Journal des débats 1998-mai-07 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Bill 9, An Act to amend the Municipal Act to provide Savings to Taxpayers in the Ottawa-Carleton Region / Projet de loi 9, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les municipalités afin de faire réaliser des économies fiscales aux contribuables de la région d'Ottawa-Carleton.

Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa-Rideau): It gives me a great deal of satisfaction to rise today to move second reading of this piece of legislation. It's a matter I have had considerable time to deal with over the past number of years. I go back to my first days on regional council in 1969 when the regional form of government was imposed by Queen's Park. We knew then we had too many municipalities in the 12 in number that were imposed. We knew also that we were dealing with too large an area in Ottawa-Carleton.

However, as time progressed and the consensus around the council table in the 1970s was reached, I can recall some discussions with then Chairman Denis Coolican of the regional municipality, Reeve MacQuarrie of Gloucester, Reeve Haydon in Nepean, Deputy Reeve Carmen there. Most particularly, I remember the wisdom, the foresight and the leadership of the then mayor of Eastview.

The issues were, how were we going to take services across the greenbelt? How were we going to pay for these services as they crossed the greenbelt that the federal government and the National Capital Commission had imposed on the Ottawa-Carleton area? The answer was a form of regional government where the infrastructure and the assets of the city of Ottawa would be used to finance the development of services, be it rapid transit or sewer and water, to places such as Orleans, east Gloucester, south Gloucester, south Nepean, Barrhaven and Kanata in the west.

In the summer of 1973, I particularly remember a very, very dry summer, no watering of lawns for a period of four or five weeks, and the 400 or 500 homes that were in Barrhaven at the time were serviced by artesian wells. Had we been faced with a fire, we were told the entire area might have been completely eliminated. In those days, 80 cents of every dollar spent at the region came from the city of Ottawa.

In 1973, I particularly remember representing an inner part of the city when I was first elected. It was a very difficult sell to justify 80-cent dollars being used to finance the growth outside the region. But if it was a tough sell for me in Ottawa South and the Glebe, let me tell you that the mayor of Eastview had a tougher sell. If there is an argument in Ottawa-Carleton for a distinct society that shouldn't be touched, I suppose Eastview, which is now Vanier, is it because that mayor, who is now the member for Ottawa East, was the person who changed the name, had a vision and a regional responsibility, and he carried it out with leadership and with scope.

I don't know what happened to him when he became a member of the cabinet of the Peterson government. I remember the joy that we felt in Ottawa-Carleton thinking that with him as Minister of Municipal Affairs something would happened. Well, he commissioned a report; you know, get a university professor in the summer to do a report. That solves all the problems. I don't know what happened to a lot of people in that Peterson cabinet. I have to be honest.

Mr Peterson was a member who was called to the bar in 1969, and the class of 1969 was an exceptional class, a bumper crop. Mr Chiarelli, the new regional chair, was from that class. The late Larry Grossman was my seatmate not just at Osgoode Hall but at Woodbine. Mr Justice Archie Campbell, who did the excellent report on police services as a result of the Bernardo affair, was a classmate, as was Mr Justice Dean Hamlyn of the federal court. I think of that because I look at that leadership race of the opposition that recently produced a leader from Ottawa and I notice that not one of the first four finishers in that race served under Mr Peterson. I think there's a strong message there, but I digress.

Today we still have in Ottawa-Carleton 12 city halls, 12 city clerks, 12 planning departments, as we had in 1969. But today we have 100% agreement, resolutions from every council moving ahead with a proposal not for one city, not for three cities, but to move ahead and get away from 12 to some reasonable, realistic number. Each council adopted a date of November 12 - the same day that's contained in my bill - on which, if an agreement had not been reached locally, to call upon the minister to move forward with some leadership and some foresight for this area and have a commissioner come in and resolve the matter on behalf of the citizens who are paying the freight for the waste and duplication that is present in Ottawa-Carleton today.

I want you to know that citizens' panel, which was disbanded recently, was made up of some of the finest citizens in the Ottawa area - Grete Hale, a business leader; Marianne Wilkieson, the former mayor of Kanata; Arnold Faintuck, the former director of planning at the city of Ottawa - selected by a committee headed by a former Governor General and a former federal court justice.

Why that agency is disbanded today - they would tell you that they were sabotaged. The argument comes forward that there's no time for public participation with the time frames within this bill that I present today, but I suggest to you that there is still plenty of time if there's leadership. I have to say with a great deal of satisfaction that Mayor Watson in the city of Ottawa, Mayor Coburn in Cumberland and the new regional chair are providing exactly that leadership and exactly the foresight and the vision that the mayor of Eastview provided to the regional council on which I had the privilege to serve.

I don't know why that citizens' panel disbanded, I don't know whether it was sabotage, but I do know this: There was tremendous concern through the region because it was becoming apparent that this panel was going to succeed. This panel was going to accomplish what had not been accomplished over the past 25 years. We were no longer going to have 84 municipal politicians representing 750,000 people in the Ottawa-Carleton area. We probably have something like 16 or 20, more akin to what Calgary has, serving around 700,000 to 800,000 people there. Of course Calgary doesn't have the benefit or the burden, if you will, of the National Capital Commission.

Under the regional form of government, the argument that I've heard with regard to the French language is countered by the fact of what has happened in the regional municipality over the past 29 years. I know the satisfaction that the then mayor of Eastview had in protecting those services and the services in the French language pursuant to the legislation that this government and the past two governments have had in place.

I can't explain to you why in the hospital structure that act cannot protect the same people for the same reason, but it seems that it's time we have a new system. There's $750,000 being expended to change the system, but I don't worry about that under this or any mode of governance that comes forward. I know the people will provide that service and I know they will be faithful to the commitment of the legislation that's there. I also know that there won't be a sheep doctor in charge of implementing any changes that come forward in here as we have in the hospital restructuring commission, so I feel confident.

I also feel confident that if it is necessary, and I hope it isn't, to move forward with a commissioner in the month of November of this year, a commissioner will be selected from the Ottawa-Carleton area and that the wisdom of some other city may not have to come and impose a position. I have suggested in the past a number of possibilities and a number of people who could serve that function and serve it well.

I suggest also that in the next five months there is plenty of time for public participation. We're not going to have what we would have had if the citizens' panel had been allowed to complete its task, and I regret that very much. But there's no reason why all public participation that is required - we've had 25 years of it since the mayor of Eastview, the now member for Ottawa East, and I first negotiated this at the council table of the regional municipality. I don't think we need another 25 years. I really don't think we need very much additional time. I think the commissioner should be responsible and directed by the minister to provide sufficient time for public participation in the period that he or she or they will be in a position to assess the positions of the various divisions within the RMOC.

I thank you for the opportunity of making the comments.

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M. Gilles E. Morin (Carleton-Est) : La question de la restructuration et de la fusion des municipalités suscite de nombreuses controverses. Que ce soit en Ontario ou dans d'autres provinces, dès qu'on entend passer de la parole aux actes, on assiste à une levée de boucliers de la part de ceux qui s'inquiètent qu'ils seront perdants dans l'opération.

Permettez-moi de me placer au-dessus de la mêlée. Mon devoir est de défendre les intérêts de mes électeurs de Carleton-Est. Mais l'enjeu dépasse les limites de mon comté et la décision qui sera prise va affecter tous les gens d'Ottawa-Carleton pour de longues années à venir. En fait, c'est de l'avenir de 800 000 personnes dont il est question.

La question de savoir si on doit supprimer le gouvernement régional, c'est-à-dire la municipalité régionale d'Ottawa-Carleton, et la remplacer par 11 supermunicipalités, a fait l'objet de longs et âpres débats. Encore aujourd'hui il y a toujours deux groupes qui s'opposent et qui défendent mordicus l'une ou l'autre thèse. Malheureusement, aucun des deux groupes ne donne l'impression qu'ils en arriveront à un compromis dans un avenir prochain.

Pourtant, ce n'est pas faute d'efforts. Il y a eu des consultations publiques organisées dans le seul but d'écouter la population. Il y a eu la création d'un comité de citoyens chargé de consulter la population, et ce comité devait émettre des recommandations. On a appris récemment que ce comité s'était sabordé. Enfin, il y a eu des annonces de projets de fusion de municipalités. Mais malheureusement, il ne semble pas qu'il y ait de suite à ces annonces.

Toutes ces initiatives, toutes ces énergies dépensées à faire valoir une position par rapport à une autre n'ont pas éclairé les enjeux.

J'en arrive à la conclusion qu'il y a eu de nombreux efforts pour consulter la population et que la population semble nous indiquer, à nous les élus, qu'il est temps de prendre une décision. Le projet de loi 9 invite la MROC à présenter une proposition de restructuration d'ici le 12 novembre 1998. J'y vois trois avantages.

Premièrement, les élus et les citoyens détiennent toujours l'initiative car c'est à la communauté d'Ottawa-Carleton qu'il revient de proposer un projet de restructuration. Si nous persistons à nous enliser dans des débats stériles, nous allons abuser de la patience de la population, et le gouvernement provincial nous imposera sa décision. Donc, je préfère le projet de loi 9, même s'il n'est pas parfait et même s'il ne fait pas l'unanimité à une décision imposée par le gouvernement provincial.

Deuxièmement, on met fin aux débats stériles et aux chicanes qui s'enveniment et deviennent des querelles de personnalités. Puisqu'il n'y a pas de place pour le compromis, il faut trancher. Enfin, nous allons consacrer nos énergies à bâtir l'avenir.

Pour conclure, je suis disposé à accorder mon appui au projet de loi 9, mais mon appui est assorti de deux conditions. Tout d'abord, les droits des Franco-Ontariens doivent être inclus dans le transfert de responsabilités aux municipalités. Le gouvernement provincial pourrait enchâsser ces droits par une nouvelle loi, puisque la Loi 8 ne s'applique pas aux municipalités. La MROC, pour sa part, pourrait s'engager à modifier sa charte et y ajouter le droit des Franco-Ontariens à être servis en leur langue.

Ensuite, si le gouvernement provincial devait intervenir, par le biais d'un commissaire nommé par lui, je demande qu'un processus soit prévu afin que la population soit consultée avant qu'une décision finale soit prise.

Hon Norman W. Sterling (Minister of the Environment, Government House Leader): It's somewhat unusual for a member of cabinet to speak on a bill, but I thought that in this case, because I have represented five of the municipalities in the Ottawa-Carleton area for some long period of time, I should bring some thoughts to this debate.

I'll say at the outset that we have talked about restructuring in the Ottawa area for a long period of time. There has indeed been some restructuring; that took place a long time ago. In the 1970s we had a significant restructuring within the Ottawa-Carleton area, particularly with the rural municipalities where we saw in the now-township of West Carleton the coming together of three municipalities to make one of the largest land area municipalities in all of Ontario. We also saw some amalgamation in the now-township of Rideau between the old township of North Gower and the township of Marlborough into the new township of Rideau.

We went through some amalgamations, some creations in 1978. I was proud to be at the forefront of the creation of the city of Kanata at that time when I first sat here in this Legislature. I met with many of the mayors, not only of the areas I have the privilege of representing, but of some of the other areas as well.

As you may remember, in the early 1990s the former NDP government brought forward a restructuring of responsibilities between local municipal government and regional government. After that occurred, many of the leaders of the local municipal government felt it was no longer tenable to retain the status quo with regard to the existing 11 municipalities plus the one regional government. I said to them at that time that if they wanted restructuring, fine, they should then go out and consult with the public, find a local solution and we would be happy to put it in place.

They all assured me at that time - I'm talking prior to the last municipal elections - that was the will of their councils, and off on to the consultation route they went. As the consultations took place, as they went down a road, they came to us and said, "Please put us under a final, binding solution." We did not do that, we did not, as a government, choose to put regional government in that particular position.

I had always held out the prospect of this being done by each region on a request to the Legislature. I think that would make sense. I think our government - and I have taken the position - wants to see a locally driven solution. I know feelings run high on the various kinds of restructuring that could take place. I am, however, hopeful that a local solution can be found which will be acceptable to most of the partners involved in this debate.

I also want to say that while Mr Guzzo's bill has specific dates, like November 12, as a date upon on which an end to a certain part of the process would come, I would perhaps be more flexible and suggest that if those members, as I will, support this bill, we refer it to a committee and have the opportunity for local input from our local mayors, our regional councillors, our local leaders who might want to alter the process outlined in Mr Guzzo's bill.

But I do believe that the basic thrust of Mr Guzzo's bill is solid and right. I think the people of Ottawa-Carleton are sick and tired of this issue. They have heard enough. They want a solution. They want to drive a solution. If, in fact, the leaders of our local governments cannot come to a committee, cannot come to a consensus, then we should kill this issue and forget about restructuring for a period of time, because we should either have it or not have it. We do not want it to be driven from this place, I think all parties would agree with that, but we cannot subject the people of Ottawa-Carleton to a continuing debate which will never end.

That would be my preference with regard to this bill. I will support this bill because it will in fact, in my view, give an end to a process which has been far too long and far too inconclusive.

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Mr Alex Cullen (Ottawa West): I am pleased to join other members from Ottawa-Carleton in speaking to and supporting the member for Ottawa-Rideau's bill to facilitate municipal restructuring in Ottawa-Carleton. It is an important part of a process that all municipal governments in Ottawa-Carleton agreed to last year in order to bring about more efficient government to ratepayers in my community. It is a process I am all too familiar with as less than a year ago I was a member of regional council in Ottawa-Carleton and a participant in the effort of reform.

I represent the riding of Ottawa West in Ottawa-Carleton, a community of over 750,000 people, the most over-governed region in Canada, with 84 elected politicians from 11 municipalities and a regional council, plus the National Capital Commission, a provincial government and a federal government.

Municipal reform in Ottawa-Carleton, I can tell you, has been a long and constant issue. As a matter of fact, the establishing of the region in 1965 was the result of a petition by 17 municipalities in Carleton county unanimously asking the government of the day to review their system of municipal governance. However, since that time we have seen the Mayo commission in 1976, the Bartlett commission in 1988, the Graham commission in 1990 and the Kirby commission in 1992, giving us today a directly elected regional council and 11 municipalities in Ottawa-Carleton. Change, as you can see, clearly has been slow and painful.

In 1994, I attended the Association of Municipalities of Ontario annual conference and heard the then leader of the third party, Mike Harris, stun delegates with his announcement that his party would reduce the number of municipalities in Ontario by one third to eliminate waste and duplication. In 1995, he won the election and began implementing his agenda. First, grants to municipalities were cut and then legislation, the infamous Bill 26, was introduced to permit provincially appointed commissioners to restructure municipalities. In 1996, the government appointed the Who Does What panel to examine provincial and municipal responsibilities. The municipal affairs minister, Al Leach, told AMO delegates that year that municipalities should start restructuring themselves or else it would be done to them.

Then early in 1997 the famous mega-week announcements occurred where the Harris government downloaded over $3 billion worth of services to municipalities, including new responsibilities in social assistance and social housing, in exchange for the government assuming education funding from property taxes. Unfortunately, it's not a revenue-neutral exercise. In Ottawa-Carleton, property taxpayers went on the hook for over $200 million in additional services at a net cost of some $50 million.

As a result, over the past two years municipalities in Ottawa-Carleton have been exploring various restructuring models. The city of Ottawa made proposals, the 10 other mayors made proposals, regional council made theirs, and the cities of Kanata and Nepean began merger discussions, as did the city of Gloucester and the township of Cumberland. They began merger discussions.

To facilitate a common approach, the government appointed Gardner Church as a provincial mediator, but it was difficult to achieve consensus other than that change was necessary. Then in March 1997, a colleague of mine at regional council, Brian McGarry, proposed that all municipal and regional councils agree to the establishment of an unbiased citizens' panel to develop and examine governance models. If a model could achieve triple majority support, ie, a majority of local councils representing a majority of the population plus a majority of regional council, reform would be implemented. However, if the process was not successful, then the government would appoint a provincial commissioner to determine the shape of municipal governance in Ottawa-Carleton.

This proposal, by motion, was accepted at each of the 11 municipal councils in Ottawa-Carleton: by Cumberland, by Gloucester, by Goulbourn, by Kanata, by Nepean, by Osgoode, by Ottawa, by Rideau, by Rockcliffe Park, by Vanier, by West Carleton and by regional council, and was endorsed by the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

To complete the agreement, however, we needed to have an amendment to the Municipal Act because the Municipal Act doesn't cover regions in its restructuring provisions. As a result, the member for Ottawa-Rideau introduced Bill 141 last June 1997, which had the complete support of the municipalities. Unfortunately, as we know, this bill died on the order paper with the prorogation of the Legislature last December. Now it appears before us today as Bill 9. Unfortunately in the interim the citizens' panel has collapsed, leading to some scrambling by the municipalities to re-establish a new mechanism to develop a made-in-Ottawa-Carleton solution. According to the time lines agreed to as part of the McGarry initiative, agreed to by the municipalities, the municipalities have until November 1998 to develop a solution, which this bill today recognizes and accommodates.

I am, for one, hopeful that a made-in-Ottawa-Carlton solution is still possible, as all the parties in this process - the municipalities, the region and ratepayers themselves - realize that the status quo is not an option. We can no longer afford 11 city halls plus a regional centre with 12 clerks' departments, 12 planning departments, 12 legal departments etc. The cost of provincial downloading has made this doubly imperative.

What will the solution be? I cannot say. Some, I know, advocate for a single city while others call for a more evolutionary model of three or five cities with a regional government. However, I can tell you that when it comes to the imposition of a provincial commissioner to settle the issue, as the municipalities have agreed to, I will be looking for changes to ensure that the public will be able to participate in the model selection process and that there is accountability.

All too often we have seen the province's hired gun ride into town, walk all over local identities and years of tradition and ride away, leaving others to clean up the mess. We will be offering amendments to give direction to the commissioner to investigate, consult and develop models of municipal governance that will be taken to the electorate by way of plebiscite to judge, leading in turn to a recommendation by the commissioner to cabinet, which will then be able to decide and be held accountable for that decision.

Today, this bill is part of a process that admittedly has its political difficulties. However, the public demands change, and this government's downloading initiatives, for good or ill, have made change necessary.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): Further debate? The Chair recognizes the member for Ottawa-Rideau.

Mr Guzzo: Let me just make a couple of points -

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Could you stop the clock, because the government members are going to lose time here.

Normally it's a tradition in private members' hour that the person who is moving the bill has the first part of the speech and wraps up at the end. The rest of the time is given to members of their own caucus. You are going back to the member for Ottawa-Rideau and it seems to me it should be one of the other members. He'll wrap up at the end.

The Acting Speaker: That is a point of order. When I looked up I saw they were both - in this case, in deference to the member for Ottawa-Rideau, I am going to be recognizing the member for Nepean. That's the advice I've been given. The Chair recognizes the member for Nepean.

Mr John R. Baird (Nepean): Mr Speaker, I would ask for unanimous consent to reset the clock to nine minutes and 45 seconds, where it was at the outset of these remarks.

The Acting Speaker: This order of business will be over at 11 o'clock regardless.

Mr Baird: Can I ask for unanimous consent that the clock be reset at nine minutes and 45 seconds?

The Acting Speaker: Agreed? Agreed.

Mr Baird: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Let me say at the outset of my remarks that I have a tremendous amount of respect for my colleague the member for Ottawa-Rideau, but on this issue we just have an honest difference of opinion. Let me also add my thanks to my colleague Al Leach and his political staff for their open-door policy and for always soliciting the input of my constituents. That's something I greatly appreciate.

Change is always difficult. It's never easy. There are no areas more so than the issues of governance and community. This is especially the case in my home region. There is a consensus in Ottawa-Carleton that we can find a better, more efficient form of government, but there is no agreement on what form that should take. It has been debated, it has been discussed, but this discussion has been by and large one with élites: by the crowd at the Ottawa-Carleton Board of Trade, by those in the media at the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Sun, and by local politicians. They see this issue as an urgent priority.

The people in my riding of Nepean by and large haven't said this is a priority. Their priorities and concerns are the economy and jobs. They're concerned about whether our health care system will be there for their elderly parents when they need it; they're concerned about the quality of their children's education; and they're concerned about their ability to feel safe and secure in their own homes.

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The average person whom I am privileged to represent is not up at night losing sleep over this issue; they're too busy working hard and raising their families. But they do care. In Nepean, people care that our city has been able to cut taxes for the last two years and that they've been able to freeze taxes for more than five years. They care that their taxes have been kept below the rate of inflation for more than 20 straight years. That taxes have been kept below the rate of inflation is something that people in Nepean take ownership in. People in Nepean believe that you don't borrow money on the backs of the next generation to live beyond your means today. For that reason, all Nepean residents take great pride in being able to live in a debt-free municipality, pride because, as a community, we've collectively insisted upon it for more than a generation now.

Our local government rolls out the red carpet to investment and to jobs. The high-tech sector in the west end of the region, centred in Nepean, has flourished and grown over the past 30 years, I think in part because Nepean has had a pro-job-creation stance. That sector could have just as easily chosen the east end more than 30 or 35 years ago when they began setting up, but they chose the west end for a reason: because Nepean and the west-end suburbs have been pro job creation and pro economic development. We have benefited from that.

This bill could set aside those accomplishments. It would ask us to pick up the tab for decades of profligate high spending in the neighbouring municipality of Ottawa. The city of Ottawa is drowning in a sea of debt and wants Nepean taxpayers to belly up to the bar and clear the tab by taking on their debt. To my good friends the mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson, and Deputy Mayor Allan Higdon, who have begun to finally clean up this mess in this year's budget, I say, no way.

Bill 26, passed by this Legislature more than 18 months ago, enabled local county governments to restructure. But let's be very clear at the outset of this debate so there is no disagreement of opinion, so it's on the table: This bill goes much further than Bill 26.

I have letters here from the mayor of Kanata, Merle Nicholds, opposing the bill. She says that if Bill 26 powers were brought in and extended to Ottawa-Carleton, she would support them, but she believes this bill goes much further.

I have a letter I received just this morning from Janet Stavinga, the mayor of Goulbourn, the largest rural municipality, which believes that this bill goes far beyond what was passed in their resolution last year.

The mayor of Gloucester says the same thing. The mayor of Gloucester - a debt-free municipality - Claudette Cain, who has cut taxes this year, who cut taxes by 5% last year, is concerned about the effect it has on her residents.

Finally, I have a letter from the acting mayor of Nepean, Rick Chiarelli, who indeed echoes the concerns and objections of Nepean to this piece of legislation.

All these mayors have clearly said that they don't want this bill and they want it defeated, because they too believe it is wrong.

Bill 26 says that if you want to restructure, you can restructure; that Bill 26 would give you the tools to do the job; that Bill 26 would allow local municipalities to restructure locally, and it would give a whole series of tools for them to do it.

But make no mistake about it, this bill goes much further. It says that you will restructure and that you will restructure quickly, all in the belief that the mass public has somehow been engaged in the process, that the average citizen has somehow called a legislative 911 demanding immediate action. This has not happened. When it does happen, according to this bill, we will have dissolved our authority as legislators without the requisite safeguards: no taxpayer protection for Nepean residents, who very likely would pick up the tab for Ottawa's debt and high taxes; no protection for our rural townships that would allow them to opt out.

Let me emphasize that point. Nothing in this legislation would allow the townships of Osgoode, Rideau, Goulbourn and West Carleton to opt out of any forced restructuring - nothing. There are no safeguards on labour transition issues or on issues affecting language, no safeguards to ensure that big-spending politicians from Ottawa won't take advantage of the opportunity to engage in an orgy of new spending.

While some in my riding may very well support this bill, I believe the vast majority of people do not support it, nor would they be comfortable nor satisfied with the outcome that would likely result from this bill. As their representative in this Legislative Assembly, it is my responsibility to be that voice.

I want to be very clear. On this issue, it's very easy because I personally and passionately agree with my constituents on this important issue. People in Nepean aren't prepared to pay off Ottawa's massive debt and to pay the highest property taxes in Canada. I disagree with this bill. I think it's the wrong way to go. I do not support it and I will vote against it.

Mr Guzzo: Let me just say that I did have a couple of minutes to finish my initial address and my agreement was that there would be five minutes allowed for the member for Nepean, notwithstanding the fact that he never requested same, he never asked for same, but he sent somebody as his ambassador - I had agreed to it.

I have to question why the change in procedure today. Under the rules, I was recognized and I have to question why it changed. It seems to me we have a change in the procedures around here whenever it's convenient and I vehemently oppose it.

In the last minute available to me, let me make one point. My bill at no time recommends a preferred mode of governance. I am not asking for one city. Most of the criticism that has come forward has been against the fear of a one-city structure. I violently disagree with the submissions made by the member for Nepean with regard to the non-ability of the agricultural areas to opt out.

The question remains that the local opportunity is there in the next five months and any arrangement that can be worked out, a triple majority is reached, can be ratified. The opportunity for the rural municipalities to be allowed to remain on their own or to join with Almonte and Carleton Place to the west, or to Russell to the south, is still available. I find it very, very disheartening to hear the comments that have been made.

The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. Further debate?

Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre): I want to say at the outset that I support this bill in principle. I think we've had enough of the kind of reaction in part that we've heard, of people digging in their heels. They can't think bigger than just their own local municipality.

The bill is not perfect; I think that was pointed out by the member for Carleton. That's why it's important at committee that the committee do some work and listen to people and listen to their views.

As the member for Rideau talked about, I won't go over the history. It's been covered quite sufficiently by two or three members. But I must say I was disappointed to see the undercutting and the less than honourable behaviour of certain municipalities towards a very distinguished, competent and dignified group of citizens that were not getting paid for this particular job and who were selected on the basis of their past contributions to the community. I think that's got to stop.

There is no question that all the municipalities had endorsed having a commission or a commissioner in the event that the panel, or the municipalities themselves and the region, could not come up with a particular set of proposals.

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So this bill, as I see it, is like an insurance policy, because there is still time, there is still seven months. I received a notice this morning, and there's some activity going on between the region and a few cities, some discussions. They're looking at having what I gather are some public hearings to continue this particular process. So at the end of the day it is highly possible that this bill will not be required.

One of the arguments I heard yesterday, from some of the people from Nepean of course, was that if we put in this bill, it will discourage people and they'll just sit back and wait. I suggest the complete contrary. Knowing there is this bill, people have not backed off. They know this is a last-ditch effort to resolve this issue, finally, after more than two decades, that will place pressure on the municipalities and people to get together and come up with a home-grown solution, which everyone agrees is the best possible solution.

There are some concerns related to the bill, and I'd like to identify those quickly. I only have a minute and a half. There are some related to whether this will be one commissioner or whether it should be two or three. These are the issues that have been raised and I think that should be discussed. I don't have a particular preference. It's fine with me whether it's one good person or three good people to come up with and propose the final options, if required, to cabinet.

There were other concerns that had to do with community identity, but that doesn't come out in this bill. This bill provides that in any solutions that come up, that's got to be considered. Of course there's the whole area of strong public participation, and in talking to the mover of this particular motion I'm convinced that's what he wants to see, and that's what we all want to see: Let's get the ball moving and let's get things on the road again.

The extent of consultations is one of the strongest points that have been made. I, for one, and I think all of us, want to see that happen. I recommend that this go to committee. At committee there will be plenty of activity. I suggest that we have some of the hearings at the committee stage, and I think some of those hearings should be in the Ottawa-Carleton area, which will give full opportunity for people to do this.

At the end of the day, the regions and the municipalities can take action. They're doing that now. I hope they continue to do it and come up with a suggestion so we do not need this particular bill at the end of the day.

Mr Bisson: I rise as the municipal affairs critic for the NDP caucus and I want to speak in that capacity. I want to put on the record up front that this party is going to take a very consistent stand when it comes to amalgamations, and that is that the province should not be forcing amalgamations through the Bill 26 process.

I really get offended as a local citizen in the community where I come from, Timmins, when the government and some of the government members seem to be saying that the only way amalgamation could ever happen in the province is if the province comes in with their omnibus Bill 26 and forces the amalgamation to happen, because: "Those municipal people just can't get it straight. All they do is turf protection and they're not going to be able to do anything on their own because they're not going to do the responsible thing." Well, excuse me. Municipalities across Ontario over the past number of years, way before Bill 26 and way before the Mike Harris government was ever elected, have done amalgamations themselves without having the province drive it.

I come from such a community. About 25 or 26 years ago, what is now the city of Timmins used to be Timmins, Mountjoy township, South Porcupine and Whitney. The same arguments I hear today in the debate around Ottawa-Carleton were made at the time by those for and against that amalgamation, as were the arguments we heard when the megacity debate went on. Those arguments were going on, but they were going on within the community. The councillors of the day decided it was in the best interests of the citizens and the taxpayers of our community to amalgamate into one city.

We had the heated debates at the local council chambers of the various municipalities. I remember quite well the debates going on in the public and what was written in the paper, in the Timmins Daily Press, and what was on CFTL-TV and CKGB and CFTL radio. In the end, it was the local municipality that made the decision. It was the residents of the community who made the final decision. The councils of the area put forward to the citizens the plan they had put together, and by way of referendum, the people of the area of Timmins voted to become an amalgamated city of Timmins. It was locally driven.

Thunder Bay, Port Arthur - that wasn't forced by the province. The good citizens of the area of Port Arthur and Thunder Bay came together themselves. They recognized the need to amalgamate, for a number of various reasons. Again, it was a locally driven process. The councils drove it, and the residents of those two particular communities decided to come together and force the amalgamation themselves through a democratic process.

My objection to the bill we have before us today about Ottawa-Carleton is that we seem to be saying that we can't trust the local municipal politicians and we can't trust the local citizens to do what might be the best thing. Who are we to decide? That is a decision that should be made by the area municipalities and the residents. In the end, it is their community, it is not mine, and I don't think that we as a Legislature, through Bill 26, should enact any kind of provision that forces amalgamation without the consent of the local citizens.

I listened to the debate earlier from both the Liberal caucus and from some of the Conservative members, saying that Nepean and Gloucester and Vanier and others had taken a position at council. But it's interesting to note that there have been referendums on this issue. In the referendum in I think the city of Nepean, I don't remember the exact numbers but something like 75% or 80% - it was actually higher - of the residents of Nepean said no, they don't want a big huge city of Ottawa.

