L006b - Mon 4 May 1998 / Lun 4 Mai 1998 1
COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP
COMMITTEE SITTINGS / ADHESION AUX COMITÉS
SÉANCES DES COMITÉS
The House met at 1830.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP
COMMITTEE SITTINGS / ADHESION AUX COMITÉS
SÉANCES DES COMITÉS
Hon Dianne Cunningham (Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, minister responsible for women's issues): I seek unanimous consent to move and consider government notices of motion number 3 and number 4 concurrently.
The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Agreed? Agreed.
Hon Mrs Cunningham: Notice of motion number 3:
I move that the membership of the standing committees for this session be as follows:
Standing committee on administration of justice: Mr Boushy, Mr Crozier, Mr Kormos, Mr Martiniuk, Mr Ouellette, Mr Ramsay, Mr Rollins, Mr Stewart, Mr Wood (London South);
Standing committee on general government: Mr Colle, Mr Danford, Mrs Fisher, Mr Froese, Mr Gilchrist, Mr Lessard, Mrs Munro, Mr O'Toole, Mr Sergio;
Standing committee on resources development: Mr Chudleigh, Mr Conway, Mr Christopherson, Mrs Elliott, Mr Galt, Mr Hastings, Mr Hoy, Mr Maves, Mr Preston;
Standing committee on social development: Mrs Boyd, Mr Carroll, Ms Castrilli, Mr Duncan, Mr Hudak, Mr Klees, Mrs McLeod, Mrs Ross, Mr Smith;
Standing committee on estimates: Mr Bartolucci, Mr Bisson, Mr Cleary, Mr Doyle, Mr Kennedy, Mr Parker, Mr Pettit, Mr Wettlaufer, Mr Young;
Standing committee on finance and economic affairs: Mr Arnott, Mr Baird, Mr Brown (Scarborough West), Mr Guzzo, Mr Kwinter, Mr Phillips, Mr Rollins, Mr Silipo, Mr Wettlaufer;
Standing committee on government agencies: Mr Cullen, Mr Gravelle, Mr Grimmett, Mr Johnson (Perth), Ms Lankin, Mr Marchese, Mr Newman, Mr Spina, Mr Stewart;
Standing committee on the Ombudsman: Mr Agostino, Mr Beaubien, Mr Ford, Mrs Johns, Mr McLean, Mr Pettit, Mrs Pupatello, Mr Vankoughnet, Mr Wood (Cochrane North);
Standing committee on the Legislative Assembly: Mr Curling, Mr DeFaria, Mr Fox, Mr Hardeman, Mrs Johns, Mr McLean, Mr Morin, Ms Mushinski, Mr North, Mr Pouliot, Mr Tascona;
Standing committee on public accounts: Mr Beaubien, Mr Grandmaître, Mr Grimmett, Mr Lalonde, Ms Martel, Mr Patten, Mr Preston, Mr Tascona, Mr Young;
Standing committee on regulations and private bills: Mr Barrett, Mr Boushy, Mr Caplan, Mr Hardeman, Mr Leadston, Mr Martin, Mr Ruprecht, Mr Shea, Mr Sheehan.
Concurrently, notice of motion number 4:
I move that the following schedule for committee meetings be established for this session:
The standing committee on administration of justice may meet on Monday and Tuesday afternoons following routine proceedings;
The standing committee on general government may meet on Thursday mornings and Thursday afternoons following routine proceedings;
The standing committee on resources development may meet Monday and Wednesday afternoons following routine proceedings;
The standing committee on social development may meet on Monday and Tuesday afternoons following routine proceedings;
The standing committee on estimates may meet on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons following routine proceedings;
The standing committee on finance and economic affairs may meet on Thursday mornings and Thursday afternoons following routine proceedings;
The standing committee on government agencies may meet on Wednesday mornings;
The standing committee on the Ombudsman may meet on Wednesday mornings.
The standing committee on the Legislative Assembly may meet on Wednesday afternoons following routine proceedings;
The standing committee on public accounts may meet on Thursday mornings;
The standing committee on regulations and private bills may meet on Wednesday mornings;
That no standing or select committee may meet except in accordance with this schedule or as ordered by the House.
The Speaker: Mrs Cunningham has moved notices of motion number 3 and number 4.
Interjection.
Hon Mrs Cunningham: Yes, I did mention Mr Marchese.
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): Marchese? Is that what you meant to say?
Hon Mrs Cunningham: I probably pronounced it incorrectly and for that I will be forever sorry. We've been together long enough that I should know this, is my point. I apologize.
I am pleased to present to the House the proposed membership and schedules for the standing committees for the second session of the 36th Parliament. I will be sharing the time with the member for Durham East.
Our government places a great deal of importance on the standing committees of the Legislature. They play an important and constructive role in the democratic process. Committees allow for a detailed review and public input towards legislation. Public hearings held by legislative committees provide an important opportunity for interested groups, individuals and organizations to express their opinions and participate in formulating public policy.
The committee process also allows for members of the opposition to more actively participate in the democratic process. We've experienced that over the 10 years I've been a member of this Legislative Assembly. Opposition members are able to voice concerns and debate their submissions, thus adding to the democratic nature of the standing committees.
I'd also like to mention that under the new standing orders, the member for Elgin, an independent member, was given the opportunity to sit as a permanent member of a standing committee. The addition of the member for Elgin further strengthens the democratic nature of the standing committees.
Our government made a commitment to listen to the people of the province. The committee process is one way in which we have kept that promise. During the first session of the 36th Parliament, our committees met for a total of 1,733 hours and 56 minutes. Committees met for a total of 353 calendar days, listening to 4,330 submissions.
Our government has placed a great deal of importance on the standing committees of the Legislature. The motion proposing the membership of standing committees and their schedules for this session will continue this government's and former governments' commitment. Our commitment to listen to the public, accept input and debate their submissions will be held in high esteem.
Mr John O'Toole (Durham East): It's a privilege to speak after the member for London North and to recognize the importance of motions 3 and 4. The committee process is a very important part of the democratic process in Ontario. It's my privilege and pleasure to stand this evening and second the discussion.
In the Common Sense Revolution we made a commitment to listen to the people of Ontario. Indeed, we have. We've been listening over the past while when the House was not in session. The Premier and several other ministers visited my riding of Durham East. They met with and spoke with people and, most importantly, they listened. We listened in our riding at town hall meetings and meetings at our schools and other community facilities. We also listened to the people of Ontario through our participation on the standing committees that we're talking about tonight, the Legislative Assembly's standing committees.
There are 11 standing committees, a long-standing tradition here in the House. For the members watching and listening to the debate tonight, this process is an all-party process where the members of the opposition and the NDP, the third party, participate freely and openly, listening to the people of Ontario. In fact, we listened to a total of 4,330 submissions in the last session of the House - all people of Ontario, some of whom, by the way, were members of my riding of Durham East. I was so proud, when they appeared before various standing committees, to hear their voices and to have their voices recorded in the debates. The Hansard record-keeping is a very important part of that debate process, which will form the fundamental foundation of our democratic process, a democratic process that includes the public and allows them the opportunity to participate in the public hearings and have input into forming public policy. It's a very important aspect of the democratic process.
Our critics say that the committee process and public hearings were not democratic. Can you imagine that? As the member for London North has pointed out, we met for a total of 1,733 hours and 56 minutes. Imagine that.
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Mr Dan Newman (Scarborough Centre): How many days is that?
Mr O'Toole: The best analogy I was able to determine was that it takes about 24 hours to drive across Ontario.
Interjection: Non-stop.
Mr O'Toole: Non-stop. In that length of time, 1,733 hours, we could drive across Ontario approximately 70 times. It gives you how much time we spent listening to the public on important pieces of legislation that were before the House. The whole thing means that the amount of time the Harris government has spent listening to the people of Ontario was equivalent to driving across the province 70 times. That's unbelievable.
If you think of it, in 353 calendar days - that was the equivalent of the time met, 353 calendar days - think of the drive. Drive across this beautiful province from Cornwall to Kenora -
Interjection: To name but two.
Mr O'Toole: - to name but two; also Calabogie and other places.
Mr Newman: Killaloe.
Mr O'Toole: Killaloe and North Beaver and Collingwood and Durham East and Scarborough, now the city of Toronto, and many other wonderful destinations. In fact, as part of the committee process, I personally have been to Thunder Bay, I have been to Sudbury and communities around Sudbury, Ottawa, Hamilton, Peterborough, Kingston, Belleville. We had one committee hearing in Belleville.
We had a lot of meetings in Windsor, but the meetings in Windsor seemed to get very badly sidetracked for some reason or other. The public input there seems to get sidetracked; it's one-sided. We need more balanced debate down in that part of the country. But we've been to London, and to Hamilton, as I've mentioned before.
In those tours across Ontario, every member enjoyed seeing and feeling this province and listening to the people of this province, a very important part of the public hearing committee process.
If I wanted to compare the time spent in public hearings to something, it would be called the eternal weekend, which was the weekend that the official opposition held their leadership convention. Many people watched that on television wander on through hours and hours and hours. Some candidates were in and some candidates were out -
Mr Newman: Like a bad infomercial.
Mr O'Toole: It was like a bad infomercial, really. I would have to say, though, that some people were wandering around dazed and confused after all the debates and discussions. One was heard to say, "Where's my wife?" But after all that discussion, today, do you know that more than 80% of Ontarians still don't know who Dalton - I mean the leader - is?
I digress, Mr Speaker, but we want to make the point.
During the first session of the 36th Parliament, 52% of all eligible bills went to committee, in comparison to the previous Parliament, the 35th Parliament under the NDP, when only 38% of the eligible bills went to the public.
They did improve, I might add, on the Liberal performance. The 34th Parliament, the long-standing memory of the Liberal composition here: Is anyone interested in the amount of bills that went -
Interjection: Tell us.
Mr O'Toole: Everyone's waiting. Twenty-four per cent. I'm breathless. When I was looking at the research here and saw that we had doubled the amount of public hearings, literally doubled the amount of time taking important legislation - of course, there has been a lot of legislation, Mr Speaker. You are aware of that. You've sat through most of it yourself. We spent more time in committee during our first session of mandate than the Liberals and NDP put together.
Almost half the time that our legislation spent at committee was spent travelling throughout the province listening to other people, the people of Ontario, the people of my riding of Durham East. The Harris government views standing committees as an important part of the democratic process in Ontario. We made a commitment to listen to the people of this province, and we are committed. As everyone knows, we deliver on our promises, and the committee process is only one way we have kept our promises to the people of Ontario.
I might go on to share with people a personal story. I remember a young family appearing before us on one particular bill. She had one of her children with her. It was a very controversial bill, but the impression that she left on me that day was something I'll never forget. It matured me and told me how important it is to listen to people, even when they disagree with you. So this government is maturing in that responsiveness to people. I can tell you that story sticks in my mind as the day I grew up sitting on one of the standing committees, so it's an important learning process.
I've sat with many members from the opposition and gotten to know them. I don't want to name names particularly, but I know there are members on the other side here this evening. I've enjoyed meeting with them and understanding their points of view. Most of the time they're wrong, but none the less I really do enjoy the fellowship and the understanding of their role and the role of the government. We all have a role. The public portion of this, the debate, the bringing to the people of Ontario is very important.
I'm speaking in support of the motion to continue our commitment to listening to the people of Ontario, the commitment to the continuation of the 11 standing committees, the tradition of those standing committees. I've served as Chairman of the Ombudsman committee with -
Mr Tom Froese (St Catharines-Brock): A very important committee.
