L251b - Wed 26 Nov 1997 / Mer 26 Nov 1997
The House met at 1830.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
GOVERNMENT PROCESS SIMPLIFICATION ACT (MINISTRY OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL), 1996 / LOI DE 1996 VISANT À SIMPLIFIER LES PROCESSUS GOUVERNEMENTAUX AU MINISTÈRE DU PROCUREUR GÉNÉRAL
Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for third reading of Bill 61, An Act to simplify government processes and to improve efficiency in the Ministry of the Attorney General / Projet de loi 61, Loi visant à simplifier les processus gouvernementaux et à améliorer l'efficience au ministère du Procureur général.
The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): The member for Welland-Thorold, I believe you had the floor.
Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): Yes, Speaker, I did. I'm pleased but also somewhat compelled to speak to Bill 61.
Here we are on Wednesday evening, 6:30 pm, sitting into the evening. This was going to be the week of the trilogy. Bill 142 was passed yesterday as a result of time allocation: a scant 45 minutes per caucus to debate a piece of legislation that has constituted an attack on the poorest in our society. Quite frankly, there were a whole lot of people who expected Bill 152 to be debated either this afternoon or this evening, or -- dare I say it? -- Bill 160. And here we are debating Bill 61.
As I say, knowing full well that the rules compel me to speak to Bill 61, I'm frustrated, I tell you, by the obligation that I have to stay on point. I find it very frustrating. I find it very restrictive. I'm going to rise to the challenge. I am going to isolate my comments to Bill 61.
Having said that, it's important that no single bill, be it 61 or 142, as was passed yesterday by the government notwithstanding the best efforts of the opposition, and notwithstanding Bill 152, the downloading that's going to raise property taxes for homeowners across this province, every single community in this province, Welland-Thorold, every community across Niagara, in the east, the west, the north and the south of this province, notwithstanding 160 that's going to gut publicly funded education -- notwithstanding all those things, here we are. That was to have been the trilogy.
Perhaps a successor to Ibbitson, perhaps an insider from the Tory caucus, if there are any real insiders in the Tory caucus, in his or her memoirs will tell us what happened, what hurdle was placed in the way that caused this government to stumble and -- dare I say it? -- falter for the briefest of moments. I'm convinced they've got an agenda. So here we are talking about Bill 61, an innocuous bill, as I said the last time I had a chance to speak to it, one which might for many be overridden by the phenomenon that happened down in Welland yesterday when over 500 high school students gathered at Merritt Park across the road from my constituency office to protest Bill 160. With the leadership of Chris Moscato, Angela Young and Bohdanna Diduch, they presented a united and articulate expression of protest and condemnation, high school students from across Welland, a disciplined and articulate condemnation of this government's gutting of Bill 160.
I'm referring to the Tribune report. Unfortunately, I couldn't be there; I was here at Queen's Park. But at the end of the rally, Chris Moscato -- and this illustrates the seriousness with which these students took this endeavour -- reminded everyone to head back to class. He's reported as having said, "We're doing this for education, not for the day off."
I want to commend those student leaders -- Chris Moscato, Angela Young and Bohdanna Diduch -- for their leadership. I want to commend each and every one of those hundreds of high school students who --
Mr Ernie Hardeman (Oxford): Took a day off.
Mr Kormos: Not "took a day off," but utilized a morning of valuable class time to express their repugnance for the grossly anti-democratic and increasingly anti-democratic nature of this government, and specifically their condemnation of Bill 160, their awareness of the fact that Bill 160 will take away from them the quality public education that it took generations and generations of Ontarians to build with sacrifice and commitment.
These students out there at Merritt Park in Welland were welcomed. They knew they were welcome at my constituency office, you see, because unlike some other members of this Legislative Assembly, the constituency office for Welland-Thorold down at the corner of King and Division in Welland has an open invitation. It's as much a public place as is the market square or Merritt Park. People in Welland-Thorold are welcome to express their views in front of our constituency office down there at the corner of King and Division. And I have to tell you, I'm proud of those students who turned out to express their views and to try to bring a little bit of democracy back to this province.
A grade 10 student, Lindsay McCormack, reminded people there that when the Premier was elected, he promised that if he ever broke a promise -- perhaps there's something inherently contradictory. If you're not telling the truth in the first instance -- if you promise that if you break a promise you'll resign, but if you're not telling the truth with respect to the first promise, maybe it's not binding, something akin to a conundrum. But Lindsay McCormack, a grade 10 student, noted that the Premier promised that if he broke a promise, he'd resign. Lindsay McCormack asked, "Why is he still there?" in view of that promise that he made. Why is he still there? Premier, why are you still there if you promised that when you broke a promise, you'd resign?
Another student, a grade 11 student, Kayti Parrent, said, "If they're wrecking our school system now, will we have one left in the future?" Again, an observation by a grade 11 student that should tell us the level of insight that young people have.
They're as interested in Bill 61, these students -- because I'm speaking to Bill 61 here, Speaker. I understand that it's your job to make sure I stay on point, and I understand that more than a few members of the Legislature will have taken it upon themselves to remind me if I should stray, if I should move away from the subject matter of Bill 61, but as I say, we've got to put this in context. You can't isolate any single piece of legislation and not regard it as what it is, as yet another piece of the puzzle. Some are smaller pieces; some are bigger pieces. Go back to Bill 26. We understand now, all the more so, how Bill 26 was the seminal piece of the puzzle, the cornerstone. It was the foundation for what so much else has been built on, that centralization of power, that not just erosion of but attack on democracy and on local governance.
I want to tell you, students like Kayti Parrent, Lindsay McCormack, students like Paul Alfaro, another grade 11 student, who stated in as blunt but as insightful a way as any Ontarian could ever -- Paul Alfaro said this. He said: "I want to get Mike Harris out of there. He's causing too much trouble for us." Paul Alfaro, high school student, grade 11, spoke for a whole lot of Ontarians when he said: "I want to get Mike Harris out of there. He's causing us too much trouble."
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I'm proud of those students. One of the things that was said was that teachers have taken a stand, and today most students in Ontario are willing to show the province that they don't support Bill 160 either.
Those protests down in Welland at Merritt Park across from my constituency office -- it's not my constituency office; it's the constituency office of the people of Welland-Thorold. Those protests were part of a network of protests across the province taking place in communities and ridings, as I say, in every part of Ontario, illustrative of the broad, widespread repugnance that Ontarians have for Bill 160 and, beyond that, the repugnance they have for the oppressive and anti-democratic style of this government. We'd better value our democratic institutions. We'd better value them enough that we're prepared to struggle for them, prepared to make sacrifices for them.
There have been people in these galleries over the last week who in a disciplined manner, with the utilization of demonstrations and in the most disciplined of ways, have demonstrated their revulsion for the style and tactics of this government and for this government's attack on democracy. They have risked arrest, and some indeed have been arrested. There have been arrests here in the Legislature of people who have engaged in civil disobedience, a style of protest that Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King developed and by which they exposed to the world injustices in their time and by which people in our time are exposing to the world the injustices that are occurring here in Ontario.
Passive resistance. Silent protest. You've been here when they have happened, Speaker. People have been arrested as a result of these. I say the disruption is but a small price to pay for democracy. There are far too many places in the world where that type of protest is met with no tolerance at all. Do we really want to emulate those kinds of places? Is it too big a price to pay for democracy to have the occasional disruption here at Queen's Park? I say no, especially when we witnessed the most disciplined and sincere of protests. Arrests -- no charges, I acknowledge that, that I'm aware of -- of some of the people engaging in a historically legitimate and universally recognized form of peaceful civil disobedience, passive resistance.
What has happened to them is that they've been served with trespass notices under the Trespass to Property Act which have forbidden them to ever attend at Queen's Park again, to ever attend in this chamber again, in what should be the most public and most accessible of places. These are people who have committed no crime. These are people who have committed no crime but to voice their sincere concern about the attack on democracy that's occurring in this province. People across Ontario celebrate their actions. People across Ontario find it repugnant and unacceptable by any stretch of anyone's imagination that the doors to this building could be locked, bolted and barred to the public.
There are places in the world where that happens, and there are places in the world where that's the status quo. They're called dictatorships, they're called totalitarian regimes, where the decision-making takes place behind closed doors, where there's no public review, no opportunity for the public to observe their legislators in action. We're now finding this occurring here in Ontario.
Understand that these notices under the Trespass to Property Act forbid these people from ever coming to the Legislative Assembly chamber again, forever. I recall two governments ago, to their credit, there were some amendments to the Trespass to Property Act that would have put a time limitation on these trespass notices. Unfortunately, the government of the day allowed that legislation to die. That of course was the government in the years 1987-90. Unfortunately, they allowed the legislation to die.
This legislation, this barring in perpetuity people from having access to this place, a public place, the most public place -- we don't own this building. We don't own these galleries. The people of Ontario own them. We're here at their will. This government has changed things around 180 degrees, where the public is here at its will.
I recall the days of throne speeches or budget speeches when the public galleries were as often as not -- because it was by invitation only -- packed with guests of Mike Harris and his ilk. My goodness, demonstrations in the gallery weren't frowned upon then if they consisted of, oh, applause. That was considered quite acceptable. When Harris's buddies, his banker friends and his corporate buddies, would applaud the announcement of a tax on the poor, would applaud the announcement of a drive to reduce minimum wages, those protests, those demonstrations were considered highly appropriate. But when Ontarians, good, committed, sincere people, dared to engage in silent protest to the oppressiveness of Bill 160, why, they were served with notices barring them from ever attending at this building again.
That will drive people to a point where locked doors will become less relevant, where padlocks and no-trespassing signs will become invitations to break down those barriers rather than to observe them or recognize them. This government is provoking a collision between the insiders, the people in the inner circle, the people with power, who are the people with money, the people with political influence -- yes, once again the people with money -- the people who have Mike Harris's ear -- once again the people with money. This government is drawing a roadmap for a collision course between that small inner circle and the great number of hardworking Ontarians, women, men, their kids, who want to see the restoration of democracy here in Ontario.
First this government slashed welfare rates by 21.6%, 22% for all intents and purposes. Then it jacked up MPPs' salaries by 40%, an additional $3 million a year. It made single moms and their kids -- unemployed; no jobs -- pay for higher salaries for MPPs across the board. The minimum wage here is $78,007 a year. That's the minimum wage. Take that Tory caucus, and there's but a handful who earn but the minimum wage. The majority earn perks in one form or another in varying numbers of dollars.
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I'll tell you some of the people who mentioned Bill 61 to me this morning. It came up in a conversation I had with a bunch of hardworking women and men, United Food and Commercial Workers who are currently and have been forced on strike at Maple Leaf Foods, who have been out there on the picket lines not willingly, not because they want to be. Like the vast, vast majority of Ontarians, they dearly want to be at work earning decent wages for their hard labour, but the workers at Maple Leaf Foods have been forced out on to a picket line.
Maple Leaf Foods, as you know, is a huge Canadian corporate success. Its big-time global aspirations, like meat slaughtering and processing operations, have earned it a pile of money, huge profits. Maple Leaf Foods has spun off into all sorts of other food production: bakeries, pasta-making, frozen foods and even coffee and doughnut shops. But in their quest for yet greater profits, when unemployment remains at double-digit levels across this province, the president of Maple Leaf Foods, one Michael McCain, is offering his workers but the scraps.
Over in Saskatchewan in August 1997, Maple Leaf Foods locked out its workers because they wanted to improve on the base wage rate -- catch this, Speaker: They wanted to improve. They had the audacity, as hardworking women and men, to want to improve on a base wage rate of $9.88 an hour. Please, the audacity to want to improve on an hourly wage of less than $10 an hour for hardworking people, hardworking women and men. They were locked out.
In October, the same thing happened to workers in Hamilton, Ontario. Their base rate, though marginally higher, was $10.90 an hour. After the lockout in Hamilton, Maple Leaf Foods had nearly 500 of their workers locked out of their jobs. Then about 900 pork production workers in Burlington, who were faced with company demands for rollbacks -- they were being called upon to pay money back to their employer, ranging anywhere from $6 to $9 an hour. Here were workers making profits for Maple Leaf Foods, whose bosses called upon them to pay the boss money, pay back $6 to $9 an hour. That forced those workers into a strike by November 1997. They were followed just days later by some 750 workers in Edmonton, Alberta, and those workers in Edmonton are being threatened with permanent plant closure and loss of their jobs.
These workers have one thing going for them and that is that they're members of a union. They exercised their collective bargaining rights that weren't granted, that weren't won in any game of chance, that were earned by workers as a result of years and generations of struggle. These Maple Leaf Food workers are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers, the UFCW -- you're familiar with that organization -- and that's the one thing they've got going for them, that and their courage and their solidarity.