Interjections.

Mr Bisson: I'll come to the Liberal position in a second. Don't worry.

Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): There is one?

Mr Bisson: Oh, they have a position. I'm quite disgusted by what's going on here.

The point is that the referendum was done and the people of that community said no, they do not want to come together as one municipality, that if there's any amalgamation, they want to amalgamate with the community next to them. Let that be a local decision.

The other point I want to make is that I think there's an economy of scale when it comes to cities.

Before I get to that, I think we can all agree here in this Legislature that Ottawa is one of the nicest cities in Ontario. Ottawa, Vanier, Gloucester, Nepean, Kanata - that whole Ottawa region is one of the nicest areas in the province. Those municipalities are clean and well run and they're safe communities to live in, and they've got some good programs at the local level to help move the economy of the area.

Mr Cullen: They are run by Liberals.

Mr Bisson: Maybe not after this, let me tell you.

The point is this: Why did the regional municipalities around Ottawa become what they are? Because those local municipalities were able to make their own decisions. Nepean, for example, was able to say what it is they want to focus on as residents within that area of the Ottawa region, and they focused quite well on what was good for them. The people of Gloucester made some different decisions about what they want to focus on. What you managed to do is build quite a dynamic area in and around the Ottawa region with all those municipalities. It happened, in my view, because those municipalities were small enough that they were able to focus on what is important to their communities and to the citizens and to focus on the priorities that are important for their own region.

If you look at what happened here in Toronto, the government forced amalgamation into the now city of Toronto of a number of communities like Scarborough, Etobicoke, Toronto and others. We said that somehow that was going to be better. Has anybody taken the time to go and watch some of those council meetings lately? My Lord, they're sitting there now and they can't deal with the big issues of the city because they have to deal with such issues as where a red light goes, where a stop sign goes, and "Can I get a permit to dig a tree out of my yard?" and all those issues best dealt with at local council. The darned thing is so huge, the municipal council, that it's not efficient any more to deal with the matters that come before the council.

The point I would make as a New Democrat is that it's more important to have councils that are manageable, that are able to deal with the local issues in an efficient way for those municipalities. I believe there's an efficiency of scale.

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Je veux dire très simplement que la position du Nouveau Parti démocratique est très claire. La position dit que si une fusion va être faite localement, par les municipalités, ça doit être un processus local et non celui de la province à travers la Loi 26, qui tout à coup pousse le processus au point à ce que la province rentre et dit ce qui va arriver. On sait, avec ce projet de loi, que c'est ça qui va arriver.

I've had the opportunity to meet with a number of people from the various communities of Kanata, Nepean, Vanier and Gloucester. One of the things I'm concerned about is the way this thing is being brokered. There is a sense out there, and this is my read on it, that the city of Ottawa, along with the region of Ottawa, is trying to control this process.

Interjection: They can't.

Mr Bisson: This is the perception, all right? The perception out there is that there are two communities that are trying to push this process, and the process set up under this bill makes it virtually impossible for the local communities to come to an agreement about how they're going to be able to amalgamate together and puts the municipalities in the position of having to have a decision imposed on them by the restructuring commissioner appointed under Bill 26.

Mr Cullen: This was a year ago.

Interjections.

Mr Bisson: The Liberals are heckling. Let me get to where your position is. The Liberal position is most interesting. I remember that when omnibus Bill 26 came into this House the Liberals, along with the New Democrats, forced the situation under Bill 26 by sitting in the House and not allowing the vote to take place. Why? Because -

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): It was the Liberals who sat in the House; Alvin sat in the House.

Mr Bisson: The last time I checked, the New Democrats were here a long - anyway, I'm not going to debate with you guys.

The point is that the Liberals and the New Democrats opposed Bill 26 on the basis of a number things, but one of them was that we didn't believe in the changes that were being made under Bill 26, how municipalities are forced to merge and to amalgamate. We thought that was the wrong position for the government to take and that we should allow the process to be driven locally. The Liberals sat in the House with us and opposed the Tory government when it came to Bill 26.

We then got into the debate around the megacity. The Liberal position then was the same as the NDP position is now: that they didn't believe for one second that the cities of Toronto, Scarborough and the rest should be forced into an amalgamation by the province of Ontario. They believed, the Liberals of the day, that the local area municipalities in and about Toronto should be the ones to make the decision about how big the amalgamation should be and when it should take place. They were very clear.

Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): So why is Ottawa different?

Mr Bisson: That's the point: Why is Ottawa different? All of a sudden the Liberals are saying by way of this bill - because they have a bunch of Liberal councillors in the city of Ottawa and a whole bunch of other places who all of a sudden are taking a party position, they've flip-flopped their position. The Liberal caucus is now saying that they favour Bill 26, that they favour amalgamation and, "What we did when it came to the city of Toronto, oh, well, that was then, this is now."

Mr Shea: Shameful.

Mr Bisson: "That was different. What happened in Toronto, that wasn't amalgamation; that was a forced amalgamation." Well, what do you think this is going to be? Do you think for one second the process being derived under this bill is going to allow a local solution to be brokered? You're going to end up forcing those municipalities under a deal done by the Minister of Municipal Affairs through his commissioner. That's what's going to be happening over here.

The game you're playing, you're saying, "Let's allow this bill to go to second reading so we can have public debate." The reality is that the government would carry the bill because they have the majority at the other end. If you were to vote against this bill today, at second reading at private members' hour you would have a chance of killing it, because there are some Tories who are voting against it, and we could muster our members into this House in order to try to kill this bill at private members' hour. But you're playing politics with this. You're allowing this bill to go through the second reading process so you can get it into committee and play politics with what's going on in the cities of Ottawa, Vanier, Nepean, Gloucester, Kanata and others. I think that's wrong. I think you have to take a position - I don't know what the Liberal position is any more. But I believe you should take a position.

I understand the Tories. If the Tories are voting for this, they're being consistent. They believe in Bill 26 and they believe in a forced amalgamation. Ideologically I disagree with the position of the Tories, but I respect them because it is a principled stand.

New Democrats are saying the same as before: We don't believe in forced amalgamation; we believe in local solutions. We believe the municipalities should drive the process and it should be their decision and then they should come to us and ask us to pass the enabling legislation with the result.

But what's happening over here is that my friends in the Liberal caucus are taking a position where they say, "Oh, megacity; people are opposed to it. We're opposed too." Then in Ottawa they figure that people are in support, so they're saying, "We're in support, too." They're playing both sides of this issue.

I predict that the minute the commission comes down with the work it's doing to force this amalgamation, the people in the Ottawa region are not going to be in favour of the imposition of what the commission's report is going to do.

I also want to know one thing. Where's Dalton McGuinty today, the leader of the Liberal Party? Where's Dalton McGuinty? He's a member from Ottawa and I would expect that the Liberal leader, the principled individual that he is -

The Acting Speaker: The Chair recognizes the member for Ottawa Centre on a point of order.

Mr Patten: It's out of order for any member to identify any other member as to whether they're here or not. I'd ask him to withdraw that comment.

Mr Bisson: Mr Speaker, he is right. I am against the standing orders and I withdraw.

The Acting Speaker: Yes, it is unparliamentary.

Mr Bisson: I cannot say that a member is not present and I won't, but the point is, I would like to see where the leader of the Liberal Party is going to be on this issue. He's not in the House. I hope they're rushing him to the House as we speak so he can take a position in not only representing his community but being the leader of the Liberal caucus on this particular issue.

That's one of the things that bothers me. I've got to go back to this point. I disagree fundamentally with a number of the issues that the Tories are doing as a government. I fundamentally disagree with what you're doing with the tax cut, what you're doing with amalgamation and what you're doing with a number of other things, but at least you're consistent. At least you guys stand for something and you're going forward. I believe we have a principled position as well. At least it's a position. The Liberals in this case are demonstrating yet again that whatever way the wind blows, that's the way the Liberal Party is going to vote and it has absolutely nothing to do with a principled position.

I repeat, the issue here is simply this to me: Should the process be driven locally or should the process be driven by the Legislature of the province of Ontario? I vote for the people; I vote for a locally driven process where the communities themselves are able to come up with a process that they then bring back by way of referendum to their citizens so that the people in their community can decide, as they did in Timmins and other communities, when it comes to amalgamation, what the future of their community should be. That's what we should be doing.

When the process is finished and the local politicians have come to an agreement about what they think is right, they should give the local people by way of a referendum the ability to support the deal or refuse the deal and allow democracy to take place because, as I believe, this process is government-driven in the end. The communities are not going to be able to come to an agreement because of the way this bill is structured. It's going to be an Ottawa-region-driven process and I think municipalities are going to be hard-pressed to come to a deal. You're going to shove amalgamation down the throats of the people of Kanata, of Gloucester and all those other municipalities which quite frankly I think will not be served well under one big city.

With that, Mr Speaker, I wish to thank you for this opportunity to debate on this most important motion.

The Acting Speaker: The Chair recognizes the member for Kingston and The Islands on a point of order.

Mr Gerretsen: I think it ought to be said, in light of what was just stated by the last member, that the major difference is that the Toronto municipalities did not want it -

The Acting Speaker: That is not a point of order.

The Chair recognizes the member for Ottawa-Rideau for his two minutes.

Mr Guzzo: Let me say in the final two minutes, since we're going to maintain the rules now, to the speaker from Cochrane South that when it comes to local decisions, I commend you for your consistency. The last changes to the RMOC Act were made under your government, the Rae government. You took the mayors off regional council: No consultation; done here and imposed like a dictator. You stand up here today and lecture anybody on consistency? You're a fraud - not the biggest fraud I've seen, but you're a fraud.

The Acting Speaker: I would ask the member for Ottawa-Rideau to withdraw that term, if you would, please.

Mr Guzzo: Do you want me to say he is the biggest fraud I've seen? No, you don't want me to comment. I apologize. You weren't in that cabinet. The man who did it is playing golf on the Rideau lakes when he isn't on Bay Street practising law these days.

As far as the referendum in Nepean is concerned, let me make one quick point. Read the question that they voted 84% for. Did it ask if they wanted 12 city halls? Did it ask if they wanted a reduction? No. Read the question, please.

I want to say, if I might, to the Minister of Environment, my colleague from Carleton, I thank him for his comments and for coming here this morning. To the members for Ottawa East, Ottawa West and Ottawa Centre, I commend them for the same vision and the same opportunity that I recognized in the early 1970s from the then mayor of Eastview. I think it's time we move ahead. I think we give them five months in this bill.

As far as the conditions suggested by the member for Ottawa East, I'm in agreement and I accept them. I look forward to the submissions at the committee.

1100

TAXATION

Mr Ernie Hardeman (Oxford): I move that, in the opinion of this House, the tax burden on middle-class families should be reduced.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): In accordance with the rules, the member has 10 minutes.

Mr Hardeman: I want to start off by saying that a number of years ago, when we started the campaign for bringing forward the Common Sense Revolution and suggested to people that it was a platform that would benefit Ontario, I knocked on a lot of doors in Oxford county and I talked to a lot of the people. One of the things that kept coming forward was that the people believed they were overtaxed, in fact, not just by the provincial government but by all levels of government. They were paying taxes beyond their capabilities and they were not getting value for money. They did not believe that the government was spending the money wisely. They felt they could spend that money far better than the government could.

These people who we were talking to were 90% lower-middle-income people in Ontario. These are the people who work for a paycheque and who will spend that increase in their paycheque when taxes are reduced. These are the small business owners in the province of Ontario and the entrepreneurs; the people who create and, incidentally, do most of the new jobs in the province.

There is a myth that small business people have a lot of money and they don't need any assistance. I want to point out that this is a myth. Stats Canada says that entrepreneurs earn a median salary of $15,000 less per year than a median of the employees in the same households. Incidentally, to achieve that they must work 13 hours a week more.

I suggest that, as we heard from the people, the question has to be, why did the people feel this way? I guess it's fair to say that the total tax burden in Ontario, including the taxes levied by all provinces, is among the highest in the Dominion of Canada, and it has increased faster than the national average; in fact, between 1981 and 1993 it increased from 31.8% of GDP to 37%.

I want to point out that high tax rates contribute to weak economic performance by cutting into the consumers' purchasing power, reducing the incentives for entrepreneurs and making it more difficult for firms to attract and keep highly skilled employees.

To explain that, we have to look at the past. In the 10 years prior to that visit to the households, taxes had been increased in Ontario 65 times. Between 1990 and 1992, taxes were raised 14 times. Despite these increases, Ontario's tax revenues decreased, not increased, by $2.1 billion and Ontario's economy lost 300,000 private sector jobs. Between 1995 and 1998, prior to last Tuesday's budget, our government has decreased taxes 30 times. Tax revenues have increased, not decreased, by $3.3 billion, with Ontario's economy creating 339,000 private sector new jobs. I think that points out that tax cuts stimulate the economy, create jobs and promote confidence and spending. This boost to economic growth also boosts tax revenue.

In Ontario, private sector employment rose by 268,000 since the tax cut of July 1996, and by 261,000 jobs in the last 13 months. Ontario leads the country in job growth. In the last 13 months, 60% of the private sector jobs created in Canada were created in the province of Ontario.

When the plan of tax reduction and job creation was started, there were some people who were somewhat sceptical as to whether this approach would work. I just want to point out that I had a number of people in my office requesting examples of where this approach had worked. At that time, a number of examples had to be used that had been done in other jurisdictions outside Canada. I'm happy to say that today we can use the example of what has happened in Ontario. In fact, we are a shining example of how reducing taxes can create jobs and create consumer confidence. In return, as more people are working, more confidence is created, more people are working - it's an ever-revolving circle - and we have economic growth.

The example of real economic growth in Ontario last year was 4.4%. I think this would prove that the process is working. When you leave people with more money in their pockets, particularly middle-income people, it tends to encourage them to spend that money, in turn creating more jobs.

Incidentally, going through the figures of Tuesday's budget, I was happy to read that in Oxford county, for the people I represent, the tax reductions, when fully implemented in July, will mean $35.5 million more in the constituents' pockets. That will also mean $35.5 million in the economy of Oxford county. I think this highlights the importance of reducing taxes on middle-income families.

I just want to point out the reason for my resolution. I think it's important that we have a position put forward that would be supported by everyone in the House, including the Liberals and the NDP. As we go over the debate that has gone on here for a number of months, we hear suggestions, first of all from the Liberal Party, that if they were to be put in the position that the provincial government is in now, they would not reinstate those taxes. From that, I must assume they feel that reducing the taxes on middle-class families in Ontario is an appropriate tool to use to bolster the economy and to make life better for all the people of the province.

I hear from the New Democratic Party at great length that reducing taxes would be an appropriate approach if it affected middle-class people, but their concern is that it is going to the higher-income as opposed to the middle-class and lower-class people in the province. I would suggest that this motion, on that basis, would also be supported. Looking at that, I hope we could ask for their support on the motion.

In the few moments I have left, I would just like to read into the record a couple of statements that were made just recently related to the tax cuts in the budget that was presented on Tuesday.

"Salesman John Janisse, 34, agrees `absolutely' with the tax cut. `I'll be buying a new Chrysler vehicle this year,' he said while shopping at the Devonshire Mall Tuesday. `It's not so much the amount of extra money in your pocket, it's the economy overall.'"

Another comment: "The general manager of the Devonshire Mall (Doug Wolfe) said a psychological boost from a tax cut fuels the retail sector. `We're seeing the effects of that confidence. We've had a steady growth of 5% to 7% per year over the past couple of years.'"

And last: "Any tax cut will be a good thing. Lower taxes gives us more money to spend and that stimulates the economy, you know." That was a comment made by a group of seniors in Windsor as they were shopping.

I would point out that it is not only my opinion that tax cuts work but in fact a lot of people's in our economy.

Again, I would ask all the members of the House to support the resolution to give a tax break and to continue the tax breaks that the province has been putting forward for the majority of the people of the province of Ontario.

1110

Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): First of all, I'd just like to congratulate the member for Oxford for bringing this resolution forward. If I've ever seen apple pie and motherhood in this House, this is certainly it this morning. At the outset, I would just like to say that I will certainly be supporting it.

However, I did notice that when the member indicated a number of quotes he has received on the budget, there was nothing there from northern Ontario. I would just invite him to go into northern Ontario and take a look at some of the quotes that were created around the budget up that way.

I have to say I would have been much more enthused had the resolution included that the House also call upon the Harris government to cut the $37 vehicle registration tax that the Harris government imposed on northerners in the last budget. It would have been probably a lot more attractive had he maybe attached that to his resolution as well, because he knows that I'm from a constituency made up of middle-class taxpayers and middle-class earners in terms of the entire constituency.

I must say as well that the folks up north don't mind paying what they consider their fair share of taxes. I've heard that many times. But I guess the real concern I find from my constituents is, are they getting the return on the value of the taxes they are actually paying?

Again, there's a very closely knit group of middle-class constituents throughout northern Ontario. I have one community in particular, the community of Ear Falls. They're middle-class taxpayers; they're all hardworking people. But today they don't have a doctor in their community; they don't have a clinic in their community. Both have been taken away from them. They're saying: "Yes, we pay our fair share of taxes. Should we not expect this kind of health care as a middle-class taxpayer?" Again, who could not agree with a reduction in taxes, but I must remind the member that we have an obligation to those citizens in a community like Ear Falls who don't have medical services.

The member will remember that I asked the Minister of Health a question just the other day regarding psychiatric services in northwestern Ontario, in northern Ontario. We have at the present time psychiatric patients who are being locked up in jail. Again, is this a fair return for them as people who are needing medical services in northwestern Ontario? When I listen to my friend over there talk about middle-class wage earners, they're expecting the services as well.

I go back to the Common Sense Revolution, that famous document where Mr Harris made a great number of statements. One of the statements he made was that there was only one level of taxpayer out there, there was only one taxpayer, and any actions they would take would not result in an increase to local taxpayers. I'd like the member to go up to some of my communities and tell people that, people who are facing greater user fees when they take their kids down to the recreation centre, who are facing tuition fee hikes unseen in this province before when they send their children off to post-secondary education.

Again, I guess the biggest slap in the face that we've seen from this government is the return of the vehicle registration fee. At least we had a government before that saw the uniqueness of northwestern Ontario and northern Ontario when it came to that fee. We don't have public transportation in northwestern Ontario as you would have here in Toronto, as you have in other major centres - the Golden Horseshoe, Ottawa. We don't have that. We pay prices for gas that you would not believe throughout northern Ontario and northwestern Ontario, gas prices that are always a great amount higher. At least at one point that was being recognized.

For Mike Harris to turn around and say, "No, we're not going to recognize that any longer. We're not going to recognize the long distances that you travel in northern Ontario. We're going to ask for that $37 back" - again, that's something I would have liked this member to have in his resolution, recognizing that these are middle-class taxpayers who are paying that, along with the many user fees that I've mentioned.

When we come to the local taxpayer, take a look at what the Harris government did in terms of dumping $650 million in provincial services on to the backs of the local taxpayer. That's coming through to the local taxpayer in that they now have to pay for social housing, for their policing costs and a number of other services that used to be paid for through the provincial tax system. Now it's dumped on to the local middle-income taxpayer. I go back to Mr Harris's statement, who always said there was only one level of taxpayer, and we're certainly seeing them being hit.

Another group of people I see suffering because of this government - and a good number of them could be middle-class taxpayers - are of course seniors and some of our disabled. Go back to some of the statements made by the present Premier before he became Premier. He indicated very clearly that aid for seniors and the disabled would not be cut, but today we have $225 million in new user fees in terms of the Ontario drug benefit plan.

I ask the member for Oxford, where does he see that group fitting in? Where does he see them, now having to pay that additional $224 million in new user fees imposed by his government, by his Premier, by his Minister of Health, on to folks I would consider as middle-income taxpayers?

We also remember this party suggesting to the middle class that classroom funding would be guaranteed. Well, in any school I go into, one of the major concerns in that school from the front-line workers - the teachers, as well the parents, the parent councils - is that classroom funding isn't there. It's not in the classroom. They're not getting that. We're talking about the middle-class taxpayers getting their dollars back. They're just not.

When we have 22 school boards cancelling junior kindergarten because of the Harris cuts, when we have 53 school boards - this was brought to my attention yesterday in Dryden when I was speaking to a grade 10 history class. They said, "What about the elimination of special education within the school boards?" their school board in particular. I had to tell them, "Yes, 53 school boards in the province now face great difficulty." I am talking of middle-class people in northwestern Ontario, in Dryden, for example.

The elimination of adult education: If we know of anything that is important to the middle class, it would be courses to enable them to move ahead, courses they could take in the evening as an adult. Some folks may be collecting employment insurance at the time, looking for these courses - again, eliminated.

I go back to something I hear often, and it's something I am sure every member in this House will hear as we move through the summer and get closer to September, and that is the increase in the tuition fees. A middle-class wage earner, trying to send two or three, possibly four children at one time - we have a member in the House who has four children attending post-secondary education. That's hurting the middle-class taxpayer.

Who could disagree with this resolution? I certainly will be supporting it, but I must caution the member that there are many unique aspects of northern Ontario and northwestern Ontario that he might want to study and encourage his Premier and the cabinet to take a very close look at. I can tell you, the quotes you gave us today out of some of your newspapers in your area or in southern Ontario are not the quotes you'll find in newspapers from northwestern Ontario, because that budget did not sell to my constituents, to my middle-class taxpayers in northwestern Ontario.

Mr Speaker, on that note, I would like to thank you for the time I have taken here this morning.

1120

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): I appreciate the opportunity to rise this morning and put a few thoughts on the record re this piece of business before us, this resolution by Mr Hardeman.

I say at the outset that I don't think there is anybody in this province who would disagree that the middle class in Ontario has been put-upon, has been hard-done-by and punished over the last 10 or 15 years when it comes to carrying the freight, carrying the mail for all the things we do together as a community and that they should be given some relief, some assistance, some way of dealing with all that's coming at them and their families.

At first blush, who wouldn't support a resolution that says, "Let's give the middle class a tax break?" because that's indeed, in many ways, what they want. But it's never that simple; it's never as black and white as this government across the way would present it.

Even though I have great respect for the member putting the resolution forward this morning and don't want to impute motive in any way, I just can't find it in my heart - having lived under this government for the last two and a half years, having sat in this place and watched what they've done to all the services the middle class in this province have come to expect to be there to support them as they try to make a living and support their families and offer their families opportunities to participate actively in the economy and the life of this province - in all good conscience, to support this resolution.

It is cynical to the max; it's hypocritical to the max; it's more of the public relations pap we've come to expect from this government as they try to pull the wool over the eyes of the people of this province and say to them, "We are giving you a tax break; we are presenting to you a tax break," while at the same time they are whacking them every time they turn around with user fees, with copayments. With all the things going up, it is costing people, middle-class people in particular, more than they ever will realize in the tax breaks they will get by the tax scheme this government has put in place that will hammer the communities and the people and the families of this province.

Let's go back a little way in the history of Canada and talk a bit about what it is that the tax system, which we have put in place together over a number of years, provides us and why it is that we've chosen, by way of the tax system, to support it in that way. Before I do that, though, I want briefly to be a bit more specific about what I'm presenting by way of the tax scheme and the reality out there.

On one hand, we're told we're getting a tax break, that we're getting a 30% cut in our taxes. Most middle-class Ontarians have not recognized that tax break in their paycheque, and if they have, as some people have said, it pays for no more than a cup of coffee or maybe a six-pack of beer every couple of weeks. It is so minimal and so insignificant when you compare it to the increase in user fees and copayments that the middle class in Ontario are asked to pay.

Look, for example, at the increase in tuition fees for any student going to college or university in this province over the last two and a half years, increases in tuition fees at the post-secondary level that are astronomical and massive in comparison to any other time. Let's have a look at the activity fees now that are being charged to students who go to secondary schools particularly across this province. There probably isn't a school any more that doesn't, when a student comes through their door, charge them somewhere around $100 a year for activity fees. That's a user fee; that's a copayment; that's a cost to middle-class Ontario that wasn't there before this government took over and introduced its tax scheme.

Let's look at health care, the shift from institutional hospital care to the community that these folks are presenting to us now. Don't get me wrong: I think we need to go in that direction, that there are lots of plusses to more and more health care being done in the community. However, under this government, what's happening is even more subtle. Health care, in the way we've come to know it, was covered under a federal act that saw the government pay for most, if not all, of the procedures required - it will now be shifted to a home care program that is no longer covered by those acts and those regulations.

So we see a privatizing of health care that will continue to cost middle-class families in Ontario more and more to cover the costs of health care for themselves and their kids, not to speak of the ever-increasing cost incurred because of aging parents who need health care.

We only have to point at the cost of drugs for our senior citizens. That used to be free to senior citizens in this province. There's now what we call a copayment. As we all know, because we've said it so often in this House, the Premier, who was leader of the third party under the last government, used to say: "A copayment, a user fee, is a tax. It doesn't matter what you call it or how you look at it, it's still a tax."

The tax scheme that this government presents to us as a relief somehow for the middle class of Ontario, that the member today is suggesting that we continue to support, is in fact a smoke-and-mirrors exercise that in the end is going to cost middle-class Ontarians and Ontario families more than it is costing them now, and they will get less service for that cost.

Let's look for a second at some of what's happening across the province.

Property taxes: In my own community of Sault Ste Marie, there was a statement made at the last council meeting that our property taxes are probably going to increase somewhere between 11% and 12% this year to pay for the download of services that this government has reneged on delivering, that this government has decided is more cost-effective to put on the shoulders of property owners across this province, who happen to be, for the most part, middle-class Ontarians. The reason you're not going to see a huge hue and cry in the immediate future in the Toronto area is that the middle-class families of Toronto, because they were able to politically persuade the government to give a little relief in the short term, have been bought off by way of a cash-managed solution for the moment. But don't be fooled, because it won't be long down the line when you will be hit as well, any of you who live in Ontario, not just small communities like mine that are being hit this year with 11% and 12% increases, but you will probably be hit with increases on a more massive scale.

New user fees: Travel immunization is no longer covered by OHIP. Women with no complications will be billed if they want more than two Pap smears a year. Pregnant women will be billed if they want more than one ultrasound during pregnancy. Ambulance rides to the hospital have gone up to $45. The province changed rules to make it easier for municipalities to charge a wider range of user fees for everything from garbage pickup to emergency response. Some regions have adopted different policies such as user fees for fire department service, traffic accident responses, fire cleanup and safety inspections. For user fees for counselling of men who abuse their wives, fees range from $1 to $75 per hour.

In the Waterloo region, municipalities are charging an administration fee of $25 for assisting an organization to obtain licences, $25 for those applying to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario for a licensed outdoor patio. The charge for a copy of Waterloo's zoning bylaws and accompanying map goes to $75 from $50. Tax certificates in Waterloo go from $20 to $25. The charge for cheques returned NSF goes to $20 from $15.

In my own community of Sault Ste Marie, along with the property tax increase we're seeing an increase in the cost of a plot to bury your family member from $395 to $688. It even costs more to die in this province now than it did, under this government's tax scheme.

User fees for prescription drugs - I have already spoken about that.

On Manitoulin Island, there are increased fees for Boy Scout camps. In the Kingston area, sports facilities increase fees by 5%. Residents requiring approvals for patios, street closures, driveway widenings and other items can expect to pay engineering fees of $100. Home alarm system owners must register, with a $100 fee. The list goes on and on.

It's interesting when you put this in the context of the history of this country and how a few years ago a Liberal government in Ottawa, under the stewardship and guidance of then Prime Minister Trudeau, thought it would be in the interest of all Canadian citizens that we have first-class health care in this country that covered everybody from sea to sea to sea and that the government, through its tax system, would pay for that. He knew that this country and this province was strong enough, had the industrial integrity, to support that kind of program. He also knew that if you brought in a well-delivered and financed health care system that provided supports to all the people in Ontario, it would be economically an advantage as well. We have come to know, by the studies that have been done, that one of the reasons that industries come to invest in Canada and Ontario is the benefit derived from the fact that we have a health care system that provides health care for all of its citizens.

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We know the comparators that have been done of industries in the United States having to pay for health care for its workers compared to what industries in Ontario and Canada pay for its workers. The difference is significant. That's one good reason industry decides to choose Canada and Ontario as places to invest.

Mr Trudeau, with the support of people like Tommy Douglas, a well-known New Democrat in this country who started medicare in Saskatchewan, decided this would be good for the whole of the country, and Ontario as a province bought into that.

It's interesting that not long after that, along comes a Conservative government in Ottawa which decided that industry and the wealthy were paying too much to make sure that we all benefited from a first-class health care system, a first-class education system and some social structures that were valuable to everybody. They began a process of dismantling the tax system that would shift the cost of programs, the cost of doing business, the cost of quality of life in this country and this province more and more away from those who could actually afford it, those who were more well-off, shift it from the shoulders of industry and business on to the shoulders of the middle class.

That's why the middle class in Canada and Ontario today are creaking under the weight of the cost of all these programs, because the tax system in place is not fair, is not progressive. It's not cognizant of who's making the profit and making the money in this province. It is overwhelmingly being more and more put on the shoulders of those who can least afford it.

Then you get the Conservative government of Ontario over the last two and a half years, which has taken what was already a bad system and made it even worse through the tax scheme it's presenting and justifying by way of some of the comments Mr Hardeman has made here in the House this morning, which some of our Liberal colleagues have supported, which we believe will, if it's allowed to go much further, diminish the level of very important infrastructure: health care, education, roads, our ability to do research and development, and so many other things that we collectively in this country have found ways to fund through our tax system. It will in the not-too-distant future diminish our ability to continue to support and to have those things in place.

