed we all are by those who would think of making money from a crime. There are people who really want to go out and sell books, who want to make television shows, who want to sell souvenirs, odd as it may sound and morbid as it may sound, based on the crimes that they have committed themselves or to which they have been an accomplice. I can't think of anything that society would find more repulsive than those who would try to do this.

Mr Jackson, the member for Burlington South, and I have both had experience with the families of two victims of recent crimes which are now before the courts: the murder of Leslie Mahaffy and the murder of Kristen French. I think Mr Jackson, the member for Burlington South, has had some discussion with both of these families, but in particular, his constituents, or the people who reside in Burlington, the Mahaffys, and I have on many occasions had conversations with Doug and Donna French about the trials and tribulations they have gone through.

This has been a crime which has received a lot of international attention. Certainly, if I focus on my own community, it has received very considerable attention. You know, we can talk about issues in this House that we believe are very significant, and they are significant; we can talk about international and national and province-wide problems. But if you talk to the people of St Catharines, there's one issue that is always foremost in their minds, and that is the issue of dealing with crimes that are as horrendous as that which was committed against an innocent girl, Kristen French, who was on her way home from school, the safest of situations, going through a churchyard, going through to her own neighbourhood on the way home from school in the middle of the afternoon, and was kidnapped and subsequently murdered. As I say, that case is now before the courts, so I'm not in a position to make further comment about the court case itself.

But there have been issues that have been raised in this House. The leader of the Liberal Party, Lyn McLeod, and Dianne Poole, the member for Eglinton, are two people I think of among others in the House who have raised issues -- the member for Mississauga South is another person, and the member for Burlington South -- such as the killer cards where, again, people are trying to make money from a crime, trying to exploit a crime that has taken place, and others have utilized these circumstances to further themselves either in terms of their own fame, if there is such a thing, or certainly their fortune.

The last time a bill of this kind was before the House, the Frenchs and the Mahaffys were in the gallery to my left. I didn't feel good, as I'm sure the member for Burlington didn't, about having to even deal with this issue; you wish you didn't have to deal with an issue of this kind. But I'm afraid it is a reality, particularly as we get into a different era in the 1990s, particularly, as I say, when we go on in the 1990s, 1994 now, and we have to address this head-on. It's an issue that has to be dealt with. I want to commend the department of the Attorney General for being so cooperative in the last couple of days to work literally day and night to come up with a formula which would fit with the concept that had been presented by the member for Burlington South.

Again you see an example in this House in the latter days of a session, when we're just before an election -- and it's a very partisan time -- of the parties being able to work together, and individuals within those parties, and members of a department of the government being able to work towards one goal of solving a problem.

There were some initial concerns about the original bill brought forward by the member for Burlington South. He's not an inflexible person. He's looking for a final result which is going to solve a problem and therefore was prepared to work with the department of the Attorney General to find a formula that would work. The formula which has been found is one which is practical. Using the office of the public trustee is a practical way of dealing with this legislation.

All of us wanted to ensure that it's legislation that has a very limited chance of being successfully challenged in court, and we often think that the department of the Attorney General in any jurisdiction moves slowly and tends to be a stick-in-the-mud sometimes, but it is always looking to ensure that the legislation that is passed is legislation that will work. The member for Burlington South has worked hard with the department of the Attorney General to solve that particular problem.

I was pleased as well, if I may take the opportunity to say so today, during the discussion of this bill, that the St Catharines Standard today had a headline which says, "French, Mahaffy Families Each Granted $25,000 Compensation" -- this from the provincial Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, which I believe is the maximum amount. I was pleased to see, having raised the issue with the Treasurer and with the Attorney General and receiving a favourable and open response on both occasions, that there has been compensation in one direction, and I know the Attorney General is looking at other avenues to try to deal with problems as a trial site is found. I think again that's positive.

So we have a consensus here. We have a member who has taken the initiative, a government which has responded, an opposition party which is supportive, a team working together to solve a problem, and of course the beneficiaries will be the victims of crime and the families of the victims of crime, and those who will be most detrimentally affected by this are those who should be most detrimentally affected, and that is those who would wish to make money in a very sinister, cynical and despicable way, those who would wish to make money from participating in a crime and then selling their stories or selling souvenirs of this particular unfortunate event.

I am pleased to indicate the support of our party and I'm pleased to give the consent and support of our party for all three readings of this bill to pass this evening in this House.

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

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): On behalf of the people of Willowdale, I would like to thank the member for Burlington South for having the courage and the conviction to pursue victims' rights in this Legislature to a degree greater than anyone else in this place. It's been a very, very difficult fight for him. He still fights for a victims' bill of rights and certainly this in large measure is a step in the right direction, a Victims' Right to Proceeds of Crime Act, to make sure that those who are perpetrators of crime can't benefit by the crimes that they commit.

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In this day of law and order and seeking safe communities, we all too often forget about the victims of crime, those who have to show up in an unfamiliar courtroom, in an unfamiliar setting and be cross-examined and whose credibility has to be tested. It's a very difficult process for a victim of a crime to go through and it's a very difficult process for a victim who has to live with the effects of a crime that's been perpetrated, so when you see the perpetrator of the crime benefiting, that makes it all the more difficult to take.

I congratulate the member for Burlington South for putting an end to something that should not happen. I also congratulate the Ministry of the Attorney General which, in the last day or so, has become involved in facilitating the passage of this bill today. As the member for St Catharines indicated, everyone appears to be working together. Everybody appears to be taking a step in the right direction to ensure that this piece of legislation is going to work. Over time it will be streamlined and I think will make a great contribution to victims in the province of Ontario. Again, thank you to the member for Burlington South.

Mr Callahan: I'm sure after what I say I'm going to be accused of raining on the parade. I would point out a couple of things, if I might, to the Attorney General. One of them is that you speak of a convicted person or an accused. There are in fact accused people who are eventually acquitted and are not guilty -- not just found not guilty, but not guilty -- who may be victims themselves.

So I have concerns about using the words "accused or convicted"; I would prefer to have seen "convicted." I simply say that, Madam Attorney, because I think it's a good bill and it should be one that we can protect as it goes through the courts, because it might very well be taken through the courts.

The second comment I would make is the fact that it talks about, "Each party to a written contract shall give a copy of it to the public trustee," and if you don't, then it's an offence. I would prefer to have seen, if I might, that no contract would be valid unless it had been approved by the public trustee. That way, you would require the people who wanted to collect the money to have had the public trustee's say-so and approval. By saying that you have to deposit a copy with the public trustee -- we know for sure that crimes such as the Bernardo crime will go through the United States and there may be difficulties in terms of recovering those moneys. If in fact the contract was invalid unless it was approved by the public trustee, you would have something, a genesis, to require that it be paid.

I do support the bill, as do my colleagues in my caucus. I hope I haven't rained on the parade of everybody, but I did feel that I had to point those out as legitimate concerns. But I do approve of the situation, that moneys of people who have been convicted of crimes should not be used or allocated to them or their families; they should be allocated to the people who are the victims.

