Journal des débats 1998-sept-29 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Mr Michael Gravelle (Port Arthur): There's no question that the government cutbacks to our health care system are the number one issue for constituents in my Thunder Bay riding, but it causes just as much alarm when funding commitments to improve health care delivery are not met by this government.

In 1996 the government was directed to make an immediate investment of $3 million to $4 million to recruit specialists to Thunder Bay. This must happen so the waiting lists for urgent care can be shortened. The fact is that the Thunder Bay region is in dire need of trained specialists to meet our community needs. Despite this desperate situation, the government refuses to act.

The government is also stalling on tackling the problem of physician recruitment and retention to medically underserviced areas as directed by a private member's resolution I put forward in June, which was supported by all members of this House. This government promised $36 million a year to address this chronic problem, yet these dollars remain mostly unspent because the minister refuses the request of northwestern Ontario doctors and the northwestern chambers of commerce to ensure that an adequate physician complement is provided.

The minister is also failing nurse practitioners across this province by refusing to spend a promised $5 million to better integrate these unique health care providers into the system. All of us in this House fast-tracked legislation so nurse practitioners can get to work in the province, yet the minister is now stalling.

Access to medical professionals and front-line service providers is the most vital component of patient care. I urge the minister to break this trail of broken health care promises -

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Thank you.

MUSHROOM PLANT

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): After six years of extremely hard work, the community of Opasatika recently celebrated the official opening of the Opasatika Northern Champignons du Nord Mushroom plant, better known as Northern Whites. The opening of this plant exemplifies the application of northern initiative, hard work and ingenuity. It is the direct result of people coming together and working towards a common goal of creating jobs for the community.

In this context, the Opasatika plant presently employs 20 people, but it is anticipated that within the next three years the plant will mushroom and hire an additional 15 people. Even though the plant produces approximately 5,000 pounds of mushrooms each week, this volume is not nearly enough to satisfy the market demand in northern Ontario, and production will soon be increased to 9,000 pounds.

It is interesting to note that the mushroom plant initially benefited from provincial government funding under the NDP government about six years ago. We believe that access to government loans is important to northern economic development as far too many small businesses suffer from underfinancing. Unfortunately, this Conservative government continually fails to understand the need for a concerted approach to economic development and job creation in northern Ontario.

We believe that government can serve a positive role in helping businesses grow and prosper in northern Ontario. The Opasatika Northern Whites mushroom plant is a fine example of this partnership. We congratulate the people of Opasatika for their steadfast resolve to make this project a success.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr R. Gary Stewart (Peterborough): I rise today in the House to speak of not one but 43 companies from the greater Peterborough area. Last week these companies received cheques totalling more than $200,000 from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board for collectively improving their workplace health and safety performance.

These companies joined the WSIB-sponsored Greater Peterborough Safe Communities Incentive Program in an effort to reduce workplace injuries and illness. This program is sponsored by the city of Peterborough and the Greater Peterborough Chamber of Commerce and is funded with seed money from the Safe Communities Foundation. The participating companies reduced their collective costs by more than 60%.

Under this incentive program participating firms join a group policy. The group then receives 75% of all savings resulting from combined improvements in their health and safety performance.

The Greater Peterborough Safe Communities Incentive Program was launched in the spring of 1997 and is one of 10 officially designated safe communities across Ontario.

I wish at this time to congratulate all 43 companies and their management and staff as well as the chamber of commerce and the city of Peterborough for having the foresight to move towards workplaces that will allow workers a safer and healthier work environment. Congratulations to all.

PREMIER'S REPORT CARD

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): We all know that Mike Harris likes to talk about his new report card and how it will be easier for parents to read and to know what kind of standards their students are meeting. A group of parents has decided that the report card format should work for premiers too. Here's a sample of the report card that these parents have given to Mike on his educational performance.

In English, for example: "Michael makes judgments and draws conclusions about ideas and written materials on the basis of evidence inconsistently and with limited understanding and reasoning. He has shown a good understanding of using media texts, editing his work to communicate only a few simple ideas." In English reading, writing, oral and visual communication, straight Rs for "remediation."

In mathematics: "Michael has difficulty justifying his choice or method for calculations, estimation, mental computation, etc. He has demonstrated only a limited ability for problem-solving and is unable to explain multi-step problems using rational numbers," and it goes on. Needless to say, Mike gets straight Rs for "remediation."

They conclude:

"Michael appears to have the ability to succeed but lacks the co-operative effort needed to produce a consistently acceptable product. Decisions lack thorough planning and sensitivity for the needs of his peers in this `classroom' (Ontario). A remedial program will only be successful if Michael personally wants to continue successfully and is willing to incorporate the ideas of his peers, the people of Ontario, and not just a selected group of peers."

Parents presenting the report card feel a higher standard of performance is in order for the Premier of Ontario.

PLANT CLOSURE

Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): Welland and Niagara region were struck a major blow last week when Ucar International announced the closure of the Welland facility. This means that 280 jobs are going to be lost, jobs that are performed by hard-working, competent, skilled workers in Welland and area, jobs which have enabled them to support themselves and their families. As well, the municipality and the region are going to lose the tax assessment of this multi-acreage property. There's going to be a harsh blow as well to taxpayers, who have already been hard hit by this government's downloading.

The Premier, in a letter to me, expresses sympathy for the 280 workers who lose their jobs. I tell you, those workers and their families and the communities of Niagara deserve and indeed are entitled to far more than just sympathy. It's imperative that this government become actively involved in the process to save those 280 jobs and indeed, failing that, put into place immediately the groundwork, the framework, for job training and job retraining and for alternative strategies to protect those families in the communities that are going to be seriously impacted.

One questions what it is that Mike Harris can say about his Ontario when 280 good jobs, well-paying jobs, are lost in Welland - what, to be replaced by more minimum-wage, part-time, temporary jobs? That's not acceptable to the people of Welland or Niagara. It doesn't put food on their tables. It doesn't permit them to send their children to school.

ANIMAL WELFARE

Mr Jim Brown (Scarborough West): This week the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals launches its Animal Violence Prevention Week. Violence in our communities and households is alarming, and one of the first signs of domestic abuse is abuse of pets. Police and social agencies recognize the link, and an abused pet is a good indicator of domestic violence in the home. Research has shown consistent patterns of animal cruelty among child, spouse and elderly abusers.

The US Humane Society has launched First Strike, a campaign to increase public awareness of the connection between animal cruelty and human violence. The FBI recognizes that animal cruelty is associated with violent behaviour. Violent offenders, research has shown, have childhood and teenage pasts that include serious and repeated animal cruelty. Animal cruelty can predict domestic abuse, criminal activity and even mental illness.

1340

I congratulate the Ontario SPCA in its 125th year and its violence awareness campaign. It is fitting that the prevention of cruelty to animals week includes October 4, which is the feast of St Francis of Assisi, protector of all animals. May the gentle example of St Francis towards animals inspire us this week and help us to recognize in them the truly divine spark of friendship and love. Animals often understand us in a way we can't understand ourselves.

TRANSPORTATION OF DANGEROUS GOODS

Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): The following is an example of government at its worst. Maybe this ought to be written up in Ripley's Believe It or Not.

Imagine a truck carrying 40,000 pounds of explosives is involved in a single-vehicle accident, blows up in the town of Walden, which is in Nickel Belt, destroys 100 feet of Highway 17, forms a crater 15 feet deep, measures 2.3 on the Richter scale, causes houses to move off their foundations, causes some people to lose partial hearing and forces some residents to become involved in trauma counselling so that they can sleep.

Do we hold a public inquiry into Canada's second-worst explosives accident? "No way," says Mike Harris. No to my request; no to the request from the town of Walden; no to the request from the regional municipality of Sudbury; no to the people of Nickel Belt; and no to the 104 other municipalities, representing a population of 1.8 million people, who say, "We want a public inquiry."

Add to this the fact that the driver was charged and an official from the minister's office says the truck company was under investigation for a variety of issues before, at the time of and after the accident. Add to this the fact that the truck company continues to haul explosives.

Tell me, would Mr Ripley be happy with this in Believe It or Not? I suggest to you this government should call a public inquiry now.

ISSUES IN HAMILTON

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I rise today to bring to the attention of the government, particularly the cabinet ministers, at least three major crises that are happening in my home town of Hamilton that quite frankly are the direct result of the Harris Tory agenda.

The first one is the issue of the property tax crisis. Hamiltonians are absolutely furious at the massive increase in property taxes that's a direct result of the actions of this government. In fact, in today's editorial in the Hamilton Spectator, the headline reads, "Tax Bill Crisis Demands Action.

"Hamilton-Wentworth hasn't seen an outcry about property taxes like this in many years. Petitions, protests and even threats to withhold tax payments are spreading in what amounts to a genuine crisis. Angry taxpayers are reeling from increases that in some cases are soaring into the red-line zone of several hundred and even thousands of dollars."

Aldermen are having to take the heat for this because there's a $38-million shortfall in your supposedly revenue-neutral downloading, and you run around saying that you're cutting taxes. All you have done is put the pressure and responsibility on local aldermen.

We've got a $38-million deficit in hospital funding that is clearly going to result in loss of services for patients, and we've still got Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital on the chopping block while your Solicitor General takes care of his own in Brockville.

PROSTITUTION

Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): As the former Metro councillor for Parkdale-High Park, I still keep in touch with many of my former constituents. I'd like to discuss one of their concerns today.

Neighbourhoods across this province are under siege and often feel neglected by a federal Liberal government which refuses to make substantive changes to -

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Order, member for Hamilton Centre.

Mr Shea: Those neighbourhoods often feel neglected by the federal Liberal government, which refuses to make substantive changes to the Young Offenders Act or offer our neighbourhood improved security legislation. And despite the valiant efforts of community groups like the Parkdale Focus Community Watch and the Parkdale Business Improvement Association, prostitution remains a cancer on our communities. It spawns drug addiction, family breakdown, crime and neighbourhood decay.

The police tell me that the way we need to attack the problem is to vigorously pursue drive-by johns. One very good way would be to impound their cars for a minimum of 48 hours. This will help send the message that our communities don't want their kind of business and want them off our streets. We hear, however, that this would pose an inconvenience to the families of johns and further punish innocent bystanders. Frankly, the private pain of dealing with the betrayal of a john in the family is not my chief concern. My concern is for the community members and police who tell me that if we take away the demand for prostitution, we'll go a long way in dealing with many of the social problems.

Parkdale and other urban neighbourhoods across this province need effective tools to help empower them as they fight to improve their communities.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

MINISTERIAL TRAVEL ACCOUNTABILITY ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR L'OBLIGATION DE RENDRE COMPTE DES VOYAGES MINISTÉRIELS

Mr Bartolucci moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 64, An Act respecting Accountability for Ministerial Travel / Projet de loi 64, Loi concernant l'obligation de rendre compte des voyages ministériels.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): The bill is very simple. All it asks for is accountability. It asks that a written summary of the purpose of the travel and any accomplishments resulting from the travel be included in a listing which is presented to the Legislative Assembly within 60 days: a detailed statement of all expenses incurred by the member, as well as by any staff accompanying the member; a listing of individuals and organizations contacted, and with whom the meetings were held; and a detailed summary of any contracts signed during travel outside the province.

All we're asking for in this bill is that Mike Harris and the executive council, the cabinet of Ontario, be held responsible, the same way everyone else in this House is held responsible.

ORAL QUESTIONS

EDUCATION

Mr Dalton McGuinty (Leader of the Opposition): In the absence of the finance minister - I assume he's not coming.

Interjection.

Mr McGuinty: I understand the Minister of Finance is on his way.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Do you want to stand it down?

Is the Minister of Education here? Is he coming? They are both coming. Stand them down?

Mr McGuinty: I'll go to the Chair of Management Board. Minister, yesterday this House put off the immediate chaos for the 200,000 students affected by lockouts and strikes, but I want to look at the big picture now. Those children are back in class, but with rare exception, if you look at classrooms right across the province, there are no extracurricular programs taking place, there is no extra help available for our students, there are now more students per teacher and there are fewer programs.

Your government has gone out of its way to publicly beat up on teachers, to the point now where their morale is at an all-time low. Last week the Premier told students that they won't be able to cut it in today's economy. He said that before a business audience.

What I'm going to ask you right now is very simple. What is it that you intend to do, now that you've put a Band Aid on that problem that arose yesterday, what do you intend to do now to provide stability to parents of children in schools in this province?

1350

Hon Chris Hodgson (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet, Minister of Northern Development and Mines): I welcome the Leader of the Opposition's question around education, because that is the number one priority, the number one social program in this country. One of the fundamental principles this government has undertaken with Bill 160, with our education funding formula and with our achievement standards is to make sure there's equity in the system, that the funding formula is based on children's needs, that whether you grow up in Red Lake or in Rosedale, you have the dollars for textbooks.

We've also tried to prioritize funding into the elementary system with new textbooks, a tougher curriculum and testing so that parents know what their child is supposed to learn at the start of the year, how they're doing, how they compare to other children in their class and how that class compares to other schools. I think that's a goal we should all share: to raise the standards in this province.

We have the best teachers in the world but we've been locked in a system which encouraged union power, encouraged laxness in our system. We're trying to improve the quality and we're trying to work with teachers to make sure they have the dollars in the classroom to do their jobs.

The Speaker: Answer.

Hon Mr Hodgson: I find it atrocious that you'd play politics with that and try to say that somehow -

The Speaker: Thank you. Supplementary.

Mr McGuinty: I don't want to talk about standards right now; I just want to talk about old-fashioned stability. If you talk to teachers, parents, trustees and students, the number one thing they are seeking in Ontario education today is stability, nothing more and nothing less.

I've got a proposal for you. Here's a very simple three-part proposal. I call it the school stability plan. There are three parts to it:

(1) You will provide an independent review of the funding formula.

(2) You will permit one-year contracts to be signed until that funding review is complete.

(3) You will permit a one-year phase-in of the class size requirement provisions where you haven't given boards enough time to get the physical space to meet your requirements.

It's simple, it's straightforward, it helps go some way to restoring stability in the system and it costs almost nothing. Will you, Minister, agree to implement my school stability plan?

Hon Mr Hodgson: The Leader of the Opposition hits the issue right on the head when he says that they care not about standards. I think we should all care about standards, we should all care about the improvement of quality. To stay at the status quo or do nothing and just get everyone so they're happy I think sacrifices our kids' futures. If you want to make sure we can compete in a global economy we have to have First World skills, and to get those First World skills we need a quality education that's equal throughout this province.

For you to stand up on behalf of the Liberal Party and say that you do not care about standards or that they're not important I think is indefensible and it goes along with other parts of your platform, where you talk about one of your new policy programs and say it is to restore vice-principals and principals to the bargaining unit. That has nothing to do with quality or standards. That's catering to special-interest union politics on union dues.

This government and this party believe we can improve the quality of education, and to do that everyone has to work together.

Mr McGuinty: Let's understand what the government's standards are, then, when it comes to public education. According to your standards, it's okay if our children aren't getting help with extracurricular activities. According to your standards, there's no extra help outside the classroom setting. According to your standards, it's all right to have more students for every single teacher. According to your standards, it's OK to have fewer programs. Those are your standards, those aren't my standards, and I reject your standards.

I'm trying to introduce just a little bit of stability into public education in Ontario. I put forward a simple proposal. It costs almost nothing and it will go a long way towards ensuring that parents can be assured of a simple right, that their schools are going to remain open for at least the next year. That's all I'm trying to do. It's a simple proposal. Why will you not buy into it?

Hon Mr Hodgson: We realize that the Liberal Party rejects our standards, which parents have demanded for almost a generation in this province, of improving the curriculum, of making sure we have province-wide standardized tests to make sure we know how our young people are doing, so we can help improve them if they need help. We know that you reject the idea of focusing more dollars into the classroom and making sure those dollars are equal throughout the whole province. We know that you want to open up the commercial-industrial assessment base in Toronto to negotiate those new union contracts and roll them right across the province. We know that. But we think the kids should come first, that we should improve the quality of their education. The only way to do that - I know it ruffles the status quo and I know it's been difficult. We're asking high school teachers to teach another 20 minutes that elementary teachers already teach, and they prepare for every class.

As a result of that four hours and 10 minutes we're asking high school teachers to spend in front of the students teaching instructional courses or special ed or remedial programs, the union has requested that they withdraw the extracurricular activities. We think those extracurricular activities are important and that teachers -

The Speaker: New question.

PROPERTY TAXATION

Mr Dalton McGuinty (Leader of the Opposition): My question is for the Minister of Finance. Throughout the summer when I was travelling the province I met with small business owners. They came to me and said: "Listen, you've got to do something about the Mike Harris government. I am getting hammered when it comes to property taxes." This is something they hardly expected from your government. They expected you would understand how hard they work: They put it on the line, day in, day out, work long hours and create jobs. The last thing they expected from the Mike Harris government was whopping property tax hikes. What are you going to do, Minister? Right now, stand up and tell us how you're going to help these small businesses that are being savaged by your economic policies, having to contend with massive property tax hikes they can't cope with.

Hon Ernie L. Eves (Deputy Premier, Minister of Finance): First of all, it has nothing to do with government policy. Municipalities in this province have been given several tools that they can use, such as phase-in, different commercial values for small or medium-size commercial properties, different industrial-size tax rates for different industrial-size properties. They could create new property classes. They could opt for a cap like the city of Toronto has done, 2.5%, so that no small business person, as you point out, would have a property tax increase of more than 2.5% this year.

To date only about 60 municipalities out of 646 in Ontario have availed themselves of the use of any of those tools, but I can assure you the tools are there for municipalities to use, municipalities such as the city of Toronto, which has been very responsible in dealing with its taxpayers and its constituents. We are working with municipalities -

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Leader of the official opposition.

Mr McGuinty: It's interesting. Apparently this government has nothing to do with property tax hikes that are being experienced by businesses right across the province. Of course they also had nothing to do with hospital closures and they will have nothing to do with school closures. This is all something that's done by other people. Small business doesn't buy that.

Let's look at some of the numbers: In Windsor, 69% of all small businesses are going to face an increase; York region, they're looking at increases from 200% to 300%; Mississauga, 240%; Dundas, 70%-plus; London, 80% increases; Hamilton is looking at property tax hikes for small businesses in the range of 100% to 900%, compliments of the Mike Harris government. Minister, what is it, again, that you are going to do? Don't try to tell us it's the responsibility of the municipalities. The municipalities didn't ask for this. You imposed it on them. You foisted it on them. What are you going to do to help small business?

Hon Mr Eves: As I was saying in response to my first question, as recently as Friday, finance officials were meeting with AMO officials to talk about the individual cases where municipalities did not use the tools that were given to them, to talk about what they can now do to avail themselves of the usage of those tools. You rhymed off several municipalities, York region being one of them. I ask you: What tool or tools did York region use to make sure this didn't happen to their taxpayers and their constituents? The answer is: None, they didn't use one single tool that was given to them. Municipalities like the city of Toronto, on the other hand, took a very responsible approach to protecting their taxpayers and you don't have that effect in Toronto, and there's no need for it to happen in any municipalities in Ontario if they avail themselves of the tools that were given to them.

1400

The Speaker: Final supplementary.

Mr Dominic Agostino (Hamilton East): I go to the minister to follow up on the questions from my leader. Minister, I'm astonished at the insensitivity you have shown to the difficulties that the small business community is facing as a result of your moves. As has been mentioned, in Hamilton, Dundas, Flamboro, we are talking about an increase of 100% to 900%. Very few small businesses can absorb that without going out of business, or by layoffs. It is impossible.

Basically you are forcing them to close their doors. Property owners are being devastated. Seniors by the hundreds are calling city hall in tears, afraid of losing their homes as a result of your downloading. Many of the businesses simply have fallen through the cracks of your inept rebate program that was put in place. You are causing chaos and you're causing a tax crisis in the city of Hamilton.