Will that create more jobs? Will that make for a better economy? Will that make for a situation where the middle class and their families in this province will be better off? I daresay that is not the case. Talk to the middle-class constituents in your area, Mr Hardeman, and I say that to every other member in this House, and ask them how they feel today about their future: Are they confident? Do they feel there's a stability out there that they can count on by way of the systems that we've all taken for granted? I suggest they'll tell you overwhelmingly no, that they're feeling more and more uneasy, that there's somebody in their family or their neighbourhood or their circle who no longer feels comfortable that there is a future for them. They're working in contract positions in short-term opportunities, and the opportunities that used to be there that were to some degree supported or paid for by the tax system we had in place are quickly disappearing. What has been put in its place? A market system that is Darwinian in nature. Yes, we'll see the survival of the fittest, the survival of the richest, the survival of those who are better placed, and a diminishing of the opportunities for those who are less well-off. I suggest the less well-off in this province are becoming a larger and larger group and -

The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. Further debate?

Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre): I'm very pleased to address this resolution.

Prior to the last election, the economy and people of this province were under a dark cloud, a could created by 65 tax increases dumped on the taxpayers of this province by the Liberals and NDP. It was a depressing cloud: It depressed initiative, it depressed risk-taking, it depressed hard work, it depressed ambition. It drove hundreds, perhaps thousands, of taxpayers underground and it exhausted the rest. Ontarians were fed up with having to pay gross amounts of taxes to four levels of government which, for the average family in my riding, amounted to close to 65% of their total family income, including income taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, sales taxes, parking lot taxes, large building taxes, tire taxes, business filing taxes, excise taxes, probate taxes, land transfer taxes. If you want to go out and buy a new car, you pay sales tax, air-conditioning tax and even a tax on the size of the engine.

There are more. I could go on but I see the Liberal members' eyes lighting up.

Many of our talented, creative entrepreneurs pulled up their roots and left Ontario to pursue their fortunes in New Brunswick, Alberta, South Carolina, New Mexico. In other words, they went to lower-tax jurisdictions. They packed up their energy, their ideas, their entrepreneurial spirit and they left. Perhaps most disastrous of all, they took jobs and the potential for more jobs with them. Others decided not to work. I don't mean low-income people and those on social assistance; I'm talking about well-off entrepreneurs who simply gave up their ventures because they didn't see the potential return for their risks and their labours.

Some of my own neighbours asked me, "Why should I work for Bob Rae?" Others worked less because they were completely de-motivated, because even if they got a promotion with a raise, the difference it made to their take-home pay was absolutely minimal. Even if they worked overtime for a family vacation or new school clothes for their children, it made little difference to their paycheque after the high taxes were deducted.

In fact, before our government came to power, I knew many families who had combined incomes over $100,000 who found it impossible to save money for a family vacation where they could spend some quality time together, or for post-secondary education for their children. That's what this is about. It's about quality of life.

High taxes and the demands that businesses have been forced to put on employees to produce more for less just so they could keep up with the high business taxes have been eating away at the quality of life for Ontarians and their children for years.

My constituents, thousands of them, get on the QEW or the GO train every morning, every workday, in the dark, and work hard all day, many through their lunch-hour. They come home in the dark exhausted, many bringing work with them.

What's been the result of all this? For five years, starting in 1990, the NDP were the government of Ontario and in those five years the number of people employed in Ontario did not increase, and yet the population was growing. Ontario clearly was heading backwards.

On the other hand, in the past 12 months alone, from February 1997 to February 1998, there have been 265,000 net new private sector jobs created in Ontario, the greatest record of job creation in one year in the history of this province. I hope everyone would agree that a job is the best thing that can happen to a family wracked with financial and emotional troubles caused by unemployment.

Between 1995 and 1998 our government decreased taxes 30 times, and our budget proposes 36 more tax cuts. The reason? Tax cuts create jobs. They stimulate the economy. They promote consumer spending. Lower taxes mean more money in household budgets for family outings, for education planning, for the little extras, or a breather from debt at the end of the month. Most of all, what the tax cuts have done is given people optimism - the optimism that comes from the feeling that they have greater control over their finances, that they aren't just working for the government, that they're working for themselves and for their families.

It's a feeling of empowerment that comes from knowing that the days when four governments can raise their taxes, confiscating the majority of the fruits of their labour without their agreement, are over. For many families in Ontario there was too much month left over at the end of the money, and it should have been the other way around.

Personal tax cuts mean there is extra money in their pockets, creating the opportunity for them to pay off debts sooner, increasing their net worth, future savings and buying power. This means lower stress on families and a more secure environment in which to raise children.

Our government is giving every Ontario taxpayer a tax cut. As of July 1, 1998, provincial income taxes will be eliminated for 655,000 modest-income individuals and families. The hard-hit, middle-income earners who make between $25,000 and $75,000 a year will receive the largest share of the tax savings at almost $3 billion a year, money which they will put back into our economy, creating more jobs.

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Our government's income tax cuts mean that a two-income family with two children and a net income of $37,000 would save $2,810 a year, while a two-income couple with two children and a net income of $60,000 would save a total of $3,550 in Ontario tax - their money for their priorities.

We also know that there are too many children leaving for school in the morning from an empty house and coming home from school at the end of the day to an empty house because their parents work such long hours just to keep the family afloat.

In this budget, we've introduced a tax credit for working families of up to $1,020 for each child under the age of seven. This supplement for working families both recognizes their efforts and eases the financial pressure for those parents who have wished they could have stayed home with their children in their formative years.

Yesterday we announced child care initiatives that will triple the number of children who benefit from child care assistance to an estimated 450,000 children. This will enable more families to balance the demands of work and home more easily.

These are the people who are benefiting from the Common Sense Revolution, the people who work hard, live by the law, trying to save for their future and their children's future and trying to enjoy a better quality of life today.

These are the people who understand that out-of-control spending by governments has to stop if we are to preserve everything we hold dear. They understand that the $9 billion a year Ontario was paying just on interest on debt in 1995 is much like the interest they must pay when they carry a debt on their own charge cards. That interest on onerous debt is what prevents parents from being able to afford a new pair of track shoes for their son or daughter to go to school with, or an evening out with their family, just as the interest the province was obligated to pay when we first took office prevented us from spending the kind of money we would have loved to spend on health care and education.

The tide is turning. Today we continue to chip away at the deficit - it's well over half gone - and to lower taxes for Ontarians. As a result, we are all starting to enjoy brighter days.

The promise is even brighter still. There is no question that the tax burden on Ontario families has to be lowered. Ontarians' freedom, feelings for personal gain, their ability to be independent, their ability to provide for the future and the ability to enjoy the quality of life they so richly deserve depend on it.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I will be delighted to see tax relief in the form of user fees being reduced for members of the middle class, user fees which have gone up tremendously.

I have now counted 264 tax increases by this government. You say, "How could that possibly be?" That could be this way: Mike Harris, when he was just leader of the Conservative Party and was not the Premier, told me and everybody in Ontario that a user fee is a tax. I believed him on that occasion and when he said that I applauded him. The member for Kingston and The Islands was in full applause at that.

I was just going through it. That's all I could find. I only found 264 tax increases since the Mike Harris administration took office. There are probably more but I found that many. As I say, if you follow what Mike Harris said, and I know you all do on the other side, you would know that a user fee is the same as a tax, because Mike said that, and I agreed with Mike on that particular occasion.

So, if the member is talking about reducing user fees, then I would say he's probably on the right track. User fees tend to hit the middle class. If he's talking about property taxes, as he would know, being a municipal individual, there was a huge downloading on municipalities of financial responsibilities. As a result they've had to either cut their services - again, services which largely benefit the poorer people, the people who are not as well off, and the middle-income people rather than the rich people - or implement significant increases in user fees or increase property taxes. That really does not take into account a person's ability to pay. If you are a very wealthy person - I won't mention names, as I sometimes do - then it doesn't matter that much if there are user fees, because you can afford those user fees.

If I were the member for Scarborough Centre, Mr Newman, I might think that's a good idea, but I am not he. Mind you, he had a good resolution in this House a while ago, because when he talked about tax decreases, he was talking about targeted ones; instead of one large one, he was talking about targeted ones.

I was listening to the chief economist for the Royal Bank and the chief economist for the Bank of Montreal, who both dismissed as nonsense this contention that the provincial income tax cut had any perceptible influence on the Ontario economy. In fact, they said it was the low interest rates in the US, which have that economy booming, and the low interest rates in Canada which are helping us out, and the low Canadian dollar, which really helps our exports. They said: "You want to know what's really making the difference? That's what is making the difference." I agree with those two. They're neutral. They're people who certainly aren't going to be arguing on behalf of the opposition.

I went through some of the user fees as well. You think of provincial parks, the average person trying to go to a provincial park. Conrad Black can afford these increases, but others may not be able to afford them. We have various tourist attractions that one has to go to, the St Lawrence Parks. In education there have been some; in environment and energy there have been some; in natural resources there have been some. There have been all kinds of user fee increases.

I know that's what my friend who proposed this resolution was worried about: those user fees being caused by the Mike Harris government. That's why I appreciate his resolution. Listen, that's why I'm going to support it, because I think we've got to cut these user fees and these property taxes.

Interjection.

Mr Bradley: That's what I said. I thought, "Well, he has got a good idea there." But it really means, then, that the Mike Harris government is going to have to assume the responsibility it has refused to have.

I was thinking of kids playing hockey. In St Catharines, they were telling me that to play on an all-star team or a travelling team it now costs $1,000. Even in a house league it's $250 to $300. That's okay for people who have money, but it isn't okay for lower-middle-income and lower-income people. But that's what happens in Mike Harris's Ontario. Just as we see in the United States a greater polarization between the very rich and the very poor, we're seeing that here in Ontario.

I've been listening to the arguments that have been put forward by the member and I keep thinking of those tuition increases. Now the government is going to allow universities to deregulate certain tuitions. The debt burden, the debt load on these middle-income people who have to write the cheque for their kids to make up the amount needed for tuition and other costs - because of course you're ending rent control, so those students are going to have to pay more money when they rent.

All kinds of costs are going up in Mike Harris's Ontario. If you're very wealthy, you don't worry too much about that, because you got your big income tax cut, an income tax cut which in actual dollars benefits the wealthiest people in this province. So I'm all for lowering those user fees, and I think the member is on the right track if he's talking about that.

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Mr Doug Galt (Northumberland): I'm extremely pleased to be able to respond to the motion put forward by the member for Oxford, "that in the opinion of this House, the tax burden on middle-class families should be reduced." To hear the member for St Catharines so enthusiastically supporting this motion, he being a Liberal, I'm very, very pleased to see that kind of support.

I'd just like to quote a little bit from the Fraser Forum in their July 1996 edition. They point out that in 1996 here in Ontario the average family, which I understand makes somewhere around $55,000, would be paying $29,450. That's way over 50% of their income going to taxes and it's just about time that something was done about that. That's extremely unfair.

I think it's interesting to note also, on page 8 in this report, the change in the tax freedom day. That's the day when all your income has gone for taxes and you can get an opportunity to start spending something on yourself. In 1985 it was May 25 and in 1990 it moved to June 21. I always thought that tax-and-spend were the Liberals and the NDP, but it only moved five days from 1990 to 1995. So what I understand from that is that the Liberals are the tax-and-spend and the NDP are the spend-and-borrow, because that's when our debt doubled. So just reading this helps to clarify and understand the different parties in opposition.

On page 9 it talks about tax rates and the percentage of taxes based on income. It's interesting to note again that it reconfirms this: From 1985 to 1990 that figure moved from 39.5% to 47.1%. That's when the Liberals were there, the tax-and-spend party. But it only moved 47.1% to 48.3% when the NDP was there. That's the spend-and-borrow party. It's rather interesting to see these figures and they're here in hard, cold print if anybody wants to make reference to them.

Then there's a neat article on page 11. It talks about British Columbia. That's a province on the Canadian left coast. It says, "British Columbia is headed down a dangerous path." This was predicted in July 1996. When I was there in March this year, they didn't know I was a politician; they just knew I was there from Ontario. My, how they wanted to move to Ontario with what was happening in Ontario, just anything to get out of the Canadian left coast.

Then on page 12 I read, "when, during the recent BC election, both Premier Glen Clark and the Liberal leader, Gordon Campbell, promised to cut taxes or resign as Premier...." Just as you noticed in the last budget "Promises made, promises kept," out on the Canadian left coast that isn't true, and it's sort of consistent with socialist governments.

I think it's interesting to note that from 1965 to 1995, a period of three decades, the federal government revenue increased by 1,569%, direct taxes went up some 2,501% and indirect taxes increased by 975%. I'm sure you'll say, "What happened to inflation in that period?" To put it another way, the tax freedom day in 1961 was May 3. From there on, you could work for yourself. That has now moved to June 30 because of all the payroll taxes the federal Liberals have laid on us in the meantime.

Yes, we have cut taxes. Why are people saying, "Where is that tax cut?" It's because of all the payroll taxes that the federal Liberals have laid on and people can't identify. It's good that the Liberals keep talking about our tax cuts, because when you look at your pay stub, it's hard to find where that tax cut really is.

What happens with these high taxes to our middle-class people? From the early 1960s to now, we have tripled the underground economy. It's estimated that it has gone from some 5% to 15%. That's the kind of thing that high taxes create. In a country like Puerto Rico, just to give you a different look, in 1987 they decided that they would cut their big, high income tax at 67.6% to 41%. Do you know what happened? The revenues increased that year by 28%; 30% more people were identifying the fact that they had income and they owned up to it. Most people, if the taxes are reasonable, want to pay their taxes, pay their fair share for their respective social programs.

There's no question that tax cuts are indeed a win-win. You create more jobs, you get more people working, there's more money coming in as revenue. As a matter of fact, the province of Ontario, from the 1994-95 budget till now, increased revenues by $6 billion. Why? Because of the tax cuts that have stimulated our economy.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Oxford has two minutes.

Mr Hardeman: First of all I'd like to thank the members for Halton Centre, Algoma-Manitoulin, Northumberland and St Catharines for their kind words or their encouragement for the resolution and recognizing the problems that overtaxation for middle-class families in Ontario creates.

I also wanted to make a couple of comments. As the resolution was prepared and the statement I made in conjunction with that, we pointed out that overtaxation is not only a provincial problem; it is all the taxation that is going on that falls on the shoulders of the middle-class families, which of course includes, as the member for St Catharines aptly pointed out, municipal property taxes.

As I talk to our local constituents, they too are concerned with the level of taxation to their municipalities. I'm encouraged by the fact that a lot of municipalities in the last number of months and the last couple of years have been working very actively in trying to find ways of reorganizing and doing their administration and finding ways to deliver their services more cost-effectively and efficiently and in that way hopefully being able to reduce the property tax burden on their taxpayers.

I would wholeheartedly agree with the member that a tax transferred is not a tax reduced, and I think that the resolution points out that the intent of this resolution is that we want to reduce the taxation that is crippling and creating a great burden for the middle-class people of the province.

Again I would like to thank all the speakers who spoke in favour of the resolution and look forward to their support as we bring the resolution to a vote. Thank you very much for the time.

The Acting Speaker: I made a ruling earlier this morning when Mr Guzzo and Mr Baird - I recognized Mr Guzzo because he was on his feet first. I was reminded of the practice of this House that the member carrying the motion has 10 minutes at the beginning and two minutes at the end and that I should have changed, and did change, my recognition to Mr Baird. I felt that you deserved to know the reason for that change on my part.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): We will deal first with ballot item number 7 standing in the name of Mr Guzzo.

Mr Guzzo has moved second reading of Bill 9, An Act to amend the Municipal Act to provide Savings to Taxpayers in the Ottawa-Carleton Region.

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

All those in favour, say "aye."

All those opposed, say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

We will deal with this after we put the question on the next matter.

TAXATION

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): We will deal now with ballot item number 8, private member's notice of motion number 3, standing in the name of Mr Hardeman.

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

All those in favour, say "aye."

All those opposed, say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Call in the members. There will be up to a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1200 to 1205.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): Order. Ballot item number 7.

All those in favour, please rise and remain standing until recognized by the Clerk.

Ayes

Barrett, Toby

Bartolucci, Rick

Boushy, Dave

Chudleigh, Ted

Cullen, Alex

Ford, Douglas B.

Fox, Gary

Gerretsen, John

Grimmett, Bill

Guzzo, Garry J.

Hardeman, Ernie

McGuinty, Dalton

McLean, Allan K.

Miclash, Frank

Morin, Gilles E.

O'Toole, John

Ouellette, Jerry J.

Parker, John L.

Patten, Richard

Pettit, Trevor

Phillips, Gerry

Rollins, E.J. Douglas

Ruprecht, Tony

Sergio, Mario

Shea, Derwyn

Sheehan, Frank

Sterling, Norman W.

Wettlaufer, Wayne

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

Nays

Arnott, Ted

Baird, John R.

Bisson, Gilles

Boyd, Marion

Galt, Doug

Kells, Morley

Martin, Tony

Newman, Dan

Saunderson, William

Silipo, Tony

Smith, Bruce

Tilson, David

Wood, Bob

Wood, Len

Young, Terence H.

Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): The ayes are 28; the nays are 15.

The Acting Speaker: I declare the motion carried.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order. Pursuant to standing order 95(j), should this be referred to the committee of the whole House?

Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa-Rideau): I'd ask, if I might, that it be referred to the standing committee on general government.

The Acting Speaker: Mr Guzzo has requested that it be referred to the standing committee on general government. Is this the wish of the House? It is agreed.

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I wonder if you could explain, if the vote was 28 to 15, why there are more than 43 members in the House currently, because I believe that four members walked in before you decided how this matter should be disposed of.

The Acting Speaker: If you will allow me, there was one door inadvertently left open and that is why. We will wait for 30 seconds and the members will take their seats.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order. Those doors were not inadvertently opened.

TAXATION

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): We will now deal with ballot item number 8, private member's notice of motion number 3, in the name of Mr Hardeman.

All those in favour, please rise and remain standing until recognized by the Clerk.

Ayes

Arnott, Ted

Baird, John R.

Barrett, Toby

Bartolucci, Rick

Boushy, Dave

Bradley, James J.

Chudleigh, Ted

Cullen, Alex

Danford, Harry

Ford, Douglas B.

Fox, Gary

Galt, Doug

Gerretsen, John

Grimmett, Bill

Guzzo, Garry J.

Hardeman, Ernie

Kells, Morley

Leach, Al

Martiniuk, Gerry

McGuinty, Dalton

McLean, Allan K.

Miclash, Frank

Morin, Gilles E.

Munro, Julia

Newman, Dan

O'Toole, John

Ouellette, Jerry J.

Parker, John L.

Patten, Richard

Pettit, Trevor

Phillips, Gerry

Rollins, E.J. Douglas

Ruprecht, Tony

Sampson, Rob

Saunderson, William

Sergio, Mario

Shea, Derwyn

Sheehan, Frank

Smith, Bruce

Spina, Joseph

Sterling, Norman W.

Tilson, David

Turnbull, David

Wettlaufer, Wayne

Wilson, Jim

Wood, Bob

Young, Terence H.

The Acting Speaker: All those opposed will please rise.

Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): They ayes are 47; the nays are zero.

The Acting Speaker: I declare the motion carried unanimously.

The time for private members' business has expired. This House stands adjourned until 1:30 this afternoon.

The House recessed from 1213 to 1330.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

CHILD FIND

Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview): I ask all members of this Legislature to join me in recognizing Child Find Ontario's Green Ribbon of Hope campaign during this month of May. The Green Ribbon campaign highlights the plight of missing, runaway, lost, kidnapped and abducted children in Ontario and in Canada.

Each year more than 50,000 Canadian children are listed as missing according to RCMP statistics. Needless to say, this issue is of serious concern to us all. Fortunately, with the support of the community and in partnership with law enforcement, customs and immigration officials, more than 90% of the children are successfully recovered.

Members of my caucus are wearing the Green Ribbon of Hope today as a show of support for Child Find Ontario's programs and services, which are carried out throughout the province by a team of 1,100 volunteers in 25 local Child Find chapters.

The services include working with everyone involved in the search for a missing child, quickly producing and distributing posters with photographs of missing children, alerting the public through TV and other media, providing emotional support to the parents, operating a 24-hour, toll-free national telephone line to collect tips and reports on missing children, and undertaking preventive measures by providing education on child safety to parents and children and by sponsoring programs like the Kid Check fingerprinting program and the All About Me Baby ID footprinting program for infants.

Members of this House, join me in acknowledging this particular day, and especially on May 25.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Could I ask members to remove their ribbons. In accordance with the Speaker's ruling, unless you have unanimous consent, they must be removed.

Mr Sergio: That's what I asked, Madam Speaker. I would be more than happy to ask for unanimous consent in order that we can wear the green ribbon.

The Deputy Speaker: Is that agreed?

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Go ahead. Could you briefly explain -

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

Mr Sergio: I'll be more than happy to try. This is with respect to recognizing the Child Find campaign which goes during the month of May and especially on May 25.

The Deputy Speaker: Is it agreed then? Agreed.

Mr Sergio: I thank the House and the members.

LANDS FOR LIFE

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): My statement today is on the Lands for Life. There is a common refrain emerging from my riding of Cochrane North and indeed the rest of northern Ontario, and that is, "Scrap the Tories' Lands for Life process."

Over the legislative recess, I heard from hundreds of constituents regarding this issue. If anything, this Lands for Life debate has been remarkable in that it has been able to forge a consensus among many different groups of stakeholders.

On April 23, in Constance Lake, 1,000 residents attended the Boreal East public meeting. Several hundred people showed up at a similar meeting in Smooth Rock Falls the following day. A petition gathered over 1,400 signatures calling on the Conservative government to put an end to this folly.

The people of Cochrane North have real concerns with the process and the potential impact of Lands for Life. Indeed, one of your very own panel members said it best:

"One of the failures of the process is the time line. We don't have time to debate intelligently, only to react adversely. We are missing a great opportunity to get ideas. The MNR promised to deliver the socioeconomic impact but they couldn't deliver," and we haven't heard the results of that yet.

Over the weekend, the chairperson of the Lands for Life round table in northeastern Ontario stated, "I don't think anyone is endorsing any one of the five options," as outlined in the Lands for Life initiative.

You can't get it any clearer. Lands for Life should be shelved now.

MENTAL HEALTH WEEK

Mr Doug Galt (Northumberland): It's Mental Health Week in Ontario. There are over 350 community-based mental health programs in our province. Services for individuals include social rehabilitation, case management, crisis management, day care, self-help and clinic-based counselling.

These programs are intended to reduce the frequency and duration of admissions to psychiatric facilities, replace inpatient treatment with outpatient services and reintegrate patients back into a community environment.

In discussing the importance of mental health care in Ontario, I would like to recognize two outstanding mental health programs in my riding of Northumberland.

The community mental health centres in Campbellford and Cobourg play a vital role in Northumberland in improving the quality of life for people who require mental health services. These agencies are effective promoters of mental health issues and in advancing mental health reform through the Northumberland County Mental Health Task Force.

I applaud Gene Duplessis and Brenda Weir and the rest of the staff at the Campbellford and Cobourg centres for their enthusiasm and initiative in developing activities and offering services in addition to the programs already provided.

Thanks for this opportunity to recognize Mental Health Week and the role that mental health programs play in our communities. Thank you for your attention.

TOURISM

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): This week's budget stated that tourism was one of Ontario's most important industries, employing over 200,000 people. The government's going to invest $120 million over the next four years, which is only $30 million per year.

Ontario, as the speech went on, was once a leader in tourist promotion. That was until this Reform-Tory government cut the tourism budget of the province some three years ago.

Elaine Viner, chair of the Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce, slammed her fist on the desk when Attorney General Harnick visited yesterday. She stated: "We need tourism dollars. They say it's a good news budget, but that's not good news and not good enough for us. I can't emphasize enough that Kingston desperately needs tourism funding."

In Kingston we have Fort Henry, the Thousand Islands, the general ambience of the city. None of these were mentioned in last week's budget speech by the finance minister.

The Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism is going to take a Yours To Discover Ontario tour within a week to decide where to spend the money, the Attorney General said, and this includes Kingston.

We don't need travel shows. What we need is the money. Give the money, the tourism promotion dollars, to the local organizations. They know how to spend it best. They know how best to spend the money to promote their own areas. Do that.

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East): On May 1 the Harris government took another swing at social assistance recipients, this time at families or single employable individuals living in accommodation owned or controlled by their parents.

These recipients are no longer entitled to a shelter allowance if they rent from a parent. They must seek accommodation elsewhere. But this government will still pay shelter costs, only to a different landlord. This is ridiculous. I believe the regulation violates the Human Rights Code which says you can't discriminate in accommodation based on family status.

Harvey and Penny Auger of Capreol rent a house to their son, his partner and two young children. They recently wrote to Mike Harris about this change: "My wife and I are very disturbed by your government's new welfare strategy as of May 1, 1998. This is with little or no notice to inform welfare recipients that if they live in separate dwellings, but owned by their parents, they will have their May 1 cheque listed as board/rent, plus a $50 living allowance. This reduces their normal amount to approximately 50%. Your reasoning is that you do not believe that the Ontario government should be making mortgage payments.

"How wrong you are, because as a parent and landlord we pay heat, hydro and repairs to the tune of approximately $250 a month. This allows our son to live within your rent guidelines.

"We are proud as parents who have helped our son through a very difficult time. He is now going to Cambrian College for grade 13 upgrading and gets very high marks. This has allowed him to apply for an OSAP grant and go for a three-year technical instrumentation ticket next year. This should allow him to get into a strong new work field.

"If this is your idea of showing a new kinder and gentler government, you have sent our entire family the wrong message."

PRINCIPAL FOR A DAY PROGRAM

Mr Douglas B. Ford (Etobicoke-Humber): I want to tell you about something very special which I was invited to and took part in yesterday, the Principal for a Day program at Dixon Grove Junior and Middle School. I want to take this opportunity to thank Principal Collette Dowhaniuk, as well as the teachers and students who made my visit so enjoyable.

Dixon Grove has 63 staff members serving 865 students from over 33 countries, speaking more than 44 languages. Together, their mission statement, as outlined in the school's strategic plan, is to "recognize the diversity of individuals, to develop confident and responsible students who value learning and equality, and to teach in educational partnership with our community the skills required to be successful students.

During my visit, I toured the school, spoke with the students and listened closely to the thoughts teachers shared with me. We discussed the issues they face daily and the goals to produce the best possible students at Dixon Grove. Part of our discussion included ways to maximize spending in the classroom, and I know the dedicated teachers at Dixon Grove will be pleased to make use of the additional money for textbooks announced in the recent provincial budget.

I want to again thank everyone at Dixon Grove Junior and Middle School for their kind hospitality, and particularly the staff for their devotion to helping students reach their full potential.

FRENCH-LANGUAGE SERVICES

Ms Annamarie Castrilli (Downsview): I rise today to bring to the attention of the House the deep anxiety and scepticism felt in the Ontario francophone community over Bill 108.

Bill 108 will give municipalities, by agreement with the Attorney General, more authority over the prosecution of some provincial offences. The problem is that the Attorney General is not willing to guarantee existing French-language rights.

The Association des juristes d'expression française de l'Ontario and the Canadian Bar Association, among others, have warned that the lack of legislative guarantees is not only unacceptable, but may in fact be unconstitutional. The municipalities, you see, are not covered by the French Language Services Act of Ontario and are therefore not required to provide services in French.

Over a decade has passed since a Liberal government in Ontario passed the French Language Services Act. Support for our francophone community remains strong. In a recent poll 77% of anglophones said Ontario should become officially bilingual. The government needs to send a clear signal to all of our country, not just Ontario, that they believe in equal rights. I will remind you that the Calgary framework, which the Premier signed, says, "Canadians are equal, enjoy rights under the law, and cherish diversity, tolerance, compassion, and equality of opportunity."

I urge the government not to abandon these principles and to adopt the amendment my party introduced a year ago. Remember that you have the legal and moral obligation to safeguard the rights of all Ontarians, including those who are French-speaking. They are no less citizens than the rest of us. Do not jeopardize their rights in your haste to download ever more services on to municipalities. Do the right thing and amend the bill now.

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COMPENSATION FOR HEPATITIS C PATIENTS

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): I wasn't here on Monday to participate in the debate that went on in this House about the issue of hepatitis C. I just want to put a few thoughts this afternoon in the time that I have. I am increasingly more disappointed and disgusted with the grandstanding and politics that surrounds this issue as each day passes.

I want to share with you a story from my own community. I think we should all be looking at the real human life issues that are involved in this piece of work. Mr Charles Duguay from Sault Ste Marie says:

"How has it changed my life you ask? Chronic fatigue and brain fog has altered my lifestyle dramatically. With reduced income, losing my liver, loss of balance, the government of Ontario and Canada refuses to compensate me and other victims of hepatitis C prior to 1986, even though a test was available and known to them in 1981. This is neither fair or compassionate, as recommended by the Krever commission. Being forced to retire 15 years early affects my ability to earn a living, look after my family, protect my assets and ability to get life insurance or a bank loan.

"Personally, I believe the whole issue is not one of compassion, but dollars. Myself and all victims of hep C have been violated by this system. The governments of Ontario and Canada should make an effort to help the people who, through no fault of their own, cannot function normally because of receiving tainted blood. Instead of asking for compassion, we should be asking for mercy, mercy as defined in the dictionary as `kindness in excess of what might be expected or demanded by fairness; kind or compassionate treatment; relief of suffering.'"

WOMEN'S INTERVAL HOME

Mr Dave Boushy (Sarnia): I am proud to say that through the cooperative efforts of this government and the Seaway Kiwanis Club of Sarnia, construction of Women's Interval Home in my community is now well on the way.

Interval Home is renowned for the quality care given to abused women, and with this new facility, made possible by the Kiwanis Club land donation and our government's funding of about $1 million, these essential services will continue on an improved site. This new site will be more than just a building, it will be a place of protection, of compassion and of caring.

We all know that violence against women is a devastating problem. I thank my colleagues for continuing to tackle this problem by offering support and escape to those who have suffered. Preventing violence is everyone's responsibility. With a compassionate community such as ours, working together as partners, I know we can take great pride in creating a society where women and children are safe in Ontario and in my riding.