I'll tell you, we in this caucus, and I hope other opposition members share this view, don't think it's right that Canadian workers should have their wages and benefits reduced to rock-bottom levels just because that's somebody's idea and it happens also to be the Premier's idea, it also happens to be the Tory idea of what is the current competitive reality, the drive to the bottom, especially when Maple Leaf Foods continues to enjoy profits. But their goal is to try and swallow up competition. We in this caucus --
Interjections.
The Deputy Speaker: Order, order.
Mr Kormos: To talk about decent wages for Canadian and Ontario workers brings howls of protest from Conservative backbenchers because they don't agree with the proposition. They don't agree that workers should receive decent wages for fair, hard work.
The fact is that the bottom line has got to be that Canadian workers have to be paid what's fair and equitable here in Canada and here in Ontario -- period, end of story, bottom line. After all, Michael McCain, the president of Maple Leaf Foods, is doing fine, thank you. I have no doubt that Michael McCain is a strong advocate of the policies of this government. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. Perhaps if I take a look before tomorrow's period of legislative debate, I have no doubt that Michael McCain or somebody down his food chain has made some financial contributions to the efforts of this Conservative Party in their political agenda.
That's why, Speaker, I'm calling on you, I'm calling on my colleagues in this Legislature to stand up with workers at Maple Leaf Foods, to stand up for fairness when it comes to wages and for fairness when it comes to ensuring that workers enjoy a little bit of the wealth that they create. We could stand shoulder to shoulder, and we do, with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union on their picket lines.
But we're also going to boycott Maple Leaf food products. Meat products: that means Maple Leaf, Burns, Overlander, Swift Premium, Prime Poultry, Campfire, Shopsy's, Coorsh, Clover, Bittners, Devon, Parma High Grade, Mary Miles and York. Boycott it. We'll not spend a penny on one of those products as long as those workers remain on picket lines.
That means, when it comes to baked goods: Canada bread, Dempsters, Karnes, Tenderflake lard, Tenderflake pastry and Venice Bakery. Boycott it. Not a penny on a single one of their products as long as their workers suffer as a result of Michael McCain's greed.
When it comes to canned and frozen foods, we're going to boycott KAM, Klik, Maple Leaf canned chicken and ham, Maple Leaf frozen pizza and hash browns. Boycott it. Not a penny spent on those products as long as Maple Leaf Farms workers are forced on to picket lines and locked out of their jobs and called upon to accept less than their fair share of the profits that they're generating.
Other products: Country Style doughnuts, Olivieri pasta and sauces, Buns Master bakeries, Shur-Gain pet food and Livestock feeds. Boycott it as long as United Food and Commercial Workers remain locked out and on picket lines struggling for the most basic of decent wages, the most modest of decent wages here in Ontario.
I received a phone call about Bill 61 from an architect down in Niagara region who encouraged me, and I told him: "Listen, the New Democrats are supporting Bill 61. We're voting in support of Bill 61." More than a few of the things contained in 61 were as a result of the initiatives begun by Marion Boyd when she was the Attorney General in the last government.
Interjections.
Mr Kormos: No, there's no ownership in these things. Ms Boyd, who distinguished herself as an Attorney General, has made it clear to me that she doesn't take any personal ownership; it's not a matter of saying this is some sort of politically driven agenda. But she agrees -- I'm sure she'll speak to this in her own right -- that it's simply the right thing to do. That's why she began those initiatives as Attorney General and is pleased, far more pleased than I am, to pass the torch on to the current Attorney General, who pales -- well, to say that the current Attorney General pales to Marion Boyd is an insult to Ms Boyd, because the current Attorney General pales to a whole lot of things.
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A young architect I know, Emilio Raimondo, whose firm has done some outstanding work in Niagara region -- most recently they did some work right in Welland -- and whose work I'm familiar with and who is a bright young architect I would recommend any time -- I say that never having retained him but being well aware of the sort of work he and his partner in his firm have done across the region. What happened is that the architects' association, their society, assigned to various architects the responsibility for contacting members of the Legislative Assembly. It's a lobby. I've got no quarrel with lobbies. In almost 10 years here, I've found lobbies to be a very effective, productive experience. I quite frankly welcome them. You get to learn a whole lot in a relatively short period of time. As a matter of fact, I've urged communities, professions, associations, workers of various types to participate in the lobby exercise. It's one of the ways MPPs can acquire a familiarity with an area of their community they may not have had contact with.
Emilio Raymond, an outstanding young architect who our community is very proud of and who represents his profession well, called me, because part of his responsibility was to contact, I didn't ask him but I suspect, other members from the Niagara region. There are six; there are only going to be four after the next election. The Niagara region gets the shaft.
Interjection.
Mr Kormos: It does. You find that funny? I don't find it funny. The Niagara region, one of the largest regional municipalities in Ontario, gets the shaft as a result of the riding redistribution. It has six members. I tell you, the people in Niagara don't find it amusing at all. Their representation is reduced to four here in the Legislative Assembly.
I don't know if Emilio Raimondo was responsible for contacting other members of the assembly, but he certainly contacted me and I assured him that this caucus, the New Democrats, were supporting Bill 61. His particular interest, of course, was in section 4 of the bill, which restores lien rights to architects and their employees under the Construction Lien Act. It used to be the Mechanics' Lien Act in days gone by, back in the days when I was familiar with the legislation. It's been amended since then.
This caucus concurs with that proposition entirely. I've assured Mr Raimondo that I appreciate his input, that I welcome it, that I'm prepared to listen to him, as I am to every other constituent and constituency within Welland-Thorold, or the whole Niagara region, and respond to the positions put to me. So I received a call from Emilio Raimondo.
I also received a letter from one Paul Aird. My impression from the nature of the letter and the way it's addressed is that it was sent to all MPPs in this Legislative Assembly. I don't know Mr Aird. It's a small article dated November 25, 1997; it's very current. Paul Aird is described as a conservationist and university educator living in Inglewood, Ontario. I quite frankly, off the top of my head, don't know what riding Inglewood is in. I don't know if members can be of assistance.
He has indicated that people can feel free, notwithstanding that this is copyrighted, to use this material freely, excepting, of course, that commercial users must respect copyright limitations. Perhaps by me putting this on Hansard I've impacted a little bit on his commercial copyright; I'm not sure. It may well become public domain.
You'll recall there was a poem during the debate over megacity, by one Robert Priest. You'll recall I apologized for perhaps having infringed on the copyright to Mr Priest's song-poem. You'll recall the lyrics well, I'm sure. As I say, I apologized. Mr Priest -- another one of our cultural treasures here in the city of Toronto and in the province -- made it clear to me subsequently that he didn't mind at all that I had recited the lyrics to his poem-song here in the Legislative Assembly, because I had heard them being hummed and sung at bus stations and streetcar stops and thereabouts.
Mr Aird, however, has already provided notice that his brief commentary, although copyrighted, can be used freely. The subject matter is interesting in the context of what we've been witnessing -- I come back here to the context of this debate over Bill 61 -- here in the Legislative Assembly, and that is the attack on democracy.
This treatise is about civil disobedience. There's a strong human history of civil disobedience. I'm not going to read the whole thing. It appears Mr Aird has sent this to every member of the Legislative Assembly, so people who live in a riding represented by a member of the Conservative Party should call their Tory MPP, those represented by Liberals should call their Liberal MPP, those represented by New Democrats should call their New Democratic Party MPP to receive a full copy of it. I think Mr Aird would appreciate it being distributed as thoroughly as possible.
The title, as I say, is Civil Disobedience. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I do feel compelled to refer to a couple of statements that he makes in this fairly well written and well-thought-out reflection -- that's all it is, a reflection -- on civil disobedience, in the context of Mike Harris's Ontario.
Mr Aird writes: "The Ontario government's vilification of principals, teachers, school boards and others opposed to its handling of public education exemplifies the demise of democracy in Ontario. The government's demonstrated lack of respect for its citizens and for their contributions to the democratic process are dangerous warning signs."
Mr Aird doesn't engage in the hyperbole that some have of labelling this government as being totalitarian or worse. I understand there's oftentimes some hyperbole attached to that type of labelling. But Mr Aird very specifically speaks to "dangerous warning signs." I suggest to you that it's a relatively generous statement on his part, that we're merely witnessing the warning signs. My fear is that we're in the midst of the eradication of democracy. Mr Aird, far more generous, speaks only of dangerous warning signs.
He goes on, but then he speaks specifically -- had he been aware that we were debating Bill 61 this evening, I'm sure he would have made reference to Bill 61 as well. I have to tell you, first being exposed to the bill, seeing that it was sponsored by the Attorney General, I felt that maybe out of caution we should just automatically oppose it, in view of this Attorney General's history. Take a look at his history.
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Mr Peters, the auditor, has spoken of this Attorney General's history over the course of just about the last two years when it comes to collecting over $300 million in unpaid fines, in victim surcharges, none of which this Attorney General, the sponsor of Bill 61, deemed appropriate to refer to the central collection agency.
This government is beating up on kids, on public education, on the poor, on the sick, on the elderly, and reaching into their back pockets and into their pocketbooks, yet over $300 million of unpaid fines aren't referred to the central collection agency by an Attorney General who is simply incompetent. If it happens once it's an accident; if it happens twice it's two accidents. When it happens as many times as it has happened with this Attorney General, it's nothing short of sheer incompetence.
Do I have to get into the family support plan? Do I have to get into the backlog of cases that he has generated once again, generating the risk of Askov and Melo decisions? Do I have to talk about his abandonment of legal aid and how that's denying, among others, a whole whack of women access to their courts?
Mr Aird restricts his comments to Bill 160. I'm sure he had Bill 61 in mind as well, because that's what we're speaking to tonight. Mr Aird says: "The review process for Bill 160 has become a farce. No white paper was issued to explain the complex bill. Public hearings were rigged to deny access to the public...."
The final comment by Mr Aird is, "For the government to ram the unjust measures" in its Bill 160 "through the Legislature by denying our elected representatives adequate time to debate them is to confirm that democracy is virtually dead in Ontario."
We will have spent more time debating Bill 61 on third reading than Bill 160; Bill 61 which, in so far as I'm aware, every member of this Legislature supports; Bill 61, which is a brief 13 pages in length, which is innocuous in its own right, which is the result of a process begun by Marion Boyd in the course of her service as Attorney General in the last government. Bill 61, a scant 13 pages, is going to get more third reading debate than Bill 160. Is it any wonder why Paul Aird writes about democracy being virtually dead here in Ontario, when Bill 160 -- evil and destructive to its very essence -- is going to receive at the government's whim but three hours' maximum of third reading debate when Bill 61 will have enjoyed a significant surplus of that?
Speaker, I want to thank you for your assistance in keeping me on point with Bill 61. I appreciate your efforts in that regard. I want to remind you to boycott Maple Leaf Foods and all their products.
The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. The member's time has expired. Questions or comments.
Mr Gerry Martiniuk (Cambridge): I would like to thank the member for Welland-Thorold for his stream-of-consciousness presentation that would have made James Joyce proud, but unfortunately he really didn't deal with Bill 61. I'd like to deal with that just shortly for a moment.
In this bill we're making amendments relating to the public guardian and trustee to streamline procedures, reduce costs to the public and improve efficiency. These changes will benefit a wide range of clients served by the public guardian and trustee, such as: vulnerable adults, whom I'm sure the member for Welland-Thorold is also concerned with; charitable institutions and beneficiaries of estates; persons who die in Ontario without a will and without Ontario relatives able and willing to act as estate trustees.
We're also amending the Statutory Powers Procedure Act to clarify the details of basic procedural rules applying to Ontario tribunals. This will serve to enhance the efficiencies of the hearing process for business and individuals and the tribunals themselves.
With this bill we also make several changes relating to the Assessment Review Board. The bill makes simple procedural and other amendments which will improve the board's ability to provide better service and make more efficient use of the board's hearing time.
I commend this bill to all parties in the House. I think it will benefit the public and I request that you support it.
Mr Tony Ruprecht (Parkdale): I listened to the comments of the member for Welland-Thorold very carefully. He indicated this evening that there is what he calls a demise of democracy creeping into Ontario. In fact, he goes further and says demise has set in and the rot has set in. In this Bill 61 there are two points I wish to very quickly address.