Mr O'Toole: A very important committee, trying to have the last court of appeal is how we felt it, and working with the Ombudsman herself, Ms Roberta Jamieson, a very dedicated, focused professional.
In the last session I was the Chair of general government, a real privilege. We dealt with a lot of legislation and important bills. As the Chairman it was my duty to really work with the clerk of the committee and many of the full-time staff of this Legislature, provide the support for the members to make sure that we keep order and allow everyone an equal amount of time to make sure that all the views are expressed and recorded.
I've also served on the resources committee, one of the most interesting committees. In fact, we spent a great of time in resources and dealt with some of the education bills, very important.
I also remember some of the bills we dealt with, the farm legislation, through the consultation process as well as in the committee process. Consulting with the people of Ontario is really the most important part of this job.
I've substituted on almost every standing committee. The standing committee on estimates is a very important part of understanding how each ministry sets their protocol and budget and reviews it. In fact, every committee adds value to the operation.
The standing committee on finance and economic affairs I enjoyed particularly. The committee on general government, as I said, is a very important committee which I have chaired. There are members here tonight who have all taken their turn of chairing committees. I might add that some of the committees are chaired by members of the opposition and third party. So it is a shared responsibility and it's an important responsibility that I know members take very seriously.
I know this is an important debate and others want to participate, so I'm going to conclude by saying I am in support of motions number 3 and 4 that have been put by forth by the member for London North to continue our commitment to listen to the people of Ontario, accepting their input and discussion and their submissions.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I thought I would offer a few words this evening about the importance of committees and how those committees relate to the many problems that confront our province at this time. I am sure I will be able to relate those to the fact that we have various committees in the Legislature to deal with these matters.
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First, I wish to deal with something which is rather perturbing to our community. You would be aware the other day of the headlines which I brought into this House of the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in St Catharines. That happened on one evening and then, subsequent to that, it happened on yet another evening. This was coinciding almost to the day with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Israel. I noted in the House on that occasion that all members of the House shared my revulsion and the revulsion of all the people in our community with that act of vandalism against one particular group in our community and particularly in a venue as sensitive as a cemetery.
What has been encouraging to members of the Jewish community in St Catharines has been the outpouring of support from various groups, organizations and individuals. The churches in our community have come together to indicate their support for the Jewish community at this time of need, at this time of despair at almost inexplicable acts on the part of people who are obviously deranged in their approach to dealing with other human beings.
All of us have a role to play in denouncing this kind of vandalism, this act of hatred which takes place from time to time, whether it's the scrawling of a Nazi symbol on the wall of a synagogue or whether, as in this case, it's the damaging of gravestones within a community. It must send chills down the spine and bring tears to the eyes of members of the Jewish community - a relatively small community in St Catharines.
I know that all members of our Legislature, regardless of their political affiliation, regardless of the geographic area they represent, would want to express their revulsion at this act of hatred, this racist act, and express their support for the Jewish community in St Catharines.
I want to move from that to how the committees might deal with the throne debate. I listened with interest to the throne speech. What's unfortunate, by the way, is that the Lieutenant Governor has to read it. I suppose when I think of the alternatives reading it, perhaps the Lieutenant Governor is a better choice. But here we have a non-partisan person above the political fray who is compelled to read the words written by the staff of the Premier. My understanding is that it's the same people who run the government, who have more power than the elected members, affectionately known as the whiz kids, who develop the wording for the throne debate and the throne speech specifically.
What it tried to do was not change the substance of what this government is about but rather change the image. As you know, all the experts in a government will always tell you that the problem is not what the government is doing but how it's communicating what it's doing, when in reality, if you examine policies of various governments over the years, this government included, you will see in fact it is the policies which have found disfavour with the public as opposed to the communications strategy developed by high-priced help in the Premier's office and in government.
I heard this last Friday in St Catharines as a number of people gathered in honour of the Premier at one of our days of action in the province. There were some people who saw the government as being harsh, tight-fisted, mean-spirited, narrowly ideological. They were portraying that image and obviously they hadn't read the throne speech, because the throne speech has attempted to soften the image of the Premier. We don't see the Premier as often now in a shirt and tie. We see him now in that open-necked shirt, and he's smiled more in the last month than I've seen him smile since 1981 in this House. He has, as I said, tried to cultivate a new image among the people of this province. However, every once in a while he slips back into the old way of speaking.
For instance, someone asked him why he was cutting off a $37 payment which was made, I think on a monthly basis, to individuals who were pregnant and happened to be receiving social assistance. This money, of course, is to assist them with special food requirements which are necessary at this time of pregnancy. The Premier said, "Oh, well, we're going to cut that off because, you know, they're going to use it on beer; they're going to spend it on beer." No sooner did the words get out of his mouth than his handlers were scrambling to find some way of stopping the damage, stopping the haemorrhaging.
What I was wondering when I heard that is - and I know my colleagues may wonder - was he as worried about how the wealthiest people in the province would spend their tax cut, perhaps at the Albany Club, on - what's an expensive drink? - Rémy Martin or Jack Daniel's or one of these expensive drinks that I hear Conservatives have from time to time. I had not heard the Premier worrying about that. I was beside myself. I wasn't worried about the pregnant women spending their $37 on beer; I was worried about the corporation presidents spending their $300,000 on Rémy Martin or Jack Daniel's or some other expensive drinks. I don't know what they are. You people over there know what the expensive drinks are in the Albany Club.
Mr Froese: Niagara ice wine.
Mr Bradley: "Niagara ice wine," my friend the member for St Catharines-Brock says.
I kept thinking, "When was the last time I heard the Premier put his foot in his mouth on one of those?" It was when he was talking about the nurses of the province. When somebody came up to him and said, "Do you understand that 15,000 nurses are going to lose their jobs, Premier?" he said, "They're just like hula hoop workers, those who made hula hoops, and they have to retrain themselves for other jobs." Apparently a lot of them headed south of the border or retrained, because it appears we're going to be into a nursing shortage now in this province as a result of the firing of so many nurses because of the cut in funding for the operations of various hospitals in our province.
I saw the throne speech as an attempt to remove the spots from the leopard and make the leopard perhaps look like a more friendly animal, a rabbit or something like that, something that's friendly and cuddly and nice to people. But every once in a while, when you take the Premier away from his handlers, from the script, he puts his foot in his mouth and once again people see that harsh, hard-edged, some would say mean-spirited approach - not I, of course - he takes to problems.
The government employs image-makers. I know that the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations - is he still that now? I think he is - David Tsubouchi, the member for Markham, hired Jan Dymond, a Conservative operative, at $2,600 a day. Now, Bill Saunderson, when he was a minister, didn't waste his money on these handlers. He didn't hire somebody at $2,600 a day to advise him on how to blame the federal government or the last Liberal government or the last NDP government or somebody else for all the problems and how to answer questions. But I wondered how tight-fisted Mike Harris and his compatriot Ernie Eves would be about $2,600 a day being paid to Jan Dymond, a Conservative operative, simply to advise a minister on how to answer questions in the House. I know there are many other volunteers in the Conservative caucus who would answer questions without that and would save the government $2,600 a day. The judge would do that. My friend the member for Ottawa-Rideau would, I know, do that for nothing. He wouldn't need someone in here to tell him how to answer questions.
So there was an attempt to soften the image, because everybody remembered the bully bill, Bill 26, that massive budget bill which was going to revolutionize Ontario, the bill that the Conservatives, when they came to power, tried to push through before Christmas in their first year. That was designed by the unelected people. I like trying to look after the Conservative backbenchers, who seem to be pushed into the background, except Steve Gilchrist, who's on TV all the time because he's a favourite of the Premier. I love seeing him on TV. Every time he appears I have faith that there might be an opportunity to topple this government. I figured out there isn't anything my friend from Scarborough East doesn't know about everything. He knows everything, and I'm delighted to see him on television.
I look at a government which was known for being tight-fisted, bullying, intimidating, now trying to soften that image. They didn't fool too many people. Some people maybe; very few, though, because they know what the real Mike Harris and the real ideologues who are around him are like.
In a motion today my friend Rosario Marchese -
Interjection.
Mr Bradley: He wants me to say his name correctly; he told me how to pronounce it. We have a resolution from the Premier today. This is the conversion on the road to Damascus. For those of you who have read the Bible - and I know that most members of the Conservative caucus certainly have; the family coalition within the Conservative caucus have read it. They would know about the conversion on the road to Damascus.
Here we had a government which was hand in hand with the federal government, the federal minister, saying, "The deal is good enough," for the hepatitis C victims. We read letters in the House today saying that they thought it was a good deal. But you know, you get enough public pressure out there and you want to cultivate that new image. Then we start to do things that are uncharacteristic of the government. Frankly, I'm glad about that today. I hope more of that happens, but it isn't the real Mike Harris and the real Ontario government. I know that.
The tax cut: I listen to the radio once in a while, and you get bombarded with government ads. These are ads paid for by the taxpayers of Ontario, out of their hard-earned funds.
1900
The Speaker: Member for St Catharines, it would be helpful if you could even refer occasionally to the motion that we're debating.
Mr Bradley: I'm always happy to engage in a debate which will allow the Speaker to rise once in a while and indicate to his wife that he is in fact in the Legislature and not at a hockey game or something like that. I thank the Speaker, because he's always correct in trying to guide me in the right direction.
I know there's a committee of the Legislature, Mr Speaker, that should deal with this government advertising. In fact I wrote a letter to the Speaker, because the Speaker in the past has expressed his view that governments, no matter who they are, shouldn't be using taxpayers' dollars to purvey political propaganda, and I agreed with the Speaker's pronouncement in that regard. On another issue to do with advertising, he even recognized that there was contempt of the Legislature by a senior member of the cabinet. That is why I bow to the wisdom of the Speaker on his rulings before the House. Once again, I have raised the issue with him and at an appropriate time will do so once again.
The reason I mention this is you may have heard on the radio, Mr Speaker, these ads extolling the virtues of the tax cut, as though it has had some positive effect on the province. Virtually everybody out there who knows anything about economics is laughing at that. I mentioned the other day Dr Joseph Kushner. Dr Kushner is an economist at Brock University - I always mention this when I say it - the most parsimonious member of city council I've ever seen. In fact, he's been labelled "Frosty the No Man," he's been labelled "Professor Negative" and "Dr No" because he consistently disapproves of what he considers to be unnecessary expenditures. You can't find a more conservative individual than Dr Kushner.
On St Catharines city council he moved a resolution last year calling upon the government to abandon the tax cut because, he said, any economics textbook will tell you, if you combine a tax cut with deep cuts like health care and education and other areas of spending cuts in the government, the result is contractionary, not expansionary.
What we're fortunate about is we have in this circumstance a lot of trade with the United States and it's an export-driven boom in the economy. When the Liberal government was in power from 1985 to 1990, when things were booming, I probably was saying, like many of you people on the other side, "Isn't this Liberal government great, because the economy is booming." I know there are a lot of people who accurately said, "Remember that you export to the United States," and the American economy was booming then, even though we were booming probably more than that direct economy. It was booming then, and our exports were doing well.
Here's something you should tell our American friends: Ask them which country is their number one trading partner. Some of them will probably say Japan. It's not, of course; it's Canada. Do you know what the second-largest jurisdiction dealing with the United States is?
Mr Bert Johnson (Perth): Cuba.