Minister, when small business owners on the Mountain have called your member for Hamilton Mountain to complain, do you know what they were told? "Don't pay your taxes." That is the advice that's coming and we have a number who will verify that. Will you review the inept rebate program you put in place? Will you review the $36-million shortfall you have screwed the people of Hamilton-Wentworth out of in downloading? Do you agree with the advice given -

The Speaker: Thank you. Minister?

Hon Mr Eves: To the honourable member, first of all, if he wants to deal in specifics, there's nothing that prevented the regional municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth from implementing a 2.5% cap, the same as the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto did.

With respect to seniors, there's nothing preventing the same municipality from implementing the tools that were given to them to totally protect seniors from one cent of property tax increases in that municipality. If they didn't use those tools, perhaps constituents should be asking their municipal representatives why they didn't use them.

Having said that, to date 37% of the municipalities in Ontario have a 0% tax increase or a decrease this year; another 30% have an increase of less than 5%. That's 67% of municipalities in Ontario having either a decrease in taxes, no increase or an increase of -

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): A third are paying more than 5%? Incredible.

Hon Mr Eves: I say to the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, do you want to talk about municipal tax increases when your government was in power? We can talk about that if you want a little later on -

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

TEXTBOOKS

Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): My question is for the Minister of Education and Training. It's very clear that yesterday you brought in your back-to-school legislation because you had meddled so much in teacher and board of education negotiations that you had to fix the problem you'd created. In fact we find that you're meddling elsewhere, and meddling is blowing up in your face elsewhere. The latest fiasco was your much-ballyhooed textbook purchase.

What I'd like to ask you about is Bliss Carman Senior Public School in Scarborough. They were told by your government that they had $37,000 for textbook purchases. They placed an order with the publisher for new textbooks. Their order, given the prices they had always used, would have accounted for about $28,000 and they would have had some money left over. Then they get a statement from your ministry saying that not only do they have no money left over, but they are over $100 in the hole. Minister, who took the $9,000 that they didn't spend?

Hon David Johnson (Minister of Education and Training): I don't think one would expect that I would know school by school what the allocations are. I can assure you of this, that the procedure was set in place to ensure that right across Ontario there would be equal access to textbooks and materials - not only textbooks but science equipment and computer software - for all the children of Ontario, and we would do so on a basis that saves taxpayers money.

The original RFP that went out attracted textbooks worth $68 million, but they were purchased on behalf of the taxpayers of Ontario at a reduction of almost $13 million; $13 million in savings to the tune of a $55-million cost. Each and every board is assured its allocation in that global context of $100 million. We will give every board the opportunity within that total allocation to spend every nickel on textbooks, computer equipment and science equipment.

Mr Hampton: Minister, you try desperately to miss the point. I would suggest to you that there are a lot of other schools out there like Bliss Carman Senior Public School. You said to them, "You have $37,000 for school textbook purchases." They looked at the price they would ordinarily get from the publisher, they did the calculations and the figure came out to $28,500. Then they get a statement from your ministry saying that in fact the textbooks cost over $37,000.

The question here is, who took the $9,000? Where did it go? The school board knows and the teachers know what their price was to the publisher. They didn't get a new price list from the publisher. The publisher didn't write back and say, "You owe more money." It was your ministry that said, "You owe a further $9,000." Who has the $9,000? The publisher doesn't have it. The school doesn't have it. Who's got it?

Hon David Johnson: The reality is that the government of Ontario through this program got the very best possible price, not only for this particular school but for all schools across Ontario. What is often overlooked in these matters is that there are transportation and handling costs and there is GST. It's a funny thing, but you have to pay tax and that's a matter that's often overlooked.

I can assure you that the total cost of the books, the handling and the taxes was the best possible purchase price. I have, as a matter of fact, letters from publishers indicating that they've given their best preferred price, which we've simply passed along to the school boards, and through that process achieved over 3.2 million books to all of our schools across Ontario.

Mr Hampton: There's something here that doesn't quite calculate. We talked with the teachers and we talked with people at the board and we also contacted the publisher. The publisher said that the price they ordinarily give to the school includes things like transportation and handling. The publisher covers all that. Suddenly you're adding in a second transportation and handling charge. You're folding into the price some other charges. Who got these other charges? Who is this phantom that is siphoning off $9,000 in textbook money from this school? Where do these extra charges come in? Who do you have a deal with that they get to add handling charges into all this? Where did the $9,000 go? The publisher says he didn't get it. The school didn't get it. Where did these additional charges come in? Who got the money?

1410

Hon David Johnson: I think we know that the leader of the third party is grasping at straws, as is not uncommon in this House. There are no extra charges, but the transportation and handling charges do have to be paid once and the taxes have to be paid once.

I have letters from the publishers to indicate that Ontario got the best possible price that could be achieved through bulk purchasing. This purchasing of over 3.2 million books across Ontario achieved the best possible price not only for students here in Toronto, not only for students in the large urban areas, but for students right across the province, in northern Ontario, where I might say the transportation costs are higher, and in rural areas. We got the best possible value, a $13-million discount. We got 3.2 million books for our students and they're in the schools today and being used by our students.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): New question, leader of the third party.

Mr Hampton: To the Minister of Health, but I would say to the Minister of Education, you'd better find out where the $9,000 went, because school after school wants to know what you did with their money.

NURSE PRACTITIONERS

Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): To the Minister of Health: Last week in the Sudbury Star there was a letter asking for a commitment from your government to expand the use of nurse practitioners in northern Ontario health care. As we've pointed out to you before, expanding the use of nurse practitioners would be one very good way of dealing with underserviced areas.

The letter actually calls on the candidates in the Nickel Belt by-election to lobby the government for increased funding for nurse practitioners. I'm here today on behalf of Blain Morin, the NDP candidate in Nickel Belt, to do just that.

Not a single penny of the $5 million you announced for nurse practitioners has been spent. Meanwhile there are approximately 50 qualified nurse practitioners in underserviced northern Ontario communities who are unable to practise because you haven't provided the funding.

What are you going to do about this problem? You said you were going to do something about it. What are you in fact going to do about it?

Hon Elizabeth Witmer (Minister of Health): I'm very proud of the fact that this past February it was our government, under the leadership of then Health Minister Jim Wilson, that did officially proclaim the nurse practitioner legislation. As we had indicated, we are and we will be announcing very soon the allocation of the $5 million in order that the nurse practitioners who are prepared can make sure they provide the needed services to the underserviced areas of our province, and we'll be making that announcement.

We have invested a tremendous amount of money in the Sudbury community. I'm very proud of the fact that we have added $117 million in spending in Sudbury-Manitoulin in health care services, and I want to assure those people that additional money will be made available for this issue of the nurse practitioners.

Mr Hampton: The minister's empty words underline the problem. You've gone into Sudbury and you've made announcement after announcement. Then community organizations and nurse practitioners try to access the money because they want to provide health care services and they find they can't access it. They are completely empty announcements, phony announcements. There are nurse practitioners who want to go to work but they can't go to work because they can't access the money that your government boasted about when you made the announcement.

That's the question. You can't go on across this province making these announcements and then when people try to access it to improve health care, they find that it is empty. So I'm asking you again on behalf of Blain Morin, the NDP candidate in Nickel Belt, and all of those people in the Nickel Belt riding, many of whom live in underserviced area communities, what are you going to do to make this money available so those nurse practitioners can go to work providing health care for people who need it? Don't give us another empty announcement.

Hon Mrs Witmer: Let me assure the leader of the third party that we have certainly done more for nursing than you did during your time in office. In fact, I was extremely pleased yesterday to have met with the members of the Nursing Task Force. We have actually listened to the nursing community. We are prepared to address the long-standing problems and issues of concern for nurses that were ignored by the previous governments.

Last night we had the first official meeting of the Nursing Task Force, which is going to look at the problems that, as I say, are of long standing. In fact, as Barb Wahl, president of the Ontario Nurses' Association, indicated in speaking about the task force, "This is a significant first step," and we would agree.

Our government is working in partnership with nurses throughout this province and we will continue to ensure that the services they are providing will continue to be there.

Mr Hampton: Correspondence from your own ministry indicates how hollow your words are. What I've got here is a letter to the chair of the Council of Ontario Universities' program in nursing from Judith Wright, your assistant deputy minister. In the letter she says that your government is reducing the funding for nurse practitioner education because you're going to reduce program enrolment and you're also going to limit the number of locations that provide nurse practitioner education. Even your own ministry officials know how phony your announcement is.

I ask you the question again: Will you come clean for the people of Nickel Belt? When are you going to stop making these empty announcements, these announcements that are completely phony? When are you going to put the money actually in place so that nurse practitioners who live in the Sudbury area, who are currently unemployed, who want to provide health care services, will be able to provide health care services?

Hon Mrs Witmer: I can assure you that we are certainly doing much more than you did during your time. Unfortunately, you did not proclaim the nurse practitioner act. It was our government that did so.

I'm also pleased to indicate that for the people in the Sudbury-Manitoulin area we have increased our funding by $117 million. Let me just review with you the money we have put into the Sudbury community. We've invested $12 million in priority programs. We've invested over $2 million in long-term-care services. We have invested $566,000 in mental health services.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Answer.

Hon Mrs Witmer: We've invested $1,580,000 in aboriginal health services. We have, on hospital restructuring, added $88 million. The list goes on and on. I would like to indicate to you that these are actual -

The Speaker: Thank you.

LONG-TERM CARE

Mr Dalton McGuinty (Leader of the Opposition): My question is for the Minister of Long-Term Care. In the members' gallery to my left are representatives of the African Canadian Society on Health Care Issues, a not-for-profit organization established to address the needs of the elderly in the local African Canadian community.

You may be familiar, Minister, with the fact that the group worked very hard to put together a proposal pursuant to a request for proposal to build a facility for long-term care. The deadline was 12 noon on July 31 this summer past. When they arrived at your offices, they were told that there was an address missing on the box. They scrambled, found a pen, put down the address, turned over the box, only to discover that it was submitted at 12:01. I am wondering, Minister, given the special circumstances of this matter, would it not be the fair and right thing to do to accept this proposal?

Hon Cameron Jackson (Minister of Long-Term Care, minister responsible for seniors): I'd like to thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question and the spirit in which he has raised it in the House. It is a very important matter and it's a serious matter, the expansion of 6,700 new long-term-care beds in the province.

The province set up what I believe is one of the most rigid and most above-reproach systems that could be designed for this open competition for 6,700 beds. Right here in the city of Toronto 2,000 beds will be announced within a couple of weeks. This process follows, through the legislation, a very clearly defined set of rules and guidelines because, frankly, there are hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars involved. The fact is that through this entire process everyone was advised, ministry dollars were spent in a series of meetings privately with all of the applicants -

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Answer.

Hon Mr Jackson: - who made application for these beds. It is a time-honoured tradition in this province that when -

The Speaker: Thank you, Minister. Supplementary.

1420

Mr McGuinty: Minister, what I'm wondering is, are you prepared to exercise discretion in the circumstances? Are you unprepared to use good judgment, given the special circumstances? I've got a letter from your offices that says quite clearly that the box was received at 12:01. The reason for the delay was that one of your staff members asked that an address be affixed to the box. But for their compliance with that request, the box would have been submitted before the deadline. Given these very special circumstances, I'm asking you to exercise your discretion as the minister and to at least consider reviewing this matter so it receives the time and consideration it warrants.

Hon Mr Jackson: I must reiterate here that these rules are designed and entrenched in law. These are matters of a legal nature and we are guided very clearly by the laws of this province in how to tender, whether we're building a bridge, whether we're building a nursing home, whether we're letting out a major contract. The facts that you present in the House are not necessarily the facts that have been shared with me, and I'd be pleased to investigate further.

I want to share with the member opposite that there were several tenders that came in late that were not on the premises of ministry property at exactly 12 noon. With two months' notice, organizations had opportunities to present their case, and this was one of several that did not get their tender in on time. We are not prepared as a government, having waited 10 years in this province for new long-term-care beds, to hold up the 2,000 beds in Ontario while you ask us to go back to square one for three months to look at this process. We need to build these beds immediately in the province.

AIR QUALITY

Ms Marilyn Churley (Riverdale): I have a question for the Minister of Energy. The new US EPA limits on nitrogen oxide seem to have caught your government off guard, just as I've caught you off guard today. The new rules announced last week will mean cuts of about 65% in the NO_x produced by utilities in the US Northeast. This will make Ontario Hydro's emissions stick out like a sore thumb. In fact, I estimated that it will require at least a 60% reduction in Ontario Hydro's NO_x emissions.

Minister, unlike the Minister of the Environment, here is an opportunity for you to help reduce the 1,800 premature deaths that happen each year in the province of Ontario because of smog. This is already a crisis. My question is, are you going to pass a law so Ontario meets the US standards?

Hon Jim Wilson (Minister of Energy, Science and Technology): The EPA standards are currently at the discussion stage in the United States; they are not law. Very clearly, we are already world leaders in emission standards and we're extremely pleased that the EPA is now at least going to meet Ontario Hydro's standards and perhaps surpass them. That's good for the environment, given that the Minister of the Environment here has constantly pointed out that it's very often the pollution from the United States that's creating the smog right here in southern Ontario.

We're very pleased with the direction the EPA is going in. Yes, Ontario Hydro and the successor companies to Ontario Hydro will meet very tough standards, will meet US standards, if we're going to be selling in the northeastern United States. We're 17% of the northeastern United States market now, and the Americans had better watch out, because our new Ontario Hydro and its successor companies are going to capture that customer base and return dividends to the shareholders, the people of Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Supplementary.

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): Minister, you are not being a leader when it comes to environmental standards; you're quickly becoming an embarrassment when it comes to those standards.

You say that you're for green power and that Bill 35 is going to be good for the environment, but the Energy Competition Act, which is in clause-by-clause hearings at committee, doesn't commit you to tougher environmental standards so that communities like Windsor and Essex country and other southwestern Ontario communities can breathe a little easier.

The NDP have proposed amendments to the Ontario Energy Board Act that would tighten the rules against smog. They would make all generators selling power in Ontario comply with limits that are tighter than they are now. If you're not prepared to commit to meeting the US standards, will you at least support the NDP amendments so that we can have some clean air?

Hon Mr Wilson: Environmental groups in Ontario are extremely supportive of Bill 35. For the first time those producing green power will have access to the grid, something that your government and the Liberal government of its day never had the courage to do, that is, open up the grid, give customers choice and allow them for the first time in the history of this province to buy more environmentally friendly power.

The hydro bills that consumers will receive beginning in the year 2000 will for the first time in the history of this province show the actual emissions. People will be able to know how their power was produced and they can exercise their choice to buy green power.

Tom Adams of Energy Probe said in the Ottawa Citizen on June 10, "Customers are going to get to see where their power comes from and what emissions are associated with it." So it's a consumer empowerment that should really help the clean power industries promote themselves as an alternative to polluting ones.

Greenpeace applauded the bill as an opportunity for the "significant chunk of the public that wants to buy green power." That was in the Toronto Star just recently on June 10.

Our nuclear asset optimization plan is all about improving the environment.

SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

Mr Joseph N. Tascona (Simcoe Centre): My question is for the Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism. I read last week that the federal Liberals came out with a study to say that the shortage of skilled workers in Canada is a myth. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that Ontario companies are in need of more skilled workers. What has your ministry done to ensure that Ontario companies have enough local skilled labour to meet their needs?

Hon Al Palladini (Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism): I want to thank the honourable member for Simcoe Centre for his question. As the member has indicated, the skilled labour shortage in Ontario is a reality. A 1996 Canadian Federation of Independent Business survey found that half of their members had a problem in finding qualified replacement workers.

A shortage of skilled people can discourage investment in this great province of ours, so as a government we have listened to businesses both large and small that are concerned about training and we are responding directly to the skills shortages that many of them have identified.

In last spring's budget we committed $30 million to a new strategic skills initiative and I believe this program has started to take effect. Education is a priority for our government. We know we have to work with the business community in making sure that we work together to ensure that students are graduating with high skills so we can compete at the global level.

Mr Tascona: I thank the minister for his answer. What specifically can he tell us about the strategic skills program and how it will benefit Ontario workers and companies?

Hon Mr Palladini: The May budget announced $10.9 million in funding for the first four projects and a commitment to a competitive process to allocate the remaining funding.

This morning I had the pleasure, along with the honourable member and my colleague the Honourable Jim Wilson, to be at Georgian College in Barrie to present a cheque for $3 million - yes, $3 million - for a new partnership between Georgian College and the Industrial Research and Development Institute.

These are the programs this government is working on with the private sector to make sure that we have the tools for our young people. This program will assist in providing advanced training in the automotive parts sector and manufacturing. It's also a great program that will meet the skills needs of Ontario's most important sector: the automotive industry.

The call for proposals for the first competitive round of the skills challenge fund was released on September 2, 1998. I want everyone to know that the deadline for the next program is -

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Thank you very much. New question.

1430

HOME CARE

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): My question is to the Minister of Long-Term Care. Your government supposedly acknowledges the importance of home care by appointing you as minister. You know that patients are being discharged earlier from hospitals and that the frail and elderly are staying longer at home. Your Minister of Health has already closed a hospital in Kingston that has operated for 153 years. You can well imagine the shock the people in our area had when they read a headline just last week that 2,000 will lose home care after cutbacks.

Minister, could you explain to these people who are losing the home care services they currently have, explain to these patients, why you have cut them off when apparently there's plenty of money available for colleges and universities. Why have you cut these people off? These are patients who have had home care and need it. You've cut them off by $1 million after you've already closed a hospital in our community.

Hon Cameron Jackson (Minister of Long-Term Care, minister responsible for seniors): First of all, I'd like to thank the honourable member for his question. I'd like to correct the record that these services have not actually been cut off. The CCAC in Kingston has indicated that it is seeing and forecasting increased demand and utilization in the Kingston area.

What we've been trying to do as a government with the additional dollars we've added to home care this year, and I just announced $83 million to increase budgets in this province, is to make sure that areas which have traditionally received more care dollars do not overshadow those areas of the province that previously have been discriminated against by previous governments.

Today in Kingston they are receiving $144 per person, and yet in York region they're only receiving $59 per person. I ask the member opposite if he would consider the fact that Kingston historically has received a higher level of funding. We have increased funding in Kingston by 8% even though their levels of service are much higher than many of the colleagues who are right with you in your own Liberal caucus.

Mr Gerretsen: The caseload has increased by 15% over last year. There has not been one additional penny put into home care during the last two or three years.

You know that these services are there so that people can be kept at home. I know you think, as you stated earlier this year, that if people think they're going to have vacuuming done for the rest of their life just because they've had surgery, that's not what the program is for. I know that is what you're thinking about this.

Your boss, the Minister of Health, has already closed a hospital, and her own officials in estimates earlier in June have stated that of the $52 million you're taking out of health care in the Kingston area, only $36 million is being returned to the area. When are you going to live up to your commitment to actually reinvest the money you're taking out of community health care and put some of these dollars back into home care? Two thousand patients in the Kingston area will be going without the home care they have had over the last number of years from now until at least March of next year. When are you going to do something about it and make sure the reinvestment takes place in the community?

Hon Mr Jackson: As the local member you should be aware of when these new dollars have been not only put into the Kingston area but actually spent. I want to remind the member opposite that in the last year of the Liberal government they were spending less than $10 million in the Kingston area. Today we're spending $23 million. It's a 134% increase in funding in the Kingston area.

I want the member opposite to know that we are increasing the funding to the community care access centres - in Kingston's case they've recently come through a labour dispute with one of the service providers; they have yet to complete their RFP process - where CCACs all across Ontario are receiving additional service units because it's costing less to perform these important care services for the seniors of Ontario.