One is the lack of legal aid certificates. Most of you -- certainly in my office -- do get some people who come to you and say, "I need a legal aid certificate because I have justice on my side and I cannot go to court, obviously, without some help from the government." That covers a broad range of affairs, but it is clear that if five people a week in my office cannot get legal aid certificates it simply means one thing: that the demise of democracy, as the member for Welland-Thorold has indicated, is on its way.
We cannot simply afford to have one system of justice for those who can afford it, one system of justice for those who are rich, and a totally different set of principles and justice for those who are poor and who are not able to afford it because they simply can't. That kind of justice cannot take place in Ontario.
I say to you today that it is important that legal aid certificates must be maintained to the point where people of every layer of society feel that they can maintain and have access to justice. That has to be one of the major pillars of our society.
A second point --
Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa-Rideau): You are making the member for Welland-Thorold --
Mr Ruprecht: I find it hard to hear you across the floor.
The second point is that, yes, he is also right when he says that the dangerous warning sign --
The Deputy Speaker: The member's time has expired. Further questions and comments.
Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): I want to thank the member for Welland-Thorold for his comments. It's interesting that the government members get so exercised when this member speaks and castigate his comments as being stream of consciousness. In fact, he was very much on the point, the point being that this is a bill brought forward by an Attorney General who has in many cases not proven to be able to implement the very things he has brought forward in the past. This member is quite right to question whether or not the capacity is there with this Attorney General to effect implementation of this bill.
Furthermore, the member is quite clear about the purpose of our debating a bill at all. So his passionate comments about democracy are very much to the point. His point, that we are indeed speaking about a bill which all of us have agreed is a bill that will pass this Legislature and has good points to it and yet we're debating it at much greater length than some of the world-shaking legislative pieces that this government has brought forward, speaks very much to the issues around democracy that this member raised.
The fact of the matter is that wherever possible, this government limits debate. They limit debate, they limit the ability of the public to respond to legislation and at every turn they do that more. All they do is trip themselves up, as they did today, with the result that their entire agenda is in a shambles.
I know it really irritates members like the member for Ottawa-Rideau when the member for Welland-Thorold puts his finger on the problems this government has, but he does it very eloquently, and he certainly speaks for many Ontarians when he does so.
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Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): I was really planning on addressing my comments to Bill 61, but I realize I have to follow the comments of the initial speaker, Mr Kormos, the member for Welland-Thorold, and he didn't talk about Bill 61. He talked about the extra costs of the pension plan or the extra costs of the salaries of the MPPs.
I have here an article that was written by the Canadian Press, and in there Paul Love of Price Waterhouse is quoted. One of the things that's important to point out is that the pension plan has been reduced, the tax-free allowances have been eliminated and many bonuses have been eliminated, including extra salary for committee work. According to this article it will save taxpayers 5% a year, and the whole thing will be paid off in 20 years or less.
Mr Kormos is so upset about this that I expect he is going to be the first one to walk into the Legislative Assembly office tomorrow and ask for a pay cut. I certainly would endorse that. I did notice that he was being urged on by the Liberal member for Kingston and The Islands, but I realize that member loves to urge people on, and I know he was just sucking him right in and there's a trap there.
The member for Welland-Thorold also suggested that we all boycott Maple Leaf Foods. I'm sure he didn't mean that we should boycott Maple Leaf Foods, because Maple Leaf Foods is owned principally by his friends the teachers' union leaders. The Ontario teachers' pension plan controls 41% of Maple Leaf Foods. I'm sure he didn't really mean we should boycott Maple Leaf Foods.
The Deputy Speaker: The member for Welland-Thorold.
Mr Kormos: At the risk of being accused of rising to the bait, you bet your boots I advocate a boycott of Maple Leaf Foods, as long as Maple Leaf Foods has its workers locked out and denied access to a fair share of the profits. New Democrats, teachers and their leadership, as members of the Ontario Federation of Labour, joined today in greeting the UFCW strikers who attended the OFL convention at the Sheraton Centre. Teachers and their leaders, along with other representatives of working people in this province, rose to their feet and erupted in applause at the arrival of 100-plus UFCW workers currently on strike. You bet your boots there's going to be a boycott of Maple Leaf Foods. Teachers will be engaging in it; Steelworkers will be engaging in it; industrial workers of all sorts and all locals and fairminded people will be engaging in it, because none of us want the products we consume to be made available to us at a cost to workers the way Maple Leaf Foods has called for rollbacks, concessions from Maple Leaf Foods workers.
I want to thank the members of the Legislature for responding. I want to challenge one member who persists in the mythology of the salary reduction to read the government's own budget book, which illustrates that as a result of Mike Harris's pay increases for MPPs, the annual cost to taxpayers in this province has risen by $3 million. That's a $3-million pay increase paid for by single moms and their kids as a result of the cutbacks in welfare.
The Deputy Speaker: Further debate.
Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): I am pleased to speak tonight to Bill 61, which is supposedly being put forward as a red-tape-cutting bill. The government prides itself in doing all of this machination behind the scenes so they can cut red tape, because that seems to be the real business word out there today. The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario continues to put itself forward as the good business managers of Ontario. Instead, what we're seeing over the first couple of years of the PC government is a continuous example of incompetence.
It was actually quite timely, if not ironic, that we would have the Provincial Auditor's report come out yesterday. If this auditor had to focus on a single area, they certainly singled out the Attorney General's ministry for complete mismanagement in significant areas that it has jurisdiction over, which is quite sad, because it's actually the one area that affects many, many people. This is nothing new. We've seen this repeatedly through a whole variety of ministries.
Last night we were here debating Bill 142 and we passed, unfortunately, Bill 142, workfare. It has been put over on the public as though they've finally initiated that plank of their platform, that they're going to make people work for their benefits. What we know is true today is that this is probably the last thing they're actually doing, and they are paying lots of money for government advertising. Just on the workfare ads, the taxpayers of Ontario are paying $900,000 for a program that is supposed to be implemented as a mandatory program. Municipalities, cities and towns across Ontario will have no choice but to participate in this type of program. The recipients, who get their cheques from the government every month, likewise have no option; it's going to be mandatory. So what was the need to advertise and spend $900,000 of my money, your money, taxpayers' money on ads for a program that is mandatory anyway? The people don't have a choice to participate in it. It's laughable.
The truth of the matter is quite simply that the government has not been able to sell this like they thought it would sell. The time is long gone since the 1995 election, when that was the real hot button for the public and the people were angry because the economy wasn't performing well. Now that the economy is performing better, thanks in large part to things completely out of the control of the provincial government, quite frankly, issues like the stock markets, the US market, those kinds of things that the provincial government has very little influence over, now that our economy is flourishing and people aren't as angry any more, all of a sudden the workfare program is just not going over.
We went to the city of North Bay and we couldn't even find support for the workfare bill in North Bay, the Premier's own home town. Of 24 submissions in North Bay -- and the PA knows well, he's here; he's laughing now but I'll tell you he wasn't laughing in North Bay. The truth is, of 24 submissions, not one could support Bill 142, which was really quite sad. We knew there was some real problem with the public relations strategy at work behind the scenes and in all of those Tory minds back there.
What's very interesting about red tape bills -- I'm always surprised that my office in Windsor doesn't get calls from the community that say: "We have too much red tape. There's too much red tape. I'm having a real problem." In fact, most constituency offices don't hear enough from our business community and we have to outreach into those communities. There probably are a number of areas that really need to be streamlined, and governments should continually work to streamline the system to make life easy for people who need to access government for whatever reason.
This is what happened some time ago in one of their red tape bills. It was in today's copy of the Toronto Star. The entitlement of the article was, "`Surprised' Metro Finds Out Couriers Don't Need Licence." It goes on to describe one of the red tape bills the government passed. What was quite interesting about it was that it was a regulation giving municipalities the power to license and oversee couriers, that this in fact had been dropped. But more interesting than that was that "The commission" -- that is in Metro -- "had no idea the province was considering deregulation of couriers," -- said one from the commission -- "and was never consulted about it."
This is quite a pattern for the Ontario government. You don't consult on anything. We don't know who it is you keep saying you've listened to, but time and time again we find more examples where the people who supposedly should know simply have never been consulted.
This went on to say, "She said next year's $270,000 in licensing revenue could have been made up elsewhere, if the province had told them sooner." So not only did they not consult the group before they removed the regulation to license couriers, they didn't even tell anybody they were doing it. It was put off at the time, "Just more red tape we really don't need."
In fact, one of the Metro councillors now, who is "a member of the licensing commission, said the province's move is `outrageous,' especially since Metro was never consulted about the benefits to the public of licensing couriers." It goes on to say, "`It means any unsavoury character can deliver your documents, cheques or parcels without even a cursory check of that person's background. He could be a thief or fraud artist and nobody would know,ÿ Wood said the couriers were deregulated partly because the Progressive Conservative government is committed to eliminating red tape."
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I would submit that there are really some very good reasons why certain types of regulations were put into place in the first place. Their excuse is:
"`The industry could potentially be forced to get licences in every municipality which they are sort of passing through or dropping off. In that sort of scenario it would be very cumbersome for the industry to operate.
"`Our sense is that consumer protection is no longer an issue.'"
Would it occur to anybody that consumer protection is no longer an issue because they regulated the couriers in the first place, that in fact they were able to weed out any that might be fraud artists because of the regulation itself? No wonder it wasn't a consumer issue. Then the Metro councillor laughed when he was told the province's justification and said:
"`How do you know that the courier doesn't have a criminal record as long as your arm and will skip town with a big certified cheque? It wipes out the requirement for them to carry insurance.
"`The real issue is, who will protect consumers from the municipal affairs ministry?'"
In fact, you guys are being painted as the bad guys here.
It's quite fascinating because here you are, the Ontario government, actually eliminating regulation that has a very real reason for being, and here we are tonight discussing another red tape bill. You wonder what its purpose was. What exactly was the purpose to bringing it in? Has any of that been identified? If we left it to the Attorney General's office, we would have some problem.
We've had significant problems with the Attorney General's office ever since the provincial election, probably well before that as well, although we realize there was some effort to improve that.
The point is, this government gets elected on the basis of being good business managers. If we brought this gang to Windsor to work in our business community in the Windsor area, they'd have been fired years ago -- fired or you'd go bankrupt. You simply could not survive operating in the style of management that you operate. You would never survive.
We had this experience with the family support program because this government in its wisdom decided to shut down the regional office. Before it ever had a plan on how it was going to manage the closure of regional offices, it just closed them. It laid off stacks of people across Ontario in its closure of offices, people who had the wisdom to know how programs actually ran. You got rid of them all, all the people with experience. Then you decided, after you got rid of them, that you needed some people to do some program work, so you called up GO Temp and you hired people with absolutely no experience, likely paid minimum wage, to come rushing in. You rented floors out of a hotel building and used their telephone system to make the phone calls.
I can't be telling you guys anything new. You've all heard this before. The point is, it's sheer incompetence because you didn't think before you acted. The end result was that families in the Windsor and Essex county area were not getting family support that was due to them; not even a social program that the government was paying for. It was money due and entitled to them from support partners. That's what it was. But all of that money went up the flue somewhere, never to be found. Months and months have gone by and we still have outstanding cases.
In the meantime, we already went through a Christmas season with moms, predominantly moms, not getting money that was owing to them. We would come in the House day after day with example after example trying to put this Attorney General on the hot seat. We said very clearly then how absolutely incompetent of you to shut down regional offices, to completely change programs over with no plan, with absolutely no plan, no vision.
The reason this is so familiar, this ringing of this "no plan, no vision," is because it's exactly the same speech that our Minister of Health gave just a couple of weeks ago to the Ontario Hospital Association. The Minister of Health went to the hospital directors and had to admit that in the area of health care we have had no plan and no vision.
After two and a half years of governing in Ontario you would think that in the area of health care, where you're actually dealing with life and death, with the deliverance of health care to God and country, you could have had a plan and a vision before you decided to implement all your various changes -- to shut down hospitals, to merge hospitals, cut their budgets outright. Just at a time when they needed people, you laid off people.
When we needed more community services because of the significant shrinking too fast in the hospital sector, you came around and you sprinkled all these announcements around Ontario, but you never brought the cheque.
The former Minister of Health came down to Windsor months ago and with great fanfare announced moneys to go towards the anorexia-bulimia society in a program that was going to be delivered out of the hospital. He did the cheque-cutting ceremony months ago. Do you know when we got the first red cent for that program? A couple of weeks ago. You got the great headlines. That was a year ago.
You don't have the plan and you don't have the vision, so we continue to come in the House and say you cannot cut hospital budgets before your plans are in place, you can't shut hospitals down before you have community services in place, because you say that's going to work. You didn't have the plan and the communities all knew that.