Mr Bradley: No. It is in fact Ontario. So when the economy is booming in the US, the economy is booming here in Ontario.
The NDP was unfortunate enough to be in power at a time of recession in the United States, and therefore -
Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South): Careful. They're together.
Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa-Rideau): Not in Buffalo.
Mr Bradley: I don't care if you're trying to prop up the NDP and be friends with them. I'm simply stating reality. They were faced with a real downturn in the American economy under a Republican administration, and as a result, things were not booming.
What is really causing things to boom is, number one, the US economy and all the purchases taking place; number two, the very low interest rates, not the high interest rates under the Progressive Conservative Mulroney government to which many of you adhered in years gone by, not that; and the other is the low dollar. When the dollar hovers around 69 or 70 cents, that always does us a lot of good.
Mr Guzzo: What's the dollar like in BC?
The Speaker: Order. Member for Ottawa-Rideau, the government had an opportunity to debate this issue and they used 11 minutes. Now it's the time for the opposition. Please allow them the same opportunity.
Interjection.
The Speaker: Member for St Catharines-Brock, I don't want to have a discussion about it.
Mr Bradley: Thank you, Mr Speaker, for asserting your appropriate authority in this regard.
Mention was made of British Columbia by the member from Rideau. I can say to you, with the downturn in the economy in Asia at this time, you're bound to see some effects on those parts of the country which trade with Asia.
Besides, you shouldn't be picking on the NDP. You know the strategy of the geniuses in the Premier's offices is to help prop up the NDP. They're being nice to them now. Gilles Bisson doesn't like that because he doesn't like cosying up to the Tories, but that is the strategy. So I should tell the member from Rideau, you're supposed to be nice to the NDP now and prop them up. That's what your role is to be.
We have the US economy booming, purchasing from here; we have those exports to the United States; we have the low interest rates; and we have a low dollar which makes us extremely competitive. I heard this in the finance and economic affairs committee. We also know that the tax cut is costing the treasury of Ontario, when fully implemented, $5 billion a year.
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I talked to a friend of mine from the United States the other day who said to me: "You're getting a tax cut in Ontario, but you're running a deficit. Doesn't that mean you have to borrow the money?" I said "Yes. You know something? Since these people have been in power, instead of wanting to wipe out that deficit quickly, they want to implement a tax cut which costs them" - according to the Dominion Bond Rating Service; certainly no bastion of liberalism or socialism - "close to $5 billion a year."
That's most unfortunate. You can look at it this way: Any money they get in transfer payments from the feds, they just give away in a tax cut. Who benefits the most from that? The wealthiest people in our society. What you're doing is you're transferring it to more regressive taxes. That's where we get into the downloading on municipalities. You've said to the municipalities, like Governor Todd Whitman of New Jersey -
Mr Michael Gravelle (Port Arthur): Christine Todd Whitman.
Mr Bradley: Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, a Republican. By the way, anybody in Ontario who wants to find out what the Common Sense Revolution is all about should just look at what happened in New Jersey. What happened was they pushed all of the financial obligations and responsibilities down to the local level, and property taxes went up and user fees went up. The member for Huron will remember, as I do, that Mike Harris said, "A user fee is a tax." He said, "It's the same thing." I believed him then and I believe him today. It's a tax. What happens is that people of more modest income, not rich people, are compelled to pay higher user fees for services which we Canadians traditionally have felt should not require those kinds of user fees.
You see, there's a difference between the United States and Canada. In many states in the US there is polarization. The rich are very rich; the poor are very poor. Unfortunately, I see more of that happening in our Ontario. Yes, there are some people doing well. There are some very wealthy people doing well and I don't begrudge them that. I like seeing people do well. I like seeing various people making reasonable profits in this province. That's good for it. I don't mind that. But it's the taking away from people of modest income some of the basics that have been there before that disturbs me. I know Dalton Camp, the Conservative columnist, has on many occasions written about this problem, where he sees governments, particularly the Harris government, moving in that direction.
All this ballyhoo about the tax cut having some effect in Ontario is just nonsense, any reputable economist will tell you that, but we're paying a big price for it.
I remember that Mike Harris got some advice on this from his own caucus when they first talked about the tax cut, maybe even before they came to power. I remember Ted Arnott, my friend the member for Wellington, cautioning against it and musing aloud about it; Gary Carr, the member for Oakville South, I recall; Morley Kells; a gentleman by the name of - well, I shouldn't say it. I'll say a person who represents Etobicoke West in the Legislature, back when he was a member of the Conservative caucus. All these people - and I say this publicly - publicly mused aloud about the advisability of a tax cut when you're already running a deficit. There's many a committee in this Legislature which has dealt with that very issue.
Now I want to get on to the government's addiction to gambling. This is where I want to bring in the family caucus, the people who ran on family values last time, the people who appear before committees of the Legislature - and they have members of the family values caucus there. What I'm thinking is, if they are really concerned about the damage that can be done to families by a lot of things happening out there - we've got the crime commissioners out there. I feel a lot safer now with the crime commissioners around Ontario, because one of them said, "Of course, you realize crime has nothing to do with poverty," which most people found rather astounding, but there we are. But let's get away from the crime commission, unless of course we can get the crime commission to deal with this government being addicted to gambling and gambling revenues.
My friend Bud Wildman, the member for Algoma, and you, Mr Speaker, will remember during the last election campaign and in this House my good friend Mike Harris saying: "I want nothing to do with gambling revenues. I don't want anything to do with them at all." His friend Ernie Eves said, without moving a hair on his head, that he himself was opposed to this addiction to gambling revenues.
Now we find this government looking for new opportunities on every occasion to get money from the most desperate people in our society. They've given the tax break to the richest people, to those who can operate hardware stores, the richest people in our society. I won't mention which ones. I mention it because one of my colleagues in the Legislature used to be associated with a company and he likes me to mention it. Sometimes I even say "Canadian Tire" to him, but it's something that we agree is to be amusing and not to be hurtful to him in any case. But the wealthiest people up there have their tax cut. However, as I said in a legislative committee, the people who are preyed upon are the most vulnerable, the most desperate and the most addicted people in our society.
The government was going to head out and put VLTs all over the province - VLTs are video lottery terminals, the crack cocaine of gambling - and they received so much flak because we'd get up in the opposition and ask questions about it all the time. When they went to church, they'd find out that some of the people at the church weren't very happy about it, and some of their own members were very unhappy about it, and they started to recoil. They were going to put them in the bars and restaurants. In fact, they got two full years of fund-raisers out of that, where the members of the hotel association and motels and restaurants, who were very much for that, were very supportive of Conservatives at their fund-raisers. Then the fur hit the fan and they found out, when they had a vote last fall, that many communities did not want the new Mike Harris gambling halls -
Mr Bud Wildman (Algoma): Gambling dens.
Mr Bradley: - gambling dens - that you people over there refer to as charity casinos.
The charities were put out there as a front. It looks good if you're going to help out the charities, so they came up with this great idea: "Let's have 44 charity casinos, Mike Harris gambling dens, across the province." They're permanent, so if they're out in Scarborough-Ellesmere, for instance, they wouldn't show up for three days and leave; they'd be there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, pulling in the dough for Mike Harris and his friends in the government, and victimizing the most vulnerable people in our society.
It's not just poor people who are victimized; there are some people of means who are addicted to gambling. They can lose a lot of money there as well. But the damage it does to the social fabric of this province is not worth the price of the blood money that comes from gambling revenues in this province.
I call upon Mike Harris to call a moratorium on the escalation of gambling opportunities. I'm not rolling back the clock. I'm not saying you have to go back and remove Wintario or that you're going to close down Windsor, Niagara Falls and Casino Rama. That's happened and I don't want to dwell in the past, whether I happen to think it's a good idea or not. But I do think there is an argument in favour of a moratorium on further gambling opportunities in this province, and I suspect at least half of the Conservative caucus agrees with what I'm saying.
The government, you will recall, tried to pretend it was making some drastic changes. It said, "We're not going to have VLTs there; we're just going to have the good, old-fashioned slot machines, so everything's fine." Everybody is supposed to say, "That's fine, Mike, you can have your new gambling halls now." Well, I can tell you that if VLTs were the crack cocaine of gambling, slot machines are the cocaine of gambling, and you haven't made a substantial difference.
Interjections.
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Mr Bradley: They also changed, I say to the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere - they said: "After the court case in British Columbia, where the British Columbia government ran into trouble over casinos, allowing their charities to front for casinos, maybe what we should do is give more money to the casinos. Those municipal councillors who are responsibly responding to the valid arguments against charity casinos, do you know what we should do with those people? Let's do a little arm-twisting. Let's get the charities to say to them" - I heard the Minister of Municipal Affairs and the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations allude to that, I don't know if in committee but certainly in this House, and suggest that perhaps the charities in those communities wouldn't do well unless they approved the new Mike Harris gambling halls in their communities.
Mr Wildman: Sort of what Klein did to the Catholic church out there.
Mr Bradley: Exactly.
Then there was a little bit of bribery out there, not bribery in the classic case of illegal bribery, but bribery in this way: They said to municipalities: "You know, it takes an awful lot to operate those gambling machines. We're going to give you an administrative fee for operating them, probably worth 200,000 bucks." If you are a municipality strapped for funds, you might just think for a moment that it might be a great idea to get them in.
Do you know who else shouldn't be in favour of these besides members of the family caucus on the government side who ran on family values and besides people who worry about the social fabric of this province? Our business people. If you put a charity casino in Kitchener, for instance, all it does -
Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): Our city said no, Jim, and we don't have them.
Mr Bradley: I agree, and I know you agree with me. I'm with Wayne Wettlaufer on that.
When they said no, it's because they knew if they had one there it would simply take dollars that would go into Canadian Tire or Home Hardware or Zellers or somewhere else, some business, some service.
Mr Wettlaufer: It would also take $90 million out of the community.
Mr Bradley: Exactly. I forgot about that argument. It also robs from existing service organizations who have their ways of raising money. It robs from them. You're right. So the Lions clubs and the Optimist clubs and so on find that their revenues are down.
Let me tell you something about bingo. I'm glad you mentioned it, I really am, because when they were running the bingos before, the prizes were limited. The provincial government said, "You can't have too big a prize." Then Mike Harris, not himself but his advisers, said: "Do you know, Mike, we can get all kinds of money. We'll have one on" - is it on television they have it? Who knows this? They have the bingo on television, a provincial bingo. Guess who the big winner is? It's Mike Harris and his government. That's who gets the money. The local people don't get much out of that big bingo, the province-wide bingo that they put in the bingo halls.
I'm calling upon my friends in the Conservative caucus to put pressure on the government. Like their change of heart on the hepatitis C compensation, maybe there will be a change on the road to Damascus, a conversion against this. I know I can count on many of my friends opposite to call upon Mike Harris, because they know that their churches or other petitions call upon Mike Harris to call a halt to the further escalation of gambling opportunities in this province.
I am glad - did I not say in this House that if this didn't happen I would be applauding? I applaud the fact that we will not have VLTs in every bar and every restaurant on every street of every neighbourhood of every village, town and city in Ontario, because Mike Harris said we're not going to have them there. He says, "We're just going to have them in the existing tourist destination casinos."
I mention briefly - because I'm raising it with you, Mr Speaker, in another opportunity - the issue of government advertising. I think the government reached the all-time low when it used taxpayers' dollars to attack one segment of our society, that is, teachers, those who deliver educational services on the front-line basis, when they took adds out - I know there were complaints in the public accounts committee about this - and attacked teachers in this province. What they forgot was that teachers are sons and daughters, they're aunts and uncles, they're wives and husbands, they're next-door neighbours, they're best friends, they're members of service organizations, so the government message could not get out unrefuted.