LABOUR DISPUTE

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): My question is to Minister of Labour. I want to raise the plight of a courageous group of workers who are fighting for dignity and their working lives. These less than 50 workers unfortunately are fighting both an unscrupulous employer and your own Harris government. These workers are at J.B. Fields, a local sock manufacturer in Trenton. Six months ago, when their employer demanded a 38% pay cut, they went on legal strike. This would have been a fair fight under the progressive NDP labour legislation, but under your anti-worker labour legislation, Bill 7, all the power went to the boss. Scabs were hired, strikers were intimidated, and last week these employees were told by the employer that they can forget about coming back to the jobs they had before.

The problem these workers have is that your government is encouraging this kind of action by the type of labour legislation and anti-worker legislation that you've promoted and passed. Minister, is this your idea of how to make Ontario a better place to live, work and raise a family?

Hon Jim Flaherty (Minister of Labour): I thank the honourable member opposite for the question about J.B. Fields in Trenton. There was a strike that commenced there March 22, 1998. I'm sure the honourable member knows that the Ministry of Labour extended conciliation and mediation facilities to both parties, as is the duty and the process of the Ministry of Labour. The Ministry of Labour is not pro-management or pro-union; it is pro-negotiated-settlement. The ministry has made every effort in this instance, as it does in other instances, to avail the ministry's people, the expert people that we have in mediation and conciliation, so that hopefully the best possible result can be obtained, which is always a negotiated settlement.

Mr Christopherson: That does not hold. If you were actually caring about workers and promoting negotiated settlements, then you wouldn't have passed legislation that lets this employer hire scabs to go into that workplace and do the jobs of those legitimate legal strikers. That's what is prolonging this strike - your legislation.

I'll tell you what these workers need. They need a government like the NDP that's going to make it illegal to hire scabs again. That's what they really need.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Order. Stop the clock. Member for Hamilton Centre.

Mr Christopherson: Mr Speaker, I really wish the government members would show that much compassion and caring about these workers and their families, who have been out on strike for over six months because of your legislation that lets the employer hire scabs. That's the bottom line.

Minister, you have to stand in your place and tell us how allowing the employer to hire scabs that prolonged this strike and kept those workers out of their jobs for over six months is somehow good for them and good for the economy of this province.

Hon Mr Flaherty: To the member, it is true that under his government we were out of the mainstream in labour relations, that we were in the minority in Canada and in North America in prohibiting the hiring of replacement workers. It is true that under the previous government employers, including small business employers, could be bankrupted by strikes in the situation where they could not hire replacement workers, with the result being of course that no one had work, that there was no business and that there were no jobs.

The Ministry of Labour's role is to provide mediation and conciliation. If there has been improper behaviour, if there has been activity by the employer in the situation described, then the Ontario Labour Relations Board is available to the parties to seek the remedies that are available under what is now a balanced Labour Relations Act in Ontario.

1440

SOCIAL POLICY REVIEW

Mr Doug Galt (Northumberland): My question is directed to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. I understand that you were at the premiers' conference in Saskatoon back in August and that the premiers reviewed the status of negotiations on their framework agreement for the social union. It's indeed important to Canadians that health and social programs be effective, secure and sustainable. As the Ontario representative to the ministers' council on social policy review and responsible for these negotiations, could you update the House on the progress of these negotiations?

Hon Dianne Cunningham (Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, minister responsible for women's issues): I think all the members of the House are interested in the future of Canada and the importance of how we work together in our social union. Our discussions with the premiers in Saskatoon were extremely positive in that everyone came away united in their efforts to make our health care programs and our social programs more accountable, more accessible and more fair across the country.

I think of interest to this House would be that Quebec is now at the table in these negotiations. We're all hoping that will work in favour of a united Canada.

I'd also like to say that governments are more committed than ever to working together, especially with our federal colleagues. We know that unilateral decisions, especially with regard to funding and funding reductions, do nothing to improve our health care and our social programs in Canada and we want to work towards more togetherness and more unanimity and more discussions.

Mr Galt: At the Saskatoon conference, I understand that the premiers directed ministers to meet with the federal government, with the co-chair, the Honourable Anne McLellan, for a negotiating meeting with the ministers as soon as possible and that a draft agreement be drawn up before the end of this current year. Minister, can you update us further on the progress made in this regard?

Hon Mrs Cunningham: Yes, we have been meeting since Saskatoon in August. On September 9, the ministers and the territorial ministers responsible across the county met to work and make more progress on the mechanism, on the new way of dealing across Canada and with the federal minister. We'll be meeting this week actually, on October 2 in Edmonton, with Ms McLellan. We are extremely positive about positive outcomes from that meeting. Only in generalities right now, and this is very complicated for the general public, but we know there has to be a better way, to get rid of the overlap and duplication, to get rid of the unilateral decision-making, especially around funding with regard to the federal government, and to talk more to each other in advance about the programs that are really important for Canadians: social services, health care and higher education.

SCHOOL CLOSURES

Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview): My question is for the Minister of Education. Last night the school accommodation review committee had a meeting at one of the schools in my area to review the possible closings of 29 schools. Three of the schools in question are in my riding and two of them are leased by the Catholic school board from the public school board. All three of the schools are full to capacity, I've been told, and the possible closure is solely due to the funding formula which you have instituted and the pupil accommodation policy which you have also instituted. My question is this: Because of your imposed arbitrary restrictions, will you allow the closing of schools when operating at full capacity?

Hon David Johnson (Minister of Education and Training): It seems difficult to me to comprehend why a school board would close a school that is full to capacity. The decision and the responsibility clearly rests with the school board, I guess the Toronto school board in this particular case.

I might say that same school board has some 80 schools that it doesn't use for public purposes any more. Some of them are empty, some of them are used for administration purposes, some for storage, and some they have leased out to either the private or the separate sector. I don't know why the board would choose, if indeed it has, to close a school which is full to capacity.

I will say, though, that schools over the years have been closed. Boards have chosen and made this decision to close schools over the years. For example, between 1985 and 1989, when your party was in power, school boards across Ontario chose to close 136 schools. I am proud to stand here today and say that today we announced a new funding formula, which will involve a whole host of new schools. Some 120,000 students will benefit in Ontario because of the new funding formula that we've announced details of this afternoon.

Mr Sergio: Closing a school creates turmoil and chaos in any community at any time. When you say you want the best for the children of our province, I take it you mean that, yet your infamous Bill 160 provides no funding for leased properties, leased schools, and the pupil accommodation policies may force the schools to close.

If you really want to do what's best for the kids as you have been saying continuously in this House, will you rise today and tell this House, the parents and the kids that you will say yes to funding for leased schools and no to closing schools when operating to full capacity?

Hon David Johnson: The curious aspect of this is that today I did just announce the funding formula, and the funding formula contains $26 million for leased schools over the next year, because we recognize that school boards have made arrangements for leased schools and need that kind of support.

I'm very proud of the funding formula. It does give flexibility to the boards. We will flow money through the boards that need the new schools. They will make the decisions of where to build. This program will be the largest one-year program, largest three-year program in the history of the province in terms of about $1.5 billion for funding in the new school construction across the province over the next three years, to assist 120,000 students in getting the proper accommodation.

CHILDREN'S HEALTH SERVICES

Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): My question is for the Minister of Health. On April 8, 1998, you announced increased funding for childhood cancer care at the Hospital for Sick Children. Although the proven need for increased care is equally as urgent in the other regions of Ontario, you have not responded to repeated requests for equitable funding.

At the Children's Hospital of Western Ontario, the two staff oncologists are trying to care for three times the number of children set out in the provincial standards for childhood cancer care. Their request for $3 million is similar to the request you agreed to at Sick Kids and it is supported by both the Pediatric Oncology Group of Ontario and officials in your ministry.

Will you explain today to parents and physicians in southwestern Ontario why the children with cancer that they care for continue to receive substandard care six months after Sick Kids got its money?

Hon Elizabeth Witmer (Minister of Health): As the member opposite has indicated, we do work and plan to continue to work with POGO, which is the Pediatric Oncology Group of Ontario. In fact, very recently POGO recommended that we set up four satellite pediatric oncology units in the province in order that we can ensure that young children and young adults, after they have received the surgery and they need the long-term care and treatment, will be able to get that treatment in their own communities. I am very pleased that we were able to make that additional funding available for four satellite centres throughout this province.

We will continue to respond to the needs, that the needs are addressed. We will continue to accept the advice of POGO, and in the months ahead we will be making further announcements in order that we can support these children who suffer from cancer.

1450

PETITIONS

HERITAGE CONSERVATION

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"Whereas heritage is vitally important to the social and economic health of Ontario communities and Ontario residents; and

"Whereas community museums, galleries and heritage organizations work hard to protect, promote, manage and develop our provincial heritage resources; and

"Whereas the provincial government has a responsibility to the people of Ontario to promote the value of heritage and heritage conservation; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government has abdicated their responsibility for heritage by cutting support to community museums, galleries and heritage organizations; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government has not implemented a new heritage act that would give communities the ability to better protect heritage sites; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government has not undertaken meaningful consultation with Ontario's heritage community;

"Therefore, we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to provide stronger support to Ontario's heritage institutions and organizations and to work with the people of Ontario to establish a new heritage act."

I'm pleased to sign that petition along with the representative from the Serbian heritage museum on Tecumseh Road in Windsor-Riverside.

PROTECTION FOR HEALTH CARE WORKERS

Mr John O'Toole (Durham East): I just wanted to recognize the Minister of Health for setting up the Nursing Task Force. In that respect:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am pleased to present this on behalf of our whip and also on behalf of myself.

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING

Mr Tony Ruprecht (Parkdale): I have a petition addressed to the assembly that reads as follows:

"Whereas the Minister of Education intends on taking more than $1 billion out of Ontario's education system at a time when there is an increasing consensus on the importance of supporting our schools and classrooms; and

"Whereas per pupil funding in the province of Ontario now ranks below other jurisdictions, such as Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri and Nebraska; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government has now embarked on an advertising campaign which will cost the taxpayers of Ontario over $1 million; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government commercial doesn't constitute an important public announcement and instead is clearly an abuse of public funds, because they are self-serving political messages which are designed to influence public opinion; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government could cancel that advertising campaign and use the $1 million which belongs to the taxpayers of Ontario for the purchase of 40,000 textbooks;

"We, the undersigned, call on the Mike Harris government to cancel their blatantly partisan, self-serving political advertising campaign and redirect the taxpayers' $1 million to classroom funding."

I'm signing my signature to it.

PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I have a petition to save the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital.

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

"We, the undersigned citizens of Hamilton and the surrounding communities, beg leave to petition the government of Ontario as follows:

"Whereas the Health Services Restructuring Commission has announced the closure of Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital; and

"Whereas community-based mental health care providers will bear the brunt of this ill-fated decision by being forced to meet what is sure to be an increased demand for their services; and

"Whereas the government of Ontario is not adequately monitoring community-based mental health services for their effectiveness, efficiency or whether they are delivering the agreed-upon programs according to the 1997 annual report of the Provincial Auditor; and

"Whereas the community pays the price for cuts to mental health care;

"Therefore be it resolved that we, the undersigned citizens of Hamilton and area who care about quality, accessible and publicly accountable mental health care for all Ontarians, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately set aside all recommendations to divest and/or close Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital and the programs and services it provides."

I proudly add my name to these Hamiltonian petitioners.

PROTECTION FOR HEALTH CARE WORKERS

Mr Tim Hudak (Niagara South): I'm pleased to bring forward a petition from about 80 residents of the Dunnville, Wellandport and Wainfleet area. It's about health-care-conscience legislation and it reads as follows:

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

Again, there are about 80 signatures and I sign mine in support.

HOTEL DIEU HOSPITAL

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): This petition is to the government of Ontario.

"Since the Hotel Dieu Hospital has played and continues to play a vital role in the delivery of health care services in St Catharines and the Niagara region; and

"Since Hotel Dieu has modified its role over the years as part of a rationalization of medical services in St Catharines and has assumed the position of a regional health care facility in such areas as kidney dialysis and oncology; and

"Since the Niagara region is experiencing underfunding in the health care field and requires more medical services and not fewer services; and

"Since Niagara residents are required at present to travel outside of the Niagara region to receive many specialized services that could be provided in city hospitals and thereby not require local patients to make difficult and inconvenient trips down our highways to other centres; and

"Since the Niagara hospital restructuring committee used a Toronto consulting firm to develop its recommendations and was forced to take into account a cut of $40 million in funding for Niagara hospitals when carrying out its study; and

"Since the population of the Niagara region is older than that in most areas of the province and more elderly people tend to require more hospital services;

"We, the undersigned, request that the government of Ontario keep the election commitment of Premier Harris not to close hospitals in our province, and we call upon the Premier to reject any recommendation to close Hotel Dieu Hospital in St Catharines."

I affix my signature as I'm in full agreement.

ABORTION

Mr Frank Klees (York-Mackenzie): I have a petition which was forwarded to me by the Honourable Al Palladini. It in turn was directed to him by John Lawlor of the Knights of Columbus. It's a petition that was signed by members of the St Mary Immaculate and Our Lady Queen of the World Catholic churches in Richmond Hill. It reads as follows:

"Whereas Ontario taxpayers funded over 45,000 abortions in 1993 at an estimated cost of $25 million; and

"Whereas pregnancy is not a disease, injury or illness, and abortions are not therapeutic procedures; and

"Whereas the vast majority of abortions are done for reasons of convenience or finance; and

"Whereas the province has the exclusive authority to determine what services will be insured; and

"Whereas the Canada Health Act does not require funding for elective procedures; and

"Whereas there is mounting evidence that abortion is in fact hazardous to women's health;

"Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to cease from providing any taxpayers' dollars for the performance of abortions."

There are some 800 signatures on this petition and I affix my signature to it.

MUNICIPAL RESTRUCTURING

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): I have a petition that deals with the downloading of costs of services in our province. It states:

"Whereas the Mike Harris government has dumped the financing of ambulances, social housing and public health care services on to the backs of municipalities; and

"Whereas this irresponsible action will create a shortfall for local governments throughout Ontario; and

"Whereas local councils have been forced to raise property taxes by as much as $200 per household or cut services; and

"Whereas Mike Harris called municipal representatives `whiners' when they tried to explain to him that his proposal was unfair and would create gaps in important services such as the delivery of public health care services; and

"Whereas the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing accused local representatives of being opportunistic simply because they attempted to point out that the Mike Harris proposal was unfair and primarily designed to fund his ill-advised tax scheme; and

"Whereas the Harris government has refused to listen to the representatives who work more closely with their constituents;

"We, the undersigned, call on the Mike Harris government to scrap its downloading plan, which has caused either an increase in property taxes or unacceptable cuts to important local services."

I have signed my name to the petition as well, as I'm in full agreement.

1500

PROTECTION FOR HEALTH CARE WORKERS

Mr John R. Baird (Nepean): I have a petition submitted by Rev Ross Lambton, the pastor of St Maurice Church, which reads as follows:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

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

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

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

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

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

I'm adding my own signature thereto.

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING

Mr Tony Ruprecht (Parkdale): I have a petition addressed to the Parliament of Ontario on the subject of education advertising.

"Whereas the Minister of Education intends on taking more than $1 billion out of Ontario's education system at a time when there indeed is an increasing consensus on the importance of supporting our schools and classrooms; and

"Whereas per pupil funding in the province of Ontario now ranks below other jurisdictions, such as Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri and even Nebraska; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government has now embarked on an advertising campaign which will cost the taxpayers of Ontario over $1 million; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government commercial does not constitute an important public announcement and instead is clearly an abuse of public funds, because they are self-serving political messages which are designed to influence public opinion; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government could cancel the advertising campaign and use the $1 million which belongs to the taxpayers of Ontario for the purchase of 40,000 textbooks;

"Therefore, we, the undersigned, call on the Harris government to cancel their blatantly partisan and self-serving political advertising campaign and redirect the taxpayers' $1 million to classroom funding."

Because I agree with this, I am signing this document as well.

COMPENSATION FOR HEPATITIS C PATIENTS

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I have a petition that has been given to me by the Minister of Health who, as you know, according to the rules of this House, cannot present petitions in the Legislature. The petition is to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, and it reads as follows:

"Whereas numerous Ontarians have contracted the deadly disease hepatitis C through no fault of their own, as a result of which they have been burdened with various expenses in addition to permanently impaired health and the accompanying mental anguish;

"Therefore, we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly to direct the Minister of Health to initiate no-fault payments to those who have contracted hepatitis C, in accordance with the first recommendation of the Krever report."

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTURING

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"Whereas the Harris cutbacks have resulted in an anticipated $38-million deficit at the Hamilton Health Sciences Corp; and

"Whereas the government of Ontario has drastically cut funding to hospitals across Ontario, leaving hospitals facing crippling deficits and massive cuts to services; and

"Whereas the Ontario Hospital Association is projecting a deficit of $200 million to $400 million for nearly 200 hospitals in Ontario; and

"Whereas the Hamilton Health Sciences Corp will receive $4 million less in revenue from the Ministry of Health and other sources and needs an immediate cash infusion to meet its costs and purchase life-saving equipment;

"Therefore we, the undersigned, demand that Mike Harris and the government of Ontario stop underfunding Ontario's hospitals to fund the tax cuts of the wealthy and act immediately to restore funding to the Hamilton Health Sciences Corp so they can continue providing quality health care services to the people of Hamilton-Wentworth."

I proudly add my name to these local citizens.

ROYAL ASSENT SANCTION ROYALE

The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): I beg to inform the House that in the name of Her Majesty the Queen, Her Honour the Lieutenant Governor has been pleased to assent to a certain bill in her office.

Clerk at the Table (Mr Todd Decker): The following is the title of the bill to which Her Honour did assent:

Bill 62, An Act to resolve labour disputes between teachers' unions and school boards / Projet de loi 62, Loi visant à régler les conflits de travail opposant des syndicats d'enseignants et des conseils scolaires.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

INSTRUCTION TIME: MINIMUM STANDARDS ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LES HEURES D'ENSEIGNEMENT : NORMES MINIMALES

Mr David Johnson moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 63, An Act to amend the Education Act with respect to instructional time / Projet de loi 63, Loi modifiant la Loi sur l'éducation en ce qui concerne les heures d'enseignement.

Hon David Johnson (Minister of Education and Training): At the outset, I would indicate that I wish to share my time with the members for Simcoe Centre, Northumberland and Middlesex.

And starting off this debate, which has to do with the definition of "instructional time," to reiterate what the Premier of Ontario said last week to a large gathering of some 1,500 people, I believe, that we do have excellent teachers in the province of Ontario. They work hard, they're extremely valuable and valued, and perhaps we can't say that enough. Their role is instrumental in the future of the province of Ontario in moulding the young people and teaching the young people, guiding the young people. We entrust a considerable amount to the teachers and over the years we indeed have been well served by the teachers of the province of Ontario.

The standard that we're talking about here today, instructional time, is part of a very much larger package of quality improvements, of standards, that this government has brought forward and has implemented.

I might say the role of the provincial government is to bring forward these kinds of broad standards. Then the role of the local school boards is to implement within that broad framework of standards the specific programs within the jurisdiction of that board, the specific programs at the local school level. That is the role of the school boards. Then obviously the role of the teachers within that framework is to do the fine job they've been doing over the years to teach the individual students in the classes, within the context of board policy and within the context of the broader standards set by the province. So today we are participating in a debate in terms of the setting of one of those standards for the quality of education in Ontario.

We have asked the secondary school teachers, through Bill 160 and through this definition today, to spend 25 more minutes in the classroom. The instructional time in the past has measured three hours and 45 minutes. The standard that we set of 1,250 minutes per week of instructional time boils down to four hours and 10 minutes a day on average, which exceeds the previous three hours and 45 minutes by some 25 minutes a day.

The question comes up, how do we define the instructional time? Given that we have through this standard determined that the instructional time should be 1,250 minutes per week, four hours and 10 minutes per day, how do we define what is included within those allotments of time? Certainly across Canada teachers are faced with the same sort of situation. In other provinces, I might say, the amount of instructional time is greater on average than the four hours and 10 minutes.