Finally, two years later, you have a new health minister and the first speech she delivers to the Ontario Hospital Association is, "We have no plan and we have no vision." I'm listening to this and I'm thinking, "Where have you been for two years?" We've been saying this for two years.
When you come from the city of Windsor with the kind of monumental change that we have gone through in our health care system, that I admit now we walked into voluntarily -- we walked into that under the last government. We said, "Okay, we'll change how we do business, we'll fix it, we'll try something different, we'll go out on the edge here," because the government guaranteed that all the money saved in restructuring was staying in the community.
The first October of the PC government, the biggest, most fatal blow that we suffered in Windsor was the admission by the Minister of Health at the time that the money was not going to stay in our community. We had to tell the rest of Ontario that this is going to be the new age of health care all right, and just brace yourselves, because God knows what's coming next. In fact, we've seen that across the board now, this kind of mismanagement, no plan, no vision. We see it time and time again.
There are other ministries that deal with issues that aren't life and death, but if you could pick which ones were your absolute most vital, that you should have spent the time to plan and not be prepared to just rush in and make all of your cuts because you're on some kind of ideological bent, the area of health care would have been the area to do that. That's not what you chose to do.
Interjection.
The Deputy Speaker: Member for Etobicoke-Humber, you're not in your seat.
Mrs Pupatello: The member from Etobicoke has the nerve to speak out. I wonder if this member specifically has ever come to the Windsor area. Have you ever decided to try our emergency services lately?
Interjections.
The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. This is getting out of control.
Mrs Pupatello: I don't apologize for being provocative on this issue. We understand that you are under significant pressures in your ridings right now. Bill 160 was another crash-and-burn exercise for the government. In my view, it's been the issue. It should have been your issue. Unfortunately, it was our issue for the people of Ontario. In education, it seems you don't have a plan either. This kind of pattern is being repeated over and over again within every ministry.
Here's our good friend from Grey-Owen Sound. We went up to Owen Sound to visit Bill Murdoch when he had a ribbon-cutting ceremony. I'm just curious to know. Did you actually receive the money? The answer is no.
They sent the minister up there to cut the ribbon for long-term care in that community. Has the money arrived at the door of his riding? Not one red cent. These ministers are pretty clever. What they do with their budget is they allocate all these special funds in all these special categories. Then they send their ministers around to do all this ribbon-cutting: "We're going to reinvest here; we're going to reinvest over there." Next thing you know, they strike up another commission so they can talk about it. The only thing these commissions are successful at doing is delaying the expenditure of the dollars. That's exactly what you've done in the city of Windsor, let me tell you. That's what they're doing in your riding. I want you to go back home and count the pennies when they finally get there, but don't hold your breath; we won't see you again. The truth of the matter is I would like to see that member again.
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Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound): Will you come back to visit me?
The Deputy Speaker: Order. Member for Windsor-Sandwich, direct your comments to the Chair, please.
Mrs Pupatello: Quite frankly, the situation with Windsor health care isn't even funny. It would be laughable if it wasn't so serious. We had the minister commission a report on emergency services. That was in the month of August. It was actually submitted to the minister August 8. Did they come forward with what the report said, with the minister's own people making the report about emergency services in Windsor? No, we had to get our own copy of that report.
We had to unleash it on the House and say: "Look, your own people are telling you everything you've done is wrong," that you've got the gall to cut funding which shuts an entire emergency service down at the west end of Windsor, in the heart of my riding, without any kind of building of the other two emergency sites. You don't have enough emergency bays outside for an ambulance to even drive up in. You've got the ambulance stopping on Ouellette Avenue and rolling the patients on the gurney right down the driveway. How many of you people would ever put up with that kind of circumstance? None of you would.
I have invited you time and time again to come down to Windsor so we can talk. I want you to come to Windsor so you can see. I want to show you the sheer incompetence of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of the Attorney General. We'll take a walk down Ouellette, where the family support plan office used to be, where the people actually knew the names of the business contacts. When the cheques weren't working out, they could call the guy at GM or the girl at Ford or wherever and make all the arrangements you had to. But you didn't do that. No, you just shut everything down without thinking about it.
What's absolutely staggering to me is that the auditor's report comes out and speaks directly to the incompetence of the Attorney General, and says, "The criminal court backlogs are more serious than under the NDP." Well, who would believe that?
Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): They were serious then.
Mrs Pupatello: They were quite serious then. It says uncollected fines hit $316 million from last March. I want to know where the snitch line is for these unpaid fines. How can this government bring another snitch line in for fraud and welfare, and you don't bring in a snitch line for fines that go uncollected, that they actually admit to this kind of incompetence?
It says as of last March the province was owed $316 million in fines under the Highway Traffic Act and Criminal Code. It says 60% had been in arrears for more than two years; it collected just $25 million. We could build a lot of hospitals with the money that's out there that you don't want to go after. That's the kind of competence we'd like to see in a government, that we haven't seen yet from this government, right across ministries.
We watched what happened with community and social services. You've got the nerve now to pass a bill with absolutely no system in place for all your delivery agents across Ontario to even deliver workfare properly, because you don't have the computer technology to do it. That was reflected again in the auditor's report: The Attorney General doesn't have the computer system to set up what he's supposed to in order to do his job properly. I realize it's shocking to the people of Ontario that the PC Party in government here in Ontario is completely incompetent.
The Deputy Speaker: Questions or comments?
Mrs Boyd: It's always hard after the member for Windsor-Sandwich gets up to try and choose what on earth we're going to respond to, because the passion is so great it kind of overwhelms us. She certainly feels very strongly about the issues that she raises.
I would like to point out to the member that she shouldn't be talking about the Askov decision as having been a problem of our government; it was our problem to solve. In fact, the previous Liberal government did exactly what this government is doing: It gave lots of rhetoric about improving court procedure and ended up destroying and backlogging the courts.
When the member for Windsor-Sandwich points out that the situation is by far worse now under this government, with all the Attorney General's comments about these special blitzes and so on, we all told him that those special blitzes wouldn't work to solve the problem he's got. We all gave him various suggestions about what needed to be done, but the finance minister said to the Attorney General, "I don't care what your problems are; you have to take millions of dollars out of the running of the court services." That's exactly why you're in the mess you're in.
This bill, as the member points out, with all the fanfare about cutting red tape, is just an effort on the part of this government to try and reassure people that they are doing something constructive. In fact, we keep telling you that when you do this kind of bill, you leave yourselves wide open to criticism and comment about the other incompetencies that you are displaying every day as a government. The electorate is not going to stand for it.
Mr Murdoch: It gives me pleasure to speak tonight for a short time. First I'd like to thank the member for Windsor-Sandwich for coming to our riding when we had a great day cutting red tape, and when money was being reinvested into my community. We certainly appreciated the day she was there to signify this great event. I want to tell the member for Windsor-Sandwich that the money is there, it's in the bank, the project is well under way and everything's going fine.
But I'd like to mention another project that she was criticizing: We now have dialysis machines in our hospital in Owen Sound. We would never have got those without the reinvestment. In fact, we cut the ribbon after the machines were in there. Can you believe that? The money had to be there or we would never have had the machines.
I appreciate her comments. I'm sure she's actually going to vote for this bill. I can't see why she wouldn't. I can't see why anybody wouldn't vote for this bill to cut red tape. We have too much red tape in this country now.
Actually, the ribbons that we cut were blue, too. I want to mention that. The ribbons that we cut that day were nice and blue. Maybe they should have been red; I'm not sure.
Mrs Boyd: They sure weren't apple green, were they?
Mr Murdoch: No, they weren't green at that time, but we could cut some green ribbons pretty soon. I think there are a lot of them floating around places where maybe they shouldn't be. Somebody's going to have to clean those up and that's unfortunate, but we will get to those when the time comes.
As I say, the member got overexcited. I don't know whether she was here when the Speaker of the House, Mr Stockwell, used to speak. He used to get excited like that and we used to have to give him a Valium. Somebody here may have some for you, because I was worried about you. I'm sure you must have been watching the Speaker, Chris Stockwell, when he used to get excited. But you have a couple of good folks right around you there, from Ottawa and Kingston and Manitoulin Island, who will look after you.
The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. Your time has expired. The member for Ottawa East.
Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East): What I like about my colleague from Windsor-Sandwich is that she's so factual. When she does research, she does a great job. You've got to give her credit.
To our friend from Bruce-Owen Sound --
Mr John R. Baird (Nepean): You can't say that with a straight face.
The Deputy Speaker: Order, member for Nepean.
Mr Grandmaître: You're cutting into my two minutes.
To our friend from Bruce-Owen Sound, I don't know what Mike Harris gave him, what kind of promises Mike made to our friend, but I'm telling you, he's onside now. He'll cut any kind of ribbons -- red, blue, orange, green. You're doing a good job.
Going back to my colleague from Windsor, we had eight ministers who stood in this House introducing their red tape -- when we talk about red tape, we're talking about frills. We're talking about bureaucracy; speed up the process. But whenever this government brought in their red tape bills, it increased bureaucracy. Now all services are centralized in the minister's office. You can't reach a human being, you can't talk to a human being. Everything is voice: voice box, voice mail. You can't talk to a human being.
I think my colleague from Windsor said it so well, that this government has no vision and they're spending our tax dollars foolishly and also increasing the deficit of our province --
The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. The member's time has expired. Further questions and comments?
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Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the comments of the member for Windsor-Sandwich, but I would also like to comment on the member for Grey-Owen Sound, who seems to have an interest in prescribing drugs this evening. It's interesting he would want to broach that subject, given the recent flip-flop by him and the members for Hamilton Mountain and Wentworth North with regard to the downloading bill. It would seem that Mike Harris has been prescribing Prozac for you and some of your colleagues in terms of how calm you appeared coming out of your recent caucus meeting, given the full head of steam you seemed to have going into the meeting. Something took place there.
With regard directly to the comments of the member for Windsor-Sandwich, when she talked about red tape and the fact that this government has an exercise in cutting red tape, the reality is behind the excuse of making things more efficient and simplifying things, they're actually going after regulations that are important to this province.
Ask anyone who's involved in the protection of our environment about the up to 50% of the regulations that were in effect to protect our environment that are now gone, eliminated. That had nothing to do with efficiencies. That had nothing to do with simplifying government. It had to do with removing protective barriers that your friends deemed to be an impediment to their maximizing their profitability. They're entitled to make a profit, but they're not entitled to maximize that profit at the expense of our environment. That's what you're doing and that's one example. I intend to expand on that theme a little later when I get an opportunity to speak directly.
I want to compliment the member for Windsor-Sandwich. I think she brings great passion and considered opinion to this.
Mrs Pupatello: It's unfortunate that the members across the way don't take seriously what we in opposition have to say about the things that you are doing that are affecting real people out there in Ontario. The truth is I've invited several of the members to come to Windsor. I've been prepared to give you personal tours, tours with all of our medical professionals, for example. If you don't think health care is an issue, I invite you to come to my riding. Things that I bring to this House --
Hon Jim Wilson (Minister of Energy, Science and Technology): You staged a protest --
Mrs Pupatello: The former Minister of Health says that he came and I staged a bunch of protests. In Windsor these things are spontaneous now under this government. Quite frankly --
Hon Mr Wilson: You didn't even say thank you. You held a press conference and crapped all over me all day. That's what you did. That's how much class you have.
The Deputy Speaker: Stop the clock. Sit down.
Mr Christopherson: Share the Prozac.
Hon Mr Wilson: You were an embarrassment.
Mrs Pupatello: Hansard, are you getting all this?
The Deputy Speaker: Order. Come on. Speaking of Prozac, everybody calm down. Minister of Energy, calm down. Come to order.
Mrs Pupatello: Jim, I thought you and I were friends.
Hon Mr Wilson: You were mean. You were the meanest I've ever seen in 14 years, and I'll always remember.
The Deputy Speaker: Okay. Now, come on. Minister, you've had your say, okay? Order.
Mrs Pupatello: We've obviously struck a chord here with certain members of the PC Party.
Mr Gerretsen: Certain ministers.
Mrs Pupatello: Certain ministers in fact. For me to be doing my job with the people I represent in Windsor, if this is the kind of language that I'm going to suffer through, so be it. The fact of the matter is we don't come to Queen's Park to be popular with this gang. We come here to do a job, and my job is to make sure that this government knows exactly the kind of incompetence and its effect on my riding of Windsor-Sandwich. If the former Minister of Health doesn't want to recognize that he has created such significant problems in my riding, then he's putting his head in the sand and he's going to have to deal with that.
