L011b - Tue 12 May 1998 / Mar 12 Mai 1998 1
The House met at 1831.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
NORTHERN SERVICES IMPROVEMENT ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR L'AMÉLIORATION DES SERVICES PUBLICS DANS LE NORD DE L'ONTARIO
Hon Mr Hodgson moved second reading of the following bill:
Bill 12, An Act to provide choice and flexibility to Northern Residents in the establishment of service delivery mechanisms that recognize the unique circumstances of Northern Ontario and to allow increased efficiency and accountability in Area-wide Service Delivery / Projet de loi 12, Loi visant à offrir aux résidents du Nord plus de choix et de souplesse dans la mise en place de mécanismes de prestation des services qui tiennent compte de la situation unique du Nord de l'Ontario et à permettre l'accroissement de l'efficience et de la responsabilité en ce qui concerne la prestation des services à l'échelle régionale.
Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): On a point of order, Madam Speaker: Perhaps we should have a quorum in the House.
The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Clerk, could you check and see if there is a quorum, please.
Clerk Assistant (Ms Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Clerk Assistant: Madam Speaker, a quorum is now present.
The Deputy Speaker: Minister.
Hon Chris Hodgson (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet, Minister of Northern Development and Mines): I'm delighted to have the opportunity to contribute and lead off debate on second reading of the Northern Services Improvement Act.
The Northern Services Improvement Act is all about good government, better and more efficient services at a lower cost to the taxpayer. The Northern Services Improvement Act reaffirms what we've been telling northerners, and all Ontarians, since this government was elected: that the best way to deliver efficient local services is to give municipalities the tools they need to help themselves. Our reintroduction of this bill speaks to that commitment.
We are bringing meaningful change to the way local services will be delivered in the future. We've consulted extensively with our northern partners on how they wanted their local service bodies to be organized. My parliamentary assistant, Joe Spina, and our ministry staff have been involved in many meetings, discussions and consultations on our proposed legislation. We've met with many municipal leaders.
We've met with umbrella associations: the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities, FONOM; the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association, NOMA. We've been involved in an ongoing dialogue with Team North, a group of northern representatives specifically called together to consult on this legislation. And we've met with representatives of unorganized communities.
We would like to thank our many municipal partners for their insights, their guidance, their spirit and the plain hard work that they have done during the preparation process for this bill. I'm proud to say that this bill has been developed through a process which should be held as an excellent example of cooperation and partnership. With our proposed legislation, we will be delivering on our promise to give northerners a plan designed to meet their unique governance needs.
I'd like to outline briefly how this act will do just that.
The most important component of the NSI act is the establishment of service delivery bodies known as area service boards, or ASBs. These area service boards will provide an alternative for delivery and funding of certain key services in northern Ontario.
I want to stress that this is enabling legislation. The legislation will allow municipalities and unincorporated areas in northern Ontario to consolidate the delivery of core social and community health services, as well as a range of optional services, if they so desire.
ASBs would initially be responsible for delivering Ontario Works, child care and social housing programs. They would be responsible for three more services as well - land ambulance, public health and municipal homes for the aged - to be phased in later. These new service delivery bodies would be administered by a board consisting of elected representatives and have direct taxing authority to recover costs for services delivered.
ASBs would make it easier to achieve greater efficiency and cost savings in service delivery by consolidating a number of single-purpose bodies into one effective, locally accountable delivery agency.
Area service boards will only be created where groups of communities want them. At the same time, however, they are an important part of a plan to make governments more efficient at all levels. Our government has repeatedly urged northern areas to avail themselves of this tool once it is legislated.
Several groups of communities have begun to discuss the prospect of establishing their own ASB. In fact, some groups of communities - in the ridings of Rainy River and Kenora, for example - have already put together ASB proposals and are awaiting proclamation of the legislation to implement their plans.
With this legislation in hand, northern municipal leaders will be able to bring forward local governance proposals tailor-made to suit the needs of their communities and unincorporated areas. They will select boundaries that result in the best balance of cost-effectiveness and cost fairness in the face of local realities.
A unique aspect of this legislation, as I indicated earlier, is that area service boards are an optional tool. Communities in the north can, if they wish, choose not to join together to deliver these services.
Until ASB legislation is passed - and with the cooperation of our friends across the way, we hope it will be sooner rather than later - some delivery mechanisms will take the form of district social service administration boards, or DSSABs. DSSABs and ASBs are important steps down the road of cost savings and efficiencies that northern taxpayers have been demanding.
What makes area service boards truly different is that the people of northern Ontario, along with their municipal leaders, will have a chance to frame ASBs to meet particular local needs. Northerners tell us that a cookie-cutter approach would not work in their unique environment. This proposed legislation shows that we have listened to what they had to say.
Another important feature of this proposed legislation is that ASB administrators will be drawn from the ranks of existing elected officials across northern Ontario. We will not create new bureaucracies. Like the other service delivery initiatives of this government, this will make it possible to find savings by reducing waste and duplication at the local level.
Think of the possibilities. Instead of individual municipal bureaucracies delivering Ontario Works within an area, only one administrative structure would exist. This would reduce the administration costs substantially and result in substantial savings to the area. Think of this in terms of the whole range of local services delivered today by municipalities and do the math. The potential for economies of scale are there.
It is also significant to note that ASBs would be directly accountable to the municipalities and unincorporated areas which they serve. Our government has always maintained that accountable governments are good governments. Services administered at the local level are likely to be of a higher quality and more relevant to the local constituents.
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The bill also contains provisions to reform local service boards in northern Ontario to provide them with the authority to deliver road services. Local service boards, for those colleagues of mine who are unfamiliar with the concept, are volunteer-based organizations that coordinate the delivery of certain services, including fire protection, recreation, water and sewage, street lighting and garbage collection in unorganized townships in northern Ontario.
This proposed reform to the LSBs responds to a need identified by northerners for a more coordinated approach to local service delivery. The changes are designed to lower costs and lessen volunteer burnout in communities where no municipal government exists. Clearly the result will be better services at a lower cost to every northern taxpayer.
I appreciate having the opportunity to participate in this debate and I urge all my colleagues on this side of the House and across the House floor to support passage of this enabling legislation that northern communities have asked for.
The Deputy Speaker: Questions and comments?
Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): I will speak to a greater extent on this later on as the debate takes place, but as the minister has indicated, this is something that northern municipalities have been looking for. Unfortunately, it was something that was tabled during the last session and did not come through, to the detriment of a good number of municipalities, as was indicated to him in a great number of cases.
I think what the northern municipalities are looking for - again, I'll get into it in more depth later on - is a little bit more leadership from this government. They find that they're being left out in terms of a lot of decisions. The minister has travelled in that region to find that out from them. They're asking where the minister was on a great number of issues.
The minister, in his opening remarks, has indicated that, yes, there are some very unique circumstances faced by the citizens of northern Ontario, a good number of them my constituents. As I indicated earlier this week in responding to comments made by a member regarding the budget, there weren't a great number of very positive headlines regarding the budget in terms of northern Ontario. We are seeing a lack of concern, a lack of leadership and a lack of the real awareness of the unique needs of northern Ontario, in particular northwestern Ontario.
As I indicated, I will be getting into a good number of these issues as we move on into the debate but, again, I just have to bring to the attention of the members, particularly on the government side, that they must get out, they must learn why northern Ontario is different and what the unique circumstances of northern Ontario are. The Premier earlier on obviously didn't realize that when he reintroduced the registration fee on the drivers of northwestern Ontario. But, again, more detail later.
Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): In the short time, I want to get an opportunity to put on the record a response to some of the things the minister said.
There are parts of this bill that I have actually no problem with. Just to clarify, the government, as everybody would remember, introduced Bill 26 a couple of years back, in the fall of 1995. In Bill 26, they set up a forced amalgamation process; that is, the government could go in by decree and decide which municipalities would be put together. Once they started the process, the government just decided what happened.
In this particular bill, I've got to say that the government has got it partly right, because what they've decided to do with the ASBs is to make it enabling legislation. On the enabling part, Minister, I have no problem with you. If there is going to be any kind of amalgamation, if there is going to be any kind of restructuring at the local level, I think it has to be locally driven. I think the taxpayers in local municipalities and the councils, mayors and reeves are the ones who should drive it, just like we should have allowed the people of Toronto to decide for themselves. Should there be a megacity or not should have been a decision of the people of the city of Toronto, just like in the city of Ottawa we should allow the people in the local communities of Ottawa, Carleton, Nepean and all those other areas, the people in that jurisdiction, to decide for themselves what is best for their community.
So in that sense of the bill, I partly support what the government does with ASBs, because they're making it enabling and they're saying that the people within the communities themselves can decide if they want to come together. For that, you're right.
I have a problem, however, with other parts of the bill. One is that this is a move to tax unorganized communities. If you end up taking some of those services out and the ASBs start taking on some of the responsibility for some of those new services, it's going to mean that unorganized communities are going to be taxed at almost the municipal rate, and with that I have a great problem. We're going to have to talk about that a little bit more in further debate in order to see what we can do there.
Mr John L. Parker (York East): I want to congratulate the minister for bringing forward this bill, which is an act to provide choice and flexibility to northern residents in the establishment of service delivery mechanisms. This is in fact a bill that recognizes the unique circumstances of northern Ontario, and it allows increased efficiency and accountability in area-wide service delivery, particularly in the north.
In bringing about this bill, I know that the minister travelled far and wide throughout the north country. I know that because I travelled with him on some of those visits. I know he sent his parliamentary assistant throughout the north, and I travelled with his parliamentary assistant also in the consultation process leading up to this bill. I am very impressed with the process that led to this bill. I believe that it does respond to the messages we heard in the various communities of the north for flexibility in how to address the matter of local service delivery.
I congratulate the minister for bringing forward the bill, I congratulate the minister for the process that underlies the development of the bill and I commend his remarks this evening in describing the nature of the bill and recommending it to this House.
Mr Michael Gravelle (Port Arthur): I'm glad to have an opportunity to respond to the minister's opening comments. I think you need to go back and have perhaps a little bit of a history lesson. The reason why this particular legislation is being brought forward, in many ways, and the reason why municipalities are being put in the position that they're in is because it's part of the downloading process of this government.
We have fought vigorously in this Legislature against large parts of the downloading program that were announced during megaweek back in January 1997. One of the elements that I think is most upsetting to a lot of municipalities is public health. One sees public health being part of this umbrella legislation and the municipalities are going to need some help to be able to deliver the services, but the fact is that public health should not be part of the downloading process at all. There is still a battle raging over that and I think a number of the municipalities in northern Ontario would really like it to be stated again and again that aspects of this downloading, such as public health, simply shouldn't be there.
If the government is not willing to accept its responsibilities, I think it's our responsibility to tell the people of this province that indeed they have erred and they are wrong to do so. To put these kinds of pressures on the municipalities I think is unfortunate.
I can tell you there's still a great deal of confusion related to this piece of legislation. There's not a great sense of security from a lot of the municipalities that are obviously being affected by this, and there is not a great deal of trust. Although it is indeed enabling legislation, there's also a real sense out there that, regardless of what the legislation may say, municipalities are going to be forced into doing what the government's agenda is anyway.
These are concerns that I think we will all be addressing to some extent as the evening debate carries on. I know myself and my colleagues are looking forward to having a further opportunity to speak. There is much to be said and I appreciate having this opportunity at this time.
The Deputy Speaker: Minister, you have two minutes.
Hon Mr Hodgson: I want to thank my colleagues across the floor from Kenora and Cochrane South, my colleague from York East and my other colleague from Port Arthur for their heartfelt support of this bill. I think they recognize that this is a unique bill for northern Ontario. It's not being forced on municipalities. I think the member for Cochrane South talked about that and he was fully supportive of allowing northerners to decide their own destiny on how they run their local governments.
I was interested to hear from my Liberal colleague. The member from Kenora talked about the lack of leadership, that the government's not forcing its agenda hard enough, and his colleague from Port Arthur, who's also a provincial Liberal, talks about how the government's forcing its agenda. As usual, the Liberal party's got one on one side and one on the other so they can please everyone.
What we've tried to do is give municipalities the tools to align themselves and deliver their services more effectively and efficiently and accountably to their ratepayers. This is what I've heard right across northern Ontario: "All of government shouldn't be dictated from Queen's Park. You should allow some flexibility for local circumstances." That is what we're doing.
Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): How come you didn't do that with education?
The Deputy Speaker: Member for Hamilton Centre, come to order, please.
Mr Christopherson: He's being provocative, Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker: Order.
Hon Mr Hodgson: I notice that the opposition tonight - they're paid to be critics - talk about downloading. What they don't talk about is uploading, the fact that Bill 160 required an uploading of education off of the property tax. That arrangement was a $3-billion trade. If they're talking about undoing Bill 160, are they proposing to raise property taxes? I think that's what they're suggesting.
I do look forward to the debate tonight. I know that all of my colleagues represent their constituents and I know the members from Kenora, Port Arthur and Cochrane South know that their residents have asked for this and that the government is responding to their direct request.
The Deputy Speaker: Further debate?
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Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): I'm happy to be able to take part in this discussion, talking about Bill 12. I would suggest from the outset that it has nothing to do with choice and accountability.
Madam Speaker, just before I get into this, I am going to be sharing my time with the member for Timiskaming, Mr Ramsay, and I thank you for that.
Might I suggest to the members in the House and to the gallery that this is not about choice and flexibility; it is about a government forcing something upon the northern Ontario people, the municipalities of northern Ontario, the governing bodies of northern Ontario, and it's something they have a great deal of concern with.
Before I get into the debate, I'd like to talk a little bit about process, because I believe process here is quite important. The minister suggested that he has had extensive consultations. Might I tell you that this legislation was first introduced on December 15, 1997. It was tabled and died on the order paper when the House prorogued on December 18. I was given the assurance from the minister and the parliamentary assistant that between December and when the House resumed, there would be extensive consultation on Bill 174, as it was formerly known; now we know that the bill is called Bill 12.