VISITORS

Mr Dave Boushy (Sarnia): Talking about my riding, the blue water land, one of the most progressive communities in Ontario, where good, nice people live, I have in the west gallery, as my guests, some of those nice people, 50 of them, visiting Queen's Park. Thank you for welcoming them.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

SMALL BUSINESS AND CHARITIES PROTECTION ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LA PROTECTION DES PETITES ENTREPRISES ET DES ORGANISMES DE BIENFAISANCE

Mr Wilson, on behalf of Mr Eves, moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 16, An Act to give Tax Relief to Small Businesses, Charities and Others and to make other amendments respecting the Financing of Local Government and Schools / Projet de loi 16, Loi visant à alléger les impôts des petites entreprises, des organismes de bienfaisance et d'autres et à apporter d'autres modifications en ce qui a trait au financement des administrations locales et des écoles.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Would you like to make a brief statement?

Hon Jim Wilson (Minister of Energy, Science and Technology): The bill, if passed by this House, would help small businesses in Ontario to grow and create jobs by protecting them from large property tax increases. It would make such protection mandatory for all charities and it would give municipalities important new powers to make property tax reform in a fair and manageable way.

/ LOI DE 1998 SUR LE TRANSFERT/ DE PROGRAMMES ET DE SERVICES ET LES DROITS LIÉS AU FRANÇAIS / DOWNLOADING AND FRENCH LANGUAGE RIGHTS ACT, 1998

Mr Bisson moved first reading of the following bill:

Projet de loi 17, Loi confirmant que les droits liés au français ne sont pas touchés par le transfert de programmes et services provinciaux / Bill 17, An Act to confirm that French language rights are unaffected by provincial downloading.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Would you like to make a brief statement?

M. Gilles Bisson (Cochrane-Sud) : Comme vous le savez, en 1987, l'Assemblée a adopté à l'unanimité un projet de loi, la Loi 8, qui a donné aux régions désignées dans la province les services en français, qui sont délivrés par la province. Ce que cette loi essaie de faire, c'est d'assurer dans le transfert de tous les services provinciaux dans les régions désignées, qui sont transférés aux municipalités, que la Loi des services en français y applique, et que les francophones ne perdent pas leur droit aux services en français.

MOTIONS

COMMITTEE SITTING

Hon Norman W. Sterling (Minister of the Environment, Government House Leader): I seek unanimous consent to move a motion respecting the meeting time of the Standing committee on administration of justice without notice.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Agreed? Agreed.

Hon Mr Sterling: I move that the Standing committee on administration of justice be authorized to meet today following routine proceedings for the purpose of organization.

The Deputy Speaker: Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

PRIVATE MEMBERS'PUBLIC BUSINESS

Hon Norman W. Sterling (Minister of the Environment, Government House Leader): I move that, notwithstanding standing order 96(d), Mr Johnson (Brantford) and Mr Fox exchange places in the order of precedence for private members' public business.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

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MINISTER OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): On a point of personal privilege, Madam Speaker: I sent a letter to the Speaker's office yesterday on this. It's on my own behalf and on behalf of the member for Windsor-Riverside.

We believe that our privileges as members elected to this chamber by the people of our own constituency, plus in an indirect way by the people of the province, have been diminished by the fact that after attending a series of meetings across the province hosted by the Ontario Association for the Deaf, we wrote a letter to the Minister of Education - who is in the House today - on March 10 asking for a meeting to discuss the very important and critical issues presented to him at those meetings and to ask for some response so that we might help those citizens of this province deal with the massive changes that are being made to the way they get supported and helped in their efforts to better themselves and participate in the economy of this province. Sad to say, on April 24 a letter was sent out from the minister's office that he would in fact not meet with us.

I remind the Speaker that the member for Windsor-Riverside is the critic for our caucus on post-secondary education and the issues we wanted addressed are within that portfolio. Having previously been a parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Education and Training and having chaired an advisory committee to the minister on deaf education, I have an interest in this as well.

We feel, as members of this place representing our constituencies, having listened to a very significant and large group of people around this province who are affected very directly by the unilateral changes - the way that deaf people in this province will now be supported in their attempts to get education has been changed. The minister has for all intents and purposes, by way of this letter, said, "I regret that the minister is unable to meet with you at this time."

I'm wondering if there's something you can do in your office to make sure that our privileges here to be present with the ministers who guide the deliberations of this place - that we get to meet with them and talk with them about the issues of concern -

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Member for Sault Ste Marie, try to wrap up now.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. I need to hear.

Mr Martin: - and not continue down this road of arrogance and high-handed -

The Deputy Speaker: Member for Sault Ste Marie, please take your seat. Minister of Education, briefly, please.

Hon David Johnson (Minister of Education and Training): I fail to see how this is a point of order, but it's certainly a point of politics; there's no question about that.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. Sit down. Member for Sault Ste Marie, take your seat. Order.

Hon David Johnson: Madam Speaker, since the member opposite has gone through quite a diatribe on this, I did want to let you know that on April 1, if the member is interested -

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. I need to hear.

Hon David Johnson: - I did meet with the parents, teachers and students of E.C. Drury School for the Deaf in Milton and we had quite an excellent discussion that day. I was in Milton at the school, at a special fair, and we had quite an excellent meeting with regard to a number of issues around this very matter.

These meetings are ongoing and today my staff is meeting again with parents and teachers and students surrounding this very same issue. These meetings are taking place on a continual basis.

I meet with officials on education issues on a daily basis. Yesterday I met with school board officials, college officials, university officials, officials involved in skills training.

It just happened at that point in time my calendar was booked up and I was unable to meet with Mr Martin. I'm sorry that his nose is out of joint, but at that particular time, as it says in the letter, I couldn't meet with him. But I'm more than happy to meet with Mr Martin and anybody else on this matter, and I would suggest that the week after next, if Mr Martin has time, I would be more than happy to meet with him and discuss this, as I've met with any number of other people to discuss this matter.

The Deputy Speaker: Take your seat, member for Sault Ste Marie. This is not a point of privilege.

Mr Martin: On a point of order.

The Deputy Speaker: Member for Sault Ste Marie, let me rule on your point of privilege. It is not a point of privilege. The Speaker cannot compel anybody to meet with anybody. I thank you for raising the matter - the issue is an important matter - but I would suggest that you do get together. I heard the minister offer to meet with you, and I suggest that you now take him up on that and get together and resolve this matter.

Mr Martin: Madam Speaker, on a point of order: The comment that came from across the way in that corner over there sums it all up. When I asked why he wouldn't meet with me, they said, "Because you're nothing." I would like an apology -

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Member for London North, don't start telling the Speaker how to react to this, please.

That is not a point of order. Take your seat, please.

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): Madam Speaker, on a point of order: I think what has got my friend here frustrated is the same comment that I heard coming from the deputy Deputy Speaker. It is the number of times during question period and other occasions where he hurls insults across the assembly. The comments that he made I would not want to repeat in this way, and I would ask the member -

The Deputy Speaker: Member for Cochrane South, I didn't hear the comment. I would give the member for Perth an opportunity to withdraw the comment if he did indeed say that.

Mr Bert Johnson (Perth): I withdraw.

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you.

ORAL QUESTIONS

TUITION FEES

Mr Dalton McGuinty (Leader of the Opposition): My question is for the Minister of Education. Here in Ontario we have played by a rule that has been around for a long time. We've told our kids that if they just worked hard enough at school, they could be anything they want to be. That's not true any more. As a result of your changes next year, University of Toronto medical students are going to be paying $11,000 a year in tuition fees. So now what we've got to tell our kids, apparently, is it doesn't matter how hard you work and it doesn't matter how smart you are; if your parents aren't rich, you can forget about that dream of becoming a doctor, a dentist or a lawyer.

Why have you now decided that in our province, Ontario, there is going to be an income test for our kids when it comes to realizing their dreams?

Hon David Johnson (Minister of Education and Training): Quite to the contrary. The announcement yesterday was an announcement to improve the quality, to improve the opportunities of our young people at the post-secondary level.

I have a letter here, for example, from the University of Western Ontario which says: "Western strongly supports your government's policy of turning over the responsibility for setting professional fees to our board of governors, and we will use the new responsibility in a way that improves the quality of education and protects access for students from all economic backgrounds."

I have a letter from Sheridan which says: "We would like to make special mention of the government's commitment to quality and access. The resources generated in this way will go directly towards improving quality in the classroom."

The Deputy Speaker: Answer, please. Could you wrap up.

Hon David Johnson: That's what this whole program is about, improving the quality of education at our post-secondary level, improving the opportunities -

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Minister of Education. Supplementary.

Mr McGuinty: I'm waiting now for the minister to stand up with letters that he has received from parents in our middle-class families, parents in our poor families and young people in this province, the thousands of young people with all their hopes and aspirations and dreams ahead of them, supporting what the minister has done when it comes to jacking up tuition fees in Ontario.

There are kids today in middle-income families who could very well become surgeons, who could find a cure for cancer. There are kids in poor families who could very well develop some kind of software program that creates thousands of jobs. You are robbing them of their potential. You are robbing this province of their potential.

1400

Since when have you decided that the amount of money you've got in the bank is now more important than your marks?

Hon David Johnson: Does the leader of the third party not have concern for the thousands of kids who are applying for various positions that are not available in the universities today - computer science positions, electrical engineering positions? They want careers. There are excellent careers in those programs but there are no opportunities today.

We are working in conjunction with the universities, with the private sector. This government will be investing $600 million, over the next three years, of new money to assist post-secondary students. We are calling upon the participation of the private sector to create 17,000 new opportunities for our young people.

Mr McGuinty: You are shutting young people out of our universities; it's as simple as that, and this in addition to the problems already being experienced by students presently enrolled in Ontario universities.

We started a little postcard campaign. We got results in just from one our universities, the University of Windsor. We asked the students presently enrolled in the University of Windsor to let us know what they've got by way of student debt right now. We got responses from 800 students that total $7 million in debt. See this package here, $1 million? This package here, $1.4 million in student debt. This package here, $791,000 in student debt? This package here, $1.5 million in student debt? When did we decide that in this province it was all right to download the government's financial responsibilities for our universities on to the backs of our students?

Hon David Johnson: We are opening up more opportunities for our young people: 17,000 more opportunities.

But let's talk about support, because the member opposite has asked about support. In the budget was announced the Canada-Ontario millennium scholarship fund, $9 billion; the opportunities trust fund, initiated by this government, $600 million; the graduate scholarship awards announced in the budget on Tuesday, $75 million; 30% set aside of any tuition increase. There is more money going to assist our post-secondary students than ever in the history of Ontario.

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): My question is for the Minister of Education and Training. Your answer to every question we have asked about increasing tuition and increasing student debt is that you are increasing opportunities for students. The only opportunity you are increasing for students in this province is to go into greater and greater debt. You're making students pay for their opportunities.

On Monday I raised a concern about the kinds of fee increases Queen's University is considering, so let me remind you: Queen's University is planning an $1,800-a-year increase in its fees for law, and a $2,500-a-year increase in engineering fees. They are proposing a $5,000-a-year increase for medicine. We are seeing other shocking proposals come forward, like Western's intent to raise the fee in orthodontics by $8,000. Yesterday you gave a go-ahead for these kinds of increases.

Minister, do you not understand that these kinds of increases shut the door to these programs for students who have to borrow the money to go to school and who don't want to go into this kind of debt?

Hon David Johnson: An important part of this program, yes, is to increase opportunities for our young people, because many young people are being turned away from the kinds of programs they're qualified for, that they will be successful in and which our society needs.

The Canadian association of technology has indicated that there are some 20,000 positions going unfilled in our economy today in information technology simply because there are not opportunities at the post-secondary level to fill them, and that's what we're addressing. But the member opposite is also perhaps of the mistaken believe that the amount of loan that a student would be eligible to receive or a student -

The Deputy Speaker: Answer, please.

Hon David Johnson: - would take has gone up. The cap remains the same. The $7,000 cap remains in effect. No undergraduate student will have to accept a loan beyond that. Anything beyond that will have to be in the form of direct assistance to our students.

Mrs McLeod: The issue here is what kind of debt our students are expected to bear and what kind of debt they can bear, and the issue here is who gets left out because their family isn't wealthy enough to help with the costs.

Let me give you an example of what these new increases can mean to a student putting herself through medical school at the University of Toronto. That student will have $28,000 in debt from her undergraduate years. She will build up another $28,000 in debt during med school. The University of Toronto is now going to raise the tuition fee for that medical school to $11,000, which is an increase of $6,200 a year. The university indeed has to give that student a loan, but that is added to her debt, so that student now leaves school with a debt of $81,000, not including private loans, and your government says that is just fine.

Minister, do you really believe that a student who is on her own, whose family cannot afford to help, is going to take on a debt of $81,000?

Hon David Johnson: The maximum debt that an undergraduate student can incur during any year, as the member opposite well knows, is $7,000. That is the maximum. That has not changed. As a result of this program, which will permit more opportunity, 17,000 more positions, the cap on the debt has not changed.

In addition, this government has injected some $600 million of new money over the next three years, some $150 million to support doubling of electrical engineering, computer science, high-tech courses which are so in demand by our students which they're not having the opportunity to pursue under the present regime, $135 million to match the Canada foundation innovation grant, access grants to various universities. We are plowing more money in to help more students.

Mrs McLeod: Minister, you know the caps; you just haven't learned to multiply. Four times seven is 28 - four undergraduate years - four times seven is 28 for four medical school years, and you've added $25,000 that the university now has to loan that student for increased tuition. It adds up to $81,000.

You have increased fees right across the board, a 60% increase in across-the-board fees under your government, and now you've said the sky is the limit for many other programs. Your only answer has been to say, "Let the universities give students a loan," so that the student can go into more and more debt to cover these increased costs. You have put no new money into student assistance, and the $300 million your Minister of Finance talked about yesterday was old money from loan forgiveness put into a new fund called a grant - a new name and no new money. You have increased the amount of debt that every student has to carry, you've increased the amount of support parents are expected to give and you still expect students to carry more debt.

You cannot talk about accessibility, Minister, because you have shut the door to students who cannot afford to pay these exorbitant increases. Why are you putting signs on our university doors that say, "For the rich only"?

Hon David Johnson: Complete nonsense. A letter from the University of Toronto says:

"Last week, the University of Toronto adopted a new student financial aid policy which guarantees that no qualified student will be deprived of the opportunity to study at the University of Toronto due to lack of financial resources."

Our first requirement is, is a student qualified to pursue? If a student is qualified, then we will guarantee that the support is there for that particular student.

Mrs McLeod: They're going into debt. It's a loan. When you borrow, you have to pay back.

The Deputy Speaker: Member for Fort William.

Hon David Turnbull (Minister without Portfolio): You didn't think of that when you were in government.

Hon David Johnson: My colleague says, "You didn't think of that when you were in government." When they were in government, with all the bleating we have today: 35% increase in student tuition. Now, at least -

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. Could you wrap up, Minister?

1410

Hon David Johnson: Unlike the Liberals, who simply allowed a 35% increase, we are insisting that should the universities decide to increase, any tuition increase must go to improve the quality of the program at the university level and 30% of it must go to help those students who need help.

Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): In the absence of the Minister of Finance, I'll direct my question to the Minister of Education. I want to ask him about the biggest tax increase that middle-income and modest-income families in Ontario have ever seen. The government was very crafty. You waited until after the budget to announce your tuition fee increases, because if those tuition fee increases had been known before the budget came out, it would have blown your budget out of the water.

The reality of your announcement of tuition fee increases means that someone hoping to attend the University of Toronto medical school is just taking on a $5,100-a-year tax hike. It makes it oh so clear how phoney your tax scheme is. Only the wealthiest people in Ontario will get a benefit of $5,100 a year out of your tax scheme. The question is, since no one else is getting that benefit, how are modest- and middle-income families going to pay this new tax at which you've just assessed their children's education?

Hon David Johnson: Every student in need who is qualified for a post-secondary education will be guaranteed an opportunity. Not only will they be guaranteed an opportunity, but the opportunities will be much greater, some 17,000 new positions in high-demand areas.

Again, the message I have from all the universities and colleges which have contacted me today - such as the University of Toronto, which has said, "No qualified student" - regardless of their income - "will be deprived of the opportunity to study at the University of Toronto."

To ensure this works, we are putting more money into student assistance. This year, for example, some $550 million is going to direct student assistance, the most in the history of Ontario.

Mr Hampton: What I'm hearing from you is this: You're going to jack up the tuition fees by $5,000 a year. So you're going to put a tax of $5,000 a year on the kind of education someone needs in this so-called new economy if they're to have a chance at getting a job or a vocation that has a future to it. You're going to put a tax on that. When people say, "That's an unfair tax," you're going to say, "Well, take out a loan to pay the tax." That's the only financial alternative there is out there for young people: They have to go into debt. Where do you think the $30,000 debt loads that students are carrying now came from? They came from your tuition increases, the 60% you've already increased tuition by.

Minister, I'm going to put it to you again. Saying to people who are already in debt, "Go get another loan so you can pay the tax increase," isn't the answer. What are you going to do for middle- and modest-income families which want to send their children to university and can't afford the tax hike?

Hon David Johnson: What the leader of the third party is hearing from me - unlike what the NDP did when the NDP was in office, 1990-95, when tuition fees went up by 50%. The NDP permitted universities and colleges to put tuition fees up by 50%. What did they get in return? Nothing. Nothing in return. What we're getting in return is more opportunities, 17,000 new positions, in conjunction with the private sector. We are plowing in $600 million of new money. The private sector will be putting in new money. That's 17,000 new positions. We're also getting a better quality. We are requiring our universities to have a plan to demonstrate how the quality of the post-secondary programs will be improved, and we will be requiring them to report back to us -

The Deputy Speaker: Answer, please.

Hon David Johnson: - to prove that that quality has been enhanced. Finally, we are insisting that 30% of any tuition increase -

The Deputy Speaker: Minister, your time is up.

Mr Hampton: All I'm hearing is that you're giving modest- and middle-income families the opportunity to take on more debt if they want their children to go to college or university. We're already talking about debt levels of $30,000 for young people. You're offering even higher debt levels. What this means in the real world, once you get off talking to the university presidents and talk to the real families and the real students out there, is that they won't be able to go to school. They can't afford to take on that debt level. They can't afford to take on the risk that when they graduate they'll be able to pay it back.

You keep saying your phoney tax scheme doesn't cost anything. Well, it does cost something. It's costing us the university and college access we need. It's costing us the health care we need. It's costing us the education we need. It's costing us a whole range of services that we need to take part in that so-called new economy. You're not going to do a thing for middle- and modest-income families except raise their taxes - in this case a $5,000-a-year increase in education taxes.

I put it to you again: Other than putting more debt on middle- and modest-income families, how are young people going to access college and university? Debt and more debt for them isn't the answer. How are you going to help them?

Hon David Johnson: The member opposite is incorrect in that the cap level on the debt has not changed. The cap level at $7,000 will be the same under the new policy as it has been previously. An undergraduate will not be allowed to have any more debt in the future than in the past.

Mr Hampton: You're trying to fudge it.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, leader of the third party.

Hon David Johnson: But the leader of the third party is correct: The budget will have an impact on our economy.

Interjection: Tax breaks.

Hon David Johnson: Tax breaks will have an impact. They'll mean more jobs. They'll mean people will be able to keep more of their own money. It will mean that the economy of Ontario will continue to outpace the rest of Canada. We'll have a thriving economy and we'll have more jobs. As a result, we'll have more money to assist more students and create more opportunities in our post-secondary institutions.

WATER EXTRACTION PERMIT

Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): I have a question to the Minister of the Environment. Let me say to the Minister of Education, though, that not even your friends on Bay Street believe your baloney about your tax scheme. They're telling you your tax scheme isn't doing it for you.

Minister, today I met with a US congressman from upper Michigan who, like me, is calling upon you to revoke the permit which you have given the Nova Group for the taking of 600 million litres of fresh water from Lake Superior each year. He points out, and he agrees with us, that this is shortsighted environmentally; it is shortsighted from the perspective of long-term public health; it is shortsighted from the perspective of sovereignty; it is shortsighted policy all around.

Minister, will you reverse your government's policy and revoke this permit now?

Hon Norman W. Sterling (Minister of the Environment, Government House Leader): I am of course very concerned about this particular issue. However, I would say to the leader of the third party that my director who issued this permit is acting in accordance with the laws, policies and regulations left to us by your previous government.

Mr Hampton: There's a difference. The government that I was part of let it be known very publicly that we were not going to approve any water-taking permits that would end up in water becoming a commodity. We were not prepared to accept or even look at any water-taking permits that would provide in the long term for the export of Ontario's water.

I want to quote from the head of the Nova Group, who said today, "We did not back down. We're still in this venture. We're not out of it." They still want their permit.

The ball is in your court, Minister. Will you revoke the permit now? Quit trying to shuffle the issue off to the federal government; quit trying to work out a strategy with them for shuffling it off to the IJC. You approved the permit; you should revoke the permit. Will you do that now?

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Hon Mr Sterling: It's the policy of this government to act within the laws of the province of Ontario. What we are trying to do -

Interjection.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Member for Parkdale, come to order.

Hon Mr Sterling: - is to work in every possible way to put my director in the position of being able to revoke this permit at the earliest possible date.

In the interim, I am working with the federal government to not only address the problem raised by this but to address other problems which may arise in the future.

I might say to the member opposite, he may know, as a former Minister of Natural Resources, that the provincial government has nothing to do with the export of water from Canada to another country. That is within the federal constitutional mandate. He knows it, I know it and everybody else knows that.

Mr Hampton: I can't believe that we're seeing a minister here who granted a permit allowing for 600 million litres of fresh water to be taken from Lake Superior, knew that part of the scheme was the export of that water to a foreign country and without consulting with anyone, without consulting with the federal government, without consulting with any of the Great Lake states in the United States, tried to slip this quietly through the system and now he wants to pretend as if he didn't know what was happening. If that's the case you're making, Minister, you should resign because you are incompetent.

Let's be very clear. The province of British Columbia has passed legislation placing a moratorium on the kind of scheme that you granted a permit for.

The Deputy Speaker: Question, please.

Mr Hampton: There is nothing stopping your government from bringing forward that kind of legislation; there is nothing stopping you from revoking that permit. Quit trying to hide behind process somewhere else. Quit trying to find an excuse. Revoke the permit. Stand up for Ontario's interests. Stand up for our long-term fresh water interests. Stop trying to divert water -

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you.

Hon Mr Sterling: If anybody was trying to hide this we did a very poor job, because this application in total was put on the environmental registry for a period of 30 days. We in the Legislature provide the NDP with over $1 million a year for research. Where was their research? Who was incompetent? Why didn't they raise the issue before, when in fact it was on the registry?

With regard to the second matter, with regard to an act which we may bring in -

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

Hon Mr Sterling: The other matter which is somewhat amusing is that in 1989 or 1990 the Liberal government passed an act which prohibited the transfer of water. The leader of the third party was the Minister of Natural Resources, whom that legislation fell under for a period of about two years or three years, I'm not sure which. Notwithstanding that, that transfer act was never proclaimed by the Liberals; it was never proclaimed by the Minister of Natural Resources for that period of time. He stands in the Legislature now and says we should pass an act. He could have done it at any point in time over a three-year period.

MUNICIPAL RESTRUCTURING

Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. You will know that this weekend, Thursday and Friday, in Parry Sound the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities will be meeting. You will also know that the region of Sudbury has commissioned your consulting group, KPMG, to do a study of the impact of provincial downloading on northern Ontario and the regional municipality of Sudbury.

You will further know, because you have the report, that the most negatively affected area in all of Ontario is northern Ontario. You will further note that FONOM and the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association has given you fairness and equity in the north with the proposal to establish a permanent northern investment fund to replace the transition grant.

Minister, will you commit today, and go to Parry Sound and announce, that you will establish a permanent northern Ontario investment fund?

Hon Al Leach (Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing): Thank you very much for the question. Certainly we'll be well represented in Parry Sound. We will meet with all the representatives of the north, as we did last week when we went to North Bay to talk to all of the northwestern municipalities.

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): Ask Hastings -

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Member for Kingston and The Islands.

Hon Mr Leach: Three hundred municipal officials met with us in Thunder Bay last week, Madam Speaker, with a number of my colleagues. I can tell you that the response to the programs of this government in northern Ontario is that it is well accepted by the municipalities in the north. The transfers that took place, every municipality in northern Ontario comes out with zero impact as a result of those. That information and my staff will be in Parry Sound on the weekend and I can assure them that the impact on those municipalities will be the same.

Mr Bartolucci: I don't know. He's in dreamland. The city of North Bay, the city of Sudbury, Callander, West Ferris - throughout Ontario - have requested money from you from what's known as the special circumstance fund. You have committed $77 million to a special circumstance fund. So far, you have more than 500 applications from small, rural and northern municipalities asking for special circumstance funding, the same funding you gave to the city of Toronto when you granted them $50 million of free money.

Minister, we want you to be fair. You have in excess of 500 applications, which total approximately $250 million. Will you grant, as you did with Toronto, special circumstance funding for each of those 500 municipalities?

Hon Mr Leach: Every one of the municipalities that has asked for help has got some help. I think the member's colleagues who were with me in Thunder Bay last week - Mr Miclash and Mr Gravette - both were there to see -

Mr Gerretsen: Gravelle. He wasn't in Thunder Bay.

Hon Mr Leach: Gravelle, rather. My apologies to Mr Gravelle.

They were there to hear the responses from the municipality, where they were probably thanking this government for providing the amount of assistance that they got. At the bottom of every sheet for every municipality, the financial impact in those municipalities said "zero," and that will be the same case when my staff go to Parry Sound this weekend to meet with the central municipalities.

Mr Bartolucci: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: First of all, to make sure that Hansard is correct, I wasn't in Thunder Bay last weekend. However, Mr Gravelle -

The Deputy Speaker: That's not a point of order. Take your seat.

Mr Bartolucci: On a another point of order, Madam Speaker: The member for Port Arthur is Mr Gravelle, not Mr Gravette.

The Deputy Speaker: That's not a point of order.

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MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): My question is to the Minister of Health. Minister, your government keeps trying to say you can have this phoney tax scheme and still meet the needs of Ontario's health care system, and every day that's proven to be nonsense.

I note that in Tuesday's budget there wasn't a single mention of increased funding for mental health. We have a crisis in mental health, Minister. There are increasing numbers of people going without treatment for lack of funds and increasing numbers who are being warehoused in the corrections system.

On April 27, the Health Services Restructuring Commission told you that you need more investment in community-based mental health services, more forensic mental health beds, more community programs, more acute care, more supportive housing. Yet in all your glossy pronouncements, all your pride about the health system, not a single word about mental health services.

What does your government intend to do about the alarming shortage of mental health services in this province?

Hon Elizabeth Witmer (Minister of Health): We certainly share the concern that has been expressed. In fact, as she well knows, we did a few months ago determine that the mental health strategy that actually had been committed to and planned by the previous government was at a point in time where it was at the midway mark. It was in the fifth year of a 10-year plan. It was obvious that the strategy was not working as well as it should.

I asked my parliamentary assistant, Mr Newman, to conduct a review. He did a consultation with stakeholders. He received consultation and I am very pleased to indicate to you that we very soon will be making an announcement as to further reinvestments and community supports. In fact, it was our government that put a moratorium on the closing of the psychiatric beds. We said there would be no more closings until the appropriate community supports were there.

We look forward to making our announcement and ensuring that people in the province of Ontario have the best mental health services possible.

Mrs Boyd: Minister, we don't need more reports. We don't need more announcements from your government. We need the crisis met now with reinvestment.

Perhaps it won't alarm you, but it certainly alarms me that a man in severe mental health crisis was admitted to St Michael's Hospital emergency on April 3 and according to the staff in St Michael's emergency, this man, whose name cannot be mentioned because of privacy laws, needed to be subdued and restrained. There were no mental health beds available and this man was tied to a stretcher in an emergency room, in plain sight of anyone who was there, for three full days before he was transferred to the Wellesley Hospital to an acute bed.

For three full days he did not receive the treatment he needed, he was exposed to the public and was tied to a gurney. This situation jeopardized the care and safety of all the other patients who were in the St Michael's emergency during those three days. Minister, what are you going to do? It is a crisis. What are you going to do today?

Hon Mrs Witmer: That's exactly why we did the review, because we realized the strategy that had been determined by your government was at a point where it wasn't working for people. In fact, it was your government that cut $60 million out of psychiatric facilities in this province. It was your government that cut 10% of Metro's psychiatric beds. I want to tell you, under our government we've recognized there is a need for more forensic beds and the number of forensic beds is actually up 20%.

FIREFIGHTING IN NORTHERN ONTARIO

Mr Bill Grimmett (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): My question is for the Minister of Natural Resources. Many Ontarians have read or watched about the forest fire situation in northern Ontario, particularly the area north of Thunder Bay.

I understand you've recently had a chance to go up and view the situation. Could you provide the House with a report on your findings on the forest fire situation?

Hon John Snobelen (Minister of Natural Resources): I want to thank the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay for the question. There is a lot of concern about forest fires and about the very dry conditions in the forests in Ontario. In fact, this early fire season is truly a challenge right across Canada now.

There are currently some 14 fires being actioned in Ontario. Of course, the most significant of those is Thunder Bay 21. Some 25,000 hectares are now involved in that fire.

I am pleased to tell the member that I was there Monday and Tuesday of this week. I was there during the time when Gull Bay was evacuated, when that community was threatened. It no longer is threatened and the fire is actually not expanding at this point in time.

I was also interested to notice how some properties in that area had been protected by MNR fire crews, who put sprinklers on those buildings and managed to save a gas station while the forest fire raged around it.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Answer, please.

Hon Mr Snobelen: It's quite interesting how the forest fire personnel work. There are some 40 fire ranger crews working there now and some 55 contract firefighters. They're supported by helicopters, of course, by bulldozers and by fire bombers, including our new -

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. Perhaps you can finish in the supplementary.

Mr Grimmett: In my riding of Muskoka-Georgian Bay there's currently a fire ban on. We've had about 28 fires in the Huntsville area in the last week that local fire crews have been fighting. I understand from questions earlier this week and last week in this House that some members opposite have great concern about other parts of Ontario. It appears that it may be a drier spring and a worse fire season than in the past few years. I want to assure the people of my riding that we're prepared for these fires. Minister, I wonder if you could assure me that you feel the MNR is in fact prepared for the fire season.

