Journal des débats 1995-déc-11 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Mr Dwight Duncan (Windsor-Walkerville): I rise today to talk about Bill 26, a powerful bill that gives to the Conservative cabinet dictatorial powers to do things that are unprecedented in our democracy.

It's clear to us now, after having read the bill, why the Conservatives had wanted to rush it through without public input. The Conservatives know that if the public knew what was in the bill, if their own backbenchers knew what was in the bill, there's no way their own backbenchers would let them get away with it.

This bill allows the Minister of Health to singlehandedly close any hospital. It gives the minister access to confidential health records. It creates new user taxes on senior citizens, the poor and disabled.

Bill 26 and the way the Tories introduced it remind me of an old Christmas story:

'Twas the week before Christmas and all through

the House,

Tory backbenchers were stirring, wondering what

Bill 26 was about.

Closing hospitals, raising taxes, the Premier did say,

That's not what we promised, thought backbenchers

with dismay.

The revolution was written by the Premier with care,

Words of user fees or poll taxes could never ever be

there.

When all of a sudden there arose such a clatter --

the Liberals were screaming --

The Tories finally realized something was the matter.

Everyone was happy till the Conservatives came on

the scene,

Now all we have in Ontario are policies that are mean.

Bah, humbug, and shame on all of you.

SPRUCE FALLS INC

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): Today I want to talk about the success of Spruce Falls in Kapuskasing. It was November 1991 when the people of Cochrane North and the employees of Spruce Falls came up with the money to be part of the employee-owned paper mill.

Battling difficult economic times, 980 employees and 470 non-employees managed to contribute over $14 million in a short period towards the purchase of this company. The effort reflected a strong belief by the people of Cochrane North that the company would survive under their stewardship.

And survive it has. Spruce Falls has had a record-breaking fiscal year and shareholders are smiling. For the 1995 fiscal year, Spruce Falls generated net earnings of $50 million, compared to $16.7 million last year. The increase in earnings is mostly due to higher selling prices of newsprint and specialty printing papers.

Improvements were made at the mill over the last year. Some $20 million was spent to complete the construction of a new sawmill, $16 million towards the construction of a thermo-mechanical pulp line and over $11 million was used to upgrade the number one paper machine. Also, Spruce Falls Inc sold nearly 4 million shares of Mallette to Tembec and made $1 million for the company.

Spruce Falls Inc employees own 52% of outstanding shares of Spruce Falls Acquisition Corp; 41% of the shares belong to Tembec, a top pulp and paper producer; and the remaining shares are owned by residents of Kapuskasing and surrounding communities.

The NDP government facilitated negotiations --

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): The member's time has expired.

HUMAN RIGHTS

Mr Tony Clement (Brampton South): For everyone who values equal rights and opportunities, dignity and mutual respect among all people, December 10 has a profound meaning. On that date 47 years ago, the nations of the world came together to sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its principles are reflected in the Ontario Human Rights Code, making discrimination illegal in our province.

To commemorate December 10 as a landmark date, the United Nations declared it International Human Rights Day. It is an opportunity for all of us to pay tribute to the continuing struggle to recognize human rights as the foundation for liberty and social justice in the world.

International Human Rights Day follows by one week the date proclaimed by the UN as International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Its goals are to promote understanding and to ensure equal opportunities for all.

I encourage everyone to help raise awareness of both of these two days.

As an Ontarian, an MPP and parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, I am proud that our government is hard at work on our equal opportunity plan. It will help make sure that the principles of human rights, including equality of opportunity, will be foremost in the minds of Ontario's employers. Built on fairness, this plan will have a positive effect for all Ontarians.

The Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation is taking the lead in developing an equal opportunity plan that will support the efforts of employers and employees to have workplaces where hiring and promotion decisions are based on merit.

Our government's plan will help us reach the goals of the International Human Rights Day and International Day of Persons with Disabilities not just one day of the year, but 365 days of the year, every year.

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OMNIBUS LEGISLATION

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): I too want to talk about what's called Bill 26, which is the omnibus bill, just to say to the public what this fight is all about.

It was only 11 days ago that this bill was introduced in the House, when, I might add, most of us were in what's called a lockup. It was dropped on our desks without any notice, in our opinion deliberately, and it was the government's intention that this be the law of the land this Thursday: 15 days from the time it was introduced to the time it was law.

It fundamentally changes Ontario. It gives the minister the right to release confidential medical records, to unilaterally tell hospitals what services they can provide, to set user fees on seniors, to take $225 million out of the pensions of people who are going to be laid off by exempting them from a law called the Pension Benefits Act, to introduce poll head taxes, to take away some fundamental bargaining rights from a whole group of people in this province: all being done in 15 days.

That's what that fight was all about last week. We had a simple request -- "Give us four more weeks to look at this bill" -- and that was being denied by this government. That's why I salute my colleague Mr Curling for taking a stand on a fundamental right.

LONDON DEMONSTRATION

Mr David S. Cooke (Windsor-Riverside): Today, thousands of people have gathered in London to express their upset --

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): Order.

Mr Cooke: They're obviously very sensitive, Mr Speaker.

Today, thousands of people have gathered in London to express their upset in a day of protest against this government. We must ask ourselves why. It's very clear.

Bill 7 is part of the reason why people are in London today. There was a complete rewrite of the Ontario Labour Relations Act in a matter of weeks, much more than anything that was contemplated in the Common Sense Revolution. There was no consultation. There were no hearings. There was no democracy.

People are also in London today because they're upset with social assistance cuts, children's services cuts, cuts to our health care system when there were promises that there would not be cuts to our health care system, cuts to education when there were promises there would be no cuts to our classroom education. Again, no consultation, no hearings, no democracy.

Why are people upset? They're upset because this is their province and they have a right to be part of the discussions and the decisions about the future of their province. Eighty-two members of provincial Parliament in the Tory caucus do not have the right to act like a bunch of dictators. That's why people are in London.

GEORGE GARDINER

Ms Isabel Bassett (St Andrew-St Patrick): I am pleased to rise in the House today to recognize the generosity and leadership of George Gardiner, an outstanding philanthropist and, I might add, one of my constituents in St Andrew-St Patrick.

Last Wednesday, the Council for Business and the Arts in Canada presented the $20,000 Edmund C. Bovey Award to George Gardiner in recognition of his leadership in support of the arts.

In accepting his award, George Gardiner warned that given the country's fiscal crises, governments won't be able to continue funding the arts to the same degree as they have done in the past. Mr Gardiner called on those who believe in the importance of the arts to urge the private sector to give even more. And in the spirit of generosity and leadership so characteristic of this man who donated his ceramic collection, together with the funds to build the George R. Gardiner Museum to house the collection, George Gardiner donated his $20,000 prize money back to the arts, half of it going to the arts and media administration program at York University and the other half to the George R. Gardiner Museum.

The Council for Business and the Arts in Canada is hoping that others in the private sector will follow George Gardiner's example by making private donations.

GOVERNMENT HOTLINES

Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South): I was flipping through the new government of Ontario telephone directory last night and I thought there might be some phone numbers of interest to the folks at home.

If you're concerned about your safety after deep cuts to snow removal or emergency roadside services, give the Minister of Transportation, Mr Palladini, a call. His number is 1-800-NEW-LIMO. He can also be reached on his cell phone at 1-800-DOG-SLED.

If you want to chat with the Minister of Health about the Conservatives' countless broken promises in health care, just call 1-800-HUGE-CUT, and if you're a senior citizen he even has a special number for you: 1-800-USER-FEE.

Got a question for Mr Tsubouchi or simply want to talk to his $25,000 image consultant? Just call 1-800-EAT-TUNA, and if the line's busy, try 1-800-CUT-POOR.

Want to ask the Treasurer why every penny of his $5-billion tax cut will be added to the debt? Give Mr Eves a call. His number is 1-800-CUTS-R-US, but you'll probably be cut off.

However, if you want to get the real goods, I have to tell you my mother, Lorna, my father, Ernie, and my wife, Joan, are in the members' west gallery today, and when they want the straight goods they call 1-800-CALL-SON.

SPENDING REDUCTIONS

Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East): While some Conservatives might want to view the workers protest in London today as a special-interest protest, they would be well advised to take a serious look at what is happening in Ontario now in response to the Harris cuts.

On Saturday morning in Timmins in the bitter cold, some 200 people marched through the downtown core to protest the Conservative cuts. They represented social service agencies, seniors' groups, the disabled, native organizations, trade unions and those concerned about child care.

A similar cross-section of the community was out in North Bay on November 2, in a rally organized by the Nipissing Coalition of Social Justice. Some 600 people protested outside a $175-a-plate Tory fund-raiser held in the Premier's home town.

In Sudbury on November 24, 1,200 people stood out in the freezing cold to draw attention to the Conservative cuts. The event occurred outside a hotel where a $150-dollar-a-plate Tory fund-raiser was under way. The demonstration was notable not only because of the many and varied groups that chose to participate, but because the security measures put in place exceeded those used for Bob Rae's visit and for Prime Minister Chrétien's visit to Sudbury in 1994.

Mike Harris's response to this protest clearly emphasizes why there will be more protests and why they will get bigger. He told the media, "I didn't see the mothers and wheelchairs." I guess not, because with the security measures in place, he never would have gotten close enough to the crowd to see who was there. The fact is, the mothers were there, the disabled were there, children were there, trade unionists were there, churchgoers were there and the list goes on and on.

While the government might want to continue to mock all of those who come out to express their concern, this government can't continue to operate in the high-handed and arbitrary fashion that it has and expect that there won't be some serious consequences.

HIGHWAY 416

Mr John R. Baird (Nepean): For decades now, provincial governments have talked about the need to build a four-lane highway linking Ottawa-Carleton to the rest of the province of Ontario. Today Ottawa-Carleton, the second-largest region in the province, the national capital of Canada, lacks a major transportation route.

Toronto, Barrie, Guelph, London, Windsor, Hamilton, Niagara Falls, Kingston and Cornwall all have a four-lane highway connecting them to the rest of the province, but Ottawa-Carleton does not. All that changed when Mike Harris made a clear commitment to complete Highway 416; no ifs, ands, buts or tolls.

True to his word, Mike Harris is following through on yet another election promise. We said we would complete Highway 416, and we are. On Friday, Transportation Minister Al Palladini announced this government's funding commitment to finish Highway 416 by the year 2000.

A four-lane highway is key to economic development in the region. In addition, it's a question of public safety. Each year, accidents take more and more lives on what has become an overcrowded and congested death trap.

For too long the residents of Ottawa-Carleton have felt that the provincial government has simply ignored them. In just under six months, Al Palladini has done more for Ottawa-Carleton's economic development than the two previous governments accomplished in more than 10 years.

People in my region are always suspicious when someone arrives and says, "Hi, I'm from Toronto and I'm here to help." Al Palladini has accomplished the impossible: He's giving politicians from Toronto a good name.

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ROLE OF THE SPEAKER

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): With the forbearance of the House, I would like to take a few minutes to contemplate the events of last week.

The refusal of certain members to vote on Wednesday last and the subsequent disregard for the authority of the Chair caused this House to be in deadlock for several hours. I would urge all members to reflect on these events, not in terms of what ends may have been achieved, but rather in terms of their effect on the institution of Parliament. Certainly, there have been occasions in the past when the business of this House has been impeded by the actions of one or more members. However, the circumstances in which we found ourselves last week are unprecedented.

There have been a number of comments and reports with respect to what the Speaker may have or may not have done in this particular situation, and I must admit there were times when I myself was tempted to pursue another course of action. However, any action that a Speaker takes in these kinds of circumstances must be considered carefully, mindful of the rules by which this House is governed. Standing order 28(c) is clear. During a division in this assembly, every member present must vote.

While we do have two precedents in this House that suggest a Speaker might cast a vote in the name of the offending member, they conflict in their application. We have more recent and consistent precedents that define a course of action for the Speaker to take. Members will know that course of action to be to name the member who refuses to vote.

The authority of a Speaker to name members of this House for disorderly or unparliamentary conduct is time-honoured. It is a tool that the Speaker may use to facilitate the function of Parliament. The use of force to ensure compliance with a decision of the Speaker has never before been required in this House. It is my fervent hope that it is never required again.

The degree of force to be used to remove a member from this House is a decision for the Speaker to make. Any such decision must be considered with great care. The consequences of any further action on my part last week would, in my view, have had devastating consequences for the future of this House.

The Speaker has a responsibility to facilitate the work of Parliament, but circumstances such as we saw here last week are beyond the control of the Speaker. On March 18, 1982, upon the conclusion of two weeks of bell ringing in the House of Commons in Ottawa, Speaker Sauvé had this to say:

"The authority of the Chair is no greater than the House wants it to be. When the rules are clear and offer precise guidance to the Speaker, the authority of the Chair is absolute and unquestioned, for this is the will of the House. On the other hand, when there are no rules to fall back on, the Speaker must proceed very cautiously indeed. The most the Chair can do is to lay the matter before the House, which can then itself create a new precedent."

It is my hope that we never again see a situation such as we saw last week. If we do, the Speaker will have a responsibility to consider the new circumstances with great care, keeping uppermost in his or her mind the future of this great institution that we serve.

ORAL QUESTIONS

PROTECTION OF PRIVACY

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): My first question is to the Premier. There is a growing sense of alarm across this province today as people begin to study and become aware of the implications of Bill 26, your omnibus bill. I would say to you that people are particularly concerned, and I think it's fair to say even frightened, by the extraordinary, broad, sweeping powers that the Minister of Health proposes giving himself; powers particularly related to viewing, copying, removing and disclosing personal medical files.

Premier, will you now admit that Bill 26 will indeed give the Health minister unprecedented powers to access and to disclose personal medical information, powers that no Health minister should have?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): Unfortunately, the Minister of Health is not with us today; he could probably give you more precise information than can I on the details of the bill itself.

I can tell you, it is not the intention of the bill to violate any privacy agreements or conventions that should be there. I know the minister does have a ruling from the Ministry of the Attorney General that says the bill does not. On the other hand, I believe the Information and Privacy Commissioner had raised some concerns, and the minister had agreed to consult with him and officials to make sure that privacy, utmost in all of our minds, of medical records was not in jeopardy.

So I would assure the member and all Ontarians, and I understand the concern as the issue is raised, that if there is something in the bill that might, because of drafting or inadvertently, allow for records to be made public that ought not to be, particularly individual records, then it is the intention of the minister and of the government to amend that.

Mrs McLeod: Premier, this was not just another drafting error that could somehow be missed. This is legislation that you have presented, that your government was determined to ram through to make law by Christmastime, legislation that gives your Minister of Health, among others, absolutely unprecedented, sweeping powers that are dangerous.

Premier, although the Minister of Health is not here to speak to this today, you surely are ultimately responsible for this legislation and indeed for the conduct of your Minister of Health. Premier, you are surely aware that we raised this issue with the Minister of Health very directly on two occasions last week in the Legislature. The Minister of Health's response was to accuse us of scaremongering. In fact, at one point he said we had pestered the privacy commissioner for his opinion, since the Minister of Health had failed to ask the privacy commissioner for his opinion, even though he said the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act would be the only protection that citizens of this province would have once this bill became law.

Indeed, as you have suggested, the Minister of Health brought in what he called his own best legal advice to assure us, as he said, that there is nothing in any of these amendments which changes the minister's authority to access or disclose any kind of personal information, including health records. Indeed, the privacy commissioner, Premier, has some concerns. In fact, he said that schedules F, G and H of this bill --

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): Would you put your question.

Mrs McLeod: Yes, Mr Speaker -- those dealing with health care, "have the potential to significantly increase the amount of personal, health-related information that will be gathered, significantly increase the number of uses that may be made of this information and raise the possibility of new and troubling disclosures of the information."

Premier, I ask you how you can condone attempting to ram through a piece of legislation that would allow the Health minister to literally invade the privacy of every individual in this province, and how you can today condone the minister's denials that no new powers are granted to him under Bill 26.

Hon Mr Harris: If the question is, do I condone powers which would allow any minister to release information about personal medical records, the answer is an unequivocal no, I do not.

I know the member is aware that the Independent Health Facilities Act brought in by her government and the minister at the time, the member for Oriole, contained ministry inspection powers into all kinds of information. Perhaps we should look at the wording that was used by the former government on that act.

If you have suggestions on how the ministry can make sure that it accesses the information required to be able to respond with the appropriate measures to ensure that we maintain an absolute first-class health care system accessible to all in conformity with the Canada Health Act, unlike most other provinces or the former government, we're very interested in having that information. But I can read you the list of acts -- the Ambulance Act, the Charitable Institutions Act, the Healing Arts Radiation Protection Act, the Homes for the Aged and Rest Homes Act -- that have those similar powers. We do want to make sure the minister has access to the information required to make informed decisions to stop fraud, to properly administer the health care system, and if the wording doesn't cut it, in your eyes, we'll change it.

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Mrs McLeod: It really is beyond belief that this Premier could stand in this House today and propose that the opposition bring forward suggestions to change legislation that just a few days ago he was absolutely determined to make law by Christmastime. I truly can't believe the bravado of this Premier and I wonder if even today the Premier has in fact read the letter from the privacy commissioner and if he takes the privacy commissioner's concerns seriously.

Premier, in case you haven't seen it, I will tell you further that the privacy commissioner went on to say, "The types of information governed by the acts which are being amended are among the most sensitive of all personal information." He did go on again to condemn the fact that no action, according to this proposed legislation, could be taken against the Minister of Health, the general manager of OHIP, any member of their staff or indeed any other person or organization for disclosing information contained in these medical files, and this is clearly unacceptable.

Premier, I believe that the privacy commissioner has made his concerns absolutely clear. He is concerned that the powers granted to the Minister of Health under this proposed legislation would threaten the privacy of every citizen in the province. Premier, if you say you do not condone this, I ask whether you will commit today to removing those sections of Bill 26 and to ensuring that no further amendments in regard to the access to patients' medical files go forward until, as the privacy commissioner has suggested, privacy legislation that protects our citizens is put into place?

Hon Mr Harris: Let me respond to a number of comments that were made by the member. The first is that we didn't want hearings. In fact, as I understand it, the agreement worked out by the House leaders last week was for 300 hours of hearings. We had offered 360 hours of hearings.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Order.

Hon Mr Harris: So under the new arrangement --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Would the members come to order, please. Premier.

Hon Mr Harris: Thank you very much. So under the new arrangement worked out, there will be actually fewer hours of hearings than we offered but over a longer period of time, and we clearly have indicated that perhaps this may be advantageous. Certainly we wanted to take the best advantage of it that we can.

I can tell you that the legal opinion of the lawyers of the Ministry of Health and the Attorney General is that the provisions contained in Bill 26 are nothing new. They are in fact drawn upon the powers that were bestowed upon inspectors of the ministry in the Independent Health Facilities Act brought forward by Ms Caplan in 1988 when the Liberal government was in power. They're there. They're the same lawyers, you see; the same lawyers who were there are the same lawyers giving us advice. So when they defended the powers, when you jammed that through -- the powers did not in fact infringe upon privacy. They're now giving us the same advice.

However, unlike you, we're prepared to listen. Maybe we'll change all the powers. Maybe we have to look at different wording in the existing legislation. So I can assure you as well --

Interjections.

The Speaker: The member for Kenora is out of order.

Hon Mr Harris: -- with the privacy commissioner last Thursday and staff --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Order. The member for Kenora is out of order. I will not warn him again.

New question.

Mrs McLeod: If the Premier is prepared to listen, perhaps he will listen to the privacy commissioner since they chose not to consult him. He has offered his opinion and we would like the government to listen to him.

HEALTH CARE FUNDING

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): Much of what the Premier has just said -- and my second question to the Premier really does not merit a response because this Premier has already created such a fundamental credibility gap for his government that it is clear that this Premier cannot be taken at his word.