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I want to say that this a proud moment for the Ontario Conservative Party, to have one of our members as the sponsor for Canada's first proceeds of crime bill for victims. I also want to compliment the official opposition, the Liberal Party, the government and especially the Premier. I understand his personal intervention resulted in this bill being brought forward today, and the support of all three parties has made it possible for the bill to be completed this evening.

I want to also take this opportunity to make reference to the member for Burlington South, Mr Jackson, and the outstanding record he has in terms of commitment to improving the lot of victims of crime. Here are just some of the bills that Mr Jackson has tabled in this House:

An Act to establish the Rights of Victims of Crime: Mr Jackson has brought this bill forward on numerous occasions, in 1989, 1990, 1992 and 1993.

He also tabled a bill in the Legislature in July, An Act to establish Victims' Memorial Day, which would establish an annual day of commemoration of victims of violent crime in Ontario.

He also tabled An Act to amend the Coroners Act, which would require an automatic inquest when a person dies by a violent criminal act while out on parole or temporary release.

The member for Burlington South, Mr Jackson, is also the chairman of the victims' rights subcommittee for CAVEAT and the safety network. He's the only elected official to serve on this group, and I simply want to say how proud we are of him in his efforts on behalf of victims of crime and his many efforts to try and bring some balance back to the justice system on behalf of those people who suffer crime in this country.

The Speaker: Further questions or comments? The honourable member for St Catharines has up to two minutes for his reply.

Mr Bradley: I simply want to say, within the few moments that I have, that I'm pleased to hear this consensus again, developing the reinforcement of that by members of various parties tonight, including the Attorney General, and the members of the Conservative and Liberal parties have indicated their support.

It's difficult to have a bill that's going to be absolutely perfect, that's going to satisfy everybody, but this is a very good effort to do so. I think this bill will go a long way to dealing with one aspect of the problem that is confronted by the victims of crime.

It's not often that you see a piece of legislation go through the House in one day. It's not often that you see the Attorney General's office able to move as quickly as it has to be helpful, and the member himself, as I say, taking the time out through yesterday and today to try to find a consensus that would be acceptable to all members of this House. I'm pleased to be able to support that, as are my colleagues in the Liberal Party.

The Speaker: Further debate? The honourable member for Algoma.

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy and Minister Responsible for Native Affairs): Very briefly, I want to congratulate the member for Burlington South and all members of the House for the support they have provided to this piece of legislation. The member for Burlington South will know that my colleague Jim Renwick, the member for Riverdale, pioneered this type of legislation in this House, and I was proud to continue that commitment after his untimely death and to bring similar legislation before the House. I'm very pleased that the cooperation of the Premier and all members of the House has made it possible for us to move forward with this legislation this evening.

The Speaker: Are there questions and/or comments? Is there further debate? The honourable member for Burlington South.

Mr Jackson: As has been said, this is probably a very emotional evening for me, given the circumstances of the last 48 hours around victims'-rights-through-proceeds-of-crime legislation. As has been stated, this is the first legislation of its kind in Canada. I do want to indicate that although I tabled this bill or a form of this bill almost exactly five years ago tonight, in December 1989, I was very much moved and guided by the initial work of Mr Renwick and, by extension, Mr Wildman. Much of their work was reflected in the bill that I have had tabled in this house for those five years.

I wanted to indicate to the Premier that this Wednesday, simultaneously in every province in this country, CAVEAT and the safety net organization with which I am involved will be undertaking press conferences, and one of the 27 recommendations which our victims' rights panel included was that every province implement a proceeds of crime act so that there is this consistency for all Canadian victims and their protection.

I cannot tell you how very pleased I am that the Premier has assisted in allowing Ontario to be the very first province in Canada to take this initiative and to show that leadership. That has not always been the case for justice reform coming from Ontario, but I consider that a significant turning point for this House and for all members and I appreciate that.

It has been said that much good can come from a Parliament when it is approached with cooperation and not confrontation. I think it is difficult for us to achieve reform in our justice system because our justice system, by its very nature, is confrontational and adversarial, and therefore all the opinions we ever get in justice are based on this adversarial model. I think that has hurt justice reform in every Parliament in Canada, and yet we have seen tonight, in the last 24 hours, through the assistance of so many, that we've been able to achieve so much through cooperation as parliamentarians.

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To summarize, I want to at the outset thank the Premier, because it was his individual intervention yesterday at about 10:30 in the morning after receiving calls from Debbie Mahaffy and Donna French and a faxed letter from Priscilla de Villiers that the Premier actually, I'm led to believe, left cabinet to specifically undertake an analysis and a decision that his government wanted to support this at this time. I wanted to thank the Premier for that.

Forty-eight hours ago a very unfortunate circumstance occurred where this bill was going to be delayed, for want of another word, for a good eight or nine months. So, quite frankly, as Debbie Mahaffy said, "Cam, Christmas is the most difficult time for us as families because we're reminded so deeply of our losses." I want to tell the Premier that his actions have in fact turned the last 48 hours of this bill into a script from a Frank Capra movie, truly.

So I want to thank the Liberal Party, Mr Bradley, the member for St Catharines, who spoke most eloquently on October 21, 1993, when this bill, in its first draft, was before this House in private members' time. I want to thank his caucus who supported him. I want to thank my leader, Mike Harris, who has consistently supported me in my concerns and my advocacy for victims and victims' rights in Ontario.

I must mention an employee of this building, Laura Hopkins, a legislative counsel. This person finished the draft of the bill at 2:30 this morning. At 7:30 it was on my fax machine, and at 7 am French-language translation began. The deputy minister of the Attorney General was involved, the chief crown law office, the chief director was involved for three hours last night working diligently. This is quite a remarkable story and a wonderful story about how everybody came together without any prejudices or without any differences towards our task. Finally, I want to thank my staff, Alex Roman and Bethany Carey, for their support with victims' issues.

The most important people are the families themselves and their courage to come to Queen's Park and to further risk their open pain in a public, political forum. Members will recall that Debbie Mahaffy was present with us in the Legislature on October 21, 1993, when she said that "To profit from crime, the murder/violation of another human being, is quite a repulsive reality in Canada." And she pleaded with members of the House not to allow profiting from crime to go on in such a fashion. Present in the House that day were also Doug and Donna French, who in a letter that was given to every member of the House -- and every member of the House supported the bill that day -- wrote to us: "The fact that people want to profit from someone else's tragedy is disgusting. But the fact that the criminals themselves can profit from crime is an outrage. It exploits victims and their families and in fact promotes crime."

These families, in large numbers, are watching tonight because they can't quite believe that this important turning point in victims' rights will be achieved in Ontario and in our country for the first time. Society becomes the spectator of their private grief, and it falls upon us as legislators to do something for them. Today we have done this. It is an important first step, but let it be said that we took that step together as a Parliament, that we took that step on behalf of the victims who no longer have a voice, and we took that step on behalf of the families who will continue to bear their grief forever.

The Speaker: Mr Jackson moves second reading of Bill 210. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Shall the bill be ordered for third reading? Agreed.

Mr Jackson moved third reading of the following bill:

The Speaker: Does the member have any opening comments? Debate?