During the legislative break, there wasn't that enormous consultation that the government wants you to believe there was. In fact, when we phoned the parliamentary assistant's staff asking for copies of formal submissions and a timetable of the meetings, the parliamentary assistant's staff told us that there were very few meetings, that they were on an informal basis and that there were very few written submissions. I was concerned about that, so I asked the parliamentary assistant if in fact that was the case. He suggested to me that there were formal discussions, that there were formal presentations.
I guess the process then has to be questioned. If there were these formal presentations and discussions, why did the parliamentary assistant's staff not share the information with us? I guess that's a part of the problem that people in northern Ontario have about the Mike Harris government. They just don't seem to trust the Mike Harris government, and I guess I have to agree with the people from northern Ontario when I say that I asked, they told me, and then tonight we find out that in fact the government says there were formal consultations.
I would suggest to you that in an informal poll I took today, I phoned municipalities across northern Ontario and they said they weren't consulted. They were concerned that they weren't consulted; in fact, some municipalities in northern Ontario are insulted that they weren't consulted. They're also insulted that this legislation is being brought forth this evening, when at NOMA two weekends ago and at the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities last Thursday and Friday, there was very, very limited time spent by the ministry staff or by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing staff on presenting this legislation to the politicians who were at both those conferences.
I will suggest to you that there was a workshop at FONOM - I talked to people who were at the workshop - but there was very little time for dialogue, for exchange of ideas. I guess that's a concern that the municipalities have in northern Ontario as well, that for some reason - and I would hope for the goodness of democracy that it's an illusion on the part of the politicians in northern Ontario, but by past practice I think that not to be the case - this government, by past practice and by present practice, has got people to the point where they just don't trust the process any more. That's sad, because this is a significant piece of legislation and it's going to have a significant impact on every municipality, every area in northern Ontario, both organized and unorganized.
I believe that fair exchange of information is important with this bill, I believe that complete exchange of opinions and information would have been important with this bill, and I'm afraid that just didn't take place. Because that didn't take place, there's a great deal of confusion out there in northern Ontario, an enormous number of questions being asked to which they have received no answers.
A part of the problem that the government is going to have once it passes this legislation - and it's going to pass this legislation because it has a majority in the House - is that it is going to have to try to ensure that those municipalities, those unorganized areas in northern Ontario, understand the significant impact that area service boards are going to have on their lives and on their ability to pay and their ability to acquire services.
The problem with the limited discussion that did take place was that there was no consensus or no agreement as to how to define an area service board. There was no agreement on the geographical areas which a particular area service board will manage.
If we look at an article which appeared in Sault Ste Marie, you can clearly see that this question is abundantly obvious. It says: "Some favour an area service board without direct taxing authority. Proposed legislation suggests area service boards will have taxing powers." Do you understand that's going to pose an enormous problem to the diversity found in northern Ontario and the population pockets found within northern Ontario?
The geographic models that are under consideration are under consideration at the area municipality level. They are not being led by the government; they are not being directed by the government. For example, in Sault Ste Marie they're considering three models. Just listen to the models that they're considering.
The first model is for one area service board for the region's 145,030 residents, including 46 municipalities within the electoral district of Sault Ste Marie and the Algoma, Manitoulin, Thunder Bay and Sudbury districts, including unorganized townships.
A second model they are looking at is two service boards, one for the eastern and one for the western section of the study area. The eastern area service board would include Elliot Lake, Blind River, Manitoulin Island and Espanola, having a population of 34,000 and encompassing 21 municipalities. The western area service board, which would include Sault Ste Marie, would stretch from Iron Bridge to Manitouwadge, incorporating about 103,000 people in 23 municipalities.
The third model they're looking at is an area service board for Sault Ste Marie, as requested by city officials, for Sault Ste Marie only.
You're looking at one area and three different proposals that have, I would suggest to you, very different geographical areas and very different population bases, which in fact is going to impact on each of those residents in the area service board district. That's the type of confusion and that's the type of struggle the municipal politicians are having to cope with because of the lack of direction they're receiving from the government. So when the government hears that so far the process has only led to confusion and that confusion reigns supreme in the area municipality, that's not an exception to the rule; rather, that is the rule, and that's one of the biggest problems with this legislation.
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At FONOM this past weekend, area municipal politicians questioned what exactly the area service board legislation was going to entail. They didn't get the answers they wanted. They weren't expecting that this legislation was going to be tabled this evening. They were surprised when I phoned them. I phoned staff and politicians from FONOM and told them we would be debating this tonight. They suggested to me that one workshop wasn't enough, that there was very little time for discussion, there has been very little time for debate, there has been very little time for the exchange of ideas, there has been very little time for brainstorming, there has been very little time for consensus-building, and as a result they are very, very apprehensive about what an area service board is going to do to them.
I would suggest to you at this time as well that it's very important for the members in the House, those of us on this side and, I suggest, some on the other side - for example, I know the member for Grey-Owen Sound is familiar with the geography of northern Ontario, because he and I did a little bit of touring in the same areas. But I might suggest to the House that I explain a little bit about the geography of northern Ontario and how an area service board may not be the best answer to meeting the needs of people in northern Ontario.
Northern Ontario has a population of 826,276 people, who reside in an area of 810,412 square kilometres. Northern Ontario is larger than France and the United Kingdom combined, and it is 7.6 times larger than southern Ontario.
This act, the way it's written now, clearly demonstrates that the provincial government does not understand northern Ontario, and I say that with all due respect to the members across the way. The way it's defined, the way it's written, you're showing the people of northern Ontario that you really don't understand that being 7.6 times greater in size than southern Ontario is going to have an impact on how you deliver services. To properly deliver social services to our community, bigger is definitely not better. In large geographical areas like northern Ontario, our communities need social services that are related to the community's needs, based on local decision-making. With this legislation, the provincial government is in effect taking that opportunity and that right away from those people.
I'll use as an example somebody making municipal decisions in Toronto for North Bay, because those are the distances we're talking about in northern Ontario. Residents will be facing those large distances when you set up an area service board to cover that type of area. I only wish it would happen sooner rather than later, but when is the provincial government going to understand that the nature of northern Ontario is different and must be treated differently than southern Ontario and that we must look at providing area service boards that are geared to the area that you want to service as a government? When you set up a massive area service board, it's not going to work for the people. It will work, but it's not going to work for the people.
I guess we have to decide what we're all about here. Are we about the people who elect us or are we about process and ensuring that something works?
If the latter is the case, I suggest to you that if you make no revisions to this act, you'll have a process in place but it won't fit the needs of the people of northern Ontario. That is one of the major concerns the people in northern Ontario have, and certainly people I've talked to today on the telephone and earlier this week, FONOM, are concerned that this is going to be the end result of Bill 12.
Another concern, and I look forward to seeing this concern dispelled, is that this government, the government that prides itself on being more efficient, is in reality, with its area service board, setting up another level of government for every municipality in northern Ontario, for every area in northern Ontario. Whether it be an organized area or an unorganized area, an area service board will end up being another level of government. I would suggest to you it's a level of government that is unnecessary.
An area service board is not needed to provide services effectively or efficiently. What you are going to be setting up, without a doubt, is a level of government. You may not want to call it that, but that's the shape it's going to take once it's in place. It's going to be a level of government. It's going to require administrative staff; it's going to require a bureaucracy. I would suggest to you that this is not what the people in northern Ontario - in fact, I don't think that's what the people of Ontario want, but because this is a northern act, let's concentrate on northern Ontario.
I believe this is going to be interpreted as setting up regional governments throughout northern Ontario. That's not a stretch, fellow members. That's what the people in both northeastern and northwestern Ontario are suggesting to me and to my colleagues, that this is going to be a level of government that's not necessary. It's going to have a bureaucracy that is not necessary. It's going to have an administration that is not necessary, that can be handled by the municipal form of government that we have in place now.
That's one of the biggest jobs the government will have, to dispel that aspect of this legislation, because I honestly tried, in discussing with my ex-fellow municipal politicians that this wasn't regional government. Let me say I was playing the devil's advocate for the government in this instance. Every time they brought up a suggestion or a question about this being another level of government, I would try to provide them with an answer. Every time I did, they'd come back to the regional municipality of Sudbury.
I want to spend a few minutes talking about the regional municipality of Sudbury, because I believe we have an opportunity here to understand what's going to happen with the creation of area service boards as outlined in Bill 12. Hopefully there will be some changes to it and hopefully there will be some modifications to it so this extra burden of government on people does not take place, because you're the government that was supposed to be against the extra burden of government. I'm suggesting to you that the way the legislation is written, it is in fact an extra level of government.
For example, we know that in the regional municipality of Sudbury some of the services are delivered by the region. We also know that some of the services in the legislation are delivered by the lower-tier municipalities; for example, Sudbury, Valley East, Nickel Centre, Walden and Capreol.
What is going to happen when this area service board comes into existence? We have another level of government. You see? The services are already being delivered by the regional municipality of Sudbury, and those services that aren't being delivered by the regional municipality of Sudbury are being delivered by the lower-tier municipality.
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But Mike Harris and the Minister of Northern Development and Mines and the cabinet and the Conservative caucus, in their wisdom, decide that area service boards are necessary for northern Ontario. It's another level of government. In Sudbury, instead of having two levels of government, we're going to have a third level of government. I tried to argue; "No, that's not going to be the case."
The natural question and the question I'll pose in the House, and I hope the parliamentary assistant or the minister or someone will respond, is: What happened to the regional municipality of Sudbury? Is it defunct? Is it finished? What happens to the city of Sudbury and the other lower-tier municipalities? Are they defunct? Are they finished?
Mr Joseph Spina (Brampton North): No.
Mr Bartolucci: Then I would suggest to you - and I thank the parliamentary assistant for responding - that if the regional municipality of Sudbury is still in existence, if in fact the city of Sudbury and the lower tiers are still in existence and you create an area service board, I don't care what you say and I don't care how you cut it, you've created another level of government. And you're the government that suggests that you would not be creating another level of government. Any way you cut it, it's another level of government. An area service board -
Mr Spina: It's a board.
Mr Bartolucci: Let's check the act here. The act says - I believe it's section 38, if I'm not mistaken - that an area service board is a corporation. That's what the act says, okay? It's a corporation and it doesn't have municipal authority, because that's what it says in 38.2, I believe. But if you look over in subsection 41(8), you will find out that the corporation takes on municipal powers when it delivers police services.
I would suggest to you that the regional municipality of Sudbury is already delivering police services. In fact what happens is you are creating another level of government. It's pure, it's simple, it's dried, and it's definitely what the perception is in northern Ontario, not only by the politicians but by the people who are going to be affected by this area service board. I would suggest to you that you have to have some clarification on that. That's a real concern.
Accountability is another factor that certainly the people in northern Ontario, the politicians in particular, are concerned about. This is not an elected board; this is an appointed board. If it's an appointed board, it shouldn't have the power to tax.
Interjection.
Mr Bartolucci: It does have the power. I would suggest to you that you will have a great deal of difficulty justifying to AMO that a special-purpose body that is unaccountable - that I believe is based on megamania, but I will talk about that later - is going to have the ability to tax. That, my friends, will never, ever be acceptable to the people of northern Ontario, or in fact of Ontario.
There are some other concerns that people in northern Ontario have. They see this as the first step to forced amalgamation. Maybe their perception is wrong and maybe that's not what the intent of the government is; I don't know. You're going to have to convince us that's not your intention, but past practice would indicate there's reason to be concerned in northern Ontario. I don't think we have to look too far out of this building. All we have to do is look around Toronto or Chatham-Kent and we find out that there are some reasons to be concerned that the politicians in northern Ontario are right when they suggest this is the first step in forced amalgamation - in megamania, if you want to call it that.
If you understand the geographical significance and uniqueness of northern Ontario, if your plan is to have forced amalgamation of municipalities, both organized and unorganized, you're doing a disservice to the people of Ontario. You're doing a disservice to the people of northern Ontario in particular in the way the legislation is written. But that's the perception. All I can do is tell the members across the way, the government members who will ultimately and finally bring the final draft document to us for a vote, that that's another enormous and major concern that the people in northern Ontario have.
I would suggest as well that the definitions of area service boards do not fulfil the concerns that the north has with regard to downloading. I'm going to frame a few of the issues around this area service board and ask the government to respond, not this evening but some time, to some of the concerns that northerners have with regard to this legislation.
For example, they're enormously concerned that with the adoption of area service boards, programs like the northern outreach program, which is already taking a major reduction in money from the government, is going to be lost in the mix, for a variety of reasons. The parliamentary assistant is nodding his head, and that's good, but I believe he knows that the northern outreach program is a very important program.
I have a variety of letters all saying the same thing, a few of which I'll read into the record, because I believe they are important. For those who don't know what the northern outreach program is, it's important that you know that the clinical support provided to both these programs is unique in a unique geographical area.
"Our needs are entirely different from those in other parts of the province, and there is no other vehicle that has addressed those needs so comprehensively. The northern outreach program has assisted in the promotion of a sense of community among those of us dedicated to nurturing these programs throughout northern Ontario. Certainly health care professionals will be forced to reconsider their commitment to the north should there be limited educational support to enhance their clinical competence."
That's from Judy Poupore, the preventive/rehabilitative exercise specialist and director of the diabetes education and care and cardiac rehabilitation program at the Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Rehabilitation Centre.
We're talking about a northern outreach program that goes to those areas that you're going to be trying to combine under one area service board.
This is another one, from Laurentian Hospital. You're familiar with Laurentian Hospital because that's the site where the new hospital is going to be built after the two you've slated for closure take place. It says:
"As a northern health facility, staffed by professionals from therapeutic disciplines including occupational, physio and speech therapy, we are faced with the dilemma of trying to meet the demands of health professionals who require ongoing professional development, with the exorbitant cost of this development and the lack of resources to fund these costs....