We learned this rather hard truth as a result of this government's broken commitment on health care, a commitment in which the Premier said repeatedly that he would not cut a penny of the health care budget. "Not one cent" was that campaign platform and then we saw it cut by $1.5 billion.

We also heard, prior to the election campaign and during the election campaign, this Premier say over and over again, "There will be no new user fees for health care," and that was a categorical, clear, unequivocal statement. And yet we saw in the economic statement that $225 million is to be gained in government revenue by imposing user fees for drugs on the elderly and the disabled and the poor, and in Bill 26 we see the government give itself power to move unilaterally in this area and impose those user fees.

Premier, I ask you to come clean today and acknowledge that you did indeed say one thing before election day, "No new user fees," and something quite different in the economic statement and in Bill 26. Will you just acknowledge that simple truth?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): What I would like to acknowledge is that we inherited a $10-billion annual deficit, $100 billion in total debt. What I think clearly needs to be acknowledged is that doing nothing, carrying on with the status quo, is a non-starter, that we have to fundamentally find creative and imaginative ways to deliver quality services within the budgetary confines that we have in the province of Ontario, something two previous governments in fact did not do.

We committed to look at the health care system, to pursue the objectives of hospital restructuring, to find savings within the system so that we could reinvest those savings so that at the end of the day the $17.4-billion health care budget would have been cut by not one cent. That's our commitment, and we will live up to it.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): The member for Windsor-Walkerville is out of order.

Mrs McLeod: The Premier surely knew there was a deficit that would have to be dealt with when he made his commitment and when people took him at his word that there would be no cuts to health care and that there would be no new user fees in health care. We have heard the Premier attempt to qualify that commitment when he and his minister have said, "Well, no new user fees for services covered under the Canada Health Act, no new user fees except for those things which are not medically necessary," and we're still trying to understand how any prescription drug prescribed by a physician is not medically necessary.

There were no exceptions when the Premier made his commitment. There was no fine print. He said, "No new user fees for health care," and yet they are now bringing in new user fees for health care, putting in place user fees on people who are welfare recipients, on the disabled, on the seniors: those disabled and seniors whom he also said he was going to protect.

Premier, I ask you again, why did you say one thing in your campaign platform and then turn around and give yourself the power, with legislation drafted in secret, to do the exact opposite: to impose new user fees for health care on the poor and the disabled and the seniors of this province?

Hon Mr Harris: First of all, let me say, nothing was drafted in secret. These questions were first raised by the leader of the New Democratic Party. I think the first question when the House returned -- and, I might add, although completely off topic, we've now sat more days in this little session than we did in the whole previous year to have public accountability -- I believe that was asked by the leader of the New Democratic Party was, "Are you looking at copayments in the area of the drug plan?" and we responded, "Yes, we are."

Interjection.

The Speaker: The member for Oakwood is out of order.

Hon Mr Harris: We are the only province now that does not have some form of cost-sharing among some segments of the population on the drug plan. I might add that the vast majority of Ontarians now pay 100% of the cost, either through a drug plan that they have to pay for themselves or their company pays for or they pay themselves.

The vast majority of Ontarians pay all the cost of their drugs, and I'm pleased to say that by looking at restructuring the drug plan, those who can afford will pay a little bit more by way of copayment, and yet those working people -- we are going to add 140,000 people who were paying 100% of the cost of these drugs under your scheme --

Interjection.

The Speaker: The member for Windsor-Sandwich is out of order.

Hon Mr Harris: -- assistance for the taxpayer. That seems to me to be pretty fair.

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Mrs McLeod: Premier, I just come back to your words. You said your government was going to be different. You said you would take responsibility for your commitments. In fact, you even said you would resign if you broke your promises. During the campaign you said, over and over, "There will be no new user fees for health care." No limitations, no explanations, no conditions -- just, "No new user fees for health care."

Premier, I believe you have broken faith with the people of this province. You have broken faith with the most vulnerable people of this province. You are levelling new user fees in direct violation of your commitment, and you're levelling them on the backs of seniors, the disabled and the poor, for one reason only, and that is to pay for your income tax cut, for the kind of cut that is going to give $5,000 a year to somebody earning $150,000 a year and $7,500 for somebody earning $200,000 a year and $28,000-plus for somebody making $250,000. Will you just acknowledge that you broke your commitment on user fees to help finance a huge tax cut for the most well-to-do in this province?

Hon Mr Harris: Let me say a couple of things. Number one, there was a myriad of copayments that were in the system on those areas not covered by the Canada Health Act, and we want to restructure some of those copayments so 140,000 of the neediest get some help and the others who can afford to will pay a very small amount, as do all the other provinces. That clearly has been our new commitment, and that's been our commitment that we've talked about. To suggest otherwise is simply not true.

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): What?

Hon Mr Harris: Simply not true. When I look at the Liberal Party talking about broken promises that far exceeded any of the commitments that they may have kept -- talk about a party that says one thing and does another, even in this last election campaign. Their record in government was abysmal, the most broken promises, a record that was tried to be matched by the New Democrats; I don't think it was.

Then you look at their commitments in the last campaign versus what they're saying now in the House: "Don't cut here, not there. Don't do this, don't do that." I'm telling you that it strains believability and credibility among all Ontarians and members of this side of the House, as we try to cope with the mess that you left with us, when you start talking and you wave the "Not One Cent" posters that are there. We freely say, that was our commitment and that's where we will be.

USER FEES

Mr Bob Rae (York South): Is it the Premier's view that a copayment is in fact a user fee?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): It could be in some circumstances, and clearly I think the public needs to get an understanding. Was it a copayment or a user fee when you forced 70% or 80% of Ontarians to pay 100% of the costs of their drugs? People have been trying to get a definition of this. As long as you're prepared, with me, to talk apples to apples, I'm prepared to talk apples to apples to you.

We are reducing a lot of the copayments that you had. We're trying to get away from this 100% delisting; that's what you called it. You didn't call it a user fee; you said it was 100% delisting. So there are delistings; there are 100% payments; there are copayments; there are words like "user fees" bandied about. What we clearly have tried to do is make sure the public understands the terminology.

We will not violate the Canada Health Act. We will uphold the Canada Health Act, which sets standards for all Canadians. We're very proud we are the only government, I believe, now not violating the Canada Health Act or under investigation by the federal minister for doing the same, and we had to make a couple of changes to correct that from what we inherited from you.

Mr Rae: I'm not sure I heard an answer to my question, but on November 30, 1993, the member for Nipissing said: "I've been calling for a full and an open discussion on the issue of user fees. Let's be fair. A copayment is a user fee. Rationing leads to user fees. Parental contribution is a user fee."

I wonder if you can tell us: Turning to the legislation, we find that under the Health Care Accessibility Act, the minister has extended to hospitals the ability to charge fees for services to insured persons. On page 113 of the bill it says, "A hospital shall not accept payment for rendering an insured service to an insured person unless permitted to do so by the regulations."

Then on the next page it says, "The Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations,

"(a) prescribing insured services for which hospitals may charge insured persons."

As far as I'm aware, this is the first time the government has given itself the regulatory power to change services in hospitals and to permit hospitals to charge for services for which they have not previously been allowed to charge.

I want to ask the Premier: Is he aware of these changes, and does he not see them as a way in which hospitals will be permitted to charge all kinds of new user fees to patients who are in the hospital for which they were not previously charged?

Hon Mr Harris: It's a good point that you raise. It gets into definitions, I suppose, of what's there. Private rooms right now have significant copayments; semi-private rooms have copayments; parking you might call a copayment or a user fee, call it what you will.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Parking?

Hon Mr Harris: Well, I don't know. In some cases we know that for food for long-term-care patients who are in hospitals, there is a copayment for that portion of it. But I can assure you of this: There will be no copayments, or user fees, call them what you will -- we tend to call user fees something that contravenes the Canada Health Act.

Mr David S. Cooke (Windsor-Riverside): Who knows what your definition will be next week?

Hon Mr Harris: Well, so that everybody can clarify, instead of your four or five words -- you see, you have one word in government and another word in opposition -- there will be no user fees. There will be no copayments either, because that becomes a user fee if it contravenes the Canada Health Act.

We are going to provide all medically necessary services equally to all, regardless of where they come from or any other plan they have. That's our commitment, that's what we must do, and that's what we intend to do.

Mr Rae: I don't think people have any particular belief in the new commitments that are being made, because the old commitments were very clear -- no new user fees -- when we're now being told that, yes, there will be new user fees, only they won't be called user fees, they'll be called -- now we're told that parking is a form of copayment. Parking is parking. It's got nothing to do with anything else.

I want to ask the Premier this question: Do you not see a difference between the charges that will be paid for parking and the charges that will now be demanded from sick people for medically necessary medication? Do you not see a difference between those two things?

Hon Mr Harris: I do see a difference. That's why we're providing for 140,000 more working people in Ontario access to some form of copayment for their drugs. It's why we supported the Trillium drug plan you brought in, why we are improving the drug plan, trying to include in our resources more of those who have difficulty paying.

This is the way I think seems to make sense to us under something that is not covered under the Canada Health Act, but clearly we want to ensure that medically necessary drugs are accessible to all Ontarians. That's why we want to target our resources, the way other provinces have, at those who need the most help, and that indeed is what we're doing.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): New question.

Mr Rae: I think most people would say that a government that can charge a disabled person for their medically necessary medication is a government that's perfectly capable of turning around in a short while and charging them for services which are now deemed to be medically necessary in hospitals or for doctors. That's exactly what we can expect.

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RESTRICTIONS ON NEW DOCTORS

Mr Bob Rae (York South): I'd now like to ask the Premier some questions on the subject of the conscription of doctors. Our government commissioned a study by Mr Graham Scott, who is a former Deputy Minister of Health, former executive assistant to Robert Stanfield, the former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada, and Mr Scott produced a report which was the basis for some of the announcements made by the Minister of Health recently.

Mr Scott was asked to look at the entire question of the problem which has been difficult for all governments for many, many years, and that is, how do we ensure the delivery of health care across the province and how do we ensure that in smaller communities in the north and in the south the people have access to qualified physicians?

The Premier's government is the first government in the history of the province which intends to create a new class of physicians called "eligible physicians." Those are the doctors who are going to be allowed to practise and who will get an OHIP number. There will be other doctors who are perfectly well-qualified, who are perfectly well-trained, who have all the capabilities of medical practitioners, but they will not be eligible to receive an OHIP number unless the Minister of Health decides that that's what he wants to do.

Can the Premier tell me where in any report, either in the Scott report or in any one of the mediation reports that have been done over the years, can he show me one single, neutral, third-party report or can he show me anywhere in the Common Sense Revolution or in any document associated with the Conservative Party where he has decided to conscript doctors, to restrict access to practice and to tell the graduates who are now coming out of our medical schools that they're out of luck when it comes to practising medicine in the province? Where have you ever said this before?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): The leader of the NDP correctly points out something that Progressive Conservative governments, Liberal governments, NDP governments have not been able to deliver on in the past, and that is, a better distribution of doctors and medical services across the province, particularly in some of the small towns and in northern Ontario. Everything that we've tried so far has not worked very well.

In British Columbia an NDP Premier came in with a program to only give billing numbers to those doctors where they needed doctors as opposed to the other. I'm assuming from the question that this NDP leader disagrees with that NDP leader. But that was one proposal that was brought forward to try and accommodate that, and the minister, I know, said, "Hey, we should look at that and see how that's working in British Columbia and see whether this will help break the logjam."

I'm quite pleased to report, and the minister when he comes back can give you more details, that my understanding is that the OMA, which has not been able to deliver these services, not been able to fulfil their obligation under the memorandum of understanding, signed by the NDP, to have doctors in underserviced areas, is quite confident that they will be able to and will be able to work with the minister now as we begin to implement some of the Scott report -- and we put more dollars into the system, I might add, as well -- quite confident that they can deliver.

That of course is the way in which we want to do it, in an area of mutual understanding and cooperation with the union representing the doctors and the government. Both, through the memorandum of understanding that your party signed, have an obligation to provide health care services all across this province, not just in the big centres.

Mr Rae: Is the Premier (a) aware of the fact that his legislation gets rid of the memorandum of understanding, and (b) is he alleging today that the Ontario Medical Association supports those sections of Bill 26 which conscript doctors? Is that his allegation today?

Hon Mr Harris: No.

Mr Rae: That's what you just said; at least that's what you clearly implied with your answer. There's no other implication. You're turning your answers into a joke. You clearly don't understand the legislation or its impact. You don't have any understanding of what's here.

The Professional Association of Interns and Residents of Ontario, which represents 2,400 interns and residents in the province, has stated that it believes this legislation to be unlawful. In fact, the previous time it was tried in British Columbia, by another government, not an NDP government, it was found to be unlawful by the British Columbia Court of Appeal. They find that it's coercive; they find that it's intrusive to a degree which no other government has ever tried in the province before.

I want to ask the Premier this question: Why would you be bringing forward such a coercive, such a centralized and such an authoritarian solution to a problem that is admittedly difficult, when it's very clear that the solutions that have been proposed by Mr Scott do not in any way condone the kinds of steps and the sort of direction you have taken?

Why would you have gone so far off the deep end, in changing the way in which medicine is practised in the province, in changing the rights of young graduates who are coming out of university, in changing the rights of specialists? Why would you have decided to take on such an authoritarian solution to a problem which demands greater sensitivity and more willingness to compromise than you've so far demonstrated?

Hon Mr Harris: That's not our intention at all and the minister has made that very clear. The tools that we inherited were -- even though we have a significant surplus of doctors in Ontario, the only mechanism without the cooperation of the OMA to make sure that northern Ontario communities and rural communities had doctors was to give even more numbers to new immigrant doctors or to doctors who didn't come through our health care system. All this did in the long run was to contribute to the oversupply. That's something the former government did, I think we did 15 years ago, the Liberal government did, you did and we've now moved in that direction as well.

However, I'm really pleased to report, one more time, that the Professional Association of Interns and Residents of Ontario said on December 1, "We're planning to take the minister at his word; he'll give recruitment and retention measures a real chance to work without imposing billing number restrictions," and further to that, the OMA now tells us and tells the minister they're quite confident that they're going to be able to work out an agreement.

You see, once you become a union and have compulsory checkoff, as you gave the OMA, and they will speak for all the doctors, they also have an obligation to provide services all across the province. That was not happening; it is now beginning to happen today.

USER FEES

Mr Gilles E. Morin (Carleton East): My question is for the Premier. In speeches and party literature, the Premier has repeatedly stated that health care expenditures would not be cut. This is a fact. The Premier may choose to reinterpret his own words, but when his own documents read, "There will be no cuts to health care funding by a Harris government," you assume that is what they mean.

The Premier and his cohorts have since proceeded, by way of Bill 26, to impose fees, or copayments, as they call them, upon the people who can least afford them. This is the same Premier who said: "User fees tend to discourage low-income people from obtaining the medical treatment they need. That makes them unfair."

Can the Premier explain, not just to me but to the many seniors and low-income persons concerned, where the fairness is in imposing, in his own words, unfair user fees upon those who can least afford them?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): Yes, I'm happy to continue to explain to you and to respond by telling you that the letters coming into my office from seniors are overwhelmingly in support, saying, "Look, we understand the serious mismanagement of the last 10 years; we understand the seriousness of the deficit and debt problem; we understand that one of the prices we pay" --

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): The member for Hamilton East is out of order.

Hon Mr Harris: -- "is for something nobody else in Canada had, that no other government provided, Liberal, NDP or Conservative." One of the consequences of that was this $10-billion deficit or, as you've already heard, $1 million an hour more going out in expenditures than are coming in. They've said to us, "Two bucks is cheap to fix the problem and make sure our children and our grandchildren have an opportunity, like we had, to live and grow and work in this great province of Ontario."

1430

Mr Morin: This is Orwellian language, any way the Premier puts it. The fact is that he is penalizing elderly and low-income Ontarians for being sick. He broke his promise about not cutting funding for health care, and now he reaches for savings into the meagre incomes of our most vulnerable citizens. Up to 1.3 million seniors will be affected by the new dispensing fees to be charged to them under Bill 26. This is a user fee, by any other name.

You said it yourself: "User fees are unfair." How is Ontario a fairer society today? How is it fair to target elderly and low-income Ontarians?

Hon Mr Harris: The member will know that the vast majority of Ontarians pay 100% of their own drugs -- the vast majority pays 100%. Those, however, who are on welfare, or senior citizens, will pay an absolute minimal fraction of that, less than in most other provinces, although you might be able to find an individual case somewhere that's there.

Quite frankly, I have to tell you that with the overall mismanagement of the system, the Health ministry, the Education ministry, throwing the money around that you didn't have -- that your government didn't have, the New Democratic Party didn't have -- we've had to make some very, very difficult decisions.

If your question is, "Are you now telling us, Premier, that there's no free ride, free everything for everybody in Ontario?" that's right, there is not. That's a change, and that's what we were elected to change.

The Speaker: New question.

Mr Bob Rae (York South): In response to the Premier's announcements and Bill 26, a number of local municipalities would appear to be planning to make some rather major moves in the field of user fees and other fee hikes. When the Premier hears, for example, that North York is going to charge up to $7 for an annual membership in the public library system, I wonder what his response is to something like that.

Hon Mr Harris: Those are decisions for local municipalities to work out. Let me tell you of an experience that really surprised me. My family is now going to school here in the Toronto area for the first time, and I was absolutely astounded. We had to pay user fees or copayments for our kids to go public skating or to do things in North Bay, and now we find that in Toronto it's all free. We're actually astounded at the number of things, privileges which we're quite happy to pay a modest amount for.

What I would hope is that if municipalities are looking at user fees or copayments in some areas, (a) that it would not be for necessary services, (b) that they think about it very carefully, and (c) that if they're planning to charge a buck or five bucks for library privileges, they make sure that those who may have any difficulty at all affording it get it for free.

Mr Rae: One of the issues around public libraries which the Premier perhaps wasn't aware of is that the Public Libraries Act now in fact requires that libraries not charge for particular services, including loaning books. Is it the intention of the government to enforce the Public Libraries Act and reduce transfers to those library systems in the province which break the Public Libraries Act and start charging people for the use of a public library?

Hon Mr Harris: I've not heard of any municipality that's planning to do that. Perhaps some are planning to charge for a card. Some now do charge for a card, which is legal under your legislation that we have inherited. That's different, though.

Some charge now for videos that go out; some do not; they compete with free videos with all the private sector businesses that charge a buck or two or three to rent a video. My understanding is that some municipalities are looking at: "Should our libraries be competing with the private sector giving free videos? Is that what we were set up to do? Is that what the Public Libraries Act empowered us to do?"

Clearly, it is our intention to work with our partners, who I think will be far more responsible than you suggest, to make sure that the citizens of Ontario can afford unexcelled, unparalleled services with virtually any other jurisdiction in the world. We believe we have the resources to do that and we're confident that will happen.

RED HILL CREEK EXPRESSWAY

Mrs Lillian Ross (Hamilton West): My question today is for the Minister of Transportation. During the last provincial election, our government reaffirmed its commitment to the completion of the Red Hill Creek Expressway. I would like to ask the minister today if you could reaffirm to this Legislature and to the residents back home what your commitment is to the Red Hill Creek Expressway?

Hon Al Palladini (Minister of Transportation): I want to thank the honourable member for the question and certainly make clear once and for all that this government understands the importance of the expressway to the region of Hamilton-Wentworth, and a Mike Harris government is keeping its promise once again.

Over the next five years, we will be providing $100 million towards the cost of the completion of the expressway. This will allow the expressway to be finished by the year 2000. The $100 million is a firm commitment even if the region is able to find savings in areas, and we believe the region will be able to find savings.

Mrs Ross: I'm pleased, as I'm sure most of the people back home are, that the government has recognized the importance of this expressway.