Frankly, the new Minister of Health has to deal with that because regardless of who you represent and what party, the government of Ontario is responsible for delivering efficient, safe, quality programs --
Interjection.
Mr Gerretsen: I know. We all feel the same way.
The Deputy Speaker: Order, member for Kingston and The Islands.
Mrs Pupatello: -- to the people of Ontario, and so far on that score this government gets an absolute, complete, the biggest F that we could ever find for complete and utter incompetence.
The Deputy Speaker: Further debate?
Mrs Boyd: I will try and lower the temperature in here and try and be mindful of the blood pressure of the member for Simcoe West. He seems to have a real difficulty tonight keeping his cool.
Interjections.
The Deputy Speaker: Come to order, please. Member for Windsor-Sandwich and Minister of Energy, come to order now. That's enough.
Mrs Pupatello: The minister has to act like a minister.
Hon Mr Wilson: I'm a human being and you have to treat me like a human being.
Mrs Pupatello: You were the worst opposition member in this House and you have the gall to lecture me?
The Deputy Speaker: Member for Windsor-Sandwich, that's enough.
Interjection.
The Deputy Speaker: Member for Windsor-Sandwich, I am warning you.
Mrs Pupatello: Point of privilege.
The Deputy Speaker: Member for Windsor-Sandwich, come to order. This is an outrage. We're in the middle of a debate. You're taking away time from the next speaker and I want to continue the debate now.
Mrs Boyd: I really do think my time should be restored, given the shouting match that has occurred.
Interjection.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Order.
Mrs Boyd: May I begin? Thank you, Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to have an opportunity to speak during the third reading of Bill 61 because many of the changes that are in Bill 61 follow along with changes that we initiated during our term of office and that are being put into place in an effort to try and streamline procedures. It is quite clear from the bill that the plan is to try and remove some of the impediments that have been there, particularly when we look at the Assessment Review Board changes -- the impediments that have been there to ensuring that individual citizens get a fair hearing.
We have no objection to those particular changes in the part of the act around the Assessment Review Board. We know that the chair of the Assessment Review Board has been recommending those kinds of changes for some time. The huge volume of appeals within the assessment regime over the last few years has really required a rethinking of the process and it seems quite obvious that the efforts that are being made in this bill may indeed help to streamline that process.
I would have one caution and I think this is true when we are changing anything in the process. We need to have some way of measuring the outcome. Do these changes actually streamline the process and make it easier for those who have concerns to be heard, or will these changes shut down some of the democratic process? I would have preferred to see in this bill, as in all the rest of the red tape bills, some measurement of what the outcomes are, some way in which we can look at a baseline of information and then we can look at the outcomes once the changes are made and ensure that the stated intent of the bill is how it actually operates for those who are the recipients of the services of the various areas.
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Quite frankly, that is particularly true of all the many changes that have happened under the office of the public guardian and trustee. It is extremely difficult for people, I think, certainly the general population that has not itself had dealings with that office, to know how very delicate their task is at times and to understand the very strong and, I would say, evolutionary changes that have happened to the whole process of public guardianship and public trusteeship over the last few years.
This is an area that gave rise to great distrust among the general population. Many people felt that if their affairs were being looked after by the public guardian and trustee, they were open to all sorts of indignities and indeed might never see their property gain the kind of care that it ought to have. I think there has been a great effort to try and change that process to make that process more open and to ensure that the rights of individuals who come in contact with the office of the public guardian and trustee are being respected and that we are seeing the kind of care for their affairs that is intended in this kind of act.
However, again there is no way to evaluate what the effects of these changes and the other changes may have been, and given that there have been huge deductions from the operating budget of this office at the same time that it has had a quite considerable increase in its duties, we all need to be very concerned about whether cutting the red tape as this bill suggests and reducing costs as has been required by the Treasurer is in fact giving that kind of care to those who depend upon the public guardian and trustee to look after their affairs.
I must say that one of the concerns that has been expressed has been whether we have a situation where in streamlining things we are losing some of the explanation to those who are accepting the services of the public guardian and trustee. I would hope there would be great vigilance on the part of the Attorney General that when these changes, added to the other both administrative and legislative changes that have happened over the past few years, are all taken into account, those who are served by the public guardian and trustee indeed are more satisfied with the services that they receive and that we as a community are more convinced that those services are being provided in an appropriate way. That would be my hope.
The amendments to the Statutory Powers Procedure Act, which is part of this bill, were certainly envisioned during some of the changes that were made by our government, and it really has been made necessary as a result of the outcomes of some of the changes that were made. The 1994 amendments were not perfect, so this bill is correcting some of the problems in that act that arose partly out of those 1994 reforms and yet is very much within the framework that was accepted by this Legislature in terms of reforming some of those processes.
Again, because an enormous amount of change has happened in the administrative law area, it is going to be essential for there to be some measurement of the success of those changes over time. I would suggest that we have a huge body of expertise among those who run our quasi-judicial bodies, those who do administrative law in the province, and we should be listening to those experts who work every day with the particular statutes that they are administering to ensure that the changes we're making have the effect we want them to have.
Again, the change to the Estates Act is a consequence of drafting errors and oversights that happened during the 1994 changes. They're part of that evolutionary process.
Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Would you be good enough to ask the table to check the House and tell me if there's a quorum present.
The Acting Speaker: Would you please check if there is a quorum.
Clerk Assistant (Ms Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Clerk Assistant: A quorum is now present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker: The member for London Centre.
Mrs Boyd: For a while there it became fairly obvious that the heart of the government is not in this work tonight, and it's good to know that we can continue. Since we keep being told by the government House leader how important all this legislation is and how great his expectation is that we will get down to business, it's peculiar, to say the least, that the government members appear to be reluctant to be in the House to do the business that their House leader wants them to do.
I am very pleased to see the change in Bill 61 to the Construction Lien Act that includes architects and those who have certificates under the Architects Act in the Construction Lien Act. When I was Attorney General, we went to a lot of effort to try and deal in a very clear way with the real problems that the construction industry was facing in terms of construction liens. It was very clear that the court process that had been used for a number of years was badly backlogged, but in fact what we were seeing was tradespeople consistently being done out of their earned money as a result of the delays in the whole process of trying to get the honouring of construction liens.
When that process was dealt with to some extent, streamlined to some extent through negotiation, very lengthy and careful negotiation between the construction liens industry, between the building industry and the Attorney General's ministry, we were able to come to a process that had agreement from all parties, even though it wasn't the ideal that either had come with, but the piece that was missing was this piece about architects and those having certificates under the Architects Act. It was missing from the original act. We had negotiated a process as opposed to bringing in legislation, and I am very pleased to see this inclusion under this act.
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The last item, which is the one I'd like to spend the rest of my time talking about, may surprise you because it is a very, very short item in this bill, and that is the item that repeals the South African Trust Investments Act. The explanatory note of course reminds us that with the end of apartheid in South Africa there's no longer any need for legislation in Ontario which places sanctions on that formerly undemocratic country.
I find it somewhat ironic that in this bill we are repealing an act that was made necessary by the undemocratic behaviour of a government in South Africa that ignored the wishes of the majority of the people in South Africa, a government that was eventually overthrown because of the civil disobedience of the people of South Africa and a country which is now struggling, and struggling against enormous odds, to make democratic process the basis of government in South Africa.
I say it's ironic because in fact we here in Ontario find ourselves subjected to a government that is ignoring the very democratic process that our cousins in South Africa are trying to put in place. This is a government that is systematically destroying the democratic process that has evolved over many years in this province and has evolved through the work of all three parties over a good length of time and that this government flouts at every turn.
This government is now engaged in struggles with virtually every sector of the economy, with every sector of society because it has not consulted fully with people, it has not allowed itself to take the time to listen to the population and in fact it has taken very strong actions to try to stifle the kind of civil disobedience, the kind of ability of citizens to express themselves at every turn.
I find it quite ironic that we are in a position of recognizing that the bill that is being repealed, the South African Trust Investments Act, was put in place as a measure by the democratic government of Ontario as a sanction against the undemocratic former government of South Africa, that we in this Legislature passed an act that was designed to show our disapproval of those undemocratic actions.
Here we are repealing that act because the majority of the people of South Africa have won back the right there to have a democratic government. They won that right through many, many years of struggle, and yes, often that struggle involved their breaking the law, sometimes with passive resistance, sometimes with active resistance, and most of us here would deplore some of the acts of violence that occurred during that resistance.
But the reality is, because of that resistance, because of that disobedience, because of that steadfast effort to criticize, to try to bring reason to a government that was so blinded by prejudice, so blinded by power that it wouldn't listen to the people of South Africa, they eventually were able to convince their governors that the old ways were wrong and that it was necessary to make democracy a reality in South Africa. I think even the renowned president of South Africa would say that's still a work in progress, and we know the efforts that have to be made to overcome years and years of anti-democratic government and the kind of civil resistance that that entails takes a good, long time.
Many of us here in this Legislature have had the opportunity to meet with elected representatives from South Africa and to talk to them about our experience of democracy. When they first started to come to visit while we were in government, we were so proud of the process that we had developed in Ontario and so happy to share the kind of rules of our Legislature that we had, the kind of way we respected one another as opposition and government members, the way in which we in fact lived out the dream of democracy in our own province.
I think it would be very hard to be so proud today when we know that time after time this government has refused to bring these issues to the Legislature in a way that enables a lot of public input, in a way that demands genuine compromise where there is serious disagreement. That is not the way this government governs, so it is quite appropriate that virtually every opposition speaker on this bill has had occasion to talk about the various undemocratic acts of this government and to talk about the need for us as legislators to provide the voice of those this government refuses to hear.
As I say, it's quite ironic that we are saying the defeat of apartheid in South Africa makes it possible for us in this bill to repeal the South African Trust Investments Act, that we in this country and this province have so admired the efforts of those in South Africa to create a democratic process that is inclusive of all in their country. Yet we find ourselves in this place with the kind of undemocratic behaviour that has happened tonight and we find ourselves in this province with the repeated act against democracy that this government has made.
We will be supporting this bill, but the government needs to understand it is an occasion for us to speak as the voices of those who are not heard.
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?
Mr Alex Cullen (Ottawa West): It gives me great pleasure to follow the comments made by the member for London Centre on this bill. I think she has made some excellent points in terms of how we approach government. Certainly the administration of government is a very important responsibility of any government, and we are dealing here with a bill that is going to affect that administration of government, the administration of justice. I do want to point out that the integrity of our justice system is very important.
It's very important for all of us to make sure that there are sufficient resources within that justice system so that true justice can be done. For those of you who believe that just because there's a law that forbids anyone from sleeping under a bridge, therefore that affects everyone equally, we know that is not so and we do our best to try and make sure that all people's rights are recognized in the administration of justice.
The bill itself, Bill 61, says it's An Act to simplify government processes and to improve efficiency in the Ministry of the Attorney General. As has been pointed out earlier in debate with respect to this bill, we have a government that is hell-bent on trying to reduce red tape, and some people may say that's a good thing, reducing bureaucracy. Some people may say that's a good thing, but when you get to the point where you seriously impair the administration of justice, then you have to ask yourself whether you are going too far too fast, a mantra I heard countless times this summer in the by-election in Ottawa West.
I just have to look at the Provincial Auditor's report that has just been tabled. In the Provincial Auditor's report he notes that nearly one third of the 224,000 cases in the Ontario Court (Provincial Division) have been on the docket for eight months or more. That's over 70,000 cases. So here we are, on one hand, the government promoting a bill presumably to improve efficiency, but on the other hand, the government is condemned by its own Provincial Auditor because of its inefficiency --
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. The time has expired. The member for Windsor-Riverside.
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Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): I want to take this opportunity to express my praise for the member for London Centre's comments. Once again, she's impressed us with her incredible preparation and research with respect to the comments she's made with respect to Bill 61.
As the former Attorney General of Ontario, the member for London Centre is able to speak to many of the provisions of this bill with a level of expertise that very few of us are able to comment with. That's why I really appreciate the comments that she made, especially with respect to the effects this bill's provisions are going to have. Is it really going to be able to achieve what it sets out to do, and that is to improve efficiencies and save time and money for those people who are affected by its provisions? There really isn't any way for the Attorney General to determine that effect.
I especially appreciated her comments with respect to the repeal of the South African Trust Investments Act, which recognizes the end of apartheid in South Africa. We need to recognize that was a situation where a government was overthrown because of civil disobedience, where the majority of the population didn't even have the opportunity to vote. It was a place where the government finally was able to recognize the importance of equity, of inclusion and of fundamental democratic principles.