1510

I suppose I should clarify up front that the four hours and 10 minutes pertains to the secondary level, to secondary schools, not to the elementary schools. The elementary schools have a different standard of 1,300 minutes of instructional time per week, which obviously is greater than the 1,250. The elementary teachers do spend more time in the classroom today, have spent more time in the classroom over the years, and there's no issue there. That standard has not been changed.

But we are talking about the secondary school teachers in Ontario. Comparing the situation in Ontario with other provinces, we find that about seven other provinces do have a higher amount of instructional time than the four hours and 10 minutes, and the elementary teachers do as well, as I mentioned.

Through the debate last year on Bill 160 I think it was fairly clear when we were talking about instructional time that we were talking about teachers in the classroom teaching students. That I believe is a definition that parents would recognize, that parents would say makes sense. Certainly it was what the government had intended through the years. We feel that's the way that instructional time was intended and understood by the people of Ontario, but it had never been defined in an act.

It's perhaps interesting that some of the definitions and some of the terms that are involved in education are not defined in an act. The word "pupil," for example, is not defined anywhere in any particular act. So it's perhaps not too strange that "instructional time" has not been defined.

During the recent negotiations there have been some new interpretations put on the words "instructional time." These new definitions have been put on perhaps to make a better match with the lower amount of instructional time of three and three quarter hours that had been the norm in the past, perhaps in an attempt to get back to those lower levels. The negotiations involving the union had focused on other activities which were not classroom activities, such as monitoring the cafeteria during lunch period, for example, or monitoring the halls at various times during the day. These were the kinds of new issues that popped up and somehow got included within instructional time. It was never our intention that they would be included.

I don't think if you were to poll the parents of Ontario they would say that monitoring the cafeteria is part of classroom activity. I'm sure parents would say that somebody needs to monitor the cafeteria, somebody needs to monitor the hall. These are important activities and there should be some assurance that they're undertaken during the course of the normal day, but they are not classroom activities. I agree. I certainly feel that our cafeterias should be safe places for the students, our halls should be safe places, but they're not classroom activities.

Bear in mind that when we're talking about four hours and 10 minutes of classroom activities, that leaves a big chunk of the day beyond the four hours and 10 minutes that teachers would have which they could devote to preparation time, for example, which I consider to be most important. It's most important that both elementary and secondary teachers have preparation time, but beyond preparation time perhaps time could be spent on other activities such as hall monitoring or supervising the cafeteria - certainly, I know many teachers are involved in extracurricular activities - or any number of meetings that they need, any number of activities that would take place that teachers would be involved with beyond the instructional classroom time. All of that's fine, but not in the instructional time.

The issue came up a few weeks ago that some agreements had actually been signed between boards and unions which took leeway with the definition of instructional time that we as a government contemplated. My response at that time was, "I don't agree with their interpretation of the words `instructional time' in certain instances if they have gone beyond what is in the classroom." However, I must admit that they did so in the absence of a definition in the act. There was no definition in the act to guide them. So in that event we had indicated, and we continue to indicate, that any contracts which were agreed upon in the absence of a definition of instructional time, we would allow them to stand, we would not rip them open. But once we clarified in the act for all to see what we understand, what I believe parents understand, is the definition of instructional time, then that definition of course must be obeyed as the standard, as regulations pertaining to the rest of education must be obeyed as well.

That's where we stand today. We now have Bill 63, which was severed from Bill 62, the bill we considered yesterday. In an act that's worthy of this House, we did, through an all-party agreement, agree to proceed with Bill 62 and get the kids back to their schools today. I'm delighted that so many students are back in their classrooms today where they rightfully belong, where they should have been all through this period of time, and the teachers are back in the classroom. This is an act that looks well upon this House, that we all got together and allowed that act to be dealt with so that the students are back in the classroom.

We did have to sever out this part of the bill and we're dealing with it here today.

I only note with a tinge of sadness, though, that the vote last night was not unanimous, because I would have thought that all the parties of this House would have voted unanimously to have the kids back in class today. I'm just sorry that colleagues from the Liberal and New Democratic parties were not able to support the bill that resulted in all the children being back in their classes today. So that's the one sad aspect of this bill. But the government did have enough votes, fortunately, to muster together to overcome the odds of the opposition parties and get all the students back in -

Interjection.

Hon David Johnson: It's called the opposition. I suppose that's true, but one hopes that every once in a while the opposition is able to support a government bill.

Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): Give some thought to it.

Hon David Johnson: Yes, give some thought to it. Thoughtful opposition.

Mr Shea: Thoughtful opposition would be wonderful.

Hon David Johnson: When we're talking about rights, there are rights of students to have education in Ontario as well. In the minds of parents, that is a very important right, that the school should be open, that the teachers should be there, that the students should have access to those schools.

Interjection.

Hon David Johnson: Yes, there is certainly a balance that needs to take place. I consider that where the students were resting was the very, very heavy side of the scale. It weighed very heavily on my conscience and I'm sure very heavily on the consciences of all in this House that we needed to act. Just the fact that the opposition parties at least allowed the debate to take place I think is a signal of a little bit of co-operation. If you had only voted for it too, that would have been so much better.

1520

Mr Gilles Pouliot (Lake Nipigon): You're overreacting.

Hon David Johnson: I'm always hopeful. This is part of the quality, having teachers teach in the classroom. What we're talking about in this bill is what does constitute instructional time. First of all, it's on the regular timetable of the teacher; it's time on the regular timetable.

Mr Bud Wildman (Algoma): You were hopeful we would vote for the bill. We were hopeful that you would accept our amendments.

Hon David Johnson: I'm sorry to dash your hopes, but we had to get the children back into the schools.

Mr Wildman: You could have accepted our amendments and still got them back.

Hon David Johnson: Mr Speaker, I'm trying to avoid this heckling now and carry on and say that the instructional time involved a course or program that is eligible for credit at the high school level. "Eligible for credit," so it must be a credit course, or a special education program. We have special education programs in Ontario and I'm pleased to say that we have protected funding for over a billion dollars worth of special education programming in Ontario, the first government to protect the special education program in Ontario. I'm getting reports back now from boards that are actually expanding their special education program in Ontario. As a result of the funding envelope that we have protected and given to the boards, the special education program is improving in Ontario and that's a source of great pride to me. The remedial classes that are regularly scheduled by teachers, English as a second language classes regularly scheduled, apprenticeship programs, co-operative programs - these are the kinds of programs in the classroom that constitute instructional time. I think they make sense.

These are the kinds of activities that we want our teachers doing. Direct contact with their students during credit courses, special education courses, apprenticeship programs, co-operative education programs; direct contact, teaching, guiding and mentoring our students, our young people in Ontario. Teachers doing the job that they do so well, that they're so well qualified for, that they're so valued for. Those are the components of instructional time and those are the components which will enhance the quality of our education in Ontario.

That's what the issue is about: Are we in favour of that quality approach or are we opposed to that quality approach? That's what this debate is about. I can tell you that I for one am definitely in favour of that quality approach, having teachers do what they do best.

There are many other aspects of the quality agenda in Ontario in which this government has taken the initiative. I would just like to comment on a few of them for a few brief moments.

For the first time in Ontario, classroom spending in general has been defined and protected. We have now defined classroom monies that boards will have and non-classroom monies that boards will have. The classroom monies are protected. Boards cannot take monies from the components of the classroom funding and spend them on non-classroom activities, such as administration or furniture for the bureaucrats or big buildings for the central office or those types of activities. They are restricted and must spend the classroom funding in the classroom on the components of the classroom.

Those components are obviously teachers, supply teachers, the guidance and librarians we've included in that category, the textbooks for the students, the paraprofessionals that support the classroom such as the speech pathologists. These are the kinds of activities that are protected. Money cannot be taken away from them and spent on administration or bureaucracy.

That's never happened before in Ontario. We do hear stories all about the province of Ontario on textbooks, for example, and how our children are being deprived and have been deprived year by year of textbooks, the shortage of textbooks, inadequate textbooks. That can no longer take place. In that context, of course we were pleased to supplement this year the textbooks in the schoolrooms at the elementary level with an initiative which doubled and brought in 3.2 million new textbooks to this point and we're barely over the halfway point in the program. We spent only $55 million out of $100 million. I still have another $45 million in this fund to put to good use. I can assure the taxpayers that we will put it to good use, and we'll put it to good use by ensuring that we get the best value in a bulk purchase, a reduced price in a bulk purchase.

Some 3.2 million textbooks have been distributed through the elementary level already. Within the upcoming months we will see the remaining $45 million being directed towards more textbooks, science equipment to support the new curriculum, software for our students to assist them in their learning, to assist their teachers. All of these purchases will assist our teachers, will assist our students and will enhance the quality of education in our classrooms.

The curriculum has been revised at the elementary level. I think perhaps one of the strongest features of the quality curriculum that has been introduced by this government is to introduce a new and rigorous curriculum at the elementary level. That curriculum involves mathematics and language, which were introduced just over a year ago and, more recently, the arts, social studies, science and technology, the first real technology aspect of the curriculum that we've had in decades. It's a very exciting new curriculum and it has expectations year by year so that the students, the parents, the teachers, everybody knows year by year what a student should be taught and what a student should know.

That is brand new as well. Formerly, we didn't have that year-by-year expectation, so a parent really wouldn't know at the end of the year what their student should have learned during the course of that particular year. But now the parent can get a copy of the new curriculum. I encourage anybody watching, anybody who wishes to get a copy of the elementary curriculum to write in. We'd be happy to send you a copy and you will know exactly year by year what each student should have learned in all of the elementary courses, whether it's art or whether it's physical education and health or any other component.

I might say that at the secondary level we have been fortunate to receive the assistance of many teachers across Ontario to rewrite the secondary curriculum as well. That rewrite is being undertaken right at the present time. The first drafts of the new curriculum have already been issued. The process is well underway. The new curriculum at the secondary level will start in the fall of 1999, about a year from now, after careful consideration.

It is being written by teachers in conjunction with representation from the colleges and universities across Ontario. It is open for public scrutiny. I would encourage anybody who's interested to participate, to see it, to be involved, to have input into the process and, again, to contact the Ministry of Education. This is an open process that we invite all stakeholders in education to be part of the writing of a new secondary school curriculum, a curriculum that will focus more on the basics, will have a little more emphasis on mathematics, a little more emphasis on language, a little more emphasis on science, a curriculum that will be more rigorous, more challenging to our secondary students, and it will work hand in glove with the curriculum that we've already developed at the elementary level.

1530

These are exciting times for education in Ontario. "Quality" is the key word: better curriculum, more challenging curriculum, province-wide testing, testing that has been assisted by the teachers. The kind of testing we've done at grade 3 across the province has been designed by teachers to ensure its success. I think that's one of the reasons we've been so successful in coming forward with quality products in education, that we've sought and received the guidance and assistance of the teachers of Ontario.

The report cards are another aspect of the quality improvement. New report cards will be available right across the province at the elementary level by Christmas in all schools, report cards designed with input from the teachers of Ontario, and there is the electronic version of the report cards, again designed by teachers and educators across Ontario.

What else have we done? We've capped the average class size. I've spoken on this issue a few times and I think it's important, because average class sizes have been going up and up at the elementary level, year after year, and at the secondary level. Between 1991 and 1997, for example, the average class size in the province of Ontario rose at the secondary level, rose year by year at the elementary level, and teachers are being asked to teach more and more students in their classrooms. This is not fair to the teachers. This is not fair to the students. We, as the first government ever, have said this cannot carry on. We have put a cap on the average class size.

Will some classes be larger than the cap, than the average? Certainly they will. Some will be larger, some will be smaller. At the elementary level the cap is 25. If there's one class of 30, there will be another class at 20, so that the average is 25. That's the nature of an average. But I'll tell you that at least we have stopped the growth of the classes. That class which is at 30, without putting a cap on class size, would be 31 and 32 and 33 as the years roll by. That will no longer happen. That was taking place to some degree in the context of negotiations between the boards and the unions. The boards and the unions were negotiating compensation and other aspects and it was resulting in larger class sizes clearly in some instances across Ontario, but we've now put a stop to that.

Tutors in the classroom is an issue we haven't talked about much over the last couple of days, but here is support for our teachers in the classroom, another program of quality. Young people from our colleges and universities who have skills are coming into the classrooms, helping the teachers with computer programs to teach the elementary students, by and large, about computers.

I was at the Andrew Hunter Elementary School in Barrie and they are just so pleased with the program and they have such an excellent program at the Hunter school in Barrie. The young kids in the elementary schools are so magnificent on the computers. They can create their own Web sites, dial into the Ministry of Education Web sites. They are so proficient with the computer. They could teach us all in this House a good deal. How did the elementary kids arrive at this level? They arrived at this level because the tutors program was there, which was an initiative of this government, I'm pleased to say, a quality initiative. We set up the tutors program. The young people came in from the colleges and the universities and showed the elementary students how to do these things on the computers and now the young kids are just so proficient on the computers. You have to be proud to see them and see how well they operate.

The special education I've mentioned.

Today I was really pleased, and I guess it's the last thing I'll speak to today before I sit down, to specify board by board the monies which will flow to school boards to build new accommodations. We know that in many boards in the province there are more students than there is space to accommodate the students, that there are many portables and that students are not being housed in the most accessible accommodations. This is something that needs to be dealt with.

The formula that we announced earlier this year, details of which I announced this afternoon, will flow monies to the boards. The boards will now be able to rely on a flow of revenues. They will be able to convert that flow of revenues into a capital program. We've given the boards the flexibility. We've said to the boards, "You are responsible entities and we're not going to direct you as previous governments have done." Previous governments have said you have to build a school here or you have to build a school there. We say no, we're not going to do that.

The boards are responsible. They know the needs of their students. They know the needs within the context of the whole board. We'll flow them the money. They will convert that into capital and they will decide, with their parents, with their constituents, with their ratepayers, where to best invest, where to best build new schools, where to best put renovations on existing schools. That's the money that we announced this afternoon. It will flow right across the province. It's an unprecedented program. It will involve some $800 million worth of building over the next year and about $1.5 billion over the next three years: an unprecedented program in Ontario.

When those schools start to come up, as the one in York region today, Richmond Hill - I was in Richmond Hill this afternoon -

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Order.

Hon David Johnson: When that school is built, I think we'll all be proud in this House, even those who are heckling me today, those merchants of fear. We'll all be proud to see those schools crop up and the students having the proper accommodation.

That's another aspect of our quality program, as is Bill 63 to describe the instructional time, to define it. I challenge the opposition. I say this is part of our quality improvement program in education in Ontario, and I ask you to look at it in that vein and give us your support. We need your support. Go for quality.

Mr Joseph N. Tascona (Simcoe Centre): I'm pleased to join the debate on Bill 63, An Act to amend the Education Act with respect to instructional time. The bottom line here is, we're dealing in terms of instructional time for secondary school teachers. Instructional time, in my view, is a teaching condition. Quite frankly, it's a quality teaching condition we're talking about here. Time in the classroom teaching students is certainly time well spent and it's one of the standards that we're trying to maintain.

Last fall, the government, through the Education Quality Improvement Act, which was Bill 160, and the Fewer School Boards Act, introduced reforms to improve the quality of education for all students in Ontario and to ensure consistent province-wide standards. During the implementation of these reforms there has been discussion about the legislative requirement that secondary school teachers provide instruction to pupils which amounts to, on average, four hours and 10 minutes daily.

In his letter of September 4 to chairs of school boards and school authorities, the Minister of Education and Training reminded them of the new provincial standard-setting and a minimal amount of time that teachers are required to spend teaching. That's what we're talking about here: teaching in the classroom. That's what instructional time is all about.

The minister's letter also discussed the meaning of secondary school instruction and signals his intention to introduce legislation that would confirm this definition for the purposes of section 170.2 of the Education Act. The minimum instruction time standard was adopted by the Legislature last year and is now the law. The proposed instruction time amendment provides confirmation of what has been a commonly understood term: that instructional time is time in classroom teaching students. That's basically common sense. I think it's fairly well understood.

1540

However, that's not what's been going on with respect to the negotiations between school boards and the teachers' unions. The proposed instruction time amendment provides confirmation of what has been a commonly understood term. If passed by the Legislature, it would ensure consistent, province-wide understanding and application of the instruction time standard as we move ahead to enhance the quality of education for students.

What we're talking about in terms of instructional time is that the Education Act provision under section 170.2 provides that every school board "shall ensure that, in the aggregate, its classroom teachers...are assigned to provide instruction to pupils for an average of at least 1,300 minutes" per week for elementary schools, which works out to four hours and 20 minutes per day, and 1,250 minutes per week for secondary school teachers, which works out to four hours and 10 minutes per day. I'd have you note the differential between elementary school teachers' time and secondary school teachers' time. There's a significant difference between the two. Yet that's what we're faced with respect to secondary school negotiations.

The very fact is that it's the responsibility of school boards and unions to negotiate agreements respecting provincial standards. That's their obligation but they have to negotiate with respect to the provincial standards, not water down the provincial standards. Some of those standards are a five-hour instructional day for pupils, 110 hours per credit, limits on class size, prohibition of planned budget deficits, minimum instructional time for teachers and 190 instructional days for secondary students, which includes a maximum of 10 exam days and a maximum of four professional activity days. These are provincial standards that have been set out.

Let's deal with instructional time because that's the focus of this bill. It involves a teacher "assigned in a regular timetable to invigilate examinations or provide instruction" in the following: "a course or program that is eligible for credit...a special education program," a remedial class, an English-as-a-second-language program, "an apprenticeship program...a co-operative education program...any other class, course or program of a kind specified...in a regulation," such as a teacher adviser program.

What we're talking about is a teacher assigned to a regular timetable providing instruction in programs which are obviously to the benefit of the students in terms of their education. It's not dealing with such items as cafeteria supervision; that's not instructional time. Neither is hall monitoring. Instructional time is time in the classroom teaching students. That's the common sense definition, that's the common sense approach of this government with respect to instructional time.

The law was passed last year so that secondary school teachers would spend more time in the classroom. High school teachers in Ontario have been spending less than four hours of their day teaching students, while the national average is 4.5 hours. Let's look at some of those national standards and other jurisdictions in the country in terms of the time that's being spent teaching students in the classroom at the secondary level.

In this province in January 1998 the teaching time hours per day ranged between three hours and 40 minutes to three hours and 50 minutes per day teaching students. Under this new legislation which was put into place, as of September 1998 in Ontario that has been increased to four hours and 10 minutes. We're increasing by 20 minutes classroom instructional time. Even with that increase, we're the third-lowest in comparison to all the other provinces in this country. The only two provinces that are below us are Quebec and Saskatchewan. All the rest are above us.

I would say to you that we're certainly not at the norm level. We're dealing with essentially trying to bring up what I would call a teaching condition. I think David Cooke, who is the co-chair of the Education Improvement Commission, would characterize instructional time to students in the classroom as a teaching condition, and I would agree with him. I wouldn't view this as a working condition, something you can negotiate with the trade union and water down so they can achieve whatever objective they want in terms of maintaining staff or maintaining the status quo in terms of the level of teaching and the time of teaching per day in front of students.

That's not what we're about. We're about providing quality education for students, not quality time for the teachers in terms of performing their job. We have to focus on this teaching condition, because another common sense fact about this is that the greater the amount of instructional time you have, the greater the quality of education you're providing; that's increasing and providing quality student time, and that leads to better performance. That's the bottom line.

What are we trying to accomplish here? Are we trying to accomplish providing collective agreements that do not provide for quality teaching time and quality education? That's why the province got involved in providing these standards. But even with what we're providing here under Bill 63, we're well below other provinces in this country. As I said, we're still the third lowest, even by increasing instructional time for secondary school teachers by that additional 20 minutes.

