Journal des débats 1998-oct-27 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Over a month ago, 175 nurses with the VON, including 63 registered nurses from the Cornwall VON branch, were locked out. These nurses provide nursing care to 3,000 acute and chronically ill patients in Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, and Prescott-Russell.

According to the VON nurses, the current situation is a consequence of the government's health care reform policies, including the closing of hospitals without adequate reinvestment in the community care sector as well as continued underfunding for home nursing care. Further, they note that due to the province's introduction of competition in the home health care field, concessions are needed to compete for contracts against for-profit agencies.

The VON nurses in my area emphasize that community nursing, like hospital nursing, should be declared an essential service and are asking the Minister of Health, Elizabeth Witmer, to take a leadership role.

Many residents in my area depend on the VON nursing provided, and on behalf of the nurses of eastern Ontario I call upon the Harris government to act to ensure the preservation of quality community health care.

WORKERS' COMPENSATION

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): Speaker, you'll recall that in December of last year I raised the case of Bud Jimmerfield, who was being denied workers' compensation for his claim for cancer of the esophagus. I'm pleased to announce that the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board did finally grant Bud Jimmerfield's claim. This was a clear recognition that long-term exposure to metal-cutting fluids can result in cancer of the esophagus. Although this is a victory for Mrs Diane Jimmerfield and her eight children, it isn't going to bring Bud Jimmerfield back, because he died in January of this year.

My question to this government is, how many more workers need to suffer the ravages of cancer caused by exposure to metal-cutting fluids? How many families need to lose a loved one before this government takes action? We're calling on this government to immediately reduce the exposure limits to metal-cutting fluids below the standard of five micrograms per cubic metre. They need to do that immediately.

When will this government take action to protect the workers from exposure to metal-cutting fluids, from exposure to cancer-causing agents in our workplace? How many more workers are going to have to suffer and die? We cannot wait. We need this government to take action today.

COMMUNITY CARE ACCESS CENTRES

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): Today I am pleased to have this opportunity to remind the members of this House of the tremendous work this government has done and the tremendous accomplishments we have achieved.

In my riding of Simcoe East, I have only to look at the community care access centres and their services to the people of Simcoe county. We recognized that Ontario clearly said they wanted a single point of entry to the services of over 1,700 agencies involved in community care. In March 1997, Bob Morton, CEO of the Simcoe County CCAC, said that these services would help people stay in their homes and out of institutions as they face health changes. I agree with him.

Last week, the Minister of Long-Term Care with responsibility for seniors, my colleague Cam Jackson, notified the Simcoe County CCAC that they would receive an additional $2.3 million to meet the increased demand for visiting nursing, therapy and homemaking services.

As a government, we recognized a need for change in our health care system. We recognized a need for greater community health services. We recognized that new techniques meant shorter stays in hospitals. We recognized a need to provide more home care support. Yes, we recognized a need for more long-term-care beds in our communities. I have seen the benefits of these changes in my riding and I applaud our government for the support they have shown.

I congratulate the work of the CCAC in Simcoe county.

TRAFFIC CONTROL

Mr Mike Colle (Oakwood): Premier Mike Harris continues to stall and make excuses as Ontario citizens are forced to risk their lives daily at high-collision intersections throughout this province. Motorists and pedestrians alike are being forced to play Russian roulette at these killer intersections because of red light runners.

Every week the Premier and his Minister of Transportation come up with new excuses for doing nothing. They claim it's too expensive; they claim it violates privacy; they claim the technology doesn't work. These excuses have been coming from Mike Harris for the last three years. I ask, how much is a human life worth? What about the privacy of the accident victims as they are thrown from a T-boned car as the result of a red light runner?

Red light cameras have been used in Australia since 1983 and work fine. They've saved lives there. The cameras are saving lives and reducing accidents in London, England; New York City; California, and even the province of Alberta is about to pass a red light camera bill. Anyway, it's time for action, because citizens all across this province, like Mr Roger Laporte of Cumberland, Ontario, are demanding an answer to stalling and excuses.

Mr Premier, it's about time to put safety first. It's time to think of the innocent victims of red light runners and allow the installation of red light cameras. Stop the excuses and delays. The people of Ontario want red light cameras now.

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SCHOOL CLOSURES

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I rise again to support publicly and acknowledge the job of the Hamilton-Wentworth public school board in my community. It was only a couple of short years ago that the board said no to the Mike Harris government in terms of shutting down our junior kindergarten system and imposed a marginally higher tax increase as a result to maintain that. I publicly stood here in my place and complimented them on that and I do again for the decision they have now made where they have said no to the Mike Harris government in terms of your arbitrary undemocratic deadline for shutting down upwards of 30 schools in my community.

I would extend an invitation to other communities that are facing the same dilemma and facing the same choices, the few choices that this government leaves, to join with Hamilton-Wentworth and say no to this arbitrary deadline. If everybody stuck together, there wouldn't be a deadline any more. That policy would die on the vine.

I want to particularly compliment Ray Mulholland of the individual trustees who said that the 18-month process that we have locally to consider closing down schools is far more important than the financial threats of this government. Even though my colleague from Hamilton West says they can do it much quicker, I want to say that I think they need as much time as possible to allow for community input, community consideration, community decision-making, rather than the education czar making the decisions for them.

SENIOR CITIZENS' HOUSING

Mr Douglas B. Ford (Etobicoke-Humber): Just over a week ago, I had the pleasure of attending a special groundbreaking ceremony in my riding. Central Park Lodges were unveiling their new site location in Etobicoke for the Kingsway Retirement Residence. I was pleased to take part in this special day. I believe the new Kingsway Retirement Residence, when completed, will make an exceptional addition to our community.

It is very important for seniors to feel they are living in a positive environment. I'm sure this 85,000-square-feet, $8-million investment to our community will definitely help to foster this positive environment for seniors enjoying their retirement years.

I understand that Central Park Lodges operate 62 seniors facilities across the country, with a total of 130 operations across North America. I am thrilled that Central Park Lodges has chosen the Etobicoke community for this special investment. I know that many Etobicoke seniors present on the day of the groundbreaking also expressed their enthusiasm for having the opportunity to retire in the community they love.

I thank Central Park Lodges for bringing this special project to the Etobicoke community and congratulate them on helping to demonstrate that jobs, hope, growth and opportunity have certainly returned to Etobicoke and to Ontario.

EDUCATION FUNDING

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): The Mike Harris government just can't seem to learn a lesson. They made a mess out of their decision to spend $100 million on new textbooks. The government was in such a hurry to get photo opportunities for their MPPs that they rushed the publisher to get the books on the list and then they gave teachers only 10 days to choose the books for their classroom. The books were produced so fast that some have even been found to have erasable ink.

Now they're doing it again. Kindergarten teachers are being given one week to buy their supplies from a government-approved list. There's $7 million to be spent on kindergarten computer supplies - this is the money left over from last spring's spending - and again, the schools have been given only a week to make the decisions.

What's the excuse for the rush this time? The students are already in school. There's no back-to-school photo opportunity left for the MPPs over there. This time, giving teachers only a week to spend millions of dollars is the fault, plain and simple, of mismanagement by a government that has no concern for what's actually good for education and for students.

The announcement of the new textbooks will undoubtedly be in big, bold print in their campaign brochures. The fact that $100 million in needed money for textbooks is being spent wastefully doesn't seem to bother them very much. It bothers the kindergarten teacher who wrote to me yesterday. She says:

"This past week, kindergarten teachers were presented with choosing materials for their classrooms under ridiculous conditions....We had to meet hastily and choose among materials we hardly knew anything about. In my school we chose a set of books which will probably not survive their third handling by the kids (poor bindings). This is a scandal."

That's how the government spends $100 million.

MUNICIPAL RESTRUCTURING

Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East): The Harris government's bungling of the download to municipalities just goes on and on. The regional municipality of Sudbury now has two different versions of how provincial offences revenue will be transferred to the community.

On the one hand, on March 31, the Minister of Municipal Affairs credited the regional government with $1.9 million. This was the money which would be received from the transfer of provincial offences revenue from the province to the municipality. Better still, the minister used the $1.9 million to offset the cost of the services which were being dumped on to the regional government. There were absolutely no conditions attached to receipt of the money from the Conservative government.

On the other hand, in early July, the Attorney General told the region that no provincial offences revenue would be given to the community until an intermunicipal service agreement has been signed at the local level. This involves negotiations between the region and the municipalities in the area served by our courts on how provincial offences will be administered and the revenue divided up. The Attorney General's office must approve the agreement before any money will be given to our community.

This position completely contradicts the government's earlier position. It sets out conditions for funding where none existed before. Most importantly, it leaves our region with a $1.9-million budget shortfall, a shortfall this government promised we would not have.

A meeting on October 14 between the region and officials from the Attorney General's office did not resolve the issue. The question remains, who is the region to believe, the Attorney General or the Minister of Municipal Affairs, and who will pick up our $1.9-million shortfall?

MARIA MURTINHEIRA

Mr Bob Wood (London South): I rise today to pay tribute to one of my constituents, Mrs Maria Murtinheira, who turned 103 years of age on Monday, October 26. It was my pleasure last Sunday to personally wish her feliz aniversario. Mrs Murtinheira was born in Portugal in 1895. She was married for 30 years and she and her husband had four children. She immigrated to Canada in 1973 at age 78. She settled in London, Ontario, where she is able to be close to her family and enjoy her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Although confined to a wheelchair for the last four years, she still enjoys the company of her family and friends.

Mrs Murtinheira personifies many of the qualities that make this province great: perseverance, devotion to family and a willingness to take on new challenges. She brings the proud traditions of a great country to Ontario and makes all of us richer by doing so. I ask all members of the House to join me in wishing an outstanding Ontarian a happy 103rd birthday.

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Ms Annamarie Castrilli (Downsview): I beg leave to present a report from the standing committee on social development and move its adoption.

Clerk at the Table (Mr Todd Decker): Your committee begs to report the following bill, as amended:

Bill 18, An Act to protect Children involved in Prostitution / Projet de loi 18, Loi visant à protéger les enfants qui se livrent à la prostitution.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Shall the report be received and adopted? Agreed.

The bill is therefore ordered for third reading.

VISITORS

Mr Gerry Martiniuk (Cambridge): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I'd like to recognize three municipal representatives from the city of Kyiv in the state of Ukraine: Mrs Tatyana Melikhova, Yuri Profirenko and Serhiy Lublin.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Welcome. It wasn't a point of order but certainly a point of interest, particularly the pronunciation.

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ORAL QUESTIONS

HEALTH CARE FUNDING

Mr Dalton McGuinty (Leader of the Opposition): My question is for the Deputy Premier. Today your Premier and Minister of Health are parading themselves around various parts of the province in an effort to create the impression that somehow all is well when it comes to health care in Ontario.

I want to tell you some real-life stories about real people in Ontario and their experience with health care.

Mr Barry Dunn, 62 years of age: He went to a hospital in Wawa. He waited an hour and a half to see a doctor. He needed an ICU bed. They said there was no hospital in the province that had a bed for him. He was sent to Duluth, Minnesota. He was transported there. That transportation took four hours. He died a short time later. His wife Barbara blames the cutbacks to hospital funding in this province. She says: "It's terrible. It can't be any worse, but it seems to be getting worse."

Deputy Premier, you and your Premier say that hospital and health care cuts are making things better. Tell me, how did your cuts help improve things for Mr Dunn?

Hon Ernie L. Eves (Deputy Premier, Minister of Finance): I am obviously not going to comment on a particular case, but I can say I think everybody has acknowledged that the health care system in Ontario was in need of restructuring. Your own comments on several occasions have indicated that. Your Minister of Health when you were in government, Elinor Caplan, indicated that. So did the NDP indicate that when they were in government.

Obviously, in any transition from an acute care system to one that focuses also on long-term care - which, by the way, everybody talked about for many years but nobody did anything about - there's going to be a transitional phase.

This year this government will be spending $18.7 billion on health care in Ontario, $1.3 billion more than was being spent when we assumed office. I suppose one could argue that we're not spending enough money. That argument is always there. But we are spending close to $19 billion this year on health care as we go through this transitional restructuring phase.

Mr McGuinty: Deputy Premier, you keep talking about restructuring and I'll keep talking about people.

Here is Mrs Kaneshakumar, 35 years of age, eight months pregnant. She experiences a brain hemorrhage at her home in Scarborough. She needs a neurosurgery bed and she needs it immediately. They make 21 phone calls to different hospitals in the province. They can't find any, except they find a bed at the Hamilton General. She is transported by road when she should have been transported by air.

Four hours after being admitted to the Hamilton General Hospital, she dies. She was eight months pregnant. Doctors were able to save her baby. There is now a coroner's inquest being held into this death.

The Premier is out there saying that his restructuring exercise and his cuts are helping Ontarians with their health care. Tell me, how did your cuts and your hospital closures help Mrs Kaneshakumar and her husband and their newborn baby?

Hon Mr Eves: The leader of the official opposition may pass judgment on actions of specific health care workers and whether they took the appropriate action in individual cases; I'm not going to do that. I would suggest to him it probably belittles him to do that as well.

What I will say to the leader of the official opposition is, here is his quote from September 22, 1996: "I am convinced there is enough money in the health care system. I don't think we're spending it as effectively as we can."

You thought in 1996, when we were spending about $1 billion less than we're spending today, that was enough money. Why is it that you don't think $19 billion today, about $1 billion more than then, is enough money now?

Mr McGuinty: The Premier and the Minister of Health are out there telling us that all is well when it comes to health care in this province. Here are some real-life stories, real-life people, Ontario patients who have been hurt because of cuts and closures. The government may not like to listen to these stories, but the facts are the facts.

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Member for Ottawa Rideau, sit down.

Mr McGuinty: Brenda Rantala-Sykes spent 14 hours in the emergency at St Joseph's in Sudbury. She went there because of severe abdominal pain on Saturday, September 26 of this year. She waited six and a half hours before she saw a doctor. She waited unattended until 7 o'clock the next morning. She got up to use the bathroom and she collapsed from exhaustion. She suffered injuries to her face, her neck, her jaw and her right eye, which required stitches.

In a letter to Mike Harris she described him as the cutback king of Ontario. She says all the while in the emergency ward the nurses were citing Harris's cuts. There was only one doctor in the busy emergency room that night.

You tell me that cuts are improving patient care in Ontario. Tell me, for the third time, how are those cuts helping people like Brenda?

Hon Mr Eves: First of all, that's very interesting rhetoric coming from the leader of the official opposition. Why don't you compare your actions when you were in government and those of your federal colleagues in Ottawa with respect to the health care field? You froze the number of long-term-care beds in Ontario in 1988; we've increased them by 20,000. You said during the 1995 election campaign that spending $17 billion a year on health care in Ontario would be quite sufficient; we're spending almost $19 billion this year. Now perhaps I know why your federal counterparts in Ottawa have reduced funding to health care in Ontario by $2.7 billion since 1995. In spite of their almost $3-billion cut, we are spending $1.3 billion more today than we were then. If anybody has dropped the ball on health care, it was your government between 1985 and 1990, and it's the government in Ottawa, not the government here in Queen's Park.

The Speaker: New question. Leader of the official opposition.

Mr McGuinty: My question is to the same minister. Deputy Premier, you made your choices. Your priorities are perfectly clear. You decided that a tax cut was more important than protecting health care for Ontarians. That's perfectly clear for all to see.

Here's another case. You may not like to listen to them, but here they are. Mr Kaihla, 67 years of age, died January 20, 1997. His son, Paul, a case I brought up in this House before, was outraged at the lack of care during his father's stay at a hospital in Sault Ste Marie. He cites finding his father tied to a chair, being left in the dark and unfed because of a shortage of nursing care. The hospital informed him that he really should be hiring a private duty nurse because they couldn't meet the demand. He said, "I will forever be haunted by images of my father in the hospital."

Once again, Deputy Premier, you tell us that your cuts, your hospital closures are helping Ontarians find their health care needs. Tell me, how did your cuts and your hospital closures help Mr Kaihla and his family?

Hon Mr Eves: Again, I'm not going to comment on specific cases. I don't believe it's appropriate; he believes it is.

I do want to point out what your government did, though, when you were in power. You eliminated almost 10,000 beds from the system without closing a single institution. Anybody knows that doesn't make any sense. And here's Dalton McGuinty, from December 3, 1996, "I would, as an overriding objective - improvement of our health care system - a component of that might be the closure of a hospital." So quit flip-flopping back and forth. You closed 10,000 beds when you were in government. You say it may be necessary to close hospitals. Now you stand up saying: "You shouldn't close hospitals. I never said that."

Mr McGuinty: Mr Whitehill, 82 years of age, was found dead on a stretcher in the hallway at Peterborough Civic Hospital. He was transported to the Civic at 9 am on February 4, 1997. There was no bed available for him. He was left in a hallway. The next day his daughter found him dead on his stretcher. Nobody at the hospital had realized that this man had died. Susan Kellar, the daughter, says, "Of course I blame the government."

Deputy Premier, you say your cuts to health care and your hospital closures are improving health care for Ontarians. Tell me, how did those cuts and how did those hospital closures help Mr Whitehill?

Hon Mr Eves: For the fourth time today, we have not cut health care spending. Your federal colleagues in Ottawa have cut almost $3 billion of health care transfers to Ontario since 1995. We have increased health care spending by $1.3 billion since 1995. Those are the facts. I know you find them difficult to accept. I know your former leader thought it would be quite sufficient to spend $17 billion a year on health care, almost $2 billion less than we're spending this year, but those aren't our priorities, those were your priorities.

Mr McGuinty: If everybody in Ontario buys that, then why are the Premier and the Minister of Health out there running some dog-and-pony show, trying to convince Ontarians by means of photo ops and God knows what else that they really, truly and honestly care about health care? Stay home and relax. The next election is yours. Everybody loves you, and they can't believe how good a job you're doing in health care.

Understand this: Mr Barry Dunn and Mrs Kaneshakumar -

Interjection.

1400

The Speaker: Member for Ottawa-Rideau, I'm not warning you again. Come to order.

Mr McGuinty: I have raised real-life stories with you once again today in this Legislature. These are stories of real people who have experienced in a very real way the impact of your cuts to health care and your hospital closures.

What have you done in the face of that? Today you announced that you are going to close the Hotel Dieu in St Catharines. You haven't learned from your experience. People are suffering in a very direct way as a result of your cuts and your hospital closures.