"The northern outreach program is a tremendous asset to facilities such as mine, as it provides much-needed support in the area of mailings, pamphlet development, advertising and support during the presentation" of important information to keep our medical experts abreast. "Without their help, much of the professional development that my staff have received in the past five years would not have taken place. Examples of northern outreach support include assistance with workshops on fine motor development, handwriting in the schools, acquired brain injuries, outcome measures and behaviour."
That's signed by Sally Spence, who is the acting program director of the children's program and the coordinator of the Children's Treatment Centre.
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Some of us might think that's small potatoes. Well, it may be small potatoes in southern Ontario, but I would suggest to you that in northern Ontario this is major stuff. This is important stuff. This is the type of programming that must get funding. When we see the minister come with a program such as Bill 12, the people, the experts, the professionals, those in the know, those who are dedicated are concerned that these types of programs will not survive in an area service board as defined in legislation in Bill 12. That's one concern that, although not directly related to Bill 12, certainly Bill 12 will impact upon it and, as such, it's a concern that you, the members of the government must be familiar with and must address at some time during this debate or during the amendments to the legislation.
There's another, I believe, very significant topic that must be addressed when we talk about Bill 12. We have to talk about the recruitment and the retention policies of this government and the effect this particular program is going to have as a result of Bill 12. I would suggest that the government made a $36.4-million commitment, not for one year, not for two years but for three years, each of those three years, to ensure that doctors would move north - it's that simple - and start life in the north in both underserviced and understaffed areas. It's a major concern to the people of northern Ontario. I don't think there's a member in this House who doesn't believe that, in this Ontario that we're faced with now, everyone shouldn't have equal access to physicians. That's not the case now.
One of the concerns that was expressed to me as I was preparing for this talk this evening was that programs such as this will be lost in the area service board. I said I don't think the government is about that. I don't think the government wants to take these services away. Again playing the devil's advocate, they suggested, "Where are they protected in this legislation?" I went through the legislation with a particular counsel and I must suggest to you and to the parliamentary assistant that there is nowhere in this legislation that those types of programs are protected. I suggest to you that if we're talking about improving northern service, if we're talking about improving northern service availability and ability, then those types of programs must be addressed.
Finally, the section that I want to deal with in a little bit more detail is the impact of provincial downloading on northern municipalities and the regional municipality of Sudbury. This is probably the greatest concern the people and the politicians in both organized and unorganized areas have with regard to this bill. They're concerned - they're deathly afraid in fact. They're not concerned, they're deathly afraid that with the passage of Bill 12, their downloading fears, their worst nightmare, if you will, will be realized and the jig will be up for many small municipalities that will just not be able to afford the enormous costs which will be associated with area service boards.
I hope that's not the intention of the government. I hope the government, in passing this legislation and in introducing this legislation, is not holding a gun to the heads of those small municipalities and, of course, the unorganized townships. I would hope - I pray - that this government has more accountability to the people in northern Ontario than that, but I think I have to illustrate to you just how negative the downloading exercise has been on northern Ontario.
I'm going to try to do it briefly because I want to give Mr Ramsay an equal opportunity to speak, but I want to talk about the per capita costs of the downloading initiative.
The Manitoulin district has the greatest per capita cost and that sits at $869. Kenora is second, $694 per capita; Rainy River is third, $681; Timiskaming is fifth, $671; and the regional municipality of Sudbury is next with $540 per person.
The per household cost: Rainy River is number one, $1,502 per household for the downloading cost; Kenora is number two, $1,486 per household; Timiskaming is number three, $1,465; the district of Sudbury is number four, $1,353; the district of Nipissing is fifth with $1,264; the region of Sudbury, $1,242.
If we look at the summary of educational tax available as a percentage of the cost services, you find out that the municipality least benefiting from this will be the district of Rainy River, with 11.4%. The district of Kenora is second, 14.7%; Timiskaming is third, 15.1%; the district of Manitoulin is next with 16%; the district of Sudbury is next with 17.1%; and finally, the regional municipality of Sudbury at 30%.
If you look at the summary of the effect of the loss of municipal support grants, it's the same story. Timiskaming number one; Rainy River number two; the region of Sudbury number four; the district of Sudbury number five. Do you see the pattern developing? Do you see what's happening with the downloading costs?
In fact, in the study which was done by KPMG using the government's figures - these aren't cooked figures, these are Ministry of Finance figures and Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing figures - they found out that in every way possible the most negatively affected area with regard to the downloading initiatives was northern Ontario and that municipalities in northern Ontario were in the upper 25th percentile, or the top quarter, of being the most negatively impacted.
Ladies and gentlemen, the concern that the people of northern Ontario have is that Bill 12 is not going to address the unbelievable discrepancy that there is because of this downloading initiative. I suggest to you that that concern is real. That concern is causing increased taxes. We're looking at increased taxes within the regional municipality of Sudbury, North Bay, West Ferris. People have no choice except to increase taxes or decrease services.
What I want from the government and what the people of northern Ontario want from the government is simply to ensure that they address those concerns in this legislation. I challenge anyone - the minister, the parliamentary assistant or any member in the House - to show me in this legislation where the people of northern Ontario are protected against these enormous downloading costs. I suggest to you, my fellow colleagues, that it's not there, but that it must be there if in fact the area service board is going to work.
As I wind down and turn the rest of the time over to the member for Timiskaming, I would suggest to you that you pay close attention to members on this side of the House, those members on this side of the House who understand what the impact of this legislation is. Listen to what we have to say, act on our recommendations, and include amendments to this legislation to ensure that if at the end of the day the area service boards come into existence, they address the needs of the people of northern Ontario. At this point in time, they're lacking.
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Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): I'd like to thank my colleague the member for Sudbury for sharing part of his time. As critic for northern development he had a whole hour, and he was very gracious in allowing me to have some of that time. I very much appreciate it, because I share all the concerns he has about this restructuring that's taking place at the municipal level in northern Ontario.
He was very eloquent in describing and outlining a lot of the differences between northern and southern Ontario, especially when it comes to the municipal level. I think it's interesting for people, in southern Ontario especially, to realize that there are thousands of people who live in northern Ontario who do not find themselves in any sort of municipal structure at all. They don't live in a village, in a town, a township, a city or even a county, because we don't have counties in northern Ontario. They basically are out there on their own and they pay a tax to - the Ministry of Natural Resources used to collect that tax; the Ministry of Finance collects that now. They're out on their own, and all that is going to change with this because of the downloading that the government of Ontario, the Harris government, has put upon all Ontario.
I'd like to start where my colleague left off, quoting from that KPMG study, which really highlighted how badly and disproportionately hurt the north has been through this downloading exercise. The minister, over time, has said that this downloading exercise would be revenue-neutral, that "All we're doing is trying to reorganize who does what." That's not a bad idea, to look at that reorganization, but it should be revenue-neutral.
But it appears from this study - and KPMG obviously is an extremely reputable firm, a firm the government uses. In this case it was the regional municipality of Sudbury that hired KPMG to do this. But as my colleague from Sudbury said, using the government's own figures, the evidence is in, it's here, that northern districts are paying disproportionately, and therefore the people who live there and who struggle to make a living in the north, primarily in the resource industries, are going to have to pay more.
My colleague had outlined some of the differences in costs per household, which means that families are going to have to pay more in their property taxation to pay for services that the province had previously delivered. When you look at that downloading package that was gift-wrapped and presented to our municipal partners in Ontario, it's a package that should not have been downloaded to municipalities. Areas such as child care and social assistance and public health and social housing and ambulances should be provincial services. They should be provincial services because the province as a whole has the ability to pay and deliver those services, while many municipalities do not have the wherewithal to raise the revenue to deliver the first-class service that Ontarians are used to and should have in the future.
With my colleagues Rick Bartolucci, Mike Brown and Frank Miclash, the member for Kenora, we travelled extensively throughout the north this winter, and already in some of our visits to municipalities there were discussions around council tables to say: "Maybe we cannot any longer afford 24-hour-a-day ambulance service. Maybe between midnight and 6 it should just be on call." Already you're seeing from this downloading of service that they're starting to question the quality of the service for certain towns.
You're not going to see that in Brampton or Mississauga or Toronto or even places like Peterborough, or, going further east, Cornwall, major municipalities in this province. But much smaller municipalities in northern Ontario are going to have a hard time struggling to provide the level of service that all Ontarians deserve. That's something that all my northern colleagues and I are very concerned about: the potential for a growing disparity in the level and quality of fundamental services that up till now the government has delivered, fundamental health services like ambulance, and social housing, social assistance and public health. We believe that is wrong.
Specifically on this bill, it is the best of a bad lot, I guess. Many of our municipal associations in the north - I've been lucky that my Timiskaming Municipal Association as well as the Kenora District Municipal Association did have a lot of input into this bill. They picked up the ball. They understood they were going to have this responsibility and decided to bite their teeth into this thing and do it. They provided some options for the government and a couple of them have been put into this bill.
I think my municipalities are going to be happy with this and maybe some other areas, but as my colleague has stated, not all northern municipalities or districts or areas are going to be happy with this because it's quite limited in its scope of options. There should have been more options for other areas of the north that have particular problems.
I'm really shocked by these downloading costs and I just wonder how our northern municipalities are going to cope. I believe these downloading figures have been designed so they will not cope. In fact, I think they've been designed so that many of them will collapse.
The whole idea of setting up these area service boards is that once we get this second, upper-tier level of government in place - that is, once the Harris government gets this upper-tier government in place - then, as they did in Toronto, they will knock out the lower-tier governments underneath that, the townships and the towns that make up that area service board, so what you'd have would be a handful of regional governments running northern Ontario. I think they will do the same in southern Ontario, so that maybe right across the province we will see, as the years come on, about 50 municipalities.
I think the reason for that and what's driving this is that this government is intent upon reducing the size of the provincial government. What's happening is that it is finding great difficulty and great resistance to private sector companies among the general public in Ontario in doing that. But where there is not so much resistance in doing that is, put it out to the public sector, ie, municipalities. People would have less resistance in seeing services delivered by another level of public service: our municipalities. I think that's the design of this government.
We will see a continuation of downloading of services and responsibilities to Ontario municipalities, but for that to happen you have to have a critical mass of expertise, a critical mass of size so you can get efficient delivery. That's why this downloading and the restructuring that's all connected to this has to happen.
So you have a major restructuring, and that means a major reduction in the number of municipalities across the province. We've gone from over 700, we've lost 200, and I would predict that if this government is allowed to continue in its way, we will see somewhere under 100 municipalities down the road in Ontario, a greatly diminished provincial government and more powerful municipal governments delivering a lot of services across the province. While for straight service delivery in some of these areas that might seem to be more efficient, as the service providers would be closer to those to whom they deliver the services, on the other hand, if you start getting into major areas of health care provision, not all regions of this province have the ability to fund these services equitably. That is going to give us different classes of citizens in this province, and that is something I would never want to see happen in Ontario.
One of the funds in there now for the north, the special circumstances fund of an extra $75 million, is only promised to be there for the next two years. I wonder what the figures are going to look like for our households and individuals in northern Ontario once that special circumstances fund disappears.
It's really interesting that this government has embarked upon this and given this extra burden to northern Ontario on the municipal side, because northern Ontarians in my area, the Timiskaming district, really feel under siege from the Harris government. They really feel under attack from a series of initiatives that the government has undertaken, this municipal downloading being one, Lands for Life being another.
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The idea that in only a few short months northerners can meet right across this province, divided up into three round table consulting groups, and basically divide up the pie of land in northern Ontario as to usage - it's really the notion that we could apply the same principles of urban official plans and zoning to northern Ontario. In fact, I think that's impossible. It's interesting to note that mayors and reeves in my area attending these Lands for Life meetings are wearing Northern Ontario Liberation Army T-shirts. That's the extent to which this has happened, and these are elected officials doing this.
In fact, the town of Cobalt passed a motion asking for a study for the separation of northern Ontario. This is a continuation of a history of this which Ed Deibel had been able to develop in North Bay over 20 years ago. At that time he had been able to build a petition of over 10,000 signatures, as is required to form a new political party in this province. The Northern Ontario Heritage Party was formed. It's still an official party of this province. There has not been a candidate running for that party, but I'm just saying to the members across the way that this is what I am hearing. I think you should take it seriously, as I do.
This is what I am hearing not just from people who derive their livelihoods from resource extraction but from elected officials in my area. It seems to be up again. Ironically, it was back when the Tory government was in power before that this movement got started. I'm saying to my friends in the government party, I want you to take note of this. We're going to have to work to do something to stop this, because I am an Ontarian and I have stated on the record at home that I don't support such a movement. We're going to have to work this out with this government or future governments to try to make sure that northern Ontario has the strong voice it deserves down here and is treated equitably, but that is not the perception, nor, I will say, the reality that northerners are sensing right now in a multitude of initiatives of this government.
Another one is riding redistribution. As we know, the Harris government decided they would adopt the federal riding boundaries for the provincial Legislature, and that will bring a reduction from 130 to 103 seats in this place where I speak tonight. In some highly developed urban areas that may work well, but certainly in northern Ontario, which is 90% of the land mass of this province and over 7% of the population, we will be losing 33% of our seats, going down from 15 to 10 seats. The people of northern Ontario are very concerned about that. They see it as a diminishment and weakening of our voice in this Legislature, the Legislature for the whole province. That, with Lands for Life and the downloading, the reorganization and restructuring of our municipal structure, contrary to what northerners have built over the years, they see as an assault on our way of life and they're very concerned.
On the local level another assault that is being seen in the Timiskaming area, especially around Kirkland Lake, is the idea that is still out there to ship 20 million tonnes of Toronto or southern Ontario or American garbage into an abandoned iron ore fractured rock pit just south of Kirkland Lake. We have now just completed an environmental assessment hearing that has been scoped on that, so again it's soon on its way to the Minister of the Environment for a possible certificate of approval. That means the proponent can market that site to, I suppose, the United States or southern Ontario municipalities to put 20 million tonnes of garbage into that pit. What is interesting is that it will require, according to the proponent and the plan, 125 years of active pumping to make sure that the leachate, the toxic soup that is a product of decaying household garbage, does not get out into the environment. A very elaborate pumping system has to be put in place and it has to work absolutely perfectly and it has to do so for over 125 years. After that, a passive system will kick in for another 800 to 900 years.