The reason that act was originally proclaimed was to show our disapproval for the lack of rights of the majority of citizens in South Africa and it's ironic that now we would condemn the civil disobedience of people like --
The Acting Speaker: Time has expired. The member for Cambridge.
Mr Martiniuk: I merely rise to congratulate the member for London Centre. In speaking to the bill, I believe you have the distinction of the first speaker this evening to deal with this important matter. I appreciated hearing some of the history that I was not aware of in regard to the repeal of the South African Trust Investments Act. I thought it was an excellent presentation.
Mr Michael A. Brown (Algoma-Manitoulin): I too was impressed by the comments of the member for London Centre. One of the things I suppose that confuses me and confuses, I think, a great many Ontarians is the very title of these bills. When you talk about "red tape," everybody's in favour of getting rid of red tape. In previous parliaments this kind of bill was usually referred to as a housekeeping measure. There were always needs in the system to deal with rules, laws and regulations that had become archaic; there always will be. I appreciate, as all Ontarians do, I suspect, the particular political spin of this being cutting red tape all the time when this kind of thing always appeared to happen with a different title.
Standing in the name of the Attorney General, I find this passing strange, and I'm sure the member for London Centre obviously does too, this Attorney General who created absolute chaos in the family support plan, this Attorney General who is in the midst of creating absolute chaos in our court system. We have the auditor telling him that his management of our justice system is just not acceptable.
We have the Attorney General who during estimates was proud of the fact that we are now plea-bargaining far more cases. I think many Ontarians would not have expected this particular government to have embraced plea-bargaining as the means to providing better justice in the province, but that's what we're seeing.
The Acting Speaker: The member for London Centre, you have two minutes.
Mrs Boyd: I'm pleased to thank the member for Windsor-Riverside, the member for Cambridge and the member from Kenora for their kind comments.
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): Algoma-Manitoulin.
Mrs Boyd: I'm sorry?
Mr Michael Brown: It was Algoma-Manitoulin.
Mrs Boyd: Algoma-Manitoulin. I beg your pardon, my friend.
I would like to say very clearly that we will be supporting Bill 61 because there are some good things in it, but as has become very clear from the rather difficult evening that we have been having in terms of the conduct of the Legislature, it is quite clear that the government members resent the obligation and the duty of opposition members to oppose.
Even though we will in the long run be supporting the bill, we have an opportunity, in discussing this bill, to talk about the concerns that are brought to us by our constituents. That is our job. Our constituents are very concerned about many of the particular pieces of legislation this government is bringing forward, but very clearly about the measures that this government is taking to get its way in this place and in the province, and doing that in a way that is destructive of the principles of democracy that the people of Ontario really appreciate.
While government members are attempting to try and portray the opposition voices as not speaking to the bill, the reality always is that as opposition our job is to call the government to account.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Gerretsen: I'm pleased to join this debate, but I can't do so without first saying that once again the people of Ontario should realize, since we are sitting this evening, that as a result of the rule change that the government brought in in June of this year, in effect we are dealing in a different sessional day. What that means is that normally in a sessional day there would be a question period, but those rules were all changed. We now have sessional days for the first time in the history of this Parliament, which has existed for over 150 years, where a sessional day does not include a question period. A question period is the most important period of time for the opposition to hold the government accountable for its actions.
Tonight we are dealing with Bill 61, which is An Act to simplify government processes and to improve efficiency in the Ministry of the Attorney General. First of all, the government ought to be congratulated on getting draftspeople to always give these bills such tremendous titles. Actually this is a toned-down version of the titles that are given to most of the bills around here. But I think it's very interesting that they should talk about improving the efficiency in the Ministry of the Attorney General.
Let me just start off by saying, first of all, this is the one department that I think it's fair to say over the last two years -- particularly with all the problems relating to the family support plan and all the tremendous number of women and children who were left without support payments as the offices were closed throughout this province. Some of these people didn't get money for three to four months and they required the support money on an ongoing basis in order for them to support their families and their children.
That this minister should talk about improving efficiency when the Provincial Auditor's report that came out yesterday talks about three areas of great inefficiency in this particular ministry that I suppose everybody can relate to in the sense that all you have to do was read today's media stories to realize the tremendous concern that is out there about what's going on in this department.
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As we already heard earlier, when we deal with the backlog of cases -- and we all know that in 1990, as a result of the Askov decision, over 50,000 cases were thrown out, but let's just take a look and see what's happened. The previous government tried to deal with that in 1991 and 1992. But let's look at what's happened since then. This is the Provincial Auditor's own report dealing with the efficiency with which court cases have been dealt with in Ontario. This isn't my propaganda and this isn't our party's propaganda. This comes out of the report of the Provincial Auditor. For those people watching, the Provincial Auditor is a legislative officer of this Legislative Assembly. He and the people who work for him don't work for the government, they work for all of us, the 130 members who are part of this Legislative Assembly. That's who employs him.
What does he say about the Ministry of the Attorney General when it comes to the pending criminal cases that are still before the system right now? I suggest to the people of Ontario that if you really want to read some horror stories, get a copy of this Provincial Auditor's report, because you will see, on page 29, that the number of the total criminal charges pending in the Provincial Division has increased from 190,000 in the year 1992 to 196,000 in 1993. In 1994 there were 193,000, but in 1995 it went to 211,000 outstanding cases, and in 1996 there are 224,286 cases before the criminal courts that are still outstanding.
What this really means is that over the last five years, from a government that preaches efficiency, a government that wants to improve efficiency in the department of the Attorney General, here is a stellar example of how the efficiency level of the department of the Attorney General has decreased over the last two years. Undoubtedly, the amount of money that's available to ensure that the process and the system of justice is properly administered has a lot to do with that.
Let's take a look at another document. Llet's take a look at the 1997 Ontario budget and let's just see what happened to the budget for the Attorney General, who's responsible for making sure that the system of justice that we have here in Ontario is administered in an efficient and proper manner. What do we see? We see that whereas in the year 1994-95, $1.085 billion was spent, in the year 1996-97 it was reduced to $604 million and currently it's at a rate of $650 million. In other words, there's been a 35% decrease in a department -- the member opposite shakes his head and says it isn't so.
I would ask the people of Ontario, don't take my word for it. Go down to your local MPP's office. I'm sure they still have copies of the 1997 Ontario budget available. I'm sure all members of the House have this, regardless of party affiliation. You will see on page 64 exactly the numbers that I'm quoting, that in effect the budget of the Attorney General has been reduced by $400 million in a matter of two years. That's the department that deals with the administration of justice. Is it any wonder then that it shouldn't really come as any surprise that the number of criminal cases that are outstanding has increased from somewhere around 190,000 outstanding cases to over 224,000 cases currently? I think that's a shame.
Interjection.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Ottawa-Rideau, I see you this time.
Mr Gerretsen: That's a shame. That should not happen, because one of these days what could very well happen is that once again it will be necessary for many of these criminal charges that were all properly laid and investigated by our officials, by police officers, by crown attorneys and all the people who are involved in laying these charges, that once again a number of these charges will have to be thrown out. It's interesting that out of these 224,000 cases, 70,000 of them are more than eight months old, and under the Askov decision, the decision that was made in 1990, any criminal case that was around for longer than eight months was thrown out.
Mr Wettlaufer: Do you remember that?
Mr Gerretsen: I don't remember that personally. I am just reading from the report here, sir, not from my report but from the report of the Provincial Auditor for Ontario.
That's one area where certainly this minister and this ministry have not been efficient. I think if there's one thing surely that we can all agree with, it's the fact that when people are charged with a crime, the court system should deal with them as expeditiously as possible. Surely there's no one here who's going to suggest that having 225,000 cases outstanding currently with 70,000 cases being outstanding for more than eight months is satisfactory. If you do think it's satisfactory, then I would like you to stand up and say so at the appropriate time.
But that's only one area. Let's take a look at another area. Let's see here now. Yes, collection of fines. This is another great area and some members have already made reference to this a little bit earlier. It's very interesting that right now there's outstanding owing to the taxpayers of Ontario -- you and I, the taxpayers of Ontario -- a total of $316 million in outstanding fines. Unbelievable. Only $72 million of that amount is less than one year old. This is on page 36 of the auditor's report. Read it for yourself. Greater than two years, in other words, fines that have been outstanding for more than two years, over $200 million is outstanding. And $43 million of fines are between one to two years old.
Interjections.
Mr Gerretsen: Now they're making fun of it and saying: "What is it? Is it parking fines? Is it for fishing without a licence?" The point of the fact surely is that these are fines and we either enforce the law and collect the fines or let's not have any laws in that area at all. If you don't think that fishing without a licence or a parking fine is a serious matter, then let's do something about it. We can debate that and do something about it. But once we have decided collectively that certain kinds of actions by individuals should lead to fines, then surely we should collect those fines. There's $316 million outstanding. An average approximately of $4 million in fines go into default each month, according to the auditor general, and more than 75% of the overdue fines are more than one year old. Again, to my way of thinking, it shows incompetence. This is unacceptable and something ought to be done about it by the ministry and the minister involved.
Now let's take a look at another area. These are the enforcement measures. Let me just read this one paragraph to you. This is on page 38 of the auditor's report. It states:
"As of March 31, 1997, overdue fines for offences committed under the Highway Traffic Act" -- so these are mainly speeding offences in most situations -- "totalled approximately $139.9 million. For $82.6 million of that amount, the ministry had driver's licence information on the individuals' account numbers. We examined those accounts with driver's licence information and found that: 15,800 individuals each had $1,000 or more in overdue fines, including 116 individuals with more than $10,000; and 16,000 individuals each had unpaid fines for five or more offences."
We've got the information on these people, we've got their numbers as it were, and why aren't we collecting it?
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There are certain things that we can do in order to collect that money. Let's see what the Provincial Auditor has to say about that. He goes on to say:
"The payment notices from the ministry warn that, in addition to licence suspension, failure to pay fines can result in other measures, such as the ministry informing the credit bureau of the debt, requiring banks to deduct the money owing from the person's bank account or registering a lien against the person's real property."
In other words, if money is owing to you, that's how you collect it. You garnishee the bank account or you put a lien against their property, and eventually you're going to get paid. You would think the ministry would do that, wouldn't you? You would think the ministry, in order to collect $139 million that's owing to you and me as taxpayers in Ontario, would do that.
But look at the next line that the auditor states in his report: "We noted that none of these measures had been initiated by the ministry."
Mr Gary L. Leadston (Kitchener-Wilmot): Mr Speaker, on a point of order: We're listening rather attentively to the honourable member but we're having difficulty following when he's making reference to lines. Is it possible that --
The Acting Speaker: Take your seat. I totally agree with you. I've been more than patient. Bill 61 talks about the Loan and Trust Corporations Act, it talks about the victim's right to proceed, but you've only talked about nothing at all. Honestly. So I'll have to correct you if you go back again to the same debate.
Mr Gerretsen: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. What I have been talking about is precisely what the title of this bill claims that Bill 61 is all about, which is "to improve efficiency in the Ministry of the Attorney General." I have pointed out three areas where not my propaganda machine is saying the ministry hasn't been doing its job but the Provincial Auditor is saying that the backlog of criminal cases is still there, the fines are still uncollected.
Under the Highway Traffic Act we have these means available to the ministry to garnishee bank accounts, to lien a person's real property in order to collect on these fines, and they're not doing that. To me, that is not running an efficient department. This ministry would like to be efficient and we congratulate them on wanting to be efficient, but by merely putting it in an act, by merely passing an act like Bill 61, you are not going to create greater efficiency. You have to have resources in order to ensure that those penalties you impose on certain situations are going to be enforced, and they haven't been. That is a real shame.
There are certain aspects of this act that we like. For example, the Construction Lien Act is going to be amended, which will restore lien rights to architects and their employees. I think we've all heard from architects and their employees that they are all in favour of this. I don't know why they were ever excluded in the first place, but that's a good thing. It's about time we did that. I wonder why this wasn't done before. Maybe there was an anti-architect lobby at work at one time with former governments, I'm not sure, but it makes eminent sense to me that architects ought to be protected in the same way as other people who do work on a particular project. It's a soft service, I suppose, in that they're basically involved in plans and maybe in the supervision of a particular work. I suppose the old argument could be made that they're not actually adding value in the sense of either putting materials or workmanship into a project, but anyway, that's been corrected now in this act and we certainly agree with that.
I certainly agree with what the member for London Centre said earlier about the public guardian and trustee. Quite often people have some strange ideas that if the public trustee or the public guardian got involved, their estate was going to be taken away and the government was going to abscond with their money. I think a lot of those rules and regulations that were sometimes quite needlessly there are going to be corrected. It's about time that was done. I think it will certainly give the people who will be dealing with these officers a much better sense of what's really going on and they won't be as frightened as many of them quite frankly were in the olden days.