Why don't you admit now, for the first time, that you have been terribly mistaken when it comes to managing health care in Ontario and that you're going to back away from your hospital closures and your hospital cuts because you understand that you have failed to meet the basic needs of Ontario patients?

Hon Mr Eves: First of all, we have not announced anything about Hotel Dieu Hospital in St Catharines today. The Health Services Restructuring Commission has filed its recommendation.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Minister.

Hon Mr Eves: I understand that it's in his best political interest to fearmonger. Perhaps he should tell us what he would do differently. We know what his government did when they were there. We know they eliminated 10,000 acute care beds from the system. We know that you didn't spend any money on long-term care. We know all of that.

I want to give you a quote from Northwest Newsweek on Thunder Bay TV on October 4 of this year: "`Watch and see.' That is what Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty is telling the voters about his party's health care policy. He says health care is his number one priority, but he wouldn't reveal any details about the Liberals' policy."

Exactly. Are they the same priorities as your federal cousins in Ottawa, to cut $3 billion from the health care system?

SPECIAL EDUCATION

Mr Tony Silipo (Dovercourt): My question is to the Minister of Education and Training. You continue to insist in this House and elsewhere that you will have money and are continuing to flow money for special education programs. We've got news for you: The money from your new grant, the intensive support amount or ISA, is not flowing. The boards are still waiting, the parents are still waiting and, most important, the students are still waiting.

We're hearing stories from groups like the Coalition for Inclusive Education about students who are being left without supports, being sent home or being kept out of school altogether. We've heard from parents in Tillsonburg, in Kingston and in Halton whose children are not getting the services they were getting in the past. Minister, when are you going to keep your promise and flow the money, or are you, like your colleague before you, the Minister of Health, waiting for the Premier to tell you to cut the cheque and deliver the cheque?

Hon David Johnson (Minister of Education and Training): The $1.052 billion in special education monies which this government for the first time set aside for special education is flowing. The September instalment, 13% of the total amount, has flowed to the boards. Another 8% has flowed to the boards in October. That's about 21% of the total monies. Over $200 million in support for special education has flowed to the individual boards across Ontario. A portion of that, a little under $100 million, is for the intensive support amount and the remainder, bringing it up to over $200 million, is the base grant to special education. Those monies have been flowing since September. The next instalment is in the middle of November and more monies will be flowed in November.

Mr Silipo: Minister, since you won't admit it here, let me tell you why in fact that money is not flowing. Yes, you have tied that billion dollars in the formula, but the problem is that you have made these grants, which as you know are supposed to be tied to the individual needs of students, subject to your mitigation factor. What that means, in case it hasn't been explained to you, is that school boards lose funding from other areas of their budget if their special education expenses increase by more than 4% over last year. It's no longer a grant that's flowing to meet individual needs; it's tied into your funding formula, to that 4% cap. You're playing a cruel shell game with parents and children. Minister, do you expect parents to accept that or are you going to change your mitigation factor as it applies to the funding formula so that these children can get the programs and the funding they need?

Hon David Johnson: I think the member opposite is somewhat confused. That $1.052 billion is not subject to any mitigation. Those monies are earmarked solely for special education. They cannot be used anywhere else other than for special education. Those monies were allocated for special education. There will be a requirement of the boards to report at the end of the year. We have made it clear that every nickel of that money, every nickel of that $1.052 billion, must be spent on special education.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Final supplementary, member for Algoma.

Mr Bud Wildman (Algoma): Minister, I want to deal with a specific group of special-needs students who have already suffered government cutbacks. These are children with communication disorders. In many schools they are already losing the services of audiologists, speech pathologists and others who give them the special help they need. After months of trying to get a meeting with the minister, the minister did meet with them last July. They asked the minister for a specific amount of the special ed funding to be mandated for communication disorders. The minister refused and asked them to wait until September to see if their children's needs were being met. Since then the parents haven't heard a word. These parents and their children are getting a clear message from you with regard to the services they need: They won't get the funding required by communication disorder students. They don't believe they're going to get it. Are they right?

Hon David Johnson: The amount of money we have put in for special education and the process we have gone through and are going through allocates sufficient monies to ensure that each and every child gets at least the amount of service received last year, and indeed more. In the funding formula, the speech pathologists, for example, are constituted as part of classroom funding, and that classroom funding has been increased. There is more money for special assistance, such as speech pathologists, in the funding formula. Again, those monies within the classroom must be spent within the classroom.

I would say that if children in certain boards are not getting the service they deserve, I want to know about it. Certainly we've allocated the money, and I would say that the boards are not putting the priorities where they should be putting the priorities, on the children who need those services.

1410

ONTARIO HYDRO

Mr Tony Silipo (Dovercourt): To the Deputy Premier, yesterday your staff told us that Hydro has a stranded debt of $23 billion and that the nuclear assets are worth close to zero. They also said that hydro rates won't be going up.

Last week we heard, and I know you heard, that Hydro is paying its American nuclear turnaround artist, Mr Carl Andognini, $1 million a year plus a pension of $12,500 a month for life. He's supposed to be fixing the nuclear plants, the same nuclear plants that your ministry says are worth nothing. So do you think Hydro is getting its money's worth from Mr Carl Andognini?

Hon Ernie L. Eves (Deputy Premier, Minister of Finance): It is not for anybody to comment on whether or not I think Hydro is getting its money's worth from Mr Andognini.

Mr Bud Wildman (Algoma): It is not?

Hon Mr Eves: No, it is not. They're an independent agency. I have a personal opinion. You could have a personal opinion. My personal opinion wouldn't be any different than yours perhaps.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Order. Minister.

Hon Mr Eves: Getting to the question that he actually asked with some seriousness, I think, and it has a serious aspect to it, which is the value of Genco, a $5-billion value has been attributed to Genco. I understand there are those who perhaps would agree that's not the appropriate amount. We can discuss that, if he likes, in further supplementaries, but I believe the underlying reason for that was because of the uncertainty of nuclear power in the future. Nobody really knows what costs are going to be involved, how important nuclear power is going to be in the future, and therefore somebody had to make a judgment call as to what the value of those assets would be many years down the road.

The Speaker: Supplementary.

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): Minister, there's one thing we do know, and that is that you are paying top dollar for your nuclear asset optimization plan, but from what we heard yesterday, the only conclusion we can reach is that the plan isn't working. Your own staff tell us that the nuclear assets aren't worth a plug nickel. That means only one thing, that rates are going to go up. If the nuclear power plants fail, rates are going to go up.

If you don't agree with me, put your money where your mouth is. Will you amend Bill 35, as the NDP tried to do in committee, to try and put some protection in there for consumers from higher rates? The title of the bill says that you're promoting low-cost energy, but the objects of the bill say nothing about low-cost energy for consumers. What are you afraid of? Why don't you take steps to protect consumers from higher hydro rates?

Hon Mr Eves: The Minister of Energy will be happy to respond to the question.

The Speaker: Minister.

Hon Jim Wilson (Minister of Energy, Science and Technology): Certainly all that we're doing in terms of energy reform in this province, electricity reform, is to bring lower rates to consumers. The plan that the Ministry of Finance and the group of experts put forward and presented to you yesterday indicates that prices will remain stable and indeed go down over the next few years as competition is introduced.

The honourable member talked about the nuclear asset optimization plan. All indications are that the plan is proceeding quite well. It did get slowed down a little bit because they had to stop while this Parliament considered the plan, and this Parliament and all parties endorsed the nuclear asset optimization plan after very careful scrutiny in a select committee last December. We're on track. As the units are rehabilitated and come on line, the value of Genco will go up.

Mr Lessard: My question is simple. Why don't you put the protection for consumers, for low-cost energy, in the bill? We know that Carl Andognini is raking in big bucks while failing to fix the nuclear problems. Rural and remote consumers are preparing themselves to end up paying the bills. They can expect higher hydro rates because Bill 35 only guarantees them rural rate assistance if they stay in the same house. It fails to guarantee them their current rate of assistance. In other words, their hydro rates can skyrocket.

It leaves you wondering who exactly is going to benefit from Bill 35. Minister, will you amend the legislation, as the NDP tried to do in committee, to guarantee rural and remote residents aren't going to get higher energy bills as a result of Bill 35?

Hon Mr Wilson: The honourable member will note in today's media clips that the government clearly instructed the finance experts to make sure they put out a system where rates would go lower. It's indicated in the press conference yesterday and in the briefing you had.

The bill speaks to lower rates. The Ontario Energy Board is not to approve anything that isn't in the best interests of consumers. I remind people that distribution rates in the province for electricity today are not regulated by anyone. While you were in office and while the Liberals were in office, from 1985 to 1995, electricity rates went up 54%. We went from the best electricity rates in this country to the third highest, just behind PEI and Nova Scotia. Unacceptable.

Anywhere in the world, everywhere that competition has been introduced, in several dozen jurisdictions, prices have come down. Our best guarantee is good, healthy competition. Prices have come down between 8% and 40% around the rest of the world. It's time Ontario lowered its prices and that's the road we're on.

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTURING

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I have a question for the Deputy Premier. While Mike Harris and Elizabeth Witmer are traipsing around Ontario trying to convince people that the Premier is the friend of our health care system, his hospital destruction commission is slamming the doors shut on Hotel Dieu Hospital in St Catharines, a hospital which has provided a half-century of outstanding medical service to our community.

We have the most elderly population in this province. On all too frequent a basis, we have a crisis in emergency care. Yet Mike Harris's hospital destruction commission has put the boots to the Religious Hospitallers of St Joseph and those who have worked for that health care facility and its patients for 50 years. In the last provincial election campaign Mike Harris said, "Certainly, I can guarantee you it is not my plan to close hospitals." Minister, how does the closing of Hotel Dieu Hospital in St Catharines fulfil Mike Harris's commitment not to close hospitals?

Hon Ernie L. Eves (Deputy Premier, Minister of Finance): As I indicated in response to a previous question, the Ministry of Health received the report from the HSRC the same as everybody else did. As you know, the public and interested stakeholders have 30 days in which to make a case and presentations to the commission. What the honourable member didn't say in his preamble to his question was that the commission also recommended some very significant reinvestments in health care in the Niagara region: $7.8 million in capital reinvestment and $55.8 million in program reinvestment, all in the Niagara region. I wonder why the honourable member for St Catharines didn't refer to those aspects of the commission's report today.

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Mr Bradley: Minister, over 60,000 people signed a petition demanding that Hotel Dieu Hospital in St Catharines stay open and continue to provide health care service to the residents of Niagara. Thousands have attended rallies in support of Hotel Dieu. I have raised the spectre of your government waving the axe in the direction of Hotel Dieu in this Legislature in days gone by. Our community has come together to try to save our hospital. Yet Mike Harris's commission, established by Mike Harris under Bill 26, has said that it's lights out for the Hotel Dieu.

The Premier sent a glowing congratulatory message in the form of a scroll to Hotel Dieu full of praise on their 50th anniversary of service to patients this year. Minister, we need the Hotel Dieu. We need the St Catharine's General and we need the Shaver Hospital. Will you now assure the people of St Catharines that the Premier's promise will be kept and that you will not allow Hotel Dieu Hospital to close?

Hon Mr Eves: As I said, there will be a 30-day period for people to make exactly those types of submissions to the commission. Having said that, the $78.4 million for renovation and capital improvement projects includes $51.8 million for St Catharines General, $14.7 million for the Shaver Hospital, $8.2 million for Greater Niagara General and $3.7 million for the Welland County General. There's another $55.8 million in reinvestment in programs: $28.6 million for long-term care, $7.7 million for mental health services, $6 million for home care, $6.3 million for rehabilitation, $6.3 million for subacute care, and $900,000 for additional hip-and-knee replacements. Why didn't you object to any of those recommendations and why aren't you bringing them up in question period?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Order, please. I warn the member.

HOSPITAL FUNDING

Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): My question also will have to be to the acting Premier since we all know that the Premier and the Minister of Health and the Minister of Long-Term Care and apparently most of the gallery have all jaunted off to London and other parts west for another pre-election photo op at public expense.

Now the Premier has got his mailbag out and he's delivering a cheque that should have been there months ago and we're asking you, Minister, about what the effect of the cuts to hospitals has been. Your cuts to hospitals mean that 50,000 hospital workers and the Ontario Hospital Association have broken off talks. We are facing the first hospital strike in this province in 17 years.

These are the lowest-paid workers in the hospital sector. They haven't had a wage increase for six years, while hospital CEOs and management salaries have gone up nearly 12% over the last two. Minister, this chaos and bitterness and tension is another result of your decision to cut $800 million out of hospitals. Fifty-two per cent of them are in debt and it's your responsibility. It's no wonder negotiations have failed.

Minister, will you restore the -

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Thank you. Minister.

Hon Ernie L. Eves (Deputy Premier, Minister of Finance): I refer this question to the Minister of Labour.

Hon Jim Flaherty (Minister of Labour): The question relates to the hospital bargaining process that's underway. I'm sure the member opposite is aware that under the Hospital Labour Disputes Arbitration Act the first responsibility is always on the parties to negotiate their own solution, which is the best solution, when the parties themselves negotiate the solution. If that doesn't happen, then we hope the parties can agree to a mediator-arbitrator under the legislation, and then the mediator-arbitrator, through the alternative dispute resolution process, can work with the parties toward a solution. As a last resort, if the parties can't negotiate a solution and if they can't even agree on a mediator-arbitrator, then the legislation provides that the Minister of Labour will appoint someone. Indeed that was done in the case of the Ontario Nurses' Association and Ontario Hospital Association negotiation, involving 40,000 employees earlier this year, successfully resolved by a mediator-arbitrator.

The Speaker: Supplementary question.

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): Minister, I point out to you that one of the big problems in all of this is exactly your new arbitration process. In fact, these workers and their unions have got you in court over this arbitration system. And why? Because it's deemed to be unfair.

In fact, there are a number of judges who have stated they will not act as one of your arbitrators. They are the Honourable Charles Dubin, the Honourable Robert Reid, the Honourable McLeod Craig, the Honourable D.G.E. Thomson and the Honourable K.A. Flanigan, just to name a few. They are supported by the Supreme Court of Canada that said in 1987:

"Our experience with labour relations has shown that the courts, as a general rule, are not the best arbiters of disputes which arise from time to time. Judges do not have the expert knowledge always helpful and sometimes necessary in the resolution of labour problems."

Minister, we had a process that served us well for 17 years and gave us peace in the labour-management process. Will you put back in place that process that served us so well and remove this partisan process that you've rammed down our throats?

Hon Mr Flaherty: I certainly don't want to get involved in a legal debate with the member. I'll say this: The compulsory arbitration system in the hospital sector has been in place since 1965. For 33 years this program has been in place whereby the Minister of Labour, if the parties cannot agree on a resolution of their dispute or cannot agree on an arbitrator, as a last resort will appoint someone: fair, reasonable, independent arbitrators. Retired judges, I think, are among that group of fair, reasonable, independent arbitrators who can accomplish that goal.

It is in the public interest to resolve these disputes, because, after all, our fundamental concern has to be for people who need that care in the hospital system. That's where the concern must be. That's why the dispute resolution process is in place. That's why fair and reasonable people are called upon to resolve the disputes when the parties themselves have difficulty.

RURAL CRIME PREVENTION

Mr Peter L. Preston (Brant-Haldimand): My question is directed to the Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services. I'm concerned about statistical reports that there were 22,440 break-and-enter incidents within OPP jurisdictions last year. As a member from a largely rural constituency, I recognize that break-and-enter crimes are of particular interest to a great number of rural communities.

In my riding, the OPP has consulted with local politicians and members of the public to get input on local policing priorities. Overwhelmingly, the OPP have heard that targeting property crime is top priority. As OPP statistics suggest, there is a real challenge in protecting private property in less populated parts of the province. I'm sure everyone in this Legislature will agree these types of break-and-enter crimes are personally traumatic. What action is this government taking to -

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Thank you. Minister.

Hon Robert W. Runciman (Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services): I appreciate the question from the member for Brant-Haldimand. In fact, this government has recognized the serious nature of this type of crime. The numbers that the member mentioned represent about 18% of break-and-enters in the province and about $22 million in property loss.

In recognition of that challenge, the government announced in its last budget the development of a rural crime prevention strategy. The police recognize that much of rural break-and-enter activity is the work of mobile, organized groups. The Treasurer, the Minister of Finance, through his budget, allowed the establishment of five regional special task forces within the OPP to target break-and-enters in rural Ontario.

From the eastern Ontario region, I can tell you they're having a dramatic, positive impact. B&Es in the eastern region are down 22%. We're also working with the cottage owners' federations to establish a cottage watch program for Ontario.

Interjections.

Mr Preston: I thank the Solicitor General for his reassuring answer, an answer that reassures rural Ontarians, regardless of the ignorance of some people across the floor. It does reassure rural Ontarians that our government has taken considerable action in addressing rural crime.

Minister, we all know that crime prevention and public safety are concerns in all Ontario communities, not just rural communities. What is the government going to do to enhance community policing across the province?

Hon Mr Runciman: The rural crime prevention strategy is just one component of our community policing partnership program. I've talked in this House and I'm going to continue to talk about the $150-million program which is a front-line initiative which will see 1,000 new, additional police officers on the front lines of communities across this province. We'll be making those announcements in the very near future.

We've also set aside $6 million to hire 115 new cadets for the OPP, which is going to free up front-line officers to spend more time patrolling communities across this province.

I think it's clear, if you take a look at the record of this government in the justice area, no government in this country is doing more to improve public safety in our communities than the Mike Harris government.

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SCHOOL CLOSURES

Mr Dalton McGuinty (Leader of the Opposition): My question is to the Minister of Education. Parents in Toronto, Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo, Elmira, Stratford, St Thomas and many other rural and urban communities are asking themselves why a government that committed to not touching one cent in classroom expenditures has in fact gone way beyond that and is now closing 600 schools in Ontario.

These parents and these students are asking themselves: "Does this minister not understand what this school means to our neighbourhood? Does this minister not understand that this forms the very heart and soul of our community? Does this minister not understand that this is much more than bricks and mortar, that after-school programs and preschool programs and weekend programs are involved here? Does this minister not understand how valuable our schools are to our children and our community?"

My question then on their behalf to you, Minister, is, why are you attacking our communities and our students by stealing these schools away from them?