Madam Speaker, being interested in the environment, as I know you are, I consider it an absurd notion that for 20 years of increased economic activity in the Timiskaming area, we would basically burden 20 to 30 generations of people ahead of us with the care of that site to make sure that the environment does not get polluted. I think that is absolutely wrong and I cannot believe that any jurisdiction in the world today would condemn the future with that sort of responsibility.
I can imagine a discussion in 200 or 300 years in Timiskaming around a council table or maybe around a kitchen table, people just scratching their heads and saying: "What were they thinking of back there in the late 1990s? What were they thinking of that they put 20 million tonnes of household waste in a fractured rock pit and asked us, 300, 400, 500, 600, 800 years later to take care of it for them, just because they wanted a little boost to their economy for 20 years?" It just doesn't make sense. I guess it's just the dollars talking.
This is not an environmental problem; this is basically a site that's chasing a problem. It's wrong. I don't know what the Environmental Assessment Board is going to recommend to the minister and I don't know what the minister is going to do after that, but it's absolutely an incredible, astounding proposal. It seems the government is looking with favour towards this project, and I say to the government members, you should look before this gets any further, because this is absolutely wrong.
I'll say to you too that if you think the anger that is developing in my area in regard to these issues before us today, such as in Bill 12, with the development of the area service boards, the downloading, the restructuring, Lands for Life, and riding redistribution - just wait for the reaction you're going to see from the people in my area. The vast majority of the people in my area, I would say now over 90% of the people in my area, are against this. Just wait until you see the reaction if this thing is given the go-ahead. In that wonderful little clay belt agricultural area where most of us live and farm and derive our livelihood, people working on that 40-mile-by-40-mile clay belt area will not tolerate, 200 metres above us, this large tailings pond filled with these toxins from this leachate system just sitting there. It's just not the right thing to do.
It's the arrogance of technology and the absolute belief in the infallibility of engineering that has brought us to this stage. I would remind us, as we have been reminded by popular culture of late, of other examples in the past where absolute belief in the infallibility of engineering and technology brought us to disasters. The Titanic is an interesting example, where there was such arrogance in the belief of the infallibility of that ship that there was not the need, according to the engineers of the day, to equip that boat with enough lifeboats to get all the people off.
The main difference between the Titanic and this is that the Titanic only put one generation of people at risk; in fact, just the people on that boat at that particular time. This project puts 30 to 50 generations of people at risk, because that is the active life of that dump. It is unbelievable that we would consider such a project.
Again I say that there will be one heck of a reaction from people from all over this province once they start to understand the magnitude of what is being proposed here. After all the years of work and toil that northerners have put into the building of this economy - actually, in years past really developed the initial wealth of this economy before that wealth-generating capacity moved to southern Ontario - northerners will be totally incensed, and I think all Ontarians will be incensed, that this is the way we are to be treated. After developing that wealth and contributing and opening up our hinterland and developing our resources, that's what we're going to be treated with, that as our reward, we will be receiving a wonderful gift of 20 million tonnes of waste from southern Ontario. That should not happen. It should never happen. I certainly will do everything in my power to make sure it does not happen.
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The Deputy Speaker: Questions and comments.
Mr Bisson: I enjoyed listening to the last couple of speeches by the other opposition party.
Interjection: What about the member for Sudbury?
Mr Bisson: The member for Sudbury I thought actually raised some interesting points about how northern communities - and it was touched on by the member for Timiskaming as well - have this increasing sense over the last couple of years of being rode roughshod over to a certain extent when it comes to what the provincial government does about decisions that affect northerners.
You're quite right: You're starting to see in the north people talk about secession from the rest of Ontario. You're seeing another political party. There's some discussion actually in your riding, in Timiskaming, of having another party formed in order to deal with trying to head up that whole movement.
I think the government members have to be careful, because northerners understand how important a role government can play in their lives in northern Ontario because of where we are in geography and also because of what happens in the economy. Ford is not going to move to Timmins or to Kapuskasing easily. To attract that kind of investment, you have to have an active participation on the part of the provincial government and the federal government and local entrepreneurs and others to try to attract investment into those communities. We have natural draws such as our resource-based industry. We have the service industry, which is natural, in northern Ontario as well. But to attract some of that heavier investment when it comes to secondary manufacturing is much more difficult to do. Northerners get the sense from the provincial government that when it comes to economic development they really are not in the game, and they're not used to that.
The second part is that they are also, as northerners, starting to understand, and they've always understood, that when it comes to government services such as health, education and other programs that are important for northerners, government again has to play an important role. They see the government withdrawing from that and, quite frankly, are feeling pretty perturbed about the process and about what's going on in the end.
Mr Spina: I will take this opportunity to respond to some of the comments by the Liberal Party members - from northern Ontario, I might add, with due respect. I'm going to keep some of my powder dry, as they say, for my share of the comments a little bit later.
Mr Bisson: Come on, let's go.
Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound): Light your powder.
The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.
Mr Spina: But why hold back?
The interesting thing about this particular legislation is that the objective of this legislation is enabling legislation. This legislation is not intended to force amalgamation. This legislation is not intended to force people to be involved in a process that they are unwilling to be involved in. This legislation is intended to have local solutions, local representation, local decisions and local responsibilities.
I agree with the concern of the member for Timiskaming where so often southern Ontario and Queen's Park have created made-in-southern-Ontario solutions. I agree with the member for Sudbury when he says that northern Ontario is unique. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that northern Ontario is distinct. Nevertheless, we know that and we appreciate the fact that northern Ontario does have a unique set of circumstances, very different certainly from the major urban areas in other parts of the province. This legislation is intended to permit local representation, local solutions, and the local representatives to take responsibility for their own governance. That is their goal.
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I want to simply commend my colleagues from Sudbury and Timiskaming for their observations on what is an important piece of legislation.
I intend myself to address some remarks later this evening to Bill 12, but this legislation deals with a very important reality that more and more Ontarians have no personal experience with. As this political culture of ours becomes more suburbanized, with one in two Ontarians now living within half an hour's drive of the CN Tower in the heart of downtown Toronto, it is hard to imagine the reality that many of us have experienced. If you have not driven from, say, North Bay along Highway 11 to Nipigon, almost 1,000 kilometres in a vast arc across northern Ontario, I think you should do it some day, because if you take -
Hon Noble Villeneuve (Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, minister responsible for francophone affairs): In the summer.
Mr Conway: Winter, I say to the Minister of Agriculture. It's 1,000 kilometres across a great Siberian arc from North Bay to Nipigon, and if you take out of that arc the urban municipalities of Timmins and Kap and Hearst, you have much of the reality of Ontario north of the French River.
As a government and an assembly responsible for that vast domain, a vast domain that we as a provincial government own in Her Majesty's name, we must in the course of this debate think seriously in this modern age how it is we organize, deliver and pay for services in that vast and magnificent land, most of which, I repeat, we own, and almost all of which has some of the lightest population density that you'll find anywhere in Canada.
Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): I'm going to restrict my comments to the remarks by the member for Timiskaming because unfortunately I didn't hear the remarks from the member for Sudbury, but I'm assured they were excellent and I'll just rely on that.
In talking about the north, those of us who are from the south traditionally look at the north as an area that has been known for people who are hewers of wood and drawers of water. It's a place of great natural resources, and that's something we need to respect. We also need to respect the amount of government involvement that it requires to develop that area.
We can't be turning that area into a place where we just draw those resources out and never contribute anything back, and certainly we can't turn that area into a great, big garbage dump for those of us in the south. The remarks from the member for Timiskaming with respect to the Adams mine proposal really brought back to me some memories that I had when we were doing waste management hearings a number of years ago. He talked about the importance of long-term maintenance for that site. It reminds me as well of this idea that we should deposit nuclear waste somewhere in the Canadian Shield up north, which is something I disagree with as well. But I've always been opposed to the Adams mine site as being an area for waste disposal for the Metro Toronto area, and I seem to recall that the member for Timiskaming was opposed to that at some point in time.
Mr Bisson: He was for it.
Mr Lessard: Oh, he was for it, that's right, but then he became opposed to it. He made this big transformation shortly before the last election, which I find kind of interesting. I hope he comments on that as well in his remarks, how he went through this transformation.
The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Member for Sudbury.
Mr Bartolucci: I'd like to thank the members for Brampton North, Renfrew North, Cochrane South and Windsor-Riverside for their comments.
Might I suggest to the House this evening that if the government could assure everyone that the special circumstance fund was in place permanently for northern Ontario under the name of the northern Ontario investment fund, whatever, this legislation would be much more palatable, because the people in the north wouldn't be fearful of the fact that the downloading costs are so enormous that they may not be able to cope with them.
There's a simple solution to the dilemma the government finds itself in with Bill 12: simply ensure what the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities and the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association want. They want the special circumstances fund made permanent in northern Ontario to ensure that those downloading problems that every municipality, at least at this point in time, 500 small rural and northern municipalities, are experiencing won't happen in the future because there will be a permanent fund to address that. If that happened, I would suggest to you that we wouldn't have nearly the problems you're having with this legislation, with Bill 12.
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Mr Spina: Done.
Mr Bartolucci: The parliamentary assistant for the Minister of Northern Development and Mines says it's a done deal. I'd like him to make it public. Hold a news conference. Tell the people in northern Ontario that the special circumstances fund will be made permanent and will be called the northern Ontario investment fund. That's what the parliamentary assistant for the Minister of Northern Development and Mines just finished saying. Do it and lots of the problems in northern Ontario are solved.
The Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Bisson: I'm glad today to take part in this particular debate on Bill 12. I'm not going to read the title, because unlike most of the titles of this government, it's innocuous and real long and supposedly has a political message in it. But to say the least, Bill 12 is all about creating area services boards.
Let's try to put this in a little bit of context. With this bill, the government on the one hand is trying to create area services boards. The process they want to use in creating those boards is an enabling process within the legislation that I think, quite frankly, is not a bad idea. If you're going to ask municipalities to organize together in a different way to be able to deliver services more efficiently or for other reasons, because there's less money to go around, as is the case now, and you're trying to find ways to save bucks to deliver services, we need to try to find a process that is locally driven. I support that. I think locally driven solutions are always the best solutions for our communities. We don't need to debate that for long, because we understand that they are the people who make the decisions, they are the ones closest to the services, they are the ones with their ear to the ground on what the constituents say. In the end, I think they should be the ones coming up with the compromises that need to be made in order to be able to deliver those services.
When you look at this bill and you read through it, there's much in this bill that I can agree with. I agree with the process of saying, "We're not going to go the Bill 26 route and force the amalgamation process." Rather, under Bill 12 they're saying, "You can form an area services board if you want," by municipalities getting together, themselves working out the details, deciding what the geographical boundaries should be, what the representation should be, what area services they should be delivering together, what the taxation model should be, having local individuals make all of those decisions so that they can figure out for themselves the best solution for their local communities. That I can support. I haven't got a problem with it.
But I think we've got to put this in context with what the government is doing overall. There's another bill that's associated with the area services boards that we're not talking about tonight, and that's the bill that was introduced by the Honourable Janet Ecker around creating district services boards. You've created quite an interesting situation. You've said, "We want municipalities across northern Ontario to, on a regional basis, deliver a number of services, such as housing, social services and district homes for the aged, and we are going to force you, the municipalities, to do that through a forced process in putting together a district services board."
Then you come with this bill now in the spring and you say: "But if you don't like that - at the bare minimum you're going to have to form a district services board - we have this other enabling legislation for you to allow you to create an area services board that will encompass those services that were downloaded first of all by the province and then organized under the district services board. Through Bill 12 we will allow you to create another model that will include a whole bunch of other services if you choose and bring them into it."
With Bill 12 as it stands itself, as far as enabling legislation giving municipalities the ability to themselves determine if they want to create an area services board, I have no problem. Where the problem comes in is that you're saying on the one hand: "We want you to form district services boards. We have set up the bill through Janet Ecker, the Minister of Community and Social Services. We force you in northern Ontario to do as the provincial government tells you to do. If you want to do something different, here's the legislation by which to do it."
I'm saying that you've got this backwards. Actually, it's not even backwards. What you should have done was not come forward with Janet Ecker's bill; you should have come forward with this bill. If you had come forward with this bill and said, "We want people in northern Ontario to come up with locally driven solutions by which they're going to deliver their services," I think you'd probably get a lot more support on this side of the House.
Talking to people like the mayor of Hearst, the mayor of Kapuskasing, Timmins, Sault Ste Marie or wherever else it might be, my sense is that northerners would say, "Yes, you're giving us an opportunity to do this ourselves, to figure out what's best for us." You're saying: "Go form an area services board. We're giving you the enabling legislation to do so, and you have three years to do it, or else at that point the province may come in and do something else."
There might have been an ability to do that, but what you're doing is you are saying, "Here's enabling legislation but, by the way, don't forget we're forcing you by way of district services boards to encompass certain services and put them into 10 regional geographic boards." On the one hand it's some good news, and on the other hand some bad news. That's the first problem I have with it. The other part, which we're not talking about here tonight, was the bill created by the Minister of Community and Social Services.
The second thing you are doing in this bill which I have great problems with is the move on the part of the provincial government to tax at a higher level unorganized communities. This might be a bit of a foreign concept to some people living south of the French River because by and large you have regional governments, but north of the French River we don't have regional governments the way you have down here. We have a number of areas that are called unorganized communities where people decide and choose to live outside of urban areas. They dig their own wells; they do their own septic systems; they bring their own garbage to the garbage dump. They provide all of their own services, and in many cases they organize to plow their own roads. But that's a decision that they make to live in an unorganized community.