I think it's fundamental. I don't think it takes away from quality education, as do those taking an opposition approach to this, saying: "The less time you're in the classroom, that's going to affect the quality of the teachers being able to teach. It's going to affect quality education, because you're making us teach more in the classroom." I just don't understand that argument. I'd remind the opposition parties that the parents in this province outnumber the teachers - that's common sense mathematics - so let's focus on who we're trying to benefit here. We're trying to benefit the students and we're trying to make sure that the parents get the value for their dollars with respect to sending their children to school and making sure that as a province we provide quality education and these standards.

That's an unfortunate outcome of what has happened with respect to these negotiations this time around. We're getting caught up into basically fine hairs, the thin edge of the wedge, if you want to put it that way, in terms of what's instructional time. Why should we be negotiating instructional time in terms of taking the teachers out of the classroom so you can maintain teaching six classes out of eight and also maintain your staff level? That's the union's objective. That's obvious in terms of what their goals are.

The bottom line is that I don't think it's out of line to increase the teaching time in front of students in the classroom by 20 minutes. That's a basic, common sense approach.

We've had to take this measure as a government to come forth with this legislation because the school boards and the trade unions haven't been able to negotiate that standard which is set out already in the legislation. That's already out there in terms of how much instructional time is required of the secondary school teacher. What they're dickering about is, what is instructional time? We know what instructional time is. It's teaching the students in the classroom their core curriculum. It's not monitoring the lunch period and other matters that take the teacher away from the classroom.

1550

We have to come forth here in this Legislature to define instructional time. That's what we're all about here in terms of dealing with this, and I think it's a fairly common sense approach to deal with it. But that's the unfortunate outcome in terms of the negotiations that have taken place this time. Unfortunately it led to lockouts on behalf of school boards and it led to strike activity on actions of the trade unions. I'm talking about full strike activity and not rotating strikes. That's another unfortunate aspect in terms of the negotiations, rotating strikes, which have obviously affected classroom time, instructional time. But that's what we're trying to do here, to make it very clear that you can't negotiate down a standard, and that's what's happening out there, negotiating down instructional time. We're not in favour of that.

The law is the law and the law has been very clearly set out in terms of the amount of instructional time that is required. We're asking for four hours and 10 minutes a day from secondary school teachers. I don't think that's too much to ask. We come here today and now we're defining what instructional time is to make it crystal clear that what we're talking about is teaching time in the classroom with respect to core subjects.

We're not talking about cafeteria supervision and we're not talking about hall monitoring. We're talking about instructional time, which is time in the classroom teaching students. That's what we've had to come to in terms of this piece of legislation, to obviously add transparency, to add clarity, so both parties know what they're negotiating in terms of what instructional time is. It's unfortunate that we have to do this because I think it's common sense what it's about.

I'm very pleased to have been able to join the debate and I fully support Bill 63, its objectives and what we're trying to accomplish in this province in terms of providing quality education. I focus on and I reiterate that what we're talking about in terms of instructional time is a teaching condition that is to the benefit of our students in this province. These are quality standards, it's quality education and it's going to improve our education system.

Mr Doug Galt (Northumberland): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on Bill 63, An Act to amend the Education Act with respect to instructional time.

In my first minute or so I'd like to first compliment the Minister of Education on his bill yesterday, Bill 62, because in my riding we have the Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic District School Board - it's Board number 41 in short. They were locked out and I certainly had a lot of parents phoning, concerned about their children not in school. I think it's rather ironic that in the town of Cobourg we had a brand-new St Mary's school just built, finished, ready to go and, lo and behold, the students were locked out. I think that was very unfortunate.

Yesterday was a beautiful exercise in the democratic process and the party system. There was give and take on both sides. Even the NDP gave and took a little bit. It ended up that the students were the winners. They were the winners in the end at 11:30 last night when we had our final vote. Even though the NDP and the Liberals didn't want to agree with the final bill, it was kind of them to let it go through in one day so our students could get back into school.

We've had complaints in the past in the opposition about bills being too thick and too many pages. I don't think they can complain about Bill 63, since it's all on one piece of paper. I doubt if they're going to complain that this particular bill is too long. However, really, if you analyze it, this bill shouldn't be necessary. Instructional time: I think common sense would prevail and we shouldn't have to be going through this exercise. However, the unions have been trying to negotiate and play games and the end result is we're going to have to define what instructional time is.

Interjection.

Mr Galt: Yes, that's right.

Of course, things that would be recognized in instructional time are a course or a program, special education, a remedial class, English as a second language, apprenticeship programs, co-op education programs and "any other class, course or program specified or described in a regulation made under" this clause.

I think this government has gone a long way in looking after students, getting quality education for our students. We've gone to the point where we actually put in Bill 160 that there would be 1,300 minutes per week or four hours and 20 minutes per day for the elementary students. We put in 1,250 minutes per week for the secondary students, working out to four hours and 10 minutes of instructional time per day.

We have even laid out that there will be 110 hours per credit, and we have limited the class size, put a cap on it, however you want to describe it. The end result is that the board average will not go above 22 students in the secondary panel or 25 students in the elementary.

I have parents regularly calling me and saying, "There are 35 in my Johnny's class," or "my Jane's class," or whoever. Another will say there are 40 in their class. I'm saying if there are 40 in your elementary school, then there must be a class of 10 someplace, and maybe you had better look around - where is that class of 10? - and ask the school. Maybe they are playing games with us and maybe there is not a class of 10. Maybe we had better check with the board and see, but the maximum class average has to be the 25 and 22, elementary and secondary school respectively.

We have also laid out that there will be 190 instructional days and that would include some 10 examination days, with a maximum of four PA days. In the past there was kind of an unlimited number of PA days and PD days and there were snow days - of course, you can understand why buses wouldn't go on snow days - so they accumulated. There wasn't a limit on how many examination days. All of the snow days and examination days were taken off the 185 instructional days. I said PA days and PD days could be over and above the 185, and there would be a limit because July and August of course are not days in the classroom.

We're focusing, with this government, on the student and the classroom and educational development, the real nuts and bolts of what education is all about. That is where we're putting our money.

The Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board, the public board in my riding, really doesn't seem to have it yet. They don't seem to understand. At the very first board meeting in 1998, back in early January, what was their first decision? To have a new headquarters. They started out at $3 million. By the time they got around to some of the renovations, it was up to $4 million. Dear knows where it's at now, because in there I understand there are even some special exercise rooms for the director of education. I would have thought he could have gone to one of the gymnasiums in one of the local schools in Peterborough, but no, they had to have their own little exercise room right in headquarters. It's quite a fancy place, I'm told.

I quote from Phyllis Diller. She once said, "Thin is in, but fat is where it's at." The same could be said for my local public school board. What we really want them to reduce is the fat in administration. Administration does indeed need to get thinner.

I'm absolutely appalled by the comment that was made by the chair, Judi Armstrong, a many times candidate for the NDP. She said that the labour problems could be solved with more money. Lo and behold, that's how it has been solved for the lost 10 years from 1985 to 1995, first by the spending Liberals - spend and borrow - and then by the NDP and their spending policies.

I think we have demonstrated that it's very important that we must focus spending on the classroom, because certainly that is not what has been happening in many of our boards. Spending is up from 1995, some $14.1 billion to $14.4 billion today and climbing. We spend more on a per student basis than is spent in any other province except for Quebec.

As you follow some of the actions of school boards, you'd almost think they were opposed to quality education, to standards. Certainly in our board, the pupil-teacher ratio actually increased from 1995 to 1997, something which is absolutely totally unacceptable.

1600

I think we have some great teachers in this province. Most of our teachers are great teachers, but they do have some very special challenges, like some of the students they have to deal with. I empathize with some of the difficulties they have in their classrooms, but there are many teachers who indeed want to do a good job. They are well trained. My hat's off to many, if not all, of the teachers in our system who are out there wanting to do the right thing. But they're working in a system that is broken and it's been broken for some time.

Back in June, a retired couple from Colborne - I won't name them because they've been previous Liberal workers - came to me and I thought they were going to give me a problem over education. Instead they were so complimentary about what this government is doing for education. They said we're right on track. What we're doing is the right thing and it's long, long overdue. It could have been done over that lost decade, but it wasn't.

Last weekend, I was in Brighton at the Applefest celebration. Some 20,000 to 25,000 people were at that celebration. Several people came up to me and said, "You're on track with education but you really should be getting those Catholic kids back into the separate school system and get on with it." I was at a retirement for the CAO of the Campbellford hospital, Dick Quesnel. An accountant from Trenton told me how we were on the right track and doing the right thing for education. The list goes on.

The many things I was at during the past weekend, from the minor softball awards night in Cobourg to the Drumhead service in Campbellford on Sunday afternoon to the Roseneath Fair on Sunday morning, the message was consistent about education: This government is indeed on the right track, the right track of recognizing excellence in education by having things like province-wide testing and publishing those results. They're saying that, absolutely, parents should know and parents want to know what is going on with their students and what's happening in the classroom. Without these results and without publishing the testing, the excellence would go unrewarded for both pupils and teachers; poor performance would go undetected and consequently students couldn't be given the extra help.

One of the most basic responsibilities a government has is to ensure that quality education is available to our students. We're there to set meaningful standards for all children. Standards in any organization ensure that there is quality, and education is not any different than any other organization. This government is setting standards that will ensure smaller class sizes, setting standards on report cards. We're testing in grade 3. This is the second year of testing in grade 3 and it's time that we got on with other grades.

We've implemented a new curriculum and teachers are thrilled with this new curriculum. Even those who are on the other side of the political fence are saying how great it is with the elementary curriculum that has been brought in. We've legislated the amount of teacher time in the classroom. That's really where education is at, when the teachers are with the students. We've been focusing our funding on the classroom, things such as the $100 million that we're putting into textbooks. This is long overdue. Students have textbooks that are outdated, held together by duct tape. That's what the previous governments were prepared to allow our students to go to school with, books held together with duct tape, but no money was set aside for the classroom. They were happy to give it all or give a large portion of it to administration.

This debate is really about instructional time. It's about bringing more to our educational system, the standards that are needed there. What we're really asking for is a standard that is in other provinces across Canada. We're talking about a standard that's already in the elementary panel and we're really trying to bring a standard into the secondary panel. We're asking high school teachers to teach some four hours and 10 minutes per day.

As I look at a graph, this graph indicates that the secondary teaching time in Ontario is under four hours, the only province in Canada where it is under four hours. Saskatchewan is right on four hours. Most of the other provinces fall between four and four and a half. There are actually three provinces - BC, New Brunswick and Manitoba - where they're in excess of four and a half hours per day. We're not asking our teachers to teach any more or have any more instructional time than other teachers across Canada.

It's certainly been a pleasure to address this particular bill and to talk about some of the changes that have occurred. J.F. Kennedy once said, "`Progress' is a nice word but change is its motivator and change has its enemies." Some of these changes that we've made have garnered some stiff opposition but these changes are needed. It's going to be to the benefit of our students. They're going to have a better opportunity in school, to ensure that teachers are there for instructional time. This is the kind of bill it's unfortunate that we have to bring forward but it's going to give direction to boards and will be of benefit not only to our students but also to our teachers.

The Acting Speaker: Questions and comments?

Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre): It sounds like I'm at a used car salesmen's convention, the self-aggrandizement of this. I would remind the members on the government side that the teachers had not rejected the idea of extra time to be in school. The real issue is that this is a way for the government to reduce costs and remove teachers.

When you remove teachers, it's not as simple as the government presents. They talk about adding 25%. One of the issues is, when you take a teacher out of a small school, and all the responsibilities that go with it, there's a ripple effect. The response on the part of a lot of teachers is that they're insulted when there isn't a recognition of the other roles they play in that school. I'm amazed that no member from the government side has yet addressed this in terms of the importance of the relationship and the skills of teachers in helping students, not just in an instructional capacity but in a capacity of counselling, in a capacity of being able to advise, in a capacity of building relationships.

It doesn't just happen in the classroom. It happens in the schoolyard. It happens in the cafeteria, if the school has a cafeteria. It happens in that class or another part of the school, maybe in a lounge or a theatre or an auditorium, if that school happens to have them. That's part of the issue.

But the nub of all of this is another way in which to nickel and dime and try to take money out of education. It will have a qualitative effect. The members well know that the teachers have not rejected the idea of the short period of time you're asking for. It's what it symbolizes and what it means in terms of not respecting the roles that teachers have played historically in contributing to the growth and development of young personalities, along with the instruction that they have to teach.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Algoma.

Mr Wildman: I listened carefully to the comments of the minister and his colleagues in the leadoff to the debate on Bill 63, a bill that the government is using to control and ensure that boards comply with their vision, if that's the right word, of how students should receive their education in the province, a bill that will remove flexibility from boards and make it more and more difficult for them to meet the local needs of their students.

I noticed that one of the members who participated in this intervention in the debate talked a great deal about unions wanting, in his view, to protect the number of positions for teachers. I suppose that's quite true. One of the roles of a union is to protect its members. The thing that he forgets, though, is that the members of a teachers' union are professional teachers who not only care about their own welfare, which of course they do, but also care about the welfare of their students and care about excellence in education.

Why is it that they want to prevent the number of teachers being lowered? That's what this is about. One of the main reasons is because they understand that if there are fewer teachers and more students, that means less contact between individual students and teachers. It means less time for teachers to help students and to ensure that they grasp the concepts they are trying to convey. This government says that they are producing more time for teachers to be with students. In actual fact, it means less time for individual teachers and students to interact.

1610

Mr John R. Baird (Nepean): I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to my colleagues the member for Simcoe Centre, the member for Northumberland and the Minister of Education. I particularly want to comment on the member for Northumberland's remarks. The member for Northumberland regularly brings specific examples of concerns and thoughts that he has heard from his constituents on issues, as he has done today with education, so he's certainly a good representative in that regard. I too want to do that. The member did so and so will I.

We sent a constituency survey out to residents in Nepean. I have one I was reading right this afternoon: "Please stay on track and get the education system changed. Don't cave in to the unions, as our education system is so far behind the reality of living."

Interjection.

Mr Baird: It just came back from a constituent on Brent Avenue. It's right here; the member opposite can come over and see it.

Interjection.

Mr Baird: If the member wants to talk about today's mess, she can come and see the two new high schools they're building in my constituency that the Liberals promised and never delivered. They are going to be opening next month. We're very excited about those two new high schools.

Interjection.

Mr Baird: The Conservative government funded those schools; the member is right.

The member for Northumberland talked about the support for rigorous standards in education, for the highest standards in education. I can tell him that's what constituents in Nepean are telling me: about the importance of curriculum, about the importance of spending every dollar wisely and well in our education system. I certainly agree with that.

The Minister of Education too spoke about the importance of capital planning. That's a tremendously important issue for me in my constituency in Barrhaven. The government is building two new high schools there and we're very hopeful that through the announcement earlier today we'll be able to build one more high school in the area and then begin to look at how we can ensure that we're spending the money wisely and well to address the shortage of school places for elementary education.

The Acting Speaker: The member for St Catharines.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to respond. What the government is embarking upon is complete central control of education by the bureaucracy and the political elite of the Conservative Party in Toronto and leaving virtually no decisions to the local decision-making process, to elected trustees at the local level.

This is totally contrary to the concept that William Davis, for instance, proposed a number of years ago when he was Minister of Education and ultimately when he became the Premier of this province, when he wanted to work with members of the teaching profession instead of against them. At no time do I remember a battle with teachers in this province which was precipitated by Premier Davis.

What this is all about is reducing the number of teaching positions in Ontario by some 7,500. That was stated in the hallway in the Whitney Block by the present Minister of Education. That is on tape. It is recorded by people that in fact he said that.

What the government has done is created a crisis. It has created instability, it has created disruption, because if you want to place in disregard a public institution, you do exactly that: You create a crisis. You create a lack of confidence in public institutions, as the Premier tried to do last week when he was firing arrows at people involved in education and the education system. You try to discredit it and then try to replace it with some new draconian measure, a new system that he believes is better but is really imported from the southern United States, where the Republicans are in power.

Morale today is at its lowest that I've ever seen it among members of the teaching profession, who would much rather be concentrating their efforts on teaching children, working with them and working with parents to produce a good education system, but all this government wants is confrontation.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Two minutes for reply.

Mr Tascona: I'm pleased to respond to the various members. I think the theme of what we're hearing here is a debate about teacher-pupil contact. That's the overriding theme here.

The member for Ottawa Centre basically focuses on the unions not rejecting the amount of time in the classroom, but what they're dealing with is the debate over instructional time and what that means. It obviously means for the member for Ottawa Centre that lunchroom time and hall monitoring are teaching time, and we fundamentally disagree with that.

The same goes for the member for Algoma, who rightly states that the union role is to protect its members. We understand that. But he says that the measures we're taking which are increasing instructional time for secondary school teachers from three hours and 50 minutes a day to four hours and 10 minutes a day are going to result in less time for teachers to interact. I fundamentally don't understand that argument, because teachers are there for seven to eight hours a day and we're talking about them being in the classroom four hours and 10 minutes a day.

The bottom line is that if we want the teachers to teach more -and I think that's what we need in order to have quality standards in this province - obviously if you decrease the amount of time they teach, you would need more teachers. But we have to have some quality standards in place. You can't expect students to be looking at one teacher, a different teacher. They want to be dealing with their teacher every day and getting that quality education.

The MPP for Nepean has correctly stated the support with respect to the quality standards we're try to establish through instructional time. But the member for St Catharines points out that teachers want to be teaching children, and that's right. That's what we want them to do, increase the time they're teaching children.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): I want to begin by taking a moment to reflect on yet again a really creative effort on the part of the current government when it comes to naming their bills. Bill 63 is An Act to amend the Education Act with respect to instructional time, but it stands as the Minimum Standards Act. I find myself thinking that the Tories have a really quirky sense of humour. They're certainly gifted at coming up with names of acts.

They want to talk about three things, quite clearly. They want to talk about quality, they want to talk about accountability and they want to talk about standards. Nothing they actually do in terms of their agenda, their policies, their actions, their funding has done a whole lot to improve quality or accountability or standards, but they manage to attach those names to each of their acts. In the course of the last year and a half we have had an act which was supposed to improve accountability, which in fact reduced accountability by lessening the role of local school trustees by putting total centralized control of education into the hands of the provincial government and making education much less accountable to the person, the taxpayer, the parent, the student at the local level. It stood in the name of accountability even though its effect was to be exactly the opposite of increased accountability.

Then we had Bill 160, which was supposed to be about the improvement of quality. As parent after parent said in making presentations to the committee that was having hearings on that bill, there was nothing in Bill 160 that spoke to an improved quality of education, yet we had an act that stood in the name of improved quality. Many would argue, and I would be one of them, based on the funding formula that was the result of the government taking total control of education, that we are seeing a lessening of quality in the classrooms of our schools across this province. That was the result of the so-called quality improvement act that this government brought in.

So now we have the Minimum Standards Act. At some point I'm going to spend a little bit of time on "minimum," because I think that may be the part of this name which, for once, speaks to what the Tory government is all about when it comes to education: It's about minimums. It's about reducing funding to the lowest common denominator. It's about reducing the time teachers spend with students in what this government appears to consider productive time to a minimum, as opposed to building on the kinds of contributions to students that teachers are making in what this government somehow considers to be outside the realm of productive time spent between teachers and students.

1620

Before I get into that, I want to start with this concept of standards. If there's one thing the Premier and the Minister of Education and every backbencher who speaks to education on the part of the Tory caucus wants to address when they talk about standards, it is the new curriculum. They want to talk about the improvements to curriculum they have made, that they are going to improve the quality of education and increase the standards of education. I think we have to focus today on secondary schools because this bill, with respect to instructional time, is speaking exclusively to secondary schools. So I'm going to address my comments almost entirely to the issue of standards in secondary schools.

