Journal des débats 1997-janv-30 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

That in the opinion of this House, the government of Ontario should release to the House and the public the secret studies showing the community-by-community impact of their downloading so the mayors, councils, ratepayers, community organizations and the public can fairly evaluate the massive changes in municipal restructuring that the Legislature is being asked to approve.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Pursuant to standing order 96(c)(i), the honourable member has 10 minutes for his presentation.

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): This is a resolution that I hope will have the support of all members of the House. It's undeniable that the announcements by the government in the last two weeks are going to fundamentally change Ontario. I'll stick to the government's own numbers: The government has announced that it is planning to take about $5.4 billion of expenses off property tax, that is, the residential portion of education, but it is going to add $6.355 billion of new costs to the property taxpayer. Those are the government's own numbers and so I hope that on the government side there's no disputing those numbers.

That is a massive shift of costs on to property taxpayers, and mainly residential property taxpayers. We have been told that there will be some funds available to offset that. That's $1 billion more that the people in Ontario are going to be asked to pay on their property taxes, $1 billion taken from provincial responsibility and put on property tax.

We've been told: "Well, don't worry about it. There are funds available to handle that." The problem is, when you cut through it all, as we now are finding out and certainly as the municipalities are finding out -- we have a report here from municipalities showing that in their opinion the province has now added about $1.2 billion of costs on to the property taxpayers.

The funds that they say are available are taken into account. The province says: "Don't worry. We're going to give you a billion-dollar fund to handle the offloading." The problem is that at the same time as they announced that they announced that they were cancelling a $666-million fund. So without question property taxpayers in the province of Ontario are being asked to take on $1 billion of added costs and the province will provide, at maximum, $335 million of extra revenue. Those are the province's own numbers.

In addition to that, the province has announced that something called the business occupancy tax is gone. The province eliminated the business occupancy tax. That, according to the government numbers, is $1.6 billion of revenue to municipalities. That's about 11% of the property tax revenue that was available to municipalities, that was being used to cover costs in the municipalities. A week and a half ago the government said: "That's gone, eliminated. You can no longer have a business occupancy tax." But it has to be made up somehow. The municipalities can't simply find $1.6 billion out of thin air, so that, according to the government, will be loaded on to the other property taxpayers.

People who are paying property tax in this province should recognize two clear things from the government announcement: They have added $1 billion of extra costs and they've told the municipalities, "No longer can you have business occupancy tax of $1.6 billion."

What does all that mean? What we're hearing from mayors and regional chairs across the province is that just to cover those things property taxes are going to have to go up 10%. I'm sure all the residential property taxpayers who are listening will say: "That is incredible. How am I going to pay 10% more property tax just because the province has decided to offload their responsibilities on to the residential property taxpayers?"

The proposals that have been announced we were told were in response to the Who Does What panel. Mr David Crombie headed it up, but it was 12 individuals selected by the Premier, hand-picked, people I assume he had confidence in. Mr Crombie said about the proposals to download, and this was a letter provided to the government on December 23, that if the province proceeded with this downloading it would "undo much of the work accomplished by the disentangling proposals." Much of their work would be undone by this. He further said: "The panel strongly opposes such a move. We are unanimous in the view that if there is a choice between placing education or health and welfare on the property tax, it is clearly preferable to continue to rely on the property tax for the funding of education."

What we have is the government acknowledging that it is adding to the property taxpayer $1 billion of extra costs, the panel that proposed the key recommendation of the government telling it, "Don't do it. We strongly urge you not to do it. We are unanimous in rejecting it," and it's proceeding with it.

I don't know how other members are finding it, but I am finding in my municipality that the councillors, the mayor, but equally important, residents, property taxpayers, are saying: "What is this going to mean? I see you people down there voting on things. I see you are being asked to approve six major bills." The public should recognize that the government has six major bills before the Legislature -- here they are, from Bill 103 to Bill 108 -- and we are being told we must approve these. The government plans, I gather, to have them as law in the next few weeks, and yet we do not have from the government what it means to residential property taxpayers. That's the purpose of this resolution.

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Surely all of us, Liberal caucus members, NDP caucus members and government members, are owed from the cabinet the information that they based their decision on to make these moves. We surely can't proceed to approve in principle laws that will implement the things the government is talking about without knowing what it means to residential property taxpayers, and the government has those numbers. The government, the cabinet, made the decision on the basis of these reports, but they are not sharing them with the public, so we are being asked to approve something where we're not being given the information we need to approve it.

We've talked, for example, with AMO, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, a well-regarded organization of our municipal leaders, and they're saying they need it. They have to have that information from the government to make an informed decision about what you are proposing here. Certainly I suspect that all of us, as we head home to our constituents tonight for our meetings with them tomorrow and over the weekend, will want to be able to answer questions from them. When the mayor or the council phones us and says, "What does all this mean to me?" I don't think any of us want to be in the position of saying: "The cabinet know it. The cabinet made that decision but they won't give us the information." So I'm proposing this resolution simply to say to the cabinet: "Share with the House the information that you used to make this decision. What will be the impact on our communities?"

I for one find it impossible to make a decision on fundamental shifting of long-term care for our seniors. Our seniors should recognize that their future long-term care is being shifted on to the property taxpayer. I find it difficult for our young people who rely on social assistance for their housing, their clothing, their shelter, to say that it's being shifted on to the property taxpayer without knowing the implications of that. I find it very difficult to approve this where we are shifting child care on to the property taxpayer without knowing the implication, and ambulance services and health services, all going on to the property taxpayer without knowing the implications. Very clearly, surely the cabinet owe us that. Surely they owe us the information that they made the decision on and surely they owe us the tabling of those reports so all of us can deal with our constituents on a reasoned, rational basis.

As we embark on what is a fundamental, total shift in the way Ontario services will be provided, I think all of us should support this and we will finally get the information the cabinet made its decision on.

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): I rise today as the representative of the NDP caucus to give our support as a caucus to the motion that is being brought forward by the member who happens to be the finance critic for the Liberal Party.

I find it really ironic that a Conservative government in 1997 puts itself and puts the rest of the province in the position of going ahead and doing the amount of restructuring that it's doing within municipalities without releasing any kind of information, without releasing any kind of impact study about what this means to municipalities and, more importantly, what it means to the taxpayers of the city of Timmins, the city of Toronto and the rest of the people in Ontario.

I remember well and the finance critic from the Liberal Party and other members who were here from 1990 to 1995 remember well how the Conservative Party, the then third party in this House, used to at every occasion come to committee and come to this Legislature every time saying to the NDP government and prior to that the Liberal government under David Peterson, "We want financial impact studies." They would come before the committee and say: "How can a government move forward with any kind of initiative without having some kind of financial impact study? The private sector would never do that. We're smarter than you. We need to make sure there are impact studies."

The Liberal government and the NDP government did that. We released information whenever we were going forward with a huge initiative such as what the government is doing, and the numbers were shared, the information was given. People at least knew the direction the government was going and had the details of that direction so that they could figure out how best to deal with it, either working with the government or working against the government.

In this case, the Tories completely forgot what they said when they were in opposition. It's a complete flip-flop in position from the position they took when they were the opposition party in this Legislature. I remember well that it was the position of the Tories that nothing should happen by the hand of the provincial government without having a financial impact study. They are now government and what do they do? They will not release what should be public information to the citizens of this province in order to be able to determine what the effects of the policies of this government are. What's worse, they're keeping that information from people. It's almost as if they're trying to operate in secrecy, behind closed doors of the cabinet, and to not allow people in this democracy to have a say.

I say to the Conservative government, you were right when you were in opposition to demand that governments provide financial impact studies. We did it when we were the NDP government. Why don't you do the same? That's the first thing I would say to you.

The second thing is I would say specifically to the direction this government is going with regard to transferring over the amount of services it will be transferring to municipalities that you have a real big credibility problem. When you started off this whole exercise of downloading services on to municipalities, you had same fair-weather friends. You had people out in the business community, you had prominent Tories, you had mayors, you had councillors who were saying: "Yes, this sounds like a good idea. We believe in disentanglement." Well, we all believe in disentanglement until it starts to entangle us. The governments at the municipal level are starting to find out that indeed this is not disentanglement; this is strictly offloading.

The wheels are starting to fly off the wagon of the Tory party because we are now starting to see people in our community across Ontario speak out in opposition to what this government is doing, not only here in Metropolitan Toronto but across the entire province. Those speaking out are not just New Democrats or Liberals who you would expect to be speaking out in opposition to what this government is doing because philosophically, as New Democrats or Liberals, we believe it's the wrong direction. Tories themselves, prominent Tories across this province, are standing up and saying: "This is wrong. You're going in the wrong direction."

A case in point is your own appointee to the Who Does What committee. Mr Crombie, a prominent Tory cabinet minister of the past, a chair of the board of trade, a person who has had party membership within the Tory party for years, the person you appointed to the committee, is saying: "Whoa. You're not doing what we recommended as a commission. You're going in the opposite direction and in fact what you're doing is wrong. It's going to hurt people and it's going to hurt the financial position of the province of Ontario."

The board of trade of the city of Toronto, certainly not an NDP bastion of support, is standing up and saying the government is going in the wrong direction. Chambers of commerce in northeastern, northwestern and central Ontario are now starting to speak out in public and say, "There is a problem in the direction this government is taking."

Point in fact: In the community of Hearst the chamber of commerce is saying: "Whoa. This is not disentanglement. This is offloading. Offloading means to say that we as business owners in our communities will end up having to pay an increasing amount of tax to be able to offset the transfer of services that you're imposing on the municipalities," and the residents as well are speaking out the same.

So it's not just people in opposition who you would expect to be speaking out in opposition to what you are doing. There is grass-roots, widespread support for the opposition view, which is that the government is going in the wrong direction.

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Should the government try to find ways to run government more efficiently? Of course. That's what the government of Bob Rae was doing, that's what the government of David Peterson prior was doing, and that's what I would expect from the government of Mike Harris. But the principle by which we moved as a provincial government under Bob Rae was that we believed that public services were an important part of our community and that we had to ensure that health care, that education, that cleaning our streets, that public transit, all of those services on which we depend not only for the social side of what it means to our community but for the economic growth, need to be maintained in some way. How you make those work and how you make them more efficient, nobody argues, but what you're doing is not making them more efficient. You're going to allow municipalities over a period of time to get rid of all those services entirely because they won't be able to afford to foot the bill.

A case in point is the city of Timmins. They're one of the municipalities that probably got their numbers together quicker than most other municipalities across the province. The city of Timmins has so far figured out what this offloading of services means to the citizens of the city of Timmins. They've quantified. They said: "What does it mean when the province transfers over 50% of the cost of family benefits on to the municipality? What does it mean when they transfer over 50% of the cost of GWA? What does it mean when they transfer over 100% of the cost of public transportation or transit authorities? What does it mean when they dump all the highways on to the municipality? What does it mean when they transfer over 100% of the cost of ambulance services on to the municipality? What does it mean to the citizens of Timmins when they transfer over the entire cost, or 50% of the cost, of community long-term care such as Meals on Wheels and home care and VON? What does it mean to the taxpayer?"

They've gone through all of this and they've looked and they've quantified it. Do you know what it comes out to? When we figure out the amount of money that the city of Timmins is going to be getting back by way of the educational portion of assessment of property taxes on residents, and you figure out what they're going to have to pay in addition, the shortfall at this point -- are you ready? -- is $12 million. Now, to the city of Toronto, where there are a lot of people, it may not sound like a lot of money. But in our community, if the municipality was to try to offset the loss in revenue by strictly a tax increase, do you know how much of a tax increase that would be? Over 40%.

I don't think the city of Timmins will raise taxes by 40%, but the Mike Harris government is putting the city of Timmins in a position where they have to decide, do we give the citizens of the city of Timmins a 40% tax increase in order to afford the services that we presently have in the city of Timmins, or do we get rid of the services altogether? Well, I know what the answer's going to be. It's going to be a combination of both. You're going to see property taxes over the next couple of years skyrocket. We have had no tax increases, or minimal tax increases, in most cities across the province of Ontario -- a case in point is the city of Timmins -- for at least four or five years. Municipal governments have been very responsible in keeping the lid on taxes.

This provincial government is going to put those cities in the position where they're going to have to make a decision: "Do I get rid of public transportation? Do I cut back land ambulance transfer services in a community? Do I shut down the Golden Manor or reduce services to seniors in our community?" I know what Dennis Welin and I know what Mike Doody and I know what Phil Goudreau and I know what Mayor Power are going to say in the city of Timmins: "Of course not. We can't afford to do that. If we get rid of those services, people are going to get hurt." So they're going to try to find some ways to find some efficiency in the system, but they ain't going to find it because, let me tell you, there ain't no fat on the bone. We're having to cut into the core of the bone at this point.

What do you think municipal governments have been doing for the last five years? They've been reducing expenditures within their municipalities and making themselves more efficient so they didn't have to give a tax break. But you're making them make the choice of raising property taxes and cutting back on services. And when the citizens of the city of Timmins start getting their tax increases, which they will get over the next couple of years, they will remember the Mike Harris government, I can guarantee you. They will remember the Mike Harris government as the government that put municipalities in the province of Ontario in a position of having to raise property taxes in double-digit numbers. Mark my words.

They will also remember that it was the Mike Harris government that made it so that services in communities that we presently enjoy, basic services like ambulance service, like transit, like cleaning the snow from our streets -- because it does snow in northern Ontario -- taking care of seniors in their homes, when those services start to deteriorate, the citizens of Timmins, as they will across the province of Ontario, will remember it was the Mike Harris government that started that.

What is Harris really up to? This has nothing to do with balancing a budget. This whole move on the part of the provincial government in the end is not doing anything towards trying to deal with the issue of the deficit. What really this is all about is for them to be able to pay for their $5-billion tax cut. How ludicrous. What business in their right mind, what business with any kind of common sense, would say, "As I'm trying to restructure my operation so that I can lower my costs, I'm going to lower my costs and at the same time I'm going to lower the amount of revenue that comes in the door"? Come on; give me a break. What do you think people are?

I was at the Timmins chamber of commerce meeting on Monday where we had an economist from the Bank of Montreal give a dissertation about what the economy is going to do in the future, and in the end do you know what the business community leaders in our community were asking this guy? "Sir, can you explain to us the tax cut? It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense." That is what the business leaders in our community were saying.

I don't say that they don't support the Tory government at this point. They still do, but they are really starting to worry about what this government is doing, because it doesn't make a whole bunch of sense. When they look at what you're doing, downloading all of the services on to the community, they're starting to say, "What government in their right mind, anyone with any kind of common sense, would try to fund a $5-billion tax cut through the kind of offloading you're doing to municipalities?" And I subscribe. I think it's absolutely ludicrous. If the government wants to reduce costs, that's one thing, but you don't reduce costs and cut taxes at the same time. It's counterproductive. In actual fact, it will hurt the economy; it won't help it.

The other thing that I think needs to be said in the last couple of minutes I have is the whole manner by which this government operates. One thing that I'm hearing more and more -- and I'm sure we're hearing it in northwestern Ontario, we're hearing it in Toronto, we're hearing it in the Ottawa Valley, we're hearing it in southwestern Ontario -- is people are really beginning to wonder: "Do we have a democracy in Ontario? Is there a democracy in this province?"

This government is moving forward and is dismantling -- first of all, they eliminated a number of MPPs in this House for the next election. Most people at first said, "Yes, we like that, we like politicians to be picked on," but they look at what's happening with municipal governments as that you're basically eliminating the ability for public representation on municipal governments. You're doing the same on school boards, and you're moving forward with your agenda without any regard for the public. In fact, you're saying that if the people in the city of Toronto were to vote by referendum en masse in opposition to your megacity project, you wouldn't even listen, and people are saying there's something wrong here.

I want to remind you, and I need to say this: In Ontario, as in the rest of Canada, we do not have an executive democracy. We don't have a democracy where only the Premier and the cabinet are the ones who are able to call the entire shot. There's supposed to be a role for backbenchers of the government, as well as opposition members, to bring forward points of view to this Legislature so that whatever the government does, it's tempered against the views of the various people of this province and we're able to find some sort of accommodation in the agenda of the government so that yes, the government agenda can be met, but it's met in a way that satisfies some of the concerns of the people of Ontario.

The one thing I'm hearing all over as I travel around this province is that the people of this province are really starting to doubt the sincerity of this government when it comes to the question of how they operate, and second of all, they're saying, "We are losing our democracy." They're really uncomfortable with how this government is operating by not allowing, as this resolution calls for, the information that should be public information into the public realm so that people can take a look at the effect of what you're doing. I say to the government, you're wrong. This is supposed to be a Legislature for the people of the province of Ontario. The public has a right to know.

The member for Scarborough-Agincourt asks very simply that the government release what should be public information to the people of this province so that the people themselves in our democracy are able to take a look at the information and say: "What are the pluses and minuses to what this government is doing? If there are pluses, fine. If there are minuses, let's deal with them, but at least let us as a people get the information so that we can take a look at it and cut through the chaff and see what really is going on."

So I call on the government and I call on members of the back bench specifically in the government to do what your party said you would do when you were in opposition, and that is to release that kind of information so there can be real debate, so there can be real information in the hands of people, so that they're able to deal with what the government agenda is all about.

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Ms Isabel Bassett (St Andrew-St Patrick): I welcome the opportunity to respond to Mr Phillips's resolution. I'd like to use this time to address some of the misconceptions and misinformation that it contains about the government's efforts to realign government services and sort out funding and the delivery of services to Ontarians.

First of all, I'd like to remind the House about some of the things that this government is doing to help municipalities deliver effective services to Ontarians and relieve the burden on property taxpayers. The greatest burden on the residential property tax base is the cost of education. Education costs make up as much as 60% of the residential property tax bill. It's the fastest-growing item of that tax bill. From 1984 to 1995, the cost of education spiralled up a staggering 82%, contributing to property tax increases of about 120% during this same time frame.

By taking education off the property tax bill we're accomplishing two things: First, we're ensuring a future of stable, consistent education funding right across the province; and second, we're relieving residential property taxpayers of a burden that we project to reach $6.2 billion by the year 2000.

By assuming responsibility for funding education, the government is freeing up tax room so municipalities can take control of their new responsibilities and deliver a tax cut at the same time. Through the Fair Municipal Finance Act we're getting rid of the business occupancy tax, an outdated and cumbersome system of taxing business that reflected the reality of the business community in 1904 when the tax was first imposed.

Municipalities will have the flexibility to recover this revenue through property taxes on any or all classes of property, so long as they don't add to unfair differences in tax burdens between property classes; or by acting responsibly and planning effectively and creatively, they can find efficiencies in their spending and pass these savings on to their taxpayers. If they choose to recover the business occupancy tax revenue, they can certainly do so through property taxes on any or all classes of property, so long as they don't add to unfair differences in tax burdens between property classes.

Mr Phillips seems to suggest that the government is divesting itself completely of responsibility for social assistance and long-term health care, and offloading them on to the municipalities. As we've been saying, the province is entering into a 50-50 partnership with municipalities to fund and deliver these services. With the steady decline in social assistance costs that we've seen since June 1995 and with the investments the government will be making in municipalities, there is every reason, with prudent and efficient management and planning, municipalities should be able to deliver both a tax cut and better services to their communities.

Municipalities will take control of the delivery of services like libraries, policing, municipal transit, land ambulances and provincial offences. This division of responsibilities makes sense. Local governments understand their communities better than Queen's Park can and will now have the opportunity to set their own priorities and deliver services in a more effective manner. Taxpayers will now know what level of government to hold accountable.

We acknowledge that these are significant changes and we'll be consulting with stakeholders to determine how these changes should be designed. The exact design of these changes will depend in large part on the results of feedback from our stakeholders.

Over the next five years the province will invest more than $6.3 billion in municipalities to help them adjust to their new responsibilities. Besides taking education off the residential property tax bill, the province is investing $1 billion every year through the community reinvestment fund to meet special community needs.

My colleague the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing has also announced a fund of $800 million over the next four years to help municipalities with short-term capital and operating adjustments. The $700-million social assistance fund will help communities that face costs arising from unforeseen economic circumstances. The amount is enough to cover the municipal share of potential welfare cost increases, even in the unlikely event of a severe economic downturn. The government will provide an additional $1.6 billion in 1996 and 1997 through the municipal support grant.

The government is also planning to consult with stakeholders to obtain their views on how these investment funds should be distributed and administered.

An up-to-date property assessment system will also cut back on the number of assessment appeals -- 200,000 province-wide in 1995, of which 100,000 were in Metro Toronto -- that have eroded the property tax base and property tax revenues over the years.

Mr Phillips's resolution suggests that our reforms will have a profound effect on local taxpayers. If he's referring to the reduction of as much as 10% in residential property tax that we predict by the year 2000, our reforms will affect taxpayers, there's no doubt about it. If he's referring to the fact that taxpayers will be able to see clearly that their taxes are based on local spending decisions, not on an uneven and unfair assessment system, of course taxpayers will be affected by our reforms, but positively affected. As I have pointed out today, we are changing things profoundly for taxpayers, profoundly and for the better.

In bringing forward the reforms we've introduced this month, we've weighed a number of factors with great care. We've considered all the recommendations of the Who Does What committee. Their recommendations have been of immense help in delivering this package of reforms to the province. We've adopted many of the panel's recommendations, in whole or in part.

Because not all of the design elements of the changes we've introduced this month have been determined yet, it would be premature and speculative to develop municipality-by-municipality analysis of impacts. Any analysis developed currently won't necessarily reflect what municipalities will ultimately experience. For example, the allocation of the costs of GO Transit to municipalities has been referred to Milt Farrow as part of his review of the Greater Toronto Services Board.

We also want to consult with municipalities about the design and allocation of the community reinvestment fund, and the allocation method will obviously affect the overall impact on municipalities.

As the Premier and the Minister of Finance have said, this government is prepared to listen to and work with our municipal partners and with municipal organizations to help them manage changes so that taxes don't have to increase and services are protected.

We understand that municipalities need and want information. Key information is being gathered right now by assessors across the province, the complete reassessment of Ontario's properties and the development of a new property assessment base. The Ministry of Finance intends to release information on the impacts of reassessment under the proposed new system when a sufficiently large sample of data based on current 1996 values is available, in August of this year.

The measures we've introduced this month will go a long way towards seeing that Ontarians get the kind and quality of services they need at a price they can afford. We're making sure that Ontario truly turns the corner towards jobs, prosperity and renewed hope for the future and our children's future.

Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): I would like to begin by congratulating my colleague the member for Scarborough-Agincourt on this, which I consider a timely resolution. This member has explained the government's very own numbers very clearly to the people of Ontario. I have to say that my municipal leaders are certainly looking for these numbers and for the documents, which the cabinet does have, that will explain to each municipality what effect it's going to have on them.

When I contacted 13 municipalities in the region of northwestern Ontario, I found out from them that in their initial estimates it's going to cost them much more to pay for the services that are being dumped on them; not one of those 13 municipalities indicated that it was going to cost their taxpayers less. Every one of them indicated that there would be increased taxation and the possibility of a reduction in services, and that's what this government is going to do.

We remember that famous document the Premier brought to northern Ontario during the campaign. It was called A Voice for the North. He suggested in it that there would no longer be the imposing of solutions to northern Ontario problems by Queen's Park. He said that right in that document. Folks in northern Ontario who are aware of that commitment know that this is not what's happening today. He also said that a Harris government would work closely with northern communities to forge a better working relationship. My municipal leaders are saying that is not happening, and I think the resolution today speaks very well to that.

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I'll be meeting with my municipal representatives in Sioux Lookout next week and so will the parliamentary assistant. I would think by then the parliamentary assistant will have those numbers the resolution is asking for from the cabinet, the studies that show the community-by-community impact. The reason I say that is that the minister himself, the Honourable Mr Leach, said only two days ago in this House that the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Northern Development will also be able to provide all the answers that anyone in Kenora riding would care to ask for.

What he's saying is that he's confident this parliamentary assistant is going to provide those answers. What I'm saying is that he's going to need those community-by-community documents which the resolution suggests we all have to see, so I'm certainly looking forward to that.

What Mike Harris has done in essence is broken a promise to northerners in which he has indicated there would be no dumping of service on to the local taxpayer. We remember that very clearly. In his Common Sense Revolution he stated very clearly that there would be no dumping, this dumping would not take place. In essence, what we've seen here and what we've seen very clearly explained by the member today is that yes, there will be a cost.

The previous speaker just indicated they're removing the education tax from the tax rolls. They're doing that, but what I'm hearing from every municipal leader is that in return they're giving us additional taxation. As has been indicated earlier, that will certainly appear on the tax bill of every resident in every community across the province when that's in.

As we all know, the Premier has made a commitment to the people of Ontario. He has made a commitment that he will follow through on at any cost. We have a good number of people suggesting that it's the bottom line, it's this government's bottom line that's leading to all of this. What the Premier wants to do is to ensure that his friends get that tax cut, and that tax cut, we all know, will benefit the richest in the province, those who have the highest earning capability in this province. It's going to be services, it's going to be an increase in municipal taxes for all of my communities in northwestern Ontario. I look forward to the cabinet showing us those documents that we know they have to indicate what it's going to do to each community in this province and to the communities in northwestern Ontario.

I would just like to congratulate the member for bringing forth some numbers and explaining them very well in terms of what this is going to do to every municipality in the province.

Mr Toby Barrett (Norfolk): This resolution from the member for Scarborough-Agincourt makes note that the government will remove $5.4 billion from the property tax levy. We all know this is the education portion of the property tax base, and the resolution states that we then are transferring $6.355 billion of current provincial spending to the property tax base, for a total of $955 million more expense.

I feel it points to the fact that the opposition knows what we on the government side have been saying all along, that these measures will save property taxpayers money, because when you add the $1-billion community reinvestment fund to the $5.4-billion education cost reduction, one has $6.4 billion to work with. This is just for starters.

Using the numbers presented in this resolution, we find that this means collectively municipalities are being handed a $45-million surplus. This is a far cry from the tales of woe we've been hearing from the opposite side and in fact reinforces what the government has been saying: that property taxes can decrease.

Now add an additional $700-million initial contribution into the municipal social assistance reserve fund and an additional $800 million for the municipal capital and operating restructuring fund, which we've also heard today. You now have $1.545 billion over and above what the municipalities need to function and to deal with these changes.

In addition, education costs, which we know are being taken off property taxes, are rising -- 82% over the past 10 years in Ontario. Welfare, one of the key concerns of local government, as its share goes from 20% to 50%, is declining in cost and will continue to decline as Ontario's work-for-welfare programs come on stream. Education alone is projected to rise to $6.2 billion by the year 2000. I know my farm land and my home can no longer afford this kind of school-board-driven property tax increase. Ontario data show a 120% increase over the past 10 years.

This government is investing in change to cut taxes. We are investing in municipal restructuring to cut property taxes. We are putting up the money to help municipalities restructure and to make their operations more efficient. That is why this government has established the $1-billion-a-year community reinvestment fund, the $800-million capital and operating restructuring fund and the $700-million social assistance fund that we have heard of earlier this morning. In total, the province is investing $6.3 billion in municipalities in the next five years. Previous governments never did that. They studied disentanglement, they set up committees to go around the province to consult with municipalities, but there was no action.