By way of this bill, you're going to force these people, who now pay a provincial land tax to the province which amounts to $100 or $200 a year, whatever the rate is now, to pay much larger property taxes. For example, if in the city of Timmins you are paying $2,100 or $2,400 a year, depending on your house, in municipal taxes, if you're caught up in one of these area services boards and you're taxed at levels comparable to the communities around us, I would argue those people in the unorganized communities are going to see their property taxes go up dramatically.
What are they going to get in return? Is anybody going to come and pick up their garbage? No. Is anybody going to come over and make sure their water system is working? No. Is anybody going to ensure that they have a good sewer system? No. None of the services that we take for granted living in urban communities like Timmins, Cochrane, Iroquois Falls or wherever it might be are going to be delivered by the municipality, the new area services board, under what you're proposing. So what people are going to see is -
Mr Peter L. Preston (Brant-Haldimand): - talking about Cayuga.
Mr Bisson: There's a different reality in northern Ontario, and that's what I'm trying to point out here.
South of the French River you have district governments. They've been doing much of this stuff for a long time, and people over the period of years have seen their taxes adjusted accordingly. But what you're going to see through this bill north of the French River is one morning you're going to wake up and, wham, you're going to have a huge municipal tax bill where you never had one before.
The point I want to make, and I plead on behalf of those people living in unorganized communities, is that they made a choice to go live outside of the urban communities. They've gone through the expense of building their homes, of building their water system, their wells, of travelling and doing all the stuff that they did knowing that they were going to get absolutely no municipal services. The exchange is that they paid a provincial land tax rather than paying municipal taxes. Now all of a sudden you're going to come back in and you're going to say to these people, "You're going to be taxed just like the people who live in Timmins or in Red Lake or in Hearst or in Ear Falls or wherever it might be."
I'm saying, like it or not, and you can defend this whatever way you want as a government, those people are going to see this as a tax grab and they're going to see this as taxation without representation. That's how people are going to view it.
If the government were to say to me today, "Listen, Mr Bisson, municipal critic for the NDP, we're prepared to go the way of enabling legislation around ASBs, but we're not going to force people to pay higher taxes in unorganized communities," it might be a little bit easier to get my support. But for me to stand here as a northern member representing, quite frankly, a lot of people who live in unorganized communities who are going to see their taxes go up, I've great difficulty supporting that aspect of the bill.
One of the things that I ask you through this debate - because you will get it at second reading. We understand that. The government has the majority in the House and they will have this bill passed and the bill will go to committee. I want you to reflect on how we can amend this bill at least at the committee level to deal with some sort of transitional system or some sort of exclusion for people who live in unorganized communities. They don't get those services, and I think we need to try to figure out some way that these people all of a sudden don't wake up a year after this bill is enacted and, wham, they're faced with a huge municipal bill. I've talked to a number of different people on this within the government. I've also talked to some people within the ministry. The way they explained it, it sounds a bit innocuous at first, but the point is, the long and the short of the story is, people who never got one before are going to get a municipal tax bill. We need to try to figure out a way to do that.
2010
One of the things I ask before I go on to the other parts of the bill is, if this thing does go to committee, which I imagine it will, we need to try to find a way to do some sort of a transition when it comes to how we deal with unorganized communities. You can't at this point in the game, where somebody's been paying a provincial land tax, say, "You're going to see your municipal taxes go up by 1,000%." It wouldn't be all that far off. If you're paying $200 a year and all of a sudden you're having to pay $2,000, that's a pretty hefty increase. We need to try to find a way to do that.
I remind the government that they supposedly are going to try to do that when it comes to the migration from the old taxation system of Toronto to the new assessment system you put in place. There's been some discussion about how you do that. Under Bill 15, you're putting caps so that businesses in those communities of Toronto aren't going to see their taxes go up by more than 2.5% if their municipal councils decide to use that particular cap process. I'm just saying that when it comes to unorganized communities we need to try to find some way to protect the residents in those communities from seeing huge increases.
I have to say that if you're living in an unorganized community somewhere 50, 60 miles out of town - for example, I know people who live out at Star Lake, out at Keefer Lake, out at Opishing, up by Joe's Half Way and areas like that in unorganized communities. They're having pretty heavy expenses. They have to travel in every day to go to work at Kidd Creek Mines or Royal Oak or wherever it is. There are added expenses of living there because you choose to live in an unorganized community.
They move out there saying: "Oh yeah, I'll have to pay more for gas and heat and hydro and all that stuff, but it's offset because I'm having to pay less municipal taxes. I'm still having to pay more but I'm accepting to pay that additional because I want the lifestyle." If the government enacts this bill the way it is, these people are going to see they've still got to pay the high cost of staying out there by virtue of higher hydro bills; higher gas bills because there's no gas out there, you have to use propane; higher transportation costs. Then they're going to see a municipal increase.
The other issue that's extremely important, other than just the taxation issue when it comes to unorganized communities, is the issue of how these people are going to get representation. It is proposed in this bill that once this legislation is enacted and municipalities decide that they want to create an ASB, the way this bill is written, the province will appoint who will represent those taxpayers on the area service board. That's not acceptable.
You're saying that after the next election there are going to be elections and people on the area service boards running from unorganized communities will be able to stand and go through the democratic process. You have to do that at the very beginning as well. You have a process right now that if a councillor resigns in the city of Timmins or Toronto or wherever, what do you do? You do a by-election and you elect the person. I think the legislation under the Municipal Act says that only in the last year of the mandate does a council have the ability to appoint a councillor. I would want to see the same type of provision.
If I'm wrong, I stand corrected. You certainly cannot at the very beginning just appoint a councillor on a whim. It's important that the people in the unorganized communities that may take part in this area service board should have the ability of electing their own representatives. I wouldn't want to see somebody appointed in my community without having to go through the process of a democratic election.
I know this government supposedly stands for democracy. As I believe strongly in the democratic process, I'm saying amend the legislation so that it at least reflects what we see in the Municipal Act. That would be one of the requests that I make.
The other issue around the unorganized communities that I really feel uneasy about is that the process as it stands under this legislation is that if municipalities, and I'll just use an example, in the Cochrane district - Timmins to Hearst down to Matheson - decide that they want to form an area service board and they come to whatever compromises that they want to do, quite frankly, the unorganized communities can have whatever model that is developed under this process set up under this particular legislation foisted on them.
If the unorganized communities say, "Hey, we don't want this," the way I read the legislation there's going to be very little that residents in the unorganized communities are going to be able to do to say, "We don't like this model. We want to change it in some way to reflect the lack of services that we get in unorganized communities, the level of taxation," or whatever it might be. They won't have an ability, because the way the legislation is written, it's driven mostly by the larger communities. If Timmins and Hearst and Smooth Rock Falls and Mattice and Cochrane and Kapuskasing and Iroquois Falls and Matheson decide they want to all of a sudden move to an area service board - I do know my geography, yes - all the residents within that unorganized area are going to have this process foisted on them. That is not acceptable.
Whatever process we use, we have to try to find some way, not to give more power to the people in the unorganized communities to veto this, because that wouldn't be right either, because there are a lot of people living in the other communities that have a say in this as well, but you have to find some way of giving those people in the unorganized communities some kind of power, so they have some ability to negotiate what's a good deal for them. I don't advocate for one second that we should all of a sudden give them a veto power so they can do what they want, but at the very least I want the people in the unorganized communities to have some say and some power when they come to the negotiating table about how area service boards are going to be formed.
The other thing is that we have to ensure - and I want to put this on the record, because it is an extremely important issue - is that once an area service board is created, if it is created by the municipality, we need to make sure it's not driven by just one community. As a resident of the city of Timmins I understand that in our area we form almost, not quite but pretty close to, the majority of the population within the Cochrane district. But that in no way should give us the power to decide everything that happens on an area service board.
It's very important when creating such a board that the people in the outlying communities have enough power to exercise their will to a certain extent. "Exercise their will" may not be the right words, but they should have an ability, when they to come to the council table of the area service board, to have a strong enough voice that if there's an issue that's counter to their best interests in the smaller communities, they're not overridden by the larger communities. I understand that the way this legislation is written is trying to come to that. That's important and that's something we should have recognized under the district service boards.
I have a great deal of difficulty with the legislative process that has been set up under Mrs Ecker's bill, because that one, the way it's going to be set up, is going to pit larger communities against smaller communities. It's going to put people at odds with each other, where people spend more time arguing with each other about how one's getting away with murder over the other one. We need to make sure that we have some sort of process where - and I hate to use this term, because Brian Mulroney coined it - we create a level playing field when it comes to the power of individual representatives from the various communities coming to this board. So if it's an issue where communities of interest have a particular feel about something, they're not held at bay by just the one community; there needs to be some kind of balance when it comes to that.
Those are my big concerns. To put it very clearly, I support the general intent of enabling legislation. I think that is a step in the right direction. I'm glad that finally after the government created Bill 26, which is basically a government-driven process where they decide what the community of interests are going to be and how this new community is going to be formed - I like this particular process that says local municipalities can decide. That's consistent with the party policy we have as New Democrats, that says all decisions should be at the local level and then the province should be there to assist and pass enabling legislation to allow things to happen in an orderly fashion.
My objection, however, is that I don't like the idea of taxing unorganized communities. I've stated the reason why. I think it's not a good idea. Also, when you're forming the ASB, the unorganized communities are going to get run right over; the larger municipalities are going to decide what happens. We need to find some way of giving those people in the unorganized communities not a veto, not all the power, not an upper hand, but at least some strength to come to the table to negotiate a good deal for themselves. The other issue is taxation. Those are the issues around the enabling part of the legislation and about the area service boards.
I want to take this opportunity to thank the parliamentary assistant, Mr Spina, who took the time last week, with his staff, to sit down with me and provide a good briefing where I was able to ask the detailed questions I wanted to ask around the legislation so we can try to deal with this in some sort of positive way.
I've got to say to the minister that it is a good thing that he has a parliamentary assistant like Joe, who is so dedicated, who tries to do his job and who works really hard - who I will not support in the next election, however.
2020
Mr Lessard: You couldn't vote for him anyway.
Mr Bisson: I can't vote for him; he's not in my riding. But I've got to say, Minister, that Joe has tried to do a good job with this. He's picked up the ball quite well and he's been quite useful in helping me to better understand this legislation and try to find ways to be helpful.
I want to go through a couple of issues in the legislation that I need to have clarified.
In section 37, under "Proposal to establish an area services board," it says in subsection (2), "The Minister may establish principles that municipalities, local services boards and residents of unorganized territory shall consider when developing a proposal to be submitted to the minister."
I'm a little concerned about that. We had a bit of a discussion about that the other day with some of my colleagues. The problem is that it almost sounds as if the minister can set up a process at the beginning that could skew things in terms of how municipalities would get together to try to find a locally driven solution.
We know that this government has had a great deal of difficulty - I shouldn't put it that way. This government is seen by municipalities across this province as being very heavy-handed about exerting their authority and their will on municipalities.
Mr Lessard: Tyranny.
Mr Bisson: I've heard people call it tyranny. I've talked to some of my good friends who are mayors and councillors across this province. I remember the megacity debate we had here in Toronto and I know of the debate that's going on in Ottawa right now and other areas. There are a lot of people who feel that this government has a very heavy hand when it comes to exercising their will about what should be happening in local municipalities.
We see on the one hand that the government says this is enabling legislation, and for that we give them credit, but when I read the fine print in the bill, it says under subsection 37(2), "The minister may establish principles that municipalities, local services boards and residents of unorganized territory shall consider when developing a proposal to be submitted to the minister."
That means the minister can say, "Here's how I view what should constitute an area services board," and set up the rules and set up the principles in such a way that it doesn't leave the local municipalities the kind of latitude they need to get to where they want to go. You may end up scaring people away from ever forming area services boards by doing this, or, on the other side, forcing them into something they don't want.
Some would argue within the government that the minister wouldn't exercise that authority because then he would be seen as having too heavy a hand and he would have to pay the political price. If that's the case, why do you put that section into the legislation?
At the committee level we need to have a few questions answered about subsection 37(2) and clearly understand what you're getting at when you say that the minister may establish the principles. If they're basic principles that are innocuous and are just a process thing, fine, I haven't got a problem. But if the minister can decide in detail what is going to be in an area services board, how it's going to work, what the representation is going to be, who's going to sit on the council, when the elections are going to be and a whole bunch of other things, I've got a great degree of problem with that.
Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I don't believe there's a quorum present.
The Speaker: Quorum?
Clerk Assistant: A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Clerk Assistant: A quorum is now present, Speaker.
The Speaker: The member for Cochrane South.
Mr Bisson: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I say on section 37(2) that we need to clarify what we're talking about when we say the minister may establish the principles. If they are innocuous principles of process, I haven't got a problem, but if that's getting into the area that the minister can decide what's going to be in an area services board and how they are going to work and what the details are, I have a huge problem, because I believe as a New Democrat that it's important that it be a locally driven process where municipalities themselves decide.
It reminds me of something. This government has a habit of trying to say, "Without government intervention, without the government sending its heavy hand into municipalities, nothing would happen." Nothing could be further from the truth. I want to remind members, amalgamations across Ontario at the municipal level and forming regional governments and forming larger municipalities happened way before 1995. I think of the amalgamation of the cities of Thunder Bay and Port Hope. I think of the amalgamation in my own community, the city of Timmins. I think of amalgamations that happened in Toronto and Ottawa and a whole bunch of other places before, and it happened how? It happened by local municipalities themselves deciding they wanted to amalgamate, for their own reasons.
I think of the debate that happened in the city of Timmins some 25 years ago. There were a number of municipalities - Whitney, South Porcupine, Schumacher, Timmins, Mountjoy township - that decided they had come to the point where it made some economic sense and some social sense from a planning perspective to form one city called the city of Timmins. At the time there was debate, as there is all the time with these types of issues. There were people on both sides of the issue, some for, some against. There was a long process of discussion at the municipal level, and finally there was a referendum during one municipal election, and the people decided they wanted to amalgamate. The province did the right thing. The Tory government at the time said: "Okay, that's what the residents in the area of Timmins, Schumacher, Whitney, South Porcupine want to do. Fine. We will pass enabling legislation allowing that to happen."