The minister would be aware of the fact that in July, 50% of the funding was deferred, an amount of $6.75 million. Can the minister please tell us whether that amount is included in the funding arrangement for this year?

Hon Mr Palladini: This is another Harris promise kept. I am pleased to inform the honourable member that, as promised back in July, the $6.75 million deferred will be restored next year, and that is in addition to the $20-million commitment we have in 1996. The region next year will receive $26.75 million towards the construction of the expressway.

VISITORS

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): If I could just take a minute, we have some guests in the Speaker's gallery who have to leave very shortly, and I would like to introduce them. They are members of the coaching staff of the Colorado Avalanche: Marc Crawford and Jacques Martin. Welcome.

1440

HIGHWAY TOLLS

Mr Mike Colle (Oakwood): I have a question for the Minister of Transportation. Last week, I asked the minister whether he was aware of the fact that under the Bill 26 amendments to the Capital Investment Plan Act, the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp has the power to register a lien on private property, including people's homes, for unpaid toll fines. The minister's response, to quote from Hansard on December 5, was, "As far as liens are concerned, we're talking about vehicles here, so we're not talking about liening someone's house because they haven't paid their toll."

I wish to draw the minister's attention to the omnibus Bill 26 subsection 43.1(1), where it says, "Any toll, fee or interest owed under this part by any person is, upon registration by the corporation in the proper land registry office of a notice claiming a lien and charge conferred by this section...."

My question to the minister is, did you not read the act, or did you announce an amendment to the act and you're not going to have liens on people's homes when they don't pay their tolls?

Hon Al Palladini (Minister of Transportation): The honourable member is fearmongering. I would like to say this: Houses don't drive on highways, cars do. We will register a lien on a vehicle if -- number one, it has to be a substantial lien. But to put fear in the people of Ontario that we are going to be liening someone's house because there's a $100 toll or a $1,000 toll, the honourable member doesn't have a clue.

Mr Colle: I'm not sure what the minister is talking about, about houses driving on highways, but my question is very simple. Who is telling the truth: Is it the minister or is it the act? Is the minister saying that the act is wrong when it says it's going to charge liens on people's property? Why would you be going to the land registry office for a lien on a car? Isn't it enough to put a lien on a $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 car? Why do you have to go that far, to put a lien on people's homes if they don't pay their tolls?

Hon Mr Palladini: No one is saying we're going to go that far. We're going to make the attempt to collect the outstanding tolls. A lien on a vehicle is a standard, customary business procedure. This government is going to operate in a business-efficient way. We will do whatever we have to do so all Ontarians are going to get that benefit.

The member is referring to Bill 26. That is a general bill. I want to talk just about tolls. I want to talk about what we are going to do if people don't pay their tolls. We will lien a vehicle in order for us to collect that money that's owed.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): New question. The leader of the third party.

Mr Colle: What's he saying? Is there a lien or not?

The Speaker: The member for Oakwood is out of order.

RESTRICTIONS ON NEW DOCTORS

Mr Bob Rae (York South): I don't know whether the Premier is really familiar with the legislation or the comments people have made, but just to create a sense of balance in terms of the record today, the president of the Ontario Medical Association described Bill 26 as extreme, unprecedented and harmful to patient care. I want to put that on the record.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Who said that?

Mr Rae: The president of the Ontario Medical Association.

The head of the Professional Association of Interns and Residents of Ontario, the executive, came to see me. They describe the bill as unlawful; they describe it as arbitrary and authoritarian; and they describe it as having implications for the practice of medicine which are disastrous. The only jurisdiction which will benefit from it, in their words, is the United States.

The powers being given to the Minister of Health and to the ministry to tell doctors where and when they will practise are more authoritarian and more centralized than any powers which have been given to the Ministry of Health bureaucracy since the beginning of medical care; in fact, in the entire history of the province we've never given this kind of power to the bureaucracy.

I want to ask the Premier, why are you taking such an authoritarian approach when there's absolutely no neutral third party that has ever argued in favour of taking this kind of approach to how people will be allowed to practise medicine in the history of the province? It's never been tried before, never been done before. Why would you take such a totalitarian approach?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): I might add that the Ontario Medical Association said very similar things, in similar language, about your government at negotiation time, as it did about the Liberal government when it was dealing with the Independent Health Facilities Act.

Mr Rae: We're not talking about negotiations.

Hon Mr Harris: Well, they have. We have the rhetoric. It seems to be a part of negotiations, and we understand that.

We, on the other hand, think it makes far more sense to sit down, work cooperatively, work productively. We say this to all unions -- we say this to the Canadian Auto Workers, we say this to OPSEU, we say this to CUPE -- that we're prepared to sit down and work in a logical way to uphold the mandate we've all been given.

I indicated earlier in response to the member that the former Progressive Conservative government -- it's going back quite a long time, so long ago that it's hard for me to remember those good old days -- the former Liberal government and the former NDP government all tried to address this issue of physician and doctor dispersement, if you like, or distribution across the province of Ontario. The more you wrestled with it for five years and the more the Liberals wrestled with it for five years, the worse the situation became.

I have to tell you that we need to look at new and different and creative ways to break this impasse and make sure we have doctors where they are needed across the province, in the specialties that are required, so that we don't end up with this still overall surplus in some parts of the province and a shortage in others.

If you have suggestions -- you may have, after you've failed for five years, on what didn't work -- we'd be glad to hear those as to how we can make sure this happens.

Mr Rae: My comment to the Premier in terms of a second question would be this: You're not talking about negotiations here; there's nothing in this bill about negotiations. This is not an act which sets out negotiations. You keep talking about how you're prepared to sit down with the OMA. To what? To negotiate the act, to renegotiate the act, between now and January 29?

Is the Premier now saying that he's prepared to withdraw the draconian and authoritarian sections in the act and prepared to sit down with the Professional Association of Interns and Residents of Ontario and sit down with the Ontario Medical Association and negotiate a new arrangement?

Or is he saying that the act stands as it is and that he's happy with the fact that the Minister of Health and the person in charge of OHIP now has unilateral authority to tell a doctor where she will practise, how she will practise, on what terms she will practise, in which part of the province she will practise, how long she will practise, and if she's not prepared to practise there, then she isn't going to be allowed to practise in the province of Ontario? That's what your legislation says; that's what it means. Are you prepared to withdraw that legislation now? Yes or no?

Hon Mr Harris: We are prepared to meet with the OMA, and the Minister of Health has been doing it. We're prepared to meet with those still in medical school and the association of interns and residents, and the Minister of Health is doing this. We would like to make sure we can work this out in full cooperation with those providing the services. But let me tell you something. At the end of the day, we're going to make sure that northern Ontario municipalities, that isolated municipalities, that rural municipalities get the health care you didn't give them.

1450

COMPRESSIONS BUDGÉTAIRES

M. John R. Baird (Nepean) : Ma question s'adresse au ministre de l'Agriculture, de l'Alimentation et des Affaires rurales ; ministre délégué aux Affaires francophones.

Suite au discours budgétaire du ministre des Finances de l'avant-dernière semaine, le ministre a annoncé qu'il devrait amalgamer ou centraliser des bureaux d'agriculture dans l'Est ontarien. Est-ce que le ministre pourrait bien m'expliquer la raison pour laquelle une telle décision a été prise ?

L'hon Noble Villeneuve (ministre de l'Agriculture, de l'Alimentation et des Affaires rurales ; ministre délégué aux Affaires francophones) : Je veux remercier mon collègue le député de Nepean pour la question. Avec une dette qui s'accroît à au-delà de un million de dollars à toutes les heures, à tous les jours, nous avons un problème économique majeur ici en Ontario et nous devons le corriger.

D'après nos rencontres de table ronde et notre sondage annuel auprès de nos cultivateurs, ils nous ont dit qu'ils sont prêts à utiliser le téléphone, le télécopieur pour faire affaire avec leur bureau d'agriculture. Alors, avec ces outils qu'ils ont, ils vont pouvoir faire affaire avec n'importe quel bureau agricole, que ce soit le Collège d'Alfred, le Collège de Kemptville, ou n'importe quel bureau. C'est ce que les cultivateurs nous ont dit et c'est essentiel, qu'il faut dépenser sagement.

M. Baird : Considérant que trois des bureaux qui seront centralisés se retrouvent dans l'Est ontarien, les francophones de ce coin sont inquiets qu'ils perdront l'accès aux services dans leur langue maternelle. Est-ce que le ministre peut me rassurer que les services en français seront toujours disponibles pour ces gens ?

L'hon M. Villeneuve : Les services en français seront toujours bel et bien disponibles, que ce soit au bureau d'agriculture d'Avonmore, que ce soit au Collège d'Alfred, avec l'amalgamation des comtés de Prescott et Russell, que ce soit partout où les services sont disponibles en français ou en anglais ; les services vont être disponibles à nos cultivateurs comme il l'ont toujours été.

USER FEES

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Mr Minister, Bill 26, in the sections dealing with the changes to the Municipal Act, states that a municipality and a local board may pass bylaws imposing fees or charges on any class of persons, and it also goes on to say that the fees and charges are in the nature of a direct tax for the purpose of raising revenue.

My question to you is something that was raised in the media over the weekend by a number of different people: Are you going to allow head taxes to be introduced by municipalities? Yes or no?

Hon Al Leach (Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing): As you know, we have been working very closely with the municipalities. The municipalities have asked for autonomy to do certain things. As a matter of fact, AMO says, "AMO successfully lobbied the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Municipal Affairs for broader authority to impose user fees on a range of services."

The municipalities want to work with us and be part of the solution, not part of the problem as in the past. What user fees or what licensing fees are brought in by the municipality will be the responsibility of the municipality.

Mr Gerretsen: Let me just see if I got it exactly correct. Are you saying that they can impose head taxes? Yes or no? That's the question.

Hon Mr Leach: Theoretically the municipality could do that, but theoretically I could get an intelligent question and I haven't got that either.

Mr Bob Rae (York South): Let me try again. We're now told that the Premier is in favour of libraries charging for services for which they've never charged before, and now I understand the Minister of Municipal Affairs is telling us that as far as he is concerned, municipalities will be allowed to charge a head tax.

Can the minister confirm once again clearly for the House today: Is it, in his view, permissible for a municipality to charge a general fee on every single citizen in that municipality simply because he or she is living in that municipality? Is that now permitted?

Hon Mr Leach: As I said, we're giving municipalities the autonomy to take action as they see fit. They've been hobbled for years by draconian legislation. They want to help us get rid of the problem that we've inherited and we're going to let them do that. What issues they choose to have licensing fees for is up to them.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): The time for oral question period has expired. Routine motions?

Hon Ernie L. Eves (Deputy Premier, Minister of Finance and Government House Leader): Mr Speaker, during motions, I believe that there is some agreement among the three parties to split the time evenly during this afternoon's debate.

The Speaker: Agreed? Agreed.

PETITIONS

HIGHWAY SAFETY

Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): My petition is to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and reads:

"Whereas the Minister of Transportation is intent on reducing northern winter road maintenance services; and

"Whereas such downgrading places the lives of northern residents at undue and unnecessary risk;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to disallow these reductions in service and to guarantee that winter roads across the northern regions of the province receive the necessary maintenance to ensure the safe passage of drivers."

That comes from a great number of communities in my riding as well as some from Manitoba and across the province.

PORNOGRAPHY

Mr Bob Wood (London South): I'd like to present the following petition to the assembly:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas we, the Catholic Women's League of St John the Divine, London, Ontario, as an association agree the protection of our children against pornography is paramount;

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

"We petition the Legislative Assembly to enact legislation against child pornography. Bill C-128 does not go far enough."

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTURING

Mr Monte Kwinter (Wilson Heights): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"Whereas the final report of the Metropolitan Toronto District Health Council hospital restructuring committee has recommended that North York Branson Hospital merge with York-Finch hospital;

"Whereas this recommendation will remove emergency and inpatient services currently provided by North York Branson Hospital, which will seriously jeopardize medical care and the quality of health for the growing population which the hospital serves, many being elderly people who in numerous cases require treatment for life-threatening medical conditions;

"We petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to reject the recommendation contained within the final report of the Metropolitan Toronto District Health Council hospital restructuring committee as it pertains to North York Branson Hospital, so that it retains, at minimum, emergency and inpatient services."

I have affixed my signature.

COMMON SENSE REVOLUTION

Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly which reads as follows:

"Whereas Mike Harris said on May 30, 1995, `If I don't live up to anything that I have promised to do and committed to do, I will resign'; and

"Whereas Mike Harris promised on May 3, 1995, `No cuts to health care spending,' but in his November 29 economic statement we see $1.3 billion or 18% in cuts to hospital spending over the next three years and a further $225 million in cuts from the health care budget; and

"Whereas Mike Harris has clearly broken his promise to defend health care cuts in funding; and

"Whereas Mike Harris promised in the Common Sense Revolution that, `This plan will create more than 725,000 new jobs,' but in his November 29 economic statement we see a prediction of only 253,000 jobs created over the next three years and an unemployment rate of 8.6% in two years, which is the same as it is today; and

"Whereas Mike Harris has clearly broken his promise to create significant jobs in this province; and

"Whereas Mike Harris promised in the Common Sense Revolution that, `Aid for seniors and the disabled will not be cut,' but in his November 29 economic statement Mike Harris is cutting the Ontario drug benefit plan and making seniors and the vulnerable pay for their drugs; and

"Whereas Mike Harris has clearly broken his promise to seniors and the disabled;

"We, the undersigned, demand that Mike Harris keep his word and resign immediately."

That is signed by eight people who live in the riding of Sudbury East. I have signed it and I agree with the petitioners entirely.

TAX EXEMPTION

Mr Toby Barrett (Norfolk): I have a petition from the congregation of St Andrew's, Hagersville, and Knox, Port Dover, Presbyterian churches re recommendation 104 as proposed by the Fair Tax Commission of the government.

"We, the members of the aforementioned congregations, do hereby petition you, our Premier and representatives, to not proceed on this recommendation of the Fair Tax Commission relative to legislating its proposal that, `The local property tax exemptions for churches, cemeteries and religious and educational seminaries should be eliminated.'

"We would remind you that such action will undermine the stewardship of our members concerning their present support of the provincial, national and international welfare and humanitarian needs of people, because it will financially strap them in their ability to continue to give support to these needs.

"Furthermore, such action will put the onus and the accountability for such undermining of our welfare and humanitarian support squarely on the shoulders of the present government, placing a greater burden upon its finances relative to the need to cover those areas of support the religious organizations would be forced to cut back on.

"We are of a unanimous mind that the proposed recommendation of the Fair Tax Commission and any legislation to its effect is self-defeating, as far as the welfare and care of people is concerned in our province, nation and world, and we again respectfully ask you not to proceed on them."

I affix my name to this petition.

HIGHWAY SAFETY

Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): "To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the Ministry of Transportation is intent on reducing northern winter road maintenance services; and

"Whereas such downgrading places the lives of northern residents at undue and unnecessary risk,

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to disallow these reductions in service and to guarantee the winter roads across the northern regions of the province receive the necessary maintenance to ensure safe passage of drivers."

I will affix my signature.

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MINISTER'S COMMENTS

Mr Tony Silipo (Dovercourt): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"Whereas six women present at a meeting held by the minister responsible for women's issues, Dianne Cunningham, at her constituency office on October 25, 1995, agreed that they heard the minister state, `Within the context of this government, you need to understand that groups or agencies that are seen not to be working with this government, providing an oppositional voice...will be audited and their funding eliminated'; and

"Whereas the minister responsible for women's issues denies having made this statement;

"We, the undersigned, request that the government establish a legislative committee to determine whether the minister responsible for women's issues abused her authority as a minister of the crown by making threatening and intimidating remarks at the meeting described above."

It's signed by about 40 people across the province and I've affixed my signature to it as well.

CHILD CARE

Mr Tony Ruprecht (Parkdale): "Whereas the Ontario government has decided to replace our current child care system with one that lacks compassion and common sense and is fraught with many dangerous consequences; and

"Whereas the concept of affordable, accessible and quality child care is a basic, important and fundamental right for many members of our community who are either unemployed and enrolled in a training program or are working single parents or where both parents are working; and

"Whereas if our present provincial government is sincere in getting people back to work, they should recognize the value of the child care component of the Jobs Ontario program and acknowledge the validity of the wage subsidy to the child care workers;

"We, therefore, the undersigned residents, business owners and child care providers for Parkdale and High Park, urge the Progressive Conservative government of Ontario to immediately suspend their plans to implement cuts to our present child care programs across the province and restore funding to the present levels."

I've attached my signature.

COMMUNITY-BASED JUSTICE OPTIONS

Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre): "Whereas community-based justice programs, such as diversion, alternative measures, community service orders, bail supervision etc, have proven valuable; the screening and supervision of accused and offenders within well-defined programs contribute to public safety; for over 20 years community-based options have made a positive contribution to the welfare of communities in Ontario;

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

"We believe that these programs must not be viewed as dispensable. As with many recent cuts, short-term fiscal expediency holds no long-term value. Credible links with the community and quality programs for the citizens of Ontario must be maintained."

I affix my signature to this petition as well.

EDUCATION FINANCING

Mr Pat Hoy (Essex-Kent): "To the Legislature of Ontario:

"Whereas all students in Ontario deserve equal educational opportunities; and

"Whereas we understand the importance of controlling costs; and

"Whereas reductions to core grants severely impact assessment-poor boards;

"Therefore, be it resolved that we, the undersigned, petition the Legislature to effect reasonable reductions in the education system and to ensure that the reductions are shared in a fair and equitable manner."

CHILD CARE

Mr Tony Silipo (Dovercourt): I have a petition signed by many people, I think it's about 100 signatures, from the Vaughan Nursery School on St Clair Avenue West. It's to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"We do solemnly petition the government of Ontario to recognize and affirm:

"(1) The economic and social value to Ontario of the highest possible standards of child care;

"(2) That Ontario is no longer the Ontario of the 1920s, '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s or '80s, and that the necessity and/or desire for parents to work outside of the house has fundamentally changed child-raising practices in Ontario;

"(3) That the public good is created by providing all Ontario's children, regardless of the income, social class, ethnic or racial background of their parents, with access to the same standards of child care;

"(4) That Ontario needs to act to protect the asset represented by the skills and capabilities of trained and qualified child care staff in providing positive, nurturing experiences for children outside of the home and family setting;

"(5) That the volunteer contributions made by parents to the success of licensed child care in non-profit cooperative centres be recognized and encouraged in any proposed changes to the child care system;

"(6) The necessity, on behalf of Ontario children, and regardless of provincial deficits, tax cut promises or other business challenges, to allocate sufficient public funds in order that access be available for all to licensed, high-quality child care services where required; and

"(7) That community by community, region by region, public consultations and discussions precede any changes that affect Ontario's existing child care system."

I'm happy to support this petition. I'm affixing my signature to it as well.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): This petition is from a number of people who reside in the Niagara Peninsula.

"The governments at provincial and regional levels are threatening cuts to child care programs. We see child care as an essential service to the community. A reduction in subsidized child care programs would result in unaffordable and unavailable child care, causing higher levels of unemployment and welfare dependency."

I submit this petition for consideration of the House.

MINISTER'S COMMENTS

Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): "Whereas six women present at a meeting held by the minister responsible for women's issues, Dianne Cunningham, at her constituency office on October 25, 1995, agree that they heard the minister state, `Within the context of this government, you need to understand that groups or agencies that are seen not to be working with this government, providing an oppositional voice...will be audited and their funding eliminated'; and

"Whereas the minister responsible for women's issues denies having made this statement;

"Therefore, we, the undersigned, request that the government establish a legislative committee to determine whether the minister responsible for women's issues abused her authority as a minister of the crown by making threatening and intimidating remarks at the meeting described above."

I affix my signature to this petition.