Mr Jackson: Thank you, and all the members of the House, Mr Speaker.

The Speaker: Mr Jackson has moved third reading of Bill 210. 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.

House in committee of the whole.

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES ÉLECTIONS MUNICIPALES

Consideration of Bill 191, An Act to amend the Municipal Elections Act / Projet de loi 191, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les élections municipales.

The First Deputy Chair (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): Are there any amendments and, if so, to which section?

Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): Madam Chair, I do have an amendment. I move that section 2 of the bill be struck out -- yes, I do have an amendment.

The First Deputy Chair: In section 1, are there any questions or comments?

Shall section 1 carry? Carried.

Are there any amendments to section 2?

Mr Hayes: I move that section 2 of the bill be struck out and the following substituted:

"Commencement

"2. This act comes into force on a day to be named by proclamation of the Lieutenant Governor."

The First Deputy Chair: Are there any questions or comments to Mr Hayes's amendment to section 2? Mr Hayes, would you like to make some comments?

Mr Hayes: We welcome this piece of legislation but we do have some concerns, and this amendment is important because we feel that we have to speak to the municipal associations, elected and non-elected, and I'm sure the Conservatives would certainly want this government to consult.

The First Deputy Chair: Any other questions or comments with regard to this amendment? The member for Brant-Haldimand.

Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): I appreciate the explanation of the amendment and I think it's very important because it is my understanding that the municipal association and indeed the Association of Municipal Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario -- and the clerks, of course, are the local officials responsible for operating municipal elections -- have not been consulted, and it's important to do so.

We recognize that there are advance polls, that two advance polls must be held and that there is voting now by proxy, which helps the situation at the present time very considerably. It's also noted that a higher and higher percentage of municipal voters is voting at each election in the advance polls rather than on the day of voting. So I think it's very important, as the parliamentary assistant has stated, that we do consult and have some dialogue with those associations.

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The First Deputy Chair: Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments to Mr Hayes's amendment?

Seeing none, is it the pleasure of the House that this amendment carry? Carried.

Shall section 2, as amended, carry? Carried.

Shall section 3 carry? Carried.

Shall the title carry? Carried.

Shall the bill, as amended, carry? Carried.

Shall I report the bill, as amended, to the House? Agreed.

ENDANGERED, THREATENED AND VULNERABLE SPECIES ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 SUR LES ESPÈCES VULNÉRABLES, MENACÉES OU EN VOIE DE DISPARITION

Consideration of Bill 174, An Act to revise the Endangered Species Act and to protect Threatened and Vulnerable Species / Projet de loi 174, Loi révisant la Loi sur les espèces en voie de disparition et visant à protéger les espèces vulnérables et les espèces menacées.

Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): I'd like to begin by thanking the House leader for bringing this bill back. I think it's an indication of the extent to which this bill is supported on this side of the House.

Talking about support, I'd also like to read to the members some other support. This letter was written on December 2, 1994. It's to the executive director of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists, Mr John Lounds. I quote:

"Thank you for your recent letter concerning Bill 174, An Act to revise the Endangered Species Act.

"It is expected that this act will receive third and final reading on Thursday, December 8, the last day before the House rises for the Christmas break. The bill is being supported by all three parties.

"Yours sincerely,

"Robert W. Runciman, MPP

"Leeds-Grenville."

Madam Chair, I'd like to suggest that perhaps we take Mr Runciman's advice and move this bill speedily through the House.

The First Deputy Chair (Mrs Margaret H. Harrington): Commenting on Mr Wiseman's bill, and sections 1 and 2 specifically, which include the purpose of the bill, are there any other comments to sections 1 and 2?

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): Madam Chair, I think it's appropriate that I respond. Mr Wiseman was reading a letter that I sent to, I guess it was, the naturalists' organization. I'm quite offended by the fact that the naturalists released a letter to a politician that I thought was a personal letter to an organization. But in any event, we all make mistakes, and I made a mistake.

The First Deputy Chair: Are there any other questions or comments to sections 1 and 2 of this bill?

Mr Chris Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton): It gives me great pleasure to rise again tonight to address committee of the whole on the private member's bill from the member for Durham West.

As was stated yesterday, everyone's in favour of the title of this bill. Where people have concerns, not just on this side of the House but from the government side as well, is, what will be the impact of this bill? That's why we have a parliamentary system with committee hearings, so people come in and inform members of both sides of the House in a non-partisan fashion about the ramifications of this bill.

We heard yesterday from a government member from the riding of Huron who expressed concerns about this. We haven't heard what the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs has to say about this bill. We haven't heard what the Minister of Natural Resources has to say about this bill.

In fact, what comes about with this bill is almost to the point of a cynical manipulation of a government member's supporters in trying to persuade them that somehow, by not having full public hearings on this bill, we're trying to block it and that he is the only one who represents a concern for endangered or threatened species in this province.

I want to quote from the member's statements yesterday where he referred to the fact that he has faxes from the World Wildlife Fund to Mr Hodgson, Mr McLean and Mr Jordan. They say, "We understand that you intend to oppose this bill and possibly filibuster it at the legislative committee reading...." I suggest to the member that if he hadn't been so busy playing politics, he could've gotten faxes from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture or from the anglers and hunters or from people in this province who have concerns about endangered species.

Everyone is concerned about the future of our wildlife and the species. What's offensive is that a member would try to play politics, even in this place, on a night like tonight, to try to mislead people to think that, by us having legitimate concerns -- and I have two pages of concerns that we raised yesterday in this House.

Mr Wiseman: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: That is unparliamentary. The member said I was misleading the House: I think that's unparliamentary.

The First Deputy Chair: I didn't hear the comment, but if the member who was speaking -- the other member has found this offensive -- I'm wondering if you would wish to withdraw your comment.

Mr Hodgson: No, Madam Speaker. I find it offensive that he would insinuate that only three members of this House had objections to this bill and tried to filibuster it, when everyone knows that you can't filibuster when the government sets the Legislative Assembly's agenda.

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): On a point of order, Madam Speaker: The hour is late, but I heard my friend from Durham West accuse my friend from Victoria-Haliburton of misleading the House. There's no debate about that. That's unparliamentary and your responsibility as Chair is to ask my friend from Durham West to withdraw the comment.

The First Deputy Chair: I did not hear the original comment. I asked the member if he wished to withdraw. We would like to continue. Member for Victoria-Haliburton, are you finished your remarks?

Mr Hodgson: No, I'm not, Madam Chair. I would just in summation -- if we continue this debate, I do have over two pages of concerns that I've expressed. I look forward to hearing from the Minister of Agriculture on what he feels in fact this will be, the Minister of Natural Resources and from other members, maybe again, from the member for Huron as well. For now, I conclude my remarks.

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet and Government House Leader): I move that the committee rise and report one bill with amendment and progress on another and beg leave to sit again.

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): Madam Chair --

The First Deputy Chair: Is this a point of order?

Mr Callahan: I want to find out if this bill protects the government. You're an endangered species.

The First Deputy Chair: There is not a point of order. Could you please take your seat.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The committee of the whole House begs to report progress on one bill and to report one bill with a certain amendment and asks leave to sit again. Shall the report be received and adopted? Agreed.