Hon David Johnson (Minister of Education and Training): As the member opposite knows, this government is giving the boards a fair amount of money, a uniform amount of money, based on the requirements of the boards, and the school boards are making these decisions. They've made these decisions down through the ages.

For example, when the Liberals were in power in 1987, the Ontario Teachers' Federation said that it was betrayed by the Liberal government. "We'll make education a major issue in the next provincial election." They weren't happy with the Liberal government. The board in Etobicoke indicated that three high schools would have to be closed in 1988. In Windsor, elementary schools would have to be closed in 1989. Indeed, under the Liberal government there were about 140 schools closed across Ontario because the school boards came to the conclusion that that made sense.

Parents and school boards are looking at the needs of their students. We are giving them the money to make the proper decisions.

Mr McGuinty: The minister represents a government that apparently has nothing to do with hospital closures, has nothing to do with property tax hikes being experienced by the great majority of Ontarians and apparently also has nothing to do with school closures. Yet this is the government and this is the minister who has cut $1 billion out of our school budgets. This is the minister who has put into place some kind of mechanical, rigid formula that bears no relationship whatsoever to real life inside Ontario communities.

Somebody got it right at a recent public rally. In Stratford there was a sign that said, "Your funding formula is a pile of manure." A student there wrote to the school board chair and said, "I am praying to Santa that they won't have to close my school." You're the grinch. You're closing these schools. You've got to wear this. Everybody understands that. You're causing school closures. You took $1 billion out of the system, you've broken a promise not to touch classroom spending, you've gone way beyond that and you're closing 600 schools. Why are you attacking communities? Why are you closing schools in Ontario?

Hon David Johnson: This is absolute nonsense. There is only one government in Canada reducing funding to education. Guess which government it is. The federal Liberal government: $2.7 billion to education, to health, to social programs. That's the only government in Canada reducing funds to education.

The funding formula that we have brought forward will involve increased funding to the tune of $15 billion: $15 billion in revenues to school boards across the province, which is $500 million higher than it was last year, and I am pleased to say that more of the money is focused in the classroom.

If the Leader of the Opposition is concerned about administration and bureaucracy, yes, we have reduced funding to administration and non-classroom expenses, but within the classroom, more money and a better education system in Ontario in the future.

ONTARIO NORTHLAND TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): My question is for the Minister of Northern Development and Mines. The minister is aware that the Ontario Northland corporation will be cutting bus service in a couple of weeks. Right now, between Hearst, Cochrane and Timmins, Ontario Northland provides two daily trips each way. With a cutback to only one trip, seniors travelling back and forth from Timmins to Hearst, college and university students, businesses that rely on this service, and people who just can't afford to own a car are going to be hurt by your cuts to the Ontario Northland bus service.

Will the minister advise this House today that he will restore the funding so that they can continue to have two bus trips per day from Timmins to Cochrane and Kapuskasing?

Hon Chris Hodgson (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet, Minister of Northern Development and Mines): I appreciate the question. As the member opposite is fully aware, the bus service is run by the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission, which has an independent board and a president. They have to run like all commercial operators. They have to work within schedules and they have to rationalize the routes, and changes are made from time to time.

I would just like to point out that no community will lose bus service, I'm told, as a result of these changes, and I'm told there are no job losses expected. Further, the North Bay to Toronto service is simply a seasonal change and the Timmins to Sudbury simply restores service to what it was in the past. We tried to put an additional route on that and it didn't work out. This is a reflection of the number of riders that play a function in this. It's run like a business and it has its own autonomous board.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Supplementary.

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): Minister, that's OK for you, you've got the chauffeur-driven limo, but people in Hearst and Kapuskasing have no means, in some cases, to be able to travel from one end to the other. That's not acceptable. Further, it's your ministry and your government that cut $10 million to the subsidy of the ONTC that has resulted in these decisions. You have to recognize that there's been a long-standing understanding in Ontario that the province of Ontario, yes, subsidizes those bus services so that at least people in those communities can get a basic level of service.

Minister, I am going to ask you again: Will you do the right thing? Will you make sure that the ONTC has adequate funding to ensure that people along the Highway 11 corridor don't do without service?

Hon Mr Hodgson: As the member knows full well, this is a board that's a scheduled agency of the Ontario government. They are responsible for conducting their business. The rail freight service has declined a little bit, the ridership has declined a bit, and they have to make route changes from time to time.

Last year, in 1997, we added another route to the Sudbury route and it didn't work out, so we're going back to the level that was in place when you were in government. In the area that the member represents, I understand that Dick Grant, who is the chair of the ONTC board, will be meeting this Friday with the mayor's action group to discuss this and look for possible changes in the future.

SAFE COMMUNITIES FOUNDATION

Mr Bill Vankoughnet (Frontenac-Addington): My question is for the Minister of Labour. Since he was in Kingston yesterday, will he explain the role of the Safe Communities Foundation? I would like to know how this foundation has helped communities like Kingston.

Hon Jim Flaherty (Minister of Labour): I was pleased and privileged yesterday to speak at the opening of the second annual Safe Communities conference which took place at Queen's University in Kingston. There were people there not only from communities around Ontario but also from Alberta and from seven or eight other provinces and territories in Canada.

The Safe Communities Foundation does important work and has been a terrific success. It was initiated by the work of Paul Kells, who regrettably lost his 19-year-old son in a work accident at a part-time summer job several years ago. He then came to my predecessor, Elizabeth Witmer, as Minister of Labour, and together they moved forward with this initiative called the Safe Communities Foundation, which has expanded not only in Ontario communities but also to Alberta.

It is a community-based health and safety solution designed to assist small business and reducing compensation costs while improving safety. Under the program, the small businesses have access to health and safety expert consulting teams, training programs and other resources that they would otherwise have difficulty gaining access to. The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board also has an incentive program that goes along with the Safe Communities Foundation program for participating companies so that they can actually receive rebates by improving their health and safety programs.

Mr Vankoughnet: Minister, can you tell us how the safe communities incentive program has helped companies in Ontario?

Hon Mr Flaherty: It has been of terrific help to many small businesses in Ontario. For example, in the Brockville area 56 companies have recently received cheques totalling $113,000 from the WSIB for improving their health and safety programs. This means improving programs for youth, making our workplaces safer for youth as well as for older workers. This is important work. In Waterloo, 48 companies received cheques totalling $350,000. In Peterborough, 43 companies received cheques totalling $200,000. Owen Sound and district is moving forward this program, and in my own region of Durham, Ajax and Pickering are moving forward.

It's a terrific program. It's sustainable. It works. It reduces injuries among our young people entering the workforce and among older workers. It's a program that we value and support.

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ONTARIO HYDRO

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): My question is to the Minister of Finance, and it concerns the briefing that his department provided some members of the Legislature yesterday afternoon with respect to the disposition of the $40 billion worth of Ontario Hydro debt. I must say I've never been in the presence of such a group before, I've never witnessed Bay Street drooling on Wall Street, and my concern as I listened to that presentation is what all of this means for Main Street, because on Main Street the concern is going to continue to be, what does all of this mean to my rates?

The question is to the Minister of Finance, not to the Minister of Energy. A certain Bryne Purchase, the now Deputy Minister of Finance, was retained by the government of Ontario last spring to advise the government of Ontario on the whole Hydro debt situation. Bryne Purchase told the legislative committee in Ottawa on August 17 that the single biggest concern for the committee ought to be protecting public shareholder value in the very substantial assets at Ontario Hydro. Dr Purchase particularly pointed out the need for very clear and strong governance mechanisms over the new successor companies, particularly Genco.

What is the Minister of Finance prepared to tell the House today about the particular steps he will take to protect shareholder value in those assets?

Hon Ernie L. Eves (Deputy Premier, Minister of Finance): The member will be aware, having attended the briefing session yesterday afternoon, of how the values of both Servco and Genco were arrived at. Servco was quite easy because there were other operations of a similar nature that you could use as a comparative value and the value of $10.5 billion was arrived at. Similarly, in response to a question asked earlier with respect to Genco, there are some prudent concerns and uncertainties that have to be taken into account with respect to the nuclear assets of Ontario Hydro, and hence the value of $5 billion was arrived at.

Mr Conway: That anticipates the supplementary. The presentation yesterday was fascinating, I thought, for two reasons: One, you've assigned only $1.8 billion of the nearly $40 billion worth of Hydro debt to Genco and, by so doing, I think most people would say you have created a very valuable generation company. You also tell us, your people yesterday, that because of the assignment of so little of the Hydro debt to Genco, which has enormously valuable hydroelectric and fossil-generating capacities, you have now created a company which, according to your own Bay Street and Wall Street hires, will pay new hydro taxes on an annual basis of in excess of $1 billion.

Let me repeat, according to your own presentation yesterday, the structure at Genco, because it's so lucrative, because it carries so little of the debt, is going to be able to pay new hydro taxes on an annual basis of over a billion dollars, which once the debt is paid off will apparently go to the credit of the Ontario treasury.

My question on behalf of the Ontario ratepayers of electricity is, will you as the Minister of Finance stand in your place today and tell the millions of residential and farm electricity consumers that in the four-year period 2000 to 2004 their hydro bills will not increase -

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Minister.

Mr Conway: - as a result of this -

The Speaker: Member for Renfrew North, come to order, please. Minister of Finance.

Hon Mr Eves: The honourable member knows that ratepayers already are paying for the entire debt of Ontario Hydro. Every time you pay a hydro bill, you are paying a portion of that amount towards servicing the debt of Ontario Hydro. There is no new created thing. It's going to be more transparent in terms of the CTC charge. It will be up front and a transparent charge. There are capital structures to debt-equity ratios for both Servco and Genco. He knows what they are. They're 60-40 for Servco; they're 40-60 for Genco. That is how these were arrived at.

ONTARIO NORTHLAND TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): My question is back to the Minister of Northern Development and Mines. To a previous question put by myself and the member for Cochrane North you were saying as the minister that the ONTC is an independent agency and you've got nothing to do with it. We know and you know and the people of northern Ontario know you've got a fixed-price contract signed with the ONTC that provides a subsidy to that agency. Furthermore, everybody in northern Ontario knows it's your government that appoints the appointees to the board that makes the decisions. So when you come back to us and say, "It's not me, not Chris Hodgson, not Mike Harris cutting the services," we know that's not the case.

There's a subsidy in place for a reason. The subsidy is there to ensure that the ONTC has the capacity to respond to the needs of the people of northern Ontario to provide a basic level of transportation. My question to you is quite simple: Minister, are you going to do the right thing? Will you keep up the tradition for northern Ontario, to make sure we have the subsidy necessary to provide basic services in northern Ontario?

Hon Chris Hodgson (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet, Minister of Northern Development and Mines): The member opposite knows full well that the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission is an organization that is a scheduled agency of the government and therefore has its own president and its own board of directors and its own chair of the board. He was involved in the government at one time and is fully aware of that relationship. I can go back in the Hansards and show ministers of your party in your answers that you gave about operational issues conducted by the ONTC. That is totally within their jurisdiction.

There are changes to bus lines and routes and scheduling. That's why you have local boards with local members on them make those decisions. In 1997 we expanded the bus service to Sudbury and this year the board found that the revenues weren't up to snuff and so they're making some changes. I expect that changes will be made for the future of the ONTC.

What I would like to say, since you bring up the subsidy, is that we have done a number of things to allow the ONTC as an organization to exist and thrive and grow its business.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Supplementary.

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): This government never takes responsibility for anything. They always want to blame somebody else. All the appointments to Ontario Northland are made by Mike Harris and Chris Hodgson. They have complete control over what happens to Ontario Northland. You have cut the norOntair airline, you've cut the train service, you've cut the bus service. What could the people of northern Ontario expect from this government? You're hurting everybody in sight - cut, cut, cut, cut. When will you restore the money that Ontario Northland needs to give good airline service, train service and bus service?

Hon Mr Hodgson: The members of the third party have their selective memory on. I will point out that the member is right, that we did inherit an $11-billion deficit and a debt of $100 billion, and there had to be some changes in the way we ran this province. I think everyone in the province recognized that, whether in northern Ontario or southern Ontario. We've allowed the ONTC to have flexibility.

We cancelled the Tucson award. Instead of paying that $9 million they were on the hook for, they got to keep it. I think you will find that our record stacks up quite well against any past government's in light of the fact that we also have to get the fiscal house of this province in order. This board should be commended for the great job they are doing on behalf of northerners and northern Ontario.

1450

PETITIONS

HOTEL DIEU HOSPITAL

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I have a timely petition regarding 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 over $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 Mike 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, along with many people in St Catharines, agree with this petition.

HERITAGE CONSERVATION

Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): I have a petition addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. It reads:

"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."

That's signed by Anthony Wayland, Phyllis Hill and many others from across Niagara.

SCHOOL CLOSURES

Mr Bert Johnson (Perth): I have a petition that concerns deeply a lot of people in the communities in Perth.

"We, the undersigned taxpayers of rural Ontario, oppose the current Ministry of Education and Training funding formula in relation to rural boards. We believe that special consideration should be given to the fact that our population is spread out over a wide geographical area. A blanket funding formula for such a large and diverse province as Ontario will not work for students equally. Education is not an expense, it's an investment."

I sign this petition on behalf of my constituents.

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): "To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas Mike Harris is cutting the heart out of many communities by closing hundreds of neighbourhood and community schools across Ontario; and

"Whereas this massive number of school closings all at once will displace many children and put others on longer bus routes; and

"Whereas Mike Harris promised in 1995 not to cut classroom spending, but has already cut at least $1 billion from our schools and is now closing many classrooms completely; and

"Whereas Mike Harris is pitting parent against parent and community against community in the fight to save local schools; and

"Whereas parents in Romney, Toronto, Ottawa, Stratford, Hamilton-Wentworth and many other communities are calling on the government to stop closing so many of their schools;

"Whereas the closure of a school should be based on local decision-making and student population, with enough time to consider all options, not complicated formulas aimed at quickly cutting money from the system;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislature to call on Mike Harris to stop his headlong rush to close local schools."

I have signed my signature in full agreement with the sentiment.

PALLIATIVE CARE

Mr Bob Wood (London South): I have a petition signed by 15 people.

"Whereas most Ontario residents do not have adequate access to effective palliative care in time of need;

"Whereas meeting the needs of Ontarians of all ages for relief of preventable pain and suffering, as well as the provision of emotional and spiritual support, should be a priority to our health care system;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to resolve that a task force be appointed to develop a palliative care bill of rights that would ensure the best possible treatment, care, protection and support for Ontario citizens and their families in time of need.

"The task force should include palliative care experts in pain management, community palliative care and ethics in order to determine effective standards for the right to life and care of individuals who cannot, or who can no longer decide issues of medical care for themselves.

"The appointed task force would provide interim reports to the government and the public and continue in existence to review the implementation of its recommendations."

PORNOGRAPHY

Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas children are exposed to pornography in variety stores and video retail outlets;

"Whereas bylaws vary from city to city and have failed to protect minors from unwanted exposure to pornography;

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

"To enact legislation which will create uniform standards in Ontario to prevent minors from being exposed to pornography in retail establishments; prevent minors from entering establishments which rent or sell pornography; restrict the location of such establishments to non-residential areas."

That's signed by many from my riding and the riding of SD&G.

WASTE DISPOSAL

Mr John O'Toole (Durham East): I present a petition on behalf of the Honourable Janet Ecker. It's from members in her riding: Terry White and David Home. For the record, I'll read the petition, although it's in improper format. It's a petition against a garbage station.

"The citizens of Ajax are outraged that a garbage transfer station could be approved on the Norton Road despite the rejection of the proposal of J & F Waste by the town of Ajax. We request the town of Ajax work with representatives of the community to defend the town's decision to reject the application and that the town provide full legal representation and independent expert witnesses at any hearings at the Ontario Municipal Board."

I present this petition of behalf of Janet Ecker.

HERITAGE CONSERVATION

Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): 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 their heritage sites; and

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

I will affix my signature too.

COMPENSATION FOR HEPATITIS C PATIENTS

Mr Joseph N. Tascona (Simcoe Centre): I have a petition to the Parliament of Ontario:

"Whereas many Ontarians have been infected with the hepatitis C virus as a result of transfusions using contaminated blood; and

"Whereas the current compensation package only provides funding for those people infected between the years 1986 to 1990; and

"Whereas in Canada there are at least 20,000 surviving victims who were infected with hepatitis C before 1986, who placed their faith in the blood system and are now suffering;

"Now therefore, we, the undersigned, respectfully petition the Legislature of Ontario, on behalf of the victims and their families, in support of the Ontario government's call for a compensation package for Ontarians who were infected with the hepatitis C virus through the blood system prior to 1986, and that pending a resolution of federal liability for the contaminated blood problem, Ontario agree in the interim that such new package be funded by Ontario and the federal government on the same basis as the federal-provincial agreement covering 1986-90. We call on the government of Canada to do the right thing."

I affix my signature.

SCHOOL CLOSURES

Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas Mike Harris is cutting the heart out of many communities by closing hundreds of neighbourhood and community schools across Ontario; and

"Whereas this massive number of school closings all at once will displace many children and put others on longer bus routes; and

"Whereas Mike Harris promised in 1995 not to cut classroom spending but has already cut at least $1 billion from our schools and is now closing many classrooms completely; and

"Whereas Mike Harris is pitting parent against parent and community against community in the fight to save local schools; and

"Whereas parents in Toronto, Ottawa, Stratford, Hamilton-Wentworth, Romney and many other communities are calling on the government to stop closing so many of their schools; and

"Whereas the closure of the schools should be based on local decision-making and student population, with enough time to consider all options, not complicated formulas aimed at quickly cutting money from the system;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislature to call on Mike Harris to stop his headlong rush to close local schools."

I affix my signature to this as well.

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PROTECTION FOR HEALTH CARE WORKERS

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I have a petition that says:

"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 or sell chemicals and other 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

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

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

ADOPTION

Mr Alex Cullen (Ottawa West): I rise with a petition signed by residents in London, Ontario, and Ingersoll, Ontario, in support of Bill 39, the Access to Adoption Information Statute Law Amendment Act, and I will summarize the petition.

The petitioners petition the Legislature to revise legislation to allow for access to birth registration, adoption records for adult adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents and other relatives, implement a no-contact notice option, recommend optional counselling, offer access to other information relating to medical files and acknowledge open adoptions.

I'm pleased to affix my signature to it.