The point I make is that when the government comes into this House saying, "Oh, the 10 lost years. Nothing ever happened before. Oh, it was terrible, the NDP and the Liberals. Oh my God, how awful it was," I've got to remind you, a lot of good things happened in Ontario for a lot of years because people at both the provincial and local levels did the right thing. It really irks me when the government comes in here - I listened to what happened during the debate over the megacity. The government was saying: "Oh, this will never happen. The province has to force the situation." With time, local communities come to their decisions based on where they're at and based on what their realities are and based on what their constraints are. Why? Because, as many members in this assembly believe, as do I, local municipalities are among the most responsible level of government when it comes to delivering services. They are closest to the constituent, they're the closest to the service, and by Jesus, they want to do what's right because they keep themselves close to what the constituents want.
Interjection.
Mr Bisson: I withdraw the comment. I didn't mean that in any other way than as "By Jiminy," one of those things. You're right. I take that back.
The point is simply that municipalities themselves will come to the conclusion about how they need to amalgamate when the time is right for them, and the province, as far as I'm concerned, should not be trying to force the process. If the government wants to allow that to happen or wants to accelerate it, there should be positive measures put in place to assist municipalities to do so and to give them some sort of reward for doing it. But to do it the way we've done it now, under Bill 26 and other pieces of legislation, where it's like forced amalgamation and "If you don't do it we'll shoot you," I don't think is a very useful process.
I also want to raise another concern I have with this legislation under subsection 38(3). This is one that gives me a great amount of concern. It's what happens once the municipalities have decided they want to form an area services board. They come to an agreement, they put together a plan and they send that plan off to the minister and say, "Here is what we've decided to do as local citizens in our community, and we would like you as the minister to approve what we've done and allow us to go forward with the model we've developed." Well, it says here in the legislation, "The minister may amend an order as the minister considers appropriate."
What does that mean? What it sounds like to me is that the minister, once the request is made to create an area services board, can say: "I don't like the idea that you didn't include this particular geographic location," "I don't like the idea that you've not done a particular thing when it comes to representation," or "I don't like your taxation model," or whatever it might be. The minister has quite a bit of power here to amend what the local people have brought forward.
2030
This is interesting, because this is different from what you put in Bill 26. Bill 26 wasn't written this way, and Bill 26 in a lot of ways is much more draconian than what you've got in Bill 12. Under this one, you've said: "We'll give you enabling legislation to allow you to create area services boards. Go out and do it." Then when the municipalities in good faith go out and do that and come back in, the minister has the power to amend to a great degree the plan the municipalities have brought forward. If this is enabling legislation, I don't think the minister should have that power.
If they're doing something that's inconsistent with another act, that's a different matter and that is dealt with later on in this legislation. But when it comes to what the new community would actually consist of and you decide to do that by way of subsection 38(3), I think you're giving the minister far more power than the minister actually needs to allow this to happen.
The point is, if you're saying this is enabling legislation, make it so: make it enabling, and don't give the minister the power to change the plan the municipalities bring forward and do what he or she considers appropriate.
I know they're going to argue and say: "Our minister will never do that. Don't worry about it. The minister would not interfere once a plan comes before the ministry." Who knows? I've seen ministers of the crown do some pretty strange things over the years.
Mr Martin: Especially the last three years.
Mr Bisson: Particularly in the last three years I've seen some pretty strange things. The point is, if I see this kind of clause in legislation I get a bit suspicious.
One of the things I look forward to as the government moves to amendments and moves to the committee stage of this bill - I think we need to have some discussion about that, and I'm sure a number of municipalities and people who make submissions on this will raise that section and say, "If you're telling us as municipalities, `Go out and create your own area services board and develop the model that makes sense for you,' and we bring it over to you and the minister can change it and turn it on its ear, we're not interested."
Why would a municipality enter into a process that in the end can be skewed by the minister? Allow the municipalities to do what they've got to do, provided that they follow the intent of other pieces of legislation. Allow them to do that, and the minister's role should be to review the plan, make sure it is consistent with all the provincial policies and legislation. If that is the case, the minister should then pass the plan, should not have the ability to amend it if it's in keeping with provincial policies and legislation.
There is another section of this bill that troubles me. I guess this is a philosophical argument, because the government members took this position on other legislation, when they created the new school boards; they're being consistent, at least, if nothing else. Under subsection 39(4), when we get into the powers of the elected members of the board, it says an employee of a board is not eligible to hold office as a board member.
I know you did this same thing in Bill 160, when you created the legislation to create the super school boards. But I have a great deal of difficulty with it. We, as a government, tried to move the clock forward in this province: We gave people who work in the civil service the ability, if they want to, to run politically. As New Democrats, we believe that all people in our community, all people in our society, if they aspire to run at the municipal, provincial or federal level, whatever it might be, should have the ability to do so.
You've already repealed that legislation; if I remember correctly, that is where they got that particular right. What you're saying in this bill is that people who work for the province of Ontario, for example, could not run for election. Some did in the last election; some provincial government employees ran in the last provincial election. I think that's fine. Some of them ran for my party. That's great; that's their choice. Some Tories ran. As a matter of fact, the person who heads the OPSEU local here in our own precinct ran in Hamilton against our Minister of Labour, the person who brought that legislation forward. I don't agree with his philosophical beliefs as a Conservative, but I believe strongly that he should have the ability to run - and it was the NDP government that allowed him to - because that particular individual had beliefs and had convictions and wanted to express those in a democratic election. I believe that's important.
But in this legislation, you're doing what you've done by repealing our legislation and by creating Bill 160. You're saying that an employee of a board is not eligible to hold office as a board member. If I understand it, you're putting the person in a pretty tricky situation, because you're saying, "If you want to run, you've got to quit." If you say to the person, "You can run and if you're elected you have to stand down or maybe declare a conflict of interest when you get to a matter that affects other employees," it might be acceptable, but to say you can't run is wrong. In a democratic society, all people who have the will to run for political office should be allowed to do so, even if it is running for a political office they are employees of. If the person works for the Legislative Assembly or the OPS or the greater public service, they should have the ability to run for provincial office.
I think the same should hold true for local office. If a municipal employee wants to run as alderman or mayor, or if they live in area and they're an employee of that area services board, they should also have the ability to do so. I know I'm not going to get you to move on this, but for the record, to be consistent with what I believe is important, I want to say that those people should have the ability to run.
Also, under subsection 39(6), it talks about members from unorganized territories. It says: "Except with respect to the first board, a board member who represents unorganized territory shall be elected by the residents of the unorganized territory...."
This basically means, as I mentioned a little earlier, that when the area services board is first created in the unorganized community, you as a government will appoint who sits on that board, unlike in municipalities, where it will be elected officials who sit on the board. For example, if we decide in the area of Cochrane to form our own area services board, the city of Timmins will pick their representative from their municipal council, and the towns of Cochrane, Kapuskasing and others will do the same. At least they're elected municipal politicians. In the case of the area services board, you're saying, "We're the province and we're going to pick your representative." I don't think that should be the case. Even if it's a term of one year or one and a half years, whatever it is, I think we should allow a local election to choose who that representative is.
The province will argue that it's a question of cost: "We don't want to spend more money than it's worth."
The government member is looking at me. It's in the legislation. Read it. It's subsection 39(6) on page 7.
I think it's important that we respect the democratic process and say, "We understand that it's going to be expensive to run a municipal election for the people who want to represent the unorganized communities; we understand that the term may only be a year or a year and a half and that expenses would be incurred to run an election," but it is only within those unorganized areas, and I think the cost is worth it. Democracy is worth something, in my view. If it means we have to spend $5,000, $10,000 or $25,000 to run a municipal election for the unorganized communities the first time out, I think we should do so and I think we should amend the legislation to make sure that happens.
The other issue is a side issue. I understand why the government is saying, "We want area services board representatives to be elected officials from local municipalities." I understand why you're doing that, because in the end they are the ones creating it and they need to have some control over how the tax dollars are going to be spent and what services are going to be governed and how you're going to pay for it.
But again my fear is that what's going to happen in the long run is that you may end up, probably not even willingly in the beginning, creating regional governments, because what could happen over time is that you give these area services boards the ability to go and get a lot of the soft services in communities now: district homes for the aged, waste management, and the list goes on. I think there are 12 core services they could go and get, and they are going to have quite a lot of services, quite a large budget. They're going to have the bulk of the responsibility for delivering services at the local level, and at some point I think some person somewhere along the line is going to say: "Hang on a second. We should just become district governments. Why do we need an area services board? We're making the decisions. We control a very big budget. We levy major taxes for people within our area services boards. Quite frankly, we do everything else a regional government does. Why don't we just create a regional government?" And all of a sudden there's going to be a pressure by people on the area service boards and others to move this one step closer to what will be regional government.
2040
I'm not a big fan of regional government. I look at regional governments in places like Nova Scotia and Manitoba and others and, when it comes to municipal services, those jurisdictions have nothing on us. Even in northern Ontario where it's difficult to deliver services, our level of infrastructure in our communities is much better, much stronger and much more efficient in areas like Timmins, Kapuskasing and others where local communities deliver them compared to what you see in places like Nova Scotia.
I had the opportunity about a month ago to travel through Cape Breton, had an opportunity to see many of the communities on the eastern and western shores of Cape Breton, and it was really interesting to talk to local politicians and to talk to local citizens about how municipal government works in Cape Breton, because they have a regional style of government and it has been in place for a long time. When you drive through Cape Breton, there is no infrastructure. There is no cohesion as far as identity of communities. It really is a different world when you look at how municipal governments are run over there. They're run on a regional level.
My fear is that what you're going to do in the longer run, not in a year or two down the road, but five, 10 years down the road, you're going to be creating the argument to form regional governments and what we will end up with at one point is 10 huge municipal governments in northern Ontario that will be the size of the districts as we know them now and municipalities that'll have virtually no power. The regional governments will decide everything, and you're going to have that at the municipal level - you've already created this at the school board level - and local communities will start to lose their identity. I'll tell you, it's important, because you just have to travel through northern Ontario to see the difference.
There is a huge difference between the city of Timmins and Iroquois Falls and some would argue that it's size. It's much more than size, because if you start comparing Iroquois Falls to Cochrane or Cochrane to Matheson, there are huge differences in those communities as well and they've struck out for themselves their own identity, they've developed the services that are important to them, they've decided to go in the directions they have over a period of years. Some communities have focused more on one thing or another, but they've done that through their municipal governments and their municipal governments have enough power and enough ability with the powers that they have to be able to shape the destiny of their own communities.
If you form large regional governments, what you're going to end up with is large regional governments that'll make decisions about all these communities and those communities are going to be lost in the process. I'm not a big fan of regional government and I very much fear that where this legislation is going to go in the long run is that you're going to end up forming 10 regional governments in northern Ontario.
I want to be on the record as having said that, because I remember having this discussion with local municipalities at the NOMA meeting in Timmins, I guess it was last fall. All of them shared pretty well the same concern. They said, "Where you're going to end up with this in the long run is that you're going to form 10 regional governments which are going to decide what the taxation level is, what level of service has to be delivered for all of the communities within the region." That I think is not going to be a good thing.
We're starting to see it at the school board level. They are making decisions at the school board level now that I think are going to be really problematic in local communities. For example, one of our boards - I believe it's the French Catholic board - has decided to close one of the major schools in the city of Timmins. At this point it hasn't made a big splash in the media, but I think as these decisions start to go on you're going to see people at the regional level making decisions about local communities that'll be to the detriment of their communities.
I envision under this new school board structure schools in communities like Raymore, schools in communities like Val Gagné are going to close because the government has decided through the funding formula that any school that's under 300 is not going to be viable. Those are the kinds of decisions you'll get when you have large regional government. You look at things from a dollars-and-cents perspective and you just look at it from that alone, and you make decisions. There might be a dollars-and-cents perspective in closing a school in Raymore, you might save a few bucks, but I'll tell you, you'll destroy that community.
The school is everything. It's where people go to meet as a community when they want to talk about issues that are important to them, when they get together to celebrate things that happen in the community of Raymore, when a play is going on in the community, anything. That's where it happens. It is the centre of the community. You pull the school out of a community like that, your government may end up saving a few bucks, but the cost to that community when it comes to its identity and its ability to survive as a community really withers away - not to speak about what it means to the kids.
You're going to have to put kids in kindergarten, because there won't be any pre-kindergarten in about a year's time with this government. But starting at the kindergarten level up until the time they've finished high school, these kids are going to have to travel on the bus, depending on what school they're going to, 30 minutes to an hour every day just one way. You're going to see kids commuting long distances unnecessarily because the government says, "We want to save a few bucks." If you start to balance off that cost, the social cost and the cost to the families and the children, I think the money saved is a pittance compared to what it will cost over the longer term. That's what you get when you form regional governments: You end up with decisions at the regional level that a lot of times do not have a good anchoring in what is important to a local community.
The other thing they're doing in the legislation, and in the time I've got left I want to talk about it, is something that the government - this has been championed by members like Mr Gilchrist and others who were big fans of this when we started moving towards eliminating a number of ridings in this province. I remember when the government introduced legislation to reduce the number of seats from 130 to 103, northern members like Mr Martin, Mr Wood, myself, Mr Wildman, Mme Martel, Mr Hampton and others said, "Listen, these are huge ridings you're doing, and creating huge ridings will make it very difficult for people to have access to their government through their member." The response we got was: "Oh, well, people can do it by teleconference. People can organize themselves by way of teleconference and be able to deal with issues with their provincial member and when dealing with their government." It doesn't work as far as trying to do large meetings of any type. It might work for an individual who wants to have a question answered, but when it comes to dealing with the issues that are important to communities and working in the community as a member, it doesn't work.