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HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LE CODE DE LA ROUTE

Mr Hansen moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill 179, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act / Projet de loi 179, Loi modifiant le Code de la route.

Mr Ron Hansen (Lincoln): I have to thank my colleagues across the floor, the member for Nepean and the member for York Mills, for speaking on this bill last night, and David Bradley, the president of the Ontario Trucking Association, who had come to me to have a private member's bill be accepted here in the House.

I can tell you, local aggregate and transportation companies, just small ones, ones that have only one truck, want this bill passed, so we're not looking at large transport companies. We're taking a look at people who only have one truck out there in the aggregate business.

I hope this House will pass this bill.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): I'm delighted to see third reading of this bill, a bill which in fact should've been brought by the government some three years ago, but I'm delighted to support my colleague the member for Lincoln in bringing forward this bill. It is long overdue.

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

Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): As the member for Lincoln said, I spoke to this bill yesterday briefly. I do wish to indicate my support as well on behalf of my party. I think this is a measure that has been long sought after by the Ontario Trucking Association, and as the member said, not just by the big companies but by the smaller guys as well. I think this measure is going to be helpful to quite a few people across the province.

With these comments, I wish to indicate our support.

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): I just want to stand and also record my support for Bill 179. We are all very enthusiastic about the passage of this bill, and in particular I wanted to record my personal support.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): We in the Niagara Peninsula stick together, and I did want to indicate very briefly my support for the member's initiative. We are a group who work together, regardless of our political affiliations, and I think that this bill will help the province tremendously. I'm glad that the member has finally strong-armed his colleagues into approving this, at long last.

The Speaker: Questions and/or comments? Further debate? Seeing none, the honourable member for Lincoln may conclude the debate.

Mr Hansen: I'd like to thank the members who participated in the debate, and I can tell you that many of the people that I represent and not only --

The Speaker: No. It's a private member's bill.

Mr D. James Henderson (Etobicoke-Humber): Out of order?

The Speaker: Yes. Very interesting, but out of order. If the member would kindly take his seat, with my apologies.

Mr Hansen has moved third reading of Bill 179, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All in favour, please say "aye."

Opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it. The motion is carried.

Be it resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT (FIREFIGHTERS), 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LE CODE DE LA ROUTE (POMPIERS)

Mr Arnott moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill 192, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act respecting Firefighters / Projet de loi 192, Loi modifiant le Code de la route en ce qui a trait aux pompiers.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Does the member have any opening comments?

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I just wish to thank all my colleagues for their support on this issue. I think it's an important issue. We debated this bill on second reading last night rather extensively. In the interest of expediency at this late hour, 11:35, I just want to wish all members of the House a Merry Christmas.

Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): I just would indicate that perhaps we should have more transportation bills in this House and there would be more unanimity and more quick passing of bills, because this is one that we will be supporting as well.

The Speaker: Further questions or comments?

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): Mr Speaker, I hate to expose my own ignorance so blatantly, but this bill was debated last night and I wasn't here last night. It's referred to as a flashing-green-lights bill. Perhaps in his response, he could just remind me of how this bill is going to benefit the people of Ontario.

The Speaker: Further questions or comments? The honourable member for Wellington has up to two minutes for his reply.

Mr Arnott: Just very briefly, the bill will allow volunteer firefighters to use a flashing green light on --

Interjection.

Mr Arnott: -- listen, Greg -- on their vehicles while they're going to an emergency in their personal car.

The Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Norman W. Sterling (Carleton): I just want to be very brief in terms of --

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): You mean short.

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): Green lights are always your favourite.

Mr Sterling: Green lights are always my favourite, yes.

I just want to say that, representing a number of municipalities which have volunteer firefighters in their area, this is a small recognition of the work they do; and, hopefully, my colleague Ted Arnott has put forward a bill which will lead to greater safety on their way to the fire station and to the fire which they often go to. So I think it's important that we recognize this as a recognition of their tremendous service that they have given to our communities. This is not to be taken lightly, as some members of this Legislature seem to do.

The Speaker: Questions and/or comments? Is there further debate?

Mr Arnott has moved third reading of Bill 192, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act respecting Firefighters. 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.

LOAN BROKERS ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 SUR LES COURTIERS EN PRÊTS

Mr Bradley, on behalf of Mr Phillips, moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill 152, An Act to prohibit certain types of payments to Loan Brokers / Projet de loi 152, Loi interdisant aux courtiers en prêts d'exiger certains types de paiements.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Does the member have any opening comments?

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): This is a bill, for members who may have forgotten, that Linda Leatherdale, the money editor of the Toronto Sun, has written about rather considerably. It is an excellent bill. There was a problem out there that existed in terms of people who are exploiting others, the word that we would call --

Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance): What a team: Jim Bradley and Linda Leatherdale.

Mr Bradley: I don't know why the Treasurer is so exercised. What is bothering you? Tell me what's bothering you.

Hon Mr Laughren: I would like to see that team together: Linda Leatherdale and Jim Bradley.

Mr Bradley: I see. Okay. Anyway, I don't know what's bothering the Treasurer. It's getting late. Something is obviously bothering him with Linda Leatherdale. I don't know what it is.

I simply mentioned it because she has on many occasions indicated her support for this particular piece of legislation. Again, it is one that the government has been helpful in. I was about to commend the department of the treasury for helping out with some amendments that have been made to this bill.

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): It was my ministry that did that. That was my ministry, excuse me.

Mr Bradley: Oh, I'm sorry. The Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations helped out by providing some amendments to this piece of legislation.

This legislation is designed to stop a form of loan-sharking. It was a circumstance where people in a certain business were prepared to ask for money up front -- $500, for instance, they might ask up front -- from an individual in order to try to secure a loan for the person. The problem was that they were asking for the money up front and there was no guarantee that indeed that loan would be forthcoming, so a lot of people were left out in the cold as a result of this.

I want to thank my friend the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations and her ministry for assisting in amending the bill so it was acceptable to the government. I know it's going to get the full and enthusiastic support of all members of this House.

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The Speaker: Questions and/or comments? Is there further debate?

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): I would like to speak with respect to this bill. I'd like to congratulate the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, who in turn of course is thanking the journalist from the Toronto Sun, Linda Leatherdale, for bringing this bill forward.

This is a very important bill because certainly there have been a number of people in the past, people buying homes for the first time, young people, people who have been inexperienced in the financial world, and they don't know enough, quite frankly, as to who to deal with. So they go to a loan broker, who says, "Sure, I'll get you a loan," only in the fine print it says that you've got to pay this upfront fee.

The difficulty is that once this piece of paper is signed and the upfront fee is paid, the loan broker then says, "Well, you're going to have to get a guarantee" or, "You're going to have to get a survey," and of course these people don't know anything about this, which costs all kinds more money. So, for whatever reason, the deal falls through.

A constituent contacted my office, a constituent from Shelburne, who simply wanted to get a loan of $2,000. He was charged an upfront fee of $195 from a loan broker in that area. He was then told after a period of time that he was going to have to get a guarantor. So he proceeded to try and find a guarantor; he couldn't get one. That was the end of the loan. That was the end of the deal. Meanwhile, they kept the $195.