HEALTH CARE FUNDING

Mr Dominic Agostino (Hamilton East): "Whereas Mike Harris promised on May 3, 1995, not to cut one cent from health care spending; and

"Whereas that promise was broken when the Conservatives cut more than $1.3 billion from Ontario hospitals; and

"Whereas Mike Harris also promised in the Common Sense Revolution that, `Aid for seniors and the disabled will not be cut'; and

"Whereas that promise was broken when the Conservatives slapped a new user fee on the drugs seniors, the disabled and the poor are prescribed by their doctors when they are sick; and

"Whereas Mike Harris promised in the Common Sense Revolution that there would be no new user fees; and

"Whereas that promise was broken when the Conservatives added $225 million worth of user fees on the Ontario drug benefit plan; and

"Whereas Mike Harris has clearly broken every single promise he has made with respect to protecting health care; and

"Whereas Mike Harris and the Conservatives are now planning, through Bill 26, to bestow upon the Minister of Health new dictatorial powers which would allow him to singlehandedly close any hospital in the province with the stroke of a pen; and

"Whereas Bill 26 will allow the Minister of Health to close any hospital in the province without any public input whatsoever; and

"Whereas Bill 26 will allow the Premier and the cabinet to usurp the rights and privileges of the elected members of this Legislature and thereby the rights of every person in this province;

"We, the undersigned, demand that Mike Harris reverse his policies, which will clearly jeopardize the future of quality health care in Ontario; and we further demand the Conservative government withdraw their heavy-handed, dictatorial budget bill, Bill 26."

I'll add my signature to that.

COMPULSIVE GAMBLING

Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): "We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"(1) That the Canadian Foundation on Compulsive Gambling (Windsor) continue to receive funding in order to meet the growing need of the compulsive gambling constituents of the area.

"(2) The government is allowing the expansion of gambling activity in the Windsor area. At the same time they are eliminating the sole source of funding to the only organization which specializes in assisting the compulsive gambler to understand and overcome their addiction.

"(3) The amount of funding which is required is only 0.032% of the net profits recorded by the Ontario Casino Corp for fiscal year 1994-95."

It's signed by the undersigned, several of the people from Windsor. I hereby affix my signature.

HEALTH CARE FUNDING

Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South): I have an additional 2,000 signatures collected by Mae Mussolum and Rose Kulimouski addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, which now makes over 6,000 signatures regarding health care. The petition ends:

"Therefore we, the undersigned, call on the Minister of Health to restore the $132 million that was cut on July 21, 1995, in order to maintain the promise made by this government to protect health care funding and not cut health care; to reaffirm this government's commitment to no new user fees; and to ensure that the health care budget will stand at $17.4 billion for every day of the life of this government."

I have signed my signature to this petition.

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTURING

Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): I have a signed petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"(1) To immediately implement sole governance for the Sudbury hospital system and to allow the sole governing body the total discretionary power to restructure the present system to more effectively meet the current and future needs of the people of Sudbury and northeastern Ontario.

"(2) To defer all restructuring until the sole governance board is operational and able to assess the impact from a local and regional perspective; and

"(3) To actively protect the regional programs for northeastern Ontario."

This was collected by Kerry Carswell, president of the Ontario Nurses' Association, and I submit it.

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REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON REGULATIONS AND PRIVATE BILLS

Mr Barrett from the standing committee on regulations and private bills presented the following report and moved its adoption:

Your committee begs to report the following bills without amendment:

Bill Pr44, An Act respecting the City of York

Bill Pr38, An Act respecting the Waterloo-Guelph Regional Airport.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): Shall the reports be received and adopted? Agreed? Agreed.

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

Mr Bob Wood from the standing committee on government agencies presented the committee's second report.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): Does the member wish to make a brief statement? No?

Pursuant to standing order 106(g)11 the report is deemed to be adopted by the House.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

CHILDREN'S LAW REFORM AMENDMENT ACT, 1995 / LOI DE 1995 MODIFIANT LA LOI PORTANT RÉFORME DU DROIT DE L'ENFANCE

Mr Hastings moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 27, An Act to amend the Children's Law Reform Act. / Projet de loi 27, Loi modifiant la Loi portant réforme du droit de l'enfance.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale): Essentially, this particular piece of legislation would permit grandparents to make custody and access applications and is amended to mention them specifically. As well, the bill amends the Children's Law Reform Act to emphasize the importance of children's relationships with their parents and grandparents.

TD TRUST COMPANY ACT, 1995

Mr Marchese moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr24, An Act respecting TD Trust Company and Central Guaranty Trust Company.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): Is it the pleasure of the House the motion carry? Agreed.

CITY OF SCARBOROUGH ACT, 1995

Mr Newman moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr41, An Act respecting the City of Scarborough.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): Is it the pleasure of the House the motion carry? Carried.

CITY OF OSHAWA ACT (OSHAWA TRANSIT COMMISSION), 1995

Mr Flaherty moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr49, An Act respecting the City of Oshawa.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): Is it the pleasure of the House the motion carry? Carried.

MUNICIPAL AMENDMENT ACT (SIMCOE DAY), 1995 / LOI DE 1995 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES MUNICIPALITÉS (FÊTE DE SIMCOE)

Mr Gilchrist moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 28, An Act to amend the Municipal Act to name Civic Holiday as Simcoe Day / Projet de loi 28, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les municipalités en vue de désigner le Congé civique sous le nom de fête de Simcoe.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): I think it is fitting that we recognize the British heritage and some of the founding fathers of this province, and recognizing civic day as Simcoe Day would, in large measure, be such a recognition.

TOWNSHIP OF SIDNEY ACT, 1995

Mr Rollins moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr46, An Act respecting the Township of Sidney.

The Speaker (Hon Allan K. McLean): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

SAVINGS AND RESTRUCTURING ACT, 1995 / LOI DE 1995 SUR LES ÉCONOMIES ET LA RESTRUCTURATION

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 26, An Act to achieve Fiscal Savings and to promote Economic Prosperity through Public Sector Restructuring, Streamlining and Efficiency and to implement other aspects of the Government's Economic Agenda / Loi visant à réaliser des économies budgétaires et à favoriser la prospérité économique par la restructuration, la rationalisation et l'efficience du secteur public et visant à mettre en oeuvre d'autres aspects du programme économique du gouvernement.

Hon Al Leach (Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing): Bill 26 has been presented for second reading, and this afternoon I would like to talk in more detail about the municipal section of Bill 26.

It amends a number of acts dealing with municipal finance and governance. This legislation gives municipalities freedom to make decisions locally, to spend money on their priorities. Municipalities need this freedom now more than ever.

Last week, the Minister of Finance told the House why the provincial subsidies had to be reduced, and the people of Ontario had made it very, very clear that they cannot afford to pay more taxes. This means municipalities will have some difficult choices ahead, but municipalities across the province have said they can make this work without increasing taxes.

Municipalities know that services are important to taxpayers, but not who delivers them. People don't care who picks up the garbage; they just want to get it done, and they want it done cheaply. I am confident that municipalities will find ways to deliver services for less.

Municipalities are just as interested in getting rid of waste and duplication as this government is. The problem is that many Ontario municipalities don't have an effective structure to address economic, fiscal and servicing issues. Current legislation makes the situation worse. It prevents municipalities from making changes to their structure without legislation from the province.

Taxpayers have made it clear that they want less government, more cost-effective government, more efficient government. Our legislation will make this happen, and it will ensure that the services that are important to people get delivered more efficiently.

Municipalities have recognized the province's debt problem. They're ready to work with us and be part of the solution. Mayor Hazel McCallion of Mississauga has said, "We'd better smarten up and realize we've got to get this province out of debt." The debt of the province is preventing economic development.

Mayor Jim Gibson of Fergus said: "Now is the time to face reality. We've got to balance the provincial budget. We can't continue to rob from our children's future."

Closer to my riding of St George-St David, Mayor Barbara Hall of Toronto and her council passed a resolution last week not to raise taxes as a result of the government reductions.

Many municipalities haven't waited for this legislation and have started redesigning how they deliver services already. Earlier this year, the regional municipality of Halton transferred its entire sludge treatment program to the private sector. Because of this, Halton region expects to save $2 million over the next eight years, or about $250,000 a year.

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The city of Toronto has started to reorganize to have just four commissioners. This move will streamline decision-making and reduce administrative overhead.

Another example is the city of Hamilton and the regional municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth, where the city's treasury department and the region's finance department are being merged for a savings of up to $1 million a year.

It is this spirit of cooperation that will make this legislation work. It's not just the province that thinks it's time for change; many municipalities obviously agree that the time for change is now.

I'd like to take some time to tell the House the details of the legislation. The legislation we are presenting for second reading today responds to municipalities' requests for increased autonomy to manage their costs and expenditures and prioritize service and delivery. Municipalities have been asking for this autonomy for many, many years.

I want to assure the House that when this legislation is passed, municipalities will have more freedom to make local decisions. I am confident that municipalities will make the right choices for their communities, choices that are cost-effective and give people the services they need. In the end, the taxpayer will be the winner.

In fact, we're sure enough that municipalities will make the right choices that we are giving them the flexibility to decide how to spend the money we give them. In the past, municipalities received money from the province under a number of different programs. Most programs had detailed and specific conditions, conditions that the province really should not have had an interest in.

The new legislation removes unnecessary restrictions. The municipal roads grant and the northern community transportation assistance grant will have funding conditions removed. They will be transferred, together with the unconditional grant, into a lump sum or block fund called the municipal support grant. Municipalities will be able to spend this money on local priorities.

The province will still set minimum standards when it has a significant interest. For example, there will be a provision to ensure that municipalities comply with interprovincial trade agreements signed by Ontario and other provinces.

I don't want to gloss over the fact that municipalities will be receiving less money. Some municipalities, probably many municipalities, will need to restructure to manage their reductions. Municipalities can restructure by streamlining their operations or by realigning jurisdictions, but they must do whatever it takes to deliver services for less.

Some people get nervous when there's talk of changing municipal boundaries. They worry that taxes will go up and they worry that they will lose their sense of community identity. I believe that restructuring can result in a municipality providing the services taxpayers need at a cost they can afford. Moreover, this can be accomplished without any loss of identity. Government structures may change, but not communities. Communities and the things that make them communities, like the local ball team, the community newspaper, the community service clubs, will all continue to exist.

New Tecumseth in Simcoe county is just one example of successful restructuring. Before 1991, the present town of New Tecumseth contained four separate municipalities: Alliston, Beeton, Tecumseth and Tottenham. Since these four municipalities amalgamated, spending and property taxes have declined. General government spending has been reduced by more than 11% and there are 13 fewer local councillors and fewer municipal staff. The former reeve of Tottenham fought hard to stop that merger. She now acknowledges that the new municipality is leaner, more efficient and better equipped to attract and handle growth. When asked if she would like to return to the old days, the former reeve replied, "In my heart I would, but in my head I know we shouldn't."

If successful restructuring is already in place, why do we need to change the legislation? It is because the current legislation is cumbersome, inefficient and expensive. Unless there is 100% consent by the affected municipalities, provincial legislation is needed to implement restructuring. In the past five years, only 16 restructurings were done. Twelve of the 16 required provincial legislation. In my mind that's not local decision-making and it's certainly not getting the provincial government out of the way of local decision-making.

Let me tell you how we're making it easier for municipalities to restructure themselves.

Under the current system, if only one municipality doesn't want to restructure, the other municipalities and all the taxpayers suffer. Under the proposed legislation, a group of municipalities will be able to restructure if the majority wants it. By "majority," I mean a majority of the municipalities representing a majority of the population. In fact, some municipalities have already told us that they want to amalgamate but the current system puts up too many roadblocks. I've also received requests since Bill 26 was introduced for municipalities that want to restructure under the new legislation.

I want to assure the House that any restructuring will be initiated locally. A commission will be appointed only on request either by at least one municipality or by a petition of residents. I should point out that regions and the restructured Oxford county are not included in the new process. This is because many regions are already actively involved in their own restructuring process and some, such as Ottawa-Carleton, recently completed the job of restructuring. Oxford county has done that as well, and that is why it is excluded from the new legislation.

As my colleagues know, the future of the GTA is currently being considered by the GTA Task Force headed by Dr Anne Golden. Again, it seemed reasonable to wait for the Golden report rather than include the regions of the GTA in this legislation.

For municipalities that are streamlining their operations, the proposed legislation includes a toolkit to help them. These tools will help municipalities reduce costs and raise revenues. As I said before, municipalities have been asking for these changes for many years.

Municipalities will be able to control costs by cutting out some of the inefficiencies and duplication. Currently, for a service such as municipal roads, both levels of local government have certain responsibilities. Even though each level has a defined role, overlap and waste occur. We're changing the legislation so that responsibilities for services such as this can be transferred from one level of local government to another. For example, roads, fire services or transit could be assumed by the upper tier if there is a majority approval by the upper-tier council and a majority of local councils representing the majority of electors. I'd like to point out, however, that no changes will be made at this time to welfare or policing.

The large number of special-purpose bodies ties the hands of municipalities and prevents them from managing their budgets efficiently. Taxpayers support the budgets of special-purpose bodies but in many cases they have no say in who is appointed to the board or in the decisions they make. The proposed legislation will allow municipalities to change or even dissolve special-purpose bodies. Some examples of special-purpose bodies that could be dissolved or changed by municipalities are licensing commissions, parking authorities or transit commissions. A full list will be identified in the regulations.

Police services boards are exempt from dissolution. A review of the structure and financing of police was introduced last week by my colleague the Solicitor General. School boards will also be exempt from dissolution.

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The proposed legislation will give broad, general authority to municipalities to charge user fees. Municipalities will be able to increase their revenue by establishing new fees or charges for services such as emergency false alarms. This means that people who use certain services will be the ones who pay for them, not all the taxpayers in the municipality.

I am confident that municipalities will be reasonable in the user fees that they charge. Under the current legislation municipalities are allowed to charge user fees for certain services, such as garbage collection or transit. Experience has shown that such fees charged have been fair and reasonable.

The new legislation will allow municipalities to license most retail businesses or trades and set appropriate fees. This is another area where the current legislation is grossly outdated. Right now, a municipality cannot even recover the cost of postage when it licenses a bakery. The $1 fee for a bakery licence is set out in legislation, and so is the $20 fee for a restaurant licence. This doesn't make any sense and obviously needs to be changed.

We have an excellent example of where this was handled very responsibly, and I'm referring to the city of Brantford, which received general licensing authority in 1985. I have every confidence that other municipalities will respond just as responsibly.

For years, municipalities have wanted to be able to establish private-public partnerships for service delivery. Our legislation will allow municipalities to make decisions on how their public utilities are provided, without a referendum. For example, if a municipality wants to privatize water services through a franchise, it will be able to do it without putting the question to voters.

Not many municipalities deliver gas utilities, and those that do are regulated by the Ontario Energy Board, so our legislation does not make any changes for the delivery of natural gas.

Regulations will also allow municipalities to downsize through early retirement. They will be able to extend early retirement on an unreduced pension until the year 2000.

Another area covered by the new legislation is performance measures. The province is getting out of the municipalities business. We've reduced or eliminated the conditions on grants, so they can now stop sending us the mountains of paper and information on how they spend their money.

Instead, this bill makes municipalities more accountable to the people who really need to know -- the residents themselves. It's the people who live in municipalities who need to know how well their municipalities are performing, so municipalities will have to publish the financial information their ratepayers need to know.

My colleague the Minister of Natural Resources is making some changes to the conservation authorities through this legislation. There will no longer be provincial appointees on conservation authorities. Membership on the boards will be controlled by municipalities. Municipalities will decide what the role or function of the conservation authorities should be. In fact they will even be able to dissolve conservation authorities.

Flood control will continue to be a municipal responsibility, whether there is a conservation authority or not. A conservation authority's power to levy will be restricted, and municipalities will be able to appeal their levy to the Mining and Lands Commissioner.

As you know, Mr Speaker, the Ministry of Transportation's roads grants have been brought into the block grant. Municipalities will have the freedom and flexibility to spend, based on their local roads needs, and they will also be able to streamline their programs and services.

The province will also have a transition fund to meet its commitment for certain projects and initiatives affected by the change. Maintenance costs associated with the sections of provincial highways that run through towns and cities will be funded as part of the block grant system.

I believe this legislation will help municipalities find ways to reduce costs and deliver services to taxpayers at a price they can afford.

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario issued a news release after the economic statement in which its president, Mr Terry Mundell, said: "We expected the cuts to be deep and we were right. We are prepared to take action, but we need continued cooperation from the province to eliminate red tape and outdated rules that tie our hands." Bill 26 is proof that this government is listening and moving in the direction of increased municipal autonomy.

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): As undoubtedly everybody in this assembly is aware, there has already been considerable controversy engendered by the presentation of this bill, controversy engendered by the way in which the bill was presented with absolutely no notice, controversy over the scope of the bill and the nature of its measures, controversy engendered by this government's determination to push this bill through before Christmas with no public hearings and with no opportunity for legitimate debate.

There will now at least be some public hearings despite the government's very strong resistance. There will be some opportunity to examine the details of this bill more fully and to propose amendments. There will even be time for the government to propose amendments as it is forced to acknowledge what it has done.

This preliminary debate on second reading can only be a precursor to what will now be a more intensive examination of the bill outside the Legislature itself. Even then it will be difficult to focus the hearings or to carry forward any kind of thorough amending process, because this bill simply covers too many areas. It makes too many fundamental changes to be able to do justice to it even with three weeks of hearings and a week for clause-by-clause consideration and the amending process.

I can't even begin to speak to the highlights of this bill in a thorough way. We cannot, in a two-day debate, speak even to the highlights of the bill in a thorough way. In the 90 minutes that I have as the leadoff speaker for our caucus to address this bill, I cannot begin to address the highlights.

This bill is 211 pages long. It affects 47 different pieces of legislation. There are single clauses in this bill that bring about fundamental changes that deserve to be debated and challenged in public hearings, and I can't even read this bill into the record in 90 minutes of debate time. But at least this debate that is about to begin, that will be given only two days, two days of debate before we've even begun to have a chance to analyse what's in the bill, at least now this will not be the only consideration that this bill receives before it becomes law.

I believe that the government's original intent in bringing forward this legislation, in wanting to ram it through despite its scope, was absolutely breathtaking in its arrogance and its sheer disregard of any due democratic process.

It is still impossible to debate this bill as it has been presented because it is not one bill but many. Each part introduces sweeping changes unrelated to one another. Each requires due consideration on its own merits or the lack of them. Some parts give unprecedented powers to this government, dictatorial powers, yet this government presents the changes in an omnibus bill with no prior notice and no time allowed for debate.

Nor was there any consultation in the preparation of this bill, even though it becomes increasingly apparent that this is a bill that was developed in a great deal of detail over a very long period of time, because it was presented to us in its full 211 pages fully translated, yet this government could take no time for consultation, no time to give prior notice, allowed no time for debate. I suggest it was not because there wasn't enough time but because there was a deliberate desire on the part of this government to limit awareness of what it is doing.

Never before have we seen such an extensive piece of legislation prepared in such total secrecy. If you believe you are right as a government, if you believe you're going to have public support, I wonder why you would make such an effort to keep the public unaware, why you would be so determined to ram this legislation through before there could be due awareness or due debate.

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We asked that very question over and over again in the Legislature last week, and the only answer we got back from the government was that the government needs to give itself these powers to back up its cuts. So let us call a spade a spade and let us see clearly that this is a budget bill by any other name, and ironically, it's a budget bill without a budget, because we have now gone, as we approach the end of this year, for the first time in history, a full year with no budget.

Again, we wonder why the government could not have a presented a budget. They've presented us with two expenditure statements. They've presented us with a budget bill to back up their budget-type measures. Why could they not have presented us with a full budget?