We could spend months debating all of the studies that have been done on municipal governance in this province which were never acted upon, but that would only add to the money wasted and the disrespect shown to the people who did those studies. Why didn't governments act on those studies and reports? Very simple: They are afraid to change. Really, the whole debate in this House over the last three weeks has been about change and who dares to try. The changes introduced will have a positive impact on governance. The status quo will not.

Our government has a vast and clear vision. Opposition objections have tended to be half as vast and only half as clear. Education taxes were going to increase; we will remove that constant burden from the property taxpayer. We know that many municipal councils would wait for the school board to set the education levy and then the municipal councils would try to reduce their own budget to buffer the tax increase caused by the school board. The result: Many councils delivered their service inadequately because of the school board.

Municipalities have learned to deliver very effectively, and I'm proud to say that in my riding in 1995, according to a Towntrak benchmarking study, Delhi was ranked the most cost-effective municipality in the province when compared to communities of similar size. In fact, five municipalities in Haldimand-Norfolk were judged to be significantly above the average. That's why I'm confident municipalities will continue to deliver in the most effective way when they implement the new changes that have been announced.

As this government is committed to helping municipalities through the transition, we will consult with local government to obtain their views before making final arrangements on any transfer of dollars from the funds which have already been mentioned.

To conduct a municipality-by-municipality analysis of impacts is premature and speculative at this time. Any analysis will not reflect the real changes that will affect municipalities, but the community reinvestment strategy is designed to ensure that no municipality is unfairly affected. As municipalities make projections for property tax levels for next year, 1998, and beyond, they should bear in mind our projections for the year 2000 and the fact that local government will not have to raise that $6.2-billion board of education burden by the year 2000. Ontario's property taxes will be 10% lower than they are now. That's the bottom line.

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Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview): I rise in support of the resolution presented by the member for Scarborough-Agincourt. I think what the member has very simply and very clearly brought to the House asks what he and members of the opposition have been asking ever since the government has been downloading on to the various municipalities.

Today the government has an excellent opportunity to come out clearly and to show the people of Ontario that it cares, that it wants to inform the people of Ontario about its actions, about its decisions -- but not only that; I think it's important to show how they do that. The reason why the member for Scarborough-Agincourt has brought this resolution to the House today and why we have been pestering the government with calls to give us the information is so that we can debate the actions of the government in this House and so that the people of Ontario can judge for themselves who is right, who is wrong and who is giving the right information or who is passing the wrong information. When the government says, "We are doing certain things, we are going to lower taxes," the resolution simply says, "Give us the information, give us those figures."

Do you know what the problem is with the government when it says to do one thing and it cannot back up that information? Take for example the city of North York, my own city, which is no different from any other city or municipality in Ontario. You have taxpayers who have paid very dearly through their realty taxes to build good parks, community centres and recreation facilities. You have the mayors of those municipalities saying: "You know what? You are downloading on us a huge responsibility. Our people won't be able to afford to use those recreation facilities we have built with their tax dollars over the years."

If the mayors of those municipalities are wrong, then the government today has the sacrosanct responsibility of giving us that information, of passing that information to the taxpayers so they can see for themselves that the government is right and that we are wrong, so the people can assess that information and say: "The government is right when it says taxes are going to come down." But we'd like to know, we'd like to have that information.

The fact is that even the government itself says there's going to be a shortfall. The government keeps on saying we are going to have a $700,000 or $800,000 fund to cover just in case of some problems various municipalities may run into. They are saying they're going to have a $1.6-billion or $1.8-billion reserve fund. What do they say? That the local municipalities will have to contribute to this particular fund, and that is not fair, that is not right. They shouldn't be doing that. We are saying, "If you're going to do that, then give us the information where the local municipalities are going to get the money."

We are not the only ones accusing the government of covering up the truth, the information we should be having. Take for example the board of trade or independent businesses of Ontario and Canada saying to the government: "Don't do that. This is going to decimate the small business communities in our province and in Metro." Mr Crombie says, "Don't do that because taxes are going to go up." Can you imagine some $350 or $400 for each individual homeowner? I think it's going to be disastrous.

I encourage the members of the House, the members of the third party to support the resolution as presented by the member for Scarborough-Agincourt. It's the information we need, the information the people need to base their decision on the referendum that is coming up. It's an opportunity for the government to show the opposition, to show the people of Ontario that it really wants to pass the true, good information.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I'm pleased that the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, Gerry Phillips, has put forward this resolution because he is asking what so many people and municipalities across Ontario are asking. He's saying, "Please give us the figures." He's saying, "In the opinion of this House, the government of Ontario should release to the House and the public the secret studies showing the community-by-community impact of their downloading so the mayors, councils, ratepayers, community organizations and the public can fairly evaluate the massive changes in municipal restructuring that the Legislature is being asked to approve." What a marvellous resolution this is.

The people I just described, the Premier described as whiners. I was reading a headline the other day in a newspaper that in fact said that. It said "Harris Chides Municipal Whiners." You may have seen that yourself, Mr Speaker. I was shocked because I know many people in the municipal field right across Ontario, some who are Progressive Conservatives, and they must have been shocked to see that the Premier was calling them whiners simply because they were standing up for their own communities. But they needed more information. That's what my colleague the member for Scarborough-Agincourt is trying to do, get this information for them. If the information is so favourable to the government, then surely they would want to release it. It makes me believe that the secret reports to which Mr Phillips is referring are embarrassing to the government and that that's why they're burying them.

Certainly we won't find them on the television commercials we're seeing on a daily basis on our television screens. We have the Premier one day in a classroom, and the next day he's with some electrical wires and he's going to straighten that out, and the next day he's at a hockey rink. Most of these ads, certainly the ones from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and the ones from the Ministry of Education, are being paid for completely by the taxpayers of this province. Every time somebody turns on the television set and sees the Premier on the television set, they should know that they are paying for it, that they have to reach into their wallet.

The people who are seeing their municipalities downloaded upon, seeing their hospitals close, seeing significant changes that are taking away essential services, should know that money instead is going to put the Premier on the television screens, and they should be justifiably annoyed about that.

You hear the government speakers out there, and they have the code words they're supposed to use given to them by the Premier's office. Message of the day: Anybody who opposes them is for the status quo, or people oppose change, because they've been told by their American friends in the Republican Party that these are good words to use, that they will resonate well with the public, except the public knows this government is moving too quickly, too drastically and is not looking at the ramifications of its actions. That's what my colleague is talking about in this particular resolution.

All of this that is being done, all this downloading that we're seeing -- I know in my own area, the region of Niagara, it's going to cost them $43 million more; the region of Hamilton-Wentworth, $121 million; Metro Toronto, $387 million; and so on -- is being done to finance this bizarre tax scheme.

My colleague Gerry Phillips, the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, who is the Liberal finance critic, months ago pointed out that this government, by moving in the direction of having to borrow $5 billion per year to give an income tax cut to people, was going to get itself into trouble: first, have to borrow money and increase the accumulated debt of the province of Ontario; and second, have to make drastic cuts that even the most ultraconservative of government members would not have recognized were going to come about.

Who warned us of that? Gerry Phillips warned us of that. That's why today in this resolution he's simply asking for information. He's asking for hidden reports out there, secret reports which will reveal on a municipality-by-municipality basis what the impact will be of all this government dumping on to the municipalities, dumping areas that are bound to rise in cost while relinquishing an area that they know is going to level off and begin to decline in cost. I commend my colleague and I hope all members of the House will support this resolution.

Mr Phillips: Just to summarize in the remaining two minutes -- I appreciate the comments of all members -- to refresh our memory, what we're asking for here is something I have no idea why the government members will not support. It's simply saying to the cabinet, "Give us the information on which you made this decision." We have had the Association of Municipalities of Ontario asking for this, the mayors asking for this, and your own handpicked Who Does What panel, Mr David Crombie, saying, "This must be provided."

I think you'll have difficulty in defending to the Chatham council that you refused to give this information, to the Woodstock council, to the Niagara Falls councils, to the Etobicoke council, certainly to the Scarborough council, all of which are saying, "Give us the information." I assure you that this request is coming from across the province, from mayors, councillors, the United Way, the board of trade, all of them saying, "What's this going to mean?"

I don't know what the cabinet told you to say today. They probably said, "Listen, the last thing we want to do is release the information." We heard a couple of prepared speeches on it, but I think the members will want to reflect on this: that the mayor of your city will phone you up and say, "Why did you decide to stonewall the release of these reports?" Because that's what it will be.

I look forward to the ultimate vote. I would say to all members that it's in all of our interests that these come out and come out quickly.

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REMEMBRANCE DAY OBSERVANCE ACT, 1997 / LOI DE 1997 SUR L'OBSERVATION DU JOUR DU SOUVENIR

Mr Kells moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 112, An Act to observe two minutes of silence on Remembrance Day / Projet de loi 112, Loi visant l'observation de deux minutes de silence le jour du Souvenir.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): Mr Kells has 10 minutes to make his presentation.

Mr Morley Kells (Etobicoke-Lakeshore): Today I am pleased to rise, rather appropriately at 11 am, in a time reserved for private members' bills and to ask for support for the reinstatement of a noble and enduring ceremony, the two minutes of silence traditionally given on Remembrance Day. I am pleased for two reasons over and beyond the context of my bill.

First, I am pleased because I support the institution of private members' business, as I believe it is an extremely worthwhile allocation of time and is in reality the only specific time given to backbenchers to express and solicit support for their particular ideals. Second, I appreciate this opportunity because indeed it is the first time that I have participated in a non-partisan debate since my re-election to the House in June 1995.

With this in mind, my bill, which is simple in scope but strong in message, has considerable personal meaning for me and flows from personal experience and carries historical impact within my own family and indeed in many ways sums up the reasons I entered public life initially.

Simply put, the legislation is an act to provide for the observance of Remembrance Day in the way that it was initially meant to be. With this in mind, please allow me to explain some of the origins of this moving ceremony and of my reasons for bringing this bill forward now.

By planning and not by chance, I was in London, England, in Remembrance Day week this past November, and because I knew I would be there on this occasion and because I was staying at the Royal Air Force Club, I arranged to take a wreath from the province of Ontario to be displayed at the club and then to be placed on the cenotaph located in Whitehall. Whitehall is the main street leading from Nelson's monument in Trafalgar Square to the House of Commons and is lined with government buildings.

I do not have to tell you that the British place great significance on the reasons for and the celebration of Remembrance Day on the Saturday or Sunday closest to November 11, but I was surprised to learn that the tradition of two minutes' silence on November 11 specifically had fallen into disuse.

Somewhat surprisingly, as these things happen, it finally dawned on a significant number of people that this omission had become the rule and not the exception, and the British set about to rectify it in 1996. As a result, they called for the reinstitution of two minutes' silence at 11 am on November 11. I was there and it was a very moving moment. Everything and everybody stopped to pay homage.

We must remember that we are not just honouring the fallen; we are reaffirming our opposition to wars and particularly to the senseless slaughter that characterized the trench warfare in France in the First World War.

The next logical question would be, why and where did the two minutes' silence originate? Quite by chance, I found the answer in a book. Just recently, I read the latest biography on George Curzon, who was by far the most able Viceroy of India ever sent to govern that great subcontinent. Unfortunately, he never made it to the office of Prime Minister of England, but few would argue with the fact that he was a gifted and extremely well-educated politician whose achievements stand out in the golden era of parliamentary democracy in Britain.

He was a member of the coalition government under Lloyd George that took over half-way through the First World War and he was a personal witness to that terrible carnage. With the war ended, he was called upon to supervise the erection of a permanent cenotaph in Whitehall and to design a moving ritual centred on two minutes' silence along with the haunting lament of the last post. At this juncture I'd like to quote from the book about Curzon:

"Determined that the ceremony should be one of poignant simplicity rather than high-ranking grandeur, he insisted that widows and ex-servicemen should be given priority on the occasion. After it had been decided that the unveiling of the cenotaph should be accompanied by the burial of an unknown soldier in Westminster Abbey, Curzon again planned the ceremony and again stipulated that places should be given `not to society ladies or the wives of dignitaries, but to the selected widows and mothers of those who had fallen, especially in the humbler ranks.' Conducted in an atmosphere of emotional intensity seldom matched in Britain, the event aroused such strong feelings that popular opinion demanded an annual service at the site of the cenotaph. One final ceremony was thus given to Curzon to devise, and it has lasted as long as anything he ever did. The Remembrance Day service still performed three quarters of a century later is his creation.

"Curzon gave himself no public role in these ceremonies and, apart from a mention in the Pall Mall Gazette, received no credit for them. Yet they owed their success to his ability as an organizer and to the sensitivity with which he created events in which everyone could participate and share a common grief. Curzon was a man of almost unparalleled contrasts, but none is so remarkable as the fact that the director who created the Delhi durbar (to celebrate Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee) also produced Remembrance Day, a ritual that can move to tears even people born after the Second World War. It is typical of Curzon's fate that he's been remembered for the wrong ceremony."

From world history, let me turn to my family history very briefly. Back in 1976, in honour of my own mother, I wrote a short family history for her side of the house. In the process of researching this, it came home to me in a very dramatic way how the two great wars had affected the fortunes of so many Ontario families in so many different ways. Their occurrences disrupted family life, created migration to the cities and to the western provinces of Canada. Again, may I quote from my own little book and my mother's description of the first armistice spontaneous celebration. Bear in mind, my mother was five at the time. She said:

"The McWatters girls on the farm in 1918 can remember vividly the announcement of the armistice that ended the First World War. The mill whistles from Elmvale and Hillsdale blew all day and horns and cowbells could be heard ringing throughout the countryside."

Similarly, as a young lad of nine years old, I can recall vividly the celebrations in Toronto surrounding VE Day and VJ Day. The one picture that stays with me is the sight of the streetcars on Oakwood Avenue draped in bunting and covered with streamers, with the streetcar bells clanging and the crowds filling the streets and doorways.

Nothing explains the meaning more forcefully to me than a little plaque on the United Church in Waverley, the small village from which I hail. There are 30-some names on that plaque representing 10 families. In other words, each family name sent three of their brothers, sons or cousins to war, and this from a church that on a crowded Sunday could only hold 100 parishioners.

From these memories, may I turn to another reason why I believe the recurrence of the two-minute silence is also important. We have in years since the end of the Second World War allowed extensive immigration into Canada, and these new Canadians have played a vital role in the prosperity of our country. Realistically, many who have arrived from countries which were not so vividly involved in the First and Second World Wars and even the subsequent wars in Korea and the American conflict in Vietnam.

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As a result, they and their children are unaware of the background and historical significance of Remembrance Day. It is fitting at this time in Canada's history to renew our vows to those who have fallen in war and to explain to our new citizens the reason for these considerations. In this way we can help teach them the value of their vote and remind them of the personal sacrifices made by generations of earlier Canadians in support of democracy, which guarantees that same vote.

I think I have time for a personal anecdote. On the Sunday that I walked from Piccadilly to Whitehall, I dropped into the Sherlock Holmes pub. It was crowded with veterans and I got talking to a veteran air force pilot from Kent. He asked about his navigator, who was a Canadian, who had promised to come to London year after year but never got past the airport. It was nice that he thought that I might know him, but of course I didn't. He spoke very well of the Canadians who had participated in the war, particularly because the British ranks had been decimated.

In my humble opinion, two minutes of thoughtful time once a year is owed to those we should not forget. But even more important, we should pause to reflect on the futility of conflicts, cherish our democratic right to free speech and the vote, while never forgetting that it is a privilege fought for years ago by a generation who felt the cause was worth the price of their very own life. In my opinion, we should let the tradition continue.

Mr Gilles E. Morin (Carleton East): I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the private member's bill put forward by the member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore.

I would like to compliment him on his presentation and on his moving account of the reasons behind his bill. I am happy to support his proposal of legislating voluntary compliance with two minutes of silence on Remembrance Day because I believe it will help to more firmly establish an important tradition into the social fabric of this province and set a good precedent for the other provinces in Canada.

At the extreme, I imagine some might say, "There is no need for this bill because we observe Remembrance Day as it is by buying poppies and tuning in to Remembrance Day ceremonies broadcast on television or on radio, while our children do special exercises at school."

Many of us, like myself, have attended Remembrance Day ceremonies at monuments such as the war memorial in Ottawa and at similar memorials in many communities across Ontario where veterans and widows have a place of honour for the laying of wreaths in memory of the war dead. In the cold, grey stillness of a November day, the reality of all that was lost is profound and unforgettable. However, more often than not the significance of the day is not given enough importance in our involvement in our day-to-day responsibilities. In that context I would like to consider the impact of the ceremonies as they are enacted in Britain, as described by Mr Kells in his speech.

They are the model of what he is proposing today and I believe are something to aim for here in Ontario. Mr Kells has described the special effort that is made by everyone to stop what they are doing at an appointed time, to stop and join together to mourn and honour those who suffered and those who died. Even those who might let the moment pass are reminded of it by the silent witness of those around them, a very simple and a very powerful statement.

In Britain and in all of Europe the ceremonies are especially meaningful because nearly every family was touched by loss and every country was either threatened at its borders or in the air or overrun by enemy forces. By luck of circumstance and geography, neither Canada's borders nor our civilians were threatened by the enemy, so unless we or someone in our families served overseas, we have no personal knowledge of war, all the more reason for us to bring the experience home in a way that will have real meaning for us and for our children.

I feel so extremely lucky to be Canadian, but the things that make this country special are the things that allow us to take so much for granted, something we should try not to do. Enactment of this bill would represent our conscious choice to once a year step aside from the rush and hurry of our daily lives to give silent honour to the noble sacrifice of many young men and women who struggled and perished to secure our freedom.

Two minutes of silence: What does that really mean when the ultimate freedom we have is the ownership of our minds and hearts? Of course we cannot legislate pious thoughts for the dead. We do know, however, that habits become part of us, ingrained, as evidence of those values that matter to us most. Habits become traditions and these we leave to our children.

As time presses on and our distance from the great conflicts in history recedes, more than ever we need to make vivid the memory of the deep losses that our country and every nation on earth have borne. The world wars are many years behind us, but we must never assume that the danger is passed. We must not forget that even today there are some 45 regional wars around the world and nations that do not yet accept that wars have no real winners. The lessons of history must be remembered to be lasting, and our responsibility to make sure they are remembered has not diminished.

War is a vicious exercise and the costs are enormous. The beaches at Normandy bear witness to that for visitors to this day. The experience of walking through a cemetery of the war dead is incredibly moving. The names and the very young ages of the soldiers lying there, one next to the other, speak quietly of the waste of each young life, of the promises of youth never to be fulfilled. Each and every name calls up a deep sorrow. For all the words we speak on their behalf, there really are no words, because their own voices are stilled forever. Our two minutes of silence on Remembrance Day can be our symbolic acknowledgement of those young men and their collective, and most eloquent, silence. I am therefore pleased to support Mr Kells's bill and I encourage every member here today to do so as well.

More than that, I urge this House, when the vote is called at the end of this debate, to proceed directly from second to third reading of the bill. I'll tell you why. Although private members' business is a valuable forum for backbenchers and opposition members to bring forward, in an open forum, issues of particular interest to them, we know very well that bills introduced this way have very little hope of passage. Even if they reach committee and win all-party support, private members' bills almost always die on the order paper. I have had that experience twice.

However, sometimes a bill like Mr Kells's comes along which has a simple and indisputably fine and honourable intention to which no one could object. Passage of this bill would represent a wonderful gesture of honour and respect for the best qualities that our armed forces, past and present, and the people of this country have offered to the world.

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Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): I rise to speak in support of this bill. I regret only that I can't do it with the same eloquence as Mr Kells or Mr Morin.

I've listened carefully, as I hope everybody has, to Mr Kells's rationale, his argument on behalf of this, not that a great deal of persuasion should be necessary, but it's important I suppose to understand, among other things, the origin of silence as a mode or a form of recognition.

Mr Kells is very candid and the bill is very straightforward in that it's a most unusual law. It's most unusual because it's more symbolic and it's more a plea, it's more an exhortation than it is a requirement. Mr Kells, in his bill, speaks of it as being compellable only by virtue of voluntary compliance. Obviously that contradicts compellability, but's it's important.

I recall that we last addressed this issue when Mr Boushy presented a bill before the House which received the support of the House, and that was a request of a consideration that Remembrance Day become a statutory holiday. I appreciate that there were perhaps some concerns raised about that, not so much as to the intent or spirit of it but as to the practicality of it. I supported Mr Boushy's bill, as I do Mr Kells's today, and quite frankly don't share some of the concerns about Mr Boushy's bill that were expressed more privately than in the course of the debate.

Down in Niagara, down in Welland-Thorold of course we have Remembrance Day and then Decoration Day, Remembrance Day almost inevitably on a cold, slushy, damp Sunday. Those of us who might feel somewhat aggrieved by virtue of feeling compelled in our own right to stand in those cold winds on November 11 or the Sunday closest to it need only to look, as it is in Welland, at the cenotaph to our left and see the last of the last of the veterans, aging and their knuckles swollen with the infirmities of the arthritis that attacks all of us as we age, and fewer and fewer in number as well. The course of time will take from us increasingly those veterans who compel us with their memories of their fallen comrades and with their memories of their own sacrifices -- and the sacrifices they make to the present, because the survivors of those wars live with the memories of the tragedy of the loss of life, with the tragedy of what were almost inevitably youngsters, children thrust into the most difficult and demanding of circumstances.

We have to recall that during the Second World War the population of all of Canada was but approximately 10 million -- it was nine provinces then, because Newfoundland had its own participation, independent of the Canadian forces; it wasn't yet a part of Confederation -- a population of only 10 million people in this country, which from those 10 million garnered troops, forces in the three branches, that very much distinguished Canada on the world map. They consisted of people like so many of our parents, my own father, so many of my colleagues' fathers. They were part of that postwar return to small-town Ontario that when they came back struggled and began to build: build communities, build factories, build economies, build a prosperity for their children.

When I attend those ceremonies in Welland or Thorold or Port Robinson or Pelham, I look first to the smaller and smaller numbers of veterans and then I look inevitably to the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides and Air Cadets and Navy Cadets and Army Cadets; again, youngsters who, and I'm impressed by this, in increasing numbers have built a great commitment to participation in Remembrance Day ceremonies.

I'm sure I'm not alone: When one has an opportunity to address the participants, one of the things that it's necessary, I feel, to remind the participants of is that the responsibility for remembering, for commemorating and for celebrating the courage and the sacrifice of members of our armed forces falls increasingly upon those young people, because the old vets simply aren't there any more.

Jules Beauchamp, a member of the Welland Legion, a fixture at those Remembrance Day ceremonies, as he got older couldn't march any more and had to use his canes. The sad thing is, I still look to where he used to stand in front of the cenotaph, not able to participate in the ritual, in the ceremony, but always there. Well, he's not there any more, but inevitably, as we march into the compound, I look to my right where Jules should have been with his wife. We've lost Jules; we've lost so many others.

I've attended far too many funerals over the course of the last several years where I've witnessed the ribbons across the left breast of the deceased, where I've seen the photographs mounted in commemoration of military service. Again, when you look at the photographs of young and healthy and bright-eyed men and women and then you look down to the worn and sometimes tired face of an old-timer, that encourages us to reflect on who it is who fights wars. It's the youngest and inevitably the best.

One has as well to reflect on the selflessness particularly of Canadians in their involvement in the two world wars and in Korea. Canada has been blessed because for over 150 years -- perhaps a little longer, of course; I was trying to calculate 1812 versus 1997, over a century and a half since Canada has entertained combat on its soil.

So we're talking as well about young people, and again we have to acknowledge the Canadians who served in other conflicts, who served in Vietnam. We're beyond the point of debating the appropriateness. The fact is that young people again felt compelled, driven by any number of things, but inevitably by a courage and a commitment, to serve in these conflicts as well as up to the present, where Canadians perform a valuable and highly lauded service internationally and are recognized. Notwithstanding what the occasional criticism might be, the fact remains that Canadians remain a highly regarded peacekeeping force internationally and have acquired an international respect because of it.

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There's no secret about why, when you're in any number of places in the world, Holland, for instance, the identification of yourself as a Canadian will bring with it an incredible generosity of spirit and accommodation, why one can travel as a Canadian to any number of places in the world where, by and large, westerners, North Americans, aren't perceived in a particularly generous light, but once one identifies oneself as a Canadian -- I've used that Canadian passport myself, and I know others have, as almost an amulet, because proffering that by way of identification is responded to with the greatest of generosity and goodwill. That goodwill and generosity in response to us as Canadians, I'm convinced, was won and earned in no small part by participants, young Canadians, in the military interventions in the tyranny of Hitler's capture of most of Europe, in the oppression and tragedy of that totalitarianism.

So I want to indicate strong support for this bill. It's one that says so much in such a compact way. But it's important as well as new generations mature and, as I say, as the veterans become fewer and fewer in numbers, that there be some official recognition, encouragement, endorsement of the need for new generations to continue to remember the sacrifice of their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents and to understand that those people were but their age, youngsters, when they were motivated, indeed felt compelled, to make the sacrifices and pay the supreme sacrifice as so many did.

I can indicate to Mr Kells, and I anticipate passage of the bill, that if he were to seek unanimous consent for the bill to go directly to third reading -- now, Mr Kells may feel obliged to put this before committee. I've read the bill; clearly others have. The bill is extremely carefully prepared. If there's a need down the road, if there's a wish or a desire to expand the scope of the bill, that can be done by way of new bills amending this bill. I simply tell Mr Kells that if he were to move and seek unanimous consent to send this bill directly to third reading, and I understand unanimous consent would permit that, rather than referral to a committee, he won't receive anything but support from this side. I'm confident I speak for all the members of my caucus and, I trust, our colleagues in the official opposition.

I suppose I regret that the bill is advisory only or relies on voluntary compliance. I appreciate that one of the arguments against making Remembrance Day a statutory holiday is, for instance, that if you have young people in their classrooms in their schools, you can then utilize the day to conduct programs.

I was down with our federal member, Gilbert Parent, and a whole lot of leaders in the community -- the mayor, Dick Reuter, and some city councillors -- at a joint celebration over at the Sacred Heart Church last Remembrance Day for our francophone students, elementary school students. These young people, through their presentations and their murals -- they did skits, they did recitations of any number of poems and prose -- displayed a remarkable cognition, understanding, of these important parts of our Canadian history and world history.

I suppose the only concern, and this is clearly not in the scope of this bill, is that there would be in response to this bill some very clear policies developed within various ministries, including education, including ministries that might have control over public workplaces, to set out appropriate periods, not just of remembrance, as this bill suggests, but to compound that -- and there's reference to that in the bill, in the ways Mr Kells suggests that the bill might be given effect to -- to provide for programs to deal with specific issues in response to the need to remember the sacrifice of these great Canadian women and men.

Mr R. Gary Stewart (Peterborough): Before I address the House on this bill, let me first congratulate my colleague the member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore for bringing forth this legislation. I believe it extremely important legislation.

The issue before us today has been a very important one for me personally. Remembering our fallen soldiers is something that many of us tend to take for granted. I'm honoured and proud to stand in this House and speak to such a special piece of legislation that relates to freedom -- freedom for a nation and its people, freedom given and preserved for us by our veterans.