So these things happen, whether they be for real estate transactions, for large loans, for second-mortgage loans, and people who are trying to obtain secondary financing for different reasons, people who don't understand the process, end up getting burnt.

Yes this has been a procedure that was certainly started by Linda Leatherdale in the Toronto Sun. As late as this morning there was an article in the Toronto Sun, which I'm sure some of you have seen. Mr Phillips, the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, picked up the message and proceeded with this bill. So I do congratulate him. It's a bill that's been long overdue, and certainly there will be a lot of loan brokers who won't be able to take advantage of this.

The Speaker: Questions and/or comments? Further debate?

Mr Bradley, in the absence of Mr Phillips, has moved third reading of Bill 152, An Act to prohibit certain types of payments to Loan Brokers. 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.

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT (SLOW MOVING VEHICLE SIGNS), 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LE CODE DE LA ROUTE (PANNEAU DE VÉHICULE LENT)

Mr Hayes moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill 176, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act with respect to Slow Moving Vehicle Signs / Projet de loi 176, Loi modifiant le Code de la route en ce qui concerne le panneau de véhicule lent.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Does the member have any opening comments?

Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): I'd like to thank all the members of the House for supporting me, the Farm Safety Association, the women's institute, the OFA, the NFU and the Christian Farmers Federation. It's a bill they've been trying to get passed for 18 years, and I'm glad that all members of this House support it.

The Speaker: Questions and/or comments? Further debate?

Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): As I indicated earlier, the transportation bills seem to be the ones that get the House together, and I'm glad on this one as well, since it is a safety measure. Certainly, the rural members -- I see Mr Eddy here, and all the other members, Mr Cleary, as the agricultural critic and Mrs Fawcett -- have all indicated their support, and certainly my party will be supporting this bill on third reading.

The Speaker: Questions and/or comments? Is there further debate?

Mr Hayes has moved third reading of Bill 176, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act with respect to Slow Moving Vehicle Signs. 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.

MUNICIPALITY OF METROPOLITAN TORONTO AMENDMENT ACT (STREET VENDING), 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LA MUNICIPALITÉ DE LA COMMUNAUTÉ URBAINE DE TORONTO (VENTE DANS LA RUE)

Mr Bradley, on behalf of Mrs Caplan, moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill 183, An Act to amend the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto Act / Projet de loi 183, Loi modifiant la Loi sur la municipalité de la communauté urbaine de Toronto.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Does the member have any opening comments? Debate?

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): This bill provides Metropolitan Toronto with the same legal rights that the city of Toronto has with respect to the use of sidewalk portions of road allowances. What it allows is to license store owners who operate outside their stores within a certain metre distance of the storefront and the sidewalk. There have been a significant number of injuries happen where store owners are encroaching further and further onto the sidewalk and thereby making it impossible for certain strollers or devices used in transporting people around on the sidewalks to pass.

Interjection: Mopeds.

Mr Stockwell: Yes, mopeds. What this does is, this allows the Metropolitan Toronto council to in fact license operators not to exceed certain limits on the sidewalk and in fact encroach on the travelled areas for pedestrians.

I would certainly recommend adoption of this, and I would compliment Metropolitan Toronto for its superb work in processing this baby through this House.

The Speaker: Questions and/or comments. Is there further debate?

Mr Bradley, in the absence of Mrs Caplan, has moved third reading of Bill 183, An Act to amend the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto 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.

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES ÉLECTIONS MUNICIPALES

Mr Runciman moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill 191, An Act to amend the Municipal Elections Act / Projet de loi 191, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les élections municipales.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Does the member have any opening comments?

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I appreciate the opportunity this evening, and I want to compliment the government on allowing this bill to move forward, although there have been some amendments which have somewhat diluted the intent of the bill as it was tabled.

Some of the concerns that have been expressed by the association of clerks and treasurers I think certainly merit some attention and some discussion prior to the implementation of this change. There was reference made that there had been no consultation with the association of clerks and treasurers, people who did express a number of concerns.

I want to indicate that I had a discussion with the executive director of the association, and although he had not discussed the bill with the board as such, he had some personal concerns: (1) that the bill, in his view, would not have any meaningful impact on voter turnout; (2) that it would be more difficult to staff polls if workers have to stay an extra two hours; (3) he felt it would be more costly; and (4) he expressed concern about fatigue of poll workers. We had a lengthy discussion on this, and we addressed, I think reasonably satisfactorily, the concerns that he brought to my attention.

The question about impact: Granted, turnout at municipal elections fluctuates according to a number of factors, whether there's a mayor's race or reeve's race, those kinds of things. This bill is designed only to make it easier for people to exercise their democratic duty, and this has been done in a number of jurisdictions in the United States; in fact a number have changed to 6 am. What I'm suggesting here is 8 am.

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A number of the concerns that were conveyed to offices of members of the Conservative Party where originating in metropolitan areas, specifically urban areas like Metropolitan Toronto, where people have to travel significant distances and consume significant amounts of time going to work and returning home.

Having the polls open as they currently do at 10 am makes it virtually impossible for many people to vote prior to going to work under the current Municipal Act provisions, and of course the 8 pm closing time, if you're leaving work and you're faced with a 59-minute or an hour-and-a-half trip to reach your home destination, again there's very little likelihood -- you're tired after a long day at work -- and very little enthusiasm to make a visit to the polls. So I view this as a further encouragement, a further opportunity to exercise their democratic right and make it that much more accessible for municipal residents to cast a ballot in a municipal election.

Number two, the concern of the clerks and treasurers about making it more difficult to staff polls: Mr Speaker, the majority of workers at municipal election polls, as I'm sure you're aware from your own experiences, are retired individuals. These are people on fixed incomes who are very glad to be receiving the extra income, and the long hours aren't that long that you wouldn't want to do it once every three years. To suggest that those extra two hours are extremely burdensome to these individuals doing this once every three years is a little difficult to accept.

Number three was the cost. They expressed concern about cost. Mr Speaker, again, as you know from your experience, polling stations are schools and churches primarily, and they're either offered free of charge or at a very nominal fee, which is paid for the entire day. So to suggest that the cost burden of extending the voting hours by two is going to have some significant impact on cost simply does not wash. When I discussed this with the executive director, I think his inclination was to agree. The other point I made was that workers are paid by the day in polling stations and not by the hour, so costs will not increase.

I think that I've adequately addressed the concerns of the clerks and treasurers association, and I believe that there is a fuller understanding, if not an appreciation, of the intent of this legislation at this point in time.

The Speaker: Questions and/or comments?

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): I would just like to rise and speak very briefly in support of Bill 191. I think it's very important, and I speak for a city of half a million people that happens to be often viewed as a suburb of the greater Toronto area and the city of Toronto itself. A lot of my constituents have to work in the city and commute back and forth. Certainly, anyone who has to do that on the Queen Elizabeth and the Gardiner knows how much time it takes. If they could go and vote at 8 o'clock in the morning, before they left to commute downtown, it would certainly give all of them an equal opportunity to exercise their franchise. I think it's very important for all of us that this opportunity exists.

The Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? The honourable member for Leeds-Grenville has up to two minutes for his reply. Further debate?

Mr Runciman moves third reading of Bill 191, An Act to amend the Municipal Elections Act. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All in favour will please say "aye."

All opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

I declare the motion carried.

Resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.

ADOPTION DISCLOSURE STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI CONCERNE LA DIVULGATION DE RENSEIGNEMENTS SUR LES ADOPTIONS

Mr Martin moved third reading of the following bill:

Bill 158, An Act to amend the Vital Statistics Act and the Child and Family Services Act in respect of Adoption Disclosure / Projet de loi 158, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les statistiques de l'état civil et la Loi sur les services à l'enfance et à la famille en ce qui concerne la divulgation de renseignements sur les adoptions.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Does the member have any opening comments?

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): This is a very important bill to a large number of people in this province. It's a bill about rights. It's a bill about human rights, but more than that and more specifically, it's a bill about birth rights. I stand here tonight very humbled and proud -- humbled by the stories that I've heard over the last number of months as I've worked with this community, birth parents, adoptees, adoptive families, as they've talked about the frustration that they --

Interjection.

Mr Martin: Excuse me; this is an important bill for me -- as they've talked about the importance of this bill to them, as they sit here tonight in support of this, as they've waited so long for this day to arrive, for them to be able to do what we all take for granted.

This bill is driven by the people from the adoption triangle; it's not driven by me or any particular member of this Legislature. It's about change and it's about having the courage to change. It gives adult adoptees the same rights as any other person born in Ontario to have access to their original birth records. This is vital information for those adoptees who have always wanted to know their origins, including thousands who have entered their names on the Ontario adoption disclosure register. The bill gives birth parents an opportunity to inform the adoptee that the birth parent does not wish to be contacted. Experience in other jurisdictions has shown that such wishes are respected.

We have talked about this bill over the last number of months at length and I ask you please tonight, all of you here, to consider that and to let this bill pass.

The Speaker: Questions and/or comments?

Mr Charles Beer (York-Mackenzie): Very briefly, because it is important that we vote on this bill, I believe this to be significant and important. It is going to help many people in this province and I urge everyone to allow this bill to be voted on tonight.

The Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? Is there further debate?

Mr Norman W. Sterling (Carleton): I move adjournment of the debate.

The Speaker: That is in order. The member moves adjournment of the debate. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All in favour will please say "aye."

All opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the nays have it.

Further debate?

Mr Sterling: We have in front of us a major bill dealing with the rights of a huge number of people in the province of Ontario --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Mr Sterling: Some 200,000 people are affected --

Interjections.

Mr Sterling: I'm sorry, Mr Speaker, are you asking me to continue or --

The Speaker: The member has the floor.

Mr Sterling: Okay. We're dealing with the rights of 200,000 --

Interjections.

Mr Sterling: I'm sorry, Mr Speaker --

The Speaker: Could the House come to order. The member for Carleton has the floor.

Mr Sterling: I understood that there was -- I had adjourned the debate --

Hon Bob Rae (Premier and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): Get somebody else up to do it.

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I'll do it. Yes, David, you should do it.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): If you guys hadn't brought us back five weeks late, we wouldn't have this problem.

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): Mr Speaker, I move we adjourn the debate.

The Speaker: No.

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet and Government House Leader): If the member opposite would yield the floor, I would be happy to move the adjournment of the debate.

Mr Sterling: Mr Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent that I might put the motion to move adjournment of the debate again.

The Speaker: Agreed? Agreed.

Mr Sterling: I move adjournment of the debate.

The Speaker: Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All in favour will please say "aye."

All opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it. The motion is carried.

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Hon Mr Charlton: As we approach the end of this session, I have a number of motions that need to be moved.

STATUS OF BUSINESS

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet and Government House Leader): Firstly, I move that notwithstanding the prorogation of the House,

(i) the following government bills: Bill 23, An Act to amend the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act and the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Act; Bill 39, An Act to establish the Ontario Road Safety Corporation and to amend certain Acts administered by the Minister of Transportation; Bill 99, An Act to revise the Limitations Act; Bill 162, An Act to amend the Game and Fish Act; Bill 200, An Act to amend the Unclaimed Intangible Property Act;

(ii) all government orders with respect to committee reports;

(iii) all private members' bills except Bill 82, An Act to amend the Employment Standards Act and the Workers' Compensation Act; Bill 95, An Act to provide for the passing of vital services by-laws by the City of North York; Bill 180, An Act to amend the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto Act;

(iv) all private bills;

(v) all private members' notices of motion;

(vi) all other matters referred to or designated in any standing committees;

remaining on the Orders and Notices paper at the prorogation of the third session of this Parliament be continued and placed on the Orders and Notices paper of the second sessional day of the fourth session of the 35th Parliament at the same stage of business for the House and its committees as at prorogation.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

COMMITTEE SITTINGS

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet and Government House Leader): I move that the following committees be continued and authorized to meet during the recess between the third and fourth sessions of the 35th Parliament in accordance with the schedule of meeting dates agreed by the three party House leaders and tabled with the Clerk of the assembly to examine and inquire into the following matters:

standing committee on finance and economic affairs, to consider matters related to the pre-budget consultation;

standing committee on government agencies, for two days each month that the House does not meet, to consider intended appointments as provided in its terms of reference;

and with the agreement of the House leader of each recognized party, the time allotted and the matters specified for consideration by the committees may be amended.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

COMMITTEE REPORTS

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet and Government House Leader): I move that committees be authorized to release their reports during the recess between the third and fourth sessions of this Parliament by depositing a copy of any report with the Clerk of the assembly, and on the second sessional day of the fourth session of the 35th Parliament, the Chairs of such committees shall bring any such reports before the House in accordance with the standing orders.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Hon Bob Rae (Premier and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs): It is my understanding that His Honour patiently awaits to give royal assent.

His Honour the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario entered the chamber of the Legislative Assembly and took his seat upon the throne.