I suspect it's because this government does not want to be slowed down by such a time-consuming thing as public consultation on a budget or a full public debate on a full budget -- not before they have made their brutal cuts and established a direction of destruction of our public programs which will not be able to be reversed. This government would not want to be held accountable for the defence of a full budget before they have established their savings, as they refer to the cuts in the expenditure statement.

They said this government knows there have been few real savings yet, there have been only cuts, and so they need what they call a restructuring before there can be any real savings achieved. And that's what the government claims Bill 26 is all about. "It's just a restructuring bill so that we can make the cuts that have to be made."

Now, this government's view of what constitutes restructuring is as sweeping as this bill itself. It includes restructuring the way health care is provided to people in this province, restructuring the way our drugs are paid for, restructuring the way our municipalities are managed. It even goes so far as to restructure the way in which freedom of information is controlled.

Some of the changes are fundamental, some may seem to be much less drastic, but there is an underlying pervasive theme that emerges when you combine the government's brutal cuts with this "restructuring" bill. It is clear that this government wants to restructure our society, and our social programs in particular, to fit their vision of the world as they want it to be, and as they in fact need it to be if they are to bring in that promised tax cut in their first real budget.

So this government can't wait to debate the nature of its proposed restructuring. They can't wait for people to actually know what they're doing or what this province will look like when the restructuring is done. And they certainly aren't going to take any chance that anyone might have objections to the way the restructuring is being carried out. So they give themselves unilateral, sweeping powers to step in and make the decisions, or give others the ability to make the decisions, with no need for legislation or debate in a forum where the decisions can be publicly challenged.

After all, debate would be time-consuming. Legislation brings people's attention to what is being proposed. It forces dissident views to be taken into consideration, or at least heard, and the government, this government, simply can't take the time for that. They need to find some savings before they can bring in their budget and their tax cut, and they need to make those savings happen fast.

If the government gets away with this, there will be little public debate or genuine consultation on anything in the future, because this is a government that wants to set new rules, rules where they unilaterally set the terms and conditions before they talk, and the message they give is, "If you want to talk to us, if you want to be a partner with this government, you do it on our terms or you don't do it at all."

This government talked about partnerships with municipalities. Yet they tell them nothing about what is in this particular piece of legislation, and they certainly didn't want them to find out before it was law.

They talk about partnership with the Ontario Hospital Association. They say they're only doing what the partners want, but the partners had no idea what the minister was about to do. The minister still claims that he was only doing what his partners in the Ontario Hospital Association asked for, even when they have said as clearly as they can possibly say it, "What you are doing goes far beyond anything we discussed."

This government talks about partnerships with physicians, but they discuss only the issues the government plans to act on. The other steps the government is going to take never get mentioned, and there is no openness in that kind of a partnership.

The pharmacists now seem to be completely ignored as partners. They offered consultation, and they were not talked to at all, because the government knew what it was planning to do and knew the pharmacists would not agree. The pharmacists have been forbidden to even try to stir up a little bit of opposition. This government's message is: "You cannot be a partner unless you agree to my dictates. It's my terms or nothing at all."

I think it's important to try to give at least a flavour of what this bill does at the beginning of the debate, just a few of the highlights of this ominous bill that takes so many changes under its wing and that the government wanted to ram through in two weeks with one vote on the whole thing. So we have proposed just the 10 top reasons to oppose Bill 26:

(1) It gives the Minister of Health unilateral power to close or amalgamate hospitals and to terminate services that hospitals provide.

(2) It allows for $225 million in new user fees for prescription drugs, in effect taxing the sick.

(3) It deregulates the cost controls on prescription medication, leading to sharp increases in the price of drugs.

(4) It gives the Minister of Health unilateral power to remove health care services from OHIP coverage, meaning these services will have to be paid for by the public.

(5) The Minister of Health is given the power to inspect, copy and disclose personal medical records.

(6) The government can place a lien on your house or car if your highway tolls aren't paid promptly.

(7) It gives the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing new powers to merge or dissolve municipalities.

(8) It allows municipalities to charge new per-person poll taxes whether or not you use various municipal services.

(9) It implements new user fees for freedom of information requests and provides greater powers to the government to keep files secret.

(10) It gives the government the power to claw back over $200 million in payments to retired civil servants.

Those are the top 10 of the moment. The list keeps changing as little by little we become aware of all that this legislation would do.

In spite of the fact that this legislation is so sweeping in its scope, I don't suppose any of us should be surprised that this is a government that sees no need for more than a few hours' debate on all of these measures taken together, because this is exactly the same government which believed it was doing the opposition a favour giving us just two days to debate its expenditure statement.

They make huge cuts that will have devastating impacts on programs and people across this province. Now they bring in legislation that gives them enormous power to make those cuts possible, and yet they think it is somehow doing the opposition a favour by allowing any discussion in the Legislature at all.

If you needed any further evidence of this government's total disdain for the democratic process, you have it now. We have had much past evidence of a government that is impatient to carry out the nastiest parts of its agenda with as little public scrutiny as possible.

We have a government that did not bring the Legislature back until September 26, almost three months after it was elected. Now, the House leader gets indignant at our criticism that they were late bringing the House back. He said he brought it back according to the schedule; they even delayed it a day in respect of the Jewish holiday. But this House could have been recalled in July, when the first expenditure statement was brought in. In fact, we could have had a budget then. We could have had the budget debate that we would have welcomed when this government first started down its slash-and-burn path. But that would not be consistent with the style that this government has adopted from its very first hours.

This was the government that cancelled its hearings on school closures because it didn't want to hear from people who would have vested interests. This is the government that rammed through labour legislation with no public hearings. This is the government that closed halfway houses with no notice at all. This is the government that is preparing to privatize our public sector programs with little or no debate. This is a government that still refuses to present a full budget after six months in government.

Then, with no notice, while we were in the lockup, required by the government if we wanted to learn of its cuts, this government slipped in an omnibus bill, an omnibus bill that is usually a housekeeping bill. Now, were we expecting an omnibus bill in the House before Christmas? Yes, we were. There's always, or often at least, an omnibus bill. But we didn't know what would be in this bill, we didn't know it was going to come in while we were in the lockup and we certainly expected that whatever omnibus bill was brought in it would fit the usual description of items that might not need a lot of debate or public consultation.

This bill that this government brought in while we were all in the lockup learning about the cuts affects everything from the Municipal Act to pay equity to drug pricing. It gives sweeping powers to the government to close hospitals or to amalgamate municipalities, and this government wanted all this passed by Christmas. This government wanted in the worst way possible to exercise the most dictatorial abuse of power in the history of this province.

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The government said we were notified that the omnibus bill was coming, that it was not without notice; and we did know it was coming. We did, in fact, expect it to be a little more than usual given the rumours we were hearing, but we had no idea it would be so sweeping. It was particularly offensive that this government would bring in this bill during the budget or non-budget lockup.

I guess they hoped that the opposition and the media would somehow not notice the unprecedented changes of this huge new bill, and here again is arrogance beyond belief, arrogance and complete lack of respect, not only for the role of opposition in a democracy, but even for the capabilities of opposition members. Did they really think we would not notice, that we wouldn't understand? Did they really think we wouldn't do everything in our power to stop this?

Who knows what they thought, because their action to me continues to be absolutely inexplicable. Maybe the only answer is that this government simply didn't care. Introducing this bill while we were in a lockup was rather like dismissing us out of hand in the most offensive way possible. Yet, in a way, it worked. It worked because it succeeded in diffusing our critique of the cuts they were making that same day, diffusing our critique of the broken promises that littered the political landscape that Wednesday while we focused on trying to stop the next and even worse step this government was about to take.

But we should remember, as we debate this new draconian bill, how closely this bill, this bully bill, is linked to those very cuts that they announced in their non-budget expenditure statement that same day, and how it is serving to pave the way for the savings they want defined to fund their tax cut in their next budget or first budget.

This is a budget bill. It backs up the budget-type cuts in the revenue proposals; revenue proposals like new user fees, new user fees for health care. Yet we have no budget; we don't have a budget debate because there's no budget. If this had been a budget, there would have had to have been some debate, but that would have been much too open a process for this government. So again, for the first time in history, Ontario has no budget and no budget debate.

At least there'll be a vote on Bill 26, although it will still be rather meaningless because this government is determined to leave this bill as one piece of legislation with one vote. But at least we have a vote. We don't have a vote on a budget yet, and the vote on Bill 26 will now hopefully follow some kind of amending process. But there will not be a vote on accepting their budget-like document, their expenditure statement, and I wonder what the government gains by all this other than to escape detailed scrutiny.

It seems to me that this is a government very anxious to escape scrutiny. In fact, they want to escape scrutiny on nothing less than the entire fiscal plan of the government because there were several critical missing pieces to the expenditure statement, the financial document that they've released. They're missing pieces that would have had to have been part of a real budget.

The missing pieces were rather crucial things like the actual financial plan, with figures showing the revenue figures that the government's working with, and what its deficit projections are in reality and how close they are to achieving them. They would have had to show how much is going to be taken from each ministry, where $1.1 billion in cuts still have to be found or where $1.4 billion in additional grant cuts have to be made. They would have to show whether there are going to be even more cuts if this government is really going to bring in its tax cut and still balance the budget.

But because they didn't give us a budget, the government wasn't required to present those figures; it just told us what it wanted us to know, and it used deficit projection figures from its campaign document, a document in which the numbers were highly suspect and didn't add up even if you were inclined to believe them.

Now we have even more reason to be concerned about those figures than when they were originally presented, because this government, and particularly the Minister of Finance, has been all over the map in recent days in telling us whether or not the tax cut has been taken into account in the cuts they've announced, or whether or when or how the tax cut will even be made; and you wonder how a government has the sheer arrogance to bring in the kind of brutal cuts that it has given us in the past five months with no budget to show us what it is achieving, what we're supposed to get and when we're supposed to get it in return for all this pain.

Then you wonder how they can back up this non-budget with sweeping legislative changes that they didn't even want to have aired publicly or debated or amended. The Minister of Finance has said they had no choice; they have to give themselves these sweeping powers to do whatever they believe they need to do. So forget any pretence of this being a democracy. These are tough times. What we need here and now, according to the government, is full-fledged dictatorship, and that's what the Tories are giving us.

They probably say they have a mandate, but I don't believe that the voters of this province gave this government a mandate to slash indiscriminately. I actually think, although I was somewhat surprised by it, I confess, that the voters believed Mike Harris when he said he could balance the budget, cut income taxes, and do it without cuts to health care or classroom education or policing or seniors or disabled programs or agriculture or tourism or natural resources. And if anybody had thought to ask about cuts to children's aid societies or child care or counselling for battered women, he would probably have said there'd be no cuts there either, because whatever group he was talking to during that election campaign was given an assurance that there would be no cuts.

"Vote for me and you can have it all," he said, "jobs, a balanced budget, a tax cut and no pain." So a significant number of people were seduced, not a majority of Ontarians but enough to give this government a majority, and all they have done with that mandate is to inflict pain. This is not, I submit, what the electorate gave them a mandate to do.

If Mike Harris had been honest with the electorate, he would have told them that they could choose any two out of three commitments. They could have a balanced budget without hurting essential services but no tax cut; they could have an income tax cut and protect essential services but no balanced budget; or they could have a tax cut and a balanced budget but valuable and needed services would be devastated.

Now, I wonder which option the electorate would have chosen. I wonder if anybody believes that the Ontario electorate would have chosen devastating cutbacks in order to have their income tax cut. I don't believe that's what the people of this province would want and I don't believe that's the mandate they gave this government, but that's what this government has given them.

They are giving the public no opportunity to say: "Wait a minute here. You didn't tell us that this is what you were planning to do. You told us that all you had to do was bring in a few efficiencies here, fix a little fraud there, nothing that would actually hurt us. You promised that we wouldn't feel the pain."

For months now people have been starting to feel the pain of this government's cost-cutting, and now the pain is going to get deeper as the government paves the way for its income tax present to the well-to-do. And it is going to get worse still as the sheer impossibility of managing this level of cuts without sacrificing services is recognized.

The government says, knowing all that, that they have to give themselves unusual powers because these are tough, unusual times. "We need unusual powers so that when people come to us and say, `This isn't what we gave you a mandate to do, this isn't what we expected,' the government can say: `Tough. Stop complaining. We'll tell you what's good for you. You can howl all you like. We'll do what we want to do and no one can stop us because we have a majority.'"

Of course, those aren't exactly the words the government uses. Instead they say things like: "We're just giving ourselves and our partners the tools we need to do what needs to be done. We all know there needs to be change. We have to do things differently. All Bill 26 does is provide for restructuring so that we can do things differently."

Bill 26 does indeed provide the tools for restructuring, tools that will be used in a unilateral and dictatorial way. The government says, "No, we won't use our new powers except as a last resort." Make no mistake, the last resort for this government is anything they have has to do to make good on the most unrealistic of their campaign commitments.

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These are tough, difficult times, and we agree. The government keeps saying, "Everyone knows there's a financial problem and everyone knows we have to do things differently and everyone's prepared to do their part," and we agree. If everyone agrees and is willing to do their part, government doesn't need unusual, dictatorial powers to do it to them. I suggest that even in the toughest of times, there are limits beyond which you cannot find the dollars you need to meet real needs, and this government has pushed hospitals and school boards and colleges and universities and municipalities and social service agencies and community service agencies well beyond that line.

I believe the restructuring that this government is considering goes well beyond Bill 26, and that is one of the reasons I am so deeply concerned with this bill. I believe the restructuring that they're planning will change us in ways we've not even yet begun to contemplate, and it will be driven not by informed and thoughtful public policy debate but by a dictatorial government's ideological and financial imperatives. Because, you see, it does seem to all work together if you're a true believer in the right-wing, survival-of-the-fittest, let-the-market-reign philosophy of the Harris government.

You need to balance a budget with a $10-billion deficit and still give people a $5-billion tax break? Okay. No problem. Just squeeze the public sector until it can't deliver service any more.

But how, you might ask, do we then provide for the health care needs and the education needs of our citizens? No problem. Let the private sector in. Let the marketplace solve the problems.

Does that create an inequity between those who can afford the best service and those who have to take what the public system can provide? "Tough," says the government. "We have to get the budget under control. We have to change. We have to do things a little differently. This is just a little restructuring. What are you so worried about?"

Well, I'm worried, because I think that when you combine the underfunding of the public system with this government's willingness to restructure and to privatize, the consequences are inevitable. The government will not be able to close enough schools or close enough hospitals or take away enough of our health care coverage or charge enough user fees to make up for its brutal funding cuts, so the publicly funded systems will deteriorate, and the pressure to let the private sector step in will be enormous. We are on our way, ladies and gentlemen, to two-tiered health care and two-tiered education.

Some of this restructuring focus I believe is ideological, which is why the government seems so totally comfortable with it. Some of it comes from a government that is at least comfortable with the privatization of services.

But most of it comes from the need of this government to deliver its crazy income tax cut. It is truly unbelievable that this province and its people should be facing this kind of cutting and this kind of radical restructuring to deliver a campaign promise that no one ever believed made any sense at all.

The government is being tough, all right: tough and heartless and dictatorial in its determination to set the stage for this tax cut. They believe that if they make all the cuts now and make them before Christmas, the shouting will die away, so they're prepared to do whatever they have to do to get the cuts they need now to pay for their income tax cut later. From now on, they believe, things will get easier and people will forget the draconian cuts of November 1995, and they hope that people will accept their argument that big daddy government is just acting in their best interests.

In the meantime, they send a clear and unmistakeable message. They send the message that whether you think the government is right or wrong, and no matter how deep and broad the pain, you had better not complain. This is tough medicine but it is good for you so just swallow it and keep quiet.

And just in case someone might have the nerve to object to what the government is doing -- maybe an objection from a hospital board down the road that doesn't agree with the minister's views on restructuring, or a community that might not be forcibly amalgamated by the Minister of Municipal Affairs, or a union that just might want some fair and reasonable negotiations -- this government stands ready to take away any power that they might have. They believe no one will care. The government will just point out that the complainer represents a special-interest group and that that special-interest group shouldn't be listened to, and those foolish enough to complain will face the wrath of all-powerful, big daddy government.

The government's hoping that by the next election the pain will be a distant memory, that the economy will have recovered, that there will even be some room for a little comforting pre-election spending.

But the strategy will backfire, I serve notice on the members opposite today. The strategy will backfire, it will not work, first because it is based on Conservative campaign commitments and Conservative campaign numbers that simply don't add up and never did. A strategy built on such a shaky foundation will inevitably collapse. It won't work because concerned citizens across this province will see and will feel the magnitude of the pain that is being inflicted to bring in an income tax cut and they will say no. They will see the injustice of this government's actions and they will say no. They will see a government replacing democracy with dictatorship and they will say no. Hopefully, they will start to see through this government's honeyed words about restructuring and realize that this government's answer to our financial problems is to slash public sector spending and let the private sector in to fill the gap.

I happen to believe that there is a place for private sector partnerships -- without question, there's a place. But I also believe that there's a need for debate, step by step, as to whether each partnership works and is appropriate. When we come to health care and to education, it is essential that we debate not just the appropriateness of the partnerships but the role of wholly private for-profit versus public not-for-profit services. These are critical defining issues of our social system. These are the values that are at stake here and surely they need to be debated.

I recognize the fact that the government takes comfort in the knowledge that there are those who support the government's agenda and particularly its cost-cutting agenda. They believe that things do need to change and that public sector spending has to be slashed in order to meet the deficit goals. They, like the government, will not want to pause long enough to reflect on whether this is the best way to go or what the implications of the specific changes will be for the future of this province.

The financial markets and the business community will give high marks for tough deficit reduction measures, although the budget analysts confess that they are a bit concerned with the lack of a fiscal plan in the financial statement and all those who believe that deficit reduction should be a priority have reservations about the proposed income tax cut -- they just don't believe it's ever going to happen. That's one reason why we had no budget this year, so that the praise that the government is expecting for its deficit-fighting measures wouldn't be clouded by criticisms of the sheer inanity of bringing in a big tax cut when the goal should be deficit and debt reduction.

That strategy didn't quite work because, lo and behold, people weren't so unaware as the government hoped. People were actually conscious of the income tax cut promise and many realized that the size of the cuts that we are seeing is a direct result of that income tax commitment. Even economists and those who analyse budgets agree that a big tax cut makes no sense at all when you're facing a $10-billion deficit.

Nevertheless, this Conservative government is making the cuts in spending in preparation for its tax cut. With Bill 26, they back up the budget cuts with the power to deliver the so-called savings, paving the way for that tax cut to happen. They are counting on things looking better by spring and they hope they can sell their tax cut in a less critical financial world, except that things will not be a whole lot better, not if this economy continues to sputter and the government's anticipated revenues continue to decline. Sadly for this province, I believe that is what will happen.

We should never lose sight of the fact that there are some bottom lines here. One of those bottom lines, one of the greatest concerns people have is whether this government's actions help or hurt our economy. If their actions don't help this economy, we will never get people working and we will never get people off welfare and we will never see a balanced budget, and neither government cuts nor government's unilateral actions to bring in sweeping changes will find acceptance anywhere if the economy is not helped.

Our economy right now is in a precarious state. There were 14,000 fewer jobs in October than there were at the start of this year. The housing market is lower than it has been in five years. People are not spending money this Christmas because they're concerned about their jobs. This set of announcements -- the expenditure cuts coupled the same day with the powers to change the very nature of our society -- is going to do nothing to restore consumer confidence.

The government's counting on the tax cut. They put all their eggs in one basket and they are counting on the tax cut. They are putting us all through this because they're counting on the tax cut as an economic stimulus, their way of getting the economy going again, their sole solution to get the economy going again. But the income tax cut is not going to provide an economic stimulus until it's actually in place, and I don't believe there's any evidence that it will provide an incentive for economic growth even when it is introduced.