For as long as there has been war, there have been many ways of honouring those who fought for peace. In many parts of the world November 11 has become a very important day since the end of the First World War in 1918. The following year, 1919, marked the first observance of the armistice. All countries involved in the war recognized three minutes of silence to honour those who gave the most precious sacrifice of all, one's life.

As a small boy, I remember my father coming home from the Petawawa camp and talking and telling my mother about the young men he once trained who were returning home from the Second World War without limbs, without eyesight or suffering from shell-shock and other mental disorders. He knew of many young, strong, vibrant men and women who had their entire lives still ahead of them who were returning from war-ravaged Europe in a state of mindless confusion and emotional turmoil. He also witnessed the pain and anguish suffered by friends who were not fortunate enough to see their loved ones return home.

The communities both at home and abroad witnessed the loss of many great people -- many factory workers, farmers, fishermen, merchants, both male and female, and worst of all, the children. My own community was no exception.

In a passage entitled We Must Work for Peace, we read of some children who had just learned of the death of their father. Let me quote:

"After the surrender, we thought of nothing but father's return. How we longed for news of him. In 1945, great-grandfather died and there was no one to look after the house. The workers had to take turn staying home. Still no word from father. Then in the autumn of 1947, two years after the surrender, a telegram came. It told us that father was dead. He died for nothing. We were angry, but we did not know with whom. Our hearts were filled with hatred. We only knew that our father had been taken away from us for nothing."

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My friends, these are the words and the emotions of the living, words that must not be forgotten, words that will never be forgotten with the passage of this bill today. As the explanatory note of this bill indicates, it will declare that we will observe two minutes of silence at 11 am on Remembrance Day in honour of those who died in war and in peacekeeping missions.

The intentions of this act will be achieved through voluntary observance and through our collective desire to remember. Some may ask how this differs from what we currently do on Remembrance Day.

I believe it is appropriate to officially recognize two minutes of silence in this Legislature. This would be the least we can do to honour the sacrifices made by the great men and women of this country and indeed this province. When we consider that in a year there are 525,600 minutes, I do not believe that taking two minutes out of one's day once a year to remember the sacrifices of others is asking too much.

It is worth noting that the two minutes of silence being called for is not only to ponder our fallen heroes in the First and Second World Wars and the Korean conflict but it is also a time to remember those men and women who are sacrificing their lives as we speak to preserve the principles of freedom and democracy, principles that we, as legislators, should hold close to our hearts and our souls. If it was not for the efforts and the sacrifices made in the past, this very chamber we occupy on behalf of the people of this province would not exist.

As we read our newspapers and watch our televisions, we are exposed to a great number of world conflicts, conflicts where the aggressors are attempting to circumvent many of the fundamental freedoms and principles that our fallen soldiers fought so gallantly to preserve and defend.

In a world that cannot afford to have another major global conflict, it is imperative that we educate the young people in our society as to the evils of our past, a past that stripped many young people of their innocence and their future, a past that left people carrying with them forever the grief and sorrow of losing a loved one to war.

I encourage all members of this democratic House to support the bill before us today, a bill that will ensure that we never, ever will forget. If we forget our past, then we as a society are destined to repeat it, which is something none of us can afford.

Mr Gary L. Leadston (Kitchener-Wilmot): As an associate member of the Royal Canadian Legion, I rise with honour to support Mr Kells's bill to observe two minutes of silence on Remembrance Day.

I'd like to take you back to the first Remembrance Day. On November 6, 1919, Sir George Foster, the acting Prime Minister of Canada, rose in the House of Commons to read a message from King George V addressed to all the peoples of the empire. It read:

"To all my people:

"Tuesday next, November 11, is the first anniversary of the armistice which stayed the worldwide carnage of the four preceding years and marked the victory of rights and freedom. I believe that my people in every part of the empire wish to perpetuate the memory of that great deliverance and of those who laid down their lives to achieve it.

"To afford an opportunity for the universal expression of this feeling it is my desire and hope that at the hour when the armistice came into force, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, there may be for the brief space of two minutes a complete suspension of all our normal activities. During that time, except in the rare cases where this might be impracticable, all work, all sound and all locomotion should cease, so that in perfect stillness the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on the reverent remembrance of the glorious dead."

Those words by the King, his wishes, were duly observed throughout Canada. Across the country at 11 am local time, businesses, factories, offices, legislatures and even traffic came to a stop for two minutes of silence.

During the war to end all wars a young surgeon, a young soldier from the city of Guelph, my home town, expressed more eloquently than I or anyone in this Legislature could possibly express the emotions of war and his desires for peace and to remember. Colonel John McCrae wrote In Flanders Fields. Many of us recited this poem as young men and women. Today I'm not sure the same commitment rests with our young people in our educational system. I'd like to take a moment to read Colonel John McCrae's poem, In Flanders Fields:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

I support Mr Kells' bill. I quote again: "If ye break faith with us who die / We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders Fields."

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Whenever we have a resolution of this kind, or a discussion of Remembrance Day and those who made the supreme sacrifice on behalf of those of us who are here today, you find a consensus in this House that you don't often see. In my experience over 20 years in this House, I have seen one day where we can always count upon the members of all three parties speaking in one accord, speaking with one voice, and that is when we pay tribute to those who have made that sacrifice.

My colleague M. Morin, who speaks on behalf of the Liberal Party, certainly in the latter years when he has been in the House has spoken eloquently, as have representatives of the Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party. It's particularly true of those who have had a personal experience serving in our armed forces in times of conflict.

Indeed, I remember speaking to the Port Dalhousie Legion not that long ago in St Catharines and I used as the basis of my speech, almost the entire speech, the words of the three representatives of the political parties in the House, including M. Morin. It was rather moving. The people in the audience were very impressed that, first of all, we had unanimity in the House on an issue because they often see conflict. That's what they see when they turn on their television sets or read their newspapers or listen to the radio. They were quite intrigued that there would be unanimity and that the members were speaking essentially from the same book.

It's because all of us, regardless of our political affiliations or experience in life or politics, are eternally thankful for those who made that sacrifice. The member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore has, I think, captured that very well in this particular bill, because he suggested some very reasonable and concrete ways in which we can pay tribute and remember those individuals who have made that sacrifice, and even those who have served and are yet with us.

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I know that our legions, our veterans' associations and others who work on this will be thankful for this particular bill. I want to pay tribute at this time to those people, to our veterans' associations, to our legions, who spend so much time helping others to remember.

I've always found it an important and moving and emotional ceremony going to the cenotaph at the appropriate time. Of course in most cases it's November 11 at 11 am, but there are other times where we remember as well. The member has mentioned ways we can do so on a voluntary basis, which is quite reasonable. The Remembrance Day service at the war memorial or cenotaph is so important, and I think it's great to see the kids coming from the various schools, along with their teachers, to be present to see that ceremony. Because time has passed us so often, our veterans from the First World War do not exist in great numbers today and many are unable to make it to the cenotaph. Our veterans from the Second World War are now people pretty well into their 70s and older, and we have people from the Korean conflict and other conflicts who are there.

I think the suggestions that are made, for instance, pulling our vehicles to the side of the road and sitting quietly just for that two minutes, announcing silence on the public address system in places of business and institutions, gathering in common areas our places of business or institutions and briefly, where it's practical -- I know the member means shutting down assembly lines where it's practical to do so for that two minutes.

Assemblies at our schools, colleges and universities are particularly important. Many of us were not around for the war or cannot remember the war as it took place, the last great wars being the Second World War and the First World War. We know from history books, we know from documentaries on television or on the radio the great sacrifice that had to be made, the difficulty of war. Very often it's glamorized in commercial television or commercial movies, but those who actually served know that there wasn't a lot of glamour, that these were very difficult times.

One thing we don't think of very often as well, because the veterans who are with us are usually people in advanced years of age, is that the people whose names appear on war memorials and cenotaphs are very young people. They are people who never had a chance to go on in life. Many of them were in their late teens, their early 20s, and never had the opportunities others had, and yet they made that sacrifice in very difficult times, in times where the outcome of the war was never really certain.

When we have an act of this kind come before the Legislature, I would be extremely surprised if we didn't have unanimous consent to this bill, and I'm confident we do have. I want to say that it's appropriate for this assembly to deal with this bill in this manner and I think all its provisions are practical, reasonable and in keeping with the reverence we have for those who have made the supreme sacrifice and have served in conflict.

Mr Kells: I appreciate the opportunity to wrap up the debate this morning. Actually it can hardly be called a debate. I appreciate the support from my colleagues and I particularly appreciate the words and the feelings expressed by the member for Carleton East, the member for Welland-Thorold and the member for St Catharines.

In the few minutes left to me I'd like to tell you another little anecdote that always comes to mind for me on Remembrance Day. My Aunt Violet had six boys and a daughter and when the war was on three of the boys were old enough to go to war. My cousin Carlyle, who was called Caddy, went to Italy with the army, and his younger brother Bill joined after and ended up in France -- actually ended up in Holland.

Because my cousin Caddy was in the engineers when the landing took place in Normandy, he was transferred from Italy to the battlefront in Holland. He was riding down the road in a truck and there before him was his brother whom he hadn't seen for a number of years, quite by chance. You'd have to be Canadian for this to happen. There they were greeting each other, and they rolled down the hill almost into the water. That's the kind of thing I remember during the two minutes' silence.

Both of my cousins are gone now, but Caddy's widow, Margaret Drennan, watches these proceedings regularly, and I promised her today that I would mention this anecdote. I think it helps sum up the feelings we have towards the two minutes' silence.

In closing, I would like to quote again, this time from the Globe and Mail editorial page dated November 15, 1996. It's entitled "Two Minutes For The Dead," and it reads:

"There is nothing quite as expressive as silence. Britain discovered that on Monday when it stood still for two minutes to remember the war dead.

"Trains, buses and cars came to a stop. Children stood by their desks with heads bowed. Office workers took their phones off the hook. The floor of the stock exchange fell silent. TV networks turned off the sound. In a hurry-up world that leaves little for contemplation, it was a magnificent gesture of national solidarity.

"Is there any reason that Canada should not follow the example? Canadians observe Remembrance Days in many ways -- in schools, at Legion halls, on Parliament Hill. But remembering together, at the same moment, all across the country would lend the event a new force at a time when memories of war are fading. Let the Prime Minister declare that, beginning next year, Canadians from sea to sea shall observe two minutes of silence at the same time every November 11. We owe it to the dead. We owe it to the yet unborn."

In closing, I think that pretty well sums up the reasons I brought my bill forward. I'm pleased to be able to do that simply because of the timing of my being in England at the time the English reinstituted the two minutes' silence.

Personally -- I have a couple of more anecdotes because I see I have another minute or so left -- I was a young man during the war. I remember I was always a great newspaper reader even as a youngster, and I remember reading about the war. Every evening, with that pink Tely, we'd sit on the floor and read about it and worry about it and listen to our parents talk about it. Then we'd have, as everybody must remember, or my vintage, my era, remembers, we had those great newspaper drives to continually collect newspapers, which was part of the war effort.

Finally, if I may go back just a bit, I think back to the First World War, and there's my grandmother who has 11 children, four boys, two of them at war, isolated on a farm, no electricity, no phones, rarely seeing a newspaper and wondering daily how the boy at the front is doing.

So it seems to me that two minutes of silence once a year just to remember is something that we all should probably get back to. We can all take our own memories and think about them in those two minutes. We can all educate our children and grandchildren, and I think it would make us all better Canadians for the exercise. Again, thank you.

MUNICIPAL RESTRUCTURING

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): We will deal first with ballot item number 59.

Mr Phillips has moved private member's notice of motion number 39. Is there any member opposed to taking a vote at this time? Is it the wish of the House that the resolution carry?

All those in favour, say "aye."

All those opposed, say "nay."

In my opinion, the nays have it.

We will defer the vote and there will be a bell.

REMEMBRANCE DAY OBSERVANCE ACT, 1997 / LOI DE 1997 SUR L'OBSERVATION DU JOUR DU SOUVENIR

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): We will deal now with ballot item number 60, second reading of Bill 112, Mr Kells. Is there any person opposed to a vote being taken at this time? Mr Kells has moved second reading. Is it the wish of the House that the motion carry? It is carried. The bill should be ordered for committee of the whole.

Mr Morley Kells (Etobicoke-Lakeshore): Mr Speaker, I seek unanimous consent that my bill, as mentioned by the other two parties, be ordered for third reading today.

The Acting Speaker: Is it the wish of the House that third reading be moved for this bill? It is agreed.

Call in the members; there will be a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1201 to 1206.

MUNICIPAL RESTRUCTURING

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): Mr Phillips has moved private member's notice of motion number 39. All those in favour, please rise and remain standing until recognized by the Clerk.

Ayes

Agostino, Dominic	Curling, Alvin	Miclash, Frank
Bartolucci, Rick	Grandmaître, Bernard	Morin, Gilles E.
Bisson, Gilles	Kennedy, Gerard	Patten, Richard
Bradley, James J.	Kormos, Peter	Phillips, Gerry
Castrilli, Annamarie	Kwinter, Monte	Pupatello, Sandra
Churley, Marilyn	Lalonde, Jean-Marc	Sergio, Mario
Colle, Mike	Laughren, Floyd	Wildman, Bud
Conway, Sean G.	McGuinty, Dalton	Wood, Len
Crozier, Bruce	McLeod, Lyn

The Acting Speaker: All those opposed, please rise and remain standing till recognized by the Clerk.

Nays

Arnott, Ted	Gilchrist, Steve	Parker, John L.
Baird, John R.	Grimmett, Bill	Pettit, Trevor
Barrett, Toby	Guzzo, Garry J.	Preston, Peter
Beaubien, Marcel	Hardeman, Ernie	Rollins, E.J. Douglas
Brown, Jim	Hastings, John	Ross, Lillian
Carroll, Jack	Johnson, Ron	Sampson, Rob
Chudleigh, Ted	Jordan, W. Leo	Sheehan, Frank
Doyle, Ed	Kells, Morley	Spina, Joseph
Elliott, Brenda	Leadston, Gary L.	Stewart, R. Gary
Ford, Douglas B.	Martiniuk, Gerry	Tascona, Joseph N.
Fox, Gary	Munro, Julia	Wood, Bob
Froese, Tom	Murdoch, Bill	Young, Terence H.
Galt, Doug	O'Toole, John

Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): The ayes are 26; the nays are 38.

The Acting Speaker: I declare the resolution lost. It being after 12, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 o'clock this afternoon.

The House recessed from 1209 to 1332.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

MODEL PARLIAMENT

Ms Marilyn Churley (Riverdale): Tomorrow in this Legislative Assembly there will be a model Parliament. For the first time the three official political parties of Ontario youth sections are participating: the Ontario New Democratic Youth, the Young Liberals of Ontario and the Young Progressive Conservative youth.

These young people will be sitting in the House together debating three bills, a question period and members' statements. The three bills these young people will be debating are workfare, tax cuts and labour. This model Parliament is a great opportunity for all young people to participate in the democratic process of this province.

It is interesting to note that the Conservatives will be in power one more time. The Conservative government received 66 seats, the official opposition Liberals received 35 and the third party, the NDP, received 29. MPP Ron Johnson, the member for Brantford, will be the Speaker for the day.

The NDP youth have selected Louise James as their leader, Wynn Hartviksen as House leader and David M. Lyons as their whip.

Much work has been put into this by all members of all three parties to make sure the day will be serious but fun. I would especially like to commend Alex Ng, James McAughey, David M. Lyons and Alex Johnson for their hard work. They are with us in the gallery today.

It's great to see so many young people of this province getting involved with politics to make this a better place to live. I wish them all good luck, but particularly the NDP in defeating all the government bills tomorrow.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I request unanimous consent to revert to the Liberal Party this afternoon since we missed our first turn going around.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): I can seek unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent to revert back and allow the Liberals to take their turn?

Interjections.

The Speaker: I hear a no.

SIMON JONCAS

Mrs Lillian Ross (Hamilton West): January 23 was a special day in the life of a very special person in my riding. You see, on that day, Mr Simon Joncas celebrated his 100th birthday.

Mr Joncas was born on January 23, 1897, near the town of Waubashene, Ontario. He and his two brothers fought hard for their country during the First World War. After the First World War, he became a pilot on the Great Lakes. He then went on to begin his own business in laying hardwood floors and laid the floor in the historic Right House building in Hamilton.

But his real passion is the game of bridge. At the age of 11, Mr Joncas began to play bridge, and it has become a daily occurrence for him. For those of you in this House who play the game, you will understand that it is not an easy game, it is one that commands you keep your wits about you, so to be an expert in the game is not easy, but to be an expert in the game at 100 is truly amazing.

I met Mr Joncas last week at a special party to celebrate his birthday. Mr Joncas, better known as Jim, is an extremely intelligent, witty and charming gentleman. The room at Sackville Hill was full of well-wishers and friends who have a great deal of respect and love for this truly fine gentleman. I wish to add my name to the list of well-wishers and I look forward to celebrating his 103rd birthday in the year 2000. Happy birthday, Jim.

Mr John O'Toole (Durham East): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: The member for St Catharines made a point that the Liberal Party had not been given the appropriate allocation of time for a question and I was seen to have voted opposed to that. I would withdraw that and propose unanimous agreement that they be given their opportunity.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Is there unanimous consent to allow the Liberals to take the turn they missed? Agreed.

LLOYD PERRY

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): It is with great sadness that I stand to recognize the recent passing of Mr Lloyd Perry, QC, a great Canadian and a dedicated Ontarian, a prominent member of the black community, a respected community activist and a personal friend. Lloyd Perry passed away January 8, at the age of 77, after a long and distinguished career.

Born in Halifax in 1919, he graduated from the University of Michigan in 1940. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force in the early 1940s and graduated from Osgoode Hall in 1950. He then joined the legal staff of the official guardian and rose to be the official guardian, where he served from 1975 to 1985. He was responsible for the legal wellbeing of children and of persons with disabilities, having to act as an advocate, investigator and counsel for their best interests.

He received several appointments over the years to committees, serving on War Amps Thalidomide Task Force, as an executive member of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and as co-chair of the NATO Advisory Board Commission on Social Issues. He lectured around the world on legal matters related to children and civil rights. As well, he often sent submissions on behalf of minorities and other disadvantaged groups to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. He was also active in furthering the diplomatic interests of Caribbean and African countries in Toronto.

Mr Perry was involved in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and was an active member of the parish. He will be remembered at a memorial service on Saturday. My condolences to his wife, Margo, his daughter, Kathy, son, Ian and sister, Inez.

EDUCATION FINANCING

Ms Annamarie Castrilli (Downsview): I have in my hands just a few of the hundreds of letters, cards and petitions that people in my riding have been sending, parents who are concerned about education. I can assure you that although these people live in Downsview, they represent the views of parents all across the province, parents that the Minister of Education is refusing to hear.

These concerned parents are appealing to the minister to stop the cuts, as they say. If I may quote, "Your government is hurting our children today and endangering their tomorrow." They request at the very least that the government halt all further cuts to education and allow the people of Ontario to suggest alternative methods for education reform.

Surely a government that has often publicly claimed to listen to the taxpayers must agree that more input to those who are using the system is absolutely essential. These parents recognize that their children must have the best possible education in order to be able to compete in Canada and internationally. That requires a government's policies that are founded on excellence, not the kind we have seen that have adversely affected the classroom environment. The parents of Ontario are not prepared to tolerate the erosion of the education system in Ontario.

I hope the minister will read all these letters, listen to what the parents have to say and answer each one individually.

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ROAD MAINTENANCE

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): As we speak, my constituency office is getting telephone calls from concerned citizens around the cities of Timmins and Iroquois Falls and Matheson about the condition of our northern highways. For upwards of a week or two now Highways 11 and 101 have been in such a state that many accidents have happened, many cars have ended up in the ditch because the Ministry of Transportation, for whatever reason, has decided to cut back on the winter maintenance budget and in addition to that is sending out the proper amount of equipment to maintain our highways to the standard that is needed for citizens of that area to be able to commute within the city and around the northeastern part of the province.

I hear people as they call my office and when I'm talking back to them and they really wonder if this government cares. Does this government care if people in the north have to go at risk strictly because they have to drive from one community to another? I was talking to Mayor Graham of the town of Iroquois Falls just yesterday and again today. He is also being flooded by phone calls from citizens in his community in Iroquois Falls with the same kinds of complaints.

How many more citizens will have to be put at risk, merely because they decide they need to drive on a highway, just because this government refuses to put the money that is needed to keep our highways to a proper maintenance standard? I say to this government and specifically to the Minister of Transportation, get off your high horse, do the job you were elected to do and make sure our highways are properly maintained so citizens of northern Ontario are not at risk every time they have to go on a highway.

THISTLETOWN SENIORS

Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale): I rise in the House today to welcome, on behalf of my colleagues, the Thistletown Seniors 55+ group from my riding who are sitting in the members' and public galleries. This fine group of senior citizens is very active in improving the quality of life for all Etobicokians through its efforts in fund-raising ventures and volunteerism.

Some examples of their many fine contributions are the Meals on Wheels program; driving for day centre and visiting services; the Woodchuckers group, who make excellent wooden toys for our younger set; and most recently the packing and delivery of 353 food baskets for needy families in northern Etobicoke this past Christmas.

Having dined with them downstairs earlier today, I can tell you that Etobicoke maintains its reputation as a desired place in which to live, thanks to the hard work these many seniors have given to their community throughout the years.

I ask all members of this House to join with me in welcoming the Thistletown Seniors 55+ group to the Legislative Assembly today.

HEALTH CARE

Mr Gerard Kennedy (York South): In recent times it has become very clear that the Ministry of Health has created chaos with respect to health care in this province. All their initiatives with respect to doctors have had to be reversed over the past year at an incredible cost. The provision of and responsibility for long-term care and public health have been downloaded on to municipalities, there's a reckless program of hospital restructuring that's been started without any sense of direction or destination and seniors and social assistance recipients have been made to pay for prescription drugs despite endless promises by this government about no new user fees. There is no evidence of any kind anywhere which shows that the actions of this government are resulting in any improvements to the health care system. In fact just the opposite is true.

Two days ago this government was told by Justice Dubin that the Ministry of Health was groundless in its efforts to take away liability coverage for doctors. We've paid a big price for this mistake. More important, patients have paid the biggest price. The government's decision to deny doctors financial assistance to deal with their liability for malpractice premiums meant a crisis in the health care system: Services were being withdrawn when doctors refused to take on new patients, obstetricians in places like Toronto and Windsor stopped delivering babies and so on. These actions put an individual's right to quality health care at risk. The ministry has to accept responsibility for this and the part-time minister we have now has to stand up and tell us the cost of the doctors' deal, that the $42 million that Dubin added to will be paid --

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Thank you.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): With all the attention, and rightly so, placed on the megacity issue here in Toronto and the downloading on to municipalities, the government might think for a minute that the workers of this province have forgotten the attack they've been facing from this government from the beginning. As much as people are now beginning to see the undemocratic nature of this government in the issues I've just mentioned, workers have faced the wrath of this government from day one, particularly in the area of health and safety.

We continue, for instance, to demand that there be an inquest into the two deaths at Dofasco that shouldn't have happened and so far the Minister of Labour has refused to respond. What else has this government already done? Bill 15 has been passed, where they ripped away the right of workers to have an equal say on the Workers' Compensation Board. They've already killed the Workers' Health and Safety Agency. Why? Because they had 50% representatives on the board. This government can't stand workers to dare be thinking that they should be anywhere other than under the thumb of their friends.

You've cut the costs, cut money, to the Workers' Health and Safety Centre, the centre that provides training on health and safety. Workers training workers: It works. You don't like it. You've cut it.

Your Red Tape Review Commission, tabled just the other day, said very clearly that this government intends to water down the right to refuse unsafe work. Bill 99, your WCB attack on injured workers, takes $6 billion and gives it to your friends.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Thank you.

WINTER CARNIVALS

Mr Bill Grimmett (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): During the upcoming month I'll have the opportunity to participate in many different winter carnivals in my riding. I believe it is the strong community involvement which makes these carnivals such a success.

Tourists come from all over North America to Muskoka-Georgian Bay during the winter season, making this area a year-round attraction. Each year the growth of cold-weather tourism activities mounts, attracting skiers, snowmobilers, fishing enthusiasts and resort patrons.

I'm looking forward to attending the Snowarama in Gravenhurst this Saturday, to welcome the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, the Honourable Hilary Weston, at its opening. Snowarama is a large tourism event in Gravenhurst, which raises funds for the Easter Seal Society, with snowmobilers collecting pledges on a 100-mile ride around Lake Muskoka.

In addition to last week's Midland Winter Carnival, other winter festivals in my riding that Ontarians will want to attend are the Winterfest in Huntsville this coming weekend, the winter carnivals in Bracebridge and Port Carling on the weekend of February 8 and 9, the 49th annual Penetanguishene Winterama, the Dorset Snowball Winter Carnival on February 14 and 15 and the St Patrick's Winter Carnival on the weekend of February 22 in Dwight.

I hope all Ontarians have the opportunity this winter to visit Muskoka-Georgian Bay and enjoy these treasures of the winter season. By the way, we have lots of snow.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

TEACHERS' LABOUR DISPUTE

Hon John Snobelen (Minister of Education and Training): Mr Speaker, I rise today to inform you somewhat sadly that following question period today I intend to introduce legislation to send secondary school teachers of the Lennox and Addington County Board of Education back to work. The legislation proposes an arbitrated end to the dispute between teachers and the board.

Earlier this week I wrote to both the board and representatives of the striking secondary school teachers urging them to come to an agreement. They were unable to do so.

Over the past weeks the board and teachers were provided with assistance by the Education Relations Commission to help them resolve their differences. Yesterday I was informed by the Education Relations Commission that the school year of students would be in jeopardy if the strike continued. Therefore, I am taking immediate action and will be introducing legislation to end the dispute.

Today marks the 29th school day lost to the 2,509 students of the Lennox and Addington secondary schools. Contract disputes also disrupted students' studies in Lennox and Addington in 1986 and 1993-94.

Across Ontario there have been 11 other job actions this year which have disrupted students' studies. Over the past 20 years, 17 million student days have been lost to job action. It's unacceptable that students and their parents are caught in the middle of these disputes. Last fall, Leon Paroian reported that these disputes have had a negative impact on students' learning. I am now in the process of reviewing legislation to achieve the right balance between the right to strike and the rights of children to an education.

Today I am asking the Legislature to join me to help the students of Lennox and Addington. I ask all members to recall the proud record of this chamber in dealing with these issues in the past and to give this legislation quick approval.

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Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): We will be most interested in seeing the legislation actually tabled so that we can look at the specifics of the legislation that the minister intends to introduce. Quite clearly, it would not be appropriate to go too far in terms of the specifics of the legislation until we've been able to see it.

I would say that it has been the history of our caucus to support back-to-work legislation when the Education Relations Commission makes a finding that students' education is in jeopardy. That's a principle to which we have always applied ourselves, both in government and in opposition, and that principle will remain a very strong one for us.

Having said that, I have some concerns about the entire climate in which the collective bargaining process is taking place in Ontario today and in which this announcement is being made. I need to take a moment of my five minutes to indicate why the process of the Education Relations Commission's involvement is so critical to the entire operation of collective bargaining in Ontario.