NORTHERN HEALTH SERVICES

Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): I have a petition signed by over 1,000 constituents in the Kenora area. It reads:

"To the Honourable Mike Harris:

"Whereas there are circumstances at the Lake of the Woods District Hospital that could cause the cessation of the anaesthetists' services, the loss of two psychiatrists and the loss of the diabetic education service in the near future; and

"Whereas these facilities are required by the people in a very large area, the Kenora district; and

"Whereas even a short-term elimination of these facilities could result in the loss of the professionals providing these services;

"Therefore, we, the undersigned, are calling on your government to provide an immediate long-term solution to guarantee the continuation of the health care facilities currently available through our district hospital."

Again, it's signed by over 1,000 constituents in my riding and I have certainly attached my name to it.

GERMAN HERITAGE

Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the people of German descent have been a part of Ontario's history since the days of pre-Confederation; and

"Whereas the German culture has always been an integral component of the cultural mosaic of Ontario; and

"Whereas we wish to demonstrate official recognition of the positive contribution of German heritage in the province of Ontario;

"We, the undersigned, respectfully petition the government of Ontario to pass the bill entitled the German Pioneers Day Act and we respectfully petition the government of Ontario to designate the day following Thanksgiving Day as the date of the annual German Pioneers Day."

I'm pleased to affix my signature.

ABORTION

Mr Bob Wood (London South): I have a petition signed by 526 people.

"Whereas the Ontario health system is overburdened and unnecessary spending must be cut; 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 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; and

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

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

ORDERS OF THE DAY

APPRENTICESHIP AND CERTIFICATION ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR L'APPRENTISSAGE ET LA RECONNAISSANCE PROFESSIONNELLE

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 55, An Act to revise the Trades Qualification and Apprenticeship Act / Projet de loi 55, Loi révisant la Loi sur la qualification professionnelle et l'apprentissage des gens de métier.

The Acting Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Pursuant to the order of the House of October 14, 1998, I am now required to put the question.

Mr Smith has moved second reading of Bill 55. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour of the motion, please say "aye."

Those opposed, please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Call in the members; a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1506 to 1511.

The Acting Speaker: All those in favour of the bill will please rise.

Ayes

Arnott, Ted

Baird, John R.

Barrett, Toby

Bassett, Isabel

Beaubien, Marcel

Boushy, Dave

Brown, Jim

Carroll, Jack

Chudleigh, Ted

Clement, Tony

Danford, Harry

DeFaria, Carl

Doyle, Ed

Fisher, Barbara

Flaherty, Jim

Ford, Douglas B.

Fox, Gary

Froese, Tom

Gilchrist, Steve

Grimmett, Bill

Guzzo, Garry J.

Harnick, Charles

Johnson, Bert

Johnson, David

Jordan, W. Leo

Kells, Morley

Klees, Frank

Leach, Al

Marland, Margaret

Martiniuk, Gerry

McLean, Allan K.

Munro, Julia

Murdoch, Bill

Mushinski, Marilyn

Newman, Dan

O'Toole, John

Ouellette, Jerry J.

Parker, John L.

Pettit, Trevor

Preston, Peter

Rollins, E.J. Douglas

Ross, Lillian

Runciman, Robert W.

Sampson, Rob

Shea, Derwyn

Sheehan, Frank

Smith, Bruce

Snobelen, John

Sterling, Norman W.

Tascona, Joseph N.

Tilson, David

Turnbull, David

Vankoughnet, Bill

Villeneuve, Noble

Wettlaufer, Wayne

Wilson, Jim

Wood, Bob

The Acting Speaker: All those opposed will please rise.

Nays

Bisson, Gilles

Boyd, Marion

Bradley, James J.

Caplan, David,

Christopherson, David

Cleary, John C.

Conway, Sean G.

Cordiano, Joseph

Crozier, Bruce

Cullen, Alex

Gerretsen, John

Grandmaître, Bernard

Hampton, Howard

Hoy, Pat

Kormos, Peter

Kwinter, Monte

Lessard, Wayne

McGuinty, Dalton

McLeod, Lyn

Miclash, Frank

Morin, Gilles E.

North, Peter

Patten, Richard

Phillips, Gerry

Pouliot, Gilles

Pupatello, Sandra

Ramsay, David

Silipo, Tony

Wildman, Bud

Wood, Len

Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): The ayes are 57; the nays are 30.

The Acting Speaker: I declare the motion carried.

Pursuant to the order of the House dated October 14, 1998, the bill is ordered referred to the standing committee on general government.

LEGAL AID SERVICES ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LES SERVICES D'AIDE JURIDIQUE

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 68, An Act to incorporate Legal Aid Ontario and to create the framework for the provision of legal aid services in Ontario, to amend the Legal Aid Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts / Projet de loi 68, Loi constituant en personne morale Aide juridique Ontario, établissant le cadre de la prestation des services d'aide juridique en Ontario, modifiant la Loi sur l'aide juridique et apportant des modifications corrélatives à d'autres lois.

The Acting Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Pursuant to the order of the House dated October 26, I am now required to put the question.

Mr Harnick has moved second reading of Bill 68. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Pursuant to the order of the House dated October 26, 1998, the bill is ordered referred to the standing committee on administration of justice.

COURTS OF JUSTICE AMENDMENT ACT (IMPROVED FAMILY COURT), 1998 / LOI DE 1998 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES TRIBUNAUX JUDICIAIRES (AMÉLIORATION DE LA COUR DE LA FAMILLE)

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 48, An Act to Improve Court Services for Families by Facilitating Expansion of the Family Court and to make other amendments to the Courts of Justice Act / Projet de loi 48, Loi visant à améliorer les services fournis aux familles par les tribunaux en facilitant l'expansion de la Cour de la famille et apportant d'autres modifications à la Loi sur les tribunaux judiciaires.

Mr Carl DeFaria (Mississauga East): I am pleased to commence debate on Bill 48, the Courts of Justice Amendment Act. This bill expands on the Courts of Justice Act, which currently regulates and provides for the creation of the family court at new sites by proclamation. This bill amends the Courts of Justice Act to make some minor changes to the structure of judicial administration in the Ontario Court (General Division). This change will facilitate the expansion of the family court.

To go back a bit to the creation of the Unified Family Court, I can tell you that the court was created in 1977. It was established as a pilot project in the city of Hamilton for a three-year period. All family law jurisdiction was consolidated into the Unified Family Court, which would allow that court to provide service in the family court whether the jurisdiction was provincial or federal.

In the past, because of the jurisdiction being both provincial and federal, there were difficulties in providing service to all the family law issues that came up in a separation or other family law situations. The split jurisdiction was based mainly on the appointment of judges and the authority that judges were conferred with whether they were appointed by the federal government or the provincial government.

In 1995, the Unified Family Court was continued as the family court branch of the Ontario Court (General Division) and was expanded to four locations: London, Barrie, Kingston and Napanee, in addition to the original site in Hamilton. The expansion has been termed a success by all means by the members of the bench, the bar association, community groups and advocacy groups in Ontario.

Unification of family law jurisdiction in one court meant better customer service for women, children and families. The family court increased support services such as intake, assessment and referral to family mediation services. In the family court, there is full service in family law at one court. All remedies such as divorce, which is exclusive federal jurisdiction, possession of a family home, custody, access, enforcement of a separation agreement, child and spousal support, enforcement of support orders and protection of children can be dispensed in Unified Family Court.

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Why amend the Courts of Justice Act? I can tell you that one of the main reasons is that our government will soon be announcing a major expansion of the Unified Family Court in Ontario. The proposed amendments would facilitate the expansion of the court. Unified Family Court now exists in five jurisdictions and hopefully it will be expanded throughout Ontario.

Further expansion of this court is long overdue. Members of the bar are well aware of the need to expand the court into other jurisdictions throughout Ontario.

The federal government has not provided Ontario with enough judicial appointments to meet Ontario's needs. However, the proposed changes will permit making maximum use of the limited judicial resources available and expanding it as broadly as possible.

The proposed changes have been requested, as I mentioned, by the judiciary who are very supportive of Unified Family Court expansion.

What are the advantages of United Family Court? One of the main advantages is a single-window service. In areas of Ontario without Unified Family Court, family law cases are still heard in both the Provincial Division and General Division courts. Each court has exclusive jurisdiction over certain family law matters. This is very confusing for litigants and for the public who often have to resort to different courts to achieve different remedies.

Unified Family Court will have jurisdiction, as I mentioned, on all family law matters and will simplify the system.

Also the Unified Family Courts have specialized services, such as mediation services, and will be able to provide information services and information sessions on family law and alternative resolution matters; also on parental separation, on children. All these information sessions are sessions that would not be available when you have different levels of court systems providing services for families.

The procedures will be streamlined. The new family rules were recently approved by the Family Rules Committee and hopefully will receive cabinet consideration in the near future. These rules are designed to make the court process much faster and simpler for the parties.

Some of the main elements of the amendment include providing the regional senior judges with clear authority to direct and supervise sittings of the family court system and assign judicial duties; also the establishment of an office of the Senior Judge of the General Division of the family court to provide advice to the Chief Justice on issues affecting the family court on a provincial basis.

Le projet de loi confirme l'autorité du juge en chef sur l'ensemble du tribunal, y compris la Cour de la famille. Il prévoit également que cela conférerait aux juges principaux régionaux de la division générale l'autorité relative aux questions opérationnelles. Concernant la Cour de la famille, les juges principaux de cette dernière conservent son autorité à l'égard des questions reliées aux responsabilités fonctionnelles de ce tribunal.

These changes recognize the Chief Justice's constitutional authority to assign General Division judges into the court on a rotational basis so that additional resources can be made available to the court and can be expanded to more communities. It also removes young offender cases from the family court. For a long time people have indicated that young offenders court should be incorporated into the criminal division, which is a provincial court division, and in fact most of the young offender cases are dealt with in the criminal court. That provides establishment, just like we now have the establishment of the family domestic assault cases, of a specialized court within the criminal division. The Young Offenders Act can be very well administered within the same system.

To finalize, Ontario is firmly committed to the goal of a province-wide Unified Family Court. We urge the federal government to make it a priority to provide more judges so that the court can be extended to all communities. In the past, all parties of this House supported the establishment of the Unified Family Court. I'm sure that most members here realize the importance of the Unified Family Court system, and I'm hoping they will be able to support this bill also.

The Acting Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Questions and comments?

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I know a matter of justice that may be affected by the courts of justice situation. The member didn't mention the injustices being done today to the Hotel Dieu Hospital in St Catharines. I thought he might have mentioned that when he talked about justice today and the courts of justice. Contrary to the promise of the Premier of this province when he said, "Certainly, Robert, I can guarantee you I have no plans to close hospitals," the Premier's hand-picked commission today, the hospital destruction commission, announced that it would be closing Hotel Dieu Hospital in St Catharines, just as it closed Hotel Dieu Hospital in Kingston and in Cornwall.

I'm wondering what they have against the Religious Hospitallers of St Joseph that they keep closing these hospitals. They have provided outstanding care. This is a matter of injustice in our area. I wish we had a court of justice. I guess the court of justice is the electorate of this province, but I wish we had that to deal with Hotel Dieu Hospital.

Just a short time ago, the Premier sent a lovely complimentary message, a scroll, which was read out at a public event, congratulating Hotel Dieu Hospital and everyone associated with it on the wonderful service they had provided to the people of St Catharines over the past 50 years. Then I find out today - I had to muscle my way, by the way, past the guards at one time to try to get into the press conference. I was not successful. They would not even allow elected members into the press conference. They had a segregated press conference in a segregated area for elected members. The elected members, even the Conservative members, were not allowed into where the real action was, the press conference. I knew there was trouble when we started there, and I know that all of my colleagues in the Niagara region will be joining me in fighting for justice for the Hotel Dieu Hospital in St Catharines.

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): With what this government is doing, there certainly are a lot of questions that have come up. Why would this government allow 12-year-olds to take hunting rifles and go into the bush being supervised by 19-year-olds? All of the cuts that are being made to the school system and the safety system in this province, how is that going to make things safer in this province? It's going to destroy a lot of families and put more kids at risk.

When you talk about questions and comments, what good is it going to do to put all the young people into boot camps? Is that supposed to make the justice system better in this province? There are a lot of questions and comments that are going to come up as we go through and debate this bill in more detail.

With the cuts to education, health care, closing 40 or 50 hospitals around this province, closing up to 600 schools and a lot of the action that has been taken, you've cut families that are in need. One of this government's first actions was to take the money away from the kids for food and shelter and what they needed to clothe themselves to be productive in society.

When we look at the whole agenda of this Conservative government, what they've brought forward, I don't believe they're really concerned about justice in society, because of the action they've taken, one move after another which is destroying families and putting more children at risk throughout this province.

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Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): I would just like to respond to something the member said, that the provincial government wanted more than the 17 judges who were actually appointed by the federal government. As he well knows, the Unified Family Court system in Hamilton started some 20 years ago and the other four courts were added back in 1993-94. It will take quite some time to make sure that the 17 judges who have been appointed in effect will be placed in different Unified Family Courts throughout the province.

The best argument he can come up with, which is against the federal government - and that seems to be the mode of this government nowadays, to attack the federal government - is the argument that "My golly, the feds didn't do what we wanted them to do, because we wanted them to appoint 22 judges and they only appointed 17 judges."

I think assurances can be given that once these 17 judges have been placed in the new Unified Family Courts throughout Ontario, the federal government will then continue with that process and make sure that other judges are appointed to make the system work, because I believe in the Unified Family Court system. It's high time, for the women and children and men in this province who are involved in matrimonial disputes, that all of their issues are dealt with in one court. The system we had before or that we currently still have in most of the province, whereby access-and-custody matters and support matters are dealt with in one court and the split-up of family assets and divorce in another court, is just unsustainable. It's confusing to people, it's more costly to people and anything we can do in order to get the Unified Family Court system going throughout this province we will do.

Don't worry about the additional five judges. Make sure that the 17 who have now been appointed, and the Senate has given its approval, are in place, and I'm sure the rest of them will follow right after that.

Mr Bud Wildman (Algoma): I listened carefully to the comments of my friend across the aisle.

Mr John R. Baird (Nepean): It's much better in person.

Mr Wildman: I was in the lobby listening to the television.

It seems to me that if the member wants to make the community safer, wants to make the family courts more responsive, then the member would be encouraging his government to ensure that programs that will support families and support kids are not cut. As long as we have less social assistance available for children, less child care available for children who need it, fewer children's mental health services, overall cuts to health services, cuts to the education system, then we're going to have difficulties and social problems in the future that are going to cost us a great deal more than if we had funded these services adequately today.

Whatever you do with the family court system, it's not going to do anything in terms of ensuring safer communities. It may, in some way, be seen as holding young people more accountable for their actions, but the very root causes of the social difficulties that families and communities face will be exacerbated by the budget cuts and program cuts that this government is forcing on the education system, on the municipal sector and on the health care system in this province, because they're hurting families, they're hurting kids and they're producing a bill that we're going to have to pay at a later date.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. The member for Mississauga East.

Mr DeFaria: To the member for Algoma, I would like to indicate that our government has been in the forefront of providing services for children. In fact, our government was the first government that created a minister responsible for children's services in Ontario.

Mr Wildman: That minister is seen but not heard.

Interjection.

The Acting Speaker: Order, member for Kingston and The Islands.

Mr DeFaria: Our government has implemented initiatives for youth employment in rural Ontario. Our government is doing the best that any government has done so far for young people in Ontario. I can tell the member for Kingston and The Islands that the Unified Family Court was actually a symbol of the co-operation of the provincial government with the federal government in that the provincial government gave jurisdiction to the federally appointed judge to be able to deal with family issues, which prior to that time the federally appointed judge would not have been able to deal with. If he would just tell his friends in Ottawa to move on with the appointment of the remaining judges, we'll do our job here, which is to expand the Unified Family Court throughout Ontario.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Ms Annamarie Castrilli (Downsview): I'm delighted to join in this debate. May I say at the outset that it seems to me there's an unusual amount of legislation coming from the Ministry of the Attorney General just in the past month. It certainly is quite a difference from what we've seen from this ministry in the last three years.

The Acting Speaker: Just take your seat for a moment.

Mr Wildman: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I'm sorry to interrupt my friend, but I'm wondering if there's a quorum present.

The Acting Speaker: Clerk, could you check and see if there's a quorum, please.

Clerk at the Table (Mr Todd Decker): A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

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

The Acting Speaker: The member for Downsview.

Ms Castrilli: As I was saying before we were interrupted, this is an unusual amount of legislation coming out of the Ministry of the Attorney General. It certainly rivals everything the ministry has produced in the last three and a half years. I wonder why we are watching all this legislation appear, why the minister waited for the end of his mandate to do what he should have done in the very beginning. In the meantime, we've seen a justice system that has gone from crisis to crisis, and frankly the public's confidence in the system has been shaken by the inaction or the negative action of this Attorney General.

The purpose of this legislation is ostensibly to restructure the court system and facilitate the expansion of the family court. This government, it seems to me, is very big on administrative changes but a little short on substance. Where is the substance in this particular bill, and where is the substance on the real issues that are plaguing the court system in Ontario?

We've heard, for instance, announcements about new courthouses but none about new judges. We've heard announcements about the consolidation of family support services but no improvement in a system that has ravaged the lives of people by not providing financial support to women and children who are entitled to it. We've heard announcements about court blitzes, but serious criminal cases continue to be dismissed by the courts because they take too long to be heard. We've heard promises from the Attorney General that he would bring forward proposals re plea bargaining, but so far none have come forward. We've even had a bill introduced in this Legislature that sought to reform legal aid, but it just announced an infrastructure, with no indication as to how it is going to be funded or how the many other grave concerns put forth by the government's own task force are to be addressed.

And here we are again: another announcement but no attempt to use this opportunity to resolve the many issues put forth by those forced to use the family court system - by practitioners, by judges and by experts. If the Attorney General does not take this opportunity now to make substantive announcements about where he sees the future of the justice system in this province, then why not? And if not now, then when? When can we expect some answers to the real problems that plague Ontario's courts? We need strong leadership in this area, not empty gestures, not hollow announcements and certainly not rhetorical pieces of legislation. Put something substantial and positive on the table. Ontario needs an Attorney General prepared to fight for his ministry and for change that is long overdue.