Hon Mr Snobelen: I know that's a concern across Ontario. Some of the members opposite have suggested that perhaps the MNR is not ready for what promises to be a very active season, and I can assure the member that's not correct. In fact, we have acquired more equipment for our firefighting crews, including more helicopters and other support equipment. Obviously, we've spent almost $200 million acquiring the very best water bombers available in the world. They're made right here in Canada - the 415s. We have a lot of equipment to help support the suppression of fires.

But the most important way of suppressing fires and the most important thing is well-trained people, and Ontario has the best-trained firefighters in the world. We have increased the number of fire rangers by 100 this year. We're up to 676. That's more than in 1993, 1994 or 1995. They are supported by trained people right across the province who are available to use their skills and their courage to fight fires in what promises to be a very hot season.

FERRY SERVICES

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): My question is to the Minister of Transportation. You know that ever since the downloading announcements were made last spring by your government, people in the island communities who have been depending on ferry fee service subsidies over the last number of years have lived in fear with the threats your government has made to them of cutting the funding off as of December 31, which was later pushed forward to March 31 of this year. This has caused a great deal of anxiety for these people and it's also caused a great bit of chaos.

There have been media reports in the last couple of days that, in effect, your government has decided not to go ahead with the scheme you initially anticipated. As a matter of fact, Ernie Eves yesterday was quoted on CBC Ottawa as saying, "I believe the province should take over responsibility for the ferry service because municipalities do not have the wherewithal to handle the cost."

Minister, could you confirm right here and now that your government has changed its mind and that you're going to carry on the ferry fee service subsidies to these communities, not only in my riding but in other ridings throughout Ontario, for the foreseeable future, so that these people can live with some sort of sense of certainty in their lives?

Hon Tony Clement (Minister of Transportation): I thank the honourable member for the question. He is quite correct. The island residents, indeed the whole area deserves some certainty on this issue. That is why we are taking our time to come up with the right decision.

We are listening to the public in that area. We are listening through the hiring of our facilitator, Mr Dale Martin, who has had a great deal of experience in these areas. In fact, Deputy Premier Eves said he would be happy to discuss the Dale Martin report with me, which we are in the process of doing. He recognized that Mr Martin is an excellent facilitator, and he had some faith in Mr Martin's report, which I anticipate very shortly.

Mr Gerretsen: It's my understanding that Mr Martin has said he is finished with the job, that the report is with your ministry right now and that there's nothing further for him to do. This report, by the way, suggests that the government come up with some $50 million to $75 million in order to fund the new arrangement he's talking about.

But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the comment that Mr Eves, the Minister of Finance, made on CBC Ottawa yesterday in which he said, "I believe the province should take over responsibility for the ferry service because municipalities do not have the wherewithal to handle the cost." Remember, municipalities would have to increase their tax costs by something like seven or eight times what they're currently charging their property taxpayers in order to pay for that service.

Will you at least listen to the finance minister and get it straightened out with the members of your cabinet and, in effect, say to these islanders: "You have to fear no longer this drastic draconian kind of government action. We are withdrawing that proposal and we're going to fund the lifeline you have to the mainland for the foreseeable future." Will you make that commitment?

Hon Mr Clement: If there are any fears, they've only been stoked by the honourable member and his party. We have been acting honourably; we have been dealing with the local residents; we have been consulting with them. We hired a facilitator to continue the consultation. We are quite confident that Mr Martin, when his final report is in the possession of myself and my caucus colleagues, will come up with a workable plan. Does it involve the province taking a leadership role with the communities? Yes, it does. We are not going to leave those residents high and dry, as it were. We are going to work with them for the best solution, not only for tomorrow or next week, but the best long-term solution because that's what those residents deserve.

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CHILD CARE

Ms Frances Lankin (Beaches-Woodbine): My question is to the Minister of Community and Social Services. Last year, you will remember, I worked very hard to try and save four school-based child care centres in this city. It took a lot of work to bring together city and province and, eventually, the federal government in an odd, strange way. We were able to save those centres. But there are four more child care centres that are now being threatened in Toronto. They've just received their eviction notices from the schools in which they are housed.

It's not just the kids and the families who use those centres who are being affected by this. In one of the schools, for example, at Highview Child Care in Scarborough, that room's also used for band and for the grade 1 to 3 lunchroom so that the little ones don't have to mix and compete with the older ones in the lunch hall.

These four centres are on the block right now. But everybody looking at this says, "This is only the beginning." As the result of cutbacks and as the result of the funding formula in education, we are going to lose these very important resources of school-based child care centres. It is crucial that you have an overall plan and vision for how to save these child care centres. Will you tell us what your ministry is going to do?

Hon Janet Ecker (Minister of Community and Social Services): The honourable member did indeed make some very strong efforts last year to help those child care operators continue to operate. One of the things that is causing me some concern with the school board in this particular case is that this government did recognize that existing child care spaces in schools were very important to protect. That's why they are protected. They are not included in the formula, as I understand it, when they're calculating the spaces as classroom space because it's not available for classroom space; it's being taken up by a child care centre and appropriately so.

I've been quite alarmed at some of the claims that seem to be coming out in the media. On the one hand, school board officials went to a public meeting and said they weren't going to be closing schools. On the other hand, the chair of the board is out there saying that somehow they're going to be kicking out day care centres. I find this quite alarming. I'm quite prepared to have officials meet with the day care operators to see what we can do about easing this out, because I'm quite concerned about what might happen.

Ms Lankin: I appreciate the step you've just committed to, but I've got to tell you it's not just a question of excluding the space. The funding formula is driving schools to have to make decisions; for example, of using additional classroom space. That has to do with class sizes. People wouldn't argue that's a positive thing, but it takes up additional room. It means there are schools that will close in certain areas as the result of shifting kids from one school to another.

The bottom line is that through Bill 160 and through your cuts in terms of capital funding within Comsoc and within the Ministry of Education, you have sent a very clear message that child care is extraneous to our education system. You are no longer supporting it as an integrated part of our school system.

Anyone who says that you can have this phoney tax scheme and still support the needs of children in this province through meaningful and quality child care is giving you a line. What we see here is the cumulative effect of all the cuts that are taking place, and the funding formula in education.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Question, please.

Ms Lankin: The bottom line is, we are going to lose child care spaces. You have to not only save them in the schools, but you have to help us figure out how we're going to create new centre-based child care -

The Deputy Speaker: Minister.

Hon Mrs Ecker: With all due respect to the honourable member, today we have over 14,000 new licensed spaces than there were two and a half years ago.

Ms Lankin: You didn't create one of them. Most of them were subsidized, Janet.

Applause.

Ms Lankin: You don't know what you're applauding.

Hon Mrs Ecker: With all due respect to the honourable member who asked the question and now doesn't want to hear the answer, those 14,000 spaces were created by child care operators out there who were interested in meeting the needs of the parents who need that child care space.

With the school boards, not only have we protected those spaces and said that is child care space, so those boards do not have to move them out, we've given the Toronto board $269 million in transitional costs to help them make the changes they're making. In addition, we have more money available for parents on child care. We've got the money we put through the learning and earning and parenting program, which is more money for subsidies. We've got more money for the child care tax credit for parents. So there are many ways we are trying to support parents access very badly needed child care in this province.

The Deputy Speaker: New question. Member for Oriole.

Mr David Caplan (Oriole): My question is to the Minister of Education and Training. Minister, your budget on page 84 claims that lifelong learning -

The Deputy Speaker: Member for Oriole, take your seat for a moment. I erred. I missed the member for High Park-Swansea in rotation. We'll come back to you.

Go ahead.

Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): I appreciate your apology, Madam Speaker, and I accept it gracefully.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I hope this isn't a lob ball.

Mr Shea: The member for St Catharines knows it's never a lob ball.

HOME CARE

Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): This is a most serious question I direct to the minister responsible for seniors. Over the last two weeks, I have heard several opposition members raise concerns about the request-for-proposal process being used by the 43 new community care access centres. In particular, they seem to be concerned that local monopolies no longer have a 100% guaranteed share of the market for home care services. In particular, they seem upset that commercial and not-for-profit operators will compete for contracts on a level playing field. Can the minister explain what health care consumers have to gain from these changes?

Hon Cameron Jackson (Minister without Portfolio [Seniors Issues]): I'd like to thank the member for his question and to respond that Ontario now has a community-based system of delivering home care and nursing support care to the citizens of Ontario. We used to have a system that was government run, that wasn't accountable and that was a monopoly. The government awarded the contracts to whomever it chose, and they had all the market. Today in Ontario these are community-based services with citizens who are participating on these volunteer boards. They are fully accountable and they award contracts on the highest quality of service they can monitor within their own communities.

This has resulted in some increased service levels. In my own community of Halton, savings have been achieved in the awarding of a nursing contract that, if fully implemented, would account for an additional 46,000 nursing visits in Halton region and 31,000 additional hours of homemaking. We are taking these savings and we are expanding services so that over half a million Ontario seniors and disabled citizens are now receiving home care in this province as a result of this program.

Mr Shea: My supplementary is also directed to the minister responsible for seniors. In many cases the CCACs are awarding contracts to commercial providers where previously those services were offered only by not-for-profits. What assurances can the minister give that quality of care will continue and that accountability for those public dollars will be maintained?

Hon Mr Jackson: The first point I want to share with the members of the House is that today in Ontario we have a system which is accountable. These budgets are monitored; they are approved in the year in which they're spent. When we became the government, it wasn't uncommon to have home care budgets spent a year before the budgets were even approved.

Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): Oh, yeah? You sent the letter at the end of March. What are you talking about?

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Member for London Centre.

Hon Mr Jackson: More important, we had a system in this province where, in parts of the province, all of the home care was being provided by a private operator and the not-for-profits didn't have access and weren't able to compete. We've created this level playing field with the highest standards of accountability, and the basis for that is on the evaluations the clients themselves make.

I know earlier this week the member for Windsor-Walkerville impugned the motives of the volunteer board of the Windsor CCAC. But we on this side of the House, the government, believe that the citizens themselves -

The Deputy Speaker: Answer, please.

Hon Mr Jackson: - who are managing these programs are doing an outstanding job listening to the clients themselves. In fact, the Windsor Star quoted a resident of that community, herself a card-carrying Liberal, Ms Rosemary Limarzi, who has received several -

The Deputy Speaker: I'm sorry, you've gone way over your time.

New question now, member for Oriole. I apologize for that.

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PART-TIME STUDENTS

Mr David Caplan (Oriole): My question is for the Minister of Education and Training. Minister, on page 84 of your budget you claimed that lifelong learning is no longer a slogan, but I'm not sure that's true, especially when it comes to our part-time university and college students who are trying to hold down a job and enhance and upgrade their skills.

Since your government has taken office, part-time enrolment in our college and university courses has dropped almost 18%. What have you done to help? Last year, you cut part-time students out of the provincial student assistance program entirely. Then you cut the funding to universities and colleges, forcing them to reduce night-time and summertime courses. Last but not least, you've allowed them to hike tuitions and deregulate fees across this province, putting affordable education out of reach.

Minister, how can you claim to be helping Ontarians to get lifelong education when at the same time you deny any support to part-time students? Will you make a commitment today to help working Ontarians continue their education? Will you give them access to assistance and to affordable tuition?

Hon David Johnson (Minister of Education and Training): You bet we'll make that commitment. We made that commitment in the budget and that commitment is to put in $600 million more money over the next three years to assist our post-secondary students. That commitment is to put in $9 billion to assist our post-secondary students through the Canada-Ontario millennium program. That commitment is to double the number of spaces in our colleges and in our universities in courses that are high demand, courses that our students are being denied the opportunity of today.

I would also say that over the past couple of days I've talked to a number of people representing the various colleges and one of the main reasons that the part-time enrolment is going down is because a whole lot of those people are findings jobs, jobs that they couldn't get under the NDP government, jobs they didn't have under the Liberal government. They're out there working.

Mr Caplan: The minister makes claims. He can't back them up. He takes the Canada millennium scholarship fund and tries to claim it as his own. That's called plagiarism, Minister. You should go back to school.

When you create access to opportunity and spaces, it doesn't matter, because there's no funding for part-time students to fill those spaces. You've cut them off student assistance programs, you've forced tuition hikes and deregulated fees, you've made it absolutely impossible for part-time students to get into those kind of programs. You can create as many spaces as you want, but if students can't afford tuition and if they can't get assistance and colleges and universities can't afford to offer the courses when students need to go, you're wasting your time and you're wasting taxpayers' dollars. Are you going to help part-time students today?

Hon David Johnson: We sure are. We sure are going to help our students and we're going to help them in the ways that were outlined in the budget. For example, involving part-time students, the tax expenditure credit has been extended. That's estimated to cost some $75 million over the next three years. There is a particular program geared towards part-time students.

The member opposite may have forgotten what I mentioned a couple of days ago, that of all the industrialized nations we have the highest participation of post-secondary students at some 40%. That's excellent and that's the kind of record we want to maintain and continue, and that includes part-time students, that includes full-time students. All together, we have the highest rate of participation in the industrial world, and through the millennium scholarships, through all of the other money, the $600 million in new moneys we're putting in to the system, we're going to make sure that participation rate carries on.

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTURING

Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): My question is for the Minister of Health. Minister, we continue to try to understand the complex and incestuous relationship that exists between your ministry and the supposedly arm's-length Health Services Restructuring Commission. Regulation 88/96, which sets out the commission's powers, reads in part: "To determine which local hospital restructuring plans provided by the ministry shall be implemented and to vary or add to those plans if it considers it in the public interest to do so."

Minister, will you explain to this House where this notion of non-political action by the Health Services Restructuring Commission comes in, if in fact they are only entitled to act on plans that are provided by the Ministry of Health?

Hon Elizabeth Witmer (Minister of Health): I would certainly seek to get some clarification on that section for you, since I don't have the information in front of me.

Mrs Boyd: I hope you will, because this is quite an issue in areas where there is real concern about political interference with the procedure. This question has been raised with the commission. Members of the public have asked to see the plan provided by the ministry and have been refused access to it.

Minister, it is extremely important, if the commission is to retain any vestige of integrity in the face of communities that see their hospitals closing, that you be able to answer clearly what this relationship is and what action the ministry takes to direct what the restructuring commission is going to decide.

Hon Mrs Witmer: I can indicate to you that the Health Services Restructuring Commission under Dr Sinclair is indeed an arm's-length commission. If there are ever plans that are submitted to the commission, those would be plans that I guess would be submitted by the DHCs, but certainly that commission is arm's length. It has been from the start and it continues to remain arm's length from the Ministry of Health and the government.

DEPUTY SPEAKER'S BIRTHDAY

Ms Frances Lankin (Beaches-Woodbine): On a point of privilege, Madam Speaker: I hope you will bear me out and let me set out this point of privilege, because it is indeed my privilege today, along with my colleagues, to invite other members of the Legislative Assembly to extend our sincerest congratulations and our many, many happy returns of the day to you, our Deputy Speaker, it being your birthday.

I am under threat of physical harm, although I'm not quite sure how our petite Deputy Speaker could actually perpetrate such physical harm, but I'm under threat not to reveal the age. I assure you it is not 39.

Hon Noble Villeneuve (Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, minister responsible for francophone affairs): It's 29.

Ms Lankin: It's not even - I'm getting too close.

On this very, very significant birthday, many happy returns of the day from all of us.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Thank you. That is not a point of privilege, but thank you very much. I believe the Minister of Agriculture got it right: 29.

PETITIONS

EDUCATION REFORM

Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): I have a petition that reads:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas sections of Bill 160 allow the government unprecedented centralized control over education in Ontario; and

"Whereas sections of Bill 160 remove our democratic rights as citizens to comment or respond to education reform;

"Whereas sections of Bill 160 allow the government to make further massive cuts to education funding without public consultation or debate;

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

"Amend those sections of Bill 160 listed above."

I attach my name to that petition as well.

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OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): Speaker, let me add my wishes of happy birthday to my seatmate.

I have further petitions. This one is from the Service Employees International Union, Local 528. It reads as follows:

"Whereas each year in Ontario approximately 300 workers are killed on the job, several thousand die of occupational diseases and 400,000 suffer work-related injuries and illnesses; and

"Whereas during the past decade the Workers' Health and Safety Centre proved to be the most cost-effective WCB-funded prevention organization dedicated to worker health and safety concerns; and

"Whereas the WCB provides over 80% of its legislated prevention funding to several employer-controlled safety associations and less than 20% to the Workers' Health and Safety Centre; and

"Whereas the Workers' Health and Safety Centre recently lost several million dollars in funding and course revenue due to this government's changes to legislated training requirements; and

"Whereas 30% of Workers' Health and Safety Centre staff were laid off due to these lost training funds; and

"Whereas the Workers' Health and Safety Centre now faces an additional 25% cut to its 1998 budget, which will be used to augment new funding for employer safety associations in the health, education and service sectors; and

"Whereas the WCB's 1998 planned baseline budget cuts for safety associations and the Workers' Health and Safety Centre will be disproportionately against the workers' centre and reduce its 1998 budget allocation to less than 15% of the WCB prevention funding,

"Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to stop the WCB's proposed cuts and direct the WCB to increase the Workers' Health and Safety Centre's funding to at least 50% of the WCB's legislated prevention funding; and

"Further, we, the undersigned, call upon the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to direct the WCB to significantly increase its legislated prevention funding in order to eliminate workplace illness, injury and death."

I do continue to support these petitions and add my name to theirs.

SCHOOL SAFETY

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Further petitions? The member for Scarborough Centre.

Mr Dan Newman (Scarborough Centre): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, and I must say happy birthday to you, as all members seem to be today.

I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas all schools in Ontario should be safe learning and working environments; and

"Whereas all Ontarians should be assured that safe school programs are in place in all Ontario schools; and

"Whereas a private member's bill has been drafted entitled An Act to Promote Safety in Ontario Schools and Create Positive Learning Environments for Ontario Students, 1998; and

"Whereas this bill will:

"Require all boards in Ontario to design and implement school safety programs, school codes of conduct, and anti-vandalism policies;

"Provide for effective early intervention strategies by requiring boards to design and implement anti-bullying policies and by providing boards with the ability to direct psychological assessments of students that they believe are at risk;

"Provide a provincial violence and weapons-free schools policy and allow boards the ability to exclude violent students from regular classroom settings;

"Give police the tools they need by creating a new provincial offence for trespassing on school property and backing it up with real consequences;

"Direct all boards in Ontario to design and implement alternative education programs for suspended or excluded students;

"Require parents to be liable for any damage done to school property by their children; and

"Protect teachers and staff from civil liability;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislature of Ontario as follows:

"To pass into law the Safe Schools Act, 1998 as quickly as possible."

I have affixed my signature to this worthwhile petition.

EDUCATIONAL REFORM

Mr Tony Ruprecht (Parkdale): Madam Speaker, let me extend a happy birthday to you as well. Congratulations.

I have a petition to the assembly which reads as follows:

"Whereas the Ontario government wants to take an additional $1 billion out of the education system this year and every year; and

"Whereas the Ontario government has decided to hire uncertified teachers in kindergarten, libraries, for guidance, physical education, the arts and technology; and

"Whereas the Ontario government wishes to remove the right to negotiate working conditions; and

"Whereas the Ontario government will remove at least 10,000 teachers from classrooms across the province; and

"Whereas the Ontario government has become the sole decision-maker on class size, preparation time and the length of the school day; and

"Whereas the Ontario government proposes to take decision-making powers out of the hands of locally elected community-minded trustees;

"We, the undersigned Ontario residents, strongly urge the government to repeal Bill 160 and create an accessible public consultation process for students, parents, teachers and school board administrators to study alternative solutions that have universal appeal and will lead to an improved educational system."

I have affixed my signature to the document.

YOUNG OFFENDERS

Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas there is an urgent need to amend the Young Offenders Act; and

"Whereas the province of Ontario continues to show inordinate levels of youth crime in the province with unsatisfactory outcomes; and

"Whereas is it clear that the Young Offenders Act does not go far enough in dealing effectively with the most serious and violent young offenders, particularly repeat offenders; and

"Whereas the time has come to take measures to ensure that these offenders are held accountable for their actions;

"Therefore we, the undersigned, respectively petition the province of Ontario as follows:

"That the government of Ontario pursue with the government of Canada to:

"(1) Redefine young offenders so that youths 16 and older are prosecuted as adults under the Criminal Code;

"(2) Provide for the prosecution of youths under the age of 12 for serious or violent offences;

"(3) Require youths transferred to adult court to have the same parole eligibility requirements as adult offenders;

"(4) Restrict access to free legal counsel to ensure parents meet provincial legal aid eligibility requirements;

"(5) Permit the publication of the names of youths convicted of serious violent crimes;

"(6) Apply the victim surcharge to young offenders; and

"(7) Provide for mandatory custody dispositions for youths convicted of an offence involving the use of weapons."

I affix my signature to all these petitions.

BEAR HUNTING

Mr Michael A. Brown (Algoma-Manitoulin): I have a petition to the parliament of Ontario:

"Whereas black bear populations in Ontario are healthy with between 75,000 and 100,000 animals and their numbers are stable or increasing in many areas of the province; and

"Whereas black bear hunting is enjoyed by over 20,000 hunters annually in Ontario and black bears are a well-managed, renewable resource; and

"Whereas hunting regulations are based on sustained yield principles and all forms of hunting are needed to optimize the socioeconomic benefits associated with hunting; and

"Whereas the value of the spring bear hunt to tourist operators in northern Ontario is $30 million annually, generating about 500 person-years of employment; and

"Whereas animal rights activists have launched a campaign of misinformation and emotional rhetoric to ban bear hunting and to end our hunting heritage in Ontario, ignoring the enormous impact this would have on the people of Ontario;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

"That the Ontario government protect our hunting heritage and continue to support all current forms of black bear hunting."

PROTECTION FOR HEALTH CARE WORKERS

Mr John L. Parker (York East): I have a petition here from a number of people in my riding of York East. In fact, this petition is signed exclusively by residents of my home community of Leaside. It is addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and it reads as follows:

"Whereas nurses in Ontario often experience coercion to participate in practices which directly contravene their deeply held ethical standards;

"Whereas pharmacists in Ontario are often pressured to dispense and/or sell chemicals and/or devices contrary to their moral or religious beliefs;

"Whereas public health workers in Ontario are expected to assist in providing controversial services and promoting controversial materials against their consciences;

"Whereas physicians in Ontario often experience pressure to give referrals for medications, treatments and/or procedures which they believe to be gravely immoral;

"Whereas competent health care workers and students in various health care disciplines in Ontario have been denied training, employment, continued employment and advancement in their intended fields, and suffered other forms of unjust discrimination because of the dictates of their consciences; and

"Whereas health care workers experiencing such unjust discrimination have at present no practical and accessible legal means to protect themselves;

"We, the undersigned, urge the government of Ontario to enact legislation explicitly recognizing the freedom of conscience of health care workers, prohibiting coercion of and unjust discrimination against health care workers because of their refusal to participate in matters contrary to the dictates of their consciences and establishing penalties for such coercion and unjust discrimination."

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SECONDARY SCHOOL REFORM

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): There are many schools in my riding that have presented to me petitions of great concern in regard to their education. This petition reads:

"We believe that the heart of education in our province is the relationship between students and teachers and that this human and relational dimension should be maintained and extended in any proposed reform. As Minister of Education and Training, you should know how strongly we oppose many of the secondary school reform recommendations being proposed by the ministry and your government.

"We recognize and support the need to review secondary education in Ontario. The proposal for reform as put forward by the Minister of Education, however, is substantially flawed in several key areas: (a) reduced instructional time, (b) a reduction of instruction in English, (c) a reduction of qualified teaching personnel, (d) academic work experience credit not linked to education curriculum, and (e) devaluation of formal education.

"We strongly urge your ministry to delay the implementation of secondary school reform so that interested stakeholders - parents, students, school councils, trustees and teachers - are able to participate in a more meaningful consultation process which will help ensure that a high quality of publicly funded education is provided."

I affix my signature to this, being in total agreement with what they say.

CONTROL OF SMOKING

Mr Toby Barrett (Norfolk): I continue to receive petitions concerning rights, responsibilities and tobacco issues.

"Whereas the freedom of choice regarding tobacco smoking in a privately owned business, as previously allowed, is being unfairly curtailed by the strict and unnecessary enforcement of the regulatory tobacco act, as passed by the previous provincial government, in the counties of Brant, Elgin, Oxford and the riding of Haldimand-Norfolk-Brant;

"Therefore we, the undersigned, request the province of Ontario to amend or revise the regulatory tobacco act in the following ways:

"That within the tobacco-producing counties of Brant, Elgin, Oxford, and the riding of Haldimand-Norfolk-Brant, the policing of the regulated no-smoking protocol be left up to the municipalities to enforce as they see fit and that this also apply to any municipality, county or riding within Ontario where tobacco production or processing is an economic factor;

"That privately owned businesses who produce or process tobacco and/or whose businesses service or supply the tobacco industry and reside within the designated regions be exempt from the posting of the regulated no-smoking signs and be allowed proprietary discretion on tobacco use within their establishment;

"That the use of legal tobacco products, as used by adults, be allowed in businesses who produce or process tobacco and/or whose business services or supplies the tobacco industry within the designated regions without the fear of penalty or fines to their clients or staff."

Speaker, I also wish you happy birthday and hereby affix my signature to this.

LINHAVEN HOME FOR THE AGED

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I have a petition from a variety of people in St Catharines about Linhaven Home for the Aged. It reads as follows:

"Whereas Linhaven Home for the Aged has provided excellent service to seniors in St Catharines for many years; and

"Whereas the staff and volunteers at Linhaven have endeavoured to enhance the quality of life of residents of the home through their kind and compassionate care; and

"Whereas cuts in funding to Linhaven will result in a reduction of staff and resources available to meet the needs of seniors who reside in the home; and

"Whereas the discharging of acute care patients from active treatment hospitals results in medical staff at homes for the aged being required to provide more extensive and intensive care to patients who are discharged from hospitals; and

"Whereas Linhaven and other homes for the aged have among their residents more individuals afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and other medical conditions which require an appropriate complement of staff and necessary equipment to meet their medical needs;

"Therefore, be it resolved that the government of Ontario increase funding to Linhaven Home for Aged in St Catharines so that the medical requirements of Linhaven residents may be properly addressed and seniors may live in dignity in our community."

I affix my signature to this petition as I am in full agreement with its contents.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Government whip.

Hon David Turnbull (Minister without Portfolio): Madam Speaker, I would have wished you happy birthday, but I've been counting the number of people who have wished you a happy birthday, and I'm sure that's already more than the number of years that you're old, so in that case I will just nod my head in greeting.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon David Turnbull (Minister without Portfolio): Pursuant to standing order 55, I wish to indicate the business of the House for the week of May 11, 1998.

Monday, May 11: afternoon, NDP opposition day; evening, continued debate on the budget motion.

Tuesday, May 12: afternoon, complete debate on the budget motion; evening, to be determined.

Wednesday, May 13: afternoon, Bill 16, the Small Business and Charities Protection Act; evening, to be determined.

Thursday, May 14: private members' public business ballot items 9 and 10; in the afternoon, Bill 16, the Small Business and Charities Protection Act.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

1998 ONTARIO BUDGET

Resuming the adjourned debate on the amendment to the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

Hon David Turnbull (Minister without Portfolio): Madam Speaker, I believe we have all-party agreement that we will not run the clock for the leader of the third party.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Is that agreed? Agreed.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): We certainly agree to that. I understand the debate will continue when the leader has finished, but he has as much time as he deems appropriate. Yes, we agree.

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. Leader of the third party?

Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): I will not be giving a speech talking about how the budgetary direction of this government ought to be approved. I will be talking at length about all the holes, all the inadequacies in the government's direction and the fact that many of the government's decisions are simply wrong.

When I look at the budget that was presented last week by the Minister of Finance, I see the government trying to fool the people of Ontario into believing that they can finance their phoney tax scheme and also put $9 billion into education here and billions of dollars into health over there. Anybody who tries to tell us that we can finance this government's phoney tax scheme and also provide the people of Ontario with the health care we need, with the education services we need, with the protection of the environment that we need and with the investment in our communities that we need - anyone who tries to tell you that you can finance this government's tax scheme and then look after all these other needs at the same time is simply not telling us the truth.

I want to go through, chapter and verse, what in fact is happening.

The packaging of the 1998 budget is incredibly fancy, the packaging is beautiful, but once you unwrap the packaging and look at some of the details, there's a lot of substance left out or, frankly, there's a lot of substance that just isn't true.

There's a glossy booklet that comes with the budget document bragging about 250 new jobs at the Babcock and Wilcox factory in Cambridge, where current employment is 900. The government wants to tell you that the 250 jobs that are going to be added is absolutely wonderful news. What the budget document doesn't tell you is that there used to be 1,700 workers at the Babcock and Wilcox factory in Cambridge. Back in 1994 and 1995 there were 1,700 workers there, before the Harris government was elected. According to the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, 700 of those people lost their jobs when the Premier of the province came back from a trip to Asia and said there were new contracts for that plant and then the new contracts that the Harris government announced didn't materialize. So 700 people lost their jobs.

The budget also claims to announce $9.5 billion for workplace training spread over 10 years. This is a proposal to be negotiated with the federal government. It's all federal money. This Harris government announced in this Legislature that there was $9.5 billion available for workplace training and it's not even their money. They don't even know if they're ever going to be able to get any of this money.

As I read the financial analysts and critics of the federal Liberal government, they say very clearly that the federal Liberal government is not going to be turning this money over to Ontario, just like they haven't turned it over to any of the other provinces. For this government to make the statement that they're going to provide $9.5 billion for workplace training when they have no idea if they're ever even going to be able to get a fraction of that amount from the federal government is incredibly irresponsible and, frankly, I believe is misleading the people of Ontario.

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In fact, this government has been cutting the funding for workplace training. Anyone who reviews the employment contract of the former Deputy Minister of Education, one Veronica Lacey, will discover just what the cuts to workplace training and adjustment have been under this government.