The Education Relations Commission was put in place when Bill 100, which established a reasonable forum for collective bargaining, was put in place. That commission was established in order to create an independent, arm's-length, apolitical body that would have as its concern, firstly, to make sure that the collective bargaining process went smoothly, but secondly, and perhaps paramount, to ensure that students were not in jeopardy. It was very clear to the government of the day, a Conservative government that established that legislation, that put the Education Relations Commission in place, as it has been to successive governments, that the Education Relations Commission was the body through which the whole process could be depoliticized, where government would not have to make political decisions on behalf of one party or the other, nor would they have to weigh the wellbeing of students against the whole collective bargaining process. That task, that responsibility, was assigned to this arm's-length body, the Education Relations Commission.

I'm not going to go any further in a history lesson today in terms of reviewing how well that's worked or how well that hasn't worked, other than to again say that the recommendations of the Education Relations Commission have always been the basis in government and in opposition for our ability to determine whether students' wellbeing was in jeopardy.

I am concerned to see the legislation because I am concerned to see whether in fact due process is being followed with this legislation today. The concern arises for me, and perhaps it's the first time I've had to express this concern, for a couple of reasons. One is because the Minister of Education and Training this week has been publicly talking about his dissatisfaction with the process, his intention to review the process to bring in changes, speculating on that at a time when there has not really been an opportunity for public debate or any clarity from the minister as to what his position will be. Our concern will be to see whether the legislation holds to the principles established in Bill 100 that set out due process.

I'm concerned too because the very operation of the Education Relations Commission is today, this afternoon, itself in jeopardy. It is our understanding that as of tomorrow the Education Relations Commission will no longer be able to function, whether in the resolution of this dispute or in the resolution of any of the disputes which are currently going on in collective bargaining between boards and teachers, because the Education Relations Commission will not have a quorum. Unless the minister is also prepared to announce today that there will be new appointments to the Education Relations Commission so that that essential, arm's-length, independent body can continue to mediate the collective bargaining situation, can continue to recommend to this minister and this government when students' wellbeing is jeopardized by the continuance of a strike, we will have a very serious, chaotic situation on our hands.

Lastly, I want to express my concern that the Minister of Education's goal so clearly is to take over not only educational funding but the management of education, with the goal of being able to make major cuts in education. I can't help but have some additional concerns about what would normally be a due process of support for back-to-work legislation on a finding of student jeopardy. I can't help but feel that that due process may be compromised by this minister's agenda on the whole aspect of making major cuts in education.

Having said that, we will look forward to seeing the legislation itself and to being able to debate it more fully at the appropriate time.

Mr Bud Wildman (Algoma): I think all members in this House agree that a strike or lockout in the education system does not benefit anyone and that it certainly puts the students in a very difficult position: caught in the middle.

When we look at this Lennox-Addington dispute, I think it's important to recognize that the Education Relations Commission has acted under its mandate and made a recommendation to the minister, dated yesterday, that the continuation of the dispute would lead to jeopardy for the students.

I think it's important to recognize that in the letter that was sent to the minister by the ERC, on pages 4, 5 and 6 it sets out the history of this particular negotiation. In that, it points out that the teachers have filed a complaint with the ERC alleging the board has breached its statutory duty to bargain in good faith.

The board unilaterally imposed some changes prior to the time that is allowed under the Education Act; under Bill 100 as well. The teachers grieved this and the arbitrator ruled in the teachers' favour. However, the teachers maintain the board has failed to implement the terms of the arbitrator's award. The board has also unilaterally changed some terms and conditions within the time frame contemplated by the act. The ERC says:

"While this may be a legitimate exercise of rights available to a board, the timing and nature of the changes in the midst of mediation have placed barriers to achieving a resolution. Further, there have been public statements of distrust and disrespect on the part of both parties. It appears that both parties in this particular dispute have not acted in a way that would facilitate a negotiated agreement."

For that reason, the ERC made a recommendation to the minister that legislation be brought in.

I think it's significant that we look at what the ERC recommended in terms of legislation. They recommended, "The collective agreement that expired on August 31, 1996, shall be deemed to continue in force until replaced by a new collective agreement reached by the parties or awarded by a board of arbitration."

The draft legislation that has been shared with us does indeed do that, but it also imposes the rollbacks the ERC has referred to in its letter. The board of education in this case got rid of department heads, a total of 44 people, and even after the OSSTF won the arbitration, the board refused to reinstate these people. It finally did give back pay, but subsequently the 60-day rule was in place so they did not make any changes. The board got rid of other positions, rolled back salaries 2.8% and forced the teachers to pay 20% of their benefits, and significantly for the students in this particular board, the board changed the pupil-teacher ratio to 16.7 pupils per teacher and fired three teachers. This move affected the timetables of 21 other teachers.

It seems we have a situation where we are talking about rollbacks that not only affected the teachers and their jobs but affected the students in the classrooms. It would be most unfortunate, in trying to resolve this dispute upon the recommendation of the ERC, if the government instituted legislation that would keep in place those rollbacks that adversely affected the students in this particular board.

I'm hoping that when we see the final legislation it does not include the provision that institutes the rollbacks, because if it does include that, it will be unfortunately impossible for us to agree to one-day passage in dealing with this legislation. If the minister has withdrawn that section, then we would consider agreeing to dealing with the legislation today.

The other point that is of significance is that although the ERC recommended that an arbitration be set up under the aegis of the ERC, the legislation says the arbitrator will be appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council; in other words, the minister. This is unprecedented, unless you go back, apparently, to Kirkland Lake in 1976, which is 20 years ago, not long after Bill 100 had been passed in the first place.

The last number of arbitrations in this case have been under the aegis of the ERC. I hope the minister --

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Thank you, member for Algoma.

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ORAL QUESTIONS

SOCIAL, COMMUNITY HEALTH AND HOUSING SERVICES

Mr Dalton McGuinty (Leader of the Opposition): My first question is to the Premier. Premier, you have had some studies done which detail in some measure the impact of your mega-week policies on communities throughout the province. That information would be very important, is very important, to us and the communities right across the province so they can gain a better understanding of what the impacts of the mega-week policies are going to be.

This morning in this House you used your majority to defeat a resolution put forward by one of our members that would have required that you provide us with the information contained within those studies. For some reason you have now determined that those studies are to be secret, and the only conclusion we can draw is that the reason you're not going to release those studies is because they do not support the case you make, the case that would have us believe the property taxes are going to come down by some 10% in this province and that there's a good case somehow to be made for transferring social services from the provincial level down to municipalities.

Premier, I'm giving you an opportunity now to prove me wrong by producing those studies by the end of today. Show that I am mistaken in this regard and those studies do in fact --

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Thank you.

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): We are releasing information as it becomes available. I think we have indicated to the House and to you and to our partners, municipalities and school boards, that we're trying to get as detailed impacts as we can with regard to how much education will come off the property tax in each individual case and the same with welfare benefits that were there. At the same time some municipalities will have to deal with policing and some will not; some will have to deal with farm tax rebates and some will not.

What we can tell you is that overall those numbers are certainly there, and overall we would expect -- contrary to when your party was in power, when taxes mushroomed, when you downloaded on municipalities -- that by the year 2000, which is when we hope to have these all implemented, that property taxes would be neutral, or in some cases perhaps reductions.

Mr McGuinty: You believe in hiding the best possible information and I believe in bringing it out. That's why we started a fact-finding tour to bring to the fore, to bring to the public attention and our attention the best possible information we can gather. That's the kind of study, the kind of undertaking, you should have followed prior to entering on your mega-week madness.

Let me tell you what we found out yesterday. The Ontario senior citizens' coalition told us this yesterday: They called your dumping of services "contemptible." They said you're already hitting them with user fees for prescription drugs. They said you're already charging them $40.29 a day for staying in hospital. They said you're reducing food services and nutritional standards in their nursing homes. They asked why, at a time when the number of frail, elderly Ontarians is on the rise, you are bent on proceeding with a plan which is going to reduce and put at risk the number of services they have to rely upon.

Hon Mr Harris: I hope you reassured them, as we reassure them, that what we are doing will enhance services for seniors, will enhance services for long-term care, will enhance those services. I would suggest to you that if you allowed that viewpoint, which is obviously wrong from the government, to go unchecked -- I would expect you, in these hearings, to speak on behalf of the motives of the government, which are entirely contrary to that. I now call on you to make sure you're not misrepresenting what the government is doing, either in motive or in fact.

Mr McGuinty: I undertook on behalf of those seniors to obtain the best possible information. I asked you for the studies that you've got, that you're hiding, and you're not prepared to release them, so how can I provide them with that reassurance?

Let me tell you what else they said. They said that not only are you killing off protections for seniors who live in apartments, you're now about to kill off the very apartments themselves. That's what's going to happen when you transfer the responsibility for public housing on to municipalities that not only cannot afford to maintain existing stock, they can hardly expect to be called upon to construct new stock.

Premier, you've had one heck of a week. That I will allow you. The seniors are calling your actions contemptible; the board of trade says you're raising taxes by $7,900; the Canadian Taxpayers Federation says you're running a shell game; and David Crombie says your actions are "absolutely the wrong thing to do."

Your response is to say: "No one out there really understands what we're up to. Nobody understands what we're doing. Nobody understands what the impact of mega-week is going to be." Premier, I've got news for you: Everybody understands what's going to happen. I'm calling upon you now to go back to the drawing board.

Hon Mr Harris: We certainly plan to discuss with municipalities and our partners how we can make sure, from a large scale, that every region of this province has the same opportunities to reduce property taxes. As well throughout this year and in the transition period, we will be prepared to work with individual municipalities.

I've heard you and your colleagues say it's a good idea to take education off the property tax. By the year 2000 that is $6.2 billion. You're the leader who said on November 25: "People are tired of opposition politicians who pound their fists, foam at the mouth, turn red in the face and insist that everything this government has done is wrong. It hurts their credibility." That's Dalton McGuinty, so I would ask you, Dalton McGuinty, which of the $6.2 billion of services do you suggest that municipalities pick up?

The Speaker: New question.

Interjection.

The Speaker: Member for Ottawa-Rideau, it would be helpful if you came to order. Thank you very much. Leader of the official opposition.

PROPERTY TAXATION

Mr McGuinty: My second question is also for the Premier. Premier, you've got to admit that the last three weeks have been a disaster for your government. It's no wonder senior members of your staff are dropping like flies, and so are your supporters. We've got the Canadian Taxpayers Federation against you now, the board of trade, David Crombie, the GTA mayors, the Toronto Sun and even the Financial Post. Can you believe it? The Financial Post.

Let's listen to what some of your Hamilton backbenchers are saying. Lillian Ross said: "It's pretty frightening. I'm concerned about it. I don't want to see it happen." Ed Doyle said: "It's got to be looked at. I'm concerned. No one wants to see the community hit. Hopefully we can find ways to mitigate the problem." Trevor Pettit said: "I have no reason to doubt the figures the locals have provided me. Our role is to speak to the ministry and see if they can't revisit the situation."

There's a simple thing to do here, Premier: Admit you've made a mistake and come back with a better plan. Will you do that today?

Hon Mr Harris: Of course we'll continue to consult and continue to listen. I have listened to the members from Hamilton whom you quote who are quite satisfied that at the end of the day their municipalities will be better off.

I would say this: On August 22, 1996, Dalton McGuinty in the Ottawa leadership debate said, "We've got to be careful how we're seen in opposition now because if all we ever do is oppose everything and propose nothing we're not going to win." I would ask you, given that you've accepted that it's a good idea to take $6.2 billion off the property taxpayer for education, what you think municipalities should pay for in that $6.2 billion.

There's your target: $6.2 billion. If you want to be positive, if you want to come forward with suggestions, if you want to be relevant, I suggest you come forward with your ideas.

Mr McGuinty: I'm really quite flattered that the Premier is taking such a keen interest in my career. I can see why he let Mr Rhodes go, though. It's obvious that the --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Government members, please.

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Mr McGuinty: It's obvious that the Premier never lets the facts get in the way of a good spin. He thinks he can dump $1 billion in net new costs on property taxpayers across the province and at the same time magically produce a 10% property tax cut. I'm not aware of it, but maybe Doug Henning has joined the caucus over there; I haven't seen him.

Yesterday we heard from the mayors and the Metro chair, and this is what they said: They said you're wrong. Quite simply, they said you're wrong. They said property taxes are going to skyrocket and they provided the numbers in black and white to corroborate what they're saying.

So, Mr Premier, give me your math. Explain how your magical 10% property tax decrease is possible after dumping more than $1 billion in net new costs: factoring in all the rainy-day funds, $1 billion in additional costs to property taxpayers across the province. Provide me with your math.

Hon Mr Harris: Your $1 billion, of course, is way off, and I have to call you on that. I think you know when you talk about figures that people would say that the opposition have picked up every nickel they could possibly manufacture and somehow or other, without recognizing all the other factors that reduce the impacts, they've come up with $1 billion.

Let me be clear --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Members of the opposition, it's important that we hear the questions and the answers, and I'm having a difficult time hearing the answers. Would you come to order, please. Thank you.

Hon Mr Harris: Let me be clear. We have acknowledged over the last two years, for example, that we offloaded on to municipalities about $700 million. That was clear in the reduction in the grants to them in the first two years of our mandate. We just were up front and we said, "We'll help you deal with that." The result: property tax reductions in Mississauga; Mel Lastman hasn't had a tax hike in four or five years. So now you're saying over the next three years we're reducing $1 billion. Well, we have another $2.5 billion we're putting into the system in addition to that. We are helping municipalities --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. The member for Hamilton East, I ask that you withdraw that comment, please.

Mr Dominic Agostino (Hamilton East): I withdraw it.

Hon Mr Harris: We are following your advice, whether you know it or not, and I would ask you to follow it too. August 1996 press release: "Ontarians are telling us to retool government, make it more efficient, concentrate on what it should be doing and doing it well." It's good advice, it's what we're doing, and we invite you to join us now in living up to what you say should be done.

Mr McGuinty: You can change a lot of things but you can't change the fact that one plus one equals two, and your math just doesn't add up. We've done our math; we've produced the numbers. Mayors across the province are doing their math; they're producing their numbers. You've got some studies and you refuse to release those. You can't talk with any credibility about our numbers being wrong unless you produce your own.

The Board of Trade of Metropolitan Toronto says business is going to face a $7,900 tax increase based on what you are about to do. The Financial Post says your plan would "force local municipalities to cut services, raise taxes, or both."

I believe one of the biggest tests of government is to see what it does when they make a mistake. You've made a mistake. It's a big one. Here's an opportunity for you to own up to it, to backtrack, to produce the new plan, and to bring it back into this House. Will you do that?

Hon Mr Harris: Is it a mistake to take education off the property tax? You can't have it all ways. John Gerretsen said there's no more reason to fund education costs on the property tax roll. That's what he says; that's what you said. You've all said that these are good ideas.

If you want to talk about numbers, this is from the party who told Ontario they had a surplus and left a $3-billion deficit. That's what you said. That's when you were there. This is from the party that not only had a $3-billion deficit but offloaded on to municipalities such that tax increases were in the 40% range, such that tax increases in education were in the 50% to 60% range. So you don't have to talk to us about who has numbers and whose numbers add up. Your numbers didn't add up when you were in government, they didn't add up in your red book in the campaign and they don't add up now.

MUNICIPAL RESTRUCTURING

Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): My question is also for the Premier. I want to draw the Premier's attention to a letter which is being sent out by his parliamentary assistant, the member for Brampton South. I understand it's being sent out under parliamentary assistant letterhead.

The letter makes some very questionable statements and I believe makes some very bad accusations. The member for Brampton South, in the letter and some of the attachments to it, basically says, "The mayors," referring to the mayors of Metropolitan Toronto, "decided on the question, are administering the process," and this is the referenda process, "are actively promoting and funding one side of the issue and are in charge of counting the ballots." He says, "Clearly this is not how things should be done."

Premier, I think your parliamentary assistant is implying that the mayors of Metropolitan Toronto are committing voter fraud. Don't you think you should apologize for that?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): No.

Mr Hampton: I'm not surprised by the answer. After all, over the last three weeks, Premier, you've shown extreme contempt for democracy. The Speaker found a prima facie case of contempt against one of your ministers and against your government. You've had your wrist slapped over your use of government fax machines to create a partisan faxing network --

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): And the TV ads.

Mr Hampton: -- and your television ads. Now your communications director and spin doctor has had to move on.

I'm saying to you that I think it's very serious that you would be implying and your parliamentary assistant would be implying that the mayors of Metropolitan Toronto are somehow guilty of ballot fraud or voting fraud. I think you should apologize and I think you should remove any reference of that. Will you do that?

Hon Mr Harris: Let's be clear about a few things. First of all, the letter that was sent out is not on parliamentary assistant letterhead, so let's just be clear about that. Second, the letter states the facts of what the city of Toronto, I believe, is doing. I haven't read the letter, but everything you've read to me seems like the facts.

I cannot apologize for your interpretation, which seems to be the most ludicrous, ridiculous interpretation of stating the facts in a letter that I've ever heard. I mean, I used the word "silly" the other day, which is unparliamentary. This one is just simply ludicrous. If that's the way you want to interpret it, you apologize. It's not the way I interpret it, it's not the way the member interprets it and it's not the way any reasonable person would interpret it. It's a statement of the facts.

Mr Hampton: Premier, I'm surprised you haven't read it yet, you know so much about it. I'm sure that people will take that into account as well, that you claim you haven't read it but you know so much about it.

Interjections.

Hon Janet Ecker (Minister of Community and Social Services): It's called Alzheimer's.

Mr Floyd Laughren (Nickel Belt): Nice, Janet. You'd better withdraw that. Do you want to repeat that, Janet?

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Order. Members, I didn't hear the comment. If you want to stand up on a point of order and ask the minister to withdraw, you can, but I did not hear the comment.

Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I believe that the Minister of Community and Social Services made an unparliamentary remark which included reference to Alzheimer's.

The Speaker: I didn't hear the comment and I will give the opportunity for the minister to comment.

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Hon Mrs Ecker: Mr Speaker, if I said anything that was unparliamentary, if I said anything that someone could take offence from, I would like to withdraw that categorically. That was certainly not my intent.

The Speaker: Final supplementary.

Mr Hampton: Premier, here's the situation: The mayors of Metropolitan Toronto oppose your mega-download and your megacity, so your parliamentary assistant implies that they are committing voting fraud. When opposition parties raise the issues and point out that this is not going to work, this is going to really hurt our communities, you say we know nothing. When the Toronto board of trade says this is wrong, you say they know nothing. When the United Way says this is not going to work and it's going to hurt our communities, you say they know nothing. When David Crombie, the person you appointed to head up the Who Does What panel, says this is not going to work, this is going to hurt our communities, you say he knows nothing.

It appears that the only person who knows everything in this province is you. Everybody else says you're wrong. Can you explain, Premier, how it is that you seem to know everything and everybody who disagrees with you is wrong?

Hon Mr Harris: Let me be clear: All the quotes that you somehow want to attribute to me are false, incorrect and allegations that quite frankly are not things that I have said. Somehow or other you put your own interpretation on things. I guess an $11-billion deficit was a balanced budget when you were in office; I don't know. I guess 1.3 million on welfare was, "We really care about people; this is a good record."

I cannot possibly explain your interpretation of statements that are made. They are false, they are inaccurate, they are imputing motive and they are wrong. If you continue to make those statements and expect me to respond to them, all I can do is correct the record and tell you, "You are wrong."

The Speaker: New question, leader of the third party.

Interjection.

The Speaker: The member for Ottawa-Rideau, thank you again for cooperating.

Mr Hampton: I would say, Premier, when everyone disagrees with you, I think you should start to listen. I think you should start to listen to some of these people who really care about our communities.

HOMELESSNESS

Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): To the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing: Last Sunday Garland Sheppard, a homeless person, was found frozen to death in a Toronto garage. Today is six months after the report of a coroner's jury into the death of three Toronto homeless people. The jury recommended that an advisory committee be struck, including the representatives of all levels of government, housing providers, tenants and homeless people. This group was to come up with a strategy to ensure that homeless people have access to appropriate housing and support services funded by the appropriate government ministries.

Minister, the six months is up. Can you tell us, where is your advisory committee, where is your respect for the coroner's jury? Can you tell us where you're at, please?

Hon Al Leach (Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing): In response to the leader of the third party, I'll refer the question to the Minister of Community and Social Services.

Hon Janet Ecker (Minister of Community and Social Services): The opposition is quite right; we do have to respond to the coroner's recommendations and we are certainly planning to do so. We think this is an extremely important issue and we are quite looking forward to be able to discuss this with him.

Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): The coroner's jury was quite clear. They said the goal should be to identify successful models of affordable and supportive housing and community supports and develop a plan. I say with regret and shame that we are witnessing the death of the Ministry of Housing.

Back to the other minister on this. I want to read you something from your party's A Blueprint for Justice and Community Safety in Ontario. On page 35 it says, "The Coroners Act should be amended to ensure the government responds to inquest jury recommendations within a reasonable time."

Does "reasonable time" mean that you disregard it completely because the six months have run out? The deadline is gone and you say you're ready to respond to this. To my knowledge, the coroner has received nothing. To my knowledge, the agencies that deal with this have received nothing from you or that ministry there that is dead. Why are you ignoring the poor, the vulnerable and the homeless?

Hon Mrs Ecker: I would first of all reject the opposition's accusation that we are ignoring this issue. That is by no means what we are doing. We are certainly concerned about the recommendations the coroner put forward. We've been considering them carefully. Some of the material is completed, some of it is not. It will be done as soon as it is complete.

I'd like to also point out that many of those recommendations that the coroner talked about highlighted the municipality's role and responsibility in this as well. That's one of the reasons we think that working with our municipal partners in solving this issue -- we've seen the expertise that Toronto has demonstrated in its care for those who have been facing homelessness in the winter and we want to continue to work with them as we take a look at solving this very serious problem.

Mr Marchese: All I can say is God bless Toronto, because if it's up to this government to help us out, the homeless are not going to have any chances to find a place to live.

Your mega-download on services to municipalities is going to make it worse for us, not better. You're making municipalities pick up the tab for the following: welfare, hostels, homes for special care and non-profit housing. They will wind up having to sell off public housing and close hostel beds because your download makes it impossible to maintain them without big tax hikes.

The coalition that's up here dealing with homelessness wants assurances from you that you won't abandon the homeless and the vulnerable. Give them that assurance.

Hon Mrs Ecker: We are not abandoning the homeless. One of the things the honourable member should remember when he is discussing this issue is that we are lifting the education costs off the property tax. We are also continuing to share many social programs to ensure that those supports are there for those who need them.

One of the problems that has been pointed out by coroners' juries on this kind of issue is that the complex nature of the needs of many people who find themselves homeless sometimes involves health needs and social needs as well as housing needs. One of the problems they have faced is that because those programs are not integrated they can't get the help they need. That's one of the objectives we will achieve with the results of our Who Does What recommendations.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): I'll just remind those people who are in the galleries that you're not allowed to speak out. You'll be asked to leave if you do.

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING

Mr Dominic Agostino (Hamilton East): My question is for the Premier. Premier, we've learned that at the same time the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario issued an $850,000 contract to Gingko advertising and Hogtown Creative advertising, the government of Ontario issued a $2-million untendered contract for advertising through the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

The process in this case, according to our information, was not followed. Management Board was asked by the ministries involved to exempt them from the regular advertising process. Basically this company that has long ties and history to your party, federally and provincially, and to you and your campaigns was given a $2-million untendered contract by the government of Ontario for television advertising. Can you explain to the House why you believe it is appropriate for your government to give a $2-million untendered contract for advertising to your friends?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): No, I can't, but I know that the Chair of Management Board, who is responsible for that, can.

Hon David Johnson (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet, Minister of Health, Government House Leader): To be more accurate, there were contracts of $400,000 pertaining to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and the Ministry of Health which went through the proper process, went through the proper Management Board process. The process contemplates situations of urgency and the process contemplates situations of confidentiality, and in those instances the proper process permits the Management Board of Cabinet to exempt the process from tendering. The proper process was followed. Management Board are satisfied that this involved urgency and confidentiality and gave the proper approval.

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Mr Agostino: I am astonished at the answer by the minister. What you have clearly done is issued contracts to your friends and used the Management Board route as the excuse for doing that. It's very clear that the process was not followed. There is a mechanism for tendering of $25,000 and over from ministries. Any contracts over half a million must go through the Advertising Review Board. None of this was done. The various ministries and ministers involved came to Management Board and said, "Exempt us from the rules."

The process for tendering contracts is sacred. The integrity of the tendering process is sacred. That system is there so politicians and political parties do not issue multimillion-dollar contracts to their friends and supporters. Very clearly, the $2-million figure involving the three ministries was provided to us by the office of the Management Board. The fact that you clearly thwarted and went around and skewed the process here is very clear. Again, will you commit to withdrawing these --

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Member for Hamilton East, come to order, please.

Interjection.

The Speaker: You know, the member for Hamilton East and others asking questions, you get so much time to ask them. If they're not put, they're not put. Minister.

Hon David Johnson: Simply to reiterate -- the member opposite is obviously not aware of the full process involved -- the process does allow for consideration in terms of confidentiality and urgency. The Management Board went through the proper process and was satisfied. I will say further that the firm selected was one of four that had current contracts with the government and had expertise in this particular area. The other firms were fully occupied with other contracts. The $400,000 contracts for the two ministries went through the proper process, got the proper consideration, met the requirements of the process and were approved by Management Board.

PESTICIDE TESTING

Ms Marilyn Churley (Riverdale): My question is for the Minister of Environment and Energy. We've been trying to tell you for some time about the threat to the environment and human health that is a clear result of your government's agenda of deregulation, privatization, funding cuts and massive layoffs at the ministry. Now we're starting to see direct fallout from that.

Because of privatization at the Ministry of Agriculture, your ministry is now going to have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for tests of pesticide samples at the University of Guelph. A leaked internal ministry memo dated January 28 says your ministry is going to cut testing of pesticide samples to the bone, or even completely eliminate these tests, because you don't have the money to cover the costs. Will you issue an order today, in writing, reversing those positions and will you guarantee that there will be no cuts at all to the ministry's testing of pesticide samples?

Hon Norman W. Sterling (Minister of Environment and Energy): In our drive to make government more efficient, what we are trying to do with regard to the testing of pesticides is to find the best combination of resources to do it at the best cost for the taxpayer. We are not going to in any way lessen the number of tests we are doing with pesticides. We are only going to find a better way of doing it.

Ms Churley: You are now on record that you will not lessen the tests, despite what this memo says. I would like to see it in writing. I would like you to prove to us in writing that you're not going to lessen the test.

This is not just a threat to the environment and human health. Farmers in Ontario know what can happen to their markets if consumers begin to lose confidence in the safety of the food they buy. One of the options in this memo says that the farmers or the consumer or user who wants the test may have to pay for it.

This is all a result of a $300,000 budget cut you've already made. Look how it's backfired. When you consider that budget cuts at the environment ministry already total $200 million, and could go higher, and you fired at least 750 staff, including monitors, inspectors and well-renowned scientists, isn't it time for you to admit today that the Harris Conservative cuts will have a disastrous effect on the health of Ontarians? Tell the truth today.