Let me just say once again that here we have a ministry that believes in efficiency, wants us to pass a red tape bill, and basically the plea from this side of the House is, why don't you start by doing the work within your own department? If you can't do it, it may just be that there have simply been too many resources taken away from you. In a ministry that basically deals with the enforcement of laws to make sure that the administration of justice in Ontario is carried on in a fair and equitable manner, it's very, very difficult to understand how they can do that with 40% less of a budget than they had two years ago.
So I say to them, let's collect those outstanding fines. That's money that's owing to you and me. Let's get rid of the backlog of those cases before they're ruled out of order on some constitutional basis. Let's enforce the fines that are owed under the Highway Traffic Act by some of the means that the Attorney General has currently. If somebody owes a fine and they've got a bank account and they don't pay willingly, garnishee that bank account, put a lien against their property, because then at least sooner or later the people of Ontario will get the money they are rightfully entitled to.
That money then can perhaps be put against the public debt of this province, which we all know is rising during the term of this government, from $100 billion, according to the government's own figures in your budget papers, to $120 billion. Most of my friends who are conservatively minded still cannot understand how a government can possibly give people a tax cut when you're still running a deficit every year and you're still increasing the public debt of this province by $20 billion. For a government that prides itself on business to allow the debt of this province to increase by $20 billion over the next five years --
Mr Grandmaître: On borrowed money.
Mr Gerretsen: -- on borrowed money is totally not understandable. I thank you for your kind consideration, Mr Speaker.
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?
Mr Christopherson: I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the remarks of the member for Kingston and The Islands. As always, he's provided us with a thoughtful speech this evening, although I have to say I found it interesting that he began early on by making reference to the Askov decision, given the fact that --
Mr Baird: Who was the government then, David?
Mr Christopherson: I was just going to come to that, to the member for Nepean. The government that was in power at the time actually was the Liberals. That was in September 1990. The Askov decision was in that month, reflecting the mismanagement of the justice system for the previous years. We didn't take power until October 1. Whereas the current government's first crisis was Ipperwash, with the resulting death of Dudley George -- we know how well they managed that issue -- our first crisis was to step in and deal with the justice system and the court system which were in absolute chaos. People will know that there were 224,000 criminal cases that were at stake, and 50,000 cases were thrown out because they languished in the court system that was not being adequately administered by the Liberal Attorney General of the day. So I find it strange that he would use that as his opening comment.
However, I want to end my remarks by agreeing with him very, very strongly when he points to the Provincial Auditor's report and talks about the fact that for the party that's in government today, which prides itself on being such businesslike people, to be found to be, as the auditor has said, "frequently weak or deficient" in terms of your performance standards says a lot about reality.
Mr Martiniuk: The presumption of the member for Kingston and The Islands to presume to give advice on the Askov case I find astonishing. Your government and you are responsible. After repeated warnings, which you ignored, from the Supreme Court of Canada, it resulted in 50,000 criminals in this province walking. There were murderers, and you are responsible. There were child molesters, and you were responsible. How you can sit there, it's astonishing. We are doing something about the problem. Your government acted like an ostrich: You put your head in the sand and we all suffered.
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As part of our plan, we started a $2-million blitz to initiate in our backlogged courts. The blitz was a combined effort of judges, police, defence attorneys and crown attorneys. To date the backlog is down 16%, a drop of 8,000 cases.
The second part of the plan: We formed the Criminal Justice Review Committee to find long-term solutions to the backlog problem. We have assembled the best and the brightest of Ontario's legal community, including the Chief Justice and the chief judge, to solve this problem once and for all. We look forward to receiving the committee's recommendations.
Ontario is investing more in the justice system than any other government in Canada. There are more crown attorneys prosecuting criminals than ever before. We are solving the problem.
Mr Cullen: I'd like to thank the member for Kingston and The Islands for bringing up the issues that should be contained in this bill which is, as the title says, "to improve efficiency in the Ministry of the Attorney General." I am very much interested in the comments that came from the member for Cambridge, but despite his apologist front that he puts forward to the public, the fact remains that when Judge Askov ruled in 1990, he dealt with some 50,000 cases; what we have today is some 70,000 cases. Indeed from 1992, when the number of cases that were on the docket for eight months or more, which Judge Askov said was a violation of people's constitutional rights under the charter, were only 16% of all the cases that were in the system at the time of Ontario, today it is double. It has gone from 16% in 1992 to 32% today. So for all the finger-pointing you want to do to the government of the day back in 1990, from 1992, despite all the earlier comments that have been presented to you by the Provincial Auditor, the administration of justice in this province has gone backwards.
Why has it gone backwards? It's quite clear: because the government has gone too far, too fast in laying off qualified staff, needed staff to deal with the very examples that the member for Cambridge talked about -- the child molesters, the rapists, the murderers, the people who break into your homes -- all those who break those laws and are in our system.
It is a constitutional right, as declared in 1990, that people in Ontario deserve speedy service by our justice system. To hear now that the government is going to be dealing with blitzes -- blitzes aren't the answer. The whole issue has been before you all this time. You can't suck and blow at the same time. You can't cut staff and then turn around and say, "We're dealing with it." I'm sorry, gentlemen across the way --
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Further questions or comments?
Mr Bud Wildman (Algoma): I just wanted to congratulate the member for Kingston and The Islands. I must say that I agree with the member for Hamilton Centre. At the beginning of his remarks it was a little hard to take, but he has a very important point with regard to the current situation that is a very difficult one. We all understand, I believe, in this House that justice delayed is justice denied. We must ensure that cases are dealt with expeditiously within a reasonable amount of time to ensure the rights of the accused are protected, but also to ensure that the rights of the victims are dealt with properly. I think we have a serious problem and I congratulate the member for Kingston and The Islands for raising it.
I must say, though, that I'm disappointed in the intervention of questions and comments by the member for Cambridge, for whom I have the greatest respect. To suggest somehow, as I think he may have, that the member for Kingston and The Islands and his party were responsible for allowing child molesters to get off is not acceptable. That's not what we're about here. All of us recognize the importance of protecting children, of protecting the family and ensuring that those who would commit heinous crimes are properly dealt with.
I agree with my friend from Ottawa West that we have a crisis before us that has been identified by the Provincial Auditor. There are many reasons for cases to be a long time in arrears, but the government must deal with it. The government can't simply look at this as a way of saving money. We must ensure justice is done.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Kingston and The Islands, you have two minutes.
Mr Gerretsen: I always find it very fascinating that members get blamed for things that other governments may have done well before they came here. I would challenge anyone, or all of you, to review the Hansard and to see exactly what I said about Askov. I just basically gave a factual statement that is contained in the Auditor General's report that as a result of the Askov decision in 1990 -- I didn't blame the NDP government. I didn't blame the Liberal government. I don't care what happened then. Whatever happened was wrong. Let's make sure it doesn't happen again.
What these statistics clearly indicate -- and I think the member for Hamilton Centre said it -- is that at that point in time there were 224,000, I think he stated, outstanding cases. Lo and behold, how many cases are there outstanding right now, in 1996, according to the Provincial Auditor? There are 224,000 cases outstanding, of which 70,000 go beyond the eight months that Askov talked about. The point I'm simply trying to make is that, as the Auditor General clearly points out, we're heading in the wrong direction.
The backlog is increasing again, and particularly with those cases that have been outstanding for a long period of time, those that are eight months or more. Since 1992, they have increased from 37,000 to almost 71,000. What's been happening over the last four years is that the number of cases that are outstanding for more than eight months has almost doubled. That is totally unacceptable.
Yes, I want you to do something about it. If you do something positive about it, I'll even congratulate you here, because it's in the interests of all of us to do something about this kind of situation that the Auditor General talks about, irrespective of political parties. Let the Attorney General do something about it.
The Acting Speaker: I'd like to make a little recapitulation of just what happened a minute ago. I heard a point of order that the member for Kingston and The Islands was not talking about Bill 61. I reminded the member for Kingston and The Islands to refer to Bill 61. I haven't heard one question or comment referring to Bill 61, not one. I hope I have made my point very clear. Further debate?
Mr Christopherson: I appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate on Bill 61. I want to begin by referencing the explanatory note found on the first page of Bill 61 where it states, "The general purposes of the amendments are to simplify government processes, improve efficiency and make corrections." My comments will reflect the proposed purposes that are outlined here.
To do that I would also, as others have done this evening, like to make reference to the Provincial Auditor's report that has just been tabled in the last day or so. For this bill to talk to "government processes, improve efficiency" is to suggest that the sole purpose of everything they do in Bill 61 and in other areas where they talk about efficiency is to do just that, such a nice, warm, simple little thing: "We want to make things run better and we want to make things run more efficiently." Sometimes we think their sole purpose is to make the trains run on time.
The auditor's report, on the first page, to me is a crucial statement about this government.
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As I mentioned in one of my two-minute responses earlier, this government likes to put itself forward as the only real choice among the parties in Ontario that can run government like a business. First of all, I disagree with the concept that government is like a business. You can do some things in a businesslike fashion, but this is not a business. I disagree with that and would love to debate that some time with one of the members of the government.
But they do suggest that because most of them have a business background -- that's not to say they're the only ones in the House, but the greater percentage of them have business backgrounds, which is why of course they don't worry so much about public services, because they have the private means and their friends have the private means to replace public services like health care, like education, with the private system because they've got the do-re-mi to go out and buy it.
It's the poor working stiffs and their families in this province who need an effective public health care system and public education system. The government likes to put that forward, that they are the one who can do things most efficiently and in the most businesslike fashion, and unfortunately there are a lot of people who buy that.
It's interesting. What does Mr Peters say in the fourth paragraph of the first page? I quote: "Successful overall service management by ministries requires effective accountability to provide assurance of prudent expenditure of public funds and compliance with ministry expectations in carrying out program requirements."
I'm reading this of course because, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the explanatory note of Bill 61 talks about government processes and improving efficiency. Therefore, Speaker, because I see you indicating you'd like me to stay on Bill 61, that's why I began that way. I do believe that talking about government processes and accountability is very germane to what Bill 61 is supposedly all about, as they've printed in their own law.
To go further under the auditor's report, that same paragraph goes on to say, "However, and this is in my view the most significant issue in my 1997 annual report, we found that ministries' practices for ensuring that billions of dollars are spent prudently and in compliance with ministry performance and service level expectations were" -- get ready for it -- "frequently weak or deficient."
The auditor says that this is the most significant issue in his entire report -- these are just his remarks -- that the government in compliance with ministry performance and service level expectations was frequently weak or deficient. In my mind it puts the lie to the argument this government always puts to the public, that is, they're the only ones who can run the business of the province in a businesslike fashion.
Mr Guzzo: Bob Rae did it. Buffaloed.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Ottawa-Rideau.
Mr Christopherson: Nonsense. It's a myth, an absolute myth. What else is a myth is the argument that Bill 61 and all its related cousins, under the rubric of cutting red tape, are merely to make things more efficient.
Earlier on I listened to the comments of the member for Algoma-Manitoulin, and in one of his two-minute responses, just as part of his comments, he said, "Everyone is in favour of eliminating red tape." From the Tory backbenches I heard, and I wrote it down, "No, they're not." I want to agree with the member for Algoma-Manitoulin. The fact of the matter is that of course everyone wants to eliminate red tape that is unnecessary or perhaps outdated or duplicates procedures. If that were the exercise that this government is going through, there wouldn't be the kind of attention that we're paying to all their so-called red tape bills. But that's not what's going on.
We're even thinking of supporting this ourselves, depending on how the debate goes, because we do believe that if there are inefficiencies, duplication and outdated regulations they should be removed, but that's not the sole purpose. In fact we in the NDP would argue that this is a front, a front to do a whole lot of other things that have nothing to do with the public good, but have everything to do with meeting the needs of your hard, mean-spirited, right-wing ideology.
For instance, I can recall when the report of the red tape commission came out that one of the things that was being recommended under the guise of red tape was increasing the work week. A government that has allowed scabs back into Ontario, that has attacked injured workers, that has taken away successor rights from OPSEU members, that has attacked health and safety regulations, a government that has done all those things is not going to be believed that the issue of extending the legal work week in Ontario is merely a red-tape-cutting exercise.
That's not what's going on here. This is about getting rid of regulations that in many cases were earned through sacrifice and hard work and lobbying and sometimes as the result of inquiries into deaths that happened in our province or attacks on our environment or consumer rights that have been found in court or through injuries to people. That's where a lot of those regulations came from and they're the ones that you're cutting.