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Let me deal in short with what little substance there is in this bill. Essentially, the bill makes some administrative changes to the Courts of Justice Act to put the Unified Family Court under the Ontario Court (General Division). This follows an initiative by the former government in 1995 which announced the Unified Family Court structure, providing for federal and provincial family court matters to be heard and services to be delivered all from one site. Begun as a pilot project in Hamilton in 1977, it was expanded to include London, Barrie, Kingston and Napanee.

The changes that this Bill 48 would make are minor and are in fact contained in two schedules to the bill. The differences between them are also minor. They revolve around the proposed change of name from the Ontario Court system to Superior Court of Justice and Ontario Court of Justice at a time to be determined by the Lieutenant Governor in Council. Essentially, one section uses the current names and will remain in force until the change of name takes place, while the other uses the new names in the event that the change-of-name clause is proclaimed before this bill is passed and proclaimed.

Schedule A and schedule B, both in section 1, state that the status of the head of the family court appears to have been lowered. In the old act of 1996, the head of the family court was the Associate Chief Justice. The new title will now be Senior Judge of the family court. This may be only a cosmetic change, but only the Attorney General will be able to tell us that and I imagine he will take the opportunity to do so. The Senior Judge is then to advise the Chief Justice of the Ontario Court with respect to the education of judges; practice and procedure, including mediation; expansion of the court; and expenditure of funds budgeted for the court. In addition, the commitment to meet from time to time with community liaison and community resources committees is affirmed. Judges from the family court may be temporarily assigned to hear other matters outside of the family court. As you can see, these are hardly weighty matters, given the very real problems that plague the family law court system and the justice system in general in this province.

Let me tell you what's not in the bill, because I think that's what is really important here. There's no mention of the importance of family law judges, that they have the necessary background to perform their job and the cultural sensitivity that is required in Ontario. When a family breaks up, we all know that it can be devastating. Access to the courts is slow and difficult. If that family is from a background other than French or English, their ordeal is all the greater. What is required is a judiciary which reflects the broad diversity that is Ontario. I mention that because this government's record in that area has not been good at all. The last report from the judicial appointments committee, which is dated December 31, 1997, makes this abundantly clear.

I'd like to read some interesting stats into the record. When you look at the number of women who have been appointed under this government to the bench in general, we've had seven until the end of last year. When we look at francophones, there has been one. When we look at First Nations, there has been one. When we look at visible minorities and persons with disabilities, there have been zero. That is a very telling indictment of this government.

I should think that I wouldn't have to remind the Attorney General to have an adequate number of judges, but also judges who have the necessary qualifications and cultural understanding. The justice that Ontario metes out is only as good as the individuals who mete it out, and the ultimate choice as to who those individuals are belongs to the Attorney General and his government.

I urge that the appointments of this government be ones that address the very real needs of Ontarians. It is unfortunate in this bill, which deals with infrastructure, that we haven't taken the opportunity to say something very meaningful and real to the people of Ontario about what we expect in terms of our judiciary.

There's also no mention in this bill of the list of recommendations which have been made by the Family Lawyers' Association. I'll return to this point later because I think it's important that we hear from the professionals in this area at length, but I simply wanted to flag that point at this time.

There's no mention in the bill of how the concerns of the Provincial Auditor in his last report are going to be addressed. In particular, the Provincial Auditor outlined serious problems of mismanagement in the Ministry of the Attorney General, and I'll return again to this point a little later.

There's nothing in the bill that addresses the grave findings of the government-appointed McCamus task force that found that approximately 67% of family law litigants are unrepresented in court: typically, low-income women and children who cannot afford a lawyer.

I want to assure the government that we will be supporting this bill, but we have some serious concern about whether this bill will be able to assist in resolving the myriad crises facing the justice system or whether we are just dealing with cosmetics. Our fear is that is precisely what we are doing.

The issues I've just cited are not isolated ones. Let me outline some of the other challenges that are faced by Ontarians who want to access the courts or who have accessed the courts.

The problems with the justice system have been exacerbated in the last three and a half years. We've seen, for instance, unprecedented backlogs. The Provincial Auditor felt it incumbent upon him in his last report to note that one third of the 224,000 cases in Ontario in the Provincial Division had been on the docket for eight months or more. Under the Askov decision that we have all cited in this House previously, which is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, these cases can be dismissed. Any case that takes longer than eight months to get to court gets thrown out, and we've seen many instances of that in this Legislature. I've risen on a number of occasions to point out that individuals who were accused of rape, who were accused of assault, who were accused of drunk driving had in fact been released, have not had their day in court, denying justice to the victims.

Let me quote some of the Provincial Auditor's findings with respect to this because I think it's quite instructive. On the issue of backlogs, the auditor's report outlines a serious increase in the caseload of many jurisdictions in the province. Some of the worst statistics of cases in the auditor's report were in Ottawa, where 4,895 were in the system longer than eight months, at old city hall in Toronto 6,080, in Newmarket 6,679 and in Brampton 7,827.

The numbers are even worse if you look at the total cases in the backlog. For 1994, just to give you some comparison, the total number of cases that were waiting more than eight months was over 43,000. At the end of this government's first year, in 1995, it was 59,000; in 1996, a whopping 70,000 cases. These are cases that are in jeopardy and could be thrown out, with accused people never being tried and victims who would never get justice.

Just by the by, the Provincial Auditor also raised serious concern about the ministry's lack of action in collecting fines as a result of convictions. According to the auditor's report, $316.5 million remained outstanding as of March 31, 1997, $200 million of which were fines imposed by the courts over two years ago. I need not remind the Attorney General, I hope, that this is money the government could be collecting. Instead, it chose to fund a tax cut by cutting millions of dollars from worthy programs rather than going after fines that it was entitled to collect.

To combat this problem, the Attorney General will say he instituted some blitzes, and indeed he has, blitzes that frankly have had very little effect on the end result, blitzes that have seen the appointment and reallocation of judges and crown attorneys, but they've been Band-Aid solutions because it hasn't been a permanent increase of judiciary and crown, and that's where the difficulty is. We have many more cases in the system, but we don't have the facility to be able to deal with them effectively.

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The Band-Aid falls off and we're in the same problem again until we put on another Band-Aid and so the system goes on. The Attorney General makes grand announcements about new courthouses that he will build but fails to tell us how he is going to people those courthouses. Are we going to have more judges? Are we going to have more crown attorneys? As a result, we have judges who have spoken out and prosecutors who have also spoken out because they are overburdened and disillusioned.

I'd like to refer to a very important conference that was held not too long ago by the Law Union of Ontario. It was widely reported. It's rather instructive to see what some of the professionals have to say. It's not just the opposition that is saying: "Enough. Something needs to be done." It's people in the system who have looked at it, who work in it, who are saying that something is rotten.

I'd like to simply quote a few of the participants of this law union conference: a judge, David Cole, who said, "Everything was reduced to getting the numbers through." Judge Cole was a panellist at that particular conference. "What most of us are doing is a lot of routine processing of petty offenders, most of whom are mentally ill." He goes on to say that what's really happening is that the court system is becoming a dumping ground for some of the social problems that are not being dealt with.

Judges and lawyers cited problems ranging from overworked and unprepared lawyers to the vast numbers of unrepresented litigants who are overwhelming the court system. For many, the clear solution was to restore funding to legal aid and the court system. Remember that we've had tremendous cuts in this area. I'll document some of those for you in a moment.

Judge Lynn King bemoaned the fact that recent cutbacks in legal aid means 65% of the family law litigants appear in court without lawyers, a fact that was borne out in some of the task force reports that were commissioned by this particular government. As a result, Judge King said she regularly witnessed the mind-boggling and tragic sight of unrepresented mothers agreeing to the demands of social welfare authorities without understanding the serious ramifications, all in an effort to get things done quickly and in a rush.

She said that it is no better in youth court, where a staggering number of teenagers unthinkingly agree to unrealistic or inappropriate bail conditions. "They inevitably end up breaching them," she said, "and are incarcerated until after their trial date," adding even more strain on a system that is very hard-pressed. "This is the state of the family law," she said, "and we are supposed to resolve these cases in a fair and equitable manner. You feel like you are a stage director telling people where to stand. You leave at the end of the day wondering what is going on."

The conference heard from many more, who said that the system is simply not working, that many family law litigants who represent themselves in court can barely string a sentence together, let alone file the proper court documents. That leaves judges with a very uncomfortable decision of having to try and assist litigants. Of course, that is impossible under our system. "Duty counsels," Judge King adds, "call out numbers from a list as if they were serving customers in a butcher store, hastily nailing down resolutions to complex domestic matters that are sometimes ill-advised."

These are very serious charges from a group of people that doesn't generally speak out. The judiciary in our tradition has been rather silent on matters that might have political ramifications. If they are prone to speak out in this instance, it is because there is no other solution left to them. They've seen a system that has been emaciated with cuts as much 30% in some areas, with support to victims being slashed, with crowns who deal with cases far beyond their capacity. We have some 425 crowns in this province who deal with something like a quarter of a million cases a year. That's an astounding number of cases to be able to deal with. I'll come back to what the crown attorneys themselves have had to say in a survey that was done by the crown attorneys' association with respect to this.

The conclusion of this law conference, in the words of one judge quoted very succinctly in the Toronto Star, was, "What we are doing is not working."

Then we get to the crown attorneys. As I've said, they are overburdened and they are having to deal with ever more complex issues in a much more limited time and in an environment of fewer and fewer resources.

It's interesting that earlier this year a survey of crown attorneys found that 92% of respondents felt they lacked adequate preparation time for criminal trials. This was a survey that was done of all the crown attorneys in Ontario by the Ontario Crown Attorneys Association.

Many of those surveyed said that they were unable to properly think through cases, conduct sufficient research or interview witnesses. One respondent remarked, "If the public were aware of how little time the system allows for preparation of cases of serious crime, they would be appalled."

Let me just cite some statistics from that particular survey. It found that 50% of crown attorneys stated that they are virtually never assigned out-of-court time in which to interview victims; 40% spent 10 to 20 hours extra a week preparing cases; 30% have less than two minutes to prepare for bail hearings.

So we are faced with professionals in the system who cannot cope. The report goes on to note the very serious physical consequences on crown attorneys as a result of their particular stresses and pressures within the system.

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): On a point of order, Madam Speaker: Given the importance of the comments being made and the issue at hand, I think you would want to ensure there's a quorum and I don't believe we have one now.

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

Clerk Assistant (Ms Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Clerk Assistant: A quorum is now present, Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: Member for Downsview.

Ms Castrilli: The litany of sins that I have -

Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): Start all over.

Mr Bert Johnson (Perth): Why don't you start over?

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. Come to order.

Ms Castrilli: I'd be delighted to start over if you'd like to listen to it, perhaps for the benefit of those who weren't here before, but I think I'll continue with another of the litany of sins of this government. I think of one that has attracted a great deal of attention in this Legislature, and that's the Family Responsibility Office.

I think it's pertinent to look at the facts: 97% of parents ordered to pay child support in Canada are fathers. Of these, about 76% of support orders are in arrears. Ontario fathers currently owe something in the nature of $2.1 billion in outstanding support payments, and this grows by millions every month. It costs the province approximately $300 million per annum in social assistance alone, in payments to families who are not receiving the support payments to which they're entitled by law.

Rather than trying to take matters in hand and making sure that things were dealt with at the local level, where there was much more immediacy and opportunity to resolve the problem, the government responded by centralizing the system, by closing the regional systems, but putting them all into one place which you can access through a 1-800. Try and call that 1-800 number on any given day and you will find yourself on the phone for a very long time. You have some dismal stories of women and children who cannot access monies that have been paid into the plan by their spouses and fathers, but somehow cannot be given out to them, or in other cases they cannot get compliance with the orders they have received.

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The delays have been endless. The glitches in computers have been astonishing. In fact, the system was set up before the contract for computers was even tendered. Desperate parents became frustrated and are frustrated with futile attempts to get through to the family support plan on overloaded telephone lines, and there is always inadequate staffing to answer questions or resolve problems if and when they finally do get through.

The result of the office closures and delays in service is chaos for the system and has reduced support for a quarter of a million children. We had stories last Christmas of parents who wrote to us and said, "I cannot buy clothes for my children for the winter, I cannot buy toys, and yet my spouse has shown me his cancelled cheque of monies that were paid into the system, but that money is not getting out to us."

We could go on and on with cases of that sort. A woman in my own riding was having difficulty collecting some $1,900 in arrears from her husband. She exerted great energy attempting without success to discuss this issue with someone in the ministry directly. Because of the problems with the new phone system, she couldn't get through to the central system. Nevertheless, she found out that the ministry had cashed a cheque from her husband but had failed to forward it to her until after inquiries were made from my office. It seems that in order for women to get justice with respect to this particular issue, they have to engage their MPP or someone who can go to bat for them, who can be their paladin, because it is difficult for ordinary individuals to access a system which was intended to facilitate the processing of such claims for ordinary individuals.

There are also cases of individuals who had never had any difficulty prior to the system, but once the system was erected were not able to get monies out, even though, as I've said, cheques were cashed. Monies were not flowing. It is impossible for responsible individuals to opt out of the system. If two parents wish to enter into their own agreement so they don't have to go through this mess the government has created, that's not possible under the current law. They are stuck with the mismanagement of the bureaucracy that we've seen so far.

Then we get to legal aid. That opens up an entire other can of worms. We've had introduced in this Legislature just recently a bill about legal aid. It's interesting because it speaks a lot about how this government is doing business right now and it speaks a lot to this particular bill, because what we have is a bill that's a shell. There's an acceptance that something needed to be done about legal aid. There's no question we've had a situation in Ontario where there have been overruns and certificates have been cut and certificates are not issued for very important matters. It's become quite an embarrassment for us when you have 67% of litigants in family court who cannot access the legal system in any real way, and therefore have to be unrepresented and have to take their case before a judge without preparation. The results are often quite staggering for them.

We knew something needed to be done, we knew there was overcrowding in the courts, we knew there were unrepresented family litigants, we knew there were cost overruns, we knew there were cuts in certificates, we knew there was a decrease in certificates, and what did we do? We decided that the best way to deal with this is to create some arm's-length agency that would take care of legal aid.

Not a bad idea, except that's all we did. We didn't say how we were going to fund it. We didn't say with what we were going to fund it. We didn't say who was going to be appointed. Unless you're prepared to tackle those difficult issues, we're not going very far. If you're not prepared to equitably fund the legal system so everybody has a chance, then it's pointless and you will have exactly the same problems as before. If you don't have people in charge of the legal aid system who have the sensitivity and the experience and are not mere patronage appointments, the system will fail and we will be back in this situation.

I think the government's record in providing funding in key areas is quite clear. You can say to us: "This is a first step. We'll set up this corporation, this Legal Aid Ontario, and then we'll talk about the funding formula." My response to that is, haven't we heard this before? Isn't this what you told us about education? "Let's reform the system. Let's bring in Bill 160. Let's bring in Bill 104. Then we'll talk about the funding formula. The funding formula, we promise you, will be equitable." Tell that to the 600 schools in Ontario that are about to be closed. Tell that to the kids in my riding who are sitting in portables. Tell that to the kids in my schools where the paint is peeling off the walls but they can't do anything because there is no capital allotment.

We have a little trouble believing that we should trust you and that the funding formula will come for legal aid and it will be equitable and allow people to have access to the courts. We're a little sceptical, and we have a right to be sceptical. The people of Ontario have a right to be sceptical about what you propose to do with this.

When we look at what you've done with respect to justice, it becomes enormously clear that your aim is not to improve the system but your aim is primarily to cut. This is a government that pretends it is interested in stomping out crime and in protecting victims of crime - and I say that with all the greatest respect to some of my friends across the way who have tried to make an issue of crime - but the reality is that we're seeing alleged criminals set free. We've seen cuts to victims' services and often unconscionable plea bargains.

Why have we had to see three women come here to this Legislature and announce that they were suing the government because of their treatment as victims in the system of justice? This was surely an unprecedented step in Ontario and one that took great courage, but one that had to be taken because these women felt there was no other option to them.

The Victims' Bill of Rights: an empty shell. The criminal compensation board: cut.

Mr Gilchrist: Give me a break, Annamarie.

Ms Castrilli: I see I'm getting to the members across the way.

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

Ms Castrilli: I thank the member for Scarborough East for actually listening. I'm impressed.

In the last year the Attorney General will say he has increased his budget, but at the same time, if you look at the facts, the cuts to his ministry in 1997-98 include a whole host of measures, including cuts to the special investigations unit for the second year in a row. He disbanded the police complaints commission in October 1997, allowing people only one way to complain, and that is to go to the police themselves; that failing, the only other avenue would be to go to the courts. They've cut $43,000 from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, which provides compensation and financial assistance to the families of those who have been victimized by crime. Now, $43,000 may not sound like a whole lot in one year, but if you look at the total since 1995, the cuts are more dramatic - $1.2 million. They've cut $1.5 million from legal services and victims' support and another $9.8 million since 1995 from the Public Guardian and Trustee Office. So it's hard to believe that this is a government that cares about victims of crime and that cares about doing something about crime.

You have enormous cuts in the justice system not allowing the justice system to do its job, to punish the criminals. At the same time, you're cutting back in ways that would assist the victims and allowing them no opportunity to be able to bring their cases forward in a non-civil way, because you've taken away all those tribunals that used to exist for ordinary citizens.

Need I say that you've also cut the Ontario Human Rights Commission and you've also cut the Ombudsman's office. All of those vehicles that people could access without going to the court system you have cut or demolished. That basically means that you leave the courts as the only recourse for many people, and then you make it difficult for them to access in a whole variety of ways.

At the same time, interestingly enough, the costs of court services to the public have increased, so you are forcing them to go to the courts and then making it very difficult for them to do that. It now, for instance, costs more in Ontario to file for a divorce, to file for a statement for claim, to file for a statement of defence, to file for a summons for a witness. You name it, it has been increased. This government has imposed new user fees on people who need access to the justice system that make it even more difficult for them.

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It's kind of interesting that just this week we've had a decision on some of these fees and it will be interesting to see how that plays out. I refer, of course, to the Eurig estate decision that was rendered by the Supreme Court of Canada earlier this week, a very interesting decision because it talks about probate fees. The court said: "We're not sure they're really fees. They're really a tax that you're calling a fee."