Hon Mr Sterling: Our government took over a number of ministries which had grown exponentially in terms of their costs and expenditures over the last 10 years. The Ministry of Environment was one of those particular ministries. When the rate of inflation in this province was at 6% or 7%, the budgets of these ministries were increasing by 15% and 20%.

Therefore, our concern for the environment is no less than any of the other political parties. Our concern for the environment is even greater than that of the other political parties. We only see the waste which was put forward by the previous parties. We believe we can enforce even tougher environmental standards than were in place before with a more efficient process. That's what we're going to do, that's what we're in the process of doing and that's what we will do.

ECONOMIC OUTLOOK

Mr Gary L. Leadston (Kitchener-Wilmot): My question is to the Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism. As you're aware, in the regional municipality of Waterloo we are proud to have in our home two world-famous universities, one in particular, Wilfrid Laurier University, which is perhaps one of the leading universities in the world with its business program. They've conducted an annual business outlook survey and it's reflected that we're having the highest economic confidence in business in a decade. Could you comment on that question?

Hon William Saunderson (Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism): I'm very pleased to respond to the member for Kitchener-Wilmot. That is a very good study. It's consistent with other studies that have been made in Ontario. It does cover the Waterloo region and the city of Guelph, I might add. What its findings show is a great deal of confidence in Ontario. It's actually approaching the highest point in confidence that we've seen in the past decade. More than 70% of the people surveyed feel that the financial picture for 1997 will be improving over the 1996 financial picture, and that was also a very good year in Ontario at last.

There are five major reasons why this confidence is showing up: the qualified and motivated labour force; the new and lower business costs as a result of our government; reduced personal taxes as a result of the government; effective deregulation, which we all know about; and finally, to sum up, a very pro-business government.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Supplementary? No?

New question, member for Fort William.

EDUCATION FINANCING

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): My question is for the Minister of Education. I want to pursue with you the fact that you and your government seem absolutely determined to spend thousands and thousands of dollars hiring consultants and then ignore the advice that you're given by those consultants.

An independent report that was done for you by Ernst and Young said very clearly that you should go back to the drawing board and get a better understanding of what makes education costs go up; for example, the needs of special education students. You ignored that.

A report by David Crombie said very clearly: "Do not take education off the property tax. The price you have to pay for that is too great." Your government ignored that.

You have another report from Ernst and Young that clearly expresses concern about the fact that if you amalgamate school boards, that could result in increased costs. You ignored that.

Would you please tell us why you ignored the concern of your own consultants that the amalgamation of school boards, just like the amalgamation of cities, could lead to increased costs, not savings?

Hon John Snobelen (Minister of Education and Training): To the member opposite, very clearly we are proceeding with answering the questions that need to be answered to provide every individual student in this province with sufficient amounts of funding to guarantee a first-class education. We are doing that now.

I have a question for the member opposite. This government has taken action on the 24 major reports that have been done in my lifetime that have suggested changes to governance and changes to finance. We have changed the governance model. We have taken out -- from 1,900 politicians in our education system, 700 will be remaining in our new system. We have streamlined it. We have saved money that's spent outside the classrooms that will be available for students and for their needs. We finally have a funding system now where the province has met its obligation to make sure there is high-quality education for every single student in the province. Why didn't you, when you were in government, take action on those reports?

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Mrs McLeod: Minister, I already had the answer to the question I asked you because the answer came from your ministry staff. When your own consultants expressed concerns about the fact that amalgamation of boards could drive education costs up, your ministry staff basically said, "Don't worry, because we're also going to take control of educational finance, and then we will control the cost." That's what all this is about. That's what this whole mega-dump of services on to municipalities is all about. It's your way of getting control of education funding so you can find a way to take $1 billion out of education.

This government is prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to convince the public that it cares about education when in fact it keeps cutting our children's education. Our students are now 46th in per pupil spending in the United States and Canada, and if you take another $1 billion out of education, they'll be at the absolute bottom rung.

Minister, your goal is to take $1 billion out of education. Will you please just tell us today where you're planning to get the $1 billion?

Hon Mr Snobelen: First of all the numbers are just plain, ordinary wrong. You're just plain wrong.

Second, there's a very clear reason why we are making the changes we're making to education, why we are taking the responsibility for funding education. There's a very clear reason why we are changing governance for our school structure, and that reason is this: For this government, for my colleagues and myself, it is unacceptable that the student achievement in this province is below the average of the other provinces. It is unacceptable and we need to make changes so that our legacy won't be your legacy, which is lower student achievement and higher costs. We're going to reverse that.

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTURING

Mr Floyd Laughren (Nickel Belt): I have a question for the Minister of Health. In December in Sudbury, when the Health Services Restructuring Commission presented its report on the restructuring of the hospital system there, I and my colleague from Sudbury East asked you to come to Sudbury to meet with local community leaders to discuss some of their concerns about that restructuring. Now the two facilitators who were appointed to resolve some of the mechanics of shifting from a three-hospital system to one hospital have packed their bags, they've left town, thrown up their hands because they can't resolve the differences with the Sudbury General Hospital.

My question to you is: Given how serious this problem is, will you now come to Sudbury and meet with the local leaders and the district health council so that we can move towards a sole governance model, which I think most of the people in the community support?

Hon David Johnson (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet, Minister of Health, Government House Leader): I know that the two mediators have expressed disappointment in not being able to come to a resolution of this matter, but I'm unaware of their final report. Their final report goes back to the restructuring commission, and I think it behooves us to allow that process to unfold, that their final report would go to the restructuring commission, and I'm sure I would be advised by the restructuring commission in due course of the situation. The restructuring commission has made recommendations in the Sudbury community. I hope that through the efforts of the restructuring commission this issue will be resolved.

There is also, I might say, an outstanding court case, as the member will know, that will have to be resolved.

Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East): The minister can't continue to hide behind the restructuring commission, because at the end of the day he, and he alone, is responsible for funding the health care system. He knows the mandate of the restructuring commission is to close hospitals on behalf of this government, but this minister has the final responsibility to make decisions about the amount of reinvestment of savings in each of our communities, the funding for a labour adjustment strategy, the community-based services which will be put in place when the hospitals are shut down and the capital cost which the province is going to provide for hospital reconstruction.

Minister, you're responsible for all those decisions. People in our community are very concerned about those issues. That's why we, on their behalf, asked for a meeting, so we could express to you directly our concerns about what's going to happen in Sudbury. When will you meet with my colleague the member for Nickel Belt and me and representatives from our community to discuss these very important health care issues which will directly affect our community?

Hon David Johnson: I find this whole topic interesting from the point of view that it was the government represented by the members opposite that started this very process. Back several years ago the NDP government spent $26 million on the district health councils to get the restructuring process started.

The role of the restructuring commission, through the experts led by Mr Sinclair, is to improve the quality of health care in our communities, and this government will be reinvesting. This government, as the member knows, has agreed to pay 70% of the capital cost of restructuring, which is more than the NDP government ever invested, more than the Liberal government ever invested, an unprecedented 70% in the restructuring capital process, and through long-term care, $170 million, many other reinvestments, this government is living up to its promises to improve the health care system in Ontario.

FARM LAND TAXATION

Mr Toby Barrett (Norfolk): My question is to the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. I have been reading press reports recently on the proposed changes to the taxation of farm lands, and the reports vary quite a bit. Some media reports suggest that farmers and food producers are quite pleased with this move and a number of farmers I've talked to are very pleased with this initiative, yet other media reports say that rural municipal politicians and leaders are concerned. Can the minister explain what the proposed changes will mean to farming communities in Ontario?

Hon Noble Villeneuve (Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, minister responsible for francophone affairs): I thank the honourable member for Norfolk for his question. Yes, the member is quite correct that the farming community is very pleased with the restructuring and the shifting of their tax burden, which they have asked us to do for the last 25 years. Previous governments did not want to do it. Rural municipal politicians have asked us to remove the education tax from the tax bill. That has been removed.

For 26 years the farm tax rebate was in place as a temporary measure. It has now been removed. Farmers will be charged 25% of the assessment on their farm land and buildings. They will not have to make an interest-free loan to the government of Ontario for six months. I'm very pleased with what we've done.

Mr Barrett: I've also seen conflicting media reports that suggest rural municipalities will have an increased burden on their finances if this proposed tax system for farm land and outbuildings is introduced. Some rural municipal leaders have expressed great concern that their tax base will not allow the flexibility they need to cope with the government's proposal. In my riding, for example, this could apply to the townships of Delhi, Norfolk and the city of Nanticoke. Can the minister explain the effect the proposed changes to farm taxation will have on rural municipalities?

Hon Mr Villeneuve: As I said in the previous answer, rural politicians asked us to remove the education tax; $5.4 billion has been removed.

Interjections.

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): Whiners? I don't think so.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Member for Oriole, my day is now complete. Come to order.

Hon Mr Villeneuve: This leaves a great deal of room to manoeuvre. In many areas of Ontario two thirds of the tax bill was education. For those municipalities that have cut down their expenses and are still in a negative financial position, there is a $1-billion fund which will be assisting them through this transition. That is what rural Ontario wanted and we have delivered.

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PROPERTY TAXATION

Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview): My question is for the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. My question relates to the challenges and continuous attacks the small business community faces from your government. The small business community, both in Metro and throughout the province, has had to bear the brunt of recent tough economic conditions. Bankruptcy or merely surviving on a monthly basis has been the norm for small business in Ontario and it is simply inconceivable that your government would choose to add to the burden. Your recent tax reform announcement will indeed create additional difficulty for the small business community in our province which is still in a very fragile situation.

My question to you is very simple: Will you agree to listen to the concerns being expressed by the small business community and rethink your government's ill-conceived and misguided position?

Hon Al Leach (Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing): We've already listened to the small business community. We've had many discussions with them on the property tax reforms we're planning to introduce. The property tax reforms that are coming in on the commercial-industrial side of the equation are going to give special consideration to small businesses. There will be proposals brought in that will have tax differentials based on value that will be of major benefit to small businesses.

Mr Sergio: Once again he's toeing the party line and refuses to see past the blind ideology which is creating so much pain and difficulty for the existing small businesses in our community.

Is the United Way wrong? Is the board of trade wrong? Is the Canadian Federation of Independent Business wrong? Are all those organizations that are appealing to the government to listen wrong?

The small business community simply cannot bear a $7,900-a-year increase in municipal taxes. For many it will mean shutting the doors; for many it will mean closing down; for many it will mean losing jobs; for many it will mean moving south. It is wrong to burden our fragile business community.

Minister, if you are very serious, as is your Premier, about maintaining a growing, vibrant and healthy community within Metro, will you reconsider, will you rethink your position with respect to --

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Minister.

Hon Mr Leach: Let's readdress what the board of trade is saying about our proposal. The board of trade is strongly in favour of amalgamation. The board of trade is strongly in favour of our property tax reform. The board of trade is strongly in favour of the position we're taking with small business. All the actions we're taking with respect to property tax reform in Ontario are going to benefit not only residential taxpayers but business taxpayers as well, and particularly it's going to benefit the small business in Ontario.

We know that the market value proposals that were brought forward by the NDP were going to decimate small businesses in Ontario; we know that. As a result, we've worked with small business right across the province and in particular in the city of Toronto, and we will ensure that there are tax policies in place that will be beneficial to small businesses right across Ontario, but particularly in the city of Toronto.

CHILD CARE

Ms Frances Lankin (Beaches-Woodbine): My question is to the Minister of Community and Social Services. In the last three weeks we have seen example after example of the Harris government making decisions without understanding what the consequences would be. Today I want to raise another one and that's the downloading of child care.

Your announcement to download child care funding to municipalities is going to create huge new costs for municipalities. You've also said you're going to make child care mandatory, but you haven't said how you're going to do this. We need you to be crystal clear with us today about the mechanisms you're going to put in place to ensure quality and regulated child care is mandatory. Municipalities have been asking and they've been getting different answers. Some have been told that the total dollar amount will be mandatory as of January 1, 1998, some have been told that the total number of spaces will be mandatory as of January 1, 1998, but that they won't necessarily have to be regulated spaces.

Minister, will you please set out for us today clearly what mechanisms you have put in place to ensure the current level of service is maintained and there's no reduction in regulated child care.

Hon Janet Ecker (Minister of Community and Social Services): As the honourable member knows, one of the strengths of the child care system has been the participation by the municipalities. Many of them had said to me in the consultations I've had over the past year that they were prepared to play a greater and more of a role in the child care system, and based on their track record, we felt that was an appropriate role for them to play.

We are working out many of the details with the municipalities, which I think is appropriate. We've certainly communicated to them how to maintain the existing system there now until we can make a very orderly and easy transition into the mandatory world we think is an appropriate way to do this. I've certainly heard the message from one of the organizations that has lobbied very hard on child care, which felt very strongly in the past that one of the protections for the system was to make it a mandatory service by municipalities. We have done that. If they wish to question that, I would be surprised, but perhaps they don't think that's the way to go now.

Ms Lankin: The problem is, Minister, we don't know yet what "mandatory" means. It's obvious that "mandatory" to your government is about as clear as mud. It's another example of how ill-thought-through these decisions of downloading social services are. You don't understand the consequences.

Okay, so you've told us you don't know yet about 1998. Let me ask you about 1997 because you just said we've communicated how to maintain the service levels. You haven't said how. Let me tell you that right now Grey county, while reviewing its 1997 budget, is considering cutting child care spaces, and it is not the only one. You've threatened municipalities with huge new costs that are going to come to them as of January 1, 1998, and you've put nothing in place to absolutely guarantee the service levels that are in place now.

It is not good enough. It is an open invitation for municipalities to drop regulated child care spaces and to put kids into informal, unregulated care. You've got to stop this. Tell us today how you will ensure that not one regulated child care space will be dumped in 1997 as a result of your downloading.

Hon Mrs Ecker: The honourable member can't have it both ways. The municipalities certainly have the ability to make decisions in this area. I would like to remind the honourable member that the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, an association she is very familiar with, has lobbied very long and hard -- I have heard their cries for some months now -- that the way to protect child care in this province is to make it a mandatory service for municipalities.

We have indeed done that and we look forward to working with the municipalities to ensure those services are put in place in a way that can protect quality and protect the safety of children, because it's a very important support in this province. We recognize that and that's why we are building on the strengths in the system to make it even better.

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VITAL STATISTICS REGISTRATION

Mr Dan Newman (Scarborough Centre): My question today is for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. In December 1996, you announced an extension of the office of the registrar general counter services to additional locations in Ottawa, London, Windsor, North Bay and Sudbury. They are in addition to the counter services available in Hamilton, Thunder Bay and Toronto. Have you had an opportunity to assess public reaction to this customer service initiative?

Hon David H. Tsubouchi (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): The member is well aware that in the past, birth certificates and death certificates and marriage certificates had been available only if you actually travelled to Thunder Bay or Toronto to get them, or have them sent by mail. By mail, of course, it takes almost two months to get.

We had extended the pilot project to Hamilton very recently. I must thank the member for Wentworth East, Mr Doyle, and the member for Hamilton West, Mrs Ross, for attending. We saw at first hand what the reaction of the public was. Over 40 applications per day have been giving the convenience to people in Hamilton not to have to travel to Toronto or wait for two months to get these certificates.

I think this is going to be very good news for people in Ottawa, London, Windsor, Sudbury and certainly North Bay. They can now go to their own local registry offices and access these simple vital statistics.

Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): You need a baby doctor to have the baby.

Hon Mr Tsubouchi: Mr Speaker, I'd like to point out the member for Windsor-Sandwich is again railing at me. I should think it's good news that the people in her own community can access this in about 10 minutes as opposed to travelling to Toronto or waiting for two months. I hope you change your mind.

PETITIONS

COURT RULING

Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): The repeal of the guilty verdict against Guelph resident Gwen Jacob has resulted in 4,095 signatures from people in my area on this petition.

"Whereas Justice Osborne stated that she, Jacob, did not commit an indecent act under the Criminal Code because her actions did not exceed the community standard of tolerance, however the community does not tolerate this judgement; and

"Whereas raising children to be good and decent in today's society is difficult enough. We monitor and rate television, movies and magazines for content, but what will be the point if they see half-naked women at school or on the way to the park; and

"Whereas we believe allowing women to expose themselves may create a rise in sexual crimes; and

"Whereas this does not attain women any respect or equality; and

"Whereas Justice Osborne also wrote no one who was offended was forced to continue looking, however, once having been seen, the offence has already taken place; continued onlooking is not the issue,

"Therefore, we call on Attorney General Charles Harnick to launch an appeal to reinstate the original verdict and agree with the community that exposure of the sexual anatomy is in fact an indecent act."

ONTARIO CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTE

Ms Frances Lankin (Beaches-Woodbine): This is a petition to the Ontario Legislature.

"We, the undersigned, believe that helping reduce crime and abuse in our communities is our responsibility as employees of the Ministry of Correctional Services, as professionals in related fields and as a concerned citizens;

"Closing institutions which provide specialized services to women and treatment to men does not achieve that goal;

"Physical, emotional and sexual abuse is often transmitted from one generation to the next, with tremendous cost to society;

"Treatment aimed at breaking the cycle must include the abuser so that another generation of children is not raised with the same destructive lessons;

"As Mr Ross Virgo stated, the Ontario Correctional Institute is `a therapeutic community known around the world for their techniques';

"Research statistics support anecdotal evidence that we are effective in changing abusive behaviour;

"A therapeutic community cannot exist in a superprison;

"Save victims and money by keeping what works open."

I've affixed my signature to this.

VETERANS HIGHWAY

Mr Bill Grimmett (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): I have today the honour of filing approximately 124 petitions signed by 124 constituents from my riding. The petition relates to a request to have Highway 416 named the Canadian Veterans Memorial Parkway.

I'm sure, Mr Speaker, you'll forgive me for introducing today my wife, Vi, and my sons, Geoff and Cory, who are in the public gallery.

CHILD CARE

Mr Tony Ruprecht (Parkdale): This is addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and it reads as follows:

"Whereas the Ontario Tory 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 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, the undersigned residents, business owners and child care workers of our Parkdale and High Park communities, urge the Progressive Conservative government of Ontario to immediately suspend their plans to implement cuts to our present child care programs across our province, and restore funding to their previous levels."

I agree with this petition and I am signing my name to it.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I have a petition from CAW Local 1995 in Collingwood, forwarded to me by Geoffrey Dalziel, a WCB rep, committee person and health and safety inspector, and also Terry Noseworthy, the president, and Selina Lawcock, the financial secretary. The petition reads as follows:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the Harris government has begun a process to open the Occupational Health and Safety Act of Ontario; and

"Whereas this act is the single most important piece of legislation for working people, since it is designed to protect our lives, safety and health while at work and allow us to return home to our families in the same condition in which we left; and

"Whereas the government has made it clear that they intend to water down the act and weaken the rights of workers under the law, including the right to know, the right to participate and especially the right to refuse unsafe work; and

"Whereas this government has already watered down proper training of certified committee members;

"Therefore, we the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario not to alter the Occupational Health and Safety Act or erode the rights of workers any further and ensure strict enforcement of the legislation."

On behalf of my colleagues, I add my name to theirs.

NORTH YORK BRANSON HOSPITAL

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; and

"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.

CLASS SIZE

Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): This petition is to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"Whereas the private member's bill introduced by Rick Bartolucci, MPP for the riding of Sudbury, limits the number of pupils that may be enrolled in a class in a school in Ontario; and

"Whereas this limit depends on the grade level of the class; and

"Whereas studies have concluded that there are clear benefits for smaller class sizes; and

"Whereas there is greater student involvement and interaction; and

"Whereas there is improved student performance; and

"Whereas there is the opportunity for greater individualization; and

"Whereas smaller class sizes allow for a more varied and constructive education for students;

"Therefore, we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to support this private member's bill, as it enhances classroom education."

Of course, I affix my name to it.

PROTECTION FOR WORKERS

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I have a petition from the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union, CEP, on behalf of their tens of thousands of members in this province and across Canada. The petition reads as follows:

"Whereas the Harris government will introduce legislation to amend the Workers' Compensation Act and distribute a discussion paper about changes to the Occupational Health and Safety Act; and

"Whereas the expected changes include erosion of the right to refuse unsafe work, workers will be forced to apply to their employer for WCB benefits and employers will decide if the claim is valid; reduction in power of the joint health and safety committees; and eliminate compensation for certain injuries and diseases; and

"Whereas the Workers' Compensation Act is a vital protection for all workers in Ontario; and

"Whereas the Occupational Health and Safety Act has prevented untold numbers of accidents and saved thousands from illness and diseases;

"Therefore, we, the undersigned, demand full public hearings throughout the province of Ontario on the Workers' Compensation Act proposed changes, and no changes to the Occupational Health and Safety Act, workers' right to refuse and joint health and safety committees."

I add my name to theirs in support.

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PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

Mr Tony Ruprecht (Parkdale): Mr Speaker, I just wanted to inform you that I keep receiving petitions against the $2 user fee for seniors. They read as follows:

"Whereas the Minister of Health has started to charge seniors and social assistance recipients a $2 user fee for each prescription filled; and

"Whereas seniors on a fixed income do not significantly benefit from the income tax savings created by this user fee copayment or from other non-related health user fees; and

"Whereas the perceived savings to health care from the $2 user fee will not compensate for the suffering and misery caused by this user fee or the painstaking task involved to fill out the application forms; and

"Whereas the current Minister of Health promised as an opposition MPP in a July 1993 letter to Ontario pharmacists that his party would not endorse legislation that will punish patients to the detriment of health care in Ontario;

"We, the undersigned Ontario residents, strongly urge the government to repeal this user fee plan because the tax-saving user fee concept is not fair, is not sensitive, nor is it accessible to low-income or fixed-income seniors, and lest we forget, our province's seniors have paid their dues by collectively contributing to the social, economic, moral and political fabric of Canada."

Since I agree with this petition, I'm affixing my signature to this document.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I have a petition from the Ontario Federation of Labour, OFL, on behalf of the over 600,000 workers it represents in the province of Ontario.

"Whereas it is vital that occupational health and safety services provided to workers be conducted by organizations in which workers have faith; and

"Whereas the Workers' Health and Safety Centre and the occupational health clinics for Ontario workers have provided such services on behalf of workers for many years; and

"Whereas the centre and clinics have made a significant contribution to improvements in workplace health and safety and the reduction of injuries, illnesses and death caused by work;

"Therefore, we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to oppose any attempt to erode the structure, services or funding of the Workers' Health and Safety Centre and the occupational health clinics for Ontario workers; and

"Further, we, the undersigned, demand that the education and training of Ontario workers continue in its present form through the Workers' Health and Safety Centre and that professional and technical expertise and advice continue to be provided through the occupational health clinics for Ontario workers."

I add my name to theirs in support.

MANDATORY INQUESTS

Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): This petition is to the Honourable Solicitor General and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"Whereas the Progressive Conservative government of Ontario has decided to scrap mandatory inquests as a result of fatalities in the mining and construction industry; and

"Whereas this unprecedented and callous decision sets workplace safety back 20 years;

"We, the undersigned, request that Solicitor General Bob Runciman, on behalf of all workers in the mining and construction industry, reverse his decision to remove mandatory inquests from the Coroners Act of Ontario."

I affix my signature to this United Steelworkers of America petition, as I agree with it.

WORKERS' COMPENSATION

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I have further petitions regarding this government's ongoing attack on the rights of workers' health and safety, this time from the United Food and Commercial Workers, UFCW.

"To Premier Harris and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"We, the undersigned, oppose your government's plan to dismantle the workers' compensation system including reducing benefits; excluding claims for repetitive strain injuries, muscle injuries, strains, sprains, stress, harassment and most occupational diseases; eliminating pension supplements; handing over control of our claims to our employers for the first four to six weeks after injury; privatizing WCB to large insurance companies; integrating sick benefits into WCB; eliminating or restricting the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal, WCAT; including eliminating worker representation on the board and eliminating the bipartite WCB board of directors.

"Therefore, we, the undersigned, demand a safe workplace, compensation if we are injured, no reduction in benefits, improved re-employment and vocational rehabilitation, an independent appeals structure with worker representation, access to the office of the worker adviser, that the WCAT be left intact and that the WCB bipartite board of directors be reinstated."

I add my name in support with theirs.

NORTH YORK BRANSON HOSPITAL

Mr Monte Kwinter (Wilson Heights): I have another 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; and

I've affixed my signature.

WORKERS' COMPENSATION

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I have petitions from the unions representing public sector workers in this province, CUPE and OPSEU.

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

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

"Whereas the government of Ontario has plans to make changes to the Workers' Compensation Act which will have a negative impact on workers; and

"Whereas the changes include reducing the payouts to 85% of earnings, eliminating various types of injuries and having employees apply to their employer for benefits; and

"Whereas the WCB had a surplus of $510 million in 1995;

"Whereas in 1994 there was an uncollected employer debt of $173 million; and

"Whereas the problems within the WCB are not the fault of injured workers; and

"Whereas the recommendation to privatize will result in an increase of 13% in administrative costs;

"Therefore be it resolved that the government of Ontario stop its plan to privatize WCB and that extensive, province-wide hearings be held before any changes are made to the Workers' Compensation Board."

I add my name to theirs in support.

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

Mr Laughren from the standing committee on government agencies presented the committee's 30th report.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Does the Chair wish to make a brief statement?

Mr Floyd Laughren (Nickel Belt): No, Mr Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker: Pursuant to standing order 106(g)(11), the report is deemed to be adopted by the House.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

Mr Snobelen moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 113, An Act to settle The Lennox and Addington County Board of Education and Teachers Dispute / Projet de loi 113, Loi visant à régler le conflit entre le conseil de l'éducation appelé The Lennox and Addington Board of Education et ses enseignants.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

I declare the motion carried. The ayes have it.

Do you have a statement to make, Minister?

Hon John Snobelen (Minister of Education and Training): No, Mr Speaker, I believe my statement was made earlier to the House.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

CITY OF TORONTO ACT, 1996 / LOI DE 1996 SUR LA CITÉ DE TORONTO

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 103, An Act to replace the seven existing municipal governments of Metropolitan Toronto by incorporating a new municipality to be known as the City of Toronto / Projet de loi 103, Loi visant à remplacer les sept administrations municipales existantes de la communauté urbaine de Toronto en constituant une nouvelle municipalité appelée la cité de Toronto.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Pursuant to the order of the House dated Wednesday, January 29, I am required now to put the question.

Mr Leach has moved second reading of Bill 103.

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

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Call in the members; this will be a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1520 to 1525.

The Deputy Speaker: Mr Leach has moved second reading of Bill 103.

All those in favour of the motion will rise one at a time until your name is called.