You're doing it because you see them not as legitimate protection for the citizens of this province, but as an impediment to your corporate pals squeezing as much profit as they can, and whoever gets hurt be damned. That's what's going on here. That's what Bill 61 is a part of. You've cut -- it's either up to or over -- 50% of the environmental protection regulations in this province.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Over 50%.
Mr Christopherson: I'm advised by the former environment minister that it's over 50%.
Interjection.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Durham East.
Mr Christopherson: I would accept the argument that there are probably some of those regulations that could be eliminated based on the argument that, yes, there are sometimes duplications and, yes, there are sometimes outdated regulations that no longer are relevant to current activities in the province and there are probably some of those that fit that category.
But you'll never convince me or anyone else who knows anything about environmental protection -- and, believe me, when you come from the city of Hamilton, where we had the Plastimet fire, and we see this government continually refusing to hold a public inquiry, you soon understand the importance of environmental protection -- you'll never convince any of us that a lot of those cuts are anything but eating away at the rights of protecting our environment to take care of your corporate pals.
The Acting Speaker: Bill 61, please.
Mr Christopherson: Bill 61, Speaker, is very much a part of that. Bill 61 was part of a group of red tape bills that were introduced as such, and I am arguing that they are not what they purport to be. I have already talked about what is in Bill 61 to the extent that we are considering supporting it, but I think I have a right to point out on behalf of the people of Hamilton that when it comes to the red-tape-cutting exercise, it's rights and protections that are being cut just as much as, and in many cases more than, any kind of inefficiencies in the system. I believe, Mr Speaker, with great respect, that's a legitimate point of view that I'm entitled to make on behalf of my constituents.
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Further to that, it's interesting that one of the current debates raging right now in terms of regulations and red tape and the whole issue about what is unnecessary red tape versus what is legitimate protection -- this government continues to redefine the issue, and they're very good at it. I give them their due; they're very good at it.
If you take a look at education, how does what I'm proposing here work there? Well, they say, "We're not cutting anything that affects" -- and then they throw it in -- "the classroom." Everyone in this province knows you can't eliminate the transportation issues, the custodial costs, the teaching assistants, the maintenance of computers, and somehow say they have nothing to do with classrooms. Of course they do. Where's the common sense in that kind of argument? I would suggest that the same thing has happened with red tape cutting: they redefined the question to suit their answer.
I would argue that we've got the same thing going on -- and I'll only reference it very briefly -- with the multilateral agreement on investments that's currently a debate raging across this country finally, and it affects Ontarians arguably more than anyone else, because we are 46% of the economy of this country. That agreement is all about, guess what? Tony Clarke, president of the Ottawa-based Polaris Institute, says that the MAI, the multilateral agreement on investments, "is designed to establish a whole new set of global rules for investment that will give transnational corporations the unrestricted right to buy, sell and move their operations whenever and wherever they want around the world, completely free of government intervention or regulation."
Their whole argument is: Get government off the backs of people, and if you get government off the backs of people, all these wonderful market forces are going to magically and wonderfully and almost biblically take care of all our problems. Yet here we see a federal government -- and I have no doubt in my mind supported by this government -- wanting a whole new set of red tape, but it's red tape their corporate friends want. To assist that, they are eliminating as much regulation as they can in the province of Ontario, not to help the people of Ontario, but to allow their friends free rein. That's who they want to get the government off the backs of.
Getting out of a decent, effective, accessible public health care system is not getting the government off the backs of people. Gutting our public education system the way you're doing is not getting government off the backs of people. What it's doing is helping to get government out of the way for your friends, and by that I mean they get their taxes lowered while my constituents get a cup of coffee or two a month in terms of their benefit from the 30% tax cut. Your friends are getting the overwhelming lion's share of the billions of dollars that are coming out of the health care system, coming out of the education system, to pay for that tax cut. That's what getting government off the backs of people means to this government.
Like Bill 61 and all the other bills that are attached to it, they want to spin it so that people believe that anything to do with government and public sector is obviously so inefficient and so full of unnecessary red tape and so much of a bureaucracy -- I see some of the backbenchers nodding their heads up and down like the little doggie in the back of the car -- that it's okay for them to cut anything. Up until recently, people were buying that argument, but I think we've seen a significant change when we got to Bill 160, because of course a group of very courageous people in this province took you on in a way that you couldn't beat.
You couldn't beat them in here, you couldn't beat them in the courts, and you couldn't beat them on the streets. Why? Because those 126,000 teachers called you on what you are doing and took dramatic action to point it out, and when the facts were out there, the vast majority of parents and communities supported those teachers.
I predict that by the time we ramp up to the next election, there will be no doubt in people's minds. When they think about this government wanting to cut red tape, they will realize that what that means in large part is rights and protections for communities and individuals and families which they purport to care about so much, like they are the only ones. That's really what's going on. When they hear the argument, "We'll get government off your back," they'll realize that what that means is a declining public health care system, a declining and deteriorating public education system, a weakened municipal government, an all but non-existent school board governance. When they finally hear again, as I'm sure they will, the mantra that, "We will lower taxes, and that will give people more discretionary income, and that will generate the economy," they will realize that the people who are getting the big bucks, and I mean the tens and the hundreds of thousands of dollars in that tax cut, don't spend it every day in our communities.
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Lambton, member for Perth, come to order.
Mr Christopherson: They invest it offshore, they add it to their portfolios, they take a little longer exotic vacation, buy a more luxurious car a little sooner, but I'll tell you what they don't do. Do you want to talk to small business about this? Go ahead, because the reality is that what they don't do is spend money in communities.
By way of that, I point to the 22% that you cut from the poorest of the poor. In pure economic terms -- I won't even try to reach your heart any more; I don't think it exists -- there are more and more small corner stores that are barely surviving because the people who are in the poorest categories of our economy spend every penny they've got to live. It goes right into the local economy, and that does stimulate economic activity.
So when you go out there and argue that you are going to cut taxes some more, the magic of that message will be gone because people will know that this is not an agenda that works for the citizens of Ontario; it works against the citizens of Ontario. Bill 61 is just part of an overall front, under the guise of cutting red tape, to go after protection and rights that Ontarians have earned for decades.
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?
Mr John O'Toole (Durham East): I am actually overcome by grief because the member for Hamilton Centre has refused again to talk about the subject. Clearly Bill 61 is an empowerment act. In fact, it's part of the regulatory framework that this government -- I'm going to break, if I may. I must take great exception to the member's criticism of Mr Frank Sheehan, the chairman of the Red Tape Review Commission. The member for Lincoln has worked tirelessly to remove over 200 regulations that are barriers to growth, jobs, hope and opportunity in this province.
The caucus and members have worked -- and really the regulations are a result of the NDP centralized power and decision-making, the kind of Kremlin process, the socialist kind of phenomenon, along with the Liberal government in the last 10 years, creating barriers to hope and opportunity. The evidence is very clear. There was an $11-billion deficit. We were spending $1 million an hour. People forget that.
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Ask Floyd Laughren, the great member for Nickel Belt. They were spending our children's future. Clearly this bill allows the Ministry of the Attorney General to modernize some of the hearings, oral and written, using electronic means, streamlining the way we do business in the modern world.
Of course, if you can't advance into the modern world, you should join the NDP group, because technically they want things to be centralized, the kind of Kremlin, eastern bloc -- shameful.
Interjections.
Mr O'Toole: I'm appalled that the member has deliberately refused to talk about Bill 61. In fact I find it contemptuous really.
The Acting Speaker: Order. I've got to smile with this type of behaviour, honestly. I know it's late in the evening, but try to just simmer it down, please. Further questions or comments?
Mr Bradley: I'm prepared to simmer this down, as you've asked, because I am concerned that the member for Hamilton Centre did not have the time in his speech to address what Conrad Black is perpetrating on this province.
Tonight we paid tribute in the press gallery to the following people who are leaving: Terry Pedwell, who is going to Ottawa for coverage there; Wilson Lee, who is going to CITY-TV, we're losing from TVO; Jim Coyle has already departed to the Toronto Star. The Southam bureau is being decimated. You're allowed to say that now, cut into tens. It's being decimated, destroyed by Conrad Black and his henchman Radler.
We don't even have now a reporter from the Ottawa Citizen, the second-largest newspaper in Canada. All we have now are John Baird's contemporaries, his friends. The Reformers, the former researchers for the Reform Party and the Mike Harris Conservative Party, are now writing the editorials. I hear people quoting them as though they're independent sources. I'm sure that Mr Baird will be sending this Hansard to them for further consideration.
We're sorry to see Greg Crone go. He's gone from the decimated office of Southam to the Financial Post. Supriya Kant is gone as a researcher. She did an excellent job over the years. Dan Nolan is heading back to the Hamilton Spectator and won't be allowed to be around here. Carolyn Abraham is being sent downtown where she'll have to report from there.
The grand coalition of Mike Harris and Conrad Black and Radler are destroying the coverage --
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Your time has expired. Further questions or comments, in relation to Bill 61, of course.
Mr Wildman: Yes, of course; actually, in relation to my friend from Hamilton Centre's remarks on Bill 61.
I would like to congratulate him on a most incisive analysis of the legislation. I must say that I was taken aback by the comments of the member for Durham East, who has quickly vacated his seat because of his embarrassment after reflecting on what he had to say. The fact is that he suggested, I think, that somehow the NDP wants to centralize and therefore he could not support the comments of the member for Hamilton Centre.
This is more than a bit of the pot calling the kettle black. This is a party that in terms of education wants to take away all local autonomy, all local control of education, all the local ability to make decisions around curriculum and financing of education and to centralize it here at Queen's Park. That's what this government wants to do. They have the gall, as the member for Durham East, to get up and say that this party is criticizing Bill 61 because it --
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr Wildman: Thank you, Speaker. I appreciate your attempt to call this place to order.
I would just say this. This government is unfortunately apparently willing to allow, in the name of cutting red tape with regard to the Attorney General, a number of cases to be lost because of the length of time it's taken to deal with them. This is most unfortunate.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Cambridge, who is the last one, by the way.
Mr Martiniuk: If we may return to Bill 61, I think it's fairly obvious that a number of the opposition members have not read it. I'd just like to deal with one particular section which I happen to think is really important.
Section 13 amends the Statutory Powers Procedure Act and sort of brings the act into the 20th century. For instance, it provides that the same proceedings will now be conducted by a combination of oral, written and electronic hearings. Pre-hearing conferences may also be held electronically. This should speed things up substantially, at a much lower cost.
Some of the new guidelines cannot be exercised until the tribunal has published its guidelines governing their use so that the public are aware of the rules before they would appear in front of a particular tribunal.
Contempt proceedings can be considered if a party fails to appear for a pre-hearing conference when ordered to do so or unnecessarily causes an electronic or oral hearing in a case scheduled for a written hearing. Also, evidence previously admitted at another hearing can be admitted into a current hearing.
I just use that as an example of the bringing of the administrative tribunal functions into the 20th century. They are now going to be using electronic means or a combination of same. That will benefit not the tribunal, not the government; it will be more efficient and will benefit those who use and rely upon tribunals in this province.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Hamilton Centre.
Mr Christopherson: I thank my colleagues in the House who took the time to respond: the member for St Catharines, who always has probably the most timely comments in this place. I think he has an electrode placed somewhere inside his earlobe that lets him know exactly what's going on in every spot of the world that's relevant to this place; my colleague from Algoma, who was very kind and generous in his remarks.
To the member for Cambridge, I found it interesting that in his comments on Bill 61 he talked about the Statutory Powers Procedure Act and their government wanting to go into the future, and that somehow it was those of us in the opposition who were stuck in the past. I would remind him that when it comes to rights and when it comes to democracy, it's you and your colleagues who are taking us back to the Dark Ages. It's you and your colleagues who have provoked justices and judges to step forward in a way they've never done before to say that you're damaging our justice system.
Look what you're doing in cutting legal aid, the whole concept of justice, of fair representation, of a law applied equally to the rich and the poor. What about scabs? That's taking us back to the Dark Ages. What about automatic certification, an issue that takes us back 50 years in labour --
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Minister, member for Durham East, member for Perth.
Mr Christopherson: Speaker, why do I lose my time because they heckle? It's a nice ploy. Unfortunately, I don't get a chance to go at the member for Durham East, but I know he'll give me many others.
The Acting Speaker: Is there further debate?
Mr Harnick has moved third reading of Bill 61. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.
Resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.
It being 9:30 of the clock, and quite an exciting evening, the House will adjourn until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.
The House adjourned at 2131.