I got calls from very strong Conservatives, who - I don't know whether by election time they will be back or not. I kind of doubt it from the way they spoke during Bill 160, some of them fund-raisers for you people. One in particular whom I know phoned me. He told me: "I've raised funds for these people, I've worked in their campaigns and so on. I have two" - I think one is a son and one is a daughter, or two daughters - "who are teachers and I am disgusted by the treatment of teachers by this government."
By the way, you will recall that the fight over Bill 160 was not a fight between the teachers of Ontario and the Mike Harris government of Ontario. It was instead a fight between those who believe in a strong, vibrant, high-quality publicly funded education system and those who do not. Of course, this government does not believe in the former but rather in the latter. When the bluff was finally called, it was discovered that they were really interested in taking funding out of the education system.
I may get back to Bill 160 shortly but I want to deal - in fact, I'll deal with it right now. Why not? What the government doesn't realize - and the funding formula flows from this and the new rules as to principals and vice-principals flows from this - is that you can't put factories out there and put students in factories, that in fact the concept of the neighbourhood school was something dear to the heart of Conservative members of this Legislature when I was first elected in 1977. To a person, they were concerned about the availability of neighbourhood schools for their children to attend. They recognized that as the numbers went up, the more impersonal the school became. They recognized as well -
Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): Speaker, do we have to listen to this?
Mr Bradley: My friend the member for Scarborough East, who interjects, like many of his colleagues, not all of them, is living in the 1950s in education, when the people went perhaps to schools and did not recognize the changes that have taken place.
You see, many of the children who attend school today have far more problems than those who attended in years gone by. There are many more who come today from dysfunctional families. It's an unfortunate circumstance. I wish it were not so, but it is unfortunately the case. So the schools, not of their own volition but because it was necessary, have assumed more than a straight academic teaching or technical teaching role but instead have had to expand their role within our society. It is very difficult to do it without the resources that might be made available.
If you are rich or if you have a family structure which allows for helping the student individually, then you may not need that assistance, but many do. Back in - what was it, Bud, 1982, or a little beyond that? - Bette Stephenson brought a bill into this House called Bill 82, called for by John Sweeney, the member for Kitchener-Wilmot of the day, and others in this House, that provided for special education.
You have to consider that when many people in this House went to school, people who were, for instance, developmentally disadvantaged or developmentally disabled were not in what you call regular classrooms. Today, many students with disabilities are, and that requires some special assistance from those who are assistants to the teachers within the classroom.
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Another thing that you didn't recognize, though, in one bill where you backed down, where you did a full retreat - I think it was Bill 146. Bud, was that -
Mr Wildman: Yes.
Mr Bradley: Bill 146. We saw the government wisely back down, but today, through the funding formula, it is going to force schools to go to contracting out services for caretakers, for cleaning, secretarial services and other services. Anybody who understands anything about the school system recognizes that the custodian, the caretaker and the secretary are all part of that school team and if you take those out, if you simply bring in people who don't on an ongoing basis know the students and the needs of the school, you cannot serve those students as well. The school secretary watches those who come in and out of the school. So does the school caretaker. They are often the first people to spot people who don't belong in those schools, who might do harm to students. They know the students and they provide some additional assistance. I think the government is wrongheaded when it starts cutting or forcing schools to go to privatization for those people.
I think we recognize that we'll see, despite the pronouncements of the government, class sizes increase. In Niagara, as I'm sure across Ontario, 35 schools under the jurisdiction of the Niagara board of education, the public board, are threatened with closure as a result of the new formula for principals and vice-principals, a formula which is totally unrealistic and which is causing chaos in the system.
And so it happens with adult education. I used to listen to members of the Conservative caucus say that learning is an ongoing process, that we're going to have to change jobs several times throughout our careers. Yet when we invest money in adult education so that people who have lost jobs or who may not have the education and skill to obtain the jobs that might be available are able to get that education and training, this government now says that they're not going to fund it as they have in the past.
Junior kindergarten: Obviously there's still a significant number in the government caucus who think that's just babysitting of some kind. They probably heard my speeches in this Legislature about Dr Fraser Mustard and all the studies he's done and the presentation he's made to various people in the province, probably through some legislative committees. He probably has been there; I'm not certain of that, but probably. Fraser Mustard already has the data available for this government to recognize that junior kindergarten is important, that if you invest at that end $1, you can save $7 at the other end through avoiding social assistance being necessary or avoiding, for instance, penal institutions and the law system which deals with some people. It's a good investment. Take my word, it's a good investment. I may not have said that 15 or 20 years ago, but certainly the world-wide studies have pointed to that and I think this government should have junior kindergarten across this province.
Now I want to deal with the hospital closing commission, as I call it. They call it a restructuring commission. It's appeared before legislative committee, I can assure the Speaker of that. Mike Harris's commission has now either closed or merged 32 hospitals in this province. You will recall, Mr Speaker, because at that time you were not an independent as you are now but you were a Conservative candidate and you would have been watching the television set with your then leader, Mike Harris, answering the question of Robert Fisher in May 1995 when Robert Fisher asked whether these reforms to the health care system would involve closing hospitals.
Let me quote Mike Harris. You probably think he said, "Maybe they'll close." Wrong. He said, "Certainly, Robert, I can guarantee you it is not my plan to close hospitals." Thirty-two hospitals closed or merged, several others under the axe.
In the Niagara Peninsula the beloved Hotel Dieu Hospital is under the axe; the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital in Grimsby threatened; the Port Colborne hospital and the Fort Erie Douglas Memorial Hospital, where the member for - we used to call it Erie - Niagara South was so vociferous this afternoon. He's going to find that those hospitals could be in trouble, and the Niagara-on-the-Lake hospital, where my friend Tom Froese represents people.
All of those are threatened because Mike Harris said to the people in the Niagara region when we had a local commission, "I want to see a restructuring plan, but first of all you should know you're getting $43 million less in funding for operating costs in hospitals."
That has had a marked effect. Ask anybody today who was in the hospital about 10 years ago or had somebody in the family in the hospital what it was like then and what it's like now. They'll tell you the service is substantially different, not because the staff of the hospitals want to do a worse job, not because they're negligent, but because there are far fewer nurses and orderlies, and people to clean up and assist in hospitals today, far fewer employees. They say now that if you go into the hospital you'd better bring somebody from the family to be an advocate on your behalf and do a lot of things the medical staff had to do before. This is simply not acceptable in the Ontario in which we reside.
It reminds me of the United States, where if you've got enough money you can get the best possible service. You can bring in your own 24-hour-a-day nurse, a personal nurse, if you have enough money. Here nurses would love to provide that service - so would doctors and others - and are unable to do so because of the underfunding of our hospitals.
Long-term care: At long last, under relentless pressure from the opposition and others, we finally had some kind of announcement made by the minister. I thought she was announcing a whole whack of new beds and services this year, because I know she announced some last year but I didn't see the dollars flowing. Instead we have this long, eight-year, vague program that might be of some assistance.
I can tell you that the residents of Linhaven, a nursing home in the north part of St Catharines, and their families and the staff are all aware of the impact of Ontario government cuts to the funding of that home. You can multiply that across the Niagara region.
People in our community are angry. They would like to appear before a legislative committee if they could - we're going to constitute those committees under this resolution - to put their case forward, because you understand now that the people who are in nursing homes arrive quicker and sicker, as my colleague Gerard Kennedy, the member for York South and the Liberal health critic, would say.
I well recall the stories my leader Dalton McGuinty, MPP for Ottawa South, has told this House about his days when he took a year off from his education to work as an orderly in the hospital, about many of the procedures he had to perform and the assistance he had to provide to patients. We recognize how important that is.
In terms of long-term care in the home, in terms of long-term care in our municipal homes, we need a great infusion of funds. In the Niagara Peninsula we have on a per capita basis the oldest population in all of Canada; that is, people 55 years of age and over. Per capita we have the largest number of people, certainly in Ontario and I believe in the entire nation. We should be treating those people with compassion and with care.
I want to mention the environment as well. I lament the appointments I see to the Niagara Escarpment Commission. I know the member for Bruce would agree with me when she sees the good old boy, the friend of Bill Murdoch, put on the commission. You know, the good old boy doesn't even believe in the commission, figures you should get rid of it. "We'll just sit down at the old county table and we'll divvy up the severances, and we'll have the Escarpment Hilton, the Escarpment Holiday Inn, the Escarpment Super 8, the Escarpment Comfort Inn," all of those, all over the escarpment.
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The member for Bruce must share my concern when she sees some of the appointments. I saw somebody from a gravel company put on there the other day. Was he the campaign manager of Jim Wilson, the Minister of Energy? Somebody told me that; I'm not certain. Somebody who is on that committee could help me. But you have to put people on that escarpment commission who believe in preserving the escarpment lands, not those who are out to destroy the escarpment.
We could get into the issue of giving away water. This afternoon there was a question from the Liberal critic on the environment to the Honourable Norm Sterling, the Minister of the Environment. There they are, the province just merrily giving water away, saying: "Don't worry about that water. We'll give that to somebody in Asia. We've got lots of water here, don't worry." Then when somebody finds out - I think it was because he was busy worrying about the automobile emission plan that the Premier keeps bugging him about, even though we know the Premier ultimately is responsible; I worry about that.
There are lots of things in the environment I worry about, but I want to get on to an issue of money and politics. This should be discussed by a committee of the Legislature. Let me tell you what's happening out there. South of the border - as Marcel Beaubien would know because he's near a border - on the other side of the border, in the United States, money talks in politics.
First of all, before I get into that issue, I was critical of the Minister of the Environment, but I want to compliment the Honourable Norm Sterling on his devotion to the Niagara Escarpment. What did he get for being devoted to the preservation of the Niagara Escarpment? He got it taken away from him and given to the Minister of Natural Resources. I can't think the Minister of Natural Resources has as much concern about it as my good friend Norm Sterling, but I digress.
Let me go back to money and politics. South of the border, in the hearings in the Senate and the House, through the national news media, you recognize the effect of money and that it affects how governments move and individual members of Congress vote. Why would we want to import those problems into Canada?
I noticed the other night, and I guess in a grudging way we compliment this, the Conservative Party - somebody will correct me if I'm wrong - had a fund-raiser in Toronto where I think you had 3,100 people at $750 a plate. You cleared two million bucks. Wow, that's impressive. But there are a lot of rich people you've done favours for and it's payback time, so they come out and give money to the party. In fact I'm going to advertise, next Thursday evening in St Catharines, another big Tory fund-raiser. I hope there aren't people out there who got government grants who think that because they got a government grant or because they are a transfer agency they have to attend this fund-raiser. I hope they wouldn't think that.
I want to get back to the issue of money and politics. It is my understanding that Mike Harris and his colleagues want to increase the spending limits in campaigns. Right now there's a formula which would allow us to spend, in most ridings, somewhere around $45,000 maximum per candidate. I recognize the ridings will be larger next time, so I believe that you should simply extend that formula to a larger riding. But there are people within the hierarchy, the whiz kids in the government, the unelected people who are not accountable to the population of this province, who are saying, "We've got a great idea." Maybe Tom Long is saying this, I don't know. He's big in fund-raising and in the party. The former president, Steve Gilchrist, is here; he probably agrees with this. But he says: "Let's increase the spending limits. The sky's the limit. Spend as much as you want." So the people who line up at the fund-raisers, who pour all the money in, will be able to spend a lot of money because they've helped the wealthiest people, the most powerful people in our province. What I'm saying is that the present spending limits are fine. If you were to increase those spending limits, you would simply increase the importance of money in our political system.