In this legislation what have they done? Listen to this. This is an interesting one. Subsection 40(7) reads, "A meeting of the board may be conducted by teleconference, videoconference or other means of distance communication."
Mr Lessard: They'll probably have to.
Mr Bisson: "They'll probably have to" is the comment from my friend from Windsor-Riverside. That might be the case because of how big these regional boards are going to be.
Interjection: How big is it?
Mr Bisson: I'll give you a sense of how big this is. Our district area service board, if it's created under this legislation, will more than likely be from Matheson all the way up past Hearst into Calstock and taking in Timmins. To drive around to get to a meeting, you're looking at people at the extremes driving a minimum of three hours to get to one meeting. If you get into communities like Timiskaming and the riding of Timiskaming, the distances will be even greater. Can you imagine being in Nipigon or in the district of Kenora and how far you would have to drive to go to a meeting? That is one of the issues.
Interjection: In the middle of winter even.
Mr Bisson: In the middle of winter. They don't even plow the highways any more. The biggest thing they do now is - highways in northern Ontario are safe in the winter because they just close them down. That way you don't have to worry about getting into an accident and flying off the highway. They just close it and they say, "It's perfectly safe. It works real good that way," unless you have to go to the emergency ward or you travel for other reasons.
In the legislation you're saying you're going to overcome these problems and you're going to allow these councils, or boards as you call them, to meet by way of videoconference or teleconference. Have you ever tried to have a meeting with 20 people or even 10 people by way of teleconference or telephone conference? It's impossible.
Mr Martin: And the technology breaks down.
Mr Bisson: I want to get to that point. That's exactly where I'm going.
First of all, the problem is that people don't participate in those types of forums. I had the opportunity recently to give a lecture to some 10 or 15 students by way of Contact North. I'm sure other northern members have had the opportunity to use Contact North. I'll tell you, it is intimidating as the person who has to give the lecture because you never really know who's at the other end, what the response is, what the reaction is. Are they really listening? Are they still there? For all you know, you're talking into air. Every now and then you've got to stop and say: "Is everybody there? Can we go around the table again?"
Mr Lessard: It's not like talking to Joe.
Mr Bisson: It's not like talking to Joe. Talking to Joe is much easier, I find. The parliamentary assistant in northern development, as his predecessor was in the Rae government, is quite a good guy.
Did you sleep in my office okay, Joe?
Mr Spina: Why didn't you introduce the bill?
Mr Bisson: Because I don't believe in regional government. That's why I never introduced it.
The point I make here, kidding aside, is that the government is saying we can do this by teleconference or by videoconference. What ends up happening in those kinds of conferences is that people don't participate, there's no full discussion. After a while, people learn very quickly to say: "Hang on a second. I'm not going to say anything, because as soon as somebody says, `Boo' on a teleconference, everybody else shuts up, it shuts down the process and there's no flow in discussion. It doesn't work too well."
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The other thing they say is, "Well, we can do it by videoconference." First of all, that doesn't work any better really, and the other thing is that half the time it doesn't work. How many videoconferences and teleconferences have we participated in as members in various meetings because the people organizing wanted to do it that way to show off the technology? Here's how the meeting goes:
"Hello? Hello? Kenora, are you there? Hello, Kenora? No, Kenora's lost. Hang on. Let's get hold of the operator. We've got to get Kenora back on the line again."
Five minutes later, Kenora comes back on the line.
"Okay, everybody is here. Can we go around the table again?"
That takes about four minutes. You get around the table and you say, "Oh, Iroquois Falls, are you gone? Hang on. Operator, can you get Iroquois Falls back?"
You never finish the meeting. You spend half your time talking to the operator, saying, "Can you get those people back on the line so we can have our meeting?"
I'm sorry, the process doesn't work. Until they come out with "teleportation," as they have on Star Trek, I will be opposed to any kinds of technological meetings. You invent me a "teleporter" - as they call it on Star Trek, a transporter - no problem. Beam me up, Scotty. I'll be at the meeting any time. But until then, no thank you, I'm not interested in any kind of videoconference or telephone meetings of that type. If you're doing a one-on-one, I have no problem with it; it's like a telephone call.
"Hi, Joe, how's it going? Everything's fine up at my former office?"
"Yes."
"Are you doing a good job?"
"No."
"Move aside, I'm coming over."
It's a pretty simple conversation. But once you try to get a whole bunch of other people into the meeting, it is a bit of a problem.
The other thing they do in the legislation, under subsection 40(8), is understandable, I guess, considering what you're doing in subsection (7), allowing meetings to happen by teleconference and videoconference. Under subsection (8) you're saying, "If it is not practicable to open a meeting conducted by distance communication under subsection (7) that would otherwise be open to the public, the public shall be given access to the minutes of the meeting."
In any other government, if people want to pop in and sit in on what we're doing over here, they can come into our Legislature any time and participate. That's one of the tenets of democracy. In fact, in the provincial Legislature of Ontario, as others, we carry it one step forward. People can watch at home, they can flick through, they can see what's happening in the debate tonight, they can listen to all sides of the debate. They can then pick up the telephone or pick up a pen or get on the Internet and send us their thoughts about what we're talking about.
Mr Lessard: They can call you right now. Why don't you just give them the number and the e-mail address.
Mr Bisson: They can call me right now. Give me a call. My e-mail address is: gillesb@ntl.sympatico.ca. If you want to send -
Interjection.
Mr Bisson: Oh, yes. You don't know your own Internet address?
Mr Spina: Say it again.
Mr Bisson: It's gillesb@ntl - oh, he does know. Okay. Anyway, I digress here. We're having a bit of fun tonight.
Interjection: We're having lots of fun.
Mr Bisson: We're having a lot of fun, not a little bit of fun. It's pretty hard to make a speech with you guys around here.
Interjection: Thank you.
Mr Bisson: You're welcome. Any time.
The point I make is that they're saying, "We'll just provide minutes of the meeting, and that's how people can participate." I don't think that's good enough. If people are allowed to go to the provincial Legislature or the federal House to participate by listening to the debate, if people at the municipal level can go and listen to their city council or their town council deliberate motions at the municipal level, I think people at the area service board should be allowed to as well. I think having teleconferences or having videoconferences is not only cumbersome when it comes to technology, not only is it difficult for people to participate as participants of that board, but it's going to be virtually impossible for the public to keep tabs on what their council is doing if they're meeting by way of videoconferencing.
I believe strongly as a New Democrat that the principles of democracy are important. One of the principles of democracy is that people have the right to come and watch what we're doing in order to comment, criticize, suggest, support or whatever else they think is necessary for the debate.
I left this part to the end, to the six minutes I have left, because I think this is basically the politics of the bill. I have had an opportunity to go through the technical aspects of the bill. As I said at the beginning, we support parts of this. We like the idea that it's enabling. We like the idea that you're not forcing the process on to communities. But we have problems with what happens in unorganized communities, and I talked about that earlier.
The politics of this are quite interesting. The government has made a decision, and the decision is that it is going to download a whole host of services on to municipalities. They want to transfer soft services that have traditionally been delivered by the province on to municipalities. They want to transfer family benefits. They want to transfer most of the welfare costs. They want to wash their hands of all that service and say, "Municipalities, take it over." They want to transfer land ambulance services. They want to transfer homes for the aged. They want to transfer issues of housing and a whole host of other services on to the municipality.
Mr Lessard: Public health.
Mr Bisson: Public health. I can go through the list. There are many. That's what the government's policy is. They want to download all those services on to municipalities. The reality is that this is what this bill is all about. The bill is about creating basically a mechanism to deal with the download. If the province was not downloading, much of what's in this bill would not be necessary. Why would municipalities get together to deliver some of these services if they had not been transferred in the first place?
What the government is saying is, "We're going to force you to create a district service board to deal with some of these services, but when it comes to all the other services that we're going to transfer, we'll allow you to deal with the area service boards to deliver these services."
Let's just go through some of the services that you're going to give them the ability to do. As mandatory services that an area service board could deal with you're transferring child care; assistance on the Ontario Works Act of 1997; public health, as my friend from Windsor-Riverside said; social housing -
Interjection: Public health is important.
Mr Bisson: Public health is very important. Yes, it is. Social housing, land ambulance services and homes for the aged. Those are the core services that you're transferring. But then it says - and this is another little kicker in the legislation that made me raise my eyebrows - under subsection 41(2), "If required to do so by an order, a board shall provide...the following services...:
"1. Services promoting economic development." So all the economic development offices in those areas would then be transferred over to the area service board.
"2. Airport service." A huge cost would go over to the area service board.
"3. Land use planning" - big issue. It would mean you would have one agency or one department of the area service board that would do all your municipal permits, land use policy; all that would be done by one.
"4. Administrative functions and prosecutions under part X of the Provincial Offences Act." They would deal with all provincial offences that will now be the responsibility, under Bill 108, of the municipalities.
"5. Waste management.
"6. Police services." What a huge cost that is. In the city of Timmins it's a fiasco, what you guys are doing in transferring policing services on to the municipalities. Vic is pretty upset with you guys, let me tell you. When it comes to the issue of police, Mayor Vic Power, like the rest of his council, is having a great deal of difficulty trying to swallow this last loaf of bread you sent over from the provincial government.
"7. Emergency preparedness and response under the Emergency Plans Act.
"8. Roads and bridges." What a huge cost that is. Can you imagine in the city of Timmins an area service board taking on the responsibility for all the bridges along Highway 11? Let me just hint something to you. Highway 11: Do you guys know the Trans-Canada Highway, of which you've already transferred some sections on to municipalities? Under this area service board, the minister or the parliamentary assistant can decide all of a sudden, by influencing the minister -
Mr Spina: No, he can't.
Mr Bisson: Yes, he can. He can influence the minister and say, "We want to transfer Highway 11 to the area service board." You will be able to do it under this legislation because it says "all roads and bridges." What ends up happening -
Interjection.
Mr Bisson: The federal Liberals? We can talk about them later. They're going to transfer the responsibility for all those highways on to those area service boards.
For a district like mine or like anybody else's in northern Ontario, that's going to be a huge cost: all the snowplowing, all the rebuilding, all the construction of passing lanes, maintenance of the asphalt, building of bridges. It's going to bankrupt those communities or they're going to have to raise taxes. I think municipalities are responsible. They don't want to go bankrupt, so they're going to end up raising municipal taxes.
You're trying to seem like the smart guy, able to balance your budget, but you're transferring all your costs on to the municipalities and you're saying: "You raise the taxes. We wash our hands. We're smart. We did like that guy did back 2000 years ago." You wash your hands of the whole thing.
Mr Preston: Pontius Pilate.
Mr Bisson: Pontius Pilate, exactly. You're basically saying: "You know, we're smart. We can balance our budget. Let these guys do it," and the list goes on, and any other service designated by the minister.
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The interesting part of the legislation is, it says:
"If required to do so by an order," the minister "shall provide...." So the municipality goes out, forms an area service board and says, "We're going to take the six core services because we're a responsible government." They think they're off the hook, they think they've done a good thing, and all of a sudden the minister goes: "Wham, there it is. You got the highways, you got the bridges, you got the airport, you got everything else that I prescribed under the legislation. Not only that, but you've got the bill, and I've got the great big hammer at the end that says, `any services designated by the minister.'" That means -
Mr Spina: Bam.
Mr Bisson: Exactly, Joe. You guys are going to be known as "Bam-Bam." That's what is going to end up happening.
I say to the government across the way, I support the idea of creating area service boards by enabling legislation. I fear in the long run it's going to be a creation of regional governments. I fear what it means to people who live in unorganized communities, because they'll see their taxes go up, and in the end this, I'm afraid to say, is going to be a mechanism by which you download all the provincial services on to the unsuspecting taxpayers. So much for Mike Harris's tax cut. It just went up in smoke with this bill.
The Speaker: Questions and comments?
Mr Spina: The comments by the member are really interesting, and I'm amazed that he actually filled the entire hour on what was allegedly Bill 12. However, it was obvious to all of us that his comments were very limited on Bill 12, and as a result he resorted to a number of other issues, but I was nice enough not to take him to task on the Who Does What, on the education stuff, on tax cuts and so on.
The key thing he's concerned about is the fact that you're looking at another level of government. Frankly, it will not be imposed, bam, by this government or by the minister. The reality is, and I will repeat what I said about the comments from the Liberals earlier on, that this is enabling legislation; this is local solutions, local representation, local decisions and local responsibility. The objective of this entire exercise is to get the province out of the hair of the municipalities. That's the objective that we are trying to achieve.
He talked about representation and consultation. We've been talking about this now for almost an entire year. I'd be happy to talk about the consultation process I went through. I was very pleased and thankful that the member for Cochrane South indicated that we consulted with him to a great degree, because he works hard trying to represent the people of his riding. It was important that he had an understanding of this bill, and that's what we are trying to do: achieve consensus of all three parties to put something into place for the benefit of northern Ontario.
Mr Miclash: The member of the third party certainly has brought forth some very interesting concepts, when you come to pitting one group up against another group. This is something this government seems to be good at. We've seen them pit municipalities against health unit boards; now we've seen them pit municipalities against unorganized territories. When we take a look at the folks in unorganized territories, yes, they're very concerned about this legislation. As has been indicated a number of times, the Kenora District Municipal Association has said, "Yes, we need something like this in order to get some control over the unorganized territories."
The important thing is that we have to allow this to move on to the next step, to move on to committee, to allow the committee to get hold of some of the ideas, some of the problems that have been pointed out and that we'll continue to point out with Bill 12 as the bill moves across the province with committee - and I hope it would get into northwestern Ontario - to listen to some of the people who are in unorganized territories who do their own garbage collection, as has been pointed out, take care of their own water, their own snow removal, their own waste systems, and take a look at the arguments they have. When it comes to taxation, it can't just be an overnight decision, as the member has indicated, just a bam-type thing where all of a sudden they wake up to a huge tax bill.
These folks need the opportunity to present to the committee to put forth their arguments. As I indicated earlier, this has certainly been legislation that has pitted the municipalities against those living in the unorganized territories.