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The people who benefit the most from the tax cut, the only ones who are going to get enough money out of it to make any investment at all, are the people who already have the money to spend and the money to invest.

The middle-income earner is not going to feel much better off, not when their jobs are insecure, their property taxes are going up, they get hit with a head tax because Bill 26 makes that possible, their child care and tuition increases are eating up more than the tax cut dollars, and there is a whole whack of new user fees coming at them thanks to Bill 26. Given all of this, there is not going to be a lot of new spending or long-term investment by middle-income families, so where is the economic stimulus going to come from?

I find it interesting that even the Minister of Finance seems belatedly to be recognizing this simple fact. He says that there really wasn't a tax cut planned when he came in as Minister of Finance. He says, "I guess some things were just not thought through carefully enough," which is an understatement if there ever was one.

In the meantime, the dislocative effects on the economy and on jobs of this government's cuts will be enormous: 80,000 lost jobs and the loss of all the economic spinoffs that come from people working. That, I suggest, is the environment that the government will be looking at next spring as it prepares to introduce its tax cut.

The financial market people will still say, when the government starts to cut taxes, "Why are you doing this when we still have a huge deficit and you are adding billions to the debt?" People across this province will say: "We don't understand what's happened here. The government cut our health care, they cut our education, they cut our child care; they give themselves dictatorial powers to close our hospitals, to force the amalgamation of our municipalities; they decide what health care we can have and where we can get it and who will provide it; they charge our seniors for their drug use; they increase the cost of drugs for everyone who has to buy them; they even threaten to take away our house if we miss paying the tolls they put on our roads, and things still aren't getting any better. We still have high unemployment. People are still losing their jobs. What have we gained from all this pain?"

The impact of the cuts will not be forgotten and the impact of Bill 26 will not be forgotten next spring as the government brings in its first budget. It will be felt in every area that the government touches with this bill. It will be felt by every individual in every community across this province. There will be mounting frustration as people realize what's been done and how helpless they now are to prevent it in the face of the enormous powers the government proposes giving itself with this bill.

I want to turn to the specifics of Bill 26, at least in respect of the provisions that give us the greatest initial concern. As I said at the beginning, I'm sure there will be other areas that emerge as concerns as this debate continues. There are many areas that I simply will not be able to touch on today.

I do want to look first at health care, where the restructuring is most extensive and, I suggest, most dangerous. I want to make it very clear that the restructuring of our health care system as it is presented in this bill serves one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to find money for a government that talks about savings but has so far made only cuts.

This bill does nothing to plan for the efficient, effective delivery of health care so that we can continue to meet new pressures and emerging needs. This bill seeks to give the government the tools it needs, the powers it needs, to wring money out of the health care system to make up for the $1.5 billion it has already arbitrarily taken out to pay for its tax cut.

Health care was to the government, according to their own words, their first and most important commitment. "Not a penny from health care," they said -- not a penny -- yet they took more than $100 million from health care in their first financial statement and now they've cut a full $1.5 billion from the health care budget.

They're taking away $1.3 billion, 18% over three years, from hospitals, those same hospitals that are already facing layoffs and longer waiting lists for surgery and overcrowded emergency departments. The cuts to hospitals are going to mean less health care in the community and more bed closures, not because there is duplication but because of a lack of dollars. There will be less emergency coverage and fewer nurses and less patient care, because hospitals are being given no options.

The minister has talked a lot about restructuring to save dollars, and we agree. Again, we agree that restructuring is needed and it can happen to save dollars. We agree that restructuring can save needed dollars that in turn can go to provide the care patients need, but we believe that the savings from those restructurings should stay in the community, because it will be a struggle for hospitals to meet new and growing needs with existing resources.

That challenge alone would force the hospitals to look at new ways of doing things -- it is forcing hospitals to look at new ways of doing things. But the hospitals cannot meet increased demands with fewer dollars.

The Premier and the Minister of Health keep talking about reinvesting the health care savings, but there hasn't been any saving yet, only $1.5 billion in cuts, and now the minister has to find the $1.3 billion he has taken away from the hospitals, has to find those in savings to put back into the system if they're going to make good their word to reinvest. So the minister is planning to find the dollars to make up for what they've already cut by closing hospitals. We're not talking about carefully planned restructuring now; we're talking about closing hospitals to pay for a tax cut.

As the minister starts closing hospitals, we can expect him to reallocate at least some of the dollars saved. It's going to be a reality that we will see announcement after announcement, I'm sure, very politically appealing kinds of announcements as the Minister of Health decides where the health care dollars should go.

There's no question that there are challenges in a host of specific areas facing our health care system. We know there are waiting lists for cancer care and for cardiac care and for kidney dialysis, but I don't believe you can start to meet those challenges by taking dollars away from the front-line hospitals.

There are areas for saving money in the health care budget without taking dollars away from hospitals, but this government seems to think that cuts to hospital budgets are fast and immediate, particularly if any dissenting views in the community are ignored.

We're not going to look forward to the announcements that the minister will have to make about the hospital closures to come. Surely, as he has the politically appealing announcement of reinvestment, he is also going to be the one who makes the announcements about the hospital closures, since he's the one that's going to make the decisions. He's taking over the power of making decisions for hospitals in every community.

I wonder where is the Minister of Health -- I thought it was Jim Wilson -- who said that communities should decide. His view now seems to be, "Make a decision, make it fast, or I'm going to make it for you." Or maybe he's saying, "If I don't like the decision you make, I'll make it for you." It's a short step from that to: "Don't bother me with the concerns of your community. I've got budgets to cut, I've got savings to find." That's the kind of thinking that dictatorship encourages, and dictatorship is what is developing here.

The minister continues to say he's doing what his partners, represented by the Ontario Hospital Association, asked him to do. He talks about all the things that they agreed were important and that they are doing -- except that the minister went well beyond what was agreed to.

Now he says he's disappointed that the Ontario Hospital Association put out a critical press release without calling him -- they didn't call him -- after he brought out legislation that went far beyond what they had agreed to or knew was happening. He says he's not quite sure what the Ontario Hospital Association is trying to get at. He says, "We've simply done what they asked us to do."

That's not how the Ontario Hospital Association sees it, and they could not be clearer in their December 5 memo in which they raised serious concerns for the future of the hospitals in this province, where they say very clearly that the Minister of Health has gone far beyond any power that was necessary to bring about a restructuring, and where they urge that there be amendments that will result in legislation that will just allow for reasoned and thoughtful decisions by government and which will prevent arbitrary actions that cannot be appealed.

I wonder what's so hard for the Minister of Health to understand in this. Once again the theory seems to be: "Don't tell the supposed partners what you're going to do. Ignore them and discredit them if they criticize what you've done." The term "partner" has never meant less than when this Minister of Health uses it.

The Minister of Health is also giving himself unilateral power to decide who can set up an independent health care facility. There will no longer be consultation before issuing a licence to private clinics to provide the services that our hospitals now provide. The minister can extend the Independent Health Care Facilities Act to cover facilities it does not currently cover, so they can take over providing the services that hospitals provide, since hospitals won't have the money to provide them. There is no longer even a requirement to give preference to Canadian-owned, non-profit facilities when those licences are issued.

The first steps this government takes, I predict, will be to open up medical diagnostic procedures to the private sector. Rather than provide the hospital with funds for an MRI, for example, they'll let the private sector do it. Then what? Does the hospital contract the service with the private sector at cost? Not likely, because that's not the way the private sector works. So does the hospital pay more for the service than it would have to if it had a budget for an MRI? That would make no sense at all. In any event, the hospital has no budget for an MRI, so who gets the service in this private facility that has the MRI? Only those who can pay for it.

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What comes next in this evolution of a two-tier, for-profit health care sector? How else does this minister propose finding his version of efficient and quick ways to take money out of the health care system? He's going to decide what is medically necessary, and if he decides that something is not medically necessary -- or it may be the general manager of OHIP who decides what's not medically necessary, according to the way I read this Bill 26 -- they will not pay for that service, even if the service has already been provided.

That's highly significant. They will decide whether the service provided to the patient was medically necessary, and if they decide it wasn't necessary, even though the physician has provided the service, they will not pay for it. I suggest that this is the first proposal for retroactive delisting that we have ever heard of. I wonder how the Minister of Health becomes an expert in determining what health care a patient needs. How does the general manager of OHIP, sitting in Kingston, second-guess a physician's decision about what's in the best interests of his patient?

This minister's new powers go on and on, including being able to decide how many people become physicians and who will practise where. The Ontario Medical Association has described this as an unprecedented piece of legislation which will give the Minister of Health full control of the health care system. Never before has a government or a single minister sought such extraordinary powers, powers which would give him or his officials the right to enter individual physicians' offices and seize their records, powers to allow bureaucrats to determine the necessity of many medical procedures and which drugs are to be administered, and allow for the arbitrary setting of thresholds and fee schedules by bureaucrats.

The issue of access to medical records which the Ontario Medical Association touches on has perhaps been the most shocking of the new powers being vested in this minister and his appointees. He has the power to appoint inspectors who will work only under the general manager of OHIP, not under the Medical Review Committee and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, as is now the case. They will have the power, these inspectors, to examine records of patients, doctors' charts, doctors' notes. They will have the power to remove that information for the purpose of copying it. They will have the power to disclose the information for reasons the minister deems in the public interest, and there will be no action for disclosure even if that disclosure is inappropriate. No action can be taken against the minister or the general manager or their staff or any other person or organization for disclosure. That is what this bill says.

The minister has said: "There's no problem with this. There's no new power here. We're not doing anything but looking at a physician's billings." That is simply not what the act says. This act gives access to the most confidential personal medical information -- doctors' charts and notes -- not just a doctor's billings, and there is no protection of the privacy of that individual, even from public disclosure.

The minister said in this House that the privacy act protects individuals, but that is not what the privacy commissioner said. His letter clearly showed that he was not consulted, that he is extremely concerned about new and unprecedented powers being given to the minister.

I was dismayed that the Premier in the House today appeared unwilling to recognize the legitimate concerns being raised by the privacy commissioner. I will not take time today to read into the record all the details of the letter which was provided by the privacy commissioner at his own volition because of his very deep concerns about this invasion of the privacy of every private citizen. I will simply read one part of his three-page letter, where he says: "Given the highly sensitive nature of the information involved, the lack of knowledge and control that exists for the person whose information it is and the vagueness of the purposes for which the information may be collected, I have real fears of the consequences that may follow."

The minister apparently has said that he will amend the act. The Premier today seemed a little less certain of that, but the minister has said he would amend the act if the privacy commissioner had concerns, and we're going to hope that this in fact is the case. Yet if we had believed that same minister's assurances that he offered to the public in this House last week and if the government had been able to push this bill through without debate, this unprecedented power to invade personal privacy would have become the law of this province.

It's hard to imagine anything that could have been more shocking to us than our finding out that the government was going to introduce copayments for those on the drug benefit plan, despite the promises of no new user fees. I guess that's the way this government's strategy of introducing Bill 26 did work, when it was introducing expenditure cuts and breaking its promises all over the place, because it made what is in Bill 26 even more shocking than the fact that the government had just broken one of its fundamental promises, not to cut health care, and another fundamental promise, not to introduce new user fees.

We saw, for weeks before the expenditure statement, the minister using weasel words to put conditions on a commitment that had seemed clear and unequivocal and unconditional when it was made. But, after all, if you've already broken your first and most important commitment -- not to cut health care -- I guess it doesn't matter if you break another promise.

I guess it doesn't matter if what you are doing, by introducing these user fees for health care, is telling those welfare folks who are trying to survive on tuna and dented tins of spaghetti that they're going to have to forget the tuna if one of their kids gets sick because they have to pay a user fee for their child's medication. And why worry about a senior who's so financially strapped that he qualifies for a guaranteed income supplement that he can't afford to get sick just because he happens to be getting old?

If you're a really well-off senior, you can afford to pay a lot more for your illness -- an average of $240 a year -- unless you have some serious medical problems or multiple health problems. I should point out that a really well-off senior for this government makes $16,000 a year or more. If you have serious medical problems and multiple health problems, you'll pay a lot more than $240 a year, because those dispensing fees will start to add up.

Bill 26 will legalize this government's ability to break its promise and to save its $250 million on the backs of the poor and the old, the disabled and the sick. The promise to protect seniors and the disabled has been broken so often it seems a little redundant even to mention it.

Ironically, as the government takes its pound of health care dollars from the seniors and the disabled and the welfare recipients, it may well find itself having to use those dollars it saved to pay for the increased cost of prescriptions under the drug plan. There's no guarantee that drug prices will not rise as a result of the deregulation. This bill, in one clause, deregulates the pricing of prescription drugs. There's no guarantee that the cost of prescription drugs is not going to go up -- go up for the government and most certainly go up for everyone who is not on the drug plan.

The cost of prescription drugs could go up as much as 15%, and there is no guarantee that they will come down in the future. There is certainly no reassurance for people in the minister's statement. After Bill 26 becomes law, buying drugs will be rather like buying a used car, because who is in a position to bargain for cut-rate penicillin when you're sick? Who's going to feel comfortable accepting a cheaper substitute even if you can find one? The important question is, who has asked any of the questions about what this will do to prescription drug prices and who will benefit from the government's decision to deregulate them?

It is one clause in Bill 26, one clause with a huge and far-reaching impact, and it is buried in schedule G of an omnibus bill. This restructures how we pay for health care, with no indication that there is a positive outcome for either government or individuals.

The Ontario Pharmacists' Association has tried to ask the questions, but the government doesn't want to hear from them. They certainly were not consulted. They, in their letter to this government, have urged the government to hear their concerns. They say:

"We need time to assess the changes and consult with our members and colleagues. We need to talk to seniors and others who will be directly impacted, so at least somebody can say, `What will happen when this one clause of Bill 26 becomes law and deregulates our drug costs?'"

There have been so many broken promises, it's getting difficult to keep track of them all. I hear people getting increasingly frustrated by a government that says one thing and does another. They certainly don't want to trust that kind of government with dictatorial powers.

People remember another broken promise, the promise the Premier made that there would be stable funding for our hospitals and school boards and colleges and universities and municipalities. He defined stable funding as flat-lined funding; that was absolutely clear. Flat-lined funding means no cuts, and he said he wanted to do better than that. Yet in the financial statement, we have cuts of 10% to school boards in one year, 15% cuts in one year to colleges and universities, 44% over two years to the unconditional grants and road grants of municipalities.

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I think of classroom education, and I'll touch on it only briefly because classroom education is not hit in Bill 26, because the government said it was going to protect classroom education. So the Minister of Education, like the Minister of Health, talks of "administrative savings" to make up for the cuts they've just made. Like the Minister of Health, the Minister of Education is going to "restructure"; this government is all about restructuring. The Minister of Education is going to restructure school boards, whether local communities think it's a good idea or not. This restructuring is not in Bill 26 because it's going to happen later. The consultations that might have affected the decisions that minister makes have already been cancelled.

The Minister of Health and the Minister of Education both are going to take any dollars saved from administration away from the local school boards and the local hospitals. They're going to take those dollars to help fund the $5-billion tax cut. Again I say, surely if this restructuring was to take place, if it makes sense in saving dollars, those saved dollars could have stayed at the local level.

Now boards that do not believe that raising taxes is reasonable are going to have to make some choices about cutting junior kindergarten or special education or adult education. Because of this government's senseless determination to bring in its tax cuts, we are going to lose valued programs that parents and educators have fought over many years to put in place. I remember when Bette Stephenson, a former Conservative Minister of Education, brought in legislation to mandate special education. I think it's a shame that the present Conservative government refuses to place any value on the progressive programs that some of their predecessors put in place.

Post-secondary education is equally hard hit, despite the recognition by members of this government when they were still in opposition that that system was already underfunded. But the government has given universities and colleges a way of recovering some of their dollars through higher tuition fees. We can remind them that they said that paying 25% of tuition, of the cost of university, was reasonable for post-secondary students, and they're already paying 26%, so we could wonder what is a reasonable share to pay.

But the question today is, they can bring about a restructuring of what students pay for post-secondary education without its being in Bill 26. They can just do whatever they want on tuition. They can force the students of this province to pay a higher cost of their education. They can do that again in order to fund their tax break for the most well-to-do.

As this government pursues its restructuring agenda, I suggest to you that not only will the well-to-do get the largest tax break from this government -- at least as they originally planned the tax cut -- but they may also get a chance to send their children to an élite private university in Mike Harris's Ontario.

As they do with Bill 26, as they carry out their restructuring without consultation or meaningful debate, the government is likely to allow the introduction of private post-secondary education quietly and without notice or debate, because that's a logical next step in this government's restructuring process. Why debate changes to even the most long-held principles of our society?

We have never in this province accepted two-tiered health care or two-tiered education. We have believed in providing a high quality of post-secondary education to secondary students with as little restriction on access because of ability to pay as possible. We have never condoned a best system for the wealthy. We wanted a best system for all and we have been remarkably successful in achieving it.

Now that achievement is threatened with reduced quality and limited access and the beginnings for the first time of a two-tiered system with a partial deregulation of tuition. Again a restructuring, a major restructuring, and it flows from the expenditure cutbacks. It doesn't need to be backed up with a new tool in Bill 26, because this government can do whatever it wants to do with tuition and the licensing of private universities.

Then the meat cleaver came down again and it came down heavily on municipalities. Again the government leaves no real options. The municipalities have great flexibility all right, I say to the Minister of Municipal Affairs. They've got the flexibility to cut services or to raise taxes.

The government says that's the municipality's problem, it's their responsibility to make the decisions. The government's giving them what they have always wanted. The government's giving municipalities flexibility, the flexibility to provide all the services with less money or to charge new user fees, and Bill 26 provides a whole new field of opportunity to bring in new user fees at the municipal level. Some might argue that a new user fee is a new tax by another name, but as long as it's the municipalities that bring it in, this tax-fighting government doesn't seem to care.

I think people might be more than a little surprised that the flexibility being given to municipalities to levy new taxes, by any other name, includes the freedom to put a head tax in place, a direct charge for every person for services provided, whether you use the services or not. If you doubt that's what's in here --

Hon Mr Leach: Name one municipality. Name one.

Mrs McLeod: The Minister of Municipal Affairs says, "Name one." It's not law yet. Minister, you are proposing to give municipalities the ability to bring in a direct head tax. If you doubt it, I refer you to page 15, schedule M.

The Municipal Affairs minister is suggesting that there's not one municipality that now does this. That's because it's not law. I suggest there's not one municipality that will want to do this, because they'll remember the uproar that met Margaret Thatcher when she tried to bring in a head tax in Britain. But at least Margaret Thatcher would have had to get the approval of the British House of Commons. This government just says, "If you want to do it, go right ahead and do it."

I think municipalities might also be surprised to find out what this minister can do to them after Bill 26 is passed, and indeed what municipalities can do to each other in the name of restructuring. Here again it seems that if the minister thinks that, "You municipalities are not working hard enough to meet the government's demand that we get bigger in the name of getting better," guess what? "This government is going to step in and it can do your amalgamation for you."

I suggest to the Minister of Municipal Affairs that he might want to look back in historical records or consult with those of us who come from the community of Thunder Bay, because I remember the reaction to the forced amalgamation of the two communities, in fact of several communities that became the city of Thunder Bay. It was 25 years ago, and there are many who have never forgiven Darcy McKeough, a former Conservative Minister of Municipal Affairs, I suggest to the current minister, not for what was done but for the way in which it was done.

I say to the Minister of Municipal Affairs that he may find that lower tiers, smaller municipalities, might not like the way things are being done if the upper-tier regional government decides just to take over some of the services that the municipality now provides or to offload what the region now has responsibility for, because this is all part of Bill 26. That's what the bill says.