There's a second aspect of this. They also want to increase the amount that a company or an individual can contribute to a candidate or political party. Once again, the larger the amount of money that can be contributed to an individual candidate or to a party the more it is going to have an effect on the system, may even affect the way in which the government or the candidate proceeds.
Also, they would like to take off the limit which says you can advertise only in the last three weeks because if you've got millions upon millions upon millions of dollars from the wealthiest people in this province, you can saturation-bomb the province with your advertising. You can fill the airwaves with what we call hot-button ads, portraying the wedge issues out there, which portray one segment of society against another segment of society.
For the sake of our democracy and to avoid the many problems that have happened south of the border, I call upon this government to renounce its plans to increase spending limits and to increase donation limits and to change the rules which affect campaigns in this province.
I will talk about the democratic system as we get into the latter part of my remarks. I could go on at some length with the permission of members of the House. I won't mention that rent control was due to be abolished on April 1. The government can't get its act together on that, fortunately, and those students and seniors and so on who will not benefit by this but will be hurt by it will see that happen soon.
I'll mention the students whose tuition fees are going out of sight so that only the very wealthiest students and only the very best students academically will be able to proceed through post-secondary education without a huge financial penalty.
I'll mention my concern about Conrad Black owning 58 of 103 or 104 daily newspapers in this country and how unhealthy that is, not just because it's Conrad Black but anybody who would own that many papers.
Lastly, I'll mention that the rule changes which this government made have a devastating effect on the way this Legislature proceeds. Virtually all of the so-called bargaining chips that the opposition has to slow the government down, to allow the government to take a second look at its drastic policies which it's proposing and bulldozing through the province, are gone. Debate is significantly limited on major bills going through this House and the opportunity for the government to get its way on a daily basis, for instance, by relegating question period to seventh place instead of the second or third place in the list of things we do, all of those are detrimental to democracy, and ultimately, if you take away all other issues in this province, the democratic system has been damaged badly by Mike Harris and the whiz kids in his office.
The Speaker: Further debate?
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Mr Wildman: At the outset, I would like to indicate that I will be splitting my time with my two colleagues.
I enter this debate on the two motions regarding the committees in this House with some trepidation. I just listened to two presentations in this debate, one from the member for Durham East, which beside the tour de force of my friend from St Catharines was sort of a vignette, and I heard two very different speeches. I'm trying to figure out how exactly I could come down in the middle, keeping in mind that I am somehow trying to relate to the two resolutions before the House.
I was just ruminating, as I listened to these two speeches, about the fact that in the current playoffs in the National Hockey League the referees have been instructed to call the games by the rules, and I noted that you are taking a very wide view, liberal view I might even suggest, of the rules of the House in the way that you have been calling the play this evening. I note that while the member for Durham East did talk about the committees, the member for St Catharines only sort of elliptically referred to the committee motions.
The member for Durham East started, I think, to give us sort of a tour of his riding. He is wont to do that. He has done that a number of times here. Then he moved to sort of a tour of the province, saying how many days, how many hours, how many miles -
Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): Minutes.
Mr Wildman: No. I asked him about minutes and seconds, but he didn't get to that, but how many miles, how many communities, how many groups the committees had heard. He had all these numbers and he then compared them to the previous two governments and indicated that the percentages were far higher for this government and that is an indication, he said, that this government is more consultative and listens to the people of Ontario more than the two previous governments. It's a rather interesting analysis. It's sort of a numerical view of consultation, that somehow by having a lot of hours or a lot of communities, a lot of miles covered, that indicates that there is consultation going on.
The thing the member for Durham East forgets, of course, is that if the majority members of the committee are not listening to what anybody says when they come to make presentations to the committee, it's not really consultation; it's just a charade. It doesn't really mean anything, except that the members of the committee are getting to travel and to see a little bit of the province and to meet various people and say hello, meet and greet. Sometimes they greet in a very vicious way and other times they're more friendly, but it doesn't mean anything unless there actually is some result.
If members of the public come before the committee and make cogent arguments and the members of the committee then say, "Yes, you have a very good point" - I'm not suggesting that they would just abandon their agenda, but they might at least adapt it or make changes or deal with questions of implementation based on what they hear in the committee. But this government doesn't do that. This government just goes however many places the member for Durham East says and doesn't pay any attention to what anybody says.
As a matter of fact, there are a few members of that caucus over there who have been known to lecture people who come from the public, give them little lectures about how they don't really understand, they're not really with it, and if they did understand, they couldn't be saying what they are.
Mr Bradley: Remember Carol Jones?
Mr Wildman: I remember going to St Catharines - the member for St Catharines mentions this - when we were on the committee on Bill 160. We went to, I think it was, a Polish legion hall. We held a hearing in the Polish legion hall and, as you all know, despite what the member for Durham East said, there were far more people who wanted to make presentations on Bill 160 to the committee than were accommodated by that committee.
We also know how this government attempted to usurp the operations of the steering committee by ensuring that each member of the committee - in other words, each individual member rather than each party - would be able to determine who could appear, and put out a list and somehow skew the list so that more supporters of the government would be able to make their presentations than those who were opposed, when in fact the vast majority, literally thousands of people who wanted to make presentations, were very concerned about Bill 160 and were opposed in most cases.
Ms Jones came to the committee in the Polish hall in St Catharines and she wanted to make a presentation. I didn't realize at the beginning who this person was. She obviously knew a great deal about the operation of committees, she knew a lot about politics and she certainly wanted to share her views about education. I discovered there was a good reason she knew that much and she was so knowledgeable, and that was, for 20 years or more, as I understand it, she had served as the constituency assistant for one Robert Welch, a man for whom I have a great deal of respect and with whom I served in this House for many years. Ms Jones wanted to make a presentation opposed to Bill 160 and she was very angry at this government.
Hon Mrs Cunningham: Was she the only one, Bud?
Mr Wildman: No, there were many, but she wasn't on the list. She was one of many who couldn't get on the list, and she was very angry.
Mr Gilchrist: She could send her comments in writing.
Mr Wildman: She did send her comments in writing, but she wanted to make an oral presentation to the committee and she was denied. She was literally escorted out. This is not a person who could be dangerous to the committee. There were three or four plainclothes policemen. Two of them were following the committee around the province, because the Chair of the committee was so concerned about all of these people who were opposed to the committee. So much for consultation.
Mr Gilchrist: It was a Liberal Chair.
Mr Wildman: It was a Liberal Chair.
At any rate, two of these plainclothes police persons were from the local constabulary from St Catharines, Niagara region police. These four hulking, burly gentlemen escorted this petite, angry, perplexed and frustrated Tory from the room. She was saying as she left that she had campaigned for the current member for Lincoln and that she had campaigned all of her life for Conservatives in Niagara region, that she had served Bob Welch for 20 years as his constituency assistant and she would never work for this government again.
That is the kind of consultation the member for Durham East was talking about when he was talking about committees, a kind of consultation that even turns off long-standing supporters of the Conservative Party because they know it for the sham that it really is, that this is not real consultation, just a façade. It's just to make it look as if the committee is travelling to communities to listen to people when in fact the majority on the committee has the view: "We've made up our minds. Don't confuse us with other opinions. Don't confuse us with facts."
Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre): How many amendments were there?
Mr Wildman: Most of the amendments were put by the government because they didn't know how to draft the bill in the first place. The member for St Catharines in his presentation talked very much about various approaches that this government has taken. Because they have the reputation that I've described of not listening, of not being consultative, of not caring about what people -
Mr Marcel Beaubien (Lambton): What amendments were they, Bud?
Mr Wildman: The member who is barracking across the way spent some time one night in his own riding that I won't get into - but if I were he I would not be too vociferous in talking about how this government listens to the population - a situation that has never happened in the history of Canada before, where a man got killed defending a land claim. This member was right there, right in on it, and he knows he should have the sense to hold his tongue and realize that it's time this government stopped and reassessed what it's doing and understood that it is important to listen to people and to understand when people disagree and to disagree civilly rather than using force when you don't like what the people are saying.
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The member for St Catharines was talking about the various things this government is doing because it has this reputation of not listening, not caring, not being consultative. The government's polls indicate that. I'm not telling them anything they don't know. The government has been told, we've seen the documents, that they must be more caring, that they must be seen to be concerned about seniors, they must be seen to be concerned about children, about minorities, about women.
So the government has decided that it will try to put a new face on its agenda. They have the Premier going around the province meeting with handpicked groups to be seen as listening. This is going to somehow change the view of the population about this government. I don't think it's going to work, because the Premier's real personality always comes through no matter how much his spin doctors attempt to spin it. Even when he was making an offer to the survivors of the Dionne quintuplets, he couldn't help but stand there saying: "We're going to give them $2,000 a month. Take it or leave it. Even if they don't want it, we're going to put it in their bank account, whether they like it or not." Then of course he reacted and he changed.
Then of course we've been told that this government has not had enough of attacking the poor and knocking down the poor. The first thing they did when they came to power was cut the incomes of the poorest people in this province by 22%, and now, just a couple of weeks before the government wants to bring in the Healthy Babies initiative, what does this government do? This government cuts the $37 a month for pregnant mothers on social assistance. This $37 a month is supposed to help them get fresh fruits and vegetables -
Mr Gilchrist: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: At least the member for St Catharines made a passing attempt to have it appear that he was on topic. We've had a quarter of an hour from the third party and as yet there hasn't been a single reference to the motion that's before us here tonight. I wonder if you could remind the member that would be a more appropriate use of his time.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): That is a point of order.
Mr Wildman: I don't see how you can say it's a point of order. I've been talking about the member for Durham East's discussion about committees and how it was consulting. I'm sure that's what we're dealing with: two resolutions concurrently about committees and how the government, even despite all of the hours he said the government had put into going around the province, has a reputation of not listening and not caring and not responding.
So the government has attempted to do two things. What has this government done?
Interjections.
Mr Wildman: You're not keeping them in order, Speaker. Every time the government runs into trouble with its own supporters, it kicks the poor again. What did they do? They took the $37 away from pregnant mothers on social assistance. This $37 was to assist mothers to get good nutrition so that they had healthy foetuses, so they'd have a healthy pregnancy; to make it possible for them to get fresh fruits and vegetables, for instance. They took that $37 away. That's bad enough to do that, a government that said they were going to have a Healthy Babies. But then when asked about it, the Premier's personality, as I said, comes out. "Why did you do this, Premier?" "Well, we did it because they might use the $37 to buy beer." It really is something when the leader of the province, the Premier of the province, can't be dignified enough to deal with an issue in a sensible way and instead attacks the most vulnerable people in our society.
As the member for St Catharines indicated, at least in that sense the Premier was being straightforward and honest. He was being himself. He was letting us know what he really thinks, how mean-spirited he really is: He's not only going to take the $37 away from these people, he's going to accuse them of having wasted it on beer rather than buying the vegetables and fruit they need in order to have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies at birth. Not only is the government going to risk low-weight babies but they're going to have the gall to accuse the women of causing their foetuses to be at risk because they were going to buy beer.