I want to begin by addressing the issue of curriculum, which is the government's favourite topic when it comes to their plans for secondary schools. This is something the government has had on the burner, on again, off again, for almost the entire length of time they've been in government. They first started out with this plan for curriculum, which they now want us to believe is about improving standards, to cut a year off the high school program. This of course was all about cost cutting, which is what this government is really about. They keep talking quality and standards when what they really mean is, "Let's camouflage what is purely and simply a cost-cutting effort."

In the case of the secondary school curriculum, they set out to cut a year off the students' academic secondary school program in order to save some dollars, only they discovered, perhaps to their dismay, that Bette Stephenson, a former Conservative Minister of Education, had already eliminated grade 13. We were now on a credit system and it was going to be a little bit tricky to cut grade 13 out of the secondary school curriculum once again. They found that they had to start dealing with credits.

What was their answer to quality improvement and setting new standards for our secondary schools when it came to their favourite topic, curriculum? Their answer was to reduce the number of credits that students would require. Their answer was to reduce the length of credit hours, reduce the amount of time that students had to spend in class in order to get a secondary school credit.

One of those areas was in English. They were going to reduce the numbers of hours that students actually spent taking English courses. This is from the very government that is saying here today, "We are going to improve quality and we're going to improve standards by increasing the amount of time that teachers spend teaching students." I'm going to debate that point shortly.

I want to take you back to where this government started with secondary schools. It started with an intention to reduce the number of credit hours for students so they could save money by cutting teachers who were teaching those credit hours, and they were going to do it, of all places, in the teaching of English. I think if you were to go out there and ask the average Ontarian or the average businessman where they think the government should make its cutbacks, they would not suggest that you cut back the teaching of English. In fact, I think the message the Premier got just before his standing ovation at the chamber of commerce after he dumped all over the education system was that we need to improve the teaching of English.

Indeed, the government heard that message and they've backed off. They've retreated from their intention to cut the number of credit hours and to cut the number of hours students spend taking English courses. They're in a bit of a dilemma now because they haven't actually been able to cut a year out of the high school curriculum because they've got the same number of credits and the same number of credit hours and they didn't know where they were going to find the money they needed to cut the costs by cutting teachers, which is one of the reasons we have this bill in front of us today that is going to cut teachers by increasing the number of students that teachers teach. "If we can't reduce the credit hours, let's just have each teacher teach a few more students and we can still cut teachers and still cut costs."

I want to suggest to you that when we finally see the secondary school curriculum proposals from this government, we are indeed going to see new minimum standards when it comes to curriculum. You know what they've got on the table now? You know their way of cutting dollars now? It's to take what used to be a thousand courses - I guess the government felt that the kind of educational depth and variety that we're offering with a thousand courses was a little too rich for their minimum standard approach. So they've taken those thousand courses and cut them down to 260. That will be the kind of choices the students who are serving as pages here in the House today will have when they get to secondary school. They'll get to choose, over the total course of their secondary school year, from about 260 courses that this government is prepared to offer as part of its minimum standards. I suggest that these are minimal standards indeed.

I would also argue very strongly, as my leader did in question period this afternoon, that it is absolutely hypocritical to talk about any kind of standards, minimal or otherwise, if you don't have some kind of educational stability across our educational system. This government has done everything within its power, deliberately and inadvertently, through the most gross mismanagement any of us have ever seen through all successive governments, to create a state of instability in our educational system.

I think a lot of it is deliberate. I know a lot of it is from sheer mismanagement. They really don't care about what happens on the front lines. They've got an agenda; they've got a public relations message. They do their agenda and they camouflage it with their millions of dollars of advertising to spin the public on what they want the public to believe they are doing. That's really what the government is all about. That's where the mismanagement comes, because they don't care about what happens on the front lines. They just get the agenda out. So I think a lot of the chaos we have is mismanagement.

I also think there is a deliberate strategy. I want to give the government credit: Some of what they do is actually thought through. It's hard for us to tell sometimes how much is thought through and how much is mismanagement; it's kind of a crazy mix. But I want to give them credit that some of what they do is deliberate, and one of the most deliberate things they have done is to do everything in their power to set one group against another, whether it is trustees against teachers, parents against school boards, parents against teachers, public boards against separate boards - you name it.

Interjection.

The Acting Speaker: Member for Durham East.

Mrs McLeod: You name it, Mr Speaker. This government has done everything possible to create a sense of confrontation and divisiveness and alienation within our school system.

As my leader said today, you can't talk about standards, you can't expect to implement your curriculum and your testing, if you don't have some stability. That's why Dalton McGuinty has proposed to this government a simple, almost cost-free education stability plan. How do you at least get some stability in the collective bargaining arena, where there is sheer chaos, where yesterday we dealt with back-to-work legislation unprecedented in its scope, back-to-work legislation that deals with eight boards at once and sends them into the most inane arbitration process that is going to leave us with a hodgepodge of arbitration awards, if any arbitrator can actually come to grips with the situation?

That's what we had yesterday. That's eight boards. That's eight boards of some 164 agreements that have to be reached, where we have about 11 settlements and now yesterday eight arbitrations. The rest are still out there waiting to be settled or waiting to face strike situations or lockout situations or arbitrated awards.

In order to introduce some stability into that climate, Dalton McGuinty said there are a few simple things you can do. He sat down last week to meet with representatives of teacher organizations and representatives of trustee organizations and said, "What could I call on this government to do that would help to get good local settlements so we would have less chaos and less disruption?"

They said: "Well, actually, there are some pretty simple things you could do. You could, first of all, allow some one-year agreements instead of deeming that every agreement is a two-year agreement automatically when many boards don't know what funding this government is going to give them in year two and therefore are hesitant to settle."

They said: "In some boards where we have tremendous enrolment growth, there are space problems. If you were to allow just some phase-in where we simply do not have enough physical classrooms to accommodate the class sizes that the government is setting now as the average across the system - give us a little bit of time to phase those in." That would have allowed some agreements to take place: not at any point to allow larger class sizes - this government is doing enough to allow larger class sizes, even though they talk about capping class size - but to recognize the fact that the government has only belatedly, only today, acknowledged that these wards are going to have some capital needs and are going to have to find some spaces for students. That was something the minister was not even prepared to consider.

As Dalton McGuinty said, for there to be any long-term stability, for there to be any kind of reasonable climate in which there can be equality of education and a standard of expectation for our students, there is going to have to be a review of the funding formula which this government has put in place, because that funding formula is creating inequalities, it is inadequate, it is strangling education in many boards across this province.

1630

Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa-Rideau): That's what he said yesterday.

The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Order, please. Come to order.

Mrs McLeod: Those are a few simple things which this government could do if it wanted to have stability. I say again, as my leader said today, without stability in education you cannot talk about standards.

Let me come specifically to the standards that are supposed to be addressed in this bill that we have before us today. This bill deals with where teachers will be allowed to spend their 1,250 minutes of instructional time per week. Let's be clear, there is no disagreement about what the law of the land is. There's no disagreement on this side of the House; there's no disagreement among teachers or among trustees. People know what the laws says. We didn't agree with it when it was done, we continue to believe that the government brought in its changes in instructional time for the one basic reason that they still wanted to cut costs by cutting teachers, but we know it is nevertheless the law of Ontario.

What does determining exactly where those 1,250 minutes a week will be spent have to say about quality? What does it have to say about standards? If you're talking about standards, unless you're talking about something truly minimum, then standards have to imply quality. I wonder what kind of quality of teaching time and therefore what kind of quality of learning time, what kind of standards we're going to have if teachers are spending those 1,250 minutes of instructional time demoralized, discouraged, feeling that their work has been devalued by the very government that controls all of the conditions under which they work.

I know this government relies very heavily on the opinion and the expertise of business leaders. I would ask them to go out and speak to any successful business leader in this province, to any business leader who's carried out any kind of restructuring of his or her organization and ask them one simple question: Do you think you can increase the productivity of your organization by dumping all over your employees? You will not find one successful business person who tells you that you can increase your productivity by having demoralized, discouraged, exhausted employees, and yet that's what this government has sought to do to the teachers of this province.

Do they not understand what conditions that creates for teaching in that 1,250 minutes of instructional time, what conditions it creates for students learning? You can't deliver a quality of education without the full participation of the teachers of this province. I don't know why the government doesn't see that as a basic tenet of common sense. We will truly have minimum standards, with this 1,250 minutes of instructional time defined, and nothing more.

If teachers feel they are pushed to the point where all they are prepared to do is the minimum - because we would then lose the hundreds and hundreds of extra hours that teachers put in working with students in what I would call contact time with students, because there is much more to contact time with students than the hours that are actually spent in a classroom. We will lose the hundreds of hours that teachers put in above and beyond those 1,250 minutes of instructional time per week if teachers feel they are pushed to the point where all that they can do is the minimum that is required. We will certainly have truly minimum standards if we lose extracurricular activities, which I don't believe are a frill. Yet many members of this government seem unwilling to acknowledge the extracurricular program as an integral part of a full curriculum for secondary school students.

You want to find out from students what they think is valuable? They will tell you the extracurricular program is an important part of a full and rounded secondary school curriculum for them. For some students it is one of the major gains that they have in their secondary school program because it is so relevant to their particular interests and skills and to the development of those interests and skills. That surely is not a frill. It's not in the definition of instructional time that we have before us today in this bill, but it's certainly important teacher-student contact time.

The minister said today, as he said yesterday, "This bill doesn't define as instructional time hallway monitoring or lunchroom supervision." He did acknowledge that in the secondary schools of this province it is necessary to have hallway monitoring and lunchroom supervision. He didn't say that he thought somebody other than teachers should be doing it. I didn't hear him suggest that we should bring back some of those teacher assistants who got cut out of every board's budget as one of the first cuts in the funding formula. I didn't hear him say that we should be contracting out hallway monitoring and lunchroom supervision to someone else or to some private company, as they have in the past suggested we should contract out the maintenance of our schools or the secretarial work in our schools. I didn't hear him have any answers at all as to who should do the hallway monitoring and the lunchroom supervision, even though he said it was necessary. I can only assume that he thinks teachers are going to do that.

If he doesn't think that should be done as part of a teacher's volunteer work during the day, maybe he could suggest to the Premier that when they run the next edition of the clock ad on which they are spending almost $1 million to demean teachers, they might at least add hallway supervision and lunch hour supervision to the time that's counted on the clock as a part of a teacher's working day, because otherwise you're going to have to find somebody else and pay somebody else to do it. Let's at least be fair. If you don't think that's a part of what a teacher does during their working day, then you're going to have to hire somebody else to do it.

Interjection.

Mrs McLeod: Add it to the clock, I say to the member for Scarborough something on the other side of the room. Add it to the clock. You want to describe a teacher as working four hours and 10 minutes, let's add to the clock the kinds of things that are necessarily done by teachers even if you want to ignore all the things they do on a voluntary basis. Let's at least get some honesty in your millions of dollars worth of advertising. Good luck, when I suggest that might ever be the result of this government's actions.

Maybe the government thinks we should go the American route. Our leader spoke to this last night. There are lots of examples in the United States. Mr Gilchrist suggests that perhaps we should add extracurricular activities to the definitions that are in instructional time. That would certainly be the American route, I suggest, because that's what happens in the United States. They pay people to come in and do extracurricular activities with students. Is that the route we want to go? Is this really about minimum standards of instructional time for teachers in this province? If this government keeps insisting, with its ticking clock on television, that teachers are doing the minimum amount, which is so far from the truth that it is staggering, not staggering that this government would spend $1 million on advertising, we've seen that six and 10 times over in the last year, but staggering that any government would so totally misrepresent the reality of a teacher's working day as to suggest they are working four hours and 10 minutes. But if they want truth in advertising and they want to describe a teacher as working four hours and 10 minutes, then maybe they want to go the American route and have somebody else do all those extra things that teachers are doing. That would be minimum standards, again.

This government has from the very beginning - I hope not successfully but they've spent a lot of money in the attempt - attempted to misrepresent the kinds of time that teachers spend with students and how the students of this province benefit from the time that is spent with their teachers. They wanted us to believe that our teachers are spending less time teaching than in other provinces. I think the member for Simcoe Centre suggested that actually there are at least two other provinces where, even by the government's numbers, teachers are spending less time with their students. But I want to emphasize the fact, because I think the government has been quite careful here, they have never said that our teachers are spending less time with individual students. They say they're spending less time teaching classes of students. Even then, they happen to be wrong.

What they've failed to understand in making their comparisons is that Ontario secondary school teachers spend some 50% of what is described as their non-instructional time in on-call time. If they don't have that on-call time, they're not going to be able to step in and cover teachers who are away and that means the boards are going to have to hire substitute teachers, occasional teachers, and they're going to have to pay the occasional teachers. I suggest that that is also a minimum standard, because I don't think you get the same quality of instruction from somebody who does not have the continuity of that regular teacher in the classroom.

1640

The crucial thing to understand is that that is what this government's agenda is, to have fewer teachers with more students. That's the goal here. All of the proposals from the government, all of the definitions, mean fewer teachers in the secondary schools. Figure it out. It's pretty easy. If you have fewer teachers, they are going to have more students. If you have fewer teachers with more students, you cut costs all right, but you also have less time with each student. Anybody who wants to buy the government's line that this is about teachers having more time with students has got to read the fine print. I don't know how you read the fine print in a television ad, because it isn't there, but the fine print is that there will be fewer teachers with more students and they will have less time with each individual student. That's reality. We will have fewer teachers.

Let me give you an example of Dryden High School. It just happens to be one single high school, and I just found out about this the other day. They are going to have 49 teachers teaching 148 classes. By the way, 96 of the 148 will have more than 22 students in them; 22 of those 96 classes are going to have 30 or more students in them. If you figure that out, that means the average teacher in the Dryden High School is going to be teaching about 100 students. I ask people to think about the time it takes for a teacher to adequately prepare for teaching 100 students a day, because that's what that average teacher in the Dryden High School is going to be teaching, 100 individual students a day.

Interjection.

The Deputy Speaker: Member for Scarborough East, come to order.

Mrs McLeod: The 100 individual students a day need classroom materials prepared, obviously, but they also need papers to be marked. That's 100 papers, because you have seen 100 students in the course of that day. Those 100 students may well need some individual help outside of those four hours and 10 minutes that the teacher will have in in-classroom time with them, because it's pretty hard to give individual attention to 100 students in the course of a day while you've got them in classes of 30 or more in the case of 22 of those 96 classes in Dryden.

That's the reality of a teacher's day. That's what goes on outside of the four hours and 10 minutes. When you teach 100 students, which is about average in Dryden High School, you've got to have some time outside the four hours and 10 minutes to provide that individual help and that individual attention, as well as do the marking that this government wants teachers to be doing. They want higher standards of evaluation. They want more testing. That means more marking for 100 students a day. The government's agenda is also quite clearly - I come back to it again - to cut costs by cutting teachers. What this is all about at the end of the day is fewer teachers, more students. Fewer teachers - fewer teachers' jobs.

I just want to tell you what is happening currently, because currently - I look at one; I have a note here from John MacDonald, who is a teacher at Eastdale Collegiate in Oshawa. There are 11 fewer teachers in his school. There were 89 teachers last year and this year there are 78, a 15% decrease in this school. I'll tell you what's just happening as we speak, and this is before there had been agreements in all but five secondary schools around teaching loads, or one-year agreements in about 15 other boards, but many boards have not reached agreement on how the 1,250 minutes is to be implemented and therefore haven't made final staffing decisions about how many teachers could be lost as a result of this government's agenda.

But here's what's happening as we speak. We see the Thames Valley board is 127 teachers down this September; Toronto is 471 down; Durham is 120 teachers down; Kawartha Pine Ridge is 119 teachers down; Peel has 252 fewer secondary school teachers this year; Waterloo is 57. At this point, just by a rough count, there are over 1,500 fewer secondary school teachers in our schools as of September, and this is just the beginning.

The reason I selected those boards is that these are boards in which there are more students, so these aren't teacher job losses that are a result of declining enrolment. These are fewer teachers with more students because of this government's agenda and this government's funding. If I take Thames Valley, for example, they have 127 fewer teachers, but they have 528 more students to teach. How does that give us more teachers and more teaching time with students? If we take Toronto, we see at this point 471 fewer secondary school teachers and 984 more students. We see Durham: 120 fewer secondary school teachers, but they've got 170 more students. We see Kawartha Pine Ridge: 119 fewer secondary school teachers. How many more students? Some 451. Here's the Upper Grand: 27 fewer secondary school teachers, 472 more students. Peel: 252 fewer secondary school teachers, 328 more secondary school students.

It doesn't take a mathematical genius to figure out that if you've got fewer teachers and more students, you're going to have less teacher time with students. That's the beginning of the results, the real results as they affect students and teaching time with students, of this government's agenda.

We know what this government's goal was; they made it so abundantly clear. Well, maybe they didn't intend to make it abundantly clear. Somehow, somebody in the Ottawa Citizen a year ago January got hold of the fact that the government was doing focus groups on how they could cut costs by cutting teachers. There was a banner headline in the Ottawa Citizen in January 1997 that said, "Government Out to Cut 10,000 Jobs." How did they want to cut 10,000 jobs? They wanted to do it by increasing the amount of instructional time that teachers would spend, the amount of classroom time, so that you would have 10,000 fewer teachers teaching more students.

They did focus groups. They did a couple in Ottawa; they did a couple in my home riding of Thunder Bay. What did they discover? The public actually thought that if they were going to have 10,000 fewer teachers, it might actually hurt the quality of education for their kids. They said: "We don't like this idea. We don't like the idea of cutting costs by cutting teachers. We don't think you should cut 10,000 teachers." So the government then did what this government does best, which is develop a very elaborate public relations spin so that people would come to believe that our secondary school teachers had less teaching time than anybody else in the country and that it was OK to have them teach more and that this would actually mean more teaching time with students.

Again, I say it was spin that distorted the reality, which is that this government is cutting costs by cutting teachers. It means there will be fewer teachers teaching more students, and that is less time with individual students. The statistics that we're seeing this fall bear that out in spades. When you have fewer teachers and more students, you have less time with individual students.

You also start losing programs and you start losing services. The member for Algoma-Manitoulin, behind me, can tell you what it means in small boards, in small high schools in northern Ontario, in his home community, and in areas near my home community, where if you start cutting school staff by 15%, you start losing the numbers of teachers you've got to the point where you can't offer a full range of credits.

We've got high schools outside the community of Thunder Bay who are saying, "We are not going to be able to graduate students with a high school diploma because we're not going to have enough teachers left to offer enough credits for our kids to get a high school diploma here at home." They may have to start shipping kids into town 200 miles away in order to get a high school diploma. Is that what we talk about when we talk about standards? That is minimum standards indeed. That is taking us back to a time so far earlier than the Bill Davis approach to education and to government that it's hard to imagine any government could want to go that far back in time.

What does this bill actually do to instructional time and to define instructional time? I think it's important to spend a few moments on it, because the minister would like us to believe that the reason he put this bill in with his back-to-work legislation was the lack of clarity about what he meant in terms of instructional time. The minister controls all things, he makes all rules, because he controls all the laws, all the regulations and all the dollars. So he said, "It was important that I clarify how I'm going to allow instructional time to be used, how the 1,250 minutes that is now spelled out as the law of the land, as the minimum amount of time that teachers have to spend in a classroom with students, can actually be used." He brought it in as part of back-to-work legislation yesterday because he somehow seemed to think that might help bring about local settlements earlier.

1650

Quite clearly, that wasn't what they were doing. They wanted to bring in the son of Bill 160, and they thought they could slip it in with their back-to-work legislation, which was so unprecedented anyway that you might as well do a couple of other unprecedented things while you were at it. In any event, it was taken out and we have a separate debate on this issue of instructional time today.

But the central issue still for the minister is that he wants to make sure there is no doubt, no uncertainty at the negotiating table about what he means by the definition of instructional time. After all, if you don't march to the minister's drummer, you are not going to get the dollars to hire the staff you've put into your contract, so you've got to be sensitive to what the minister is saying about the definition of instructional time.