ROYAL ASSENT / SANCTION ROYALE

Hon Henry N.R. Jackman (Lieutenant Governor): Please be seated.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): May it please your Honour, the Legislative Assembly of the province has, at its present meetings thereof, passed certain bills to which, in the name of and on behalf of the said Legislative Assembly, I respectfully request Your Honour's assent.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees (Ms Deborah Deller): The following are the titles of the bills to which Your Honour's assent is prayed:

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

Bill 152, An Act to prohibit certain types of payments to Loan Brokers / Projet de loi 152, Loi interdisant aux courtiers en prêts d'exiger certains types de paiements

Bill 163, An Act to revise the Ontario Planning and Development Act and the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, to amend the Planning Act and the Municipal Act and to amend other statutes relating to Planning and Municipal Matters / Projet de loi 163, Loi révisant la Loi sur la planification et l'aménagement du territoire de l'Ontario, la Loi sur les conflits d'intérêts municipaux, et modifiant la Loi sur l'aménagement du territoire et la Loi sur les municipalités et modifiant d'autres lois touchant des questions relatives à l'aménagement et aux municipalités

Bill 165, An Act to amend the Workers' Compensation Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act / Projet de loi 165, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les accidents du travail et la Loi sur la santé et la sécurité au travail

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

Bill 173, An Act respecting Long-Term Care / Projet de loi 173, Loi concernant les soins de longue durée

Bill 175, An Act to amend the Statutes of Ontario with respect to the provision of services to the public, the administration of government programs and the management of government resources / Projet de loi 175, Loi modifiant les Lois de l'Ontario en ce qui a trait à la fourniture de services au public, à l'administration des programmes gouvernementaux et à la gestion des ressources gouvernementales

Bill 176, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act with respect to Slow Moving Vehicle Signs / Projet de loi 176, Loi modifiant le Code de la route en ce qui concerne le panneau de véhicule lent

Bill 179, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act / Projet de loi 179, Loi modifiant le Code de la route

Bill 183, An Act to amend the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto Act / Projet de loi 183, Loi modifiant la Loi sur la municipalité de la communauté urbaine de Toronto

Bill 185, An Act to amend the Power Corporation Act / Projet de loi 185, Loi modifiant la Loi sur la Société de l'électricité

Bill 187, An Act to reform the Law regulating Businesses / Projet de loi 187, Loi portant réforme du droit réglementant les entreprises

Bill 190, An Act to amend the Securities Act / Projet de loi 190, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les valeurs mobilières

Bill 191, An Act to amend the Municipal Elections Act / Projet de loi 191, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les élections municipales

Bill 192, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act respecting Firefighters / Projet de loi 192, Loi modifiant le Code de la route en ce qui a trait aux pompiers

Bill 197, An Act to amend the Assessment Act / Projet de loi 197, Loi modifiant la Loi sur l'évaluation foncière

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Bill Pr51, An Act respecting the City of Windsor and the Will of Edmund Anderson Cleary

Bill Pr117, An Act respecting The J.G. Taylor Community Centre Inc.

Bill Pr118, An Act to revive Monpre Iron Mines Limited

Bill Pr120, An Act respecting the Young Men's Christian Association of Cambridge

Bill Pr121, An Act to revive York St. Peter's Evangelistic Organization

Bill Pr129, An Act respecting the Ontario Professional Planners Institute

Bill Pr130, An Act to revive Brampton Bramalea Christian Fellowship

Bill Pr132, An Act respecting the Township of East Luther and the Village of Grand Valley

Bill Pr133, An Act to revive Community Network of Child Care Programs (Willowdale)

Bill Pr135, An Act to revive Durham Regional Police Association Inc.

Bill Pr136, An Act to revive Peace Bridge Area United Fund Inc.

Bill Pr138, An Act to revive Berean Baptist Church of Collingwood

Bill Pr139, An Act respecting the Sarnia Community Foundation

Bill Pr140, An Act respecting the City of Hamilton

Bill Pr143, An Act to revive Coballoy Mines and Refiners Limited

Bill Pr144, An Act to revive Columbia Metals Corporation Limited

Bill Pr145, An Act to revive Parkway Delicatessen Limited

Bill Pr146, An Act respecting the City of York

Bill Pr147, An Act respecting the City of York

Bill Pr148, An Act respecting the City of Mississauga

Bill Pr150, An Act to revive Mississauga Synchronized Swimming Association

Bill Pr151, An Act respecting the Board of Education for the City of London

Bill Pr152, An Act to revive S.A.W. Gallery Inc.

Bill Pr153, An Act respecting the Simcoe County Board of Education

Bill Pr154, An Act to revive Oshawa Deaf Centre Inc.

Bill Pr155, An Act to revive Pays D'en Haut Wilderness Expeditions Limited

Bill Pr158, An Act respecting the Ontario Association of Home Inspectors

Bill Pr159, An Act respecting the County of Kent and the Local Municipalities in it

Bill Pr160, An Act respecting the County of Kent.

Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): In Her Majesty's name, His Honour the Lieutenant Governor doth assent to these bills.

Au nom de Sa Majesté, Son Honneur le lieutenant-gouverneur sanctionne ces projets de loi.

The Speaker: May it please your honour, we, Her Majesty's most dutiful and faithful subjects of the Legislative Assembly of the province of Ontario in session assembled, approach Your Honour with sentiments of unfeigned devotion and loyalty to Her Majesty's person and government, and humbly beg to present for Your Honour's acceptance, a bill entitled An Act to authorize the payment of certain amounts for the Public Service for the fiscal year ending on March 31, 1995.

Clerk of the House: His Honour the Lieutenant Governor doth thank Her Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects, accept their benevolence and assent to this bill in Her Majesty's name.

Son Honneur le lieutenant-gouverneur remercie les bons et loyaux sujets de Sa Majesté, accepte leur bienveillance et sanctionne ces projets de loi au nom de Sa Majesté.

PROROGATION SPEECH / DISCOURS DE PROROGATION

Hon Henry N.R. Jackman (Lieutenant Governor): Mr Speaker, members of the Legislative Assembly, ladies and gentlemen, the third session of the 35th Parliament, which I opened with a speech from the throne on April 13, 1993, has seen the province move into what is now an increasingly vibrant economic recovery.

The government's plan -- to invest in jobs, to provide sound fiscal management and to preserve services -- is working and will continue to work. Strong leadership has been needed to make the tough but compassionate decisions required to sensibly and successfully guide Ontario's economy through this period of hardship. Now the people of Ontario can look forward with renewed hope to a buoyant economy and revitalized public services.

Job creation remains the government's number one priority. In November alone 45,000 new jobs were created, a rate of 1,500 per day. That continues a pattern of strong monthly job growth that began early this year. During the last 10 months alone, 182,000 new jobs have been created in Ontario.

All segments of society are participating in the recovery. Many of the most vulnerable Ontarians are now able to re-enter the workforce. In fact, from March to October of this year, general welfare assistance caseloads declined by 36,500, the most significant decrease since 1989.

But much work remains to be done. The current level of unemployment, although declining, is unacceptable to this government. More and more jobs are needed, and Jobs Ontario is meeting this challenge head-on. In this fiscal year alone, Jobs Ontario will be responsible for creating and supporting 166,500 Ontario jobs. Jobs Ontario will succeed because it represents a new kind of partnership involving Ontario businesses, organized labour, individual workers, training institutions, public sector agencies and communities.

Jobs Ontario Training has enlisted more than 38,000 employers in support of an initiative which thus far has created 65,000 jobs. Jobs Ontario Capital annually invests more than $3 billion in Ontario's infrastructure, creating 93,000 jobs this year. Jobs Ontario Community Action will invest $300 million in over a thousand projects in Ontario communities. Jobs Ontario Homes will create 20,000 units of affordable housing and generate $1.65 billion in capital activity all over the province. Jobs Ontario Summer Employment has supported jobs for more than 20,000 students during each of the last two summers.

To facilitate infrastructure investment, the Capital Investment Plan Act established the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp, the Ontario Clean Water Agency, the Ontario Realty Corp and the Ontario Financing Authority. As one example of what this means, the government will be investing with its private sector partners in the construction of Highway 407, to be built 22 years ahead of schedule, creating 20,000 jobs over five years.