I'm telling you, these motions that are before us will not change the view of the populace towards the government. They will not in any way give the government any opportunity to change the view that the people have about them being uncaring and not listening and not consulting, because inevitably, no matter how hard the committee members try to be seen to be listening, the Premier's real personality will come out and he'll betray his true views, his true mean-spirited agenda. All we have to do is ensure that in the committees we are able to counter that as much as possible so that when this government is defeated, they won't have done as much damage as the Premier would like them to be able to do.
Mr Marchese: I just want to continue where my colleague left off and add several other points that have not been touched on - at least one of them has, actually.
The changes to the rules that this government has made have caused serious concern, both to the members of the opposition but particularly to the public that is actively involved all over Ontario. They know that the changing of the rules that has permitted the acceleration of bills in a matter of days, that permits very little scrutiny of your bills, is wrong. That is something I think you will have to deal with in committee when you get there, because a number of people have raised it already in the committees that I've been a member of, where they are not getting sufficient opportunity to debate your bills. Not only the public but we, the members of the opposition, have been curtailed in our ability to respond to the government members and their bills. They have curtailed our time in this House.
To be fair, the New Democrats did it. Some of our own members said, "It's not something we should be doing, because it limits the ability of the opposition," but we did it. I want to be one of those to admit that I thought it was a mistake. The Tories thought it was a mistake as well when they were in opposition, but it didn't take them long to get back into power and to immediately change the rules in terms of how much time we have here as members to debate bills; and not only that, but to limit the scrutiny of the public on those very bills that are hurting them on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
That is one of the points I want to make, because here when we have an opportunity in this House to speak, we take it. We take every opportunity to raise points because we have so little time and so much to say. When members of the government say, "Are you going to speak to this motion?" of course we're going to speak to this motion, because there is much to be said.
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On the issue of government agencies, of which I used to be a chair and now in opposition I am joining that committee, I will be the Vice-Chair of that committee, I am very pleased to be there because I know the workings of that committee and know the kinds of issues we've had to deal with.
I want to raise a point with respect to that. I want to remind those listening that we did not always have a committee that reviewed appointments and reviewed the various boards, agencies and commissions that are connected to this government. In the past there was no such scrutiny. We knew not what you did; what the Liberals did or what the Tories used to do when they were in power for 45 years by way of appointments. They simply happened. Somebody made it happen. Of course, if you were lucky enough to know who was being appointed, you might be able to attack this person or that person or something that may have been going on in those committees, but we never had a clue.
To remind the public, the New Democrats established that government agencies committee, and it gave the opposition the opportunity to scrutinize appointments to those boards, agencies and commissions. If you recall - and some of the public will recall - both the Tories and the Liberals in that committee were blood-thirsty when it came to appointments connected to New Democrats. They could sniff out a New Democrat very easily, even when they didn't say "New Democrat." They called each and every New Democratic appointment in front of the committee to make the point that it was political patronage and that they, the Tories, would not engage in it. Liberals certainly would not engage in it and never had they done so in the past.
But lo and behold, these guys get into power - remember, they weren't going to do what the New Democrats did, to appoint a few New Democrats. You see, New Democrats wanted to be pure. We wanted to elect Liberals, Tories, NDPers, because we felt we were different as a party. We did. But it didn't matter to them. As soon as they sniffed out a socialist, there he was, in that committee, being scrutinized. But for you fine Tories - some of you don't know, because you weren't here, but the other fine Tories who remained in committee, those blood-thirsty Tories who said, "Never again; not under us," it didn't take them long. These Tories -
Mr Bradley: They're lined up at the trough.
Mr Marchese: Snorking at the trough. Not lined up at the trough; snorking at the trough, with those fine fellow friends, the ones Mike Harris spoke to the other day at the fund-raiser, where he told them: "We thank you. We know you understand us and we understand you. You've stuck by us and we're going to stick by you."
You know what that means? It's money that talks. It's that specie, that lucre, that pecunia, the glitter of money. That's what speaks between Tories and businessmen of the higher levels. It's not the little guys. The little businessmen hardly win the respect of these people. The big guys with the big dollars, they respect that. That's why Mikey, the Premier, at that meeting said, "We thank you for your support and we're going to be there to support you." What do you think it means when they say that? It's like one pocket on one side and a pocket on the other, interconnected. That's what it means. You will deny it, and of course it's up to the public to scrutinize your actions.
You people weren't going to nominate any Tories to those government agencies. No, not you, because you fine Tories would be different. You had the higher moral fibre then. It didn't take long to rid yourselves of that moral ground, had you any to begin with.
Moving along, M. Gilchrist, mon ami, you recall that in the throne speech M. Harris has transformed himself. He's a new man. I would say rather a chameleon, but forget that. Forget the chameleon nature of M. Harris. He's a transformed man. There's a renewal about Mike Harris, a new spirit - perhaps religious - of renewal, of wanting to seek out the compassion that those old Tories used to have.
You recall that my good friends M. Gilchrist and the member for Northumberland the other day defined compassion as a fiscal kind of responsibility. I thought that was an odd definition, frankly, because I don't believe the definition speaks to that. That's why Mike Harris today, on a motion that we dealt with, spoke about that compassion to the hepatitis C victims and said -
Mr Bradley: They did a poll.
Mr Marchese: Polling? No, they don't poll people to find out how they think. It's the new Mike Harris compassion. It's right here. It's written in big letters that he has found a way, because he saw the light, one presumes, and he's now making a big U-turn. You can make U-turns in life, as some of you know. You can retrieve some of those old feelings you might have had as a child. So Mike Harris has retrieved those good old compassionate feelings.
Mr Bradley: You mean that wasn't his stand all along?
Mr Marchese: Never before. No, he's a new man now. He says that if the federal government does not come in half-and-half to pay to support those victims of hepatitis C, he, Mike, would fund it himself. I love this man. You've got to love this guy. He's a new guy. Please forget about things like -
Interjection.
Mr Marchese: Mr Gilchrist, mon ami, Steve, look at this: "The province won't pay to bury the homeless." Forget stuff like that. That was in the past. It is true now that the city has to pick up the payment for the indigents. Those poor homeless who die may or may not have any family, may or may not have any money to pay for the burial, but the city has to pick up the cost of those indigents. It was once a cost shared by you and the city, but you have finally downloaded even the dead to the poor municipalities. A good friend of mine, Joe Pantalone, describes it thus when he says, "I know that the Tories have no respect for the living if they're poor, and now it's clear that they have no respect for the dead." Can you believe that?
Here is another quote from another councillor who says, "The province is kicking kids before they're born" - a reference my friend from Algoma made earlier about taking $37 from women who are pregnant and who are on social assistance; that's the reference here - "and now they're kicking people after they're dead."
That was probably before. That was brutal Mike, but no longer. That was mean, brutal, dictatorial Mike. No longer. Now he's a pussy cat who wants to help every victim imaginable in Ontario. He obviously had to talk to my friend Steve Gilchrist from Scarborough East and say: "Look, don't say things like that. It's not just about fiscal responsibility, it's about having compassion for the poor, for people who are victims, such as the hepatitis C. Please don't define it as fiscal responsibility, because then people are going to think we just care about money and supporting our rich buddies through a downloading system, through the deregulation of everything that we see in sight, through the privatization of anything we can manage. People might think we're like that, and we're not. We're different people now. Please get into the messaging that we're trying to talk about here."
My good friend M. Bradley talked about the tax cut. We all talk about the tax cut, because, you see, it's important. You think of people like Mr Barrett, president of the Bank of Montreal; M. Cleghorn, the Royal president; M. Flood, CIBC. These guys are starving, poor guys, right? They work for these big banks night and day making millions for their investors and they only take home, just as a salary, $1.5 million. They think that's so unfair.
Finally, you have a guy like Mike Harris saying: "You're going to get a tax cut because you deserve it, Cleghorn. You, Barrett, work hard for your money. For my money, you work hard. They're not paying you enough and I want to give you a tax break so that at the end of the 30% tax cut you, Cleghorn, who earn $1.6 million, are going to get $120,000 more. How about that?" Cleghorn says: "Yes, I deserve it. Gee, I'm paying a lot for my money, and boy, can I invest a little more money to make the economy go. Yes." But the guy doesn't need a new fridge or a new trip. He's got the change for that little trip to Aruba, good God.
When we get into committee -
The Acting Speaker: Order. I've been listening intently to the member from High Park and I'm waiting for him to bring his remarks within the terms of the motion. I'd request that you do so, please.
Mr Marchese: Speaker, you of all people obviously understand, as the Speaker in the chair at the moment, that we deal with all these issues in all these committees. You know that.
Mr Gilchrist: No, we don't.
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Mr Marchese: Sure you do. In the standing committee on finance and economic affairs - I've got all the committees in front of me - we deal with these financial issues. The income tax cut is something that comes before that committee. Jobs come in front of that committee. You know that.
These Tories talk about this income tax scheme or cut as a way of stimulating the economy. Sure, it stimulates the pockets of the wealthy but it does very little else for the others.
What I want to do is take that little money away from M. Cleghorn and M. Barrett, people I don't know but have no reason to dislike. I want to take that money that they get, the top 25% who get approximately $1.5 billion and say: "I'm taking it away from you, sorry. It is morally wrong that you, 25% of the population, should be taking up to two billion bucks, taking it from services that are needed by the general populace."
When you give a tax cut like that and take it away -
Mr Wildman: Six per cent of the population.
Mr Marchese: Six per cent of the population and 25% of the tax break. Thank you, my friend. It leads to the same thing.
When you give that kind of $2-billion break to that 6% of the population, you are taking money from hospitals, because that's what you did; you're taking money from schools, because that's what you did. You're taking money from people on social assistance like that measly $37 from pregnant women who need it to keep the health of their children so they can avoid the cost down the line. You're taking away money from the environment because you say: "They can scrutinize themselves. We don't need money for people to go and scrutinize what companies are doing." You're taking away money from natural resources because you say, "We don't need firefighters up there; let the forest burn." You borrow so many billions of dollars you don't have to take from services that we need. I argue it's morally wrong.
It's not connected to this compassion that M. Harris is attempting to regain. He cannot regain what he never had. You can't restore what you never had. You can't rebuild what you never had. You can't make a U-turn. If you are a dictatorial kind of guy, you can't change it; that's the way you are. And you, Harris, and the other minions on the other side, your minds are made up.
If the folks out there listening allow themselves to be deceived by this new game, God bless. I say you deserve Mike Harris and you deserve these other guys. But if you follow it closely, as I hope many of you do, you will say to those of us who are fighting for justice issues, for equality issues, that we need to restore the health of our system, our social health, with the balanced kind of economy we've got, because the economy has been working. You've been lucky for the last two years. Chrétien has been lucky. The economy is doing so well that all the money is coming in, even though most of you Tories and the federal Liberals have been saying, "We've got to cut social programs; that's the real burden we carry." But we know through every study we have seen that the social costs have only been 6%. The real costs have been interest rates, and 40% of it to do with tax breaks. That's what we're talking about. That's what we've got to deal with. That's why we New Democrats talk about justice for the poor and justice for the middle class that is becoming extinct under the Conservative government here in Ontario and under the Liberals federally.
We're going to have plenty of opportunity in the committees to deal with these matters, and we need to raise these issues because the public needs to see the duplicitous nature of this government, and as they see it, hopefully they will look to alternatives that speak to issues of justice, social and economic justice for all.
Mr Bisson: I'm happy to follow the speech of my good friend Rosario Marchese from Fort York and my good friend from Algoma, because they raised something in this debate that I thought was crucial to what we're talking about here.