So he has defined it, and I want to make it clear that this bill before us today does not dictate that every teacher must be teaching seven classes out of eight. This gets pretty complex and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but I think we've got to recognize that 1,250 minutes, which is the law of Ontario thanks to Mike Harris and the Tory government, is less than the teaching time that would give you seven classes out of eight as your teaching load. This bill does not say every teacher has to teach seven classes out of eight.

The problem is that what's in Bill 160, what is the law of the province, 1,250 minutes of instructional time, has created something of a problem for school boards - and for staff, for that matter - because you can't actually schedule it in high schools. It's not seven out of eight, but it's not six out of eight. It's some sort of something in the middle. I think it's probably 6.8 or something like that, and it's virtually impossible to schedule that.

My colleague the educational critic for the NDP and I repeatedly asked at estimates last year how the government thought this could be scheduled. We were told, "Oh, it can be scheduled." Nobody said how. We knew full well that it couldn't be scheduled, and in fact it can't be scheduled. It certainly can't be scheduled in a semestered school.

One of the perhaps inadvertent results of the Tories' agenda of cutting costs by cutting teachers, and they do that through increasing instructional time, is likely to be that we're going to have all of our schools non-semestered again. We can have another debate about the merits of semestering versus non-semestering. I was through that once many years ago. I don't think it's the sort of thing you should stumble into accidentally, which is what we seem to be doing here in Ontario as we have the government dictating instructional time that can't be scheduled and that probably will mean the schools have to all be non-semestered so that they can schedule whatever it is the government thinks should be scheduled.

But in any event, this legislation does not go the next step and actually increase the amount of instructional time that is considered to be the minimum standard. The government originally wanted to go well beyond 1,250 minutes. When they did the focus groups in Ottawa, their goal was to cut 10,000 teachers. Their goal was to increase the amount of instructional time and to decrease what is seen as preparation time by at least 50%. The public response to the cuts they were making forced them to back off that to some degree. One of the reasons we have this crazy thing that doesn't actually work in terms of schedules is because the government was forced to back off its original intention.

But this bill doesn't necessitate that contracts have teachers teaching more than 1,250 minutes. The difficulty is that many boards feel they don't have any choice but to have teachers teaching more than the 1,250 minutes. The reason they feel they don't have any choice is not just because of the scheduling problems, but because of what they are forced to do by the limitations of the funding formula.

We've called for an independent review of the funding formula. We believe that's absolutely essential to there being any kind of quality of education in our schools, any kind of equity and any kind of stability, to review this funding formula that the government now controls 100%.

Right now, there are enormous inconsistencies between what is required in terms of the 1,250 minutes of instructional time and what this government is doing through its funding formula. There are huge areas of underfunding that aren't related specifically to instructional time and the hiring of teaching staff, but they all put pressures on school boards. It may seem totally unrelated that this government has strangled the maintenance funding, that they've arbitrarily cut the dollars for heating, lighting, and cleaning school space. They've done it to the tune of millions and millions of dollars that school boards are going to be short just to heat, clean and light their schools. That might not seem to be related to how you hire enough teachers to teach, but it is, because it's all part of the school boards' funding dilemma that this government has forced on them. Boards are feeling that they may have no choice but to go beyond the 1,250 minutes which the government's clock defines as the teaching day.

I want to also acknowledge that what this bill does not do is rigidly describe as instructional time only those hours that are spent teaching academic credit. It is broader than that, and I'm appreciative of the fact that it's somewhat broader than that. It does include teaching the special education program, a remedial class. The minister today spoke about how proud he was of special education in the province of Ontario, so maybe that's one of the reasons they wanted to be sure that remedial classes were included in their definition of what might be considered to be productive teacher-student contact time.

I have difficulty with the minister taking pride in what's happening with special education when I look at what the funding has done to force boards to cut all of the support that's given to special-needs students, whether it is psychologists or social workers, or whether it is the teaching assistants who provide supports for special-needs students, or whether it's the fact that the very funding which is supposed to be going to special-needs students is in the mail, according to the minister. It's certainly not in the hands of school boards so they can hire people to provide support for special-needs students.

The minister says: "Don't worry about special ed. We are going to allow teachers to teach remedial classes." Well, fortunately they are - if boards can afford to actually provide remedial classes, which is another question - but that does not speak to the challenges of the teacher who has 22, in rare cases, but more likely 25, 28, 30 or sometimes more than 30, 35 students in a class, and within that 30 students there may well be two or four or eight students with special needs, and no teaching assistants.

It's not a secondary school example I want to give, but it's on my own mind because I ran into a junior kindergarten teacher in my home riding on the weekend. She has 28 three- and four-year-olds in her class and she has no teaching assistant. One of the little three-year-olds had an accident in the class one day and it was obviously disruptive, in the way that can be, to the learning environment. The teacher couldn't deal with it because she couldn't leave the 27 other three-year-olds to help this little tyke with the problem he obviously had.

I turn that into secondary schools. We talk about classes that can be 25 or 30 or more students, with special-needs students in those classes. Remember that the average teacher is teaching a hundred students a day, with special needs as part of those hundred. These aren't the kids in remedial classes; these are the special-needs students whom we all want to see mainstreamed in our regular classes. Right now they're there without support. I say that the challenge for a secondary school teacher is to be able to provide the kind of individual support to all of the hundred students, with special needs or without special needs.

They can't do that and they don't do that with only four hours and 10 minutes of instructional time. They do that through all the other contact time a teacher has with those students and through all the other work they do that has a bearing on the quality of education that those hundred students receive.

What's left out of the definition is really what I'm talking about here, because what's left out of the definition, which includes a remedial class, which includes English-as-a-second-language for boards that are able to provide some measure of English-as-a-second-language - on another day, with more time, we'll start to go into the details of how much English-as-a-second-language classes have been cut because of the limitations this government has placed on funding. But at least it's recognized as instructional time. Apprenticeship is recognized. Co-op education is recognized.

What's left out is the time that's spent with the learning-disabled child or the special-needs child, the time that's spent in tutorials giving extra help. The minister today talked about his pride in the tutors in the classroom - great program, good experience for the students who come in as tutors in the classroom. But it does not replace the time that a professional teacher spends in tutorial help with individual students who need some extra help. That's part of a teacher's day. It's not in the four-hour-and-10-minute clock that's running on television, but it is part of a teacher's day, and it's left out of the definition.

1700

Preparation of materials is left out. The time that is spent with special projects for gifted students isn't in the definition. The time that is spent evaluating students is not in the definition. The time that's spent communicating to parents is not in the definition of instructional time. How many hours added to the teacher's day would be included in the definition of instructional time if things like tutorials or support for learning-disabled kids or preparation of materials or the disciplining of students or the evaluation of students were included in the definition of instructional time? Well beyond four hours and 10 minutes and, I say to the members opposite, well beyond a standard eight-hour day.

The other difficulty with the legislation, because it was supposed to clarify beyond any shadow of a doubt - and I quote the minister - what he means by instructional time, is that it leaves the barn door pretty wide open for the minister to just jump in whenever the minister chooses to. Subsection (13) says:

"(13) The Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations,

"(a) specifying or describing classes, courses or programs for the purposes of clause (11)(g); and

"(b) clarifying the meaning of any word or expression used in subsection (11) or (12)."

Basically, this is the minister's first stab at clarifying what he means by instructional time. He can step in at any point in the future, at any time, and if the boards and the teachers are not getting agreements that march to his direction and the funding limitations he wants to impose, he will redefine and reclarify what he means by instructional time, because come hell or high water, this government is not planning to increase the funding and they are going to make sure that the teacher cuts get made so that the funding restrictions can be met. If you have any doubt about that, just look at the restrictions that were put on arbitrators in those eight boards that are going to arbitration over the course of the next month.

We have had settlements to date. I stress again that teachers and trustees have accepted the fact, whether they agree with it or not, that 1,250 minutes of what the minister defines as instructional time is the law of the province of Ontario. Nobody is arguing that now; it is fact. There are some agreements that have been reached that trustees and teachers believe work in the interests of students and meet the letter of the law with 1,250 minutes of instructional time. There aren't a lot of them. I think by last count there are only five secondary school agreements that are actually two-year agreements. There are, I think, about 15 one-year protocols. They can't be called agreements because the government deems that any agreement must necessarily be a two-year agreement.

But these are boards and teachers who have tried to find some way of making the 1,250 minutes work in a way that they feel really does meet the concerns for quality of education for students. Those agreements have defined the meaning of instructional time at least as broadly as this legislation does and in some cases perhaps more broadly.

I think we would see more and more local agreements that incorporate the 1,250 minutes, that make it work successfully, if it weren't for this open-ended hammer the minister has placed in this legislation, because as long as boards know that the Minister of Education can come in at any moment and redefine instructional time and change the funding to fit his definition of instructional time, there may be a lot of hesitation to actually reach local agreements.

I hope that's not the case. I hope that boards don't feel as though they're either going to have to wait for the second shoe to fall, because the minister did send out a letter saying he was going to get to his goal of increased instructional time and teacher job losses in two steps - I hope the boards aren't waiting for the second shoe to fall. I hope they're not just hoping that an arbitrator will be sent in, as we have more and more back-to-work legislation, so that the arbitrator will take the responsibility for making decisions about how they can meet the government's regulations and not run into a deficit situation.

I hope that boards will realize that these arbitrators are going to start coming into their school systems and they're going to be given the power and the responsibility to essentially micromanage the school system, because how else does an arbitrator make an award that guarantees that the board is not going to run into a deficit situation? I hope trustees will say, "We don't want somebody coming in and micromanaging virtually every aspect of our board in order to come up with an arbitrated settlement award."

What I do know is that if it goes the route of arbitration in board after board, we are going to have a crazy quilt of hodgepodge arbitration awards and we are going to have teachers teaching under very different conditions and students learning under very different conditions.

I see what's happening in my home board of the Lakehead, where the funding restraints are so significant that the teachers are indeed teaching the seven classes out of eight. I see what new teachers are experiencing who are teaching four classes a day with 100 students. I see the exhaustion that they're experiencing. I see what's happened to extracurricular activities and I say to you it is not a work-to-rule measure as much as it is a reality of what happens when teachers have to add on top of four classes and 100 students a day all of those extra things that are a necessary part of a teacher's day, from lunchroom supervision to hallway monitoring to evaluation to tutorial work to counselling to parent communication.

The reality is that if you're teaching four classes a day and 100 students and doing all of those other things which must be done, there's just not a lot of time or energy left over to do the voluntary extracurricular work in the evening. I hope that those kinds of conditions are not conditions which become extended to more and more boards because of this government's funding limitations. I hope that before very long this government will understand that an independent, objective review of its funding is absolutely essential, again, if there is to be any equality or any quality or any stability. Until that happens, we are going to have minimum standards created because we have funding at the lowest denominator.

I am rapidly running out of time. The minister wants to talk about their increase in funding in order to talk about the fact that somehow their funding is supporting a higher standard or a higher quality of education. It's important to recognize that we're going to have fewer teachers with more students, not just in each individual school but across the system.

I have read you the statistics of what's happening this fall, of how many places have fewer teachers while they have many more students. If we have fewer teachers with more students, we also have fewer dollars per student now than we had in 1997-98. We're going to have decreasing funding per student in 1999, 2000 and 2002. That what the government's stable funding means. When the Tories talk about no cuts, what they really mean is the same dollars for 25,000 more students per year. It doesn't take a mathematical genius to figure it out. There's going to be less funding per student in each of the next three years. The funding restrictions are going to get tighter and tighter, and I would argue that is because we are going down to the lowest common denominator in the kind of standards that this government wants to talk about.

Let me just give you one figure, because I don't want to drown, particularly in these last few minutes, in figures. Based on the report that was done for the previous Minister of Education, John Snobelen, by Ernst and Young, an independent consulting firm, the dollars that were being spent in 1995 were $6,032 per student. When this government completes its three-year period of so-called stable funding, the dollars per student will be $5,371, a decrease of some $600 per student, which makes a significant difference in boards' budgets, particularly those boards that have large increasing enrolment. They are going to have fewer dollars per student, which means of course that they are not going to have anything other than fewer teachers for the numbers of students they have.

I know that my colleagues have spoken about how we got here. Why are we in a situation that can only be described as total chaos, whether we're talking about collective bargaining, whether we're talking about the agony of the funding decisions the boards are having to make because of the underfunding that's built into this government's funding formula, whether we're talking about the school closures that we are going to see by the hundreds?

I was part of a school board for some 17 years. I was part of closing some 12 schools over that 17 years. Every one of those decisions was a difficult decision. We made it because of declining enrolment. We made it because we thought it was responsible. I can't conceive of a situation where school trustees are going to have to close literally hundreds of schools.

In the case of the Toronto board, that board alone is going to have to look at closing over 100 schools, not because of declining enrolment but because the government has arbitrarily decided that we have surplus school space, even though there are students in the space, and because they've arbitrarily cut the funding for those school spaces. So the boards have to look at this massive school closure.

1710

How did we get to this situation of chaos? We can't go all the way back and I don't have time to give a full chronology of the crisis that we're facing in Ontario education right now, but we can certainly go back to what I think was clearly articulated by the previous Minister of Education who said that they were going to have to create a crisis. People made a joke of that, but it wasn't a joke. It wasn't an inadvertent top-of-the-head comment. It was a very carefully articulated philosophy of the management of change on the part of the previous Minister of Education. He believed that the only way you could overcome resistance to change was to bankrupt the system. When you had bankrupted the system, then you would have the kind of clear slate on which you could bring in your transformational change.

Bankrupting the system is what we have seen this government steadily intent on from the time it came into office. I don't know whether Mike Harris conceptually believes in the process of bankrupting a system to bring about transformational change or whether he would articulate that in the same way Mr Snobelen did, but I know he supported the changes that were introduced by the previous Minister of Education, that his government supported those changes and that the current Minister of Education continues with those changes and is supported by his government.

They have brought us to a state of crisis beyond anything John Snobelen could possibly have imagined in his most ideal vision of bankrupting a system so you could bring in transformational change, which by any other words means the government imposing its agenda, and as this government has gone on successfully for three years to create a crisis beyond anybody's imaginings, to divide the system so that it attempts to wash its hands of any responsibility for actual management of the system even though it controls all of the dollars and makes all of the rules.

As the government continues with that agenda, we have a situation which is unprecedented in terms of what it has done to create not a quality learning environment for students but a negative learning environment for students.

We have had a government that has imposed its agenda through legislation, which not only has not involved consultation, but which has gone directly against every piece of advice that has been given to this government, not just by teachers, not just by trustees whom they would dismiss as special-interest groups, but indeed by parents and students right across the province. That was true on Bill 104 where they amalgamated all the school boards whether they needed to be amalgamated or not, whether they were going to save $150 million or whether it was going to cost $300 million as the school boards said it would. We saw it in Bill 160, which was rammed through as an omnibus bill on education because it was part of this government's basic agenda of cutting costs by cutting teachers and therefore they had to take control of the dollars. We have seen this government impose its agenda for change in a dictatorial and bullying way, which is also unprecedented.

Where is it all going? I believe, whether it is deliberate, whether it is some mix of deliberate agenda and sheer mismanagement because they don't care about anything other than cutting costs and creating a public relations spin to camouflage the cost-cutting agenda, some crazy mix of that, whatever, what this government is doing is setting the public education system up for failure. They are certainly setting school boards up to fail. If they can't manage the system without going into a deficit, the minister will exercise his powers and come in and take them over. If they manage their boards without a deficit, then they are going to have to do what Justice Cumming says: They're going to have to in many cases cannibalize the rest of the education system just to meet this government's funding controls.

If they can't get agreements because there's no local flexibility to reach local agreements, is the government going to go to provincial bargaining? Maybe for a very brief transitional time. But this government doesn't want the responsibility of actually managing a system, actually negotiating agreements with the province's teachers. They wouldn't hold that responsibility for two seconds. They would simply use that as an excuse to hand the responsibility for management over to parent councils, which is also something they have wanted to do from the very outset and backed off only because of the universal rejection of that concept by the people who sit on parent councils in schools across the province.

I don't know how much of this is part of the grand design, setting the system up for failure, and how much of it is just a convenient fallback position that if the system fails they can allow for charter schools and voucher systems and privatization. Either way, whether it's part of a grand design or just a convenient fallback position, we are heading, at a rate that disturbs me profoundly, towards the loss of public education in Ontario.

We're not very good at talking about what we value in public education. We are wonderful critics. Everyone is a critic of public education. Everybody has been through it. Who knows better than somebody who has been through it what's wrong with public education? We are all good critics of the public education system. We are not very good at talking about its strengths. Like so many things we value as Canadians, we tend to take it for granted, and things that we take for granted, we don't spend a lot of time talking about what it does well.

This government has made a three-year commitment to not talking about the strengths, to misrepresenting the strengths and the achievements of our students as well of our teachers. That's part of their grand design without any doubt at all, to convince the public that the system is broken so that the public will accept the changes that you are bringing as necessary to fix the system. What does this government talk about except moving money out of administration into the classroom? The Premier talked about that at the chamber of commerce, even though he now controls the funding and has decided how much should be in administration and how much should be in the classroom.

They're trying to convince the public: "We'll just fix the parts that are broken, the parts that are costing too much money and not giving us value. We'll improve the value part and just fix the parts that are broken." What that really means is, "We can cut the costs." This government is trying to persuade the public that the public education system is broken and of no value, and they are paving the ground for the loss of public education as we know it.

We have not been good at valuing the strengths of our system, but we had better understand why we value public education in this province. We had better understand why it's threatened and what we stand to lose, because if we lose it, we'll never get it back.

The Deputy Speaker: Questions and comments?

Mr Wildman: I'd like to congratulate my friend from Fort William on her presentation on this legislation. It was an excellent examination of the motives of this government, as well as what is actually in the legislation.

I think it was significant that she talked about minimum standards and what that means in terms of the quality of education for students in Ontario, because this government is more interested in minima than it is in maxima in terms of the quality of education for students in Ontario. Also I think she made it very clear that the purpose of this legislation, the purpose of Bill 160 and the funding formation - or the defunding formula - is to ensure that there are fewer teachers on staff in Ontario. That's the purpose.

Some might say, "Okay, maybe we don't need that many teachers," but the point is, if this government is going to lower the number of teaching personnel in the province, then they should be quite frank about it and say that is their purpose, that is their design, rather than trying to camouflage that motive in the rhetoric of excellence in education, in the rhetoric of more contact between students and teachers, because it's simple mathematics that if you have significantly fewer teachers and more students in Ontario, there is going to be less time, less contact between individual teachers and students.

The government should be up front and simply say they're trying to cut teachers to save money and they're not interested in quality education.

1720

Mr Bruce Smith (Middlesex): I want to say at the outset that I have had the pleasure of spending a great deal of time across the table on educational issues with the member for Fort William, and I have to re-emphasize to her today, and to others, that there is no grand design to dismantle the education system in this province. It's not about establishing minimum standards; it's about establishing new standards in curriculum, new standards and province-wide testing. The evidence is there, it's before the people of this province, so quite to the contrary.

I have to admit that I am somewhat surprised at the negative perspective the member brings consistently to the debate on education. I have to think in part that it's reflective of her frustration with the fact that the Liberal Party in this province has no educational policy whatsoever. She's frustrated by that perspective, and in that context, in the absence of any meaningful policy, the member's quite satisfied in relying on the status quo and keeping things the way they are with respect to education.

Much has been said about teacher positions and the loss of teacher positions. In fact, this government is the first government to take specific action on class size, putting it into statute. Not only did we put it into statute, but we've placed the financial tools that are necessary to deliver on that in the form of some $1.2 billion, and $1.2 billion equals 3,000 new teaching positions in this province. When I look at the Durham board, for example, their projected teaching positions, some 40 original notices were given for layoffs. All have been recalled and the projected teacher hiring equates to some 200 new positions. So it's not about eliminating teacher positions in this province. It's about including them in a renewed and rejuvenated public education system where their contribution and participation is very meaningful to this government.