In January 1994, the Ontario government signed the tripartite Canada-Ontario infrastructure works agreement which will result in 37,000 jobs for Ontario workers.

Jobs Ontario programs are creating jobs now. The government's industrial strategy provides the framework for the jobs of tomorrow. The $150-million sector partnership fund represents a new way of doing business in Ontario. Enormous future economic gains will flow from the sectoral partnerships being forged in the auto parts, plastics, aerospace, computing, telecommunications and health industries, to name but a few.

Another key example of the government's partnership approach is the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board. The transfer of responsibility for the provincial training system to an agency at arm's length from government allows those most directly affected -- employers, unions and community-based trainers -- to guide and coordinate training efforts in the province. OTAB's network of local boards will be able to coordinate and streamline labour market programming that is appropriate to the needs of the changing economy.

Community economic development is fundamental to the government's economic renewal strategy. Legislation was passed to provide credit unions and caisses populaires with broader lending powers to support small business, farms and cooperatives. Revitalization of the Thunder Bay waterfront and creation of the Roberta Bondar Park in Sault Ste Marie are only two of the hundreds of community projects undertaken throughout Ontario. The Windsor casino will result in 10,700 new jobs and generate over $200 million in revenues for the province.

A thriving small business sector is a cornerstone of job creation. My government's Clearing the Path initiative will simplify business regulations and streamline the regulatory paperwork for small businesses. Legislation accompanying the 1994 budget has increased small and medium-sized business access to capital and strengthened the role of cooperatives. Tax measures were implemented to exempt employers hiring new workers and new employers from paying the payroll health tax.

This government has passed legislation that institutes a workable management structure and financially viable compensation system for the Workers' Compensation Board. A royal commission will recommend longer-term solutions to the challenges facing employers and injured workers who rely on the board.

2420

Following extensive consultation, the Employment Equity Act was proclaimed this September. This legislation will increase equity and fairness in the workplace for women, aboriginal people, persons with disabilities and members of racial minorities. Employment equity stands as a cornerstone of this government's agenda for social justice and economic renewal.

My government is particularly sensitive to the need to develop appropriate programs and resources for the agricultural communities of this province. To this end, the government has committed itself to protecting the unique fruit lands of Niagara through the tender fruit lands program.

My government was also pleased to have been able to respond to the long-standing request from farm organizations to stabilize their funding base. The Farm Registration and Farm Organizations Funding Act will allow farm organizations to provide better services on behalf of their farmer members.

In addition, the government announced the FarmPlus loan program, which will give Ontario farmers better access to investment capital loans. This program will strengthen Ontario farm businesses and thereby enhance our agricultural and rural economy.

The government recognizes that a commitment to the environment and concern about the economy are not mutually exclusive -- both are essential components of a healthy and viable community.

A significant step was taken towards greater accountability and citizen participation in the environment with the proclamation of the Environmental Bill of Rights on February 15, 1994.

The Crown Forest Sustainability Act guarantees the long-term health of our forests and will help to sustain the communities, industries and jobs dependent on them.

This House has recently passed legislation which will change land use planning in Ontario by allowing municipalities greater control over the planning process, give more consideration to environmental issues and which will reduce red tape for developers.

The second element of my government's plan recognizes that in addition to job creation, an essential element of providing good government is responsible fiscal management. Governments everywhere are coming to terms with the fiscal realities imposed by escalating deficits and the declining revenues accompanying the recession.

It must be noted that the government's fiscal situation has been dramatically and adversely affected by a series of actions taken by two successive federal governments. Billions of dollars have been cut from Ontario's transfer payments. Ontario has been denied its fair share relative to other provinces.

In the spring of 1993, my government came forward with a clear plan to manage its deficit. An expenditure control plan was put forward, reducing government expenditures by $4 billion, with minimal disruption to programs and services. The Social Contract Act was passed, allowing the government to avoid up to 40,000 layoffs and realize another $2 billion in savings. The alternative to these tough decisions would have been an irreversible decline in the quality of the public services Ontarians deserve.

The current budget furthered these bold steps to ensure that deficit reduction targets are achieved.

Like the private sector, governments must restructure to meet the challenges of the modern economy. We began by decreasing the number of government ministries from 28 to 20. The government will meet its commitment to reduce the size of the Ontario public service by more than 5,000 positions -- and this has been accomplished with almost no layoffs.

The government's intention to issue new, more secure health cards to residents of the province is just one example of sound management. Photo health cards will result in approximately $65 million in annual savings by reducing fraud and misuse.

The final element of the government's plan is the preservation and enhancement of services for all Ontarians. My government is fully committed to ensuring quality programs and services for all residents of this province.

In this respect, the redirection of long-term care and support services is well under way. These reforms will integrate and improve services to elderly persons, their caregivers, adults with physical disabilities and others who need health services at home.

The government's commitment to illness prevention was clearly demonstrated in the recent proclamation of the Tobacco Control Act. This legislation focuses efforts on discouraging our young people from starting to smoke.

The aboriginal healing and wellness strategy will allow my government to work in partnership with first nations to address the pressing health issues facing aboriginal communities.

My government's continuing concern about the quality of education in this province led to the appointment of the Royal Commission on Learning in May 1993. The commission will make recommendations on re-engineering Ontario's education system to ensure our children are prepared for the 21st century.

Notre gouvernement entend faciliter l'accès des étudiants francophones à l'éducation supérieure. Il l'a prouvé en annonçant la création de deux nouveaux collèges de langue française ainsi que l'aménagement d'un campus permanent pour la Cité collégiale, le premier collège francophone en Ontario.

Legislation to extend pay equity was proclaimed in July 1993. Now, 420,000 additional women will have access to fairer wages. These workers, primarily in the broader public sector, ensure the high quality of public services we rely on.

These three elements -- job creation, sound fiscal management and preservation of public services -- have guided my government's course over the past session. The plan is a balanced and fair approach to governing in difficult times. It is a plan which has helped put this province back on its feet.

In addition, the government has taken other actions to ensure that Ontarians are able to live in safe communities. Personal safety is an issue which increasingly confronts each of us.

To this end, this House passed the Highway Traffic Amendment Act last fall, to provide a safer regime of licensing new drivers. In addition, my government has introduced the integrated safety project to curtail speeding and further enhance safety on Ontario highways. These are significant initiatives to provide safety on our roads.

My government established the provincial weapons enforcement unit, and a three-month weapons amnesty which took over 4,300 weapons out of our neighbourhoods. Most recently, the government has passed legislation to allow municipalities and police to take the necessary measures to protect neighbourhoods from the violence and disruption too often associated with after-hours bars.

Honourable members, I would like to congratulate you on your many accomplishments during this lengthy session.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish you and your families the very best wishes during the holiday season, and a healthy and happy new year.

In our sovereign's name, I thank you.

Nous déclarons maintenant la session prorogée.

I now declare this session prorogued.

His Honour was then pleased to retire.

The House prorogued at 2429.

8 décembre 1994