Ayes

Arnott, Ted	Harnick, Charles	Pettit, Trevor
Baird, John R.	Harris, Michael D.	Preston, Peter
Barrett, Toby	Hastings, John	Rollins, E.J. Douglas
Bassett, Isabel	Hudak, Tim	Ross, Lillian
Carr, Gary	Johnson, Bert	Runciman, Robert W.
Chudleigh, Ted	Johnson, David	Sampson, Rob
Clement, Tony	Johnson, Ron	Shea, Derwyn
Cunningham, Dianne	Kells, Morley	Sheehan, Frank
DeFaria, Carl	Klees, Frank	Snobelen, John
Doyle, Ed	Leach, Al	Spina, Joseph
Ecker, Janet	Leadston, Gary L.	Sterling, Norman W.
Elliott, Brenda	Marland, Margaret	Tascona, Joseph N.
Ford, Douglas B.	Martiniuk, Gerry	Tsubouchi, David H.
Fox, Gary	Munro, Julia	Turnbull, David
Galt, Doug	Murdoch, Bill	Villeneuve, Noble
Gilchrist, Steve	Mushinski, Marilyn	Wood, Bob
Grimmett, Bill	Newman, Dan	Young, Terence H.
Guzzo, Garry J.	O'Toole, John
Hardeman, Ernie	Parker, John L.

The Deputy Speaker: All those opposed will rise one at a time until your name is called.

Nays

Agostino, Dominic	Crozier, Bruce	McLeod, Lyn
Bartolucci, Rick	Curling, Alvin	Miclash, Frank
Bisson, Gilles	Hampton, Howard	North, Peter
Boyd, Marion	Kennedy, Gerard	Phillips, Gerry
Bradley, James J.	Kormos, Peter	Ruprecht, Tony
Caplan, Elinor	Kwinter, Monte	Sergio, Mario
Castrilli, Annamarie	Lalonde, Jean-Marc	Silipo, Tony
Christopherson, David	Laughren, Floyd	Wildman, Bud
Churley, Marilyn	Marchese, Rosario	Wood, Len
Colle, Mike	Martel, Shelley
Conway, Sean G.	McGuinty, Dalton

Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): The ayes are 55; the nays are 31.

The Deputy Speaker: I declare the motion carried.

Pursuant to the order of the House dated January 29, the bill is accordingly ordered referred to the standing committee on general government.

Hon David Johnson (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet, Minister of Health, Government House Leader): Mr Speaker, I believe we have unanimous consent to proceed with the second and third reading of the bill introduced by the Minister of Education, Bill 113.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Agreed? Agreed.

Mr Snobelen moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 113, An Act to settle the Lennox and Addington County Board of Education and Teachers' Dispute / Projet de loi 113, Loi visant à régler le conflit entre le conseil de l'éducation appelé The Lennox and Addington County Board of Education et ses enseignants.

Hon John Snobelen (Minister of Education and Training): In light of the fact that --

The Deputy Speaker: Just a moment; I want to make an announcement. I would like to inform the members of the assembly that we have in the Speaker's gallery today a delegation from Trinidad and Tobago headed by Dr Hamza Rafeeq.

Hon Mr Snobelen: In light of the fact that we have unanimous consent on this bill, my comments will be very brief. Like previous governments, we are forced to protect the interests of children and end the job action. In this instance, it's the interests of 2,509 students in Lennox and Addington who require this legislation.

Let me be very clear: A strike is the admission of failure in a bargaining process and the ending of a strike with legislation is an admission of failure in the process of reaching a dispute settlement. Sadly, once again, we arrive at this point having had the lives of 2,509 students disrupted. At least with the passage of this legislation they'll be disrupted no more.

The Deputy Speaker: Questions or comments?

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): It is unfortunate when we reach these circumstances where legislation of this kind is brought forward by various governments at various times, because there's always the hope that there's going to be a favourable resolution, that when the two parties get together they're able to hammer out a collection agreement. It should be noted that in the overwhelming majority of cases in Ontario that in fact happens. The two sides sit down, they discuss matters of mutual concern and interest and they come forward with an agreement which isn't always fully acceptable to one side or the other, but it's an agreement with which both sides can live.

Unfortunately, what has happened this year, and I think last year, is that we're seeing a lot more conflict taking place because of the significant reductions in funding being provided to boards of education to carry out their responsibilities. So the pressures arise, and unfortunately what we have now are sometimes people within the secondary panel in some disagreement with the people in the elementary panel, and we have those who are representing employees in conflict with the boards of education from time to time, when in reality, if you look at it, the problem lies in the fact that there is really not sufficient investment in education to carry out all the responsibilities that a board of education has.

Ultimately it is the students who lose, because when there are cuts in the number of teachers available in the classroom, when there are resources that are not available, the publicly funded system being the system that levels the playing field for many, when those funds aren't there we see conflicts of this kind. We only hope this can be resolved by further negotiation and that the arbitrator won't be necessary.

The Deputy Speaker: Further questions or comments? The member for Oriole. The member for Algoma.

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): No? Yes? Did you recognize me?

Mr Bud Wildman (Algoma): I think it's Elinor Caplan.

Mrs Caplan: Are you going to yield the floor, the member for Algoma?

Mr Wildman: I'll just speak for a couple of minutes. If the member for Oriole wants to wait for a couple of minutes, I'll speak.

I want to say to the minister that we understand he has made accommodation in the bill by withdrawing the two subsections of section 3. I want to recognize that. The fact is that this is an attempt to try and deal with a very difficult situation and it is not one that any of us welcome.

As the minister said, the introduction of this kind of legislation is an indication of the failure of the collective bargaining process in this particular instance. It should be recognized, though, by all of us that under Bill 100, as it's referred to, over the last 20 years most negotiations between teachers' collective bargaining units and boards have been successful. The vast majority of the negotiations result in mutually agreed collective agreements.

Unfortunately, in this particular case the Education Relations Commission has deemed that it is very unlikely that the two parties will be able to come to an agreement, has recognized this and has recommended legislation. I hope that in doing this the minister and the government recognize the role of the ERC in these kinds of very difficult situations and continues this kind of process, because in most cases, 97% of the cases since the bill was passed about 20 years ago, the collective bargaining process has worked.

Mrs Caplan: I would just like to add my concern whenever we see collective bargaining break down. In the history of this province, since teachers have had the right to strike, we know that collective bargaining has worked in some 97% of the situations.

I support collective bargaining, I support collective bargaining for teachers and I hope that the government will not move to eliminate the right to strike for teachers across this province, because the system has worked well, and within the system as it exists today the Education Relations Commission is there as a safeguard to protect student interests.

I have always, in all the time I have been here, respected recommendations from the Education Relations Commission. In this case they have recommended legislation. They feel that there is no hope that the two parties can reach a collective agreement. That is a failure. The failures have been few, but we have to acknowledge that in this case there has been a failure.

I hope the government will not use this as an example of the failure of collective bargaining in the teaching and school sector across this province, because the history has been one of success. I believe that this is one of those unfortunate rare examples -- I underline the word "rare" -- and so I put the government on notice: Do not try to use this as an example of the failure of collective bargaining in the education sector in this province. I believe that the teachers have acted responsibly. We have respected collective bargaining and we have seen primarily successes, and it is regretful that in this rare case we have not had success.

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): Later this evening, I will be driving home and thereby past the North Addington Education Centre in Cloyne, where the snow will be deep, the Mazinaw frozen. People in Cloyne and Northbrook and environs will be happy to know that this strike is at an end, hopefully, by the passage of this bill now before the assembly.

I don't want to engage in debate at great length this afternoon, but I have in front of me the report of the Education Relations Commission to the minister. One aspect of the report gives me pause and I'm sure gives pause to the constituents of the member opposite, the member from South Hastings, Lennox and Addington. I refer to page 4, under the title "Negotiating History," and I quote, "The labour relations record of these parties" -- the secondary school teachers and the Lennox and Addington board -- "must give rise to serious concern," and the report goes on to detail a sad and sorry relationship over the last decade. The young people of North Addington, and Lennox and Addington generally, have been seriously inconvenienced on three occasions in the last decade, as the member from South Hastings pointed out in his question yesterday.

I support the legislation, and as someone who supports collective bargaining, I want to say seriously to both the teacher leadership and the trustee leadership in Lennox and Addington, I don't know what the problem is or has been, but surely it is in the interests of the students, and more importantly, the broader public interest in that part of eastern Ontario and the province as a whole, that this sad and sorry negotiating record of the past decade be dealt with and that the students particularly of Lennox and Addington not face this situation for some very considerable time into the future.

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The Deputy Speaker: Minister, you have two minutes to reply.

Hon Mr Snobelen: I appreciate the comments of other members. I will have to correct one thing, and that is that the member for St Catharines is both right and wrong, wrong in the sense of the bargaining climate over the last couple of years. There have been problems in the bargaining climate, but this is the first time this government has had to bring this sort of legislation forward. I believe, if you'll check back, that this is an unusually infrequent number of times. However, you are quite correct that students are hurt by this process and I take to heart your other comments.

I would also like to mention that the member for Algoma is correct: It is very difficult to bring this legislation forward in a way that fairly treats this situation; that is problematic. The comments from the member for Algoma and the member for Fort William were very useful in getting this legislation before the House. I appreciate their efforts in that regard.

The Deputy Speaker: Further debate?

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): It's the intention of our caucus to support the legislation that the minister has just brought before the House. It has been, as I indicated earlier this afternoon, the practice and the principle of our caucus to support back-to-work legislation in situations of teacher-board collective bargaining where due process has been fully followed.

The fundamental principle of due process is set out by the Education Relations Commission, which is established as an arm's-length independent commission under the law to ensure the smooth workings of the collective bargaining process, to provide independent fact-finding, to provide mediation and, perhaps most importantly of all, to monitor the jeopardy of students who are affected by a strike or lockout situation.

We are going to support the legislation because our paramount concern, as I believe it is the paramount concern of the Education Relations Commission, is to ensure that students are not jeopardized by a collective bargaining dispute between employees and a school board. In this case, the Education Relations Commission has today sent a letter indicating that it believes the impasse cannot be resolved in time to prevent jeopardy for students being encountered. I think it's worth taking time to enter into the record of the debate the statements from the commission in finding jeopardy.

"The commission has also received numerous phone calls, facsimiles, and letters from parents, students and other members of the community expressing their concern for the welfare of the students of Lennox and Addington. All this has led us to the conclusion that the parties are now in a situation of impasse in their negotiations. They are unable or unwilling to undertake the movement necessary to overcome the impasse. Further, there is no prospect that the situation will change before it becomes too late for students to make up the lost instructional time in order to successfully complete their courses of study."

Because the commission has so found, we will be supporting this legislation, which would have the teachers back in the classroom and which would lead hopefully to continued negotiations, hopefully to a resolution between the parties and, failing that, to the appointment of an arbitrator to make a final resolution.

Having said that and having recognized that it is our hope always to be able to find with the students and with the protection of the students' interests, we were very close, just a matter of two hours ago, to not being able to support, for the first time in my memory, legislation that is based on a finding of jeopardy. The reason that we might not have been able to support the legislation this afternoon is because the legislation that was originally presented just a short time ago was not, in my view, following the due process that had been set out by the Education Relations Commission.

I recognize the fact that the Education Relations Commission, which again has been established as an independent, arm's-length body, is nevertheless just advisory to the minister. The ministry is not bound by the recommendations of the Education Relations Commission. So it was legally possible within Bill 100, the law that governs collective bargaining between teachers and school boards, for the minister to accept none of the recommendations of the Education Relations Commission and to bring in whatever legislation he saw fit as appropriate to deal with this situation. However, I believe the purpose of the Education Relations Commission, and therefore the due process that is established in Bill 100 for governing collective bargaining situations, was jeopardized by the legislation that was originally put forward by this government.

There is some history to the bargaining situation that is perhaps necessary in order to explain this. I think an explanation is important, because this was a situation, as the education critic for the third party has already indicated earlier this afternoon, in which the board, one of the parties to this dispute, had made a decision to unilaterally change the contract which was in place at the time at which the strike action was begun.

I won't go into the details of the changes in that particular contract. I have no desire this afternoon to enter into any of the specifics of the ongoing dispute between the teachers and the board. But I have in front of me the letter from the Education Relations Commission which, at the same time as it finds jeopardy and recommends back-to-work legislation, says equally clearly that the teachers should be back in the classroom on the basis of the collective agreement that was in place on August 31, when the strike action began.

The government saw fit to ignore that advice of the Education Relations Commission and to put in place in the original legislation a clause which would have put the teachers back in the classroom on the basis of the contract which had been unilaterally altered by the board.

Again, I don't want to enter into the pros and cons of the bargaining. That is not appropriate, nor am I informed as to what has gone on at the bargaining table in any detail, nor should I be. But I find it difficult to accept the minister's statement this afternoon when he says it is difficult to bring forward legislation which adequately deals with this kind of situation, because there are many precedents for this minister and this government in bringing forth back-to-work legislation on the recommendations of the Education Relations Commission. There is no precedent, in all of the years that Bill 100 has governed collective bargaining with teachers in this province, for putting into legislation a clause which would amend the collective agreement that was in place at the time the strike action took place.

The government saw fit to do this, to take unprecedented action, to do that despite the fact that there has already been an arbitration award which found for the teachers and not for the board, but even more importantly, in my mind, to do it despite the fact that the same Education Relations Commission recommendation that said, "Bring in the back-to-work legislation," told them to bring that legislation in on the basis of the original collective agreement.

I found that a very serious violation of the process that's been put in place, and had that amendment not been made by the government to remove that clause -- in fact, the two clauses that were in violation of the Education Relations Commission recommendations -- I don't think we could have found it possible to support the legislation, in spite of our absolute commitment to the principle of being concerned most with students and their jeopardy. I guess the reason I feel so strongly about this is because I really believe in the process of an independent, arm's-length body that does everything possible to avoid the politicization of what are often difficult collective bargaining situations.

The whole idea, the whole purpose, of Bill 100, which was put in place by a Conservative government but which has been upheld and implemented by successive governments, both Liberal and New Democratic Party governments, was to make sure there was a process that did not come back for political debate in the Legislature, that did not allow for a political agenda of the governing party to be seen to be imposed on one or the other of the parties, and which did not hold students hostage to political agendas.

When you see any kind of politicization of that process, which was put in place in order to ensure that there would not be the imposition of political agendas on collective bargaining and therefore on the wellbeing of students in that process, I think we have to be concerned about the fact that it's there, the fact that it was proposed, and about why it was there in the first place, why the government, in acting on those recommendations today, saw fit essentially to inject itself into the dispute itself and to take sides in the dispute.

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There is another aspect of the legislation that was put in front of us a mere few hours ago that I find difficult. It is not going to prevent my recommendation to my colleagues in caucus that we support the legislation, because for us the finding of jeopardy of students has to be paramount, but I do want to express my concerns about it. It's the fact that there is something else which is almost unprecedented. There are very few situations in which the Education Relations Commission has not been the body that would appoint an arbitrator in the event that the parties cannot either resolve this dispute at the bargaining table or agree between the two sides on an arbitrator.

There is in this legislation the provision that the two parties can agree to appoint an arbitrator, but should that not be the case, should collective bargaining that is to take place in the next two weeks not lead to resolution, should the parties not be able to agree on an arbitrator, then the Lieutenant Governor in Council, which of course is our way of referring to the cabinet and therefore to the government, will have the power to appoint the arbitrator.

This is not consistent with the recommendations of the Education Relations Commission, which set out that the parties should try to resolve the dispute, that they should have the ability to agree on an arbitrator, but which also said if that's not possible then the Education Relations Commission, which is much more traditional, should appoint the arbitrator in this situation.

I am concerned that the government would feel it necessary to take that power from the Education Relations Commission and I have raised the issue with ministry and minister representatives. The defence of having placed this particular clause in the legislation, of having not acted on the recommendations of the Education Relations Commission in this case, is that it may be that as of tomorrow the Education Relations Commission cannot function because it does not have a quorum. I find that an incredible defence, because quite clearly the responsibility for maintaining a quorum in the Education Relations Commission, which is basically just making sure there are enough people appointed to the commission that they can do the work of the commission, rests solely with the government.

I have to ask myself why a government would allow an Education Relations Commission that is charged with the very important, critical task of monitoring collective bargaining processes, and particularly monitoring to ensure that disputes do not lead to jeopardy for students, to reach a point where it cannot function, and that as of tomorrow that body that does fact-finding, that does monitoring and mediation and recommends that students are in jeopardy, will no longer be able to function because it does not have a quorum because this government has not appointed people to the commission.

The minister assures me they intend to make the appointments to the commission. There is a provision in this legislation. It is section 13. It is also unprecedented. There has never been the need for such a provision in legislation of this nature before. That provision says that if the Education Relations Commission -- I'm reading this into it. It allows for the minister to take the powers that the legislation gives him and his cabinet and give those powers back to the Education Relations Commission. You might say, why would you have the power in your legislation to delegate back to the commission when the commission isn't getting the powers now because it doesn't have a quorum? The minister assures me that they do intend to appoint people to the Education Relations Commission and that if they get their people appointed, then they will give the powers back to the commission, presumably including the power to appoint an arbitrator.

But again I have to raise the question of how a government could allow this to happen. If you consider this to be an important body, if you consider this process to be important, if you consider the monitoring and the mediation and the finding of jeopardy in the interests of students to be important functions for the commission to carry out, how could you allow the commission to reach the point where it can no longer function?

I suppose one possible interpretation is that this is just sheer disorganization, sheer mismanagement, that nobody was paying attention, that you couldn't find people you were comfortable appointing to the commission, and that raises a whole other set of issues about what kind of criteria the government has in looking for people who will be on the commission. You might ask why they couldn't simply continue the term of appointment of the people who are currently on the commission until they can find people to relieve them. Why would the government allow this commission to reach a point where it can no longer carry out its important work?

You might, if you were a little bit cynical, see this as a rather thinly veiled way of getting control of collective bargaining, because of course what this legislation does is give the minister and cabinet powers which normally in legislation of this nature it has not held, including the power to appoint the arbitrator.

I guess that's one of the issues I want to talk about as we debate this legislation. I'm concerned about the agenda behind what we have just experienced in the last few hours. I'm concerned about an agenda that appears to provide a basis for government to introduce an unprecedented clause into back-to-work legislation, an unprecedented clause which would interject the government into taking sides in the dispute and which would allow unilateral changes in a contract that existed between the board and its teachers. I'm concerned about an agenda that would have the ministry not only let the Education Relations Commission go without appointees so that it cannot function, but bring in legislation which then gives it the power to appoint arbitrators.

We know -- I have no question in my mind -- that one of the agendas of this government is to take control of educational funding in order to take at least $1 billion of educational costs out of the budget for education in this province. We have evidence of that in so many areas. One of the most recent pieces of evidence for the government's intention to control educational costs by taking control of educational financing is a report that was done by the Ernst and Young company for the minister in which the consultant, Ernst and Young, expresses its very real concern about the fact that the amalgamation of boards, which the minister has presented as a way of saving dollars, could in fact lead to an increase in costs in education.

Experience of amalgamations has shown that this is invariably the case, that amalgamation does not lead to less costs, that it leads to more costs as you begin to try to consolidate the literally hundreds of contracts which will have to be consolidated in the amalgamation process, and as you begin to equalize services, presumably at a level that is above average and not below average. Inevitably then the costs of any amalgamation process become higher, not lower.

Ernst and Young expressed that very concern to the ministry and saw fit to put their concern into a preface to the study they gave to the minister. They also saw fit to put in their introduction to that study the ministry's answer, which was to say essentially, "Don't worry because we're not just going to amalgamate school boards, we're also going to take control of educational finance and then we will control the costs." I think that is clear evidence this government wants control of educational finance to be able to once more gut financial support for education.

It would seem that the Minister of Education wants to get the $1 billion almost any way he can, but would perhaps prefer to get it by attacking teachers' salaries. I think the clauses that were originally in this legislation we're debating today provide some evidence of the direction and intent of this minister and this government.

I think as well that the kinds of comments which have been made by the Minister of Education this week, the comments that make it very clear he is reviewing the collective bargaining process with an intention to bring in legislation this spring, make it clear that it is the collective bargaining process and teachers' salaries that are the focus for his next effort to take money out of education.

I have some very real concerns, once again, not just about taking another $1 billion out of education, but about the way in which this minister is reviewing what is a very sensitive, difficult area of public policy, and that is the collective bargaining process between school boards and teachers. I find myself wondering if the Minister of Education is once again doing what he preaches, and that is to create the kind of crisis which makes change inevitable.

If the Education Relations Commission is ineffective because there have been no appointments to the commission, if it can't do its job of mediating, of fact-finding, of monitoring whether students are in jeopardy, then clearly the legislation that established that commission, the legislation that governs collective bargaining between boards and teachers, is going to be seen to be ineffective.

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That's one of the reasons I think it is absolutely unconscionable for this government, whether it was through mismanagement or deliberate intent, to let the Education Relations Commission appointments go to the point where the commission could no longer function. But it certainly does create a crisis and a climate in which this minister may feel he can now step in and change the process.

I believe that it is time to review Bill 100, the legislation which governs collective bargaining between teachers and boards. I can't remember the exact year in which Bill 100 was brought in, although my colleague the member for Renfrew North may be able to give me a quick prompt on that.

Mr Conway: It was 1975.

Mrs McLeod: Thank you very much. Our memories both go back that far, but your memory for dates is more accurate than mine.

Nevertheless, that suggests that it is some 21 years that the legislation has been in place. It seems appropriate to review it; to look at how well that legislation has worked over the course of that 21 years; to look at whether there are parts of it that need to be changed; and again, because our paramount concern is the protection of students and their wellbeing, to ask ourselves as a Legislature the question of whether or not that legislation does enough to protect students against disruption in their education. All of those I believe are legitimate reasons to undertake a process of review of the collective bargaining legislation that we have in place.

But let there be no doubt in anybody's mind that we have to have a reasonable process for fair collective bargaining or we will indeed have the chaos that leads to crisis after crisis. I do go back long enough to remember what it was like to be bargaining for school boards with teachers in the days before Bill 100, when there were no legal strikes in the province of Ontario, where the only action that was open to teachers who were in a dispute with their board was to tender mass resignations.

I don't want to take time this afternoon to go back and tell you what that does to a community, but I've been there. I've experienced what it's like when the only way to deal with an impasse in negotiations is for the employees to have to tender mass resignations with absolutely no guarantee of re-employment. It escalates the level of emotion to a point that makes resolution in any sort of fair and reasonable way almost impossible. It brings the community of people who are concerned about education into the dispute in a way which is so highly charged that communities have difficulty recovering from that divisiveness for years and years.

I don't want to go back to the pre-Bill 100 situation, because whatever concerns we might have about the way collective bargaining has functioned in the last 21 years, it is infinitely preferable to what happened before Bill 100.

Bill 100 was brought in by a Conservative government to provide a reasonable basis for full and fair bargaining and to provide at the same time -- and I'm going to stress it again -- an independent process for fact-finding, for mediation and for monitoring the wellbeing of students.

There are many -- and I suspect many who are watching the debate this afternoon -- who would say that they think the process of collective bargaining under Bill 100 has worked relatively well. We need to hear the views of those who believe it has worked well. We need to have the review, we need to ask ourselves the questions, but I would like to think the review would be carried out with some openness to really look at whether there needs to be change and whether the change will work for good collective bargaining and in the interests of students.

I do not believe this Minister of Education has gotten off to a good start for that kind of objective review with input from all of the stakeholders affected by having the report done by his good friend Mr Paroian, a report which, as we have seen, has been considered to be so biased and so filled with inaccurate information that his conclusions and recommendations have no credibility at all.

It is ironic that a government that has commissioned consultant report after consultant report has ignored virtually every piece of advice that has been given to it in those reports. Whether it was the Ernst and Young study presented to the Minister of Education that said, "Go back to the drawing board before you amalgamate boards. Find out why education costs are going up so high. Look at the needs of special education students to see what factors are out of control for boards and drive costs up," they ignored that; whether it was the Ernst and Young report that said amalgamation will lead to increased costs, potentially, not to decreased costs, they ignored that; or whether it was the David Crombie report that said, "Do not take education off the property tax because the price we pay for it, if you are determined to dump other social services on to the municipalities, is simply too great," they ignored that.

This government, which has ignored virtually every report and advice that has been given to it in the last months, may well find Mr Paroian's report to be the one which it is prepared to look at seriously, because it fits with the predetermined agenda of the minister. I hope that's not the case, because if we are going to have a fair review of collective bargaining legislation and if at the end of that review we are to have a good piece of legislation brought before this House, with any amendments that might be proposed, and if we are to have the kind of due process which will allow future governments to act in a way which is not injecting a political agenda into the dispute but which allows us to act in the interests of students and to have the support of opposition parties for any future legislation that might be required in terms of a back-to-work ruling, we are going to have to have a cleaner start than Mr Paroian's report.

I trust that this government is now going to facilitate the appointments to the Education Relations Commission -- the minister assures me that will be the case -- that it will follow due process, that it will avoid politicizing the collective bargaining process and that we will have a reasonably objective review of the collective bargaining process that has been in place for some 21 years.

Having said that, I have to say further that, even if Mr Paroian's report is set aside with all of its bias, I am not sure we can have a full, fair and objective review of collective bargaining in the climate that has already been created, in the climate in which the government and the Minister of Education are clearly looking for at least $1 billion out of education in order to pay for the tax cut and where the minister clearly believes in getting control of educational funding and, indirectly at least, the collective bargaining process.

The minister may not have been deliberately trying to create a crisis by failing to make appointments to the Education Relations Commission, but he has certainly successfully created a sense of crisis in almost every other area of education. I would be happy to take time this afternoon to once again talk about the crisis that has been created by the cuts that were made to education a year ago, by the impact of those cuts on our classrooms; the crisis that was created for school boards, for example, that believed in the importance of junior kindergarten classes and were faced with having to cut other services, raise taxes or lose junior kindergarten; the anguish of special education parents who found that the needs of their students could not be met because of the financial constraints on school boards that were created because of the crisis that $400-million cut, which was really more like a $1 billion, had.

I'm not going to take a lot of time to get into my own frustration that we have a Minister of Education who will not in any way acknowledge the impact of the cuts and continuously misuses information, misrepresents factual information, in order to create the sense that there is more money that can be cut from education.

We have so many examples. There is the $6 billion that the minister says is spent outside the classroom, as if that were somehow wasteful and can be dispensed with, when we know in fact that $6 billion, in large measure, goes to support student busing to get them to school and janitorial and custodial maintenance of our schools so that our kids can go to school in clean buildings. There isn't $6 billion of wasted money spent outside the classroom; that is critical classroom support.

I heard last night one of the ministers of the cabinet suggest that spending on Ontario students was the highest of any jurisdiction in Canada. That's simply factually wrong. The spending in Ontario per student is 46th out of 62 in the United States and Canada, very close to the bottom, and another $1 billion in cuts will put our per student spending right at the bottom. If you want to look just at Canada, there are five jurisdictions in Canada that spend more per student than Ontario does. But the attempt to create the impression that we are wasting money because we are spending so much and it's not going to students is something which this minister has felt compelled to do repeatedly, no matter how much evidence is given that this is not the case.

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The minister has also made it very clear that it's his intention to take more money out of education by saying, in fact "bragging" I think is the more appropriate term, a year ago -- and I think this is almost a direct quote -- that if you think last year's cuts were tough, wait until you see next year's cuts. If that isn't an indication of where this government is going with education, I don't know what else it could be.

What happened of course was that the people said, "No, wait a minute." Parent groups, those parents of kids who wanted to be in junior kindergarten and have that opportunity, parents of special needs kids who saw the support for their children being eroded, started coming and saying, "We don't want more cuts to education; we value education." The government realized it was in trouble, so it backed away. It didn't make the cuts in November that we all believed were coming.