I listened at the very beginning of the debate to the member for Durham East, who stood in the House and talked about how his government is listening. I thought the member for Algoma and the member for Fort York put that into some context and I want to follow up on some of that.
The government tries to paint this picture lately, and the member for Durham East was certainly attempting this, trying to say: "There is a new Mike Harris government in Ontario. You have a Mike Harris government today that listens," a Mike Harris government that supposedly after listening is going to make some changes and have legislation supposedly reflect what the people of Ontario would like to do. But, Mr Speaker, I see no evidence of this because of what I've seen happen in this Legislature, as you have been here for the last couple of years, on a number of very crucial bills. Let's take a look at some of the bills we dealt with at committee.
Do you remember Bill 26, Mr Speaker? Do you remember that omnibus bill that was passed in the fall of 1995 that the opposition had to force into committee because the government was trying to ram it through the legislative process with absolutely no public hearings? Do you remember that? The members of the opposition had to barricade themselves in the Legislature to force the government to do the democratic thing. Members in the opposition, both in the Liberal and NDP opposition, didn't plan on doing that because it was some idea that it would be a lot of fun to sit in here into the next morning. We did it because as members of the opposition, as did the members in the Conservative opposition before, we believe it's important the public be part of the public legislative process, because that's what this Legislature is all about in a democracy.
This government, when it came to Bill 26, didn't want to use the entire committee process. They tried to ram that piece of legislation through, a piece of legislation that amended 152 pieces of legislation. They tried to do it by way of closure, without any debate. Only after the opposition forced the government did they give it very little time in committee to hear what had to be said.
I was a member of another committee with my good friend Mr Kormos, the member for Welland-Thorold, on Bill 84, I believe it was, which was the firefighters' bill. I remember we travelled the province of Ontario, the opposition members along with the government, listening to firefighters, to municipal representatives, to the public, to victims of fire and accident, member after member of the public, come before that committee, a standing committee of this Legislature, and say to the government: "Do not go forward with this bill. You're going in the wrong direction."
I remember those stories, they were very compelling, where people talked about how important it was to have public fire departments inside our municipalities staffed up with full-time firefighters so we can respond on time to emergencies. If not, the cost of that will be lost lives.
Did the government listen? Absolutely not. The government just did what it wanted to do. The government did as it always does, these Tories. They think they know everything. They think they've got all the answers. They think they know better than everybody else. They just rammed ahead with Bill 84, no matter what anybody had to say, even some government members of the committee.
I remember Mr Carr, who was on that committee, and the other member - I can't remember the member's riding but one of the other government members - who were kicked off the committee by Mike Harris. Why? Because all of a sudden they were starting to show that maybe they should make some amendments to this legislation based on what they heard. What did the Premier do? He kicked the parliamentary assistant out of his position and then kicked the Vice-Chair of the committee off the committee because they were starting to listen to the public.
Imagine that: A member of the Legislature listening to the public and being kicked off the committee by the Premier, members of his own caucus. And this government's going to make me believe that somehow or other they believe they're going to be listening more, somehow there's going to be a better democratic process? Do you believe it? I don't believe it. I don't believe anybody believes it.
I remember Bill 160 that travelled through the province. The member for Algoma raised it. I remember. I was only at one of those particular committee hearings. They had the police there. The government was hiding behind the police because they were afraid of the public. Can you imagine that in a democracy a government is worried about the public? I didn't see anything inside those committees that would make me afraid. People were, yes, opposed to the legislation. People came with very strong points of view because it is a very charged issue. But I didn't see anybody out there physically threatening in any way any member of the committee, be it opposition or government. But the government wanted to have the protection of the police.
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Mr Gilchrist: It was a Liberal in the chair.
Mr Bisson: Then I hear in this House the member for Scarborough East say, "Of course, it's because it was a Liberal Chair," insinuating in some way that because a Liberal happens to sit as a Chair of a committee it's going to be biased. Excuse me. I think that calls into question the integrity of the person who happened to be the Chair of that committee.
Members of this committee from all sides of the House, from all parties, sit as chairs of committees as appointed by our leaders, and I have yet to see a government member, a Liberal member or an NDP member be biased as a Chair on any committee that I have sat on, and I have sat on a lot of committees in this House. I stand behind the decisions of the Chairs of the committees.
Interjection: You're living in a fantasyland.
Mr Bisson: You're saying that your own members are - this says it all. The government members believe that anybody who sits in the opposition who chairs a committee is biased and is going to do something to do in the government. Can you imagine? I have never heard that in this House in the two terms that I have been in here, and I only would have believed that would have possibly been said by somebody like the Tories. Unbelievable.
I remember Bill 103, another bill that appeared before a public committee. Again, people went before the committee and made presentations. Did the government listen? Not once. I remember sitting at a committee hearing in Sudbury where the isolate board of the community of Hornepayne came and made a submission to the committee about the creation of the new boards of education. Everybody agreed. The government and the opposition members agreed what the government was doing was silly. Did they listen?
Mr Gilchrist: Yes, we did. We created the board.
Mr Bisson: No, you didn't. You created the board without listening and you did nothing to address the issues of the people of Hornepayne, another example where the government -
Interjections.
Mr Bisson: They don't understand that. You wonder sometimes, Mr Speaker, why we even go through this process. They still don't get it. This was another example where the public, represented by the people of Hornepayne who came to present to our committee, convinced the members of the committee on the government side and convinced the members of the committee on the opposition side that the legislation was wrong.
I remember listening to the Conservative members say: "Yes, we're going to have to go back to our Minister of Education and get this changed. We think you're making a very good point here." Members of the opposition do the same. When a motion is brought before the committee in order to amend the legislation, the government votes against it. Why? Because Mike Harris and the Minister of Education at the time, none other than John Snobelen, said: "Oh, no. We know better. We're smart. We have all the answers. We're not going to have to listen to anybody in the public." The member for Durham East tries to make me believe they want to travel around the province on committee in order to listen to people, to listen to what they have to say so they can take it into consideration. As I say, they don't have a very stellar record when it comes to listening.
I watched on Bill 104. Do we all remember the megacity bill? We listened.
Mr Gilchrist: Sure we do. That wasn't the megacity.
Mr Bisson: Well, which one was it?
Mr Gilchrist: Bill 103.
Mr Bisson: I stand corrected. There are so many bills in this House, but it was Bill 103, the megacity bill where they created one huge city of Toronto, which seems to be falling apart to a certain extent now as we look at how this bureaucracy that they created actually doesn't work.
The point is "the government that listens," remember? The member for Durham East starts his debate by saying: "We listen. Oh boy, do we listen. We're a kinder and gentler Mike Harris government, and we're listening."
Did they listen to the people of Toronto, did they listen to the people of Scarborough, did they listen to the people of Etobicoke when they had the referendum? Almost 70% in some cases, and over, voted in opposition; 76% in the case of Toronto voted in opposition to Bill 103. They didn't want to see megacity go forward. Did the government listen? Not one iota did they listen. They went ahead. Why? Because Mike Harris and in this case M. Leach figured they had all the answers, they're smart, nobody else, and -
Interjection: That was the old Mike.
Mr Wildman: He was completely lost.
Mr Bisson: He was. But I refer back again to the second person who spoke in this debate, the member for Durham East. I think he made a comment that really summarizes where the government is coming from. At one point - I think he was heckling when I heard this particular part - he turned around, and somebody was speaking. I think it was the member for St Catharines who was speaking on this bill.
Mr Wildman: He couldn't have been speaking.
Mr Gilchrist: Well, he's the only Liberal who listens.
Mr Bisson: Anyway, the member was speaking to the bill and was making some comments about committees, about how it works, how it's important for the government to listen to what the public has to say, and he made a comment about how the government doesn't listen.
The comment from the member for Durham East, and I wrote it down because I thought it was so interesting, was, "It's because they're wrong most of the time; we're right."
Excuse me, Mr Speaker. All of a sudden this government thinks they're the only ones who know absolutely anything about what should be happening in Ontario. Were all of the public through the megacity debate wrong? The 76% of the people who voted in opposition to the megacity, were they all wrong? According to the government they were, but I don't think so. I tend to like the idea of democracy, where people are able to express themselves and have their government listen.
Un autre exemple, c'est la Loi 99. On a fait des changements à la loi de compensation qui sont épouvantables - je répète, épouvantables - quand ça vient à ce que ça veut dire pour les travailleurs de la province de l'Ontario. Le gouvernement a fait des changements dans cette législation qui sont massifs.
Les travailleurs accidentés à travers la province, personne par personne, sont venus devant le comité à Kingston, à Toronto, à Burlington et à d'autres communautés comme Sudbury pour dire au gouvernement, «Vous allez dans la méchante direction, monsieur Harris. Vous êtes méchant. Vous êtes en train d'ôter mes bénéfices. Je suis seulement un travailleur accidenté. J'ai pas demandé d'être accidenté, c'est un accident. Et là, vous allez me punir. S'il vous plaît, ne faites pas ces changements-là.» Les experts qui sont venus devant le comité sur le projet de loi 99 ont dit, «Ne faites pas certains changements, parce que ces changements-là vont nuire au fonctionnement de la Commission des accidents du travail.» Est-ce que le gouvernement a écouté?
M. Marchese : Jamais. Ils n'écoutent pas.
M. Bisson : Jamais. Ils n'écoutent pas.
Je regarde ce qui est arrivé avec la loi de contrôle des loyers, la Loi 96. Mon bon ami M. Rosario Marchese a travaillé si fort sur ce projet de loi pour essayer de garder une protection pour les locataires de l'Ontario. Locataire après locataire, représentants municipaux et ceux des organisations sont venus devant ce comité pour demander au gouvernement, «S'il vous plaît, n'allez pas dans cette direction-là.» Ont-ils écouté ? Y a-t-il eu des amendements sur le projet de loi ? Du tout, le gouvernement n'écoute pas.
Quand le gouvernement arrive et qu'ils me disent au commencement d'un débat qu'on va faire des changements sur un comité en changeant des personnes puis changer la journée que le comité va se rencontrer et quelques manières afin que le gouvernement puisse mieux écouter, je ne suis pas convaincu. Je ne le crois pas.
I say to the government members across the way, changing the membership on the committee and the day that a committee meets is not in any way, shape or form going to do anything to change this government's attitude when it comes to the public, this government's way - I say their way, because it is their way - of not listening to the people of Ontario. I think their record speaks for itself.
I for one am not convinced. I don't believe for one second that this government is going to get any better when it comes to listening to the people of Ontario by changing the committee membership of these particular committees and changing the days that the committees meet.
With that, I would like to leave the remainder of the time to my good friend Mr Wayne Lessard from Windsor.
Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): I don't know if I'll be using up all of the time, but I do have a few things to say.
Just to follow up where my friend from Timmins left off, changing the members of the committee and changing the times that the committee meets really isn't going to change the face of this government or whether they're going to listen or not. It's kind of like changing the deck chairs on the Titanic. Is it really going to make any difference?
There are some members in this Legislature who think that if you slow down the Titanic a little bit, it is going to be a good thing. But we say you need to change the direction of the boat, because if you slow down just when you're going to hit the iceberg, that's not going to make any difference. While some may say the government is moving too far, too fast, we recognize that it's going in the wrong direction and it needs to turn around.
We hope a sign of that turnaround came during the throne speech a week or so ago, where this government says they've been listening to people and they're going to be kinder and gentler in the coming session. We can only hope that is true.