It isn't a fee because a fee has to be equivalent to the services provided and there are no equivalent services being provided for the amount of probate fees that we are charging in this province. The probate fees have tripled in the last while, leaving individuals to pay a death tax, not a probate fee, and the court quite rightly said that this is unconstitutional and beyond the scope of the province to do by way of regulation; that if you want a death tax you'll have to come to the Legislature and you will have to bring an appropriate piece of legislation. You cannot do things behind closed doors by regulation.

Again we kind of go back to what has been happening in this Legislature where more and more has been centralized. More and more has been put behind closed doors. More and more is being determined by ministers and Lieutenant Governor in Council by regulation.

It will be interesting to see how many of these fees will be challenged, how many of them will be found to be taxes and how much of the power you're exercising now is constitutional. When you think about the various pieces of legislation that you've brought in this Legislature which purport to take away that ability of Parliament to discuss tax issues, I think it will be a very interesting time. The Supreme Court of Canada has rendered a very important judgment which we will have to look at and which we will have to be cognizant of.

I want to spend some time on the particulars of the family court system because, after all, this is a family court bill. It is an area where we see the problems that we are facing in the justice system are in fact exacerbated. The Family Lawyers' Association, judges and ordinary people have consistently decried what is happening.

I will start by quoting the Family Lawyers' Association in their brief to the McCamus committee. You'll remember the McCamus task force was one of two task forces that the Attorney General set up to deal with the issue of legal aid after we on this side pressed for some answers as to what was happening in that very critical area. In their brief to the McCamus committee they state:

"It is clear that low-income Ontarians have urgent needs for effective legal services in the area of family law. Parties involved in family law disputes deal with fundamental issues affecting their children, support and property division. These cases often involve issues of safety for both the parties and their children."

That's the nub of the matter. Family law is unlike other kinds of law. It often deals with very much the most vulnerable. It deals with children; it deals with women; it deals often with not just property disputes but also cases of custody and abuse and children at risk.

There's a quote from a famous British judge who opined that "Justice is open to all, just like the Ritz Hotel." It's interesting to think of that quote when you look at what's happening in Ontario today because in Ontario that is what's happening: Justice is open to all, like the Ritz Hotel. If you can pay for it, you have access. You will be able to afford the lawyers. You will be able to pay for the court costs. You will be able to get your day in court. You will be able to wait it out. But if you happen to be poor, low income, middle income, those opportunities are not open to you. They are not available to you in any real sense.

I think that is a sign of the times here in Ontario, that really, and it's trite to say, we've become a society of haves and have-nots. That is precisely what has happened. Those of us who are privileged, those of us can afford it, will be fine under this government. Those of us who are on the brink, those of us who have mortgages to pay, those of us who have children in school, those of us with elderly parents, will not be fine under the measures that are taken by this government, and this you see over and over again in the family court system and in the court system as a whole.

Traditionally, women have received approximately 70% of the family law legal aid certificates that are issued in this province. Primarily this appears to occur because women either have no income or have a lower income than their spouses do. It's kind of interesting, just on that point, to hear what the Family Lawyers' Association describes as real challenges in family court as they describe the lack of equality between the spouses, the power structure that obviously favours those who have money, the power structure that favours those who are not immigrants, who don't have language and cultural barriers. The needs of those individuals are often in jeopardy in a system that doesn't allow them to be represented.

It's a very trying situation. As I said at the beginning, in this particular case they're also dealing with the emotional hardship of a family that has broken up, of children who are just devastated by it, of financial hardship that can come from the division of assets, if there are any assets, the absolute turmoil of losing your home, in many cases, because you can't afford to make those payments.

It's at that very time that people need the most assistance, that they need the sensitivity of the justice system to help them through. Instead, what they find is a system that has crown attorneys that can't deal with them, they don't have the time. They can't access a lawyer through the legal aid system because certificates aren't available to them and they're thrown to the wolves, without any disrespect to the judiciary, but they are thrown in situations with which they are not familiar and they find themselves in very grave circumstances and often with very unjust results.

The McCamus report, as I've said, found that 65% of family law litigants continue to be unrepresented in courts. The bulk of those are women, which accounts for about 77% of all family law clients in the province. Judge Lynn King, who I quoted before, says, "You see, this is the state of family law, and we are supposed to resolve cases in a fair and equitable manner," and I can understand the frustration of a judge trying to do her level best with no resources available to her, in the face of ever more complex cases.

The throttling of the legal aid plan has made it impossible to spend adequate time on most cases, unless a lawyer is willing to work for free. In 1996, the Ontario legal aid plan issued some 74,792 legal aid certificates, which represented a drop of 41% from the year before; hence the increase in unrepresented litigants before the courts.

Family law has been one of the hardest-hit areas since the caps on legal aid were introduced. In 1996, the number of certificates for family law litigants dropped 75%. Family lawyers are saying that principles of justice, like fairness and equal access to the courts, come second to fiscal restraints. This has been stated by others. It has been echoed many times, not just by the practitioners but by very sedate individuals who don't normally speak out, members of our judiciary. There are numerous articles that have been written on our judges speaking out because they simply didn't know what else to do. Chief Justice McMurtry in fact took the unprecedented step of writing an article for the Toronto Star where he indicates that the funding crisis actually threatens the courts.

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It's unprecedented when courts say that our system is in tatters. It's unheard of that our judiciary goes beyond the bench to attack the government in public because of the mismanagement of the justice system, when they say that the courts are in tatters, when vast numbers of litigants are unrepresented. As I've said, this is not the opposition. These are very sensible individuals, very sober individuals, who care passionately about the work that they do.

Hon Noble Villeneuve (Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, minister responsible for francophone affairs): They were all in APEC.

Ms Castrilli: Well, Roy McMurtry was a member of your own government, I would say to the member opposite, and you have to listen when he says, "While lip service is paid within the ranks of the government to the importance of the justice system, the priorities are elsewhere when it actually comes to allocating funds." I don't think he minces any words and I don't think you can dismiss him when he says what he does. It's a very serious indictment indeed of the way that this government is proceeding in a very critical area.

The Family Lawyers' Association have been very forthcoming and very vocal in their view of what's happening. They have made it no secret that as far as they're concerned the family court system is in a state of chaos. In fact, in their various submissions they have noted that we now have a province in which individuals are unable to assert their rights in family law matters pertaining to the welfare of their children and families. This goes to the very core of a democratic society, and I think they're right. It is at the very core of a democratic society who can insist on their rights and how those rights can be insisted on. We have come, I hope, a long way from the feudal system where only the rich had rights and everyone else did not.

But because of the cutbacks and capping of legal aid funds, what we see is that people who have family law issues, unlike in other areas, have been hit by a double whammy. Eligibility for family law certificates has been restricted to only the highest priority cases, that is, those that involve children who are at risk or where a children's aid society is involved. The number of hours family law lawyers have been allowed to bill has been severely restricted. That has caused, as you know, some lawyers to threaten to sue the Attorney General for not paying their clients' bills; again, unprecedented steps, unheard of in Ontario, unheard of in western society.

What have the results been? In a report by a working group of lawyers that came out recently, a Provincial Division judge and a social service agency in the London area have made a number of shocking discoveries.

First, there has been a sharp increase in the number of unrepresented litigants in the family court system. That should come as no surprise to anyone because that has been documented over and over again. The law society has suggested that this number could be as high as 80% in some jurisdictions. Second, they found that the number of women remaining in or returning to abusive relationships is growing. Third, there has been an increase in some cases of inappropriate use of duty counsel in family court cases.

In 1995, when this government was first elected, the Battered Women's Advocacy Centre in London did a study on the number of women who reported living with an abusive partner, and it's rather instructive to review those figures. The study surveyed 426 clients. In 1995, 20.6% reported living with an abusive partner. In one year the number jumped to 33%, fully one third of the women in the study.

One has to ask why women are returning to these abusive relationships. Why aren't we assisting them as a society to move on, to free themselves, to become independent? I think the reasons are quite obvious. If you look at the cuts in welfare and family benefits, how are women supposed to leave an abusive relationship when there's nowhere for them to go, when there are no support systems for them to go into? When you cut welfare and family benefits that affect this particular segment of society, you create real havoc. You force women into a position of, if not bondage, close to bondage because they have no choices open to them but to remain.

I think it's obvious that another reason is lack of second-stage housing. Where do they go? Virtually all of the second-stage housing has been closed and shut down in this province since this government took over, leaving women again in the uncomfortable position of having to remain in situations that they know to be dangerous but cannot avoid.

Third is a concern that women without legal aid funding and without a lawyer could lose custody of their children if they walk out of an emotionally abusive relationship, a very serious problem. Imagine if after all a woman does to summon up the courage to leave, even in the face of no money and no resources available to her once she leaves, she then loses the battle in court for the one thing that she has left: the love of her children. This is very serious. There is no question that we have some very difficult problems ahead of us.

The Hamilton Spectator found that the problems for children in family courts are even worse than the ones that face women. They published an article on October 16 of this year, as a matter of fact, entitled, "More Cases are in the System, but Delays are Growing Longer." It's an interesting article because it goes into quite some detail about children and what they are experiencing in the system and really talks about the most difficult cases of all: children at risk.

They state that the number of children that were removed from their homes and placed in the care of a child protection agency climbed 8% in 1997 over 1996, which amounts to 1,500 children province-wide. Court orders were required in each case, and statistics from the Attorney General's office indicate that there were about 2,000 more applications filed to Ontario's courts under the child protection law in 1997 over 1996, which represents a 13% increase. Hamilton alone saw a 10% increase in those applications to Unified Family Court.

The caseload for the Ontario Children's Lawyer, the office that represents children in family law matters, has climbed by more than 15% in each year. But remember that the numbers of lawyers have remained constant, so that means an additional workload.

The executive director of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies has decried this and said that the public, government and people are demanding that the system be held accountable when a child falls between the cracks. I think that's right. We all want to make sure that children are well taken care of and that they don't fall between the cracks.

That means that we need to make sure, first of all, that children are adequately represented in these particular cases, that they don't get caught up in lengthy court proceedings as the courts become more bogged down with cases. Sometimes cases stretch for five or six days once they even get to court, and we're talking about very small children that are very, very difficult. This of course stalls decisions that need to be made for a child's future.

Children are in jeopardy because they are least able to speak for themselves. I raise this issue because it's not one we talk very much about. It's not very fashionable to talk about kids who have problems in our system, but it's those very children we have to pledge to assist, because it is those children we need to pay attention to to make sure we don't see them again in our prison system, in our social welfare system. The courts, unfortunately, are making the problem worse, and the kinds of inaction that we see on the part of this Attorney General and the lack of attention towards children who are truly at risk is quite appalling.

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I did say at the outset that we will support this bill, but one says it with a very sour taste in one's mouth, if I may say so. This is another example of a piece of legislation that is really nothing more than a shell. We will support it but we will want answers. How does this government really intend to ensure equitable access to the justice system by all Ontarians and not just the wealthy? How will an expanded family court be funded? What assurances will they give that those appointed to the family bench will have the necessary experience, sensitivity and characteristics of the broader population of Ontario? What will they do to ensure that there is a turnaround in the crisis they have created for a whole host of people?

I want to remind this government that a former Attorney General, Roy McMurtry, now Chief Justice of Ontario, said something during his tenure as Attorney General that I think quite profound. He stated that as Attorney General of Ontario he had a "historical and constitutional responsibility to ensure that civil liberties are protected." He quoted Seton Pollock, a famous English jurist, and agreed with him that, "It is the corporate responsibility of a community to see that none of its members are excluded from the rule of law."

We have a situation here, ladies and gentlemen, where many individuals in our corporate society are excluded from the rule of law because we have made it difficult for them to have a lawyer, to get through the courts, to insist on their rights, to see that justice is done. I would remind this Attorney General of this historical responsibility. That's what he was elected to do. That's what he was appointed to do.

I urge him to take to heart the words of Mr Justice Martin, another famous jurist, who said: "We live in a society that is deeply committed to improving the material welfare of all, to providing essential medical services and to ensuring equal opportunity for education. A society so committed will not tolerate the lack of adequate legal representation for those without the means to secure it for themselves."

I think that's an apt note on which to end. Let us all be mindful of the fact that the people of Ontario expect us to be mindful of all their rights, and while we will certainly support this legislation, we will expect you to do more than just give us shells and rhetoric.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Questions or comments?

Mr Len Wood: I listened attentively as the member explained some parts of the bill that she's able to support and some parts that are troublesome. Our party is of the same opinion, that at a time when this government is talking about justice and changing the justice system there are a lot of problems that they've created out there with women and how women are being dealt with. If there's a particular woman who wants to have a subpoena or court orders issued against her abusive husband, she now, as our party has pointed out during question period, has to deliver the paperwork on her own and as a result gets targeted and beaten up or run over by a car, as happened in one particular case.

The cutbacks that are happening in education and health care create large problems for society in general. A lot of the areas that the member has talked about expose people to those problems and it's a direct result of cutbacks that have happened.

Under the NDP government, we established a new family court system in the province and created four pilot projects, but I understand that those might now be slowly phased out. Imagine that when you're dealing with young offenders you put them into boot camps where they come out as hardened criminals.

Some of the things that this government is moving on as parts of this bill we don't have any problem supporting, as the critic for the Liberal Party has pointed out, but there are problems that we want to point out as well as we start speaking on the bill.

Mr W. Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): I'm pleased at this time to respond to the words of the Liberal member, who has to some degree approved of parts of the bill and then has difficulty with other parts. I don't want to be partisan but that pretty well stands with the Liberal assessment of much of our legislation that we have brought in.

I just want to point out that this bill has one very important aspect to it, and that's the mediation factor, where you can have a mediator appointed to deal with these marriage problems before any separation takes place. The member, with all due respect, pointed out that we weren't providing sufficient legal assistance. I'd just like to say that if the mediator is used properly before any lawyers get involved - people come to my own constituency office and, believe it or not, the differences at the time they first come in are not all that serious. You can often find a common denominator to allow them to renew communication on the issue.

Now that we have a Unified Family Court, if it has to go that far, it will make it much easier and less costly for the people involved. Of course our main interest, with all parties is the children, who we have to put first.

Mr Bradley: If the member only had more time, she'd be able to address this, but she must be wondering, as I am, whether the government is going to embark upon an advertising campaign to sell this particular piece of legislation. If the government were to follow what it's doing in other areas, it would be spending tens of millions of dollars on government advertising of the worst kind, the most self-serving, outrageous examples of government advertising one way or another.

You know and I know that every time you open up the newspaper, there's another picture of Mike Harris, at the cost of the taxpayers of Ontario. I know Gary Carr's mother, who is always watching this, will be very worried about this because she has to pay part of that.

I am worried because I hear the government has now purchased all kinds of time on television next month to start yet another campaign. I'm now getting calls even from the taxpayers coalition members who to this point in time have been silent. The cat has had their tongue. I am now getting calls from these individuals saying: "We're even outraged. We like these people, or at least we used to, and we're outraged now with all the government advertising we're seeing."

They open up the mail box, they pull out a pamphlet and there is a piece of government propaganda. You can put your name and address on it. I think it goes to Tory headquarters and they send out more propaganda. Or you turn on the radio when you're coming into Queen's Park, to the Legislature, and you hear government advertising. You turn on the television set and you get more government advertising. There's carpet bombing of this province with advertising, all paid for by the taxpayers of this province.

I know Mrs Carr in Etobicoke-Rexdale will be a person who is very concerned about this. She'll be telling her son about this and demanding that this government not engage in this kind of advertising.

Mr Wildman: I want to commend my friend for her remarks and her reasoned description of this bill and some things that she supports in the bill and others that she has some reservations about.

I must say I'm a little bit surprised at the - well, maybe I shouldn't be. I was going to say I was surprised at the comments about the presentation by the Liberal member by the member for Lanark-Renfrew. I think I know what he meant, but surely it's not surprising that in a bill of this sort there would be some portions of it that members from all sides could support and other portions they might not think were necessarily fully acceptable. To be fair to my friend, I think she was being quite reasonable in her approach, in saying, "There are some developments here that are good and supportable, but there are others I have some concerns about." That's what the process is about; that's what we're supposed to do in debate.

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Hopefully it will mean that the government will allow this matter to go to committee where we can have further discussion in a more informal way about the various parts of the bill, and perhaps put forward some amendments and suggestions for change. That's the way it used to work in this place. I know that over the last few months and the last couple of years it hasn't worked that way. The government never goes to committee unless they have full agreement with everything in the bill first. Only then do they go to committee. If there's any controversy about a bill, any question about certain parts of a bill, this government tends to ram it through with time allocation so there can't be real discussion. That's not what I understand by democracy.

The Acting Speaker: Member for Downsview, you have two minutes.

Ms Castrilli: I want to thank the members for Cochrane North, St Catharines and Algoma for their comments, but I'm really surprised at the comments by my colleague from Lanark-Renfrew. I was trying to put forward a very direct case of some improvements that should be made to the bill. I believe it is a function of this Attorney General to bring forth legislation, and I believe it is my function as a critic of the Attorney General to assist him in coming forward with a bill that is as perfect as we can possibly make it. I hope we have the same result, which is a better justice system and that we're not just playing partisan politics. If you construed my remarks as partisan politics, let me assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.

What I have put forward today is a case that has been made by others, not just by the opposition. It's been made by the women who need assistance in the courts, by children who are at risk, by judges, lawyers, practitioners, social workers, the children's aid society. I have given you copious evidence of difficulties in the system that need to be addressed that this bill does nothing to address.

My worry is that we're embarking on a series of legislation with this ministry at this time, and we've seen some examples here in the last three weeks, that is nothing more than rhetoric. We set up legal aid corporations, we set up a name for the family court structure, but we do nothing to change the endemic problems that plague the system. We've done nothing to appoint more judges, nothing to have more crown attorneys, nothing to give more access to legal aid to people who need it. None of those have been addressed, and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

I'm disappointed with the member for Lanark-Renfrew, that he misconstrued me. What we're trying to do here is have a better process and it is in that vein that my comments -

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Your time has expired. Further debate?

Mr Christopherson: I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the debate. I confess right up front that mine is going to be a very partisan speech. I make no attempt to be writing the legislation for the minister. I am going to criticize this as best I can, which is my sworn oath to do, and if nothing else, will at least try to keep members awake if not onside.

Hon Margaret Marland (Minister without Portfolio [children's issues]): Are you going to shout?

Mr Christopherson: If I need to, I'll shout, but I'll try not to start that way.

Hon Mrs Marland: Because I've already got a headache.