Representation was something else the member spoke about. We've seen what's happened in northwestern Ontario in terms of our school boards that have been combined, and the problems that has brought about with representation and the distance factor.
Again, I look forward to this legislation moving to committee.
Mr Martin: I want to take this opportunity to commend the member for Cochrane South, soon to be the member for all of Cochrane because of -
Mr Bisson: The member for northeastern Ontario.
Mr Martin: - northeastern Ontario - what this government has done to northern Ontario with the realignment of the jurisdictions, of constituencies we will represent.
He did a super job of connecting the pieces, because they really are connected. You can't separate anything in this bill from anything else that has gone on that this government has imposed on the communities of northern Ontario. However, I don't share his enthusiasm for the provision in the bill that he suggests is enabling legislation, because nothing this government has done so far has been anything other than imposing everything and anything on other jurisdictions - imposing costs, imposing blame, and at the end of the day, imposing political responsibility. I dare say that at the end of the day when we see the impact of this on the communities we all represent, it will be another of the same old story.
I think it's also important to point out that, actually, if municipalities in northern Ontario want to get together now, they can do so and have done so.
Mr Bisson: Good point.
Mr Martin: Your community of Timmins is an excellent example. I know in Sault Ste Marie a few years ago there was an amalgamation of different communities because they felt it was in their interest to do that. If it's enabling that you're looking for, just leave us alone and let us do our thing.
This is actually all about the download. This is about trying to find a way to spread the costs over more communities, over more people. They know that the cost of paying for the services they've imposed on communities will cost them way more than they can ever produce by way of property taxes, so they're looking for other properties to tax. This is what this is about. It's about taxing more properties in northern Ontario and you won't get away with it.
Mr Parker: I listened with interest to the comments from the member for Cochrane South on the subject of this bill and on other subjects as he seemed to pad out his hour with remarks on other matters somewhat more tenuously related to the bill.
The member was quite clear in his lack of support for our government and in his lack of enthusiasm for telephone conference calls, and on that subject I have to admit some sympathy for the experience of the honourable member. On the subject of this particular bill, however, I'm a little less clear on whether the honourable member supports it or not. I'm left with the suspicion that maybe he supports it and I look forward to his vote on the subject when it finally comes time to make a decision.
This is a bill, after all, which gives freedom of choice to northern communities. It's enabling legislation. It's legislation that allows northern communities to decide for themselves whether they want to have an area service board, and if they want to have one, they are able to have one under the authority of this bill. If they don't want to have an area service board, they don't have to have one. This bill doesn't require them to have an area service board, but it does permit them to have an area service board.
This bill was the result of a great deal of consultation on the part of the minister and on the part of the minister's parliamentary assistant. It's a bill that deserves the support of all members of this House. I believe all members from northern Ontario should look forward to it with enthusiasm and I look forward to the vote from the other side when this matter comes to a vote.
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The Speaker: Response.
Mr Bisson: To the members who participated, thank you very much to the member for Kenora. To the member for York East, I want to make it perfectly clear that I will not be voting in support of the legislation. I think I was quite clear. What I had to say was that I support, on the one hand, what you're trying to do by way of enabling legislation - I could support that - but I have some problems with what you're doing with unorganized communities. However, I don't kid myself. The bill will pass the second-stage process because the government has a majority and I believe the Liberals will vote with you. When it goes to committee, I'm hopeful that maybe we can amend parts of this legislation so that I can give you support on third reading.
To the member for Sault Ste Marie, whom I always respect because he is a great member when it comes to being able to connect all the varying points about what this government is doing, I understand he gave quite a remarkable speech last night in this House exactly around that. I couldn't agree more. This is the mechanism by which you download services. That's what this area service board legislation does.
I revert back to section 41. You have a number of services you're downloading on to municipalities in the first six paragraphs, and then you say, "If required to do so by an order, a board shall provide...." If, in other words, the minister decides to download services promoting economic development, airport services, land use planning, waste management, administration of the Courts of Justice Act, police services, emergency services, roads and bridges like Highway 11, the minister has the power to download that, and that's what you're giving yourselves under this legislation, and then the wham factor is - wham, bam, thank you, Sam - any other service designated by the minister. That scares me.
To the member from Brampton, you said you want the province to get out of the hair of the municipalities. My God, the municipalities are feeling like they've got an Afro, because you certainly have not been out of their hair in the last three years you've been in power.
The Speaker: Further debate? Member for Brampton North.
Mr Spina: Speaker, you say that with such wonderful enthusiasm. Thank you.
Interjection: Well, it being almost 9:30.
Mr Spina: It being almost 9:30 of the clock, I will attempt to conclude my remarks by that time.
I'm pleased to rise today for second reading debate on the proposed Northern Services Improvement Act. As the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Northern Development, I take a lot of pride in representing my northern colleagues across the way as a native son of Sault Ste Marie and as a person who knows northern Ontario well. As an individual, I've travelled from Mattawa to Jaffray-Melick to ensure that the concerns raised by the people in the municipal governments, by the representatives of the various communities across northern Ontario are also discussed directly with a government member, as well as their own local member who just happens to usually be in opposition.
It is a privilege and a pleasure to work on this draft legislation. It's a privilege because, as legislators, we in this House are entrusted with this noble duty to draft and amend and write Ontario's laws. It's a pleasure because this legislation we debate today is the product of a thorough, complete and extensive consultation process. I say that with all sincerity. Let me quote the Sault Star on August 27, 1997:
"Area service boards are an idea that's existed in some shape or form for a couple of decades. As the cost of doing government business soars and the population of many northern centres remains static or even declines, ASBs have been seen as a way to rationalize services over a larger, more sparsely populated area."
I take that as an endorsement of this process.
Since the NSIA was introduced, as the others have indicated, on December 15, 1997, and died when the House prorogued, MNDM and MCSS, the Ministry of Community and Social Services, have convened a series of nine meetings to discuss consolidated service delivery across the north. We had about 550 northern community leaders attend these sessions. ASBs appeared to be the governance structure of choice at most of these sessions.
The NSIA has been positively received in northern Ontario. In fact, three municipal associations - Kenora, Rainy River and Timiskaming - have indicated a desire to create an ASB as soon as this legislation is passed. Twenty-four northern communities have written to the minister personally in support of the Northern Services Improvement Act. That is very extensive consultation, probably more than any other single issue in northern Ontario, and it's critical that we make note of that. I say that because this is an extremely important item to the members of northern Ontario, to the community and to the people of northern Ontario. It's an opportunity for them to get services delivered that they have not been able to have delivered before. It's an opportunity for them to have services delivered in a much higher degree of quality, and yet the costs can be defrayed among a number of partners in the area in that district as part of that area services board.
We're moving forward on a bill that would allow northerners to pool those administrative resources and deliver efficient services at a lower cost to the local taxpayers, and this really has been a team effort. We've talked about a number of things tonight. We have heard comments about taxation. We heard comments about representation. We heard comments about the forced amalgamations or amalgamation options, comments that the member from Cochrane was concerned regarding unorganized communities. These are very realistic concerns, and I say with great confidence that these concerns can and will be met under this enabling legislation. The reason they can be met is because the local partners, the local representatives, will have the opportunity to address these issues through their elected members.
We had comments from the member for Sudbury about upper-tier government and the bureaucracy and administration that would be a duplication. Frankly, I might see that that is a possible option in Sudbury, with a regional government there. However, I spoke at great length with the regional chair, Mr Wong, who specifically made a trip down to Toronto for us to discuss this very issue in that region. I explained to Mr Wong, as I explain to the member for Sudbury, that this is not an enforced option. Enforced option: That's an oxymoron. Mr Bisson, you missed that. You see, it's not an enforced piece of legislation. This is an optional, enabling piece of legislation.
What it means is that if an area services board, for example, were created in Sudbury district - and that goes far beyond the boundaries of the region of Sudbury - what happens is this: The area service board could have the authority, would have the authority if they structured it in such a way, to be able to contract the region of Sudbury to deliver certain services within that particular area. There's nothing wrong with that. But the key element, the key benefit, would be that the people in the unorganized areas of Sudbury district and other smaller organized communities within Sudbury district would be able to avail themselves of services that they might not have now, or they could get them at a lower cost than if they tried to handle them on their own.
It does not have to be a duplication of services. In fact, if they found that at some point down the road the citizens of Sudbury region and the municipalities of Sudbury and Capreol and some of the others like Coniston and Lively decided that maybe there was an opportunity here for them to change the structure of government, that's an option they could take on their own if they chose. This government would not impose that upon them now or in the future. We make that very clear, that this would be a locally elected option for them to pursue.
The members talked about the comments from FONOM and NOMA. Let me quote some of the comments from some of the people. This is a quote from Jay Aspin, president of the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities, now the previous president. Jay says: "The government recognizes the needs of the north are different. We were happy to work with the government during the extensive consultations that have preceded the introduction of this bill and we look forward to working with the government towards its successful conclusion." That's from FONOM.
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Now let's go to NOMA. Neil MacOdrum, who again is past president of the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association, says: "The introduction of this legislation means our members can get down to some of the serious work that must be done to finalize their plans to implement local government realignments. The government has been open to discussion...." I repeat that: This government has been open to discussion. "The legislation reflects the various concerns that NOMA has expressed and taken into account." That's a quote from Neil MacOdrum, past president of NOMA.
Just to list some of the services in terms of the process, what we are looking to do here is accomplish an enabling piece of legislation. What does this enabling piece of legislation do? Under the currently created district social service area boards, three social services would be adopted: child care, assistance under Ontario Works, and social housing. The optional services to be picked up would be public health services, land ambulances and homes for the aged, if and only if an area services board is created.
If an area services board is opted to be enacted and created, what's the next step? We go to additional services, and there are nine additional services.
One is services promoting economic development, which can be very helpful on a broader scale to promote tourism and other elements of economic development, job creation and growth on a grander scale than just focusing on a narrow community.
Airport services: This is an interesting thing, because if we look, for example, at the Sault Ste Marie airport, which I understand has been recently taken over by the private sector in its purchase from the federal government - did I get that right?
Mr Martin: Not quite the private sector. Non-profit.
Mr Spina: Non-profit. Okay. What happens with that particular airport is that all of the people in that region generally benefit from the use of that airport. I'm talking about people from Clear Lake, from Blind River, all the way up to probably as far as Manitouwadge, who might even drive to the Sault to use the Sault airport.
Interjection: Wawa.
Mr Spina: Well, Wawa is farther south. Manitouwadge is even farther.
What we want to make sure of, because of all of these people having the opportunity and the flexibility to use these services, to use that airport, is that all of these people have the opportunity to share in the support of that airport service, if that was adopted by the ASB. Even those people in the unorganized territory which Mr Wildman, the member for Algoma, represents will now have an opportunity to share in those services.
We can also talk about some other uses: land use planning under the Planning Act; administrative functions and prosecutions under part X of the Provincial Offences Act so the benefits of the revenue from the Provincial Offences Act can now be shared by all the other communities within that area services board; waste management, an extremely important area of cost and concern to many communities. It can now allow the opportunity for unorganized territories and smaller municipalities to join forces and pool their services so that waste management can be a lower-cost service that can be delivered to the greater area.
Some people asked the question, and I believe the member for Cochrane South brought it forward, "What happens if a particular area within an area services board chooses not to adopt that service?" Let's say, for example, a municipality did not want to participate in a waste management program. What would happen? Well, what happens is that the area services board has the authority, the flexibility and the option to deal with that on their own. They don't need Big Brother - Queen's Park, the Ontario government - to impose upon them a decision.
Emergency preparedness and response under the Emergency Plans Act, police services that the member talked about: These can now be shared over a broader scale around an area services board so that they can increase the services to that particular community. They can increase the police services, the protection and the patrols, at the same time keeping the cost at a reasonable level.
Roads and bridges: Those are very expensive, and we know that. In fact, I was surprised the member for Cochrane South didn't mention the large bridge that's being reconstructed right now in the city of Timmins. That will be a great help in terms of increasing traffic flow through and around that city.
Those kinds of services can now be shared on a grander scale with the greater area services board. Any other services can be designated by the minister, but only upon request by the ASB, if they choose. So, you see, there are a number of services that can be adopted in this.
We talk again about consultation. If any of the members of the opposition claim this government has not consulted, I remind them that last December 16, I met with the northern Liberal Party caucus members. Mr Bartolucci, Mr Ramsay and Mr Gravelle were all there. Four staff members from other offices representing their members were there. On December 16, I met with some staff members from the northern NDP, but no MPPs, even though some confirmed. It really made me want to question whether or not these individuals had any concern to have this bill succeed, but on January 15, I agreed to come back to Toronto along with those members, to be able to discuss this with the NDP members. Unfortunately and with regret, the member for Cochrane South couldn't attend because of a death in the family, but the other people were there. Mr Hampton, Mr Pouliot, Mr Wildman, Mr Martin, Ms Martel and Mr Wood were all there, and at that time we gave them the briefing under the structure.
This act was created by northerners for northerners. At the briefing session that they had, they want to consider it a joke, but the reality is that they were expecting us to come up with one complete, set structure, to hand them a top-down, imposed solution. They really had difficulty grasping the fact that this is enabling legislation, that the model could be created by the local groups, that the communities can design the ASB along the structure of the bill.
The act is flexible. It allows northern communities to accommodate the local distinctions, and they can be created and personalized, frankly, for the various communities that want those services.
I realize that we are winding down. I just want to wind up by saying that this bill has the opportunity to really create a delivery of services for the members, the communities and the citizens of northern Ontario. The reality is that if we can get this bill through quickly now, we can produce a bill in an environment where the communities can get what they want, not what this government needs or wants. If they choose to adopt that, then they can take that.
So we're making progress. We want to stay on track, but if the opposition members delay the process, our hands are tied.
The Speaker: It being 9:30 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 of the clock tomorrow.
The House adjourned at 2129.