If the minister denies that is the case, then I ask him to sit in committee and explain this clause by clause, because it clearly says that in the name of restructuring, upper-tier municipalities can take over services that lower-tier municipalities provide; that the Minister of Municipal Affairs can step in and amalgamate or allow larger municipalities to annex smaller municipalities, all in the name of restructuring. Municipalities don't even know what might be done to them.

I suggest this is not what municipalities wanted; I suggest it is not what the Premier talked about on the campaign trail. It is certainly not what he meant when he talked about municipal partnerships. Municipalities told us when we talked to them, as we all did, what they wanted.

They wanted more autonomy; they wanted less direction from Queen's Park; they wanted a clear definition of a partnership that works between the province and the municipality on shared-funding programs; they wanted an assurance that there would not be unilateral changes in that relationship without consultation. Instead the municipalities have been given unheard-of cuts, the flexibility only to raise new taxes and charge new user fees and the threat of having their jurisdictions taken away from them. That truly is a unique new definition of partnership.

I want to recognize the fact that children are not going to escape this government's restructuring efforts, far from it, although this particular restructuring is not the focus of Bill 26. I suspect the only reason that the restructuring of children's services is not in this bill, along with everything else, is because the government knew that people were watching for this one on that particular day. We have had clear evidence of how this government's cuts are going to hurt children in this province.

We have seen the cuts to children's aid societies, which can barely meet their legal mandate for child protection now. We have seen the cuts to child care, and we know that this government is looking at a massive restructuring of child care by introducing a voucher system. They offer it in the name of choice; it is in fact a way to limit government subsidies with no responsibility for ensuring that quality care is available.

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Here again, watch for this government to just bring the new system in, destroying what has taken years to build slowly, with no debate and no consultation, because we have seen it cut again and again. We've seen cuts to programs that provide counselling support to families struggling to survive, with no consultation. We've seen the elimination of programs to help battered women establish independent lives for themselves and for their children, with no consultation and not even an acknowledgement of the impact of what was done.

We hear the Minister of Community and Social Services saying that they are restructuring within their ministry, they are looking at redefining their mandate, they are looking at setting priorities because across-the-board cuts aren't the way to go. We agree, but surely, as they restructure and redefine, one of the priorities must be to keep a reasonable level of service for children and families in need. That is no longer there and cannot be there as a result of this government's cost cutting. It is the most vulnerable and the most needy and the most at risk who will pay the greatest price for this government's tax cut to the well-to-do and for its determined dismissal of the concerns of any who are affected by its cuts.

There are no restructuring proposals in Bill 26 to deal with these concerns -- I acknowledged that as I introduced the subject in the debate -- because these are just cuts and the services are just gone, and the government has no intention of putting anything, even restructured, back in their place.

I'm one of the concerned. I'm concerned about the impact of this government's cuts. I am deeply concerned about the loss of services that are needed. I am distressed that we are seeing programs destroyed that took years to build and will be impossible to restore. I'm concerned that we are only seeing the beginning of what will be a massive restructuring of our social programs under this government.

I believe that this government has set us on a road to greater privatization of essential public services, like health care and education, because when you seriously underfund the public system, the pressures from those who can afford better, to give them an alternative, become enormous. When we start to get more privatization we will have a two-tiered system: one for the rich and one for the not-so-well-off.

Part of the social fabric of this province has been a commitment to provide the best in health care and education to everyone, regardless of ability to pay, and that social fabric is threatened by this government, all because it wants to find $5 billion more for a tax cut that will benefit those who least need it.

There is a destructive sequence to all of this: Take money out of the public system, give that money to those who can afford to pay their own way in health care and education and let them use that tax break money not to invest or to spend but to buy the services that the public system can no longer afford to provide. I am convinced that this is the road this government is taking us down.

I am frustrated that this government cannot understand that the depth of their cuts will hurt our economic renewal by putting so many more people out of work. I am disturbed that they cannot even understand that there's a role for government in providing targeted support for economic investment, with a much more measurable and certain return than putting $5 billion into an income tax cut.

The restructuring of our economic support programs can be carried out without any new powers or legislative changes at all. You just dissolve the programs that are there. You take $230 million in grants and loans away from businesses. Yet if you read the backgrounder, you find that this includes the entire sector partnership fund that provides support to development in key economic sectors.

It includes cutting the entire green communities program that was leading to the development of environmental-based businesses. It includes the Ontario Development Corp, the Eastern Ontario Development Corp, the Northern Ontario Development Corp. This government, in its ideological haste, didn't even stop to look at the record of success of these programs in stimulating new businesses and creating new jobs.

Their economic restructuring strikes at our cultural industries with devastating cuts, and no one seemed to notice that these industries were our only job-creating industries during the five years of recession.

We will never get to debate these decisions, yet they will bring about a significant restructuring of our economy, not to mention a restructuring, if you can use the term, of people's lives.

I am angry that the commitments that were made during an election campaign can be so easily set aside by a government that claims that it has a mandate to do whatever it chooses to do and by a Premier who said he would resign if he broke his promises. He never said his resignation would only come after the public fires him for breach of faith, and that's what his cuts and his dictatorial budget bill are.

This is not what the government said it would do; it is not what the public expected this government would do. The reaction against it will not fade away, it will build. Neither the government nor its financial statement nor Bill 26 will wear well, but the province and its people will bear the pain.

I believe we will also pay the price for the undermining of democracy. In a democracy different views are allowed expression, criticism is heard even if it's not accepted, there is room for debate, and that's what democracy is founded on. Bill 26, in what it does and in the way it was introduced, kills democracy. Without a democracy, you truly are left with dictatorship.

As members of an opposition, we could not allow that to happen, because if there is no democracy in this place, we might as well pack up and go home. It is only as democratically elected representatives that we have a role, and if the government takes away our ability to present concerns and to debate essential matters, we can no longer function as effective representatives. So does anybody really need to ask why we feel so strongly about this?

It was not only the opposition that saw the erosion of democracy presented by this bill and the government's decision -- determination -- to ram it through without public hearings or even meaningful debate. I want to show that this is not just the opposition talking.

We have the Kingston Whig-Standard saying:

"Dictatorship by Premier Mike Harris's cabinet does not make common sense. Yet rule by cabinet decree, without public debate in the Legislature, is the disgraceful purpose of the Tories' Savings and Restructuring Act."

We have Jim Coyle of the Ottawa Citizen saying:

"This is a gross abuse of power. The democratic process does not begin and end with elections. June 8 did not give Mike Harris a mandate to pursue any means to reach his end. It's remarkable to think that scores of Conservative MPPs ran for office just to accede almost immediately to their own emasculation."

We even have Terence Corcoran of the Globe and Mail saying;

"On health care the Tories have plunged into the dark abyss of central planning. Call it the omnibus bill if you want, but it deserves to be known as the ominous bill. Bill 26 is a draconian power grab by the Health minister."

The Toronto Star editorial:

"Had Mike Harris's government shown even a modicum of respect for democracy and for the voters, it wouldn't have tried to ram through its huge omnibus bill that proposes to give the government extraordinary and utterly unnecessary new powers."

From the Ontario Teachers' Federation, who are not directly affected by the bill so perhaps aren't counted as a special-interest group in this case, "As teachers, we're concerned about the lesson this government is teaching our students about the exercise of power and disregard for the democratic process."

This government absolutely refused to consider any public hearings on this bill until the pressure started to build. Then what they offered was a total and complete sham: a week of public hearings before Christmas. And if the members opposite try and describe this as legitimate public hearings, I defy them to make that case. They offered, after the pressure started to build, a week of public hearings before Christmas, starting immediately, before anyone had a chance to analyse this bill and its impacts.

The Premier continued to say, even as this debate went on in this place, that opposition outrage over this bill was unwarranted. That's the Premier saying, "What is the opposition getting upset about?"

Mr Speaker, you know well that the opposition has few resources that can be used to delay a government determined to circumvent due process and exercise its power. We did indeed in this House last week use every means at our disposal.

Finally, when the Speaker of this assembly ceased recognizing our members, even to raise points of order, we had no legislative resources left. All we could do was to refuse to vote on a motion that would begin a debate that we could not participate in in good conscience in a meaningful way.

But, Mr Speaker, I say to you that we are duly elected members. We belong in the legislative chamber. We are elected to sit here. We want to participate, and so we stayed. If Mike Harris will not apologize for bringing forward this sweeping bill that gives his government unprecedented powers, if he will not acknowledge that trying to ram this through without public awareness or public hearings or even real public debate was an attempt to circumvent and erode the democratic process, no more will we apologize for doing the only thing we could do to slow him down so that we could let the public in.

1650

The member for Renfrew North suggested at one point that extraordinary measures call for extraordinary means. Because the emotional level of the debate, the level of frustration, was becoming rather intense, I think the members opposite, when the member for Renfrew North said, "Extraordinary measures call for extraordinary means," thought that perhaps he was calling for a counterrevolution. Well, I'll tell you quite frankly that we weren't sure at that point in time just what extraordinary means there might be.

Perhaps a counterrevolution is what last week became, in a rather unprecedented, unplanned and unexpected way. And perhaps a counterrevolution is what is to be expected, because history suggests that revolutions do indeed lead to dictatorships and then to counterrevolutions. But in this province and in this country, the only counterrevolutions will be ones which say no to the exercise of a majority in a tyrannical, abusive way.

Ultimately, the counterrevolution in Ontario will be carried out democratically through the ballot box. In the meantime, we have at least four short weeks in which to debate the future direction of this province. We look forward to that debate.

Mr Bob Rae (York South): I rise to speak in this debate and I do so with the full recognition that the critical issues are not going to be resolved today by my intervention but rather will depend, I think, on the government's response to a number of concerns which are raised in the course of the public hearings and in the course of the reconsideration of this bill, which I suspect will even animate some discussions within the Conservative Party caucus.

I found when I was Premier that some of the most animated discussions on a bill took place after members had had a chance to go back to their constituencies and hear comments, not so much from the opposition -- after all, our comments can very quickly be discounted because of the fact that our opposition is to be expected to a government bill -- but rather, I would suggest, the next six to seven weeks will tell the story, and that will be the extent to which this government is prepared to respond to what I suspect will be a very widespread and growing concern expressed by a number of people about the steps that are being taken in this measure.

I've had the opportunity to give, already, a couple of fairly lengthy interventions in the debates in this House, and I take this opportunity, first of all, since I suspect there may not come another one in the days ahead, to wish members the very best for the Christmas season, knowing that this will be a chance for them, many of whom in the House today are first-time members, to reflect on some of their political experiences as well as spend some time with their families, and also say that this Christmas period always brings with it a chance to listen to one's constituents.

I've found in my time in public life that you can usually get a pretty good feeling from just walking down the street and spending some time in the shopping malls and spending time in the constituency office over the next few weeks. I suspect that members will be hearing a great deal from different people about what's in the bill. You'll hear from a range of people. Some will be strongly in favour, advocating some parts of the bill. Others will have a direct interest, and they will no doubt be expressing concern about their direct interest. Of those people, the lobbyists of one kind and another, who are always very fast and very quick to gain time in your constituency offices, I think it's fair to say that those meetings are usually fairly predictable. They come with a brief that's been prepared by someone else, and those sorts of things are not necessarily very productive.

However, I think there's a broader range of concerns which I would ask members to reflect on just a bit as they listen to the concerns which constituents raise about this bill. I first of all want to say that we obviously deal with this bill in the context of the government's overall policy which was announced by the Minister of Finance two weeks ago.

I would say to the Minister of Finance that if we in our party had been re-elected, I have absolutely no doubt in saying that we would have had to cut. In fact, I know we'd have to cut, and we were very clear and very public with people in saying that's what we would have to do. I have no doubt at all, as I've said on a number of university campuses, in a number of hospitals, in meetings with teachers, that if we had been re-elected the meetings we were having would be very different because people would have been opposed to whatever it is we suggested needed to be done. It's very hard in our current political situation to expect people to stand up and cheer when their services are being affected.

However, the evidence will also show and the experience will show that the size and the depth and the severity of the cuts that have been proposed by the Minister of Finance are generated not so much by a preoccupation with the subject of the deficit as they are with needing to find the fiscal room to make space for this absurd tax cut promise which still bedevils the Conservative government. I believe that the tax cut promise is what lies behind the health care cuts, I believe the tax cut promise is what lies behind the severity and the depth of the cuts to social services and to welfare, and I believe that the tax cut promise lies behind the enormous cuts in transfers which were announced by the Minister of Finance the other day.

It's to be expected, I suppose, that the government would be defending these cuts and the announcement as entirely consistent with the Common Sense Revolution and the simple statement, "We were elected to do these things and that is why we are doing them." But I would suggest that such is not the case, that in fact the Harris government was elected because it promised that it would not do certain things. The Harris government was elected because they promised that the cuts that they intended to bring about and the redefinition and the reinvention of government which was at the root of what they were talking about was a process that would not affect the things that they knew most Ontarians cared most deeply about.

They said they would cut taxes, they would cut the size of government, they would cut regulations and they would make a dramatic change in the climate and culture of public policy. That is very clear and we know that, Mr Speaker. You and I know it and all of us know it because we were participating in this election the last time.

But we also know that the Premier promised that he would not cut health care spending because, to quote his words: "It's far too important. And frankly, as we all get older," he said, "we're going to need it more and more." He said that "health care spending will be guaranteed" and that they would be "aggressive about rooting out waste, abuse, health care fraud, mismanagement and duplication," but there was no reference to the fact that transfers to hospitals would be cut by some 20% over three years, which is something we're just beginning to see and feel in terms of its impact. There was no reference to the conscription of medical services, no reference to user fees; in fact, quite the contrary.

The comments that were made by the Premier today were a direct contradiction of what he said before the election and during the election on the subject of user fees, when he promised people he would not be the Premier to introduce user fees; in fact, there would be no new user fees under the Conservative government.

1700

The first thing that I want to say, and I think the reason why there's such a sense of anger in the air -- and we've seen it. We've seen the concern. We saw it today in the day of protest in London, when, for the first time in the province's recent history, not only the labour movement but the general population and social groups and church groups, all sorts of people, have become caught up in this sense of frustration and this sense of anger at a government that has taken away services, taken away their rights, broken its promises and made absolutely no attempt to listen or to learn or to say publicly: "Yes, we've broken our promises. Yes, I had said I would resign, but I'm not going to do any of these things, because I don't feel that I have to," or "I don't feel that I want to," or for whatever reason."

In the last 10 days, we've been in the throes of considerable debate and to and fro in this House, but it must be said: There is not a member opposite who was elected on a promise to cut health care. There is not a member opposite who was elected because he said or she said that they would cut transfers to hospitals by 20%.

Now, having said that, I was not personally surprised. Nothing this government has done so far has surprised me -- nothing -- because we predicted all the way through that this tax cut would end up producing the kinds of health care cuts that we described. I spent the last 10 days of the election campaign giving nine and 10 speeches a day and saying to my fellow Ontarians, "Wake up, folks; we're talking health care here; we're talking the services that matter to you," and Mike Harris said: "No, no. Bob Rae is fearmongering. The Premier is on his way out and he's fearmongering. He's raising fears." Nothing could be further from the truth. What we said was true, and what we are now having to deal with is a government that has completely broken its major promise with respect to health care.

Let me examine the ways in which there are elements to this legislation that I think any sensible person could support, because I think it's obligatory on us, even when emotions are running high, to say, "Yes, there are features of this bill that I would support."

I would support schedules A through E, because those strike me as being all part of the logic of governing and part of the logic of what needed to be done. Even, I would say, when it comes to schedule F, I would support the establishment of a Health Services Restructuring Commission. I think it's a logical next step with respect to the need to give the minister the best possible advice on restructuring.

But then when we find the next sections, the amendments to the Public Hospitals Act, which are set out around pages 48 and 49, that is where I part company with the government, and let me say why.

I'm fully aware of the view inside parts of the establishment, if I may put it that way, who have advised governments consistently that the answer to their problems is to increase the unilateral power of the Minister of Health and to accumulate within the ministry a far greater central authority.

I think to a degree there does need to be the capacity within the Ministry of Health to in fact manage the health care system overall. I've said on many occasions, when we took office and budgets were increasing by greater than inflation, in fact at 10% and 11% and 12% -- and this was not a recent phenomenon; I could not ascribe this to the Peterson government; this was a feature of health care budgets from the time medicare was established -- that medicare and the cost of the health care system were growing more rapidly than the economy itself. That is not sustainable, not a sustainable proposition for our society.

It was with that view in mind that I asked my colleague from Beaches-Woodbine to become the Minister of Health. I gave her the responsibility of getting the Ministry of Health budget under control, because we managed to socialize the insurance system with the introduction of medicare, but we had not managed to truly take responsibility for the overall costs and management of the system.

Going back, this is not a new observation. I think it's fair to say that both the Davis and Peterson governments recognized the problem, tried to do something about it and sometimes did, but the public response was always very, very strong.

We know, for example, that within every community there's tremendous support for the local hospital, and it didn't take very much for the local board and the others to simply blame the bureaucracy at Queen's Park and say: "We need more money. Let's organize some pressure for a new machine. Let's pressure for some new capital expenditure." I can say, from my time in office, that it's a lot more fun to open the wing of a hospital than it is to shut one down. I think that's a simple observation of political life that members opposite may learn over time.

The public likes to see things being built; they like seeing things to be constructively done with their tax dollars; they like the sense that things are improving. I see my colleague from Oakville is listening very patiently to what I have to say. During our term in office, we completed the complete reconstruction of the hospital in Oakville, and I was very proud of the fact that we were able to do that. It was an expensive operation. We spent some money, the local community spent money, and we did it.

My concern is that I think the pendulum is about to swing too far. That is to say, if the Minister of Health were to come to me and say, "I need the authority to actually shut hospitals down," my response would be: "If you're going to assume that kind of power, Minister, or if the government is going to assume that kind of explicit power, we'd better set out some very clear criteria and we'd better establish some very clear safeguards so that everybody in the system knows it's a fair process."

I happen to believe that as a result of the restructuring that's under way, hospitals will close in the province. I have no doubt about that. I have no doubt that if my colleague from Thunder Bay had been elected Premier, she would have faced the same situation and she would have had to make the same decisions. I have no doubt that if I had been elected, that would have to have been done as well.

But I want to be very clear with anyone who's listening -- and as I say, the future of this bill does not depend on me; it depends on the people of the province and whether we're able to get to everyone in an attempt to deal with this issue. I guess I would address my remarks to my colleagues who are listening from the opposition benches and say that I think you probably would like to have some way of ensuring that the Minister of Health has to listen to you and to your hospital board when they get the news that they're about to be shut down. I would suspect that's in your interests as much as it's in mine and as much as it's in the interests of the province of Ontario generally.

One of the things I always find ironic about public life is that right now we're at a stage when all three parties have been in government. All three parties are agreed that the deficit needs to be brought under control. But where do we differ?

We differ over the tax cut, because I really think that's a wrongheaded move at the present time, though nobody would be happier than I would be if I felt that within two or three years we could afford to give a tax cut. That would be great; I think we'd all like to do that. That would be a wonderful thing to be able to do.

But I just don't think it's wise at the moment; I think it's very unwise, and I said that throughout the election campaign, not because I like high taxes or because I think high taxes are wonderful, but because I don't think we can deprive ourselves of the revenue stream that quickly because of the impact it's going to have on funding for hospitals.

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Given that fact, let's pretend that we're actually legislating here, and let's pretend that we have a process by which the government will actually have to listen to what it is that we feel as legislators. They're not going to say this now, but I suspect a few more will start to say it in a few weeks and months. I would suspect that there are Conservative members who are increasingly frustrated by the fact that there's a small gang of folks in the cabinet who really run everything, that they have a lot of aides and political people around them who occasionally return phone calls and more often don't, and that that's a reality that one has to contend with.