Now the government has to look at new ways of getting at the education funding so it can find its billion dollars. The first thing they do then is essentially collapse school boards. That's what Bill 104, which brings big mega-boards into place, is all about. It's about the eventual dissolution of school boards. They're an irritant. They may disagree that the answer to spending cuts from the province is to cut JK and to cut special ed, and they might raise taxes locally in order to make sure you can keep those services for kids, so they're an irritant. Not only that, but he can't take another billion dollars away from them without having both the trustees and the parents express their concerns.

So we're going to have mega-boards that are well removed from the local situation, that are virtually unable to be accessible to the concerns of their local communities, but that are still somehow going to be what the minister calls the employer of record. That is the issue that is perhaps most relevant to today's debate, because I'm not sure how these mega-boards are going to be able to bargain.

Remember, we've got a situation where Bill 104 is in front of the House, amalgamating the school boards and making necessary the amalgamation of the hundreds of collective agreements which now exist. We also have a situation where those school boards are going to have no control over any of the dollars that are spent on education at all because they will all be controlled by the Minister of Education and the government. I don't know how those boards, even though they may be the employer of record, can possibly carry out collective bargaining with their employees when they have no control over the dollars they have to spend to support the agreements that are reached at the bargaining table. I think already we have precluded, through the amalgamation of school boards legislation, a fair and objective review of the collective bargaining process, because I don't think those mega-boards are going to be able to successfully bargain.

I don't believe the situation in the course of the next months is going to be manageable, so we have a situation in which there will be chaos and confusion and in which the Minister of Education will once again have successfully created the crisis that he believes is necessary for change. Over the course of the next few months, according to the terms of Bill 104, we will have appointed an Education Improvement Commission. I want to be very clear: This is not the Education Relations Commission, it's an Education Improvement Commission, a new body of people yet to be appointed by the government because the legislation's not in place, although that hasn't stopped them from appointing the co-chairs of this education commission. But the education commission is going to be given powers, once it's officially in place in law, that are retroactive to the middle of last month -- well, of January, this month past. The powers that the commission will be given take the place of any powers which the elected boards now have.

I've expressed my concern about the fact that I don't know how these new amalgamated boards, without any control of dollars, are going to be able to be the employer of record or to carry out collective bargaining, but I certainly don't know how this Education Improvement Commission is going to create the kinds of conditions in which there can be any collective bargaining carried out in the course of the next year.

The Education Improvement Commission is going to be given powers under Bill 104 to control all the hiring and firing that is done by school boards. As of January 14, in fact, even though the law is not in place, no school board can enter into contracts that don't meet with the approval of this commission that has yet to be appointed because at this point it's not law to appoint it. School boards as of this moment in time essentially have no power to hire or fire, except under guidelines that have been approved by a yet to be appointed commission. How do they enter into collective bargaining agreements that affect the hiring or potentially the firing of employees?

There is a clause in Bill 104 that says the exception to this is anything that falls under the collective bargaining agreement, but it's hard for me to reconcile that with the fact that the Education Improvement Commission will have the power to approve or amend any board budget. I find that an incredible power to be given to an appointed commission, because we still have local boards that were duly elected, that raise taxes because they are an elected body with the power to tax. And yet those powers have been suspended and they cannot bring in a budget this year that does not have the approval of the Education Improvement Commission, and that same commission can amend the local board's budget. Even though anything which is part of the collective agreement process is somehow exempt from the powers that have been taken away from school boards, since the boards don't have the power to put a budget in place, I don't know how they can carry out collective bargaining.

There's even a clause in Bill 104 that says that no board, as of the middle of this past month, can enter into a contract that extends beyond the end of December 1997, so I find it puzzling that in the legislation that's before us today, the legislation establishes a contract period which does not expire until August 1998. I don't know whether this legislation is therefore in conflict with the government's legislation, Bill 104, or whether the whole thing is just sheer, massive confusion.

I don't know what kinds of guidelines can possibly be put in place by the Education Improvement Commission or by the ministry or by anybody else that is going to make for an easy transition for the amalgamated boards when they are faced with harmonizing all of the existing collective agreements. I think we are guaranteed to have the crisis the Minister of Education so likes to create from the moment the amalgamated boards are formed and are given the task of harmonizing collective agreements, given no dollars with which to do that, and yet are still considered to be the employer of record. In the meantime, before the amalgamated boards are in place, we are going to have the sheer chaos of boards that have had their powers stripped away from them, and in particular their ability to approve the budgets to support any collective agreement.

So we need an Education Relations Commission, as impossible as the job of that commission may be. We need the commission because we are going to have a period in collective bargaining in this province such as we have never seen before.

I trust that we will never come into this Legislature again in the course of the chaos of the next months facing a piece of legislation in which the recommendations of the commission are reversed and in which the government appears to be putting its own political agenda in place. I trust that we are going to have some kind of reasonable review of the collective bargaining process, even though I'm sceptical that's going to be possible, since I really believe there are different agendas driving the process from the ministry's perspective than the agenda of trying to get a process that works effectively both for collective bargaining and most particularly for students.

Nevertheless, I believe we have to support the legislation that's before us today because we have a finding of students being in jeopardy. That has become paramount. I am relieved in no small measure that the government has agreed to the withdrawal of the clauses which would have so clearly injected the government into the process of the bargaining itself and in my view imposed a government agenda on that process. Because they have withdrawn those most offensive and challenging clauses, I trust that my caucus colleagues will join with me in supporting this legislation so that students can be back in the classroom. With that, I will look forward to the further debate.

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The Deputy Speaker: Questions or comments?

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): I just want to congratulate the member on the speech she's given in the debate on the legislation that's before us, which is dealing with the strike situation that exists within the particular district.

She pointed out the fact that the government, through negotiations back and forth with the Liberals and the NDP, talking with the minister and the House leader, has agreed to make two changes that will go a long way towards making sure that this legislation will probably pass. Other than that, it would not have been possible to pass this legislation today. Now I understand we're going to be able to have some kind of an understanding that the school board and the teachers are going to get back to the bargaining table and will know that the situation can be resolved.

I know the member for Algoma wants to get into the debate on this piece of legislation and he's more knowledgeable, as the critic for our New Democratic Party, in dealing with this situation. I'm looking forward to the comments he's going to have concerning the discussions he had as House leader in reminding the Minister of Education and the government House leader that changes had to be made to the draft legislation we had seen earlier this morning. The Liberal member has just mentioned that, that there were changes made to it that are more receptive than the original legislation they were going to table in the House today, so I'd like to congratulate her for the debate she had.

Mr Conway: I want to commend my colleague from Fort William for her remarks. She said many things. I want to highlight a couple of points that were made by the member for Fort William, the former chair of the Lakehead Board of Education, and that is that there are many who share -- I think we all have frustration with these processes that don't always settle arguments as quickly as we might like, and in some cases lead to lock-outs or strikes. There are many today, as there were 10 and 15 years ago, who would argue, "Just get rid of the right to strike and there will be greater happiness in teacher-school board relations."

It is important for those of us who have been around here for some time to recall as Mrs McLeod, the previous speaker, did, that in Ontario before there was Bill 100 we had quite a spectacle. We had the mass resignations, we had all kinds of work-to-rule and other such disturbances. So there is ample precedent in modern Ontario for disruptions and dislocations without there being Bill 100. Bill 100 should be reviewed and amended and there is I think general agreement. But as the Education Relations Commission has observed in its report today about Lennox and Addington, the best kind of solution is one where both local parties agree on terms and conditions and negotiate that amicably at the table.

But let there be no confusion. If people think that we should just eliminate the right to strike and we're going to have some kind of unalloyed happiness in teacher-school board relations, Mrs McLeod is quite right in recalling the pre-1975 situation in Ontario, which was far from that.

The Deputy Speaker: Further questions or comments? If not, the member for Fort William, you have two minutes.

Mrs McLeod: Just in summary, in supporting the legislation in the interests of students and in support of the finding of the Education Relations Commission, the finding of jeopardy, I want to express my dismay that there should have been any necessity for debate around this piece of legislation at all.

There would not have been a real necessity for debate if it hadn't been for the apparent politicization of the agenda in the original legislation that was presented, and if it hadn't been for the fact that there are some further issues of concern that are in the legislation in rather unprecedented situations, such as the cabinet having more power to appoint arbitrators and that, according to the minister, the only reason those are there is because the government failed to appoint people to the Education Relations Commission.

I just find it so difficult to accept what the minister tells me at face value when our alternative is to believe that the government has simply mismanaged the entire responsibility of ensuring that the Education Relations Commission can continue to function and that it was somehow difficult for them to draft legislation which would not have injected the government's agenda in support of, in this case, the board, but one of the parties, when in fact all precedents they had before them would have taken them in a very different route.

The easiest route for the government today, the clearest route for the government, because perhaps these things are never easy, was to act on the recommendations of the Education Relations Commission, as it was set out, to bring in a straightforward piece of legislation which would indeed have had the support of parties in the House, as it has traditionally had, because we respect that process, and in the future to make sure the Education Relations Commission is fully staffed and functional so that we may never encounter this kind of situation or this kind of legislation in the Legislature again.

The Deputy Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Wildman: I rise on behalf of my caucus to participate in this debate on this bill, and I must say that like other members, I regret very much that we have to enter into this debate.

Those of you who have known me for a while will know that I have certain biases that I guess I should lay out right at the outset, and they are that I personally used to be a member of the teaching profession, that I was a member of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation and that I participated for three years as a salary negotiator for that organization many years ago.

I recall, as does the member for Fort William, the situation, although I was on the other side of the fence from what she was at the time, as it was prior to the passage of Bill 100. It was a very sorry situation in many cases across Ontario, because neither boards nor school teacher federations really had any kind of framework within which to resolve difficult disputes, and there were many situations where work to rule had been instituted or where there had been withdrawal of certain services, where the boards had tried to take sanctions against teachers on some occasions, and there were no real guidelines.

As a result of that difficult experience, the teachers' federations and the provincial government of the time, the government of William Davis, a Conservative government, looked at the whole situation and passed a piece of legislation that has been called, ever since, Bill 100. That piece of legislation has governed teacher-board collective bargaining ever since, for over 20 years, in Ontario. In some areas there have been continuous problems, but they have been very much the minority of areas, because in most situations since the passage of Bill 100 teacher-board agreements have been arrived at mutually without the resort to either lockout or strike. As a matter of fact, over 97% of the negotiations over the last 20 years have not resulted in any loss of class time for students. I think that's what's important for us to recognize.

Prior to the passage of Bill 100, there were more disruptions than there were subsequent to the passage of Bill 100. Prior to the teachers having been given the right to withdraw their services in a dispute, there were many more disruptions than happened in many areas subsequent to the passage of Bill 100 and the provision of the right to strike to the teaching profession. So I think we should look at this legislation that we are discussing here today for Lennox and Addington in the context of what is being discussed in the education agenda in Ontario today.

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We've had a number of reports prepared by consultants for this government that have made a number of recommendations. We've also had the minister, on behalf of the government, make it very clear that his top priority is to take as much money as possible out of the education system. He says he only wants to take that money out of administration and cut administrative fat, that he doesn't want to take it out of the classroom. As a matter of fact, his party guaranteed in the election campaign that while there would be cuts in education, educational classroom funding would be guaranteed and there would not be any cuts in that regard.

So we saw in 1996 the government remove $400 million from elementary and secondary education in Ontario over a very short period of time in the school year. On an annualized basis, that worked out to somewhere around $800 million to $1 billion in cuts. When it was pointed out to the minister that it wasn't really $400 million, it was upwards of $800 million to $1 billion, the minister said: "Fine. If we can get that much out, all the better."

He insists that classroom education has not been affected. He also insists that the cuts were only 1.8% of expenditures, that this is less than 2%, so it should not be very much for boards to be able to find and should not affect classroom education: $800 million.

One of the ways the minister has been able to deal with this is by redefining what "classroom education" is. He excludes a number of things that most people involved in education understand to be part of classroom education for students. Let's keep in mind, all of us in this debate, that the student is the most important person in the education system. That's what education is about.

The minister says that a number of things are not part of classroom education. Somehow he says that junior kindergarten at the elementary level and adult education day programs at the secondary level are not part of classroom education. As I've said before, the last time I checked, those kinds of programs were carried on within the four walls of classrooms. But somehow for this government they are not classroom education.

We've seen larger class sizes as a result of the cuts, meaning less individual time for the student with the teacher, less remedial work, less contact between the teacher and the student on an individual basis. We've seen cuts to special education programs which affect all students. They certainly affect the special needs students, because if you have teacher aide cuts or if you have specialized services for students with special needs that are cut, those students then don't get their needs met, and in many cases, because they're integrated into the normal classroom, the lack of response to their needs adversely affects all of the other students in the class. The teacher has to spend more time with the special needs students, or if the teacher is unable to do that, in some cases the special needs kids may act out and may then affect the atmosphere in the classroom and affect the learning experience of all the other students in the class.

We've seen in Metropolitan Toronto and urban centres cuts in English-as-a-second-language programs. We've seen support services cut. I've had anecdotal evidence given to me of situations where classroom supplies are short; where students don't have enough textbooks, two and three kids having to share textbooks, not being able to take their textbooks home at night to do their homework because they don't have individual texts; where they run out of paper halfway through the year; where art classes run out of paint. Music programs are being cut.

In some cases user fees are being imposed on students so that they have to pay for their art supplies or for their musical instruments. In some cases, in extracurricular programs where there have been user fees to help pay for busing, for instance, those user fees are going up substantially, so you find that students who come from families that are of meagre means cannot participate in those programs any more.

I think we really have to look at what's happening in education in this province. The most insidious approach of this government has been to say that teacher preparation time is not related to the classroom, is not included in classroom education, as if teachers are somehow taking a period off during the day, or, if they are doing some kind of work, it's not in preparation for the classroom. Frankly, that's an insult to the teaching profession. I believe it's an insult to the intelligence of the public of Ontario. What on earth are teachers preparing for if they're not preparing for the classroom, if they're not preparing lessons? In some cases they use that preparation time to contact parents to talk about students, to give remedial help to students. But the minister does not classify that as classroom education and therefore has said that preparation time for teachers can be cut.

The fact is that even though the minister, before Christmas, announced there would not be further cuts to the operating funds of school boards in 1997, he still intends to get another $1 billion out of the education system to help finance the tax cut that has been promised by the government. To be fair to Mr Snobelen, the Minister of Education and Training, when he made his announcement before Christmas, he did say that boards would have to be prepared for further cuts in 1998.

Some might ask, what does this have to do directly with the Lennox and Addington County Board of Education situation? As I understand it, in this negotiation the board has said to the teachers that it needs to find $875,000, and the only place that it can get $875,000 is out of the collective agreement. What the board has said to the teachers is: "We have to cut back on teachers. We have to cut back on the number of teachers, therefore increasing class size; we have to cut back on the number of positions of responsibility, department heads, to save money; we have to increase pupil-teacher ratio, again affecting students because it means bigger classes, less individual contact between student and teacher; and we have to cut teachers' wages."

If the board believes that it must find almost $1 million, that it has to take it out of the collective agreement, obviously that was going to make for very difficult negotiations, because even in a time of low inflation, very few people are prepared to take cuts in pay or to have members of the collective bargaining unit laid off. But more than that, as professionals, I believe the teachers were very concerned in this particular situation about the effects on their classes, on their students; that if we saw in Lennox and Addington increased class size, that would adversely affect the student. It's not surprising that the members of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation in Lennox and Addington were not prepared to simply say yes to the board when the board said: "We've got to cut you. We've got to cut the collective agreement. There have to be takeaways."

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What did this mean for the situation there? As I understand it, the board eliminated department heads. That affected 44 people in the collective bargaining unit. There is a 60-day clause in Bill 100 which allows boards to change the terms and conditions of employment after 60 days, but in this particular case the board did not wait the proper length of time.

The federation went to arbitration and won the arbitration; the arbitrator agreed with the members of the federation and ruled against the board. But as I understand it, the board then refused to reinstate the people who had been cut as department heads. The board finally agreed to pay the back pay that had been deducted from them because they had lost their position of responsibility, but they still were not reinstated. So the board got a ruling against it and still didn't comply with the arbitrator's ruling. That led the teachers, as I understand it, to file a complaint of unfair bargaining, bargaining in bad faith, and that's not surprising.

I understand the teachers were also asked by the board to take cuts, but the board didn't just ask for that; the board arbitrarily, unilaterally, decided to do it. The board cut salaries by 2.87% and forced the teachers to pay 20% of the benefits that had been paid 100% before by the board.

But this is what really concerns me, because we are here talking about students and what happens to students: The board changed the PTR and increased it to 16.7. That means they increased class sizes and they laid off three teachers as a result. This move also affected 21 other teachers who were not laid off but had changes in their terms and conditions of work.

I want to emphasize that the terms and conditions of work for teachers are also the learning environment for students. Why do boards and teachers, most of them, in their collective agreements across Ontario have agreements around pupil-teacher ratio or class size? The reason is that, as professionals, teachers have felt they should negotiate optimum class sizes for the benefit of the students. I don't think you'll find very many students who disagree with that. Students and parents understand that if classes are too large, students don't get the kind of individual attention they should, and teachers, even if they attempt to, can't provide the kind of individual attention they would like to.

Obviously in this kind of situation, with the board taking these kinds of unilateral actions, the atmosphere at the bargaining table was not very good. I will refer you to the letter sent to the Honourable John Snobelen, Minister of Education and Training, dated January 29, 1997, yesterday, from Paula Knopf, the chair of the Education Relations Commission.

The Education Relations Commission, as we all know, was set up by the provincial government under Bill 100 to assist in collective bargaining, to assist boards and teachers to reach amicable agreements. They have an important role to play in determining when students' years, their progress, is jeopardized by a dispute between a board and teachers. In doing this, the Education Relations Commission wrote to the Minister of Education yesterday and pointed out that, "The teachers have filed a complaint with the ERC alleging that the board has breached its statutory duty to bargain in good faith." In other words, they've charged bad-faith bargaining. That has not yet been ruled on by the commission.

The Education Relations Commission also referred to the board using the 60-day rule to change the terms and conditions unilaterally, but it also points out that the board did not wait for the 60 days in order to be up before they imposed some of these changes, which is against Bill 100, against the rules. The teachers grieved this and went, as I said, to an arbitration. The arbitrator ruled on behalf of the teachers. However, the board apparently failed to implement the terms of the arbitrator's award. They lost before the arbitrator, the arbitrator told the board to rectify the situation and they didn't do it. You can imagine how this would affect negotiations and the relations between the board and the teachers.

Then they point to the changes that the board did make properly according to the 60-day rule under the legislation and they say, "While this may be a legitimate exercise of rights available to a board, the timing and nature of the changes in the midst of mediation have placed barriers to achieving a resolution." In other words, relations were bad between the two parties. "Further, there have been public statements of distrust and disrespect on the part of both parties."

For those reasons, the ERC concluded that it was unlikely that further negotiations would lead to an amicable agreement and "that the continuation of the strike," which was likely, "will place in jeopardy the successful completion of courses of study of the students affected by this dispute."

What is interesting, though, is that the ERC then went on to make a recommendation to the Minister of Education and Training on how to deal with this situation.

We must keep in mind that today is one day before the Education Relations Commission no longer has a quorum because this government hasn't appointed the people it's supposed to appoint to the commission.

This is what the Education Relations Commission recommended to the minister: that the teachers would have to go back to the classroom, but also that, "The collective agreement that expired on August 31, 1996, shall be deemed to continue in force until replaced by a new collective agreement reached by the parties" through negotiation or "awarded by a board of arbitration."

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Today, when we met with the representatives of the ministry and the minister's office to discuss how the minister was going to respond to this recommendation of the Education Relations Commission, we were presented with a piece of draft legislation. That draft legislation differed substantially from this recommendation of the Education Relations Commission. The draft did say that the government would reimpose the collective agreement that expired on August 31, 1996, but it also had included two other clauses which essentially said that the rollbacks, the cuts, the board had made since August 31, 1996, would also continue in force, which is not what the Education Relations Commission recommended.

When presented with that, we in the opposition made clear to the government that we would not facilitate the introduction of this legislation today, because of the difference between what was recommended by the Education Relations Commission and what the government was proposing. As I said earlier today, I've recognized that the minister withdrew those two objectionable clauses. What is now being proposed in the legislation before us is the imposition and continuation of the collective agreement that expired on August 31 until it is replaced by a new agreement, either negotiated or arbitrated, which is what was recommended by the commission. I recognize that the minister has done that.

Let's understand that in having to deal with this legislation today we are having to deal with a failure. We're having to deal with the failure of the two parties, the board of education and the teachers' union, to negotiate a collective agreement amicably.

Mr Peter L. Preston (Brant-Haldimand): Get rid of both.

Mr Wildman: I don't participate in this debate in any way celebrating a situation like this. This is a sad day. It's far better for both sides to negotiate an amicable agreement. But I point out again that perhaps part of the reason the board had all of these rollbacks was not because it just decided unilaterally that it had to take out a lot of money from the existing collective agreement but because it was faced with cuts from the minister; not 1.8%, as he has argued, but as his own ministry staff have admitted, about 5.5% in grants last year -- $400 million across the province. That probably is the reason the board had to get this money out of the collective agreement, because the board was cut in its grants from the government and couldn't do it, I guess, unless it increased taxes substantially, and the government has made it clear that it doesn't want boards to do that.

The member for Brant-Haldimand interjected when I was speaking and said that maybe we should get rid of both parties, the board and the teachers' union. I guess this is in the context of what the minister is now proposing to do with education in Ontario. He is indeed talking about amalgamating boards, but more than that, he's talking about taking control of education away from local authorities, taking away local accountability. He's transferring $5.4 billion -- although in the House for some reason every now and then the ministers say $6.2 billion, but it's actually $5.4 billion -- off the residential property tax and saying that the government will take control of funding and expenditures in education.

Keep in mind that the minister himself said there will be further cuts in 1998 and he also said he needs about $1 billion. Mark my words, in 1998 boards across Ontario are not going to get $5.4 billion more in grants from this government; it's going to be somewhat less. It may be $4 billion, it may be $4.5 billion, I don't know, but that's where the cut is going to come. We're going to see further cuts next year. The local boards, the bigger amalgamated boards, are going to be faced with the situation where they're going to have to cut programs, they're going to have to cut staff, they're going to have to increase class size even further. But they won't have any real control. They won't have any local taxing power. So I don't think that's really a solution.

I believe in local autonomy. I believe in local accountability. I think education should not be funded from the property tax, but I don't think it's a solution to say that the decisions are going to be taken completely to the centre and controlled by the provincial government.

That raises the question of how we will negotiate collective agreements with teachers in that situation. It's a little unclear at this point what the government intends to do. The Minister of Education and Training appointed Mr Paroian to study this. He went around the province and listened to presentations and he berated board representatives who appeared before him and said that Bill 100 worked well. He said: "That's not what I want to hear. What are you doing coming here and telling me that?" He expected it, I guess, from the teachers' federations but he didn't expect it from the boards. He should have expected it from the boards because 97% of the collective agreements have been reached without disruption since Bill 100 became law. But he made recommendations and he recommended significant changes in teacher collective bargaining.

The minister has mused since that time about perhaps taking away the right to strike from teachers. Well, mark my words: If that is the agenda of this government, we're going to see massive problems in teacher collective bargaining. It won't be Lennox and Addington alone; when you have a major problem it may be province-wide, if it's province-wide bargaining. Instead of having a number of students like the students in Lennox and Addington having their educational year disrupted, it may be the students right across Ontario. That's hardly a solution.

If the suggestion is to take away the right to strike completely, then we are going to have serious problems. We're going back to the old days before Bill 100 when there were all sorts of disruptions. Why do you think the Bill Davis government passed Bill 100? To resolve these problems, and it has worked. It's been a problem in places like Lennox and Addington, I admit, and that's why we're dealing with this legislation today, but do not take Lennox and Addington as the norm; they are the exception, a most unfortunate exception.

I am alarmed by the minister's statement when he introduced this legislation, where he said he was reviewing teacher collective bargaining and he was going to be bringing in changes. If the minister means by that he believes the disruption in Lennox and Addington is the norm rather than the exception and he's going to use that as an excuse for removing the right to strike, we're going to have serious problems between teachers and the provincial government, and there are going to be a lot of students affected in that kind of situation.

I don't know why, when the government introduced the draft legislation to us, the government introduced a draft that included rollbacks, instituting rollbacks the board had brought in and which the board had been criticized for by the Education Relations Commission. It's beyond me. We made it very clear that if the government intended to proceed in that manner, we would not facilitate the introduction of the legislation today, and I'm glad to see that has been removed from the bill.

There are a couple of other things I'm concerned about. I mentioned that as of tomorrow the Education Relations Commission no longer has a quorum because the government hasn't appointed members. There are two who haven't been appointed, one more whose term runs out tomorrow, and as of that time they don't have a quorum. It's because the Education Relations Commission, in its letter to the minister, recommended that arbitration be brought in in the legislation, but it recommended that legislation be brought in under the aegis of the ERC, that the Education Relations Commission would be the one to which the parties would propose arbitrators and make proposals for bringing the dispute to an end. In the legislation, in the bill, it's not the ERC that does this.

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It's quite unprecedented for the minister to take the kind of power he is taking in this bill in these kinds of situations. In the bill the minister -- or the Lieutenant Governor in Council, meaning the cabinet, the minister -- will appoint the arbitrator. It does make provision for the two sides to come together to agree on an arbitrator, but if they can't agree the minister will still appoint the arbitrator.

This hasn't been done in this way, to my knowledge, for 20 years. The last time it was done I think was in a Kirkland Lake dispute in 1976. Certainly the last three times that there's been legislation recommended by the ERC to bring an end to a dispute between boards and teachers, the Education Relations Commission has been responsible for the arbitration and for ensuring it operated well.

It's very strange too in that this legislation talks about a single arbitrator that will be appointed by the minister. In nearly all the disputes I know of that have been dealt with in this manner under the Education Relations Commission there's been a panel set up, a panel of three. The teachers would appoint one arbitrator, the board would appoint one arbitrator, and then they would attempt to come to an agreement on the chair for the arbitration panel, a three-person panel. If they couldn't come to an agreement on the chair, then the Education Relations Commission appointed the chair of the three-person arbitration panel.

Why is it that this bill doesn't do it that way? I don't understand why. It may be because the ERC doesn't have a quorum tomorrow so therefore they can't do the job. Maybe that's the reason. If that's the case, then the solution would have been for the minister to get on his horse, get the appointments made, get the orders in council through cabinet and get the ERC in a position that it could do the job.

My concern is that the government may in fact be intending to eliminate the Education Relations Commission. Perhaps that's their agenda. Perhaps that's what they're about as part of their response to the Paroian report and the changes they may be going to bring in in teacher collective bargaining. Maybe they're going to eliminate the Education Relations Commission. Perhaps that's why they haven't made the appointments. If that's the case I'm very, very concerned, because the ERC has done a very good job for 20 years: a lot of different people appointed to the commission, but they've done a very good job over that period of time under three different parties in power in Ontario.