Mr Christopherson: You've already got a headache? I'll make you a deal, Margaret: If you don't provoke me, I won't shout.

Hon Mrs Marland: All right, I won't.

Mr Christopherson: All right. I should have added "and your colleagues," because that was too easy a deal for you.

Hon David Turnbull (Minister without Portfolio): Too late now.

Mr Christopherson: But you're right. We'll see how well I do in keeping my side of the commitment.

The first thing I'd like to say is that indeed I'm a very proud Hamiltonian, to the extent that the first Unified Family Court was in my hometown of Hamilton, and that was of course in 1977 when the original concept was brought forward that it would be an improvement in the justice system were we to extract or isolate family law matters from all other legal matters and place them in their own setting, in their own courthouse, with their own set of judges. That was for a very good reason. Family law had changed, and did change, dramatically over the last two decades and some years prior to that. There was a recognition that those changes were making family law more and more complex, to the point now where, I would suggest, if we didn't have a Unified Family Court system it is indeed something that the evolution of family law would have forced us to do regardless.

I compliment the government of the day in 1977 for having the foresight to recognize that this was an area of growing complexity, of growing importance, and that we needed to be planning for the future. Of course, I would compliment them on the wisdom, the absolute, crystal-clear visionary wisdom, of selecting Hamilton, a place where you can never go wrong in terms of planning for the future and adopting new ways. Quite often, I would point out to members of the House, we are chosen as a community for pilot projects in many different disciplines of government for that very reason. We're large enough that we have the complexities of big cities, and yet we are small enough, just under 500,000 people region-wide, that we still have that small community connectedness, particularly as we talk about the planning of community, the overlaps of responsibilities and the fact that those overlaps need to be co-ordinated and brought together if you're going to improve systems that tend to get larger and a little more unruly and a little more unclear. Of course, that's where inefficiencies come from. I would be, again, remiss were I not to stand as a Hamiltonian and say how proud I am.

I would also point out to the members, just to give credit all around, because I'm going to end up giving credit to the NDP government - a big surprise - but having started giving credit to the Tory government of 1977, back when they were real Tories, someone who at least had some semblance of a heartbeat in there that you could find and monitor if you really, really searched, unlike this government that clearly has no heart whatsoever. I'm still not yelling, Margaret, you notice?

Hon Mrs Marland: And I'm still not interrupting.

Mr Christopherson: And you're still not interrupting. I thought you were going to say you're still not interested.

Hon Mrs Marland: Oh, no. I'm interested.

Mr Christopherson: I think you'll find this interesting, Margaret. What I wanted to say was, in terms of the Unified Family Court, after the pilot project was clearly going to become entrenched and there was going to be expansion, then there was a search for a permanent home for it. At the same time, our old Carnegie library, a beautiful old building, a landmark right next to our beautiful city hall, was being vacated because we were building a brand new central library in downtown Hamilton. I happened to be on city council as an alderman at the time the decision was made about whether or not we'd save this building.

Members will know that in communities when these sorts of things happen there can often be a real tussle between those who want to embrace and remember the history of our communities and those who feel that the economic need - and I'm trying to be fair in presenting this - of a local community in a given specific instance requires that that building be demolished and that something else go in its place and regret that but feel that it's important. I was on the side of those which wanted to preserve the building. As I recall, it was by only one or two votes that we saved that beautiful building.

I now come to my credit to a second party who has had power in this place, and that is the Liberals of the time, the Peterson government.

Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa-Rideau): How about Copps Coliseum?

Mr Christopherson: I'm not going anywhere near Copps Coliseum. I'm not going to touch that, other than to say it's another beautiful landmark in the city of Hamilton. But I do want to say, Speaker, and as a member of the party that I'm about to compliment, I know you'll be interested, that during the Peterson government, after quite a number of -

Hon Mr Villeneuve: Where are they?

Mr Christopherson: I know, there are none in the House, and that's a shame, because I did want to ensure they heard that one can be complimentary when we go through these things.

There were a lot of arguments made that, the city council in its wisdom having preserved this building and prevented it from facing the wrecker's ball, one of the things we ought to consider was a new home for the new Unified Family Court courthouse. There, again, the benefit of the kind of community that we have in Hamilton and Hamilton-Wentworth, we were able to co-ordinate the kind of pitch one needs and apply the right kind of pressure and talk to the right people and, most importantly, make the right kind of public argument about the proper usage of civic facilities as well as the expenditure of taxpayers' money.

As a result of that, the Liberal government of the day, again to their credit, gave the go-ahead that we would indeed preserve that building and expand on to the back, keeping the entire facade of the building and much of the beautiful interior intact, as originally crafted by the craftspersons of the time. Of course, those were the people who were trained under the old apprenticeship laws, the ones that you're deep-sixing. Those were the folks who had hand to material and gave us this beautiful building. We were able to preserve that and expand a new design on the back, and the two married really well. It's a beautiful facility.

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I urge anyone here, especially those who visit Hamilton - government members, if you're in Hamilton for any kind of business and you're at city hall, take a look just to the east, on the same side as city hall, and you'll see the old Carnegie library that is now the Unified Family Courthouse. I think you'll agree that that was the right thing to do for the people and community of Hamilton-Wentworth, but it was also the right thing to do in terms of unifying the family courts in one place and providing them with their own facility to do the important work they do.

As to the details of the bill itself, one of the things I want to comment on - and I know that my colleague the former Attorney General has great experience in this area. As a former Minister of Corrections and Solicitor General, I've had some experience in these areas too, and I want to share her concerns about the removal of parts of the Young Offenders Act from the family court. I understand that there are judges also who have expressed concern.

I want to remind this government that as much as they like to brag about law and order and that they're the only ones who care, the fact of the matter is that there is a great deal of hypocrisy in the positioning that this government takes vis-à-vis the reality of what's happening in our society, not the least of which is, of course, giving 12-year-olds guns; your support of capital punishment when we have growing cases like Morin, Marshall and Milgard, who, quite frankly, under your kind of thinking would be dead even though they were innocent.

Your whole position around red light cameras, that's all just your concern about being tagged as being hypocritical on the issue of photo radar, because you were so opposed to that. You saw it as a populist issue, thought you'd run on it, and now you're stuck. Now you've got this issue of red light cameras being proven to make for safer streets in our communities, but you have to oppose it because then the next question will be, "Why don't you take the next step and go into photo radar?" You don't want to appear to be flip-flopping. So poor Tony Clement gets up every once in a while when he's asked, sort of hung out there to dry, twists in the wind and does the best he can to come up with some kind of flim-flammery position and then sits down, praying that the media has already left the room or that it's time for another minister to be put under the laser beam.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that the 213 recommendations from the Arlene May coroner's jury are a matter that you have not dealt with at all. Not one of those recommendations has been implemented. You've done nothing about those recommendations that deal with women who face abusive partners, and die in many cases. There have been deaths since and you've done nothing about it.

I want to say to you that I think you have an awful lot of hypocrisy on law and order to answer for, and I think you're going to find that flushed out as the election progresses.

Hon Mrs Marland: You can't say "hypocrisy."

Mr Christopherson: I've been very careful, Speaker, in how I framed my use of the word "hypocrisy." I have tried to remain within the parliamentary rules and obviously I think I've succeeded.

One of the concerns about removing it, aside from the bumper-sticker slogans about being tougher on crime, is the fact that young people face a lot of different circumstances than adults, and there's a recognition of that, I think, even by most of your people, the government members, although there's nothing that would surprise me with you in these matters.

The fact is that oftentimes, in fact I think the majority of times, there is a history of emotional abuse in the family home that these young people have emerged from, sexual abuse and other physical abuses, and they have an impact on a young person's ability to be rehabilitated - again, another word you've dropped from your vocabulary; it's all punishment, punishment, punishment.

You know what? There are times when all society can do is to give a fine to someone or extract some kind of a punishment in the hope that's enough, but when we're dealing with young people and the opportunity we have - usually only once. The first time we intervene is our greatest opportunity to change that young person's life, where we can have a meaningful intervention. I'm not talking about namby-pamby programs that some of your backbenchers like to point to. I'm talking about meaningful intervention where, first of all, you get them back into some kind of school setting and get them back on the school course. If they've got an alcohol or a drug or other substance abuse problem, get them off that. Start getting them thinking clear-headed.

If they've got a situation at home that clearly is one you don't want to return them to, then start making arrangements and plans for that young person to go into a setting that's going to be supportive rather than damaging, and provide sentences that allow, where possible, the young person to stay as connected with the community as possible. There are situations where that is not possible. There are situations we can all point to when we look at the headlines that point to monstrous acts. But there are provisions to move young people into adult court when that happens. There are tools there.

I'm talking about the vast majority of cases that, especially at first instance, with a very young person, are relatively minor, and I say that advisedly. Nobody likes to have their window broken and nobody likes to have something stolen off their back porch. But within the context of the kinds of crimes that are possible, that humanity, unfortunately, is capable of, these are relatively minor.

Our concern is that placing those matters in the family court system originally was a good idea. It allowed us to take into consideration that you must look at the family environment of a young person who is within the criminal justice system if you're going to give them fair, democratic justice - for them, unlike an adult. The family situation can play a role, but I think all members would agree it's not as significant as it is for a young person, for obvious reasons that I don't need to spell out here.

Now this government has brought in boot camps, and also of course keys to get out on the night before you cut the ribbon to those boot camps, but you've opened up these boot camps with this whole idea that that's what you're going to do. You're going to straighten those young people out. A good, swift kick in the rear end ought to just straighten them all out. Possibly, for a very fraction of a percentage of the total, maybe it would. Two years ago the evidence was clearly unclear. Now I think it's becoming clearer and clearer that the evidence is it doesn't work. Yet this government marches full steam ahead. Why? Not because it's in the best interests of young people, not because it's in the best interests of the criminal justice system, not because it's in the best interests of our community, but because it's in the best interests of their politics, because it plays well to bumper-sticker sloganism.

That's our worry here, that that's what driving this, that kind of mentality, that political mentality around these so-called law-and-order issues as opposed to the proper administration, carriage and evolution of one of the best justice systems in the world.

By moving that out, you put it back into the adult system. A lot of that expertise that's there in the family court system, attained because of 20 years' experience around family situations, around what you can do when families break up to try to mitigate some of the damage children face - certainly in the case of young people who are now into the criminal justice system, it has to have played a role, particularly if it's the majority of cases, as I've mentioned, that have the kind of abuse that exists. We have real, serious concerns about what that will mean at the end of the day for our criminal justice system, particularly young people, and at the end of the day, the safety of our communities.

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Like my colleagues in the NDP, I have an awful lot of trouble trusting this government when they make any changes to the administration of anything that affects families, particularly as a result of their disastrous handling of the Family Responsibility Office.

If I had more time, I'd raise a particular case in my riding. I don't have time now, but it will be there. It will come up in another speech, I guarantee you, because it's an important case. It deals with Rev William Glenn Empey, a constituent of mine in the heart of my riding who has been wronged beyond belief by the Family Responsibility Office, strictly because of the mismanagement of that office, because this Attorney General shut down all the regional offices and laid off incredible numbers of staff before he was anywhere near ready to make the transition from the old system to the new. He was told ahead of time that these things would happen and didn't care. He said it was more important to get the money out of the system because he had to pay his bit from his ministry into the central fund towards the infamous 30% tax scam.

As I have said, I will get into some of the details of what happened at a more opportune time, because I think it's important that we understand that, yes, women were hurt, and hurt unfortunately in far greater numbers than men, because it's women who need the system - that's just the stats - but it is the males of our society who are also being hurt. You have damaged virtually everyone because of the way you have mismanaged the Family Responsibility Office, and I will bring that forward.

At the end of the day, as I get into my final moments, let me say that we have some of these very serious concerns. Where we'll be at the end of the day will depend in large part on how these concerns are addressed and just how much this government is prepared to take steps to offset those, I believe, very legitimate concerns.

I close with support for the concept of the Unified Family Court, its whole system, the concept behind it, the need for it and the fact that it does work, as exemplified by the pilot project that began in my home town of Hamilton in 1977, of which I remain eternally proud.

The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?

Hon Mrs Marland: I'm quite sure that if I were a betting woman, which I'm not, the member for Hamilton Centre in the final analysis will vote in favour of this bill. I'm pleased to hear that you're happy about the experiment that took place in your riding, because how could anyone in this place vote against anything that facilitated probably the most difficult experience a family could ever have, and that is being involved with the judicial system.

It's the Unified Family Court that at least in some ways helps those families. It doesn't help them from the fact that they have to be there in the first place, but to make it easier for parents and children. Of course, with my hat as minister responsible for children, I'm grateful to see that our government has decided to go ahead with expanding the unified court.

I know the member for Hamilton Centre is aware of all the huge, strong support that comes from the community agencies, the advocacy groups, the judges, the lawyers and the court staff. They are the people who know what a traumatic experience it is for these families to go through that process.

While we're talking about new things that our government has done to help children and families in the process of being in court, we also have this wonderful new witness assistance program where we help prepare child witnesses for their court appearances - again a progressive move by the government of which I'm very proud.

Mr Michael A. Brown (Algoma-Manitoulin): I'm most impressed by the comments from the member for Hamilton Centre. I know, though, that if he had been allowed some more time, he probably would have liked to talk about some of the deficiencies we are seeing in the justice system here in Ontario today.

As I pointed out repeatedly in this Legislature, in the district of Manitoulin, for example, we have been without a crown attorney for some time. The district of Manitoulin I believe would be the only judicial district in the province to be attempting to function without a crown attorney. It seems to me, and it seemed to the people of Manitoulin, that a crown attorney based on Manitoulin Island would be more conversant with the community, more conversant with the need for justice on Manitoulin and would identify the issues. Since Mr Allison left some time ago, we have not had a crown attorney in the district.

I also would like to point out that we are in the very strange and odd situation within the constituency of Algoma-Manitoulin of having no justice of the peace in the city of Elliot Lake. Without a justice of the peace, of course, both the OPP and the city of Elliot Lake police service are having great difficulty in obtaining warrants and doing the normal sorts of things that police need to do because there is no justice of the peace readily available to them in their own community. That is a distinct and important problem the government could rectify in the blink of an eye if they would only make an appointment.

As we consider this piece of legislation, I would hope that the government could tend to some of the administrative problems they have in the rest of the justice system on behalf of my constituents.

Mr Wildman: I listened to my friend from Hamilton Centre and I want to congratulate him on his commitment to make what he said was a non-partisan speech. I noted that he gave credit to all of the parties.

Mr Michael Brown: I think he said the opposite.

Mr Wildman: Yes, he said he was going to give a partisan speech but then he went on and gave credit to all three parties. He said that he gave credit to the Tories for what they did in 1977, back when they were real Tories. The member for York Mills interjected and said His-Tories, which I suppose is quite different from the current Reform-a-Tories. Then he gave credit to the Liberals.

Knowing something about the politics locally in Hamilton, it's not usual for members in that community, whether they are New Democrats, Liberals or Conservatives, to give each other credit for things - they more often tend to shout at each other at very high decibel levels about the deficiencies of the others - but I notice that he gave credit to the Liberals. But I also noticed that when he did that - I'm talking about what the Liberal government of David Peterson did - he did it at a time when there were hardly any Liberals in the House to hear him. So perhaps he was doing this in a rather muted way and didn't really want the people back home to know that he was praising the Liberals.

He then did give credit, obviously, to the government of which he and I were both members for their expansion of the family court system and the efforts that were made during the Bob Rae administration to ensure that families were supported. I want to congratulate him for making those points.

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Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I just want to comment briefly on the member for Hamilton Centre's comments. I appreciate the input he has had in the Legislature today on this very important bill. I also want to commend the minister for bringing this legislation forward. There are a couple of things in this bill that I think have been long overdue for so many, many years. One is to have an arbitrator deal with situations in family disputes. I think it's long overdue to have an independent person who will do that. There are not many people who have gone through the situation who have ended up in a court of law and have felt very comfortable, but I think with this legislation it will change that.

As it is now, there are five Unified Family Courts in the province. What this is going to do is expand them to most courts in the province. The problem we have now is that the federal government will have to appoint approximately 27 new judges. My understanding is that they've committed to about 16, so we do need that. But the important thing is - and the member for Hamilton Centre has mentioned it - the fact that the bench, the bar association and the public are supporting this type of legislation that we're dealing with here today. So in the areas of Ontario without a Unified Family Court and family law, they are still heard in both the Provincial Division and the General Division courts. Each court has exclusive jurisdiction over certain family laws.

As I said before, the unification of the family courts with an arbitrator who is appointed, and I think out of this whole process the most important person is going to be that arbitrator who is going to resolve some family disputes that will cause those families to stay together, and we will not have the problem of two lawyers trying to get in between for the good of themselves and not for the good of those children and the family.

The Acting Speaker: Member for Hamilton Centre, you have two minutes.

Mr Christopherson: I would thank my colleagues from Simcoe East, Algoma, Algoma-Manitoulin and Mississauga South. I want to say that it is important in terms of having given recognition to the other two parties, and that somehow I got carried away with all this fair-mindedness and lost myself and forgot to give us the credit that my colleague from Algoma correctly pointed out, and that was of course that in 1995 Bill 136 was introduced, which formalized and established the actual Unified Family Court system, which has now been expanded under this bill. Again, we take a great deal of pride in having recognized that was something that was successful in the Hamilton experiment and needed to be established and set down in permanent law and then ultimately expanded.

I would hope that future governments, preferably ours next time, will continue to expand the system till it's right across the entire province.

I would also want to mention to my colleague from Algoma, who has returned to the chamber, that there are times when Hamilton members disagree, and when we disagree it's usually pretty clear that we're disagreeing. You're right; you can stand a couple of blocks away and you can usually hear exactly what it is we disagree about, probably much to the chagrin of those who have to bear it. But that's the nature of Hamilton politics and we always like to be sure that we're heard.

But one of the other things that's crucial about Hamilton politics is that because we're so close to Toronto, we have to really fight like hell to get what we're owed, our fair share, and oftentimes we do unify around positions, which is why it hurt so much to see the four Tory backbenchers vote against my resolution the other day that would have compensated for that $36-million shortfall in the downloading program of this government.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Joseph N. Tascona (Simcoe Centre): I'm very pleased to join in the second reading debate on Bill 48, the Courts of Justice Amendment Act (Improved Family Court), 1998. The amendment of the Courts of Justice Act is going to involve a major expansion of the Unified Family Court in Ontario. The proposed amendments to the Courts of Justice Act, which deals with the administration of justice in Ontario, will facilitate the expansion of the court.