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): We've just heard from the previous speaker the propaganda as to what current government policy is supposed to be. I have in my hand today's Pembroke paper which tells it as it is from the point of view of front-line teachers in Ontario in an area that's supposed to be advantaged by the current government's policy.

What have I got? Today's Pembroke Observer quoting the director of education for the Renfrew county board saying that the problem they now face is that in fact in terms of classroom resources, the new funding formula is about reductions, not about improvements. That's Renfrew county. We're supposed to be better off. That's not Conway talking. That's the director for the Renfrew County District School Board.

Perhaps even more importantly I have in my hands today a letter by a special-ed teacher by the name of Alice Roy from Pembroke. She writes an open letter to Dave Johnson, Minister of Education. I don't have time to read the whole letter, but this is from a special-ed teacher who says the following, and I quote:

"I am a special education teacher in a large high school. My job is to ensure that the students with special needs have every opportunity to get the best education possible. Our school has 94 learning exceptional students who have been identified as needing special supports or programs. I work with students in wheelchairs, autistic students, learning-impaired students, students with cerebral palsy, developmental delays, learning disabilities and behavioural problems. Some of my students" - says this teacher in the Pembroke area, Alice Roy - "require physiotherapy, occupational therapy or speech therapy. I work closely with" others in providing these needs.

She goes on in the letter to say she had hoped and she had believed that the new funding formula, courtesy of Mr Johnson and Mr Harris, would make things better. She reports today to the people in Pembroke and area that in fact the formula is not helping, it's hurting.

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you.

Mr Conway: That's the reality -

The Deputy Speaker: Further questions and comments? The member for Lake Nipigon.

Mr Pouliot: One more time we've been the benefactors, the recipients of the most articulate and factual description, compte rendu, of where we're at at the present time, by the former Leader of the Opposition, who also spent seven years as an educator in a supervisory capacity as chairperson of the board. So yes, the critic member, the former leader of the party, knows what she is talking about and we should pay attention.

She warns the government about what is happening, putting the children into jeopardy because this government, let it be known, does not like teachers. We don't know to this day whether it's a flaw with the Premier -

Hon Margaret Marland (Minister without Portfolio [children's issues]): We do like teachers. We not only like teachers, we think we have the best teachers in this province, in this country.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. Member for Mississauga South, come to order.

Mr Pouliot: - that when the Premier was a teacher for a few weeks or months, for two years, he did not like the profession, or the personality of the Premier did not suit education. To this day, recall, Madame -

Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): Qu'est-ce que c'est ? Je ne comprends pas.

Mr Pouliot: I have no lesson to take from you, so please, kindly be quiet.

Back to education. He's declared war on teachers. Who is paying the price? The future of the province, the pages who are attending the education system, the hundreds of thousands of students in Ontario. In fact, over two million are left carrying the guilt because the Premier does not like education, does not like professions. The Premier preaches double standards. We have a chaotic situation that the Premier and this cabinet have concocted.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Fort William.

Mrs McLeod: I am intrigued that the member for Middlesex, who is the parliamentary assistant for education, assures us that there is no grand design that has led to the chaos which education is experiencing right now. I thought I was actually giving the government a degree of credit for at least a Machiavellian capability in suggesting there was some measure of grand design in where all this is leading, because the only other conclusion is that all of this chaos is a result of deliberate or inadvertent mismanagement of education, and that is incredibly irresponsible on the part of any government.

My frustration - the member for Middlesex has touched on my frustration - is real. It is the frustration, as I've said in this House many times before, of somebody who actually is committed to public education and determined to defend it. It is a frustration that I have as a member of this Legislature, as well as somebody who has been involved in education for some 30 years, with a government that is prepared to pursue its agenda without any concern at all for the impact of that agenda on students across this province. My frustration is with a government that is able, with blindfolds on -

Mr Baird: You are the only one who has concern. No one has concern but you.

The Deputy Speaker: Member for Nepean.

Mrs McLeod: - with absolute, fixed blindfolds, to pursue its propaganda line, as my colleague from Renfrew North has described it. My frustration is with - maybe it's amazement -

Mr Baird: You are amazing.

The Deputy Speaker: Member for Nepean, come to order.

Mrs McLeod: - with government members who are able to sustain their ability to ignore the impact of what they are doing on students and on classrooms, in spite of the fact that the evidence of that is before them in every school in their riding if they choose to see or to look or to hear what is actually happening.

Justice Cumming said it all when it came down to the core of what this government has done, its control of funding: that it brought in the funding formula without taking time to look at the impact of the funding formula on education, because this government doesn't care about the impact. There is no grand design; I accept that. This government has had one goal from the beginning, to cut costs, and they don't care how students get hurt.

The Deputy Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Wildman: I rise to participate in this debate on Bill 63, the son of Bill 62, which is here before us because my leader yesterday in the Legislature, in expressing our complete and serious disagreement with Bill 62, indicated that as an opposition party we would be prepared to allow for debate of Bill 62 yesterday if the government were prepared to sever the bill, that is, divide out some of those parts of the bill that we found particularly objectionable and detrimental to the quality of education in Ontario and those parts of the bill on which we felt we needed to have the opportunity for full debate to bring before the House the concerns that we have as representatives of our constituents and the people of Ontario about the government's direction in education, particularly as it relates to Bill 160.

The government wasn't willing to sever as much from Bill 62 as we desired, to be frank. We felt that there were portions of Bill 62 beyond what the government was prepared to sever which did not need to be passed quickly, even in terms of the government's view of the situation in education. Those portions of the bill dealt with the fettering of the arbitration process in Ontario, the setting of constraints that arbitrators would have to adhere to in making decisions around awards related to collective bargaining between teachers, the federations and boards in Ontario.

These constraints are most onerous. They're very narrow. They perhaps don't sound unreasonable to someone not particularly interested or knowledgeable in collective bargaining, but simply by setting a requirement that the arbitrator take into account ability to pay, the government was enforcing its centralization over the budget.

1730

We know that in Bill 160 the government took complete control of education budgets away from the locally elected boards. Of course they've amalgamated boards and made them much larger and less local than they used to be, less accountable to their electors, less accountable to the ratepayers, to the parents and to the students. But what has really harmed the role of trustees is this government's taking control of the purse strings to the point of saying that boards could no longer have any discretion to raise any funds locally and would be completely dependent on the provincial government, on the Minister of Education and Training and the Minister of Finance, to determine how much money they would have to be able to provide education for the students of Ontario.

The boards find themselves now in a very difficult position. They have to administer a budget over which they have absolutely no control, and if that budget is inadequate, if the revenue is inadequate for ensuring quality education in Ontario, the boards can't do anything about it. There's absolutely nothing they can do about it.

I hear members across the way when someone raises questions about special education, as my friend from Renfrew North just did. His friend from Lanark-Renfrew said, "Talk to the trustee." Frankly, you can go and talk to the trustee, but what good is that going to do? The trustee will say, "We're doing the best we can with the money the government has given us, and we don't have enough money to ensure quality special education for the students of Pembroke."

What will the trustee say to the teacher who wrote and who was quoted? I suppose the trustee will say, "I guess you'd better go and talk to your MPP, who can raise it in the Legislature with the Minister of Education and the Minister of Finance, because they're the ones who determine how much money we have for special education in Pembroke."

What does this mean for the arbitration process? The arbitrators have to take into account the ability to pay. Of course the board's ability to pay under this new regime is determined by the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Education and Training, so on the one end the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Education and Training, the provincial government, is determining how much money or how little money the boards have, and at the same time they're saying arbitrators will have to take into account ability to pay in making awards.

They are controlling things at both ends of the process and making it impossible for boards to protect quality education and meet the needs of special education students in Pembroke.

We would have liked to have had the government prepared to compromise more than they did yesterday. We would have liked to have seen them take those provisions on the arbitration, which don't have to come into effect, according to the government's own legislation, for 30 days, take them out of the bill and debate them at greater length in this Legislature because of their implications for the quality of education for students in Ontario and for the collective bargaining process.

What's even more bizarre is the requirement under the arbitration process this government has brought in that the arbitrators have to be able to provide a plan to the provincial government indicating how the board is going to be able to meet its requirement not to have a deficit if there is any increase in the expenditures as a result of collective bargaining.

This, to my knowledge, is quite unique and I don't think this has ever happened in any process involving mediation or arbitration in the province. Never have arbitrators been required to draw up a budget for the management to implement. There's just never been a requirement.

We wanted to have further debate on that. We wanted to be able to debate it at greater length, but the government said no. The government said they had to have the provisions, the terms and conditions for arbitration as part of their bill that would order teachers back to work, back into the schools. and order the reopening of the schools.

Just as an aside, I think it bizarre that in areas where there were lockouts the boards seemed to have decided that they needed to be ordered to reopen the schools. Surely, if the chair of the Toronto Catholic board wanted to have the schools open and the teachers back in the schools, all he had to do and all the board had to do was to reopen the schools. They didn't need any legislation. All they needed was a good key that would fit the lock.

The reason, of course, that they wanted legislation is not because they couldn't open the schools without legislation, but because they did not want to negotiate. They didn't want to negotiate with their teachers and they were waiting for back-to-work legislation.

I don't agree with that approach, but I understand it because, frankly the reason they didn't want to negotiate was because they didn't have any money. They didn't have enough money to deal with the issues and ensure quality education and deal with the concerns of the teachers in the collective bargaining process, so they were waiting for the government to order everybody back to work.

We wanted to debate those things at greater length. The government refused to take that portion out, but the government did offer, in response to my leader's suggestion, to take out what was part II of Bill 62. Part II had absolutely nothing to do with the so-called crisis that the government was trying to respond to yesterday. It dealt with what the government now calls minimum standards for classroom instruction. This is an amendment to the Education Act which goes far beyond the immediate situation related to the work stoppages and the disruptions.

As I proceed with my discussion of this, I hope to be able to demonstrate that if this bill passes, it will probably exacerbate the situation in those areas where collective agreements have not yet been signed beyond the eight boards where there were disruptions that the legislation yesterday dealt with.

I am informed that in the Algoma District School Board, for instance, in my own area, the public board, the members of OSSTF are going on a rotating strike tomorrow because they haven't been able to negotiate an agreement with their board. They are trying to put pressure to try and bring about some movement on the part of the board. With this legislation that was introduced yesterday, and with the media hype around here, because most of the boards that were affected and most of the students who were affected were in the Toronto area, the Toronto media seem to think the strikes are over. They aren't. As a matter of fact there may be strikes and lockouts in other boards across the province that up to now have been trying to negotiate, but are now coming to the position of an impasse.

1740

This problem is going to continue because the problem does not really originate with the boards or with the teachers. The problem originates with the agenda of the Conservative government. The government has set a funding formula which is inadequate to ensure quality education in the province, a funding formula that means there must be fewer teachers. The government has centralized control over education, has taken away local control and centralized it in the Mowat Block, centralized it in the hands of the Minister of Education and Training and the Minister of Finance, and the government has taken away any flexibility that local boards might have to help negotiate agreements with their teachers. This is a government that seems to think bigger is better and centralization is the best thing there could be.

This bill that we have before us, Bill 63, this son of Bill 62, is in fact going to make the situation worse, because what this bill does is ensure even greater centralization of control over education and the organization of our schools, our education system, here in Queen's Park at the Mowat Block.

This is not a bill that's about education per se. It's certainly not about quality education. This is a bill that is about control, power, about determining who can say or have a say in how the schools are organized and how they're run. What it says is, the Minister of Education will have complete control. The Minister of Education has always been responsible for education in Ontario and has always had some say, some control, but so have other actors in the process, so have other participants in the education system. The locally elected trustees have had some control and accountability for quality education in the province. The administrators in the local boards have had some control and say in how the boards are to organize the schools and run the education system.

The teachers, the professionals who are responsible for ensuring quality education, had some say. In many cases, they exercised their role through negotiations with their local boards. They negotiated things that related to the quality of education, the size of classes, the number of teachers, the number of students, the number of hours of instruction. Those things were negotiated. It was a shared responsibility, a shared power for ensuring quality education.

What this government has done has ended that sharing and has concentrated control in the hands of the minister here at Queen's Park. In doing so, they have produced a situation that, as such, local boards cannot meet their obligations. Students are going to suffer, the quality of education is going to be hurt, and frankly the minister, because of what he has sown, is going to reap the whirlwind. He's doing it now. Unfortunately, he and the government are not going to be the only ones who have to pay for their mistakes. I hope they are mistakes, I hope it wasn't by design that they've done this, because students are going to suffer. Families and communities are going to suffer as a result.

I said that boards have less flexibility. Obviously this bill is about ensuring almost no flexibility. It determines how boards and teachers will negotiate around the issue of instructional time and what the instructional day should be, what instruction is.

Many participants in the debate have tried to argue that this is really an argument only about 25 minutes a day additional instructional time. That is a very simplistic interpretation of what is happening in Ontario in education today. Keep in mind that because of this government's legislation, all of the collective agreements that were in place involving teachers and boards in Ontario were null and void at the end of August, just before school was supposed to start. That in itself is an example of the centralization, the lack of flexibility and, frankly, the stupidity of this government. Why on earth would you have all the contracts, involving every school, every teacher and every student in Ontario, come due at the same time? No wonder you've got a lot of problems on your hands. The government insisted that the contracts that would be negotiated would be for two years.

If the teachers and the boards can't reach an agreement, the only options they have are for the boards to lock out the teachers or for the teachers to strike. The government will say: "No, no, they can keep negotiating. The boards' and the teachers' negotiators can keep negotiating at the bargaining table while they teach." All that means is that the problem will go on and on without resolution. Certainly the students will be in the schools and they'll be benefiting from instruction, but the difficulty of ensuring proper organization of the school and good quality education in the province will not be resolved. It will simply go on.

I said it's a simplistic argument to say that there's only 25 minutes more per day and that's all this argument is about. It is true that the government is insisting on 1,250 minutes of instruction per week and that adds up to, as the government has so often said, four hours and 10 minutes per day.

That of course, ignores the fact that any good teacher who cares about excellence in education, who cares about students, doesn't just work when she or he is in the classroom instructing students directly. Any teacher who is worth her or his salt is going to be doing a lot of work in preparation for those classroom periods, is going to be doing research, is going to be doing preparation of class lessons, is going to be analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of individual students in the class, is going to be determining what their needs are, is going to be trying to figure out ways to meet those needs, is going to be discussing with other professionals, other teachers, other members of the staff how they can meet those needs, if there are problems, is going to be contacting the parents of the student and dealing with the parents on the basis of how we can properly meet the needs of the student. That's part of the job, part of the profession, part of the responsibility of the teacher. Most of that is not done when the teacher is in the classroom.

I'll admit there are some teachers who don't do those things, or only do some of them and don't do others, or are not as diligent as they might be. But I can tell you that those kinds of teachers, those kinds of people, do not last very long in the profession. They find other professions for which they are better adapted. Some of them -

Mr W. Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): Where do they go?

Mr Wildman: The member said, "Where do they go?" and I just thought, there was a teacher in North Bay who taught for two years, who didn't get along, didn't like it very much and he went somewhere else. I think he became a golf pro. If the member wonders where they go, there's an example for you.

The fact is that teachers generally care about their students. Why on earth would you be in teaching if you didn't care about students? It would be a terrible life to lead if you didn't like children and you didn't care about their progress. How on earth would you be able to survive in the teaching profession? I honestly don't know. I've never met a teacher who wasn't a genuinely caring person who wanted to help students.

1750

Most people would say: "Why not 25 minutes more per day of instructional time with students? What are the teachers concerned about?" First off, I've indicated there are a lot of these other things teachers do that they must do if they are to help students to achieve, to meet their potential, that are done outside of the classroom, outside of the instructional time. Teachers give extra help to students. That's instruction, but under this definition it's not instructional time. This definition lacks flexibility.

It's not about 25 minutes and I'll explain that. Right now we have a situation in Ontario where most schools at the secondary level are not on an eight-period day. A number of years ago, many schools in Ontario shifted the way they approached the teaching of credits away from an eight-period day all year to a semestered system so that students take half of their credits in the first semester, complete them at the end of the first semester and then take the other half of their credits in the second semester. Instead of an eight-period day of periods anywhere from half an hour to 40 minutes each, most schools have a four-period day, and the periods run anywhere from an hour to 75 minutes or so. If you're going to increase the instructional time by 25 minutes, it doesn't fit into the timetable. It can't be done.

What is the reason there have been so many disruptions in negotiations and difficulty in negotiations beyond the fact that the boards don't have enough money? It's simply because most of the boards are saying, "In order to meet the requirements that the government is asking for in terms of total instructional time per day, we have to ask each teacher to teach one more period." But one more period is not 25 minutes per day; it's an hour to 75 minutes. So the argument even in terms of the number of minutes is wrong. The argument is not over 25 minutes, it's over an additional hour or 75 minutes of instruction.

The interesting thing is that most teachers are not so concerned about having to teach an extra period. What they are concerned about is the additional preparation, marking, consultation with parents and other members of staff that will go with having an additional 30 students per day. Instead of having perhaps 90 students a day, they're now going to have 120 students a day.

Of course the government now says, "That means there's more contact between teachers and students, because each teacher has more students." How silly. A teacher is one individual, so if the individual has 120 students instead of 90, that means less time for that teacher with each individual student during the day. That's elementary. But the government members don't want to understand that, I don't think. I hope they don't understand it, because if they do, then they're not telling us the truth when they are making their speeches and saying that there's going to be more time for each individual student with the teacher.

Mr Pouliot: That would make them liars. No, no.

Mr Shea: And you know we're telling the truth.

Mr Wildman: I know you're mistaken.

Mr Shea: You know we're telling the truth.

Mr Wildman: People who are mistaken when they tell the truth are still mistaken.

It's a question then about, can the teachers meet their professional obligation to students properly? Some boards have said they can shift and change the timetable to meet the requirements that the government had for an additional 25 minutes per day of instruction by lengthening each individual period in the semestered system, instead of requiring an additional period to be taught by the teacher. Instead of it being, let's say, an hour period, it now would become a 75-minute period. So the additional number of minutes per period would work out to the required number of minutes in the week.

But this government says: "No, you can't do that. You can't just lengthen the number of minutes per period. That isn't going to do what we want to do." Why? It does mean the teachers would be teaching the number of minutes required, but the government then betrays its real agenda when they say that's not acceptable. The real agenda is they want to have fewer teachers, not each individual teacher teaching more minutes by lengthening the number of minutes per period. No. Because that doesn't mean fewer teachers. That's what this is about: The government wants to have fewer teachers in the system.

I'm not surprised that most members of the public - parents and ratepayers - don't understand all of this. They aren't involved with setting timetables and working out the computer models for how we can end up with this number of instructional minutes per day. That's fine. But I think it became very clear when this government said, "No, you can't just lengthen each period to get the number of minutes required; you've got to ensure that each teacher teaches more periods," that what this government was really about was ensuring fewer teachers, not ensuring that the number of teachers we now have teach more minutes.

Some boards suggested that maybe one way they could do it is to have each staff member teach six and a half periods instead of seven. It's not clear if this will be allowed under this bill. It doesn't say it will be, but it doesn't say it won't be. I'm not sure if that is one of the solutions that would be acceptable under this bill.

Another proposal some boards had was that there could be team teaching. In other words, you could have two teachers teaching the additional course, so in fact they're each actually teaching a half more, rather than a full course. Again, it's not clear whether this is allowed under this bill.

Speaker, I notice that we are nearing the witching hour. I would like to adjourn my debate at this moment and bring up some other interesting issues related to Bill 63, the son of Bill 62, when we return to this matter on the order paper.

The Deputy Speaker: Indeed, yes, it is 6 of the clock. This House stands adjourned until 1:30 of the clock tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 1759.

29 septembre 1998