This government is more centrally driven than any government I can recall seeing in office, whether it was mine or anyone else's. People used to accuse my government of being very heavily driven out of the Premier's office, but would that it were so. It was a little less like that, from my vantage point. I don't recall too many cabinet meetings exactly like that.

What am I suggesting? My first suggestion is this: that if you're going to try to coordinate the restructuring of hospitals and the restructuring of the delivery of health care, you'd better be very careful to make sure that there are processes in place whereby affected communities and hospitals have somewhere to go and that all this power is not accumulated in the hands of a minister. I don't think it belongs in the hands of a minister. I don't even think the minister should be the one who makes the decision as to which hospitals will live and which will die.

I agree that there needs to be some process and there needs to be a central place where it happens, but fundamentally I believe one ought to be looking at a process where there's an appeal, there's a discussion, there's an opportunity -- and we could talk about how that could be drafted -- and that the decision would be made ultimately by the restructuring commission perhaps in an advisory role to the minister. If people wanted to appeal that decision to the cabinet, then one would say, "Okay, there's a process under way which we understand is going to be fair and reasonable."

I believe this legislation accumulates in the hands of one person powers which are really quite extraordinary and which all of us would really want to reflect on. I would say to the minister, were he here, that he may like to have all that power for the moment, but he's not going to particularly want to exercise it. It puts too much pressure on one person. It puts too much pressure on one office. It expects one person and one office to be the fount of too much authority and too much information and too much wisdom. No one person has it. Therefore, one should try to disperse it and share it as effectively as possible.

That is the opposite of what the government has done, and I just think it's unwise. I think it's politically unwise. I think it's bad policy. I think it's a bad law. I think it's badly drafted. I think it's absurd to give that much power to one single minister of the crown.

Perhaps the opportunity will come in the next few years, if this bill passes, when members opposite may themselves want to say, "My goodness, maybe we should have created a process whereby we had some right to appeal." You give that much power to one individual, and it will inevitably be abused.

So it's at the beginning of schedule F that I part company with the government. As well, of course, as I've tried to describe, I part company with the overall fiscal policy which lies in part behind the powers which they have accrued to themselves.

We then turn to what I see as perhaps another part of the Conservative agenda, and this is where we again part company. We agree on the need for restructuring. We agree on the need for greater efficiency in health care. We agree that one of the consequences of that is that there will be different facilities to do different things and that in some instances some facilities will close. But I then come to the amendments to the Independent Health Facilities Act, and what I see there is another part of the Conservative agenda which gives me a great deal of concern.

It's been established public policy in this province for a number of years that, given the demands which will come from business and the pressures which will arise from the business community, particularly from the American business community, to commercialize health care and to commercialize health facilities, we reached an agreement during the last years of the Peterson government that we would try to regulate that to some extent. That was the reason the government brought in the Independent Health Facilities Act.

The purpose of that act was to try to establish some kind of control over the incredible prospect of the commercialization of our health care system. In several amendments to this act contained in part IV of schedule F, I see the prospect that we will no longer be able to resist the wave of commercialization, the wave of privatization, which will accompany these amendments.

I had an opportunity in question period to ask the Premier some questions, and to be perfectly honest, he did not appear to be too familiar with the bill or with any of its particular details. I'm sure he's very busy and hasn't had an opportunity to really absorb it yet, and certainly I'm glad we've given him the opportunity to absorb it in the next several weeks.

It's interesting. I asked him some questions on the Scott report. Mr Graham Scott is a Conservative, a Progressive Conservative, who worked for Mr Stanfield and was then the Deputy Minister of Health in the Davis government and was then appointed by Ruth Grier, the former Minister of Health in our government, to bring out a report. He was a fact-finder on the issue of Small/Rural Hospital Emergency Department Physician Service. At the back of his report, page 43, there's the heading, "Other Issues Raised." He talks about nurse practitioners and midwives, and then he writes about commercial walk-in clinics.

"The commercial walk-in clinics were singled out by almost every group that made oral submissions as a prime example of non-essential medical service delivery at a high cost. They were seen as: providing `frill' medicine that increases the costs of the system disproportionate to the limited convenience they offer; adding to costly duplication within the system; encouraging bad consumer habits; and providing beneficial incomes based on providing services requiring little medical challenge.

"Their strength is consumer convenience, but it is provided at a high cost to other family practitioners performing more valuable services. In a period of limited resources such non-essential convenience medicine is an indefensible drain on medical resources."

I didn't write those words. I wish I had, but I didn't. They're written by Mr Scott, who again is not a supporter of mine, so far as I can tell. In fact, he was a member of the transition team that led to the introduction of the Conservative government.

With the amendments to the Independent Health Facilities Act -- at least under the Liberal law we had the basic criterion that if there was to be a new facility, which would, by the way, go well beyond a commercial walk-in clinic; we're not talking about commercial walk-in clinics here, we're talking about independent facilities independent from hospitals -- we now have the clear statement of philosophy by the Conservative government that private sector, for-profit, American-owned clinics are welcome in the province of Ontario. For the last six years we have said very clearly, "No, we want not-for-profit facilities, we want Canadian-owned, not-for-profit facilities, and we do not want this to be driven by the demand for for-profit facilities."

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It's clear to me what's going to happen. First of all, with respect to long-term care, I have no doubt at all that the same drive to commercialization is going to be given priority, no doubt at all; that you're going to see under this government a cave-in to the commercialized, private-sector lobby, which is going to overwhelmingly give concessions to friends, concessions to donators, concessions to contributors, concessions to people who finance it, and concessions to people who see that where you have a publicly insured system -- a publicly insured system which subsidizes private profit at every step of the way is the most expensive, the least efficient health care system one could possibly devise, unless the insurance system says, "We are going to try to control and manage the costs and we're going to try to step in and do it in a productive way."

I would say one only has to look at the experience in the United States, where you're going to find duplication, you're going to find huge inefficiencies, only the difference between us and the United States will be, all those duplications and inefficiencies will be subsidized by the taxpayer.

I just think it's so wrong, and yet it's very clear this is what this government is all about. It's not what they campaigned on, it's not what they said they would do, but it's very clear to me this is what is being specifically permitted by the bill, and I would argue it won't be very long before we see it being actually encouraged by the bill.

We then have the amendments to the drug legislation where, for the first time, seniors are being charged for drugs, and not only seniors but disabled people are being charged for drugs. The vast majority of seniors make somewhere between $16,000 and $35,000 or $40,000, and those seniors will be paying $2 for every time they go. They'll be paying the dispensing fee, which is somewhere between $6 and $6.50 -- it's about $6.11 -- and they'll be paying that every time.

You can tell the seniors in your constituency that this isn't going to cost them simply $2 a throw; it's going to cost them $2 a throw plus $6.11 a throw plus $100 deductible. So you're looking at the prospect of seniors having to pay somewhere in the order of $200 or $300 or $400 or $500 for their medication every year, and the test of how much they pay will not be how much money they have; the test of how much they pay will be how sick they are and how much medication they require.

If you have someone who's in their 70s who's a diabetic, has a blood pressure problem and may need some other medication, well, the costs are really very, very substantial. The member opposite is shaking his head. The cost of --

Mr Frank Klees (York-Mackenzie): You've got it wrong there.

Mr Rae: No, I don't. I don't have it wrong. You tell me how I have it wrong when you get a chance to give a speech. The cost of blood pressure medication for two months -- taking a pill a day -- would be about $100. So that's $600 a year for that senior citizen.

When you look at the cost that's in place in many, many different parts of the legislation, the additional cost which is being suggested will be borne by seniors is new. This is not what the government campaigned on, it's not what they promised, and I don't think there are enough people out there who are aware of the potential this has for their own situation.

The Premier said today, you know, he's getting all the calls, and all the seniors who are writing him are keenly in favour of what's being done. I would suggest that --

Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): Name names.

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): Let's see some of those letters.

Mr Rae: I guess it depends where you live. I must confess that's not the nature of the calls that I've been getting in my constituency office or here at Queen's Park.

But I would also suggest that people don't even know about this yet, because it's all part of some huge omnibus bill and they don't really know what's in the whole thing. If there was one bill on drugs, I can assure you everyone would know and everyone would be focused. But this is very skilfully managed. You created so many issues out there that people aren't really sure of exactly what's coming next.

But I can tell you, folks, you don't know what's coming next either, because if you think the senior citizens of this province are going to stand up and cheer, or that disabled people are, then I think you're sadly mistaken.

The amendments to the Public Service Pension Act will quite simply take away some several hundreds of millions from people who are about to be retired and dismissed by the government. This is another example where the government sets laws for itself that are different from laws which would be the case for any private sector employer. If a private sector employer is selling part of its business and it has a union, the person buying the business has to accept the union as part of the deal: successor rights. The government says: "Well, that would be all right if we were in business, but no, in our case, when we privatize, nothing happens. You can't take the union rights with you."

Similarly, if General Motors were about to announce a downsizing of 20,000 or 30,000 people and General Motors were to come to the government and say, "Oh, and by the way, we'd like you to pass an amendment to the Pension Benefits Act which makes us exempt from the act so we don't have to pay out so much to the people we're laying off, we don't have to pay so much in pension benefits to people who are taking early retirement," I think there'd be quite a reaction.

But what's the government doing? Exactly that. They're saying: "We're going to pass a law that says the law doesn't apply to us because we're the government. So we can lay off anybody we want and we don't have to be bound by the terms of the Public Service Pension Act." I find it quite extraordinary. I find it quite extraordinary that the government would do that and think there was nothing wrong or unusual about it.

Now we turn to the changes to the Municipal Act. These changes are very broad, very powerful in terms of their implementation, and what I find interesting about the government's approach to the municipalities -- in fact, this is part of a broader point that I want to make.

There's an authoritarianism about this government which I find quite out of keeping with the sort of libertarian rhetoric which led to its election. The libertarian election campaign was: "We're going to help get the government off your back. We're going to free you from the shackles of government and bureaucracy. We're going to set you free. We're going to open up this province and get rid of all those socialist laws and all those old Liberal rules and all those bureaucratic things and we're going to set you free."

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You had doctors coming in and saying -- I had a doctor running against me, Dr Edwards, a very nice man, very loyal Conservative Party member, a very strong supporter, and he kept saying, "This is a party that's going to free the province up from all these rules and all these regulations that are in place, all these socialist rules and regulations."

Ms Frances Lankin (Beaches-Woodbine): You're going to listen to your constituents.

Mr Rae: "And we're going to listen. It's going to be very different from that old, arrogant Bob Rae government. They just kept on doing it."

What I find fascinating about this document is, this is the most bureaucratic, authoritarian document one could possibly imagine. I'm telling you, no Fabian society in the world would've sat down and accrued more power to governments, whether they're provincial governments or whether they're municipal governments and said, "We're going to give you all this power."

The Ministry of Health has more power. The Minister of Health has power over health care records, such as have never had before. They have the power to conscript doctors. They have the power to tell a doctor, "In order to be a specialist you have to be associated with a hospital. When that hospital gets shut down, you no longer have privileges. If you no longer have privileges, you can no longer practise your profession." That's what the law says. If you're an orthopaedic surgeon attached to a hospital that is about to be closed, I wish you luck, because you're going to be out of a job, and you're not just going to be out of a job at that hospital; you're going to be out of a job, period. You're not going to be able to practise medicine unless you can attach yourself to another hospital.

That is what this law says. It says that that's the kind of conscriptive powers that are provided to the government of the day. It's quite incredible. One person has the power to tell the doctors this, has the power to do this to doctors. In the province of Alberta last year all but two of the students graduating from the University of Alberta medical school went to the United States, and that's exactly what we're going to find here, because there's no way that young doctors are going to say, "Yes, this is great, this is the way to proceed."

Interjections.

Mr Rae: You can laugh opposite. Sure, laugh. It happens to be in the bill. It happens to be the meaning of the bill. It happens to be the direction that the bill will take.

Then we find the approach -- and I'm sorry that he's left and I know he's a very busy man and it really is lonely at the top. The Minister of Municipal Affairs has left. What is it that they've done? They've given to the municipalities the power to do anything they want. They haven't given power to the citizen; no, no, they haven't given power to the citizen. They've given power to all these local bureaucracies, I say with due respect to my good friend the former mayor of Kingston, who's sitting to my right, and say, from my experience, municipal government can be every bit as petty, every bit as interventionist, every bit as interfering, every bit as capable of inventing bylaws and laws and ways of stopping people from doing business, intervening and preventing people from living their lives as any level of government, any level.

Mr Gerretsen: As this place.

Mr Rae: Yes, exactly, as this place is. They're no better than we are. They're no more possessed of any great source of wisdom. So what have we done? What does this legislation do? This legislation doesn't say, "Set the people free." No, no, no, no. It says, "Set the bureaucrats free."

Now, if you're a municipal bureaucrat, look at what you can do. Mel Lastman could scarcely contain himself. He came in here and he was almost overcome with joy. He says, "I'm going to tax anything that moves," almost with a kind of glee, and yet in the Common Sense Revolution, what were we told? What were we told in the Common Sense Revolution?

Mr Douglas B. Ford (Etobicoke-Humber): You got that from yours --

Mr David S. Cooke (Windsor-Riverside): He is a Tory. He is one of yours.

Mr Rae: Mel is one of yours. No, no. He's a good friend of mine, but he's one of yours. Trust me, trust me.

What were we told in the Common Sense Revolution? How many taxpayers are there? How many? One, not five, only one. What were we told? No new taxes. What were we told? A fee hike is a tax hike. How many times did Mike Harris stand in this place and say to me, "A fee hike is a tax hike." I can't count the number of times he said that.

Mr Cooke: "It's not a revenue problem."

Mr Rae: No, we don't have a revenue problem, but if there's a spending problem here, there's a spending problem at the municipality. Why would you give them the power to raise taxes every step of the way? Why would you give that power to the municipalities? If you were really interested in helping the people, why would you set all those municipal bureaucrats on the backs of people able to stop them doing anything they want to do?

In the Common Sense Revolution, you said you would stop them. In the Common Sense Revolution, you promised us; you promised us. Come, come.

Interjection.

Mr Rae: No, no, no, member, listen carefully. You said you were going to make sure -- it's all in here -- that whatever you do in your transfers to municipalities -- we all knew you were going to cut transfers. That's a no-brainer. Everybody knew that -- inevitable. But we were told: "Don't worry, your taxes will not be raised. We're going to fight those municipal tax increases." Instead, what do we have? We have an act which sets the municipal bureaucrats free to invent any form of taxation they want and to impose any new fee.

Let's just read through this. No matter what the law says:

"Despite any other act, a municipality and a local board may pass bylaws imposing fees or charges on any class of persons, for services or activities, for costs, for the use of property.

"A bylaw under this section may provide for fees and charges that are in the nature of a direct tax, interest charges and penalties, the payment of collection costs, discounts and other benefits, fees and charges that vary on any basis, different classes of persons and deal with each class in a different way," blah, blah, blah.

It is unbelievable, the kinds of powers which are provided. It provides powers which are quite extraordinary.

It then goes on to say, on page 150 --

Mr Cooke: Taxing power. "Any new tax, there has to be a referendum."

Mr Rae: Not just taxing power. And you no longer have to have a referendum for any local tax, just go ahead and do it.

Then it says it's not just the taxing power; it's the general licensing power. This has always been my favourite. The Tories say, "We're the party of the little guy." You're not the party of the little guy, you're the party of the municipal bureaucrat, the little rich guy, the municipal bureaucrat who wants to stop anybody from opening a business, who wants to shut something down, who wants to charge people for breathing the air, who wants to charge people every time you have a glass of water, who wants to charge people every time you move.

Without limiting, you have "the power to license, regulate and govern a business," including "the power to prohibit the carrying on of or engaging in the business without a licence; the power to grant or refuse to grant a licence; the power to fix the time for which the licence shall be in force" -- licence, licence, licence, licence.

Finally, on page 153 -- and listen to this; this is my favourite section. The mayor of Kingston will enjoy this, because he'll know exactly how it's going to be interpreted. It says, "If there is a conflict between a provision in this part and a provision of any other section of this act or any other act, the section that is less restrictive of a local municipality's power prevails."

You know what that means. We all know what that means: anything that grants the power. Just the same as the stuff about planning and the apartments: that any way a municipality, in its wisdom, wants to restrict the right of a homeowner to do with his or her property what he or she wants, that's good. I don't understand that. I thought you guys were in favour of property rights. You don't believe in property rights; you believe in property rights for a few folks. That's what you believe in. You don't believe in the rights of the individual. You're more concerned with the rights of the bureaucrat, whether it's the rights of the bureaucrat in the Ministry of Health or whether it's the rights of the bureaucracy at the municipal level.

Wherever that bureaucrat is, you're going to empower them to charge, to tax, to license, to gouge, to do whatever it is that's going to help you get out of your fiscal mess and the problem you're in, to help you pay for your stupid tax cut. That's exactly what's involved and that's exactly what this means. People are going to be charged every time they turn around. Every phone call they make to a municipality, every step they take, is now going to be charged: user fee, user fee, user fee, user fee, which is another nice, fancy word for a tax increase and a tax growth and for increasing the revenues of whoever wants to increase their revenues. That's what's so phoney about this revolution and that's what's so phoney about this law.

Finally -- and I'm sorry my time is limited. I know others feel the same way. I say to this group, we're going to learn to love each other over the next while, we really are.

My other favourite clause is under the section dealing with savings and restructuring, schedule O, amendments to the Mining Act. I asked someone the other day, "What is this all about?" They said it's basically designed to take away the sense of security everybody had within the law that certain things were going to be done in a certain way, a certain assurance that businesses would have to comply with the cleanup provisions already in place in the Mining Act.

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I looked through it very carefully and read through the section over and over again, and I finally came up with my favourite section, almost my favourite one. I say with respect to the members who are heckling opposite, if you guys really care about the rule of law at all or the rights of the citizens, listen to this one.

"Despite anything in this act" -- and I'd ask my colleague from Rainy River to be listening carefully -- "where in the opinion of the minister special circumstances exist, the minister may exclude the time within which work upon a mining claim must be performed or reported, or both, or within which application and payment for lease may be made, and may by order fix the anniversary date or dates by which the next or any subsequent periods of work must be performed or reported, or both, or by which application and payment for lease may be made."

What does that mean? It means, basically, that the Minister of Natural Resources and Northern Development and Mines, the minister responsible for this legislation, can do whatever he likes, despite the law. He doesn't have to obey the law; the minister is now above the law. "Despite anything in this act, where in the opinion of the minister special circumstances exist" etc. Can you imagine the number of companies that are going to go down to the minister and say, "Special circumstances exist, Minister, and now we'd like you to respond"? Can you imagine the pressure this puts on an individual minister of the crown? "We think special circumstances permit. Give us a permit. Change the dates. Tell us we don't have to clean up by this date. Tell us we don't have to perform the work by this date. Delay it. Give us another week. Give us another month. Give us however long we need."

I find that this bill and the process by which the government has come to this point has been a fascinating object lesson in the changing dynamic of politics in this province. A government which pretended to be the great friend of the people, which pretended to be a genuinely libertarian government, has instead become a surprising friend of authoritarianism and bureaucracy, in which power has accumulated in the hands of very few ministers, in which that power is to be exercised basically in any way, shape or form they see fit, and which, until the events of last week, was not really prepared to listen to what the people had to say and to give them a chance to express their legitimate concerns.

This is where I want to close. We don't expect the government to listen to what we have to say every day of the week. In fact, I've been around too long to expect that. But I would say to members opposite, you can shake your heads and laugh and you can giggle, you can do whatever you like, but at some point you're going to have to listen to your constituents and you're going to have to listen to the arguments. You're going to have to actually read the bill, take your time reading the bill and take your time to understand why this latest piece of authoritarianism has got to go. This bill is going to have to be amended dramatically, because as it stands, it can't stand, and it will not stand as it now has been proposed.

Report continues in volume B.

11 décembre 1995