Then there is the incredible child care reannouncement. Two years ago in their budget, this government announced that they were going to put some new money into child care, but at the end of that budgetary year, when people looked around to see if any new money had gone to municipalities or communities for child care, they discovered that nothing had happened. In their budget last year, this government took that same announcement of two years ago, repackaged it and then said they were going to provide a tax credit for child care.

You could tell when it was announced in the budget last year that the vast majority of modest-income families would never be able to access this money, because in order to access the tax credit at the end of the year you had to spend money on child care during the year. The way this so-called tax credit was set up, a family would literally have to take food off the table and stop paying the rent in order to find the money to finance child care before they got a mere fraction of it back at the end of the year in the form of a child care tax credit. It was a scheme that was designed to fail. So none of that money has been made available for child care either.

In the budget of this week, the Minister of Finance took the same money again and repackaged it, only this time he's going to call it the Ontario child care supplement for working families. But we discovered, by doing some research between the actual announcement of the budget and now, that it's not going to go to anything like that. In fact, what the Harris government has done - just before they call an election - is that they have found a mechanism to mail out a cheque. Imagine that. After taking 22% of the income from some of the poorest families in Ontario, they have created a mechanism in this budget that just before they call the next election they're going to be mailing out a cheque to some of those families and trying to say to them: "Oh, how wonderful this government is. We're going to pay you $85 a month now" - incredibly cynical, unbelievably cynical.

But what takes the cynicism even a step further is that after cutting the 22% from people who are unemployed, people who can't find work, the government is now going to redistribute it through this $85-a-month scheme to those people who have found work but are literally working at minimum wage. It's literally stealing from the people who are the poorest in the province and then saying to the people who are situated next to them in the province, "Here's a little money courtesy of the Harris government" - a very cynical ploy. And then to try to disguise it as child care shows just how cynical this whole operation really is.

Then we have health care. There were a lot of wonderful headlines about health care. But anyone who cares to look beneath the surface will discover again that there isn't any substance here. The reality is, if you look at this government's investment in health care per person in 1998, it will be less than what was invested in health care per person in this province in 1992, yet we have an aging population in Ontario, a population that is older now than it was in 1992, so the actual health care costs and health care needs have actually gone up. What this means is that not only has there been a cut per person in terms of health care investment, but in terms of the actual needs of the of the population there has been a cut in health care investment. That's the true record of this government.

The magnitude of the cut: In 1992 in Ontario we were investing $1,655 per person in health care services. Now the Harris government is investing only $1,639 per person in 1998, even as the need for health care services has increased.

Then we look at some of the budgetary sleights of hands. Last year the Harris government said it was going to provide hospitals with $880 million to help hospitals deal with the orders issued by the Health Services Restructuring Commission, to help hospitals reposition themselves in the ongoing closure of hospital services and hospitals. The Harris government proudly made this statement: that $880 million was going to move to hospitals in the budget last year. We checked, and $880 million did not move to hospitals; only $154 million actually moved to hospitals.

Why is this important? Because it points out again that this is a government that likes to make grandiose announcements in its budget, but then if you check on what's happening three months later, six months later, a year later, nothing has happened. The money that was promised, the investment that was promised, hasn't happened, and in this case it didn't happen in health care.

Let's take a look at nursing services. Since 1995, the Harris government has cut $9 million for nursing services in the home, at a time when more nurses and health care professionals are needed in the home care program. So this year they've come up with an announcement that they're going to put $5 million back into nursing care. But when you read the fine print you discover that it's not all going to home care. A little bit is going to home care, some is going to community health and some is going to public health.

After a $9-million cut to nursing services for home care, the government now tries to pass off a $5-million increase in nursing services as if it's all going into home care. Our analysis suggests that less than $2 million will be going into home care, which means that they're still $7 million behind in terms of nursing services in home care, as the need for home care is growing dramatically. Why is it growing dramatically? Because people can't get the nursing services in hospital any more. Ten thousand nurses have been laid off from our hospitals as a result of the cuts imposed on hospitals, so people can't get that nursing care in the hospital. They're being told, "Go home and get it," but when they go home they find that nursing services have been cut there too - again, this government's record of making grandiose announcements and then either not investing the money in health care or in fact cutting the money in health care after they've made the grandiose announcement.

The government says they're announcing up to $75 million for more hospital beds in peak times and they estimate that $50 million of the $75 million will be available this year. But when you read the fine print, you find that the beds that are going to be made available are only temporary and the staff will be casual and part-time.

Hospitals across the province are saying: "We need some financial flexibility and we need some long-term stability and we need to have a trained nursing staff available, not on some sort of call-in basis, not on some sort of contingent basis; we need to have them regularly available." The government's plan is not going to provide for that. The government's plan is only going to provide nurses in very serious situations to be called in at peak hours or peak demand. In other words, you're not going to have the continuity of care that patients deserve and need.

The only flexibility, the only long-term capacity that you're going to find out of this government's reinvestment in health care is flexibility for this government - not flexibility for hospitals, not flexibility for nurses in the wards, not flexibility for people's health care; only flexibility for this government in terms of being able to make more announcements and then not follow them up with the real investment.

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The government says it's promising $20 million to be put into the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program to identify high-risk pregnancies and children at risk and ensure that they receive community services. When we heard that, we were saying, "What community services would these be?" Nutrition supplements for pregnant women on social assistance? No, that's gone. That's been wiped out, so you don't get that. Where is the money for enhanced community services going to go when public health has been downloaded to municipalities, increasing the financial burden for them?

You've got across this province municipality after municipality, community after community who are now having public health downloaded on to them, saying: "We can't manage this. We can't support it financially. Not only that, we don't have the expertise to deal with it. Not only that, we're not geographically positioned to deal with it." So they're going to eliminate some of these services, but the Harris government says: "Oh, don't worry. We're going to make available some money to help enhance these services."

Again, the hypocrisy. The service is actually being cut, if not in some communities disappearing, yet this government says it's going to make more of the service available. How can they do that? They're downloading the service. They have frankly no capacity to do anything about public health services any more.

Then there's education. Boy, the education part of the announcement is even more cynical than the health part, because all this government has done on the education front is reannounce their education funding formula. This is the education funding formula that is forcing boards of education across the province to close schools. Why? Because there's not enough money in the funding formula to provide each school with a janitor or a custodian any more; there's not enough money to ensure that you have a school secretary; there's not enough money to ensure that you have a principal; there's not enough money in many cases to pay the electricity bill or the heating bill or even the operating capital to ensure that the roof doesn't leak.

Boards of education are being forced by this government to close schools. So we have the new Niagara district school board announcing the closure of 35 schools; the Toronto Board of Education announcing that it is looking at closing 120 schools; the Ottawa Board of Education announcing that it is looking at the possibility of having to close between 20 and 30 schools; Sudbury boards of education looking at the closure of six schools; Thunder Bay board of education looking at the prospect of having to close six schools.

Across the province, board of education after board of education will have to close schools as a result of this government's cuts to the education funding formula. The government had the gall to reannounce that funding formula as if it were good news. The only news in terms of education is that the government will put in another $50 million, one-time money, for the purchase of textbooks. Why do they have to do that? Because teachers and boards of education across the province came back to them and said, "Look, you can't implement any new curriculum if there's not money set aside for the purchase of textbooks to accompany that curriculum." So the $50 million is actually being put in to cover up a mistake. This government thought they could implement a new curriculum without putting any money aside for textbooks. They were caught out and now they're having to admit that if you really want to implement a new curriculum you have to purchase the textbooks to do that.

The budget announces $130 million for Internet networking in schools. We called the Ministry of Education and they say they have no idea how much of this will come from the province and how much of this will have to come from the private sector, and they have no idea how they're going to get this money from the private sector.

I'm concerned that the only way this money will come from the private sector will be if boards of education agree to turn over their schools to the private sector investor and let the private sector investor treat the school as a marketing place - in other words, the further privatization of our school services, the further privatization of education in this province. That's where I think this is headed.

If you add up the new $50 million for textbooks, if you add up the $12.5 million that the government says will be made available for labs, it works out to about $12,000 per high school. Then there's supposed to be $1 million for tutors and $1.5 million for testing, $69 million for school board debt retirement, and whatever of the $130 million Internet money that is real. It gets pretty close to the $200 million that Ernie Eves expects to take in salaries through the early retirement package. In fact, the Ontario Teachers' Federation suggests that the government was looking for ways to say it is putting new money into education; it's not. This is simply money that's being taken out of the salary budget for teachers because of the early retirements. It's not new money at all.

Then we have colleges and universities. Boy, talk about something cynical. The budget trumpets $9 billion for millennium scholarships. Again, we did some research, and what did we discover? The reality is that there is not a single penny of new Ontario money in this announcement. It's a proposal to take the existing money, the existing meagre amount of money that goes towards student assistance, and couple it with the federal government's announcement of a millennium fund and then put a new name on it. There is not one cent of new money from the province of Ontario. This is simply a coupling of the little bit of money that is already available for student assistance with the federal government's so-called millennium fund. You put a new package on it and say, "Isn't this great?" There is absolutely no new investment here for students who are trying to go to college and to university and trying to pay the incredible increases in tuition fees with which this government has just hit people across Ontario.

I want to dwell just a minute on that. If ever there was an expression of cynicism, we saw it in the way in which the government did not announce the incredible tuition fee increases until after the budget. If this government had announced the tuition fee increases in the budget, everybody in Ontario would have said, "This is awful; this is horrible," hitting people who want to go to medical school with a $5,000-a-year tuition fee increase, hitting people who want to get an engineering degree with $3,000- and $4,000-a-year tuition fee increases, hitting people who want to get a degree in computer science with $3,000- and $4,000- and $5,000-a-year tuition fee increases. These are the largest tax increases that families across Ontario have ever seen. There is absolutely no way the Harris government's tax scheme will provide middle- and modest-income families with $3,000 a year or $4,000 a year or $5,000 a year to pay for these tuition-fee increases.

The government didn't announce the tuition fee increases until after the budget was presented. I think if the government were truly honest, the tuition fee increases would have been in there with the budget so that people across Ontario would have had a clear idea of what is really happening.

I want to deal just for a minute with the plight, and the plea, of people with disabilities. The Harris government signed a document in 1995 stating that the Harris government would bring in an Ontarians with Disabilities Act to ensure that people with disabilities had an opportunity to get into the workforce, that accommodation was created for people with disabilities so they could become members of the workforce. It is now three years later, and we have not seen and we are not going to see an Ontarians with Disabilities Act from this government. It's shameful, absolutely shameful, a shameful way to treat some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

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Instead, what has the government offered? The government offers a corporate tax break. The government offers a tax break for corporations, saying, "We will give you a very fast tax write-off if you will do something in this area." Let me suggest to you what's going to happen here, because there's evidence of this in the United States. Corporations will be very happy to take the tax break and do absolutely minimal things to accommodate people with disabilities. That was the experience in the United States. That's why jurisdictions in the United States passed disability legislation, to ensure that these kinds of tax schemes were not taken advantage of and then people with disabilities literally pushed to the side. I'll say to you very clearly that that's what's going to happen here. This is a tax break for the corporate friends of the government. This is not going to accommodate or help Ontarians with disabilities.

I want to deal with children's aid. The government made a much ballyhooed statement that they were going to add money to children's aid societies across the province. We did some research to check out the government's headline, and this is what we found.

The reality is that because this government cut the budgets of all the children's aid societies across this province in 1995, because they dramatically cut their budgets, virtually each and every children's aid society across this province has been running a deficit in 1995-96, in 1996-97 and again in 1997-98, and the government at the end of the year has had to cover some of these deficits. The children's aid societies have to help children in trouble, they have to help children who need protection, they have to help children who come under child welfare legislation, so they go out there and they do it. In many cases they're handling caseloads that are far beyond their capacity to endure over the longer term, and at the end of the year the government comes in and covers the eventual cost.

What is the government trying to do in their budget? They're trying to say that the money which goes to cover the end-of-the-year deficits for children's aid societies is somehow new money. It's not new money. What it is is a government trying to cover its tracks, a government trying to cover up the fact that it cut the funding of children's aid societies, it placed children in communities all across this province at risk and it denied the services that children need from those children. Now, as it puts a little money back in, it's trying to announce that as if it were some incredible accomplishment. It's a government merely trying to cover up its own tracks.

To show you how phoney the announcement is, when we did the research we discovered that only $20 million in new money will go to children's aid societies in 1998-99. In 1999-2000, it may be $40 million, and in 2000-2001, if anyone can predict how the economy will be doing in 2000-2001, it may be another $30 million, for a grand total of $90 million over three years. But the government wants you to believe that it's $170 million in new money - again a shallow, phoney, cynical announcement that is not going to be observed, at the expense of some of the most vulnerable children in Ontario.

Then there's the environment. We saw the headline about the environment. The government says it is going to put money back into the environment. It works out, if you read the budget document, to about $20 million, maybe $25 million if you give the government the benefit of some of the spin lines. It's at most $25 million, when this government's operating cuts and capital cuts to the Ministry of the Environment amount to more than $150 million - absolutely unbelievable.

This is a government that laid off 750 scientists, inspectors, enforcement officers, monitors and technicians at the Ministry of the Environment. It created such a fiasco in the Ministry of the Environment that you have the Plastimet fire in Hamilton. You have that sort of situation and the Ministry of the Environment has no idea and doesn't have the capacity to tell us what actually happened there.

You have the government announcing its Drive Clean program, and then it's embarrassed afterwards to have to admit that the Drive Clean program won't get off the ground because all the people who had the expertise in the Ministry of Environment to get the program off the ground don't work there any more. They were cut. They're now unemployed. They're gone. But this government puts out a flashy announcement that there might be $25 million going back into the environment, after they cut over $150 million since they became the government of the province. Again, how cynical.

There is another area I want to deal with because it is so important. I think it again speaks to the cynical attitude of this government. It is what all people across rural Ontario are feeling. The Ontario Federation of Agriculture and farm groups from across this province, in the initial two years of this government, went to this government and said: "We don't like the fact that you're cutting agricultural programs. We don't like the fact that you're cutting rural health care. We don't like the fact that you're cutting infrastructure in rural Ontario. We will work with you, but we want you to reinvest in agriculture and rural Ontario down the road."

This spring and this winter, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and an alliance of other agricultural groups went to this government and said: "Here's a plan for reinvestment. We want you to now reinvest in rural Ontario." The message from the OFA and the message from those agricultural groups was clear, it was persuasive, it's workable and it's affordable. They worked very hard with the Harris Conservative government to find and create those opportunities for reinvestment. They were very hopeful that in this budget they would see some needed reinvestment in rural Ontario.

Let me quote from the communiqué from the Farmers of Ontario. The title of the communiqué is A Promise Made, A Promise Broken. It says: "The Farmers of Ontario, a coalition of 37 farm organizations, are extremely disappointed with the government of Ontario for not living up to its election promise."

These 37 farm organizations refer to the Harris Conservative's promise in the 1995 election which was, under a Mike Harris government, agriculture will regain its fair share of government support. This is what happened and this is what the farm organizations are so upset about: In 1992 the NDP government maintained $453 million in agricultural investment and food programs and services. The Conservative government, promising to give the farmers of Ontario their fair share of support, cut $160 million out of investment in rural Ontario and out of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

Farmers have told us that the Harris government has reduced their business partner, the farmers' business partner, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, to a series of ad hoc programs that do not reflect the needs of farmers, that are difficult to access for farmers, and that do nothing to reinvest and restore the confidence of farmers in the future of Ontario's food industry. The farmers of Ontario are very angry with this government, very angry that they worked so hard with this government and now have been given the back of the hand by this government.

I want to say it is a fundamental error for this government not to reinvest in the communities of rural Ontario, not to reinvest in the agricultural industry in Ontario.

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I could go on, but I just want to make one plea for people who are out there. You're going to hear over and over again that the Harris government's tax scheme is benefiting you. So I make this plea to people: Sit down, take a blank sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side, write down the Harris tax scheme and actually look at your paycheque or your pension cheque and try to figure out what benefit you've gotten from the Harris government's tax scheme. If it's $10 a week, write it down; if it's $15 every two weeks, write it down.

But on the other side of the page I want you to write down some things too. If you have a son or daughter in university, write down $1,100 in tuition fee increases. That's how much tuition fees have increased over the last three years under this government. If you have a son or a daughter who's trying to go to an engineering program, or a computer science program, or a commerce program, or is trying to get into pharmacy or is trying to get into medical school or law school, write down $5,000 in tuition fee increases, because that's the new education tax the government just announced today. If you have a son or daughter in community college, add $600 a year in tax increases there, because that's how much tuitions have increased.

If you're a senior citizen who needs prescription medicine in order to regulate and maintain your health, add $300 a year in prescription copayment fees.

If you have a daughter or son in high school, ask them about the new student activity fee, which is at least $100 in the vast majority of high schools across this province.

Then call up your municipal clerk and ask them how much municipal property taxes are going to increase after this government is finished downloading the cost of ambulances, public health, policing, fire, social assistance, child care and a whole host of other programs that used to be paid for out of your income tax. Municipalities will tell you that they're looking at property tax increases of $300, $400, $500.

I simply say to people, take that ledger. On the one side add up the tax scheme benefit that the Harris government says you're receiving, and on the other side add up all the new user fees, the copayment fees, the administrative fees, the property taxes, the tuition fees and all the other hidden taxes the Harris government has trying to put on you.

I'll make you a wager: that if you are a modest middle-income family in Ontario, you are going to be paying more taxes than you paid before, only they're going to be hidden as fees and property taxes and tuition fees and so on.

The only people who are benefiting from this government's tax scheme are the wealthiest people in this province. They are the only people who are going to benefit from this tax scheme, because it's only when an individual has an income of $75,000 or $80,000 a year that the supposed benefits of the tax scheme start to overvalue all the new hidden fees, all the new property taxes, all the new tuition increases and all the new copayment, administrative and whatever fees this government has put on you. It's only then, only when an individual has an income of about $75,000 or $80,000 a year, that there are actually some benefits out of this government's income tax scheme.

When you get up into an income of $150,000 a year, there are more benefits; $200,000 a year - more benefits. If you're Frank Stronach, you get back from the Harris government, out of their tax scheme, $600,000. This is an income tax scheme for the wealthiest people in the province. For middle- and modest-income families in this province, it's higher tuition fees, higher property taxes, higher copayment fees of every kind.

I am opposed to this government's budgetary direction. I believe this government is headed in the wrong direction and I want to add this amendment to the motion that is already put amending this government's budget. It is this:

I move that the amendment to the motion be amended by inserting after "the best start in life" the following:

and

That the government's phoney tax scheme will continue to cause damage to Ontario's health care, education and other vital services until reversed by a future government.

When we become the government of Ontario, we'll reverse that phoney tax scheme.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): Mr Hampton has moved that the amendment to the motion be amended by inserting after "the best start in life" the following:

and

That the government's phoney tax scheme will continue to cause damage to Ontario's health care, education and other vital services until reversed by a future government.

Further debate?

Mr Doug Galt (Northumberland): It is certainly a pleasure for me to be able to respond to the budget. After listening to this speech of a few minutes ago, all doom and gloom and how terrible, let me tell you that some of the darkest hours, the darkest days this province ever had were back in 1990-95. That was a period of time when business left this country. That was a period of time when jobs were leaving. People were fleeing this province, going to other provinces and to the States where there were less taxes and a less draconian type of government. It was a time when some 400,000 net new jobs were created across Canada, but here in Ontario over that period of time it was minus 10,000 jobs. Indeed, it was a dark, dreary time for Ontario. It was a time when the government of the day kept two sets of books to keep the public of Ontario totally confused.

This budget, Madam Speaker - and happy birthday to you and welcome back - is a budget about the cutting of taxes: the cutting of income tax; the cutting of payroll tax such as the employer health tax; the cutting of corporate taxes. One of the reasons people are not seeing more money in their paycheques is because of increased payroll taxes by the federal government. But keep talking it up, leader of the third party and leader of the official opposition, because the more you talk about it, the more people will think that the federal government is not taking that much money away from you. They'll spend more and that will stimulate the economy. It's great.

It's good to see that we are now in a position to reinvest in priority areas and it's certainly helping in the area of health care, education and so on. In the budget there was reference made in the special edition, The Ontario Success Story, and I think I can have this in here without too much trouble. It referred to a company in my riding, Ste Anne's Country Inn and Spa, and I want to make special recognition of those entrepreneurs near Grafton who have some 562 acres where they operate the inn.

The property was purchased back in 1981, and by 1985 they had developed as a bed and breakfast, and it just kept evolving. The people who came talked about the spring water, so they started to package the spring water. They used to have some 400 deer on the farm - actually it was 1,000 deer. They now have 400 elk on the farm. At these three enterprises they now employ 150 people, a real success story. We're proud to have them along with many other businesses in Northumberland.

The main core of this budget, as in some of our other budgets, was cutting taxes, getting the government out of people's faces and letting people get on with business. I think there are 10 good reasons why we should be cutting taxes here in Ontario and I'd like to line my speech up with these 10 reasons. I think they are 10 very good reasons why we should be cutting taxes here in Ontario.

The first is that Canada is the highest-taxed jurisdiction in the world; at least it's one of the highest-taxed. Do you know that the federal income tax is actually 22 cents on every dollar that's earned? That's even more than what it costs the average person for shelter. Seventeen cents comes out of the dollar for shelter, 12 cents comes out of the dollar for food, and you add this tax on to property tax, the provincial income tax, sales taxes, energy taxes, and the list goes on. Statistics Canada shows that from 1992 to 1995, income taxes rose 15% on average here in Canada. Household spending at the same time rose some 8%. Therefore the income tax alone doubled the rate of household spending.

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The second reason for cutting taxes is that high taxes create nations of tax cheats, and certainly that was what was going on here in Ontario. From 1960 to 1998, the underground economy moved from an estimate of 5% to 15%. The byproduct of high taxation is tax evasion. What's the response of the federal government? "We'll get tougher on them. We'll find them, we'll chase them, we'll hound them" rather than address the real problems of high taxes and wastage in their operation.

The third reason for cutting of taxes relates to the fact that we simply did promise to cut taxes and we are delivering. That's a change in politics, to really follow through on promises. Take, for example, Premier Glen Clark. He promised to cut taxes, but what has happened? Even though he promised that if he didn't cut taxes he would resign, he's still moving on with higher taxes, keeps increasing. That's out on the Canadian left coast. What's happening out there? People are leaving and moving to Alberta. Businesses are going to Alberta faster than all people coming into BC put together. If he would just keep his promise, BC could be a province like it used to be.

It's also interesting to note that now Paul Martin is trying to take the credit for the tax cuts here in Ontario. I can't imagine anything more absurd than Paul Martin trying to take that credit, but then, being a Liberal, I guess you'd jump at any opportunity you possibly could.

The fourth reason we should be cutting taxes is that Canadians are getting very angry with the high tax rate that's here in Ontario. A poll taken by Angus Reid back in December indicated that 82% of the population of Canada think the taxes are too high, and they even rejected the idea that you should tax those with high incomes more and tax corporations. They're not even impressed with that kind of thinking.

We do have just a massive tax grab here in Canada with the Canada pension plan. They're indicating that the premiums are going to go from 5.6% up to 9.9% by the year 2003. That will be a 73% increase. That's certainly extremely unfair, and the federal government recognized it, because they are protecting the federal employees from this. They'll contribute the same to their pension even though the Canada pension will go up tremendously. There will be a reduction of some $20 million into their pension plan, because the extra is going to the Canada pension plan. Most unfortunate. They recognize the problem that they have created.

The fifth reason we should be getting rid of taxes is that high taxes discourage productivity. People get pretty discouraged when they earn some extra income and off it goes to taxes, whether it be gas tax or income tax or whatever. Why bother? I hear that so often: "Why should I put in those extra hours? Why should I work so hard to make some extra money and then it all goes to the government?" I'm sure the opposition has heard this on many occasions.

Unfortunately, businesses are forced to invest so much time and money into how to work their way around and how to save as much tax as possible when really what they should be focusing on is the operation of their business rather than having to worry about the excessive taxes that we have in this province.

Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I think the member is quite right, and as an employer, the Legislative Assembly has a right to expect a quorum during the member's speech.

The Deputy Speaker: Clerk, could you check and see if there is a quorum, please.

Clerk at the Table (Ms Lisa Freedman): A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Clerk at the Table: A quorum is now present, Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Northumberland.

Mr Galt: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate getting a quorum in the House.

The sixth point is lower taxes, and with lower taxes are increased tax revenues. We've talked about this considerably. There's just no question. You can see it happening here in Ontario. We cut the income tax. What has happened from the budget of 1994-95 till now has been a $6-billion increase in revenues coming in. It's just a natural circle, a natural cycle. There's nothing magic about it. There is saving, there's spending, there's investing, and this ends up in job growth.

My seventh point on why taxes should be cut is that in high-tax jurisdictions, people leave, businesses leave and jobs leave. In a recent poll by Angus Reid in BC, they found that 28% of the businesses planned to leave in the next two years. Reason: high taxes. It's not surprising they would want to leave.

In the States, where they looked at the 10 states with the highest taxes versus the 10 states with the lowest taxes, there was a 20% economic improvement in the ones with the lowest taxes. Also, there were 1,000 people per day moving from the highest-taxed states to the lowest-taxed states.

The eighth point: It's only fair to pay back those who have helped to balance the budget. We are now reinvesting in health care, reinvesting in education, reinvesting in job creation and in safety.

My ninth reason for cutting taxes is that tax cuts force governments to prioritize spending. It's kind of strange, but as we look around we see that spending will expand to fill any amount of money that's out there or any amount of borrowing that the previous government could possibly carry out. Tax cuts are the seeds of future growth. It increases the size of that economic pie. Reducing taxes stimulates the economy and people start spending because they have money in their pockets. Once they start spending, that creates jobs, and on the cycle goes. With more jobs created, more taxes are flowing in to the coffers.

My last point is that tax cuts really do create jobs. Look at the turnaround in this province: almost 350,000 jobs since we took office. What happened in the five years before? Minus 10,000 jobs. What was happening across Canada in that period? Four hundred thousand net jobs in that five-year period of 1990-95. At that time, Ontario was an anchor around the neck of the rest of Canada. Now Ontario is pulling Canada up by its bootstraps.

There's no question that the lower taxes, whether it's income tax or payroll taxes or corporate taxes, are stimulating the business of this province. It's stimulating jobs. We are going ahead. This was the right budget at the right time. I'm very pleased to be part of the government that is bringing in this budget and is going to help now with reinvestments in various areas like health care and education, helping with safety. Finally, we have the deficit under control and it's going to be eliminated, come the year 2000-2001.

Thanks very much, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to respond to the budget.

The Deputy Speaker: Questions and comments?

Mr Bradley: The member has been the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of the Environment. I know he must be shocked and surprised that once again the environment budget has taken it in the ear, that once again the allocation of investment in the Ministry of the Environment for the purpose of protecting our environment has been reduced, that in fact it's now over one third of the complement of staff and one third of the budget of the Ministry of the Environment that's been cut.

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While I understand that many of the people who attend your fund-raisers may well like that - because they didn't like the Ministry of the Environment because it was there to protect the people of this province against those who would cause damage to our environment - some people thought they should just be able to carry on as they have many years ago; that is, without giving full consideration to the environment.

The general population loses and those corporations and businesses that genuinely feel strongly about the environment, who have invested the money in that field, who have invested in the training of their employees, who have acquired the resources to deal with environmental challenges, are the ones who as well are going to be complaining. But I can assure you that if you go to any Tory fund-raiser, you will find a lot of people who will be applauding the reduction in the role and responsibility of the Ministry of the Environment of Ontario.

If this government leaves one legacy of which it cannot be proud at all, it will certainly be its record in dealing with environmental issues. That's unfortunate, because I think there are many people who are members of the Conservative Party across this province who have a genuine concern about the environment. When they see the environmental ministry virtually dismantled by this government, I know they, like the member, must be sad indeed.

The Deputy Speaker: Questions and comments? The member for London Centre.

Mrs Boyd: Thank you, Madam Speaker, and may I wish you the very best returns of the day. I'd like to respond to the member for Northumberland's speech and remind him that he is engaged in a very slick public relations scheme when he tries to present part of the truth of the reality around the economy of Ontario and what's happening.

Even the Minister of Finance admitted not long ago that the tax cuts had not had the effect on the economy that had been expected. Even he was prepared to admit that the tax scheme that this government has put into place has very little to do with the increase in the economy. That is mostly because of lower interest rates, because of the kinds of changes that had to come, the restructuring that had to happen within our manufacturing sector, which came through those very difficult periods of the recession.

I really thought for a moment that the member was going to break his arm, he was patting himself so hard on the back. I was a little worried, because if he did that he wouldn't have any health care, especially in his community, as we all know.

I would say to the member that when you use this kind of rhetoric about this budget, you are underestimating your constituents and all the people of Ontario. They know that this is a puffball budget, that it is very slick and very glossy and that the reality for them will not be a better life, particularly if they don't happen to be among the top 10% of earners in this province. Most people aren't in that top 10%. You are redistributing the wealth to them directly.

Mr John L. Parker (York East): I listened carefully to the remarks of my colleague from Northumberland and I appreciated his message here today. I thought it was very creative of him to put his comments in terms of the 10 reasons why tax cuts are a good thing. When you boil it all down, his message to me was that it's time governments recognized that the taxpayer's dollar is a scarce resource to be treated with respect. It's a resource that can be put to good purpose if it's properly applied and if it's not just assumed that the taxpayer is an endless well for government to dip into whenever government wants to spend money here or spend money there or respond to this pressure group or that pressure group or that vested interest or whatever.

But when government disciplines itself to determine its priorities in consultation with the people and to apply the taxpayers' resources to addressing those priorities, then we have a proper balance of the public interest and the private interest. The byproduct effect, as the member for Northumberland so effectively illustrated, is that the pot that's available for government to draw from actually grows. When you have a stronger economy, when you have more people working, when you have more people paying taxes, then there are more resources available to meet the priorities that society has identified and that government is entrusted to discharge.