There's something else that bothers me seriously about this legislation. There are penalties included in this legislation for teachers who do not comply with the terms of the bill. In other words, I suppose if some teacher or group of teachers were to say, "We're not going back to work despite the fact that this has been passed," there are penalties included. But the penalties in this piece of legislation are fines. This is unprecedented. To my knowledge this has never been included in this kind of legislation before. Frankly, in most cases it hasn't been necessary. The teachers and the boards have agreed on an arbitration panel and they've proceeded through the process and the teachers were back in the classroom and so on. I would hope they're not required this time. But why is it we have this punitive measure put in the legislation?

Interjection.

Mr Wildman: The member for Fort William makes a suggestion which probably makes sense. If they were intending to impose the rollbacks that the board had brought in, maybe they were afraid that would inflame the situation to the point where teachers might defy the legislation and therefore they needed penalties like this in the legislation. At any rate, those two provisions imposing the rollbacks have been taken out, so hopefully this will not come into effect. I certainly hope not.

It doesn't help, though, to have this kind of thing in the legislation if you're trying to resolve a very difficult situation. Obviously, the teachers are going to react against this kind of thing. It's holding a club over their heads and most people don't react well to that kind of thing.

We are not in favour of, and I don't think any member of the House is in favour of legislating agreements or legislating binding arbitration. All of us would prefer to have parties negotiate in good faith and come to agreements that benefit each party. Each usually has to give up something, each party has to feel they've won something, and in coming to a mutually acceptable agreement, without disruption, then the most important person in the education system, the student, is not harmed. The student's interests are looked after by both parties, the board and the teachers.

I regret very much that we are here dealing with this piece of legislation today. I regret that the situation in Lennox and Addington has deteriorated to the point where the Education Relations Commission determined there isn't likely to be a settlement in the dispute. I regret very much that the Education Relations Commission came to the conclusion that the students' progress was in jeopardy.

I have had situations like this -- not very many, very few actually, one or two in the 20 years I've been in the Legislature -- in my own constituency. I know the kind of difficulties that produces. I know, particularly in small towns and rural areas, the kind of relationships that are harmed by these kinds of disputes. It's very difficult for a community. I think I have some idea of what the local MPP has been experiencing. I think I have an idea of what the teachers are going through. I think I have an idea of what the trustees are experiencing. But most important, I think I have a very good idea of the problems and concerns and uncertainty that face the students and their parents.

I want to say sincerely to the members across the aisle that if the agenda for the government is to take away collective bargaining rights from teachers, we are all going to face these kinds of problems in our constituencies. That will not be good for education; it will not be good for students. We will all lose.

Education of kids is too important a process for us to jeopardize it because of some ideological position taken. It is too important to be jeopardized by a government that says it is going to deny the free collective bargaining rights of a profession, not because it's going to help financially, economically, but because they have an ideological position they want to impose.

I implore the members of the governing party to look at the history of Bill 100, to recognize that the situation in Lennox and Addington is an exception, a tragic, unfortunate exception, that most collective bargaining processes between teachers and boards across Ontario -- not just most, 97% of them -- are resolved amicably, without lockout, without strike, without putting students in the middle. I think it's most unfortunate if we use Lennox and Addington as an excuse for some other wider legislation that will cause disruptions across Ontario.

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I heard one member say, "What about work-to-rule?" Let me tell you that if this government is determined to take away the free collective bargaining rights of teachers, not only to bargain for their own terms and conditions of employment but to bargain for the improvement of the educational environment of their students, then we're going to have a lot more than just collective work-to-rule programs in Ontario; we're going to have a very difficult, serious situation, so I won't repeat that I find it most unfortunate that we are here.

I hope that the two sides in Lennox and Addington will be able to reach an agreement. It is allowed for under this legislation. They can still proceed. Hopefully through negotiation or through arbitration they can reach an agreement. I hope that happens. I hope the fact that the proposal is for a two-year agreement rather than one year as the board was asking, I understand, will help to cool the inflamed situation so relations can improve between the employees and the employer and between the two parties and the rest of the community. I'm pleased that they're talking here about a two-year agreement rather than one year.

That raises another question. If under Bill 104 this board is no longer going to exist, if it's going to be amalgamated, then that raises all of the questions about what's going to happen about collective agreements. The so-called Education Improvement Commission -- or eek, as I call it -- is going to have an enormous task before it in trying to meld very different collective agreements and trying to deal with different seniority lists and trying to deal with layoffs of certain teachers, I suppose early retirements, changes in terms and conditions in pay rates. I hope that process is not just going to lead to further problems in Lennox and Addington and the other communities, the other boards in the area with which it is going to be amalgamated, because that's possible.

In British Columbia, where they lowered the number of boards a number of years ago -- there were fewer boards in the first place and they lowered the total number by a lot less than we're talking about in Ontario -- it took three years to put the system in place to deal with all these problems and difficulties. This government is talking about doing it in a few months. I fear what effect that will have.

If you were going to move to amalgamation, it wasn't necessary for you to have it in place by this fall for the next municipal election; you could have done it for the subsequent municipal election and you could have done it in a much more orderly fashion and got a lot of these problems resolved in a more orderly way.

But the problem the government had, of course, is they weren't just talking about amalgamating boards; they weren't talking about finding some sort of efficiencies through amalgamations alone. What they were talking about is taking control of the system away from local authorities and taking another $1 billion out of the system. They had to do that in a hurry because the Premier has stated he wants to move up his income tax cut for the wealthy. So you had to get $1 billion out of education, you had to get $1 billion out of health and you had to get $1 billion out of other community services like welfare and so on this year; you had to do it this year. So I hope that EIC is not going to be causing all of us to utter that kind of guttural sound in future in Ontario, but it may be going to, and it won't be E-I-C, it'll be e-e-k.

I regret, as I've said a number of times, that we're here. I recognize that the government made changes in the draft of the bill. I hope we aren't going to face serious disruptions across Ontario because of the rest of the government's agenda to take so much money out of education, to harm classroom education for students across Ontario and to perhaps remove the free, democratic collective bargaining rights of teachers across the province. I regret the fact that the government is intent on removing local accountability and local autonomy at a time when I think all of us who are interested in education should be able to have a say and influence what happens for our kids in our communities.

The Acting Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Questions or comments?

Mr Gary Fox (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings): I wish I could say I'm pleased to speak on this legislation introduced --

The Acting Speaker: There's a two-minute response before rotation of speeches. Do you want to give a two-minute response?

Mr Fox: No, I go to the debate. Sorry.

The Acting Speaker: We just have to go through the rotation. Two minute responses? The member for Fort William.

Mrs McLeod: I want to make it clear, particularly to the anxious parents in Lennox and Addington who may be watching this debate and who may not understand the way in which the procedures of the House are carried out, that there is all-party agreement to have a vote on second and third reading of this bill before 6 o'clock this evening and before the House adjourns for the evening. So this bill will be brought forward.

The reason we felt it necessary to have a debate about the bill, which in itself might be somewhat unprecedented in back-to-work legislation, is because there was so much evidence earlier in the day of other agendas of the government than those related specifically to the resolution of the issue dealing with the ERC's recommendations on jeopardy. I think it should have been a focus today exclusively on the concerns in Lennox and Addington. It should have been a concern exclusively on how this Legislature moves on the recommendation of the Education Relations Commission to deal with a finding that the students' year is in jeopardy. That should have been the sole focus of our debate. We shouldn't have faced a situation in which other agendas of the government were superimposed on that very critical issue for the people in Lennox and Addington.

I am concerned, and I think it's the reason why this debate has been so important, with the issues that have been raised by the member for Algoma, and that is not only the future of collective bargaining being very difficult with the amalgamated boards and the challenge of harmonizing all of the collective agreements, including this one that has to be concluded in Lennox and Addington, but that as of now there has been a climate that makes collective bargaining and resolution at the bargaining table almost impossible because of the powers that will be given to the Education Information Commission and because they will undoubtedly be imposing limitations on school boards that will force either a reduction in services or the efforts to find a reduction in costs at the bargaining table. I can only appeal to the Minister of Education --

The Acting Speaker: Thank you.

Mrs McLeod: -- who is well on his way to creating another crisis, to attempt to deal with this --

The Acting Speaker: The member's time is up. Further questions or comments?

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Mr Len Wood: Briefly, I just wanted to say that the member for Algoma did an excellent job over the last half-hour or 45 minutes that he was discussing this piece of emergency legislation that was brought in so the students in this particular area are not going to lose their year.

We know that education in 1997 and 1998 is going to be -- the parents are going to be very much concerned as they take $1 billion or $2 billion out of education, with rumours that further legislation is going to be brought in by this government that is going to affect collective bargaining for all teachers right across this province.

I'm concerned, as a father of two daughters who are teaching, one in Hamilton and one in Mississauga, about their future as teachers: How many students are going to be in the classrooms and what is going to be the atmosphere of all of the teachers and parents and students right across this province as the Minister of Education continues to make major changes? We see as they take the school taxes off residential properties across this province they are downloading more and more costs to all of the municipalities that are going to drive up the cost of other services. Property taxes are going to go up.

In this particular case we are concerned, as the official opposition is concerned and the government is concerned, about the parents, the students and the teachers who are out there, that we have to have a debate in this Legislature in order to help resolve this labour dispute that is out there and is causing great concern.

Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): I listened very carefully to the member for Algoma's comments. His expertise and his familiarity with the issues are unquestionable. It's certainly unfortunate, indeed I suppose even beyond unfortunate, that a Legislature would be called upon to intervene in collective bargaining.

Having said that, I recognize that in this instance teachers have been stonewalled, have been stymied, have had every tactic used against them in what amounts to nothing more than the very worst of bad faith on the part of their board employer. You talk about irresponsible. Here's a board that's not going to exist in short order because this government has such disdain for local governance. Here's a board that isn't even going to exist by the time this government is finished with its dismantling of local governance of education.

At the same time, it would appear that here's a board that has very much picked up the theme of this Harris government that's designed to devalue the work that teachers and other skilled professions and helping professions do in our communities, devalue the work of public service workers, teachers included, that expects the teachers to pay for this government's irresponsible tax break to the very richest in this province. I think this government has shown an incredible lack of insight by its response in this particular matter. The issue is really one that's far broader and one that is going to have far greater consequences than we've seen to date.

Mr Wildman: I want to thank the member for Fort William, the member for Cochrane North and the member for Welland-Thorold for their comments. I would agree with the member for Fort William that people should understand why this debate is occurring and what the import of the debate is, recognizing that we do not support this kind of legislation and we regret the fact that this legislation is being introduced.

We recognize that students have been harmed and that the Education Relations Commission has ruled that their year might be in jeopardy and therefore the government should take action. We regret that the government has not used the Education Relations Commission as it might, and as was proposed by the Education Relations Commission, to help to resolve this dispute finally.

One of the members referred to this as a labour dispute. I might be tempted to call it a board dispute because of the kind of criticism that the Education Relations Commission has levelled at this particular board, but I recognize that the board is in a difficult position because of the cuts made by this government to education and that this board believes it has to take a substantial amount of money out of its collective agreement to, as the member for Welland-Thorold said, make the teachers pay for their tax cut to the wealthy, and so I regret that we are here.

I also am very concerned about what the future holds in the context of this government's agenda, as this government is determined to take another $1 billion out of education and use the Education Improvement Commission, the amalgamation of boards, as a smokescreen for taking more money out of classrooms and hurting students. We are opposed to that and we will fight it with everything we have.

If this government is determined to take away the free collective bargaining rights of teachers to bargain for their terms and conditions of work and for an improved environment for students, we will fight that with everything --

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Further debate? The member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings.

Mr Fox: Sorry I jumped in a little suddenly there, but I'm quite anxious to speak on this because it is of a grave concern in my riding with parents and students at this time. I wish I could say that I'm pleased to speak on the legislation introduced by the Minister of Education and Training, but I would really rather not have to. I wish this strike had never come about.

Introducing legislation to end a strike is a tough job for any government. Not only is it evident that the two sides in this dispute, the school board and the union, could not overcome their differences, but more importantly, it brings to light the people who have lost out due to the strike. The unions feel as though they were forced to make concessions and the school board feels they are ones who were forced to give in.

But let us not lose sight of the bigger picture and the reason that the Minister of Education and I and others are standing up today. The real losers in this strike are the students of Lennox and Addington County Board of Education. The teachers at Lennox and Addington County Board of Education walked off the job on December 9. As a result, the students have lost 29 instructional days. The students' school year is in extreme jeopardy. They know now that without legislation being passed today their year could be lost.

We can only imagine what each student in Lennox and Addington has thought about each morning since December 9: "Am I going to be able to finish my year? Am I going to graduate? Am I going to be able to go to college or university this fall? What about our summer jobs? How am I going to have time to work if I'm in school over the summer? Should I even bother to look for a summer job?"

What is happening here is that the students are being used as pawns in a dispute they care little or nothing about. I might also at this time bring to the attention of the House that these students in Lennox and Addington have no option but to attend school within their own county or board jurisdiction. They do not live in cities like Toronto or Ottawa, which would allow them to attend another school while the strike is on.

I personally know of many parents who have volunteered to help students with their independent studies. Some have even offered to take time off work to fill out the void in the classroom created by this strike.

On Tuesday of this week I presented a petition to the House. It took the organizers of the petition just 72 hours to get over 1,100 names. This is quite a feat for a rural area where there are no large malls or mega-stores where the parents could stand and collect these names. This indicates just how much support there has been from the parents and students to do whatever it takes to get the teachers back where they belong: in the classroom.

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The two sides in this dispute are at an impasse. They are about as close to reaching agreement as they were on the eve of the strike. They have spent hours and hours arguing their points and trying to curry favour with the mediators, all this while every student in Lennox and Addington waits at home until both sides reach an agreement.

After assistance by the Education Relations Commission to resolve the differences of the boards and the unions, the ERC announced to the Minister of Education and Training that the school year of the students would be in jeopardy if the strike continued. The ERC advised the Minister of Education to legislate the teachers back to work.

All elected members of Parliament in this House today represent parents and students. We all know how important education is. Education is the passport to opportunity for our youth. It is the vehicle for arming our students to compete in today's complex and challenging global economy. That is why access to education is a right for all Canadians.

What are we as elected officials supposed to do about this situation? What about our obligation to these students? Didn't we as lawmakers introduce legislation that demands every child in Ontario must stay in school until they are 16? Don't we as legislators continue to fight for the best quality of education for our Ontario students? How then can we sit back and allow teachers to leave the classroom and refuse to teach students?

I stand here today as your colleague to ask every member for your help. We all know the importance of education to our youth. We all know the outcome of students losing their year. I appeal to all members here to put their weight behind this bill and see it passed today without delay. The parents and students of Lennox and Addington thank you.

The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?

Mr Conway: The member makes a very legitimate plea and a request that I certainly intend to positively respond to, as I expect the House will unanimously. There is, particularly for a relatively newly elected member in this assembly, no hell like being the local member living through a school strike. I'm telling you, it is a misery that is not to be endured if it can be avoided.

I see the member for Guelph here. I remember in my first few months as minister the then newly elected member for Guelph had the experience of being in the midst of what was one of the most acrimonious and I think one of the longest disputes in the province. I myself in -- I was elected in 1975 -- about 1977 or 1978 had a dandy, as my father would say, in Renfrew. It went on for weeks and it certainly was one of the most miserable experiences I've ever had as a local member.

Everyone wants to do the right thing, everyone wants to accommodate the students, but the interests sometimes of the taxpayer as employer and the interests of the teachers are not always one and the same. I just make the point that Mrs McLeod made earlier, and I'm sure that Mr Wildman made in his remarks: Only Pollyanna would imagine that there is some magical way to resolve this sometimes clash of different interests in a painless way. Bill 100 is certainly not perfect; it ought to be changed. But anybody who thinks that we can wave a magic wand and solve this clash of interests is perhaps Pollyanna's sibling.

Mr Wildman: I understand the position taken by the member and the plea he makes on behalf of the students and parents in his constituency. I would just reiterate that the Lennox and Addington situation, difficult as it is, is not the norm and should not be used as an excuse or a reason by the government to make wholesale changes in collective bargaining for teachers in this province, because both boards and teachers' federations will testify to the fact that Bill 100, over the last 20 years, has operated well to ensure that most teacher-board collective bargaining processes have been resolved amicably, without disruption for students. Nobody wants to see students brought into the middle of this kind of situation. Nobody wants students to feel the uncertainty and concern about the future and whether their year will be put in jeopardy. Teachers don't want that, trustees don't want that and certainly the students and their parents and the community don't want that.

But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater in future in this House by bringing in wholesale changes to Bill 100 that will perhaps bring further disruptions across Ontario in education that will hurt many students, hurt teachers and hurt communities.

Mr Dan Newman (Scarborough Centre): I rise today to respond to the excellent debate from the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings. I know he's worked very hard on this issue. On Tuesday, as he mentioned, he presented a petition with 1,100 names of constituents of his from that area of his riding who were very concerned about the issue.

I know that yesterday he asked a question of the Minister of Education and Training regarding this issue. He really drove the point home in that question when he spoke about the girl who wants to soon graduate from Napanee District Secondary School, go on to Queen's University and eventually on to med school. We're talking about real students here and real lives that are being affected by this situation.

I just want to congratulate the member for his fine speech and for standing up for the students, families and communities within his area and to let him know I will be supporting this bill.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions or comments? Seeing none, the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings, you may sum up if you like.

Mr Fox: I'd just like to say that it has been a big concern. The thing is, it started out with the parents and the students very concerned with the board of education and the teachers' union. But since nothing had happened, they came to me for support to get something happening here through legislation so that this could be finalized. I must say that the day before yesterday 90 calls to my constituency office show that there was immense concern for what was happening. It has been averaging about 40 calls a day.

I'm very pleased that all parties here today have agreed to propose this legislation, but it is sad that we have to do this. The member for Algoma mentioned in an earlier statement that both parties were at fault here, the school board and the teachers' union. It's too bad it had come to this point where they hadn't been able to make an agreement so that we have to do this today. I appreciate what all parties are supporting here today.

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The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Conway: I will take a few moments this afternoon to join the debate and make some observations as a member and as a former Minister of Education. I heard the member for Algoma, not his entire remarks, but the member from South Hastings made the point a moment ago, that there were two parties to this and they were both to blame in some measure. I'm not in any way privy to the negotiations, though I do read the Tweed and Napanee newspapers and I drive through almost the entire length of Addington every week.

Have I wrinkled the linen here?

Mr Wildman: Don't take too long.

Mr Conway: I'll try not to take too long. I wouldn't want to take too long.

Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa-Rideau): You've never taken too long.

Mr Conway: Your Honour, I have never taken too long. I'll tell you one thing, I would have been very brief in your court. If I had to look at so formidable a chief magistrate as the member for Ottawa-Rideau, I probably wouldn't have dared open my mouth.

But I want to open my mouth briefly this afternoon on the matter before us, which is to end the dispute in Lennox and Addington. I said earlier this afternoon that one of the concerns I have here is that there appears to have developed over the last number of years some bad blood between these parties at the table, because Lennox and Addington has been experiencing some real difficulty in the last eight to 10 years.

I think the Education Relations Commission has observed in its January 29, 1997, letter to the Minister of Education that there have been two previous difficulties that have led to a withdrawal of services or an interruption in instructional time since 1986. I would repeat the point I made earlier that after this bill is passed today there ought to be a renewed effort by both parties to fix whatever the atmospheric difficulty is in that otherwise very sensible part of my region of Ontario.

I listened carefully to Mr Fox, who I know to be a very hardworking fellow. I hope I didn't hear him taking credit for the introduction of this bill today, although I know he has worked -- I don't see our friend from Napanee here today, Gary, but I'm sure he's up in Denbigh doing important parish work.

The process has worked, apparently, under the terms and conditions of Bill 100. The impartial Education Relations Commission monitors these matters, and when it feels, as the impartial monitor, that the jeopardy point has been reached, it so recommends to the minister. That seems to have happened. Today is January 30. This letter I have in front of me from the Education Relations Commission was dated yesterday, a finding of jeopardy was made and we have now a bill before us. How many days are we at now? We're at the 29th lost day.

The redoubtable Dr Bette Stephenson -- and I want to say to this assembly, I have yet to meet a battler in this crowd who is half as tough as Dr Stephenson. I still bear the scars of battling Bette. I remember that in the Sudbury case in the early 1980s Dr Stephenson allowed a dispute. She was minister. I think the dispute went into nearly a 60th day -- 55 or 60 days.

Interjection.

Mr Conway: Very well said, but for people like the previous speaker, there's some concern that any time lost is -- well, yes, we all agree the Sudbury case was almost 58 or 60 days.

I'm told by everybody there's some deal I am breaking, so I want to simply say I'll be happy to support this bill and save some of my remarks for Bill 104.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Questions or comments? Further debate?

Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre): When our children disagree or argue or fight, our educators bring them together, sit them down and teach them to work out their differences peacefully, without violence and without disrupting the school yard or the classroom. They teach our children to compromise for the betterment of all. They teach them to think about how their actions affect others. They talk to them about being considerate of others. But most of all they teach them by example, because everyone knows that above all else children learn by following example. They're preparing them to go out and take over our world and hopefully improve it. Our educators spend years with our precious youth, ingraining the value of education, yet when unions and school boards disagree or argue or fight, the first thing to go out the window is education. That's the example we give our children. Disruption then becomes acceptable. Then it becomes every child for himself or herself. The irony of all this is not lost on our students. They know what's going on. They can spot hypocrisy: "Do as I say, not as I do."

What are they really learning? They're learning mistrust for authority, they're learning they don't matter very much, they're learning that you should try to get along and work out your differences peacefully only to a certain point. They're learning that their education can be sacrificed on the altar of collective agreements. I think we should start today and ask all the parties in education to commit that this will never happen again. I'm calling for a new paradigm in labour relations in Ontario. I'm calling for the very thing we teach our children: that we practise what we preach, that we work out our differences peacefully without affecting innocent children and their future.

We all know well the statistics about disputes between teachers and school boards. In the last 20 years there have been 17 million student days lost; in the case of the Lennox and Addington board, 29 days of instruction lost. What does that mean? My colleague the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings pointed out that he's getting 40 calls each day from profoundly worried parents. Others have faxed messages to our ministry. Students' educations and dreams have been put on hold. This is the reality of a dispute between a board and teachers. Students and parents are held hostage by two groups that should have the interests of their community as their priority.

In his review of the school boards' and teachers' collective negotiations process, Leon Paroian described this process as "hostage-taking." I find any hostage-taking in Ontario repugnant. At the end of the day it's the students who suffer in many ways. During his consultation, Mr Paroian listened to a principal in a Toronto elementary school. The principal told him that strikes harm students. He knew this because of regular testing done at his school. The loss of two or three or four weeks of instruction would undoubtedly represent a significant and measurable loss for students.

The students of Lennox and Addington have suffered too much already. Their dreams are on hold. Their education is in jeopardy. I urge members to support speedy passage of this legislation so that we can put these young people back on the track to success immediately.

The Speaker: Questions and comments?

Mr Wildman: I must say that the member for Halton Centre demonstrated the exact problem that I tried to refer to in my remarks, that one should not treat this difficult situation in Lennox and Addington as the norm. It is a very unfortunate exception to what happens in teacher-board collective bargaining in Ontario. That's why we are having an exceptional situation here today in the House, where we're dealing with very special, unfortunately repugnant, in my view, legislation. We've had to do it from time to time in the House in the past, but not very many times. The suggestion that Mr Paroian made that there were a certain number of hours lost in the last 20 years ignores the fact that 97% of teacher-board collective bargaining in Ontario has been settled amicably without strike or lockout in the last 20 years since Bill 100 was passed by the Bill Davis government.

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Don't throw out Bill 100 because of the minority number of situations that result in serious disruptions for students. None of us wants students to suffer, to be put in the middle of a dispute between teachers and boards. Boards don't want that, teachers don't want that and certainly the students and the parents don't. But don't say, "Okay, let's risk very serious disruptions right across Ontario between teachers and boards and teachers and the provincial government," by eliminating free collective bargaining rights for teachers, or changing substantially Bill 100, simply because on those few very difficult situations, there are disruptions for students. Don't do it.

In making a plea that this should never happen again, I hope that this is not a plea to deny the free collective democratic bargaining rights of teachers in this province. It must not be. This government must not do that. Please remember what Bill Davis knew after 1975.

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): I know that I should respond to the previous speaker, not the person who just made questions and comments, but as a matter of fact the member for Algoma was able to stray somewhat from the previous speaker's comments. I don't know how many people sitting in this chamber at this time have been a parent with their children at home during a secondary school teachers' strike. It's probably even more difficult during an elementary teachers' strike.

As a matter of fact, I say to the member for Algoma, 20 years ago was 1976. You referred to Bill 100 being passed in 1975. I was a trustee on the Peel board at that time and we did have a secondary school teachers' strike which, as I recall, went on for seven or eight weeks, and we did have children in secondary school at the time.

That is a devastating experience for everyone who's involved, particularly for those students who in the normal course of events really expect to have their grades met in one school year and not to have to repeat anything because of the interruption of a strike. Strikes where innocent third parties are involved, such as school children, elementary or secondary, are a very sad experience for everyone. We hope that there will be some satisfaction and some solution to look after all the concerns on all sides.

The Speaker: Response, the member for Halton Centre.

Mr Young: I say to the members of the official opposition and the third party that we are approaching a new millennium and our labour relations are stuck back in the 1930s, so I ask you to join us in renewing labour relations in Ontario, to allow for fair bargaining and fair settlements for all, with no further loss of instructional days for our children.

The Speaker: Further debate? Would the minister like to sum up?

Hon Mr Snobelen: No.

The Speaker: Mr Snobelen has moved second reading of Bill 113. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

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

Shall the bill be ordered for third reading? Agreed.

Mr Snobelen moved third reading of the following bill:

The Speaker: Minister of Education and Training.

Hon Mr Snobelen: I believe that the comments made by my colleagues have been noted. As I said earlier today, no one's heart is gladdened by this sort of legislation, but I appreciate the cooperation of everyone in this chamber in getting this legislation passed today.

The Speaker: Questions and comments? Further debate?

Mr Snobelen has moved third reading of Bill 113. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour, please say "aye."

All those opposed, please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

I declare the motion carried.

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

Hon Mr Snobelen: Mr Speaker, Her Honour awaits to give royal assent.

Her Honour the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario entered the chamber of the Legislative Assembly and took her seat upon the throne.

ROYAL ASSENT SANCTION ROYALE

Hon Hilary M. Weston (Lieutenant Governor): Pray be seated.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): May it please Your Honour, the Legislative Assembly of the province has, at its present sittings thereof, passed a certain bill to which, in the name of and on behalf of the said Legislative Assembly, I respectfully request Your Honour's assent.

Senior Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Journals (Mr Alex D. McFedries): The following is the title of the bill to which Your Honour's assent is prayed:

Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): In Her Majesty's name, Her Honour the Lieutenant Governor doth assent to this bill.

Au nom de Sa Majesté, Son Honneur la lieutenante-gouverneure sanctionne ce projet de loi.

Her Honour was then pleased to retire.

The Speaker: It now being 6 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until Monday at 1:30 of the clock.

The House adjourned at 1800.

30 janvier 1997