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My experience, in the short time that I've been here, is that at committees I've sat on - just a few. One was with respect to the workfare legislation, where I attended committee hearings in Ottawa, for one place, and listened to concerned, compassionate members of the community come to make presentations to that committee. They received stern lectures from members of the government when they were there to listen to what people have to say. At least if they don't agree with them, they could say: "Thank you very much for coming. We appreciate your input." But to actually lecture people who come before committees I think is wrong.
Mr Bisson: And chastise them.
Mr Lessard: And chastise them as well. It's inappropriate behaviour.
I also attended some hearings of the committee that was looking into Bill 160. I went to Chatham and St Catharines. I was with the member for Algoma when that fine woman who wanted to make a representation to the committee -
Mr Bradley: Carolyn Jones.
Mr Lessard: Carolyn Jones, the former constituency office assistant to a Conservative MPP, wanted to be heard but wasn't able to be and was escorted out of the committee hearing room and the legion hall by the security people who were in attendance at all of the meetings of that committee. One has to wonder how committees are able to do their work; how the public feel when they come to make appearances before committees, if they're lucky enough to get on the list to make representations, and attend in committee rooms where they have to be faced with undercover officers and police officers at the doors to guard who knows what. I didn't understand why they were there.
Let's look to the future a little bit to see some of the things that the committees are going to be dealing with, that I anticipate in the coming session.
One of the things the throne speech indicated was that there were going to be some changes to apprenticeship training. We know what the government has announced with respect to apprenticeship training including tuition fees. That's one thing. As if students don't have a high enough debt load here in Ontario so far, what we want to do is add to the debt load of persons who are going to be involved in apprenticeship training. That's going to require some changes to legislation. I hope this government would ensure that they have committee hearings throughout Ontario to hear from young people about the impact that's going to have on their ability to access apprenticeship opportunities.
The government has also indicated they're going to reduce the ratio of journeymen to apprentices. It's our belief that's going to negatively impact the quality of the training that apprentices are going to receive. It's also going to have a negative impact possibly on health and safety protection to persons who are involved in the apprenticeship training programs.
I think it's important for the public to have an opportunity to express their views with respect to those sorts of changes. I would expect that if this bill were referred to committee, they would certainly come and visit Windsor, because we know there are many apprenticeship opportunities that are there in various sectors, the tool and die and the mould-making area, where there is a severe shortage of people to enter those programs. Also there is much construction that's going on there as well. There is a need for apprentices and we need to encourage young people to enter into an apprenticeship program. But one way we're not going to encourage people to take apprenticeship training programs is by raising the barriers for people to enter into those programs, by imposing tuition fees and facing students with huge debt loads after they complete their programs. That's not one way we're going to encourage people to be involved in that.
Other legislation that is probably going to committee, I would hope, is with respect to the impending breakup of Ontario Hydro. All of us recognize that there need to be some changes with respect to Ontario Hydro, especially given the problems that were revealed through the report with respect to the nuclear generating plants. Something we need to hear from the public is what impact the changes to Ontario Hydro are going to have on consumers. Is this going to mean that hydro rates are going to rise? I know the government will say that increased competition will ensure that rates are going to go down, but how are we going to ensure that that happens? That sort of regulation needs to be in place.
What about the stranded debt? What's going to happen to that? Is that something that is going to have to be paid by consumers as an extra surcharge on their bill, so even though rates may go down there is this extra charge to deal with the stranded debt? We know that debt isn't going to disappear. Either the people who are consumers of hydro are going to pay it or the rest of the taxpayers generally are going to end up getting stuck with that bill. That's certainly not something I would like to see happen.
We also want to know what this government plans to do with nuclear reactors. Are those going to be permitted to be sold to the private sector or are they going to be retained in the public sector? I think people have legitimate concerns about safety when it comes to the ownership and operation of nuclear reactors, and that's something the public need to be heard on by committee in the upcoming session.
We also know there is going to be a switch or an encouragement to lower-cost power. How that power is going to be generated at a lower cost is probably through cheap, coal-fired plants. I'm concerned about the impact that's going to have on the environment. We know there are emission caps with respect to greenhouse gases for Ontario Hydro, but what if people are permitted to purchase their hydro from outside Ontario, for example, and purchase it from somebody who has a coal-fired plant in the Ohio valley? We don't have any emission caps on generators of hydro in the Ohio valley.
We know in Windsor, for example, that a lot of the air pollution from the Ohio valley just comes right up that valley, right past the city of Windsor, and we end up having to deal with the environmental fallout. That was something that was the subject of the Environmental Commissioner's report last week. I know you'll recall that, where the Minister of Environment, Norm Sterling, and the rest of the ministers as well, were admonished by the Environmental Commissioner for their total lack of commitment with respect to the protection of the environment.
Unless there are those environmental controls when we see the breakup of Ontario Hydro, we really have some serious concerns about the impact that's going to have on the environment and the impact it's going to have on our health. We know that 1,800 people, by the admission of the Minister of Environment, die each year as a result of air pollution. We're going to be faced with the prospect of the deregulation or the privatization of the hydro business, and we fear this spirit of "open up the gates," wide-open, free-market, free-enterprise generation of electricity is going to have a negative impact on environmental standards and on air quality as well. That's something I believe the members of the public should have some input on.
I hope this government is listening. I hope the changes that are being made with respect to committee membership and the times they meet is going to have an impact, but I'm not optimistic.
Mr Crozier: I want to take just a few minutes tonight to make a couple of comments with regard to government motions 3 and 4. First of all, I think back to the speech of the member for Durham East, when he mentioned how the government listens and how they've gone all across this province and travelled highways all across this province. With the downloading that has gone to municipalities and counties, I find it difficult to find a highway that goes all the way across this province, with the exception perhaps of Highway 401. The highways are disappearing in Essex county. The major employer in Essex county is now not on a major highway, because it has been downloaded to the municipality. So I'm not so sure that in listening and in travelling across this province, the government would be able to travel on highways.
2050
We talk about listening to constituents. I recall as well that it was reported in a local newspaper that the member for Durham East said early on in this government's mandate that he had some second thoughts about even being the member, because he was tired of listening to his constituents complaining about what the government was doing. That's part of listening: You have to listen to what your constituents like and you have to listen to what they don't like.
There are some members in this House, as a matter of fact, whose constituents have to make an appointment; their constituents have to outline in a one-pager what they want to talk to them about. There are others in this Legislature who have what you would call an open-door policy. In Essex South when I'm in the office, if I don't have an appointment with somebody at that time in particular and a constituent comes in, they come right in the door and sit down and talk about it. That's the way we should listen.
Listening has been mentioned earlier this evening by others. We think of the megacity and the vote that was taken in the city, the referendum. An overwhelming majority didn't want the megacity, yet did the government listen? I think not. Now the government may in fact bring in referendum legislation. That's a little bit too late. You just don't bring it in after you've passed major pieces of legislation such as the megacity legislation.
I now want to get to the three committees I want to speak about. On one I'll give the example of how the committee system works, and works well, and that is the justice committee. We went through hearings across this province where the government was bringing in legislation that would put 20,000 video slot machines in every backyard, on every street, in every town in this province. We went from town to town, and people told them they didn't want the crack cocaine of gambling in their backyards, they told them they didn't want these 44 casinos in their backyards, and they continue to tell them they don't want these casinos in their backyards. But it worked on the justice committee, because now, notwithstanding the fact that the legislation was passed, the government is thinking twice about these video slot machines. They're thinking twice about putting the crack cocaine of gambling in every community across this province.
The interesting thing is that at the time of the hearings you wouldn't have thought the government was going to consider anything. They had their legislation and it was going to be passed. In fact, we came back to the hearings in Toronto, the clause-by-clause, and we made amendments to the piece of legislation that would have limited these VLTs to only controlled gambling areas; for example, racetracks. Those amendments were turned down. In the four years that I've been here, I can't recall a piece of this government's legislation where they've accepted amendments. I guess if it doesn't fit their pattern, it just isn't acceptable.
We tried on the VLT legislation to limit those to only controlled gambling areas, but I'm glad to see now, after the committee hearings, after clause-by-clause, after passing the legislation that will still allow them to be in every corner of this province, they have decided - at least they've announced publicly that they've decided - that they're not going to have 20,000 VLTs in the province. I hope they stick to that, notwithstanding the fact that the legislation still allows it.
The government agencies committee has been alluded to earlier this evening by the member for Fort York. I was on government agencies for several years, and if ever there was a committee that doesn't work the way it's intended, it's the government agencies committee.
For those who may be watching and would like to know, every member gets a list of government appointments to various boards, agencies and commissions. The government agencies committee then can call these appointees before the committee and scrutinize their appointment. I am sorry to say that that committee is merely a rubber stamp for the appointment of friends of the government.
In fact, I said to the member for London South at the government agencies committee one day: "Look, member, what I seem to see here is that all the appointments that are being made by the government are going to pass whether we want them to or not; they're going to be accepted whether we want them to or not, and in addition to that they're all friends of the government." He wouldn't say it on the record, but I got a nod across the room that acknowledged that this is pretty much the way it is. I would have thought that the government agencies committee was one that could scrutinize whether that proposed member is fit for the job.
I have no qualms, if anyone is qualified for that job, that it's then the government's right, and well they should propose whom they want to fill that position. But when you question the capability of an individual, whether the individual has the experience, whether, to use a word that's been used in the Legislature today, they might even have the compassion to deal with the issues that come before a particular committee, and then simply to have the government say, "I'm sorry, it doesn't matter, we're voting for it and that's the end of it" - as a matter of fact, we all know that it really doesn't matter whether or not the government agencies committee accepts that nomination, it's still the prerogative of the Premier to appoint that person in any event.
Finally, I'd like to have a word about the social development committee. Today in Windsor we, the Liberal opposition, held a news conference headed up by Dwight Duncan, and Pat Hoy, the member for Essex-Kent, and myself, where we said that our health care is not for sale in Ontario. This is something that I think should come before the social development committee and be debated, because what's happening in Ontario today is that our health care is for sale. We're not going to let it happen if it's at all possible, if there's anything we can do about it as an opposition. That's why I think there should be a public debate on it.
Speaker, it would interest you to know that up until now not-for-profit caregivers such as the VON have given magnificent quality care to the residents of Ontario, but as of today 30% of that care can be doled out to private agencies. I don't agree with that. I have elderly people in my riding who have been served by the VON, for example, for years. They trust the VON. The VON gives quality care. They like the VON. Now we're going to find that it's going to be turned over to private companies.
Mr Gravelle: It's going to get worse next year.
Mr Crozier: My friend from Port Arthur says it's going to get worse next year, because now it's 30%, then it will go to 60%, then it will go to 100%. Some would predict that the Victorian Order of Nurses won't exist in this province in five years, and that's a shame. I think a major change in the care given to the citizens of Ontario such as that should be brought before the social development committee, or one of the major committees of the Legislature, and debated before that can happen without the citizens of the province having an opportunity to say how they feel.
There I've given you a quick view of only three of the committees: one that works, one that doesn't work and one that should be given the work so that the citizens of Ontario can have a say in their health care future.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate? No.
Mrs Cunningham moved government notice of motion number 3. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? It is carried.
Mrs Cunningham has moved government notice of motion number 4. Is it the pleasure of the House the motion carry? It is carried.
Hon Isabel Bassett (Minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation): Mr Speaker, I move adjournment of the House.
The Acting Speaker: Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? It is carried.
The House adjourned at 2101.