In the budget that came down this week we saw increased health care spending. No thanks to Ottawa, no thanks to Mr Bradley's Liberal friends in Ottawa who have reduced transfers to this province, but the health care spending in this province has actually increased and this budget increases health care spending more. We found spending in the classroom -

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. The member's time has expired. Further questions and comments?

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): First of all, why would you complain about the transfers when in effect you're giving that same amount of money in tax cuts to people?

Let's just take a look at the facts. I'm looking at the government's own budget document. Let's just take a look at what's happening to the public debt in this province. In 1995, the public debt was $89 billion. It has now gone up to $105 billion. In the last three years the public debt of this province has grown by $16 billion, partly as a result of your tax cuts.

When you look at the amounts of money we pay annually as interest on the public debt, how much is it? This is according to your own documents. It's gone up from $7.4 billion in interest payments to $9.1 billion. Take a look at it. More than $1.7 billion more in interest payments at a time when interest rates are at an all-time low.

Let's deal with the actual tax cuts. Again, dealing with your own document here, some of the examples that have been given in the budget document: Somebody who earns $14,900 - this is a senior, this is an example in the budget - how much do they save? They save $230 over four years. That is more than one year of user fees that you're charging. This is in your own document. How about a couple who has an income of $29,000? How much do they save? They save $1,600 over four years. That's $400 per year.

Let's get one thing straight. Would we all like a tax cut? Of course, we'd all like a tax cut. The problem is we cannot afford it. The public debt of this province is still rising and the interest payments that we're paying on that have risen by $1.7 billion just over the last three years that you folks have been in office.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Northumberland.

Mr Galt: I appreciate all the responses, particularly the one from the member for York East. His comments were very apropos.

I'd like to respond to the member for St Catharines, my friend from the Niagara Peninsula. I'm disappointed every time a Liberal gets up. All they can talk about is spending. Do you know that from 1985 to 1990 the tax freedom day moved from May 25 to June 21? That leads me to believe that the Liberals have the right title: "Tax and spend." The NDP should be called the spend-and-borrow government, because they doubled the debt. They didn't have the intestinal fortitude to go out and tax. They just borrowed and left it on future generations.

I want to talk for a moment about the member for St Catharines, the previous Minister of Environment. He talks about this government and an environment record. Let me tell you that within a year and a half we did more for the province of Ontario for environment than you people did in the previous 10 years. The previous government ducked on waste energy incinerators. We brought out the G-7 guideline. We brought out an Environmental Assessment Act that works. We're now getting on with environmental assessment activities. We're in the process of bringing out standarized approvals for landfill sites. We've worked on reg reform and have come out with all kinds of new regulations that work. They're not just cumbersome and awkward red tape - one, for example, on reducing the evaporative level of gasoline, helping with smog. We've come out with a standardized approval process that helps to clarify and get on with the business of looking after the environment. We've brought out the storm water tunnel to help look after the Toronto beaches. We've returned the managed forest tax rebate. We've taken the taxes off conservation lands. We've come out with a smog plan. We have a Drive Clean program. Unfortunately, my two minutes are up.

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

Mr Bradley: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, and happy birthday to you as well. I want to join the others in saying that to you, wishing you well on this very special day for you.

What I regret, and I'm sure all members of this Legislature regret, is the fact that I will have only 20 minutes to be able to share some thoughts with you this afternoon. Because of the draconian rule changes you have imposed upon this Legislature, members of this Legislature individually may at this point in the debate spend only 20 minutes dealing with the entire budget, and the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale alone will only be able to spend two or three minutes in rebuttal of this.

I feel concerned, first of all, about the fact that you've changed the rules of this House. I know it makes the House more efficient. I know it runs this House, the legislative process, the democratic process, like a big business. But that is not the way we should run a democracy. Big business should run the way big business does; that's the way they operate. I don't expect they're going to operate under these legislative rules, and we should not operate the way Conrad Black operates his businesses.

Interjection.

Mr Bradley: I know, as the Minister of Municipal Affairs interjects, that his friend Conrad Black is pleased with this budget. I saw a photograph of him the other day; he had a smile from ear to ear. I'm sure that many of his newspapers editorially will be reflecting his point of view. Indeed, he owns 58 out of 104 of those particular newspapers.

Mr Galt: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I want you to rule on the fact that the member for St Catharines has never had a speech where he hasn't mentioned Conrad Black.

The Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order. Member, take your seat.

Mr Bradley: I have to mention him, because he's obviously one of the big supporters of this government. The wealthiest people in this province, if they don't have a social conscience, should be in favour of this government. I don't know whether Mr Black has one or not; he may. But I know that the wealthiest people in this province are happy with this government and they will show up at all the Conservative fund-raisers. I assure you, in St Catharines tonight they'll be turning them away at the doors. The developers will be lined up at the fund-raiser, all the big-business types, all the people who want to say, "Thank you, Mike Harris, for making one rule for the rich and one rule for the rest." I expect that you will be very financially successful in that regard -

Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale): You are extremely rich yourself.

The Deputy Speaker: Member for Etobicoke-Rexdale.

Mr Bradley: - just as I can hear the tinkle of the champagne glasses touching one another at the Albany Club as each new initiative in the budget was announced. As those people of means, those people of wealth, those people of power gathered together after the budget at the Albany Club, they were celebrating, and so they should. But does that mean the people who are the middle- and lower-middle class and those people who don't have much wealth should be cheering? The answer is no.

Some people will write an editorial - you get them in the Conrad Black newspapers - that take, word for word, from the budget what the budget says, as though somehow there's some degree of truth in the budget. But let me just point out who benefits from an income tax cut, as opposed to, for instance, a sales tax cut.

If a person makes $1 million a year - let's say Conrad Black made $1 million a year. He makes far more than that, but let's say he makes $1 million a year.

Mr Hastings: That's you.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr Bradley: I don't want to talk about Mike Harris; he will be embarrassed. But I want to say this. What if he makes $1 million a year? If he makes $1 million a year and you gave him only a 10% cut in provincial income tax, then one would presume he's going to get $100,000 back in his pocket. Whereas if a person is making $10,000 a year and you gave that person a 30% cut, for instance, what would they get? My friend the member for Etobicoke-Humber will tell me they would get a $3,000 cut. Would it be that much, $3,000? Maybe at the most. I look at that and I say, "The more money you're making the better you do." You can play all the percentages you want. I remember people used to say, "So-and-so got a 10% increase but another person got a 20% increase." Well, thank you. Ten per cent of $1 million makes people very happy.

When you're talking about tax cuts of an income tax nature, those cuts benefit the richest people in the province the most. The people of wealth, the people of power are the people who show up at your fund-raisers, and they are there to say thank you. They say thank you in droves. As I keep saying to you people, you have to know it, the Minister of Municipal Affairs once said when he was in Ottawa, "I want to see more construction cranes and fewer whooping cranes in Ontario," I say to the Minister of the Environment. I can tell you that the Minister of Municipal Affairs was reported to have said that.

Hon Al Leach (Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing): On a point of order, Madam Speaker: The member for St Catharines, that statement was never ever made.

The Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order; however, you've got it on the record now.

Mr Bradley: I'm always prepared to take the word of my friend the Minister of Municipal Affairs that the Ottawa Citizen, or wherever that appeared, mistakenly quoted him. But the point I want to make is that those cranes will have to be going, because they have to build bigger halls to hold those fund-raisers for the Conservative Party.

What is the agenda behind this? Well, because these people on the opposite side really believe in the American system of politics where money reigns supreme, they are itching, I can assure the people of this province, to raise the spending limits in election campaigns, so they can carpet-bomb the province with advertising from the Conservative Party, so they can blanket this province with their advertisements.

Not only do they want to increase the amount of money you can spend in a campaign, but they also want to increase the amount of money that rich people can donate to the Conservative Party. The companies they want to be able to donate more, individuals they want to be able to donate more, and they want to change the rules so you can have advertising taking place outside of the last three weeks of a campaign. That's the real agenda. I hope my friends in the back benches know that. They haven't told you that yet, but that's the agenda.

They want money to rule supreme in Ontario politics. They don't want there to be arguments. I don't mind when you have a debate in this House, and you people on the other side put forward your views, we put forward our views, and the people make their choices. That's fine. That's what democracy is about. But when you have millions upon millions of dollars to launch into advertising campaigns, when there's no balance in the democratic system because money is on one side as opposed to the other, then I say to you, we do not have a healthy system and a fair system, and I see that's what is happening.

Let me tell you what else is happening over there. I don't think in my over 20 years in the Legislature I've seen anything which is as blatant political propaganda as this. This is a document, by the way, that is put out by an organization that is known as the Ontario Jobs and Investment Board. When the Premier announced this, I was optimistic. Maybe this is a good idea to have something like this; maybe it will help out. He talked about the mandate that it had, and I thought this had some possibilities. Then I find out that the real purpose of it, apparently, is simply to be a propaganda machine for the government.

Let me tell you, first of all, who was made the chairman and the president and chief financial officer of this particular organization. This is supposed to be non-partisan, this is supposed to be civil service; in other words, within the public sector. Let me tell you who was appointed to it: David Lindsay. Maybe you would like to know, as would the people of this province, who David Lindsay, the head of this, is. Well, here's his biography.

David Lindsay was appointed principal secretary to the Premier of Ontario following the Progressive Conservative election victory on June 8, 1995. This followed his five years as principal secretary to the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. Prior to joining Mr Harris's office, Mr Lindsay was the director of research and communications for the PC caucus at Queen's Park. During the minority government from 1985 to 1987, Mr Lindsay was executive assistant to the House leader of the official opposition, responsible for coordinating the question period process and legislative activities of the PC caucus. In the 1987 provincial election Mr Lindsay ran as a PC candidate in Don Mills.

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If he could say, "That part of my life is behind me. I've served the Progressive Conservative Party, the Progressive Conservative caucus. I was the person who sent out their missives about what was good about the Conservative Party and so on," put that behind him and say, "I've got a new job now. I've got a new responsibility. I've got something" -

Mr Tony Silipo (Dovercourt): "I've learned from my mistakes."

Mr Bradley: My friend from Dovercourt says, "I've learned from my mistakes."

Mr Silipo: Not me, him.

Mr Bradley: David Lindsay's mistakes. Let me put that aside. I don't want to put it in that context.

I thought that he's going to have the new job now and I suppose he's going to be non-partisan. He's going to be a public servant out there and he's going to have an operation which is really going to try to bring investment and jobs to Ontario, and I think that's good. When the Premier announced that, some people may have denounced it and been suspicious that it would be used for some other purpose. I thought that if it had what they described it as, that was good.

Then in the mail this week came out essentially a Conservative pamphlet. I don't know how you people with any conscience can accept this. Yes, a couple of you can, but I know some of the people here who have had some history in this Legislature and must themselves - I don't expect they're going to get up and say it - be absolutely ashamed to see a document of this kind.

I thought it was only given out to a few businesses and so on. I went home last night to St Catharines and I went into the mailbox and this was sitting there, so it's had widespread circulation. All it is is Conservative propaganda from start to end. That's all it is. Any objective observer would say that.

There are things you can have within your advertising which are reasonable. I was showing some people in the media what I thought was some reasonable government advertising and some advertising which was not. There are two different kinds.

For instance, they had an advertisement in the Toronto papers saying, and the Minister of Municipal Affairs would be aware of this, "Here is what is happening with your property tax, and you can go to this forum or this open house and have your particular circumstances explained." It had a little bit of priming the government in it, but I thought it was a reasonable ad and a good expenditure. I saw requests for proposals for a number of things out there which were pretty reasonable, straightforward.

I saw one that I thought was good. There were some changes made by the government to the Family Support Plan Act, so there were some new provisions that applied. They said, "Here are some open houses where legal people free of charge will explain to you what the implications are of the government changes," all very reasonable. There is some tourism promotion that takes place, particularly outside of this province - in the United States and Europe and other places - which extols the virtues of Ontario, very reasonable.

But the whiz kids have to get hold of this, the smart people, not necessarily the members of this House but the whiz kids, and they say, "We've got something smarter; why don't we use all of this for our own purposes," and you get a document like this. There's no way. I hope everybody in Ontario who gets this in the mailbox will realize that this is just Progressive Conservative Party propaganda.

If you paid for it, if the party sent it out, there's nothing wrong with that. That's part of the process. I accept that. I see that during the election campaign all of us produce material. The people will make their judgement. Nothing wrong with that. It's exactly the way our democratic system works. What I object to is government abusing its power, abusing its role and using an agency which I think has potential to really be helpful to Ontario: the Ontario Jobs and Investment Board. I thought that here's something that can be helpful.

All of us hope for good things to happen in Ontario. We all do, whether you're sitting on that side or this side, because we represent people in our communities. We want them to do well. We'll argue over some things in this House from time to time. Sometimes the differences on certain issues may not be great, on other issues they may be greater. But this is a complete abuse of public power. This is nothing but blatant propaganda and taxpayers' dollars are used for it, and that means people who support the party or support the government and those who do not. By gosh, you've done well in your fund-raising. Congratulations to you. That's what you should use.

We had a Days of Action day in St Catharines last Friday and some of the Conservative members locally put an ad in the paper, from their point of view - I didn't agree with the contents, but they put their ad in about what they thought was the government position and why they thought it was good - paid for, I presumed, by the Conservative Party. No objection to that; that's the way it should work. But I think you people yourselves, for the sake of the system, never mind the partisanship, should stop all governments, whether it's this or any future government, from this kind of nonsense. Because this is initiated, not by members of this House but by smart people, the clever, whiz kids who sit in the back room thinking of all the things they can do. I prefer to listen to you members in the House put forward your point of view. Sometimes I don't agree with it, sometimes it may annoy me, sometimes it may make me amused, but that's the democratic system and that's what we should do. This is exactly an abuse.

Something else came out. I saw an ad in various newspapers, my own as well, which said, "Request for proposals for new nursing home beds." There's nothing wrong with putting that out, because if you want those proposals, you want to get that information. But they couldn't do it just alone. They had to put in a propaganda message as part of it, the same as Ontario savings bonds. I want people to purchase Ontario savings bonds because it helps our province, but then you get the ad in there. There's an ad in the paper, and there should be ads in the paper, telling people where they can purchase them and what the return will be and so on. But do you know what the ad has to say? It has to have propaganda, "You'll be investing in the best economy," and so on. It's the political message which I think is wrong, not the ad itself, just as I think you people have allocated $50 million for a plan to promote Ontario abroad. That's a good investment I think. It can be a good investment in that regard as long as you don't use it for the wrong purposes.

I look at one thing that still continues to concern a lot of people in our part of the province, and that is, the promise that the Premier made during the last election campaign. He made a promise during the leaders' debate. He was asked by Robert Fisher of Global news, who was one of the panellists, "This health care plan that you have, Mr Harris, will it involve the closing of hospitals?" Mike Harris said exactly this, "Certainly I can guarantee you, Robert, it is not my plan to close hospitals." Thirty-five hospitals have closed, and more are on the block.

I don't think, with an aging population, we can afford to close hospitals. Yes, we need more long-term-care beds. We're going to get those, and I'm pleased to see that we are going to get those. But what we need as well is acute care. Because when people are elderly, when all of us get older, we are more likely to require acute care as well as chronic care. So we've got to have that. We've got to have that emergency care. I find that when you talk to people out there they're prepared to see their dollars invested in it.

You people rushed headlong into the tax cut, and I know there was a debate within the party whether you should do it. Really, if you're going to implement tax cuts, I think you have to do it after you've balanced the budget, because then you don't have to borrow the money to balance the budget. What I find odd with the Conservative group of people is that the debt has gone up from $89 billion to $105 billion with this government in power. Now, not all of that could you control. I want to be fair to you. Part of that was going to go up anyway because we are running a deficit, but I think you could have eliminated that deficit faster if you had forgone the income tax cut. You would have had that revenue coming in.

I know the talking notes the government has say that you're supposed to give credit to the tax cut and, as I say, most people like to have a tax cut of some kind. But really it amounts to - and I don't want to give any government any particular credit - the fact that you have low interest rates in the US, low interest rates in Canada, and a low Canadian dollar, which allows -

Interjection.

Mr Bradley: Good question. I wish I had more time to explain this to the minister. He mentions BC.

We do a lot more trade with the United States than any other province. If you look at it, Canada is first as a trading partner to the US. Second, it would be Ontario. We do a tremendous amount of trade with the United States and therefore when their economy is booming and they're making purchases and they have low interest rates, that really helps us. The same thing happened to the Liberal government when it was in power from 1985 to 1990. We were fortunate that the American economy was doing exceedingly well at that time. We had little bit higher interest rates, but the American economy was doing well.

Don't be fooled yourselves into thinking the tax cuts have that effect. They'll make people politically happy, but I'm convinced there are other factors which are equally important, and perhaps when I respond to some comments I'll be able to deal with those then.

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The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): Comments and questions?

Mr Silipo: I want to just do a couple of things in the two minutes I have. The first is to express, as other have done, my best wishes to the member for Riverdale, the Deputy Speaker, on her birthday today and to congratulate her as she and my colleagues are celebrating somewhere in this building.

The second is to say in response directly to the member for St Catharines, someone I always find very useful to listen to, that he has outlined very well what's wrong with the approach Mike Harris has taken. I know this is an area he has always been particularly interested in: He also talked about the way in which government goes about advertising what it's doing and his views on that. I think we share a lot of the same positions on that.

I just have one comment or question directly to the member for St Catharines, and that is, being a stickler, as he is, for the rules of this place and the procedures of this place, I was a little bit surprised he did not comment at all on what really is technically the first and foremost thing in front of us today, which is the amendment to the amendment that we have moved. I really am interested in hearing his thoughts, to the extent that he can in the rebuttal, as to whether he will support the amendment we have put, which I remind him and others is "that the government's phoney tax scheme will continue to cause damage to Ontario's health care, education and other vital services until reversed by a future government."

The reason I raise that is that I know we have some different points of view and I would very much appreciate hearing his view on why it is that even though he and his caucus are against the Harris tax cut, they in fact would leave it in place - which I think is the position they have taken - and why it is that if they are so against that, as we are, and if they believe it's helping to destroy the very fabric of this province, they would not see that that has to be taken back at least to some extent to be able to fund back into the services of health care and education, among others that we need.

Mr Hastings: It's rather interesting at times to hear from the member for St Catharines - the millionaire member for St Catharines - talking about political propaganda and his hope for the Ontario Jobs and Investment Board and how tax reductions are not a good idea; that a tax addiction, though, that his party has had for 10 years - I'd like to go back and place his comments back in the Peterson years when we're talking about significant tax increases over those years.

The rate of growth back in the mid-1980s was about 3.5% to 4%, yet the Peterson government spent four times that amount - 16% expenditure for most of those five years. That's the ramp-up to the problem we ended up having June 8, 1995.

If they had managed things much more effectively, if they had reined in expenditures at even only 6% compared to the economic growth rate of those days at 4%, we wouldn't have the problems we have today that we're trying to grapple with. But nobody in those days was thinking ahead to what was happening in the millennium. No, we wouldn't want to do that, so we had over those years 33 crazy tax increases for questionable - actually, what I would call phoney - reasons.

You want to talk about political propaganda. If we went back and looked at some of the ads put out by this member, who was heading up the environment ministry, they were nothing but sheer political Liberal propaganda at its worst.

Mr David Caplan (Oriole): I'm very pleased to join the debate. I'd like to thank my colleague from St Catharines for a most excellent presentation. It is interesting that we always talk about numbers. On page 72 and throughout the budget there are these little snippets about what the total tax savings will be to individuals because of the actions of the government. I would point out that I was looking at page 72. I thought it was very interesting.

It talks about a single student whose net income is $16,500. It goes on to say in the postscript - I know the member is very interested to learn this - "A single student attends university full-time for eight months. Annual tuition is $4,000 and ancillary fees are $500." That's kind of out the window with yesterday's announcement from the Minister of Education on deregulation of tuition. "This student earns $16,500 as a waiter, working full-time during the summer and part-time while attending school." This tax cut is going save this student $435 over four years, so that is about $100 a year this student is going to get. Of course their tuition fees, and all members I know would be interested in this, are going up $3,000 in one year.

This is the amazing thing: Mike Harris has said, "You're a student in Ontario, we'll give you a hundred bucks a year, because that's your share of the tax cut, but boy, are we going to take it away on the other hand with enormous fee increases." That's not unusual because from Mike Harris and Ernie Eves this is an assault on the middle class of Ontario. These people are just sticking it to the middle class and to families and to students, and somebody has to say that enough is enough.

Mr Gerretsen: I wanted to make a comment with respect to the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale about the millionaire status of some members in this House.

Let it never be forgotten that it was your government that changed the pension rules of the individuals who are here, and that there are members of each and every party who benefited from that tremendously, including the Premier. He got $840,000 as a payout. Mr Eves got over $800,000 as a payout. I think the people of Ontario ought to know that if you had changed the pension plan so that the old pension plan would have been in effect for the people who were here once they retired, those large payouts that your government approved would not have been necessary. The people of Ontario ought to know that because it meant that another $50 million had to be put into the pension plan in order to pay this out to the 60 or 70 members who benefited from it.

The way I look at it when people ask me about it is I always say: "The way they used to pay people around here, it was kind of like a sports contract. There were deferred payments involved. You got $45,000 or $50,000 while you were here now, and $40,000 or $50,000 per year, as long as you were here for five years, for the rest of your life."

When you think about it, for some of those members who were here for 15 years, taking out $840,000 works out to over $50,000 per year. It is wrong for this government to have done that. There would have been other, much better ways to deal with the pension situation for the old members. Now, for a member of the government that approved this to start taking a shot at members of the opposition who didn't control the situation to start off with, because you are the government that passed those new rules and regulations, I think is totally terrible, and you know I'm right.

The Acting Speaker: The member for St Catharines has two minutes to respond.

Mr Bradley: I appreciate the remarks which are always a response. I like this part of the rules which have been initiated where members have a chance to respond.

Interjection.

The Acting Speaker: Order. Did I miscount? The Chair recognizes the member for St Catharines in rebuttal.

Mr Bradley: Thank you very much for the opportunity to respond.

I first of all want to respond to my friend from Dovercourt to say that I have watched with a good deal of interest the tricky wording that is used in each resolution now or each amendment. I've always felt that you should never get caught with tricky wording. That's what you always have to know.

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You know me: I tend to know where the enemy is. I don't attack them. But I was looking this morning to see the New Democrats voting en masse against a motion from a government member, and when I looked around they were like Casper the ghost: They had disappeared. I don't even attack the NDP, because they have few members and the government has a massive number of members. This morning I thought, "Well, they have opposed the tax breaks, so I can count on the NDP," and I turned this way and there was no - we're not supposed to say who is here and who is not. I'll just say they were Casper the ghost, all of them. I couldn't find any of them. I understand that. I understand why the NDP did that. I'm not critical of that at all.

It's a matter of timing. When you have a surplus, you're in a much better position to be allocating tax cuts than you are when you are not running a surplus. I think that's what small-c conservative people are saying.

I was waiting for somebody to mention the gambling initiatives of this government. I think one of the most backward steps taken by this government has been moving massively into government gambling, particularly into the slot machines, and now trying to shove into various municipalities the new Mike Harris gambling halls which you refer to as charity casinos. I suspect a good half of the government caucus agrees with me on that.

The Acting Speaker: It has been mentioned several times about our well wishes for the member for Riverdale on the occasion of her birthday. Our wishes for this special day should also go to the member for London South, I believe. Happy birthday.

Further debate?

Mr Silipo: I certainly echo your best wishes on his birthday to the member for London South.

I'm happy to have an opportunity to join in this debate and to just say a couple of things.

We've made the point, and will continue to make the point, that what we see in this budget is really a lot of nice packaging, a lot of fancy packaging, a lot of good packaging, to be honest about it. Yet when we look behind the packaging or inside the packaging, when we begin to unravel what's in the contents, we then see that the truth, both in terms of what actually is happening out there and even in terms of what is reflected in the numbers themselves and in the documents themselves, doesn't quite mesh with the initial rhetoric.

The packaging is nice. It's like the salesperson who says: "Don't pay us. It's a don't-pay-a-cent event. You don't pay now." It's the pretense that somehow you're saving a lot of money, but the reality at the end of the day is that you're going to have to pay for it at some point.

We continue to feel that what the government is doing is wrong. We have been clear in saying that time after time. But it's not just a question of saying to the government and saying to Ontarians that the Mike Harris view of the world is wrong. It's a question of seeing to what extent this government is now going as they try to change their image, as they try to show, as we get to the end of the third year of their mandate, that somehow they have a softer image, that somehow they're listenting, that somehow they now care about the programs, the services in health care and education which they have torn to shreds with their actions over the first two and a half to three years of their mandate.

Even within the budget document, we have to point, and can point quite easily, to some of those glaring inconsistencies, to those real, clear oppositions between what they, in their rhetoric, say they are doing and what they are actually doing.

The easiest place for me to start is in what the Minister of Finance is telling us in this budget. He trumpets the virtue of the fact that the economy is improving and the economy is growing. With that we agree and with that we quite frankly rejoice. We're happy, as we all should be, regardless of partisan stripe, that the economy is improving.

But one of the first things when you look at the numbers - and this is a budget discussion, so we have to talk a little bit about numbers, although we can go much beyond the numbers and talk about the reality that's out there for people. But when you look at the numbers, one of the first thing that jumps out at you is here is a government and a Minister of Finance who are telling us on the one hand that the economy has improved, that the economy is going to continue to improve, yet what does he tell us is going to happen with respect to income that's going to come into the coffers of the government from income taxes? He's actually wanting us to believe that it's going to go down. So he's projecting growth in the economy, but then he turns around and says, "By the way, under the personal income tax in particular we're going to get less revenue in the fiscal year that we're just starting than we did in the last fiscal year."

Of course, all of us know, and certainly the Minister of Finance knows, that's not true. He calls it being fiscally prudent and underestimating, being cautious. We know that it is just another part of the shell game that goes on and that we've seen now for a couple of years, where he purposely underestimates the revenue in order to continue to create the impression that the belt-tightening has to go on, that the cuts have to go on. Then he'll come in three and four months from now and say, "Oh, by the way, the reconciliation has come in on the personal income tax and the other tax side from the federal government and, lo and behold, we found another $1 billion."

We've seen that game played now for a couple of years; we're going to see it again this year. You cannot have anybody believe that with a growing economy the revenues coming into the government are going to be less in this fiscal year than they were in the fiscal year that just ended, yet that's what the numbers show.

If it was only that, we could say: "Well, those are just the quirks of the accounting system that allow the Minister of Finance to do that. That's just the way in which he's able to play out the latitude that he has and to give himself the room so he can look good three, four, five and six months down the line." But it's worse than that, because when you look again behind the veneer of the cover of the budget, you actually begin to see the reality as people out there see it. There are couple of other examples that we have highlighted which we'll continue to mention.

Jobs: The government for the first time is saying that they will meet the 725,000 jobs. In fact, the Minister of Finance says they'll actually exceed that. Time will tell. What we can say with growing certainty on the strength not only of our view of how things should be, but in the view of many economists across this province and across this country, is that what the government claims is not true; that is, it is not the tax cut that is causing the growth in the economy and the growth in jobs. That may have a small role. I think you can argue whether it does or not. But the reality is, according to many economists, that there are many other factors that go into the growth that we have seen and the improvements in the economy. They would list the tax cut, if at all, as one of the last factors in that economy growing.

They are saying that it isn't the tax cut that's causing that growth, so we have to ask, "If it's not, then what's the point of doing it? What's the point of doing it when again on the numbers it's adding billions of dollars to the provincial debt, by some estimates as much as $30 billion?" Again, we can argue about some of those numbers, but even government members and the Minister of Finance would have to admit that they are borrowing this money that they are giving out in the tax cut. It's not as if they have it as surplus. So in borrowing it, you're adding that piece on top of the amounts that would be there in the annual deficit to the debt of the province - and this from a government that says they are against deficit financing and increasing the debt, yet they are increasing the debt, not just by things they could say are not of their doing, but they are increasing the debt directly as a result of actions they are taking - another reason why we say, "Why would you then do the tax cut?"

When you then look at what happens to the tax cut in terms of who gains the benefit from that, as our leader very clearly delineated earlier, it isn't the typical family that receives the benefits of the tax cut. It may surprise even people in this Legislature to know that about half of the taxpayers of this province earn less than $35,000. Half of the taxpayers of the province are under that income. For them, there's very little in the way of benefits in the tax cut. They're going to actually be paying out more through the other things that Mike Harris used to call taxes and now he says are no longer taxes, things like user fees for a variety of municipal services, increases in property taxes that will take place across the province, the copayment for medicines if you are a senior or someone on social assistance, not to mention what will happen with respect to tuition fees if you have children in college or university - not only with respect to tuition fees, the ones that will hit all students in post-secondary education, the roughly $500 a year increase that we've seen for the last couple of years on tuition fees, but in fact the announcement that we saw made just yesterday that will mean that in the professional faculties - medicine, law, engineering and many others - the government has completely opened the door now to let universities charge what they want to charge.

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So again, what's going to happen for families who are half the taxpayers of the province? They're not going to see much benefit out of this tax cut. They're going to actually be paying more. That is also true as you go up the income bracket. Even families that are in the $50,000 and $60,000 range, at the end of the day, depending on their circumstance, are not going to see any real benefit from the tax cut. That's another reason why we say there is no sense, common or otherwise, to this tax cut.

Then we come to the third and probably even more significant reason for why we think the tax cut, which is at the heart of what the Harris government is doing, is so wrong, and that is that the cost, not just in dollars, as I've indicated, and in terms of increasing the debt, but also in terms of what it means out there for people on a day-to-day basis, is just quite frankly too harsh to bear. The cost has been seen and is being felt day by day out there in our services.

It's being felt in a huge way in our health care system. In community after community in this province we have seen and continue to see, unfortunately, examples of problems in our hospitals, problems in many of our other service areas in the health care system, again resulting from a government that set out to simply cut, as opposed to restructure, that called what they were doing restructuring but in effect what we saw was simply cutting. They didn't put in place a plan to have community-based services in place first, before taking the money out of the hospital sector and before making sure that there was an ability to move from an institutional-based system to a more community-based system.

In the area of long-term care, an area that affects many of our seniors and others across this province, the government has the audacity to come in a few weeks ago with what they say is a major announcement, $1.2 billion, to be invested in long-term care. Then you read the second sentence and that's where you find that it is, by the way, over eight years. What does it mean for next year and the year after? What does it mean now that the problems are out there? It might mean another $100 million, if that gets spent. Again, the pattern of this government has been so clear: They like to announce new spending and then we never see it. A year later, when we check the books to try to figure out how much of that was spent, not much of it was there.

Had this government believed seriously and sincerely in the need for long-term care, then they wouldn't have and shouldn't have shut down the investment in that area that we had begun a full two years before our mandate was over. They cancelled the program. You cancelled it. You can quibble about why you did it and how you did it, but that's the reality. Now you're saying, three years into the mandate: "By the way, we need to reinvest back into health care. Aren't we great, that now we're doing it." If you had done it before -

Hon Janet Ecker (Minister of Community and Social Services): You tried to spend money you didn't have.

Mr Silipo: The Minister of Community and Social Services said, "You tried to spend money you didn't have." Where are you getting the money from, Minister? You're getting it exactly the same place we did: by borrowing it and from the taxpayers of the province. You don't have a surplus yet. It's not like you've got millions of dollars sitting on the shelf. Maybe you do. Maybe you know something we don't.

The point is, had they been serious about wanting to reinvest, then they would have continued. If they wanted to philosophically or otherwise make some changes to the nature of the program, that's their prerogative, they could have done that. But there is no justification for them, having cut the funding, having cut the programs, now to come in three years later and expect us and expect the people of Ontario to praise them for reintroducing something that they cut three years ago.

That, of course, is typical of the way in which they have been behaving. That is typical of the way in which they have been going, as was a small but important example that we highlighted the other day with respect to the whole job situation, the example that we gave of Babcock and Wilcox Canada.

The Premier put out nice big ads in the newspapers saying: "Good on you, Babcock and Wilcox. Your success is bringing new jobs into Ontario." We're happy that they're growing. It was in fact the first in the list of success stories in this other glossy document that was part of the budget, in which again they say that this is a good company, with international contracts etc.

Again, we're happy that the government is congratulating this and other companies about the fact that they have in this case increased by 250 people, but I think you have to ask yourself, why is the story not just that? Why is it that when we look beyond that, the government is taking credit for the 250 new jobs but yet they refuse completely to acknowledge, let alone take responsibility for, the fact that during their mandate, directly as a result of a deal that fell through that was announced by the Premier of this province, Mike Harris, in 1996, this same company lost 825 jobs? This company had more employees when the NDP was in government, 1,700 employees, versus now.

It's a small example, as I say, but it is typical of the attitude. The reason we raise it is not in any way to diminish either the importance of this company or its contribution to the Ontario economy nor to in any way diminish the fact that we're happy. We are happy about the fact that they are growing again, but they are still far behind where they were. All we're saying to the government is, please don't insult the intelligence of the people of this province with these half stories, if not half truths. Tell the whole story.

Hon Mr Leach: We created 350,000.

Mr Silipo: I say to the Minister of Municipal Affairs, as I said to the Minister of Finance the other day, I'm happy to argue the job growth numbers and we'll continue to see it and the reasons that is happening. If you want to talk about that, I'll be happy to talk about that, but what I'm saying here, and I know there are things that the government members in particular don't want to hear, is they ought not to tell these half stories, if not half truths. They ought to have the decency and the courage to tell the whole story.

They ought to tell people, for example, that in the health care budget that they continue to trumpet as increasing, there are some large sums of money, and we'll find out over the next few weeks as the estimates numbers come out and as we look at them whether it's $800 million, whether it's $1 billion or whether it's $1.5 billion. Somewhere in that range, that amount of money is sitting there, having been announced by the government, having been put in previous years in the budgets and yet not spent. So when they say, "We have increased spending for health care," on the books maybe they have, but in reality, in terms of services, they have not.

That amount of money and a lot more is there in restructuring, so the great irony we have is that even where they are increasing in the health care area, they are increasing in terms of helping to pay for that restructuring as opposed to helping to pay for the services that need to be provided.

In wrapping up, let me just come to one final point, and that is that I think it's fair, as people continue to listen to those of us among the Liberal Party and the NDP talk about and criticize what the Harris government is doing, people begin more and more to ask us: "Well, you guys are always just saying `no.' What is it that you would do differently?" I think it's a fair question. It's a question that we have to address more and more.

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We have begun to do that. We have begun to say to people that for us our health services and health care and education and social services, whether they're services for children or people with developmental disabilities and the whole array of other services, are so crucial, are so important that we believe that in order to properly fund those services, we would need to look at taking back a portion of the Mike Harris tax cut.

We have said that we would take back the portion of the tax cut that goes to the top 6% of income earners, people who make over $80,000, who represent only a small fraction of the population of Ontario but who get a large portion of the tax benefit that Mike Harris is putting in place, that being to the tune of $1.5 billion, which we believe needs to be reinvested and can be reinvested and should be reinvested in our health care system, in our school system, where we're going to see problems - if I had more time I would be happy to talk more about that - in spades over the next year, year and a half.

School boards are looking now at school closures, at cuts they have to make. Many school boards are finding that the ministry of education has overestimated their enrolment and so had told them they were going to get more money than they're going to get. The cuts are going to be more severe right across the province and we're going to see that unfold over the next six months to a year in a very big way.

We have begun the process of saying to people that not only do we believe that this tax cut which is at the heart of what Mike Harris is doing is wrong, we actually have gone the next step, which I note that my Liberal colleagues are not prepared to do, to say we would take back some of that tax cut, because we think that only in that way can we afford to pay for the very vital services that Ontarians need and deserve.

The Acting Speaker: Questions and comments?

Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview): I'd like to compliment the member for Dovercourt for exposing the many aspects that the budget does not contain. If there is one very open matter that has come from the Premier and a lot of the cabinet members and many other members as well, it is that they have not been able to communicate to the public the good things they have done. The problem they are having is that they haven't done much good. That is why they have problems communicating the good news.

Other than packaging a coloured budget depicting very nice figures and stuff like that, once you look inside, there isn't really much for real people of Ontario. I won't take away some of the merits of the government with respect to the business community because yes, they tend to cater so much to that. But I would like to say to the members present in the House that Ontario is composed of a variety of people, and the House is represented at the same time by a variety of members from different parts of the province.

Unless the government and the members understand that unless you take care of those people who cannot take care of themselves, the government is not doing a good job, I have to say that the government is not doing a good job, because it's continuing to pick on the two weakest groups of people in our community: the youth and the seniors. To the youth it's saying, "You students go to your university or college and tell them that you're going to get a loan." To the seniors it's saying, "If you can't afford to stay in your house, go ahead and get a mortgage."

Once we do not look after those two particular people, and I don't have time to go into youth unemployment, there is nothing in this budget for those people.

Ms Frances Lankin (Beaches-Woodbine): I'm pleased to respond to the member for Dovercourt. He covered a number of areas in his presentation with which I'm in total agreement. I wanted in particular to pick up on the issue of tuition deregulation particularly for graduate programs and some of the professions. I hope, with some reflection, the government might see the error of its ways here.

Let me make this very personal. I'm someone who comes from a family of modest income, my background. I had an honour and an opportunity to attend university. I don't believe I could have pursued the studies I did if I had been at that time staring down the pipe of the future, looking at a debt load that our students of today will be looking at, at the end of it.

I don't believe I would have had the courage to take on that kind of debt load. I don't believe that with the experience of our family we would have felt that was doable or appropriate. I think we would have sadly chosen another route for me and my future.

I think of a person I know who went through post-secondary education and graduate engineering, and who chose at the end of that to pursue work in northern and remote Canada in aboriginal communities, to work on building much-needed infrastructure, and who also worked in the field of international development, who took those skills and did good work in the world, but who was not paid the large incomes that many of the members across the floor seem to be alluding to today as rationale for these kinds of exorbitant tuitions.

I hope the government realizes that what it's doing is ensuring that those in this province who will have access to the highest levels of education are only those who have the highest levels of income, and that that's wrong.

Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): I am pleased to be able to rise and respond to the comments that have been made by my colleague from one of the 416 areas. I know he would not want me to forget to make some comments about at least third-party endorsements that will have some significance for him.

It was yesterday that I listened to some comments on CFRB that have been repeated on several occasions since. They were the words of a man who is charged with the responsibility of leading this metropolitan area, Mel Lastman. He is a person I know my colleague from Dovercourt holds in high esteem. He has spoken of him on many occasions and reflected on his words of wisdom on many occasions. His summary of the budget was, "This is the greatest budget ever." I think we need to remember that. "This is the greatest budget ever."

Interjections.

Mr Shea: Let me tell you, if you really have a problem dealing with what Mayor Lastman has to say - and if you do, I say, "Shame on you" - let me simply turn to another statement. "Because of the budget," says Mayor Lastman, "this is going to be boomtown Canada." In fact he then turned his attention to the Liberals and said, "It is time for the federal government to get its act together and to do what the provincial government is now doing." He was speaking particularly of taxes. He is sick and tired of tax-and-spend kind of legislation. I hope my Liberal colleagues in this House will take that message to heart.

If they are finding it difficult to accept the words of Mayor Lastman, let me remind them of John Bech-Hansen's comment, "This is overwhelmingly good news for Toronto."

So I say to my colleague from Dovercourt, who I know tries to represent our area well, that he'll take that to heart and that he'll understand the importance of this budget for the people of 416.

Mr Caplan: I must admit I am always enthralled by the comments of the member for High Park-Swansea, but very selective in quoting the esteemed mayor of our city. I recall a few months ago the mayor had less than kind words to say about the Premier. In fact, I believe he called into question the commitments the Premier had made to him. I would like the member to stand up and make some of those quotes known to this House. I would, but I know it's not parliamentary language to be used in here.

More to the point, the member for Dovercourt made some excellent points. The reason that Ontario, indeed Canada, is enjoying a great deal of economic prosperity has to do with the very sound management of our federal government. They have chosen an approach where they've go their finances under control, where they have eliminted a deficit have put us on track to be able to make choices as far as increasing spending and cutting taxes are concerned. They've made those kinds of choices possible. It's also the low-interest-rate policies of the federal government which have made this possible, which have removed a lot of the burden.

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It's very interesting that the member did not point this out, but I know he would not want to be remiss in ensuring that those facts are very well known. Of course, the wellbeing of our neighbours to the south, our biggest trading partner, is certainly a big factor in how well we're doing. I know the members opposite are congratulating Mr Martin, as they did, by the way, when they wrote their election platform. It said how they endorse the policies of the federal Liberal government. I think they should congratulate our federal cousins.

The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. The member for Dovercourt has two minutes to respond.

Mr Silipo: I really appreciate the array of comments I've received. Let me just say, without selecting any individual members, that I continue to like the mayor of Toronto. I happen to agree with him on some days in terms of what he says, and I shudder sometimes on the basis of what he says. This is actually something I know I share with the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

Ms Lankin: On different days.

Mr Silipo: On different days. We don't react perhaps the same way to the same statements made by the mayor of Toronto.

That aside, there are just a couple of points I would make. To my Liberal colleagues, I would say you're right, and had time allowed, I would have acknowledged it. I think I did, though maybe not in as much detail as you would have liked me to, point out that one of the things economists are saying more and more that is leading to the job growth is the low-interest policies. Given that we've been critical in the past of that approach, we have to give credit and say that we're happy there is now at least an approach to keep interest rates low, and we hope that continues.

Mr Shea: That and the 69-cent dollar.

Mr Silipo: The low dollar is another element. But I say to my Liberal colleagues that they also would want me to tell the whole story and say I was a little bit puzzled when I saw the equally spiffy packaging that was put together by my Liberal colleagues. Here, we can show them. Sure. Here we go. There it is.

But what was really interesting was one chart on the inside, where they praise the federal government for having reduced its deficit. They contrast that against the Mike Harris government. They of course don't mention that one of the reasons the federal government has managed to reduce its budget is in fact the cutting of transfers to provinces, certainly including Ontario, in terms of health care and education. Not that this in any way should excuse what the current Harris government is doing, but it is also a matter of public record.

The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired.

Given that there are 365 days in the year and 130 members of this Legislature, it's passing strange that we would have not just one member have a birthday today, not just two; we have three. Many happy returns of the day should go to Ted Chudleigh. Our congratulations to the member for Halton North.

Mr Ted Chudleigh (Halton North): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I'm not sure if it's parliamentary. I think you're out of order, but I do appreciate the sentiment.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Dan Newman (Scarborough Centre): It's my pleasure as the member for Scarborough Centre to join the debate on the budget here today and to talk about the good news that was created in the budget of this week and the fact that some 341,000 net new private sector jobs have been created in this province since this government took office in June 1995.

I want to talk about the effect this has on my riding of Scarborough Centre, and especially the effect it has had on small business people in my riding. As I drive along Kingston Road or Eglinton or Midland Avenue or Brimley Road in my riding, McCowan Road, Danforth Road, I see the new businesses that have opened up in this riding and see the effect that our 30% reduction in income tax rates has had to date.

In June 1995, the provincial income tax rate in this province was 58% of the federal income tax rate, and today, proposed in the budget, we'll have the lowest provincial income tax rate in this province at 40.5%, which is keeping our commitment to reduce personal income tax rates in this province by 30%, something the opposition parties, the people who oppose what this party stands for, said could not be done. We are keeping our word on cutting taxes in this province.

Something else that was interesting in the budget was the fact that there's going to be assistance for those municipalities that have higher than average education taxes on the commercial and industrial side. There's going to be money over the next few years, over $500 million, going towards those municipalities, which includes the municipality of Toronto and others such as Owen Sound and Niagara Falls. Kenora is one of those municipalities as well.

The effect it will have in my riding of Scarborough Centre is that it will ultimately reduce the amount of property tax paid by business owners, which will make them more competitive and allow them to hire more people.

What has been proposed in this budget is 36 tax cuts - those are tax cuts, not tax hikes -and we take that with the previous two budgets the finance minister brought forward in which there were 30 tax cuts. So 30 tax cuts in the first two years and 36 tax cuts proposed in this budget is 66 tax cuts, if you can imagine that.

I reflect back on my own riding and see that during the 10 years from 1985 to 1995, when we had governments headed by the Liberal and New Democratic parties in this province, what we saw was 65 tax increases. Those were 65 increases in taxes which did nothing for job creation in this province. What we have here are 66 tax cuts that are producing jobs. To date, 341,000 jobs have been created as a result of the policies of this government within this province.

If we look at the five years from 1990 to 1995, there were actually 32 tax hikes on the part of the previous NDP government. If we look at it in terms of the job creation numbers, this province actually lost 10,000 jobs. There were 10,000 fewer people working in this province from the year 1990 to the end of 1995. So it was a loss of 10,000 jobs.

We're seeing positive job creation as a result of tax cuts. It's wonderful to see that as of July 1, 1998, when the last phase of the personal income tax reduction is put in place, our province will actually have the lowest personal income tax rate in all of Canada. In three years we will have gone from the highest at 58% of federal to the lowest at 40.5%. This is very significant because what's happening is that the hardworking people of this province who earn their paycheques in the first place are actually getting an opportunity to keep more of that money. They're getting an opportunity to keep more of what they earned in the first place.

I look at what effect that has on my riding in Scarorough. I see that as people have more money in their pockets, some are choosing to invest it and many are choosing to spend it. There are many items they have been putting off purchasing. I can see as I pass Marvin Starr Pontiac Buick on Eglinton Avenue, on my way to Queen's Park every day, that there are more and more truckloads of vehicles being unloaded on to the lot. Those vehicles are being sold or leased to people across the city of Toronto, many of them to people in my riding who are buying new vehicles.

I see the effect the income tax reduction, among the other tax reductions, has had on people choosing to go to restaurants. As I was going to work the other day, I saw a sign at Hennessey's restaurant on Eglinton and it said: "Hiring more people. We're getting busier."

More people are spending those dollars, they're spending them in their own communities and they're creating jobs. I think it's important to remember that 82% of all the new jobs created in this province are created by small business. When you look at the 341,000 job number, yes, there have been a lot of large new plant openings across this province, but the majority of those 341,000 jobs are small business owners.

I look at other new restaurants that have opened in my riding, like Tony Pepperoni or Under the Sun. These were vacant buildings. They sat vacant. To see today that these are thriving businesses that are employing a lot of people, that are paying property tax and provincial taxes, to see this positive investment happening in my riding is so important, because I know it's happening in the ridings of Etobicoke-Humber and Bruce, and right across this province I see that happening.

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I also look at the effect that the employer health tax has had on businesses in my riding and the fact that this government made a commitment to reduce the employer health tax on the first $400,000 of payroll, that that will actually be accelerated with this budget and that those businesses with payrolls under $400,000 will no longer have to pay the employer health tax. That employer health tax on $400,000 is roughly $7,200 in savings to those businesses. But equally important not only in terms of the dollars they save in not having to pay that employer health tax is the time spent filling out all those unnecessary forms that our small business owners are faced with, actually allowing them to spend more time to grow their businesses so that they can see more positive results throughout their businesses. So the budget has had positive effects in my riding.

One of the other things the budget talked about is the reduction in the deficit, that the deficit is down to $5.2 billion. If we look back to 1995, I think on this side of the House we were all absolutely stunned when we saw that the figure was $11.3 billion in this province, that that was the deficit of this province. We were actually spending $11.3 billion a year more than we were taking in revenue. That was absolutely shocking not only to members on this side of the House, but I think to all Ontarians. The deficit now, at $5.2 billion, is on track to be balanced in the year 2000-2001.

The budget also spoke about the highest 12-month job growth period ever in the history of the province, which was from February 1997 to February 1998. We had 265,000 new net private sector jobs created in this province. This isn't even with the total tax cut. I know that perhaps a year from now when we are here, we will obviously see those job numbers go much higher when we see the full effect of a 30% tax reduction on the province of Ontario. If we look at how the Ontario economy is doing, it has stronger projected growth than any of the G-7 industrialized nations over the next three years. This is what has been predicted by many private sector economists.

Our 36 new job-creating tax cuts again total 66 in this budget just passed, as opposed to the 65 tax hikes brought upon by the governments headed by the Liberals and NDP from 1985 to 1995. I mentioned, as I know my friend from York East will want to know, the fact that we are cutting commercial and industrial education rates to affect ridings where we are, in York East, and my good friend from Etobicoke-Humber as well -

Mr Parker: And Eglinton.

Mr Newman: - and Eglinton as well, seeing that the commercial and industrial education tax rates have been cut. This is very important, and that will be phased in over an eight-year period.

The budget also spoke about opening dialogue with municipalities to look at further ways of reducing property taxes. I think that's something that all Ontarians want to see, further reductions in their property taxes, because we have seen that property taxes can indeed be cut.

There are many other initiatives within the budget to create job opportunities for youth and disabled Ontarians which I'm proud to say were in here.

On the education side, Mr Speaker, which I know is something of great interest to you, is the fact, as we had announced earlier, of $583 million for new spending in the classroom by the year 2000 and the fact that there would be stable funding for elementary and secondary education for the next three years. I know that's something all Ontarians are pleased to see.

The budget also spoke about the $1.2 billion being spent to ensure average class sizes of no larger than 25 for elementary and 22 for secondary students. It also spoke about the $1 billion being spent to ensure funding for special education in this province. That's something I'm very proud to support in this budget.

There's been a lot of talk about textbooks. In my community of Scarborough there's talk about textbooks. To see that there's $100 million in this budget for elemenary textbooks and other learning materials is something I will be pleased to support, because that's something that will give our students an advantage, having those quality textbooks. The budget overall is very positive. It's positive for my riding of Scarborough Centre.

I see that the budget also spoke about the fact that we're emphasizing work and not welfare. When we look back to 1995, when the people of Ontario elected this govrnent, one of the key platforms of election was reforming the welfare system. What we've seen to date is that 250,000 fewer people, a quarter of a million fewer people, today are dependent on welfare than in June 1995.

Mr Parker: One hundred thousand children.

Mr Newman: "One hundred thousand children," my good friend from York East mentions.

There are training and employment opportunities for 750,000 Ontarians yearly through a $9.5-billion workplace training and employment plan that is included within the budget.

The income tax has been eliminated for 70,000 modest-income Ontario families, and I think that is very significnt and will definitely help those individuals.

There's a new Ontario child care supplement for working families that will help some 350,000 young children in this province, and that again is something I am very pleased to support, and a 30% workplace child care tax deduction for the capital costs of the building or for expanding the onsite child care facilities or for contribuions to facilities within the community. We're talking about the private sector spending money within their own facilities to provide day care or providing money within their own community for day care spaces. I think that's very important.

I look at health care within the budget, because health care is something I know you care about, Mr Speaker - it's something that I care about; in fact all members of this House and all Ontarians care about health care - to see that health care spending has been increased to $18.5 billion a year, which is the greatest amount of money ever spent in this province on health care. Again, if we look back three years to 1995, we see that in this province we were spending $17.4 billion on health care, and we see that over that time $1.1 billion more was being spent on health care. That is a significant reinvestment. That works out to $1,639 for every man, woman and child in this province.

The recent long-term-care announcement, which was a $1.2-billion announcement to increase beds for seniors by 35% and to expand services for seniors and people with continuing care needs and children with disabilities, I was pleased to see that. I had the good fortune last Friday of making the announcement that 5,837 new beds over the next eight years would be allocated for the population of Toronto.

The budget also spoke about $75 million being spent to open hospital beds during periods of peak demand, which is something that I'm pleased to see in this, and that there's increased training for critical care and emergency nurses as well.

I know the member for Wellington a couple of weeks ago had a private member's resolution on the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program, and in this budget I was pleased to see that program has been increased by $10 million, to $50 million by the year 2000-2001. The encouraging thing about this program is that it screens all newborns and identifies those at high risk and ensures that they receive the appropriate community services so that these children indeed have a good start in life.

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The budget also spoke about the establishment of a nursing services task force and the fact that $300 million was going to be spent for medical equipment renewal - that's something I was pleased to see in the budget - and another $5 million is being spent to enhance community-based nursing care.

But the budget isn't just about health care, isn't just about cutting taxes; it's about people and their priorities. One of the priorities of the people of Scarborough and indeed across the province is personal safety, and the fact is that this budget commits $150 million over five years on new community safety initiatives, and there is a community policing partnership with municipalities for hiring hundreds of new front-line police officers. I hope that many of those officers are available here in the city of Toronto for our residents and for our community.

There's a new OPP cadet training program, there's a rural crime prevention strategy, and very important is a multiforce anti-biker gang squad that has been put into place with this budget. The budget also talks about the proposal to set fines at double the rate today for running red lights, which I believe would go from $105 all the way up to $210 for running red lights. That's very important.

I will be supporting this budget. It's a very good budget, not only for the people of Scarborough Centre but for all people in Ontario, with the fact that we have a strong economy, an economy that's getting even stronger today with our 66 tax cuts versus the 65 tax hikes of the previous two governments; the fact that we are on target to balance the budget in the year 2000-2001; and the fact that some 341,000 new net private sector jobs have been created since this government was elected by the people of Ontario almost three years ago.

The budget is indeed very positive. It's emphasizing work, not welfare. It talks about health care. It talks about the increased reinvestment in health care in this province. It talks about personal safety, education in the classroom, textbooks. These are all positive things we're seeing the effects of, not only in Scarborough Centre but across the province.

I think it was best said when it was said that a tax cut is the best job creation program ever invented. I believe that is true. I know there will be many more jobs created, not only in Scarborough Centre but across the province with this budget being passed.

The Acting Speaker: Comments and questions?

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I wanted to take the opportunity to make some quick comments. The member for Scarborough Centre was pretty bold in defending his government's position on the budget and there were lots of smiles were over there. I think this was the same government, the same party, that talked about how we cannot put our children in debt.

When this government took over in 1995, as you know, Mr Speaker - I know you were listening attentively - the debt of the province was $89 billion. Their approach was to say, "We will not saddle our kids with debts in the future." Today it's $105 billion. Tell me, who will be paying for that? The young children of tomorrow. Who will be saddled with higher tuition fees, lots of user fees? That $105 billion is just as of today, and they've got another year to go. Who pays for that? The poor, the most vulnerable.

For three years this party was so vicious, so unkind, so brutal with those who are vulnerable in our society. Those who were on welfare were being pushed off. Those who were disabled were being treated like second-class citizens. My golly, he woke up one day and said: "I am the compassionate Mike Harris today. Love me today. Forget the three years when I put all this brutal attack in a vicious manner on those people." Listen, what about those bodies lying on the ground? What about those you have left behind? He said, "Don't worry about those bodies. Just look at who is alive. Don't worry about the disabled."

When the members gets up in his defence, I would ask them to talk about what they are going to do with those people you have left behind and so brutally treated. I must love Mike Harris now?

Mrs Boyd: I too would like to respond to the member for Scarborough Centre and remind him that the increase in the total debt that my colleague from Scarborough North talked about was incurred and given to those who are most wealthy in the province. The phoney tax scheme benefits those at the upper end of the tax scale. I would just like to say to the people out there that when you talk about tax cuts, when you talk about that, the people who are paying might as well just take it right from their pockets and hand it to all those people who are the top earners in the province. They are not saving a cent in terms of this. They are paying, out of their lower income, user fees, all sorts of fees, increases in property tax, all those regressive areas that pay no attention to your ability to pay.

What is so fascinating about the defensiveness of this government, particularly the set and structured pieces that you are given to read about this budget, is that it takes no account of the reality of how this is going to affect the majority of people. You are so tied to big business, you are so tied to those that you see as the successful ones in the society. You are so immersed in an effort to try and transfer from the poor to the wealthy that you neglect the reality of the people you represent.

Yes, there have been improvements in the overall economy over the last few years. Why wouldn't there be, given that we went through a worldwide recession that accounts for most of the issues that you raised between 1990 and 1995?

Mr Parker: I listened with great interest to the remarks of my colleague for Scarborough Centre. I've also listened to the criticisms that have been levelled against his remarks and against the budget. I always find it interesting that those who choose to criticize this government for the tax cut and suggest that somehow it is a bonus to the wealthiest tax payers in this province always forget to mention the Fair Share health levy and the net effect of those two policies when they are put together. I don't quite understand why they do that, but that seems to be a common practice - sort of a very convenient amnesia when they discuss these matters.

But I was very interested in the remarks of my friend from Scarborough Centre. I thought he gave a very good synopsis, a very good review, of this week's budget. Representing a Toronto riding, as the member for Scarborough Centre does and as I do, we both are particularly pleased with the announcement in this week's budget concerning the commercial and industrial education tax. As you know, Toronto has historically paid higher education taxes than other taxpayers elsewhere in this province. Not more than all communities; other communities have also shared the extraordinary burden that Toronto taxpayers have carried, but Toronto has carried a historically high education tax burden. As you know, this government has now taken control of education tax away from the school boards and put the education tax one step further removed from the influence of the unions that have constantly applied pressure to keep the cost of education up and caused taxes to go up. These have been equalized now, thanks to this budget.

Mr Sergio: I am also happy to comment on the remarks by member for Scarborough Centre. If there is one thing I have to agree with in his comments, it is that he is looking after the people of the riding he represents. Everyone should be doing the same thing, and I know that everyone in this House is trying. He has commented specifically how the good news of the budget affects the people in his riding. That is indeed good news if that is the case.

But let me tell you that I have the same composition of people in my riding, and the biggest problem I have with the people in my riding is jobs. There is nothing in this budget here that alleviates the unemployment of the youth in our particular community. I think it's the same in many other areas.

Unfortunately, it is not his budget; it is not my budget. The budget is the way the Premier and Mr Eves see it here in Ontario, and they don't want to listen. They don't want to get it, that they are hurting the real people in Ontario, not the business community, because they can take care of themselves.

With all due respect to the member for York East, commenting on education taxes, my goodness, if we really want to bring some fairness to this bleeding system, let's not spread it over eight or 10 years. Let's do it now. Let's bring some relief now. Why continue this inequity? I would say that if the government was sincere in doing the right thing, they would have done it right now, not in eight years. That's what I would call listening to the people, listening to the business community and wanting to bring some fairness where it doesn't exist, where it didn't exist for a number of years.

I would say to the member, continue to put pressure on Mr Eves, on the Premier, and do the right thing.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Scarborough Centre has two minutes to respond.

Mr Newman: It's my pleasure to respond to the members for Scarborough North, London Centre, York East and Yorkview and their comments. I know the members for Scarborough North and Yorkview get their marching orders from their leader. Their marching orders are not to talk about the good news, not to talk about all the new jobs that are being created in this province, not to talk about the prosperity that's happening within their own ridings.

All of a sudden, the member for Scarborough North is concerned about the debt. Where was he when he sat at the cabinet table under the David Peterson government? He talks about welfare and welfare reform and what we've done as a government. Look at this document here, the red book that the provincial Liberals ran under, to know that they were actually going to cut people's welfare by 30%. Some people in this province would have seen a 30% reduction in welfare on the part of a Liberal government. Their plan was called mandatory opportunity. Our plan is called real opportunity. That's the difference between this party and the Liberal Party.

I say to the member for London Centre, I appreciate your comments. You're always consistent. You're not like the Liberals; you are consistent. I know that you're against the tax cut. I know that you and your leader call the tax cuts phoney, but they're very real, and people in my riding and in your riding and all ridings across Ontario are seeing the benefit of tax cuts in this province.

The fact that you talked about big business - big business doesn't vote. Individuals do. Individuals vote in London Centre; individuals vote in Scarborough Centre; individuals vote across this province. It's the people of this province who elected the Conservative government to cut taxes, reduce the deficit and make Ontario once again the economic engine of Canada.

The member for York East always speaks so eloquently and makes common sense when he speaks.

I say to the member for Yorkview, I appreciate your comments as well and I know that your riding will benefit from the $500-million reduction in business taxes.

The Acting Speaker: It being almost 6 o'clock, this House will adjourn until 1:30 o'clock, Monday, May 11.

The House adjourned at 1755.

7 mai 1998