Unified Family Courts now exist in only five Ontario communities: in Hamilton, which came into existence in 1977 under the Progressive Conservative government of that day; in London; in my riding of Simcoe Centre in the city of Barrie; and also in Kingston and Napanee, the riding of MPP Bill Vankoughnet.

I would just say that it's worked very well in the city of Barrie. The city of Barrie also serves all of Simcoe county and it's worked very well in terms of the family court process. I think the Unified Family Court, which was brought in in 1977, was very far-reaching, leading edge with respect to the Progressive Conservative government of the day. Obviously, it's something that should have been followed on by the other governments of the day. Unfortunately, we didn't have that much expansion in it. Now we're seeing tremendous expansion in terms of the Unified Family Court and it's long overdue in terms of this very emotional and troubling part of the law.

Further expansion of the court is overdue and is widely supported by the judiciary, the lawyers and also the public. However, the pace of expansion is not within provincial control. Unified Family Courts require federally appointed judges by the federal government. Obviously, the federal government is shirking their responsibility once again in this critical area.

The federal government has not provided Ontario with enough new judicial appointments to meet Ontario's needs. However, the proposed changes will permit us to make maximum use of the limited judicial resources available and expand as broadly as possible.

When we deal with the family court, it's a branch of the Ontario Court (General Division) and all family court judges are federally appointed, and that's just because of the Constitution in terms of the responsibilities that are given to each level of government and the way the courts deal with this. For example, in the federal court responsibilities under the Constitution, what we're dealing with is divorce, property division, and those are things that are handled by federally appointed judges.

The Ontario government, in keeping with providing better services to families and children, plans to expand the family court province-wide. However, it must rely on the federal government to appoint a sufficient number of judges. In March 1998, the federal government announced that 17 more judges would be appointed to family court in Ontario. While the new appointments will permit an expansion of the family court, the federal appointments are not sufficient to permit a province-wide expansion. That's another example of the federal government shirking its responsibility, not being sensitive to the needs of families and the people who need to use these courts to resolve their differences.

The proposed changes have been requested by the judiciary, which is fully supportive of the Unified Family Court expansion.

In 1977, as I had mentioned, the Unified Family Court was established as a pilot project in Hamilton for a three-year period. All family law jurisdiction was consolidated in the Unified Family Court, as opposed to the split of jurisdiction which still exists today in most areas of the province. The split jurisdiction is based on the authority of judges appointed to sit in those courts.

Naturally, that's the difficulty we face, because there are significant advantages to the Unified Family Court system: first of all, the single-window approach. In areas of Ontario without a Unified Family Court, family law cases are still heard in both Provincial Division, for example, custody and support, and General Division courts, which are federal, which deal with divorce and also property division.

Each court has exclusive jurisdiction over certain family law matters, which I've set out. This is confusing and inconvenient for the public, who often must use both courts to resolve family disputes. Unified Family Courts have jurisdiction to hear all family matters and provide a much-needed single window for the public. Unified family courts reduce the cost and complexity of resolving family disputes as well as the financial and emotional burden on families and children.

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There will also be enhanced services. All Unified Family Courts provide mediation services to help families resolve disputes without resort to costly and time-consuming litigation. We will be enhancing the mediation services at Unified Family Court by providing new public information services. Two kinds of information services will be provided: (1) information sessions on family law and alternative methods of resolving disputes, which is mediation; and (2) information sessions on the impact of parental separation on children. These services are widely supported by judges and lawyers and will help families to resolve disputes with less acrimony and with greater focus on the interests of children.

There are also going to be streamlined procedures. To further strengthen the court, we intend to streamline the procedures of the Unified Family Court. New family rules were recently approved by the Family Rules Committee and will be reviewed through the cabinet for consideration. The rules are designed to make the court process faster and simpler for parties and to put an even stronger emphasis on the early resolution of cases before they become too time-consuming and too expensive for the families and the children involved. We expect the new rules to come into force at the same time as the new court locations begin operation.

The main elements of the amendments to the Courts of Justice Act are designed to ensure that the Unified Family Court operates as efficiently as possible and to ensure that Ontario obtains the maximum benefit from the available judicial resources. The amendments include providing the regional senior judges with clear authority to direct and supervise sittings of the family court and assign judicial duties, and also, establishing the office of the Senior Judge of the Family court (General Division) to provide advice to the Chief Justice on issues affecting the family court on a provincial basis.

Further amendments recognize the Chief Justice's constitutional authority to assign General Division judges into the court on a rotational basis so that additional resources can be made available and the court can be expanded to more communities. After all, we need federally appointed judges to deal with issues such as divorce and property division. At the same time, a substantial core specialized bench will be preserved. Most judges hearing cases in the Unified Family Court will be permanent appointees to that court.

There will also be amendments to remove Young Offenders Act matters from the court. These matters will be dealt with by the Provincial Division. Both the Chief Justice and the Chief Judge and the Senior Judge of the family court fully support the elimination of family court jurisdiction for Young Offenders Act matters. This change will also free up judicial resources for wider expansion of the Unified Family Court.

Other provisions in the bill contain a housekeeping amendment to restore the regulation-making authority to set salaries and benefits, including pension benefits, for provincial judges and masters retroactive to February 28, 1995, which is the date on which it was inadvertently removed.

The amendments appear more complicated than they are because the changes in the names of the courts under part IV of the Courts Improvement Act, 1996, Bill 79, have not been proclaimed. Part IV cannot be proclaimed until the complementary federal legislation has been put in place. The federal legislation is now before a Senate committee. The amendments have been drafted to accommodate the proclamation of the court name changes either before or after the bill comes into force.

An announcement about the expansion locations will be made very soon. We anticipate the new courts will be operating by the spring of 1999.

The services provided at the new Unified Family Court will be funded through the reinvestment of savings realized by the appointment of Provincial Division family judges to the court.

In summing up, I firmly support this and I urge the federal government to make it a priority to provide more judges to the court so it can be extended to all Ontario communities.

The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?

Mr Michael Brown: I appreciate the comments. One of the questions I might ask, though, is that if we're waiting for the announcement of the sites of the expanded Unified Family Court, would they be placed in northern Ontario? Will we begin to see some of the services that have been available in parts of southern Ontario in the north? Will we see the Algoma district being served by the Unified Family Court out of Sault Ste Marie, and obviously moving through the area, serving communities like Wawa and Elliot Lake? Will we see the Unified Family Court on Manitoulin Island in the district of Manitoulin? Will we see the Unified Family Court out of Sudbury, where it could serve places like Chapleau and other places in the Sudbury district such as Espanola? Will we see the Unified Family Court serving the constituents of the northern regions? That would be one of the questions we certainly would like to see the government answer today, as usual, as we sometimes look towards a spring election.

Mr Dwight Duncan (Windsor-Walkerville): Photo ops.

Mr Michael Brown: Maybe they are looking for photo ops. Maybe this is really what this is about. What this really is about would be an election promise rather than actually something we might see, because I note as I read the bill it says in the explanatory notes, "The bill amends the Courts of Justice Act in order to restructure the Ontario family court to accommodate" - listen to this - "a possible expanded family court."

We're talking here about possibilities. I hope that's not what the government's intending here. We want to take them at face value and we want the services available across Ontario.

Mr Wildman: I want to compliment my friend from Simcoe Centre on his remarks. I noticed that he was quite critical of the federal government for not appointing enough Unified Family Court judges. I would just point out that this is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. The fact is that in our area of the province, this government hasn't appointed enough justices of the peace to do the basic administration of justice.

In Chapleau, for instance, they're short a justice of the peace to the point that, on occasion, the courts have had to postpone hearings that were scheduled. The police haven't been able to get warrants issued and so on. On a couple of occasions a justice of the peace has had to drive from Wawa to Chapleau on the day of the court proceedings, a distance of over 90 miles, and arrived too late to be able to deal with any of the proceedings, simply because this government hasn't appointed a justice of the peace when they should have. There is no justice of the peace in Elliot Lake - similar problems.

Why is it this minister, the Attorney General, can't get his act around getting the people appointed who are required to administer the courts? I think if the government is really serious and wants to administer the system properly, they would move to appoint a crown attorney for Manitoulin district, as has been mentioned by my friend. If this government is critical of the federal government for not appointing enough family court judges, why doesn't it get its own act together and appoint - I'm not even suggesting they should appoint Liberals or New Democrats. Appoint some Tories, if necessary, but get the thing going.

Mr Gerry Martiniuk (Cambridge): I listened with great interest to the comments of my colleague from Simcoe Centre. I think he has historically given us the matter of the Unified Family Court and its growth in Ontario, along with his unanimous consent.

One of the matters he touched upon which I'd like to expand on and comment on is the Young Offenders Act being removed from the new Unified Family Court. In 1995 when the Unified Family Court was expanded, a test case was set up so that some of the Unified Family Courts could hear matters relating to the Young Offenders Act, whereas in others that was excluded and the young offenders were dealt with in the Provincial Division.

As a result of that experiment, it was the conclusion of most of the parties who were involved with both the Unified Family Court and in fact the criminal court, Provincial Division, that we should remove young offenders from the Unified Family Court. I think that's very important because all of our court structures are busy. By removing young offenders from the Unified Family Court, this will permit them to deal more expeditiously with problems of the family, both custody and divorce, and especially the welfare of children, rather than having cases prolonged before a final resolution of a dispute could arise. So we had decided, after consultation with all stakeholders, to remove young offenders from Unified Family Court.

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Mr Duncan: I'm pleased to have the opportunity to respond to my colleague from Simcoe Centre. Let me preface it by saying that I personally will be supporting this bill and feel it is a step in the right direction. I want to take a moment, however, to address some other justice issues and particularly come back to the notion about justices of the peace and judges.

In my community of Windsor we have a critical shortage of justices of the peace. If you're going to address all of the questions around justice matters, court matters, the proper function of courts, you really have to address those issues. Like my colleague from Algoma, I don't care who you appoint, just appoint somebody. We have a situation now where we can't get justices of the peace on weekends in my community, and frankly that's unacceptable. This particular bill, in my view, cannot be discussed, debated or dealt with outside the context of that issue, and a variety of other issues that I'll have a chance to speak to in a few moments.

I want to say this: All of us want a court system that functions well and serves the interests of families and children. The minister responsible for children's issues made that point quite well, I thought, and I wanted to have the opportunity to say the same thing. But to consider this bill to the exclusion of other issues that have been dealt with in this House and in other places in the justice system really doesn't serve the debate well. So I want to view this bill in the context of a number of other issues which my colleague, although eloquently expressed today, did not address. I look forward to having the opportunity in a few moments to try to put this into the context of justice issues overall.

The Acting Speaker: Member for Simcoe Centre, you have two minutes.

Mr Tascona: I am pleased to respond to the comments of my colleagues. The MPP for Algoma-Manitoulin certainly expressed his concern for northern Ontario, to make sure that they have the services that are being provided. Fortunately in my riding of Simcoe Centre, in the city of Barrie, the Unified Family Court is already there and working very well.

Certainly it's the goal of this government to have province-wide Unified Family Court services available. The major problem in terms of providing that is because of the fact that the federal government has shirked its responsibility in terms of providing more federally appointed judges. Obviously you have to have the judiciary available to be able to provide those services.

What this bill is really about is that it shows that this province is moving in the right direction and that the federal government once again is not providing the resources for the administration of justice in this province and is showing an insensitivity to the families and children of this province.

The MPP for Algoma comments about the shortage of JPs. JPs do not deal with family court matters. I won't say any more.

The MPP for Cambridge comments about the historical growth of Unified Family Courts brought forth by the Progressive Conservative government of Bill Davis in 1977. But also what's pivotal is that the Young Offenders Act is being removed from the Unified Family Court system. That will provide greater resources and also increase the expeditiousness of dealing with the problems of the family. That's welcome news.

The MPP for Windsor-Walkerville comments about the administration of justice and the fact that he's going to support the bill. He fails to note, though, that there's a brand new courthouse being built in Windsor and they're very lucky to have that. That will increase the administration of justice in Windsor.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate.

Mr Duncan: I am pleased to stand today to discuss Bill 48, the Courts of Justice Amendment Act of 1998. I want to discuss it both in the context of the bill itself and in the context of this government's initiatives in other areas, in the justice area, and frankly their lack of initiative.

I do have to comment that the member for Simcoe Centre is quite right; Windsor is getting a new courthouse, a courthouse that is long overdue, and largely scaled back and cut back from what was originally conceived and is not now well received by the criminal bar or the bench in terms of its adequacy, and because of cuts by this government, probably will reach a level of obsolescence relatively quickly. Although it certainly is an improvement over what is currently being used for criminal courts in our city, it is far and away not what was originally contemplated and was scaled back in a dramatic fashion by this government as part of its cost-cutting initiatives, another example of where governments can be penny wise and pound foolish. So while I'm interested to hear the member's comments, I think we need to put them into that context.

This government has been big on administrative changes in the justice field, but oftentimes they miss the boat in terms of the bigger picture.

Today we talk about this particular bill. It's a natural progression, a progression that's been aided over the years, as my colleague from Hamilton Centre said, in non-partisan fashion, by all three parties and all three governments for the last 21 or 22 years, beginning with the Hamilton experiment. The previous New Democratic Party government moved us along and this government responded this year with this particular bill.

But what the government doesn't talk about in this debate today, and doesn't particularly like to talk about in other places, is the cuts they've made in services to victims. They don't like to talk about the lawsuit brought by a group of victims, and they certainly don't want to talk about the new user fees for people who need to access our court system, user fees, by the way, which as a result of the court decision last week are going to come under increasing scrutiny.

I remember the Premier who has styled himself as the Taxfighter saying, "A tax is a tax is a tax." When one looks at the public accounts for the province of Ontario since this government took office, one sees that those non-tax user fees and services I believe have quadrupled.

With the court decision we now have, it will be interesting to see how many of those fee increases are in fact tax increases that are decided by regulation, by cabinet, by order in council without consultation with the Legislative Assembly. That is taxation without representation. I will predict today that is going to become an increasingly thorny issue as the people of this province begin to understand the full impact of those fee increases.

The government hasn't talked today about the Rodrigues case, and I intend to talk for a few moments about the Rodrigues case. This was the most recent example. The government was very quick to criticize previous governments of both stripes about backlogs in courts. Different governments have tried to resolve these difficult issues in different ways. But let me remind the government members about what we think ultimately led you to bring this bill forward, and that's the Rodrigues case.

You'll recall that the government was quite proud that it was reducing court case backlogs and administrative jams. On June 23, 1996, in a very tragic event Claudine Rodrigues was killed by a driver who was charged with impaired driving. On September 9 that case was dismissed due to excessive delay. That was following a question that was put in this House by Gerry Phillips, my colleague from Scarborough-Agincourt. After considerable pressure from the Rodrigues family, the government is appealing that dismissal.

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So the government talks a good game about what they're doing, but it doesn't always add up. Justice and crime issues are coming to the forefront. I see the crime commissioner over there who's been making a name for himself by leading the fight supposedly on questions of crime, punishment and justice. Indeed, I'm intrigued because I support this bill, but I am intrigued by a government that wants to make courts function more efficiently, wants to make our streets safer, wants to protect society from criminals, but then puts guns in the hands of 12-year-olds.

They're going to give 12-year-olds guns. They are going to give them guns and they can try and pass the buck on that. That's not what they were doing in the by-election in Sudbury, but now they're going to say to 12-year-olds in this province: "Here's your gun. Go ahead and hunt." We think that's just nonsense and it betrays what we think is a fundamental flaw in adequacy in the government's whole crime-punishment agenda. It's smoke and mirrors.

I believe the police forces in our province and the justice system are doing a pretty good job under difficult circumstances. Indeed, we've seen crime rates go down on some major types of crime. I am just dumbfounded at how anyone could suggest that giving 12-year-olds guns is going to help. It makes no sense. When we consider this bill, a bill which on the face of it makes sense, a bill which we will be supporting, one has to consider it in that context.

While we're on the matter of family courts and family responsibility, what about the Family Responsibility Office? The government really botched that one up. They made a mess out of a system that admittedly was not perfect, I think all of us agree could have done better, but what you've replaced it with - and members in the government know this because if their constituency offices are like mine, Family Responsibility Office inquiries, complaints, concerns, are your number one issue. I get more calls to my office about that than anything else.

I must say that when the crisis first broke, it was a real mess. There has been an improvement in the time it takes to resolve these problems, but it remains, in my view, necessary that if we are seriously committed to enforcing family responsibility, there ought to be a system of regional offices that can provide service and resolve disputes. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

What does it mean when the Family Responsibility Office isn't working? It means that women and children aren't getting the money that's owed to them. Quite frankly, in some cases it means that the support parents, the people paying the support, either have too much taken off or I had a case where a fellow called me because he couldn't get them to take off enough, and it takes months to resolve these problems.

This bill on its face is easy to support, but a government that was truly committed to the proper and efficient functioning of our justice system wouldn't allow scenarios like northern Ontario where you have a community that has no crown prosecutor, communities like mine where there's a shortage of justices of the peace, and it certainly wouldn't allow 12-year-olds to have guns in this province and would deal post-haste with the mess that still exists at the Family Responsibility Office.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for my time today.

The Acting Speaker: Questions and comments? The member for Cochrane North.

Mr Len Wood: I listened very attentively to the member for Windsor-Walkerville and his comments saying there's a lot of the parts of the bill that he supports, but there are problems out there. One of the points he talked about is why would this government, under the Attorney General, lay off all of the workers and scrap the computer system before they had a new system in place for the family support system. As a result, you end up with a large backlog of payments that are not going out to women and children.

He mentioned that there's a number of court cases that are being thrown out because of the long delays that have taken place. He mentioned the fact that during the by-election that was held in Nickel Belt the government was so proud and happy to announce that they were going to give hunting rifles to 12-year-old children to go out in the bush and hunt wildlife. They're saying, "It's OK, it's going to be supervised by adults," but they only have to be 19 years old.

There's a lot of concern that he has raised in speaking on the bill, saying that he's going to support the bill but that there are a lot of issues out there that we should be talking about. I know in the Cochrane North-Kapuskasing-Hearst area there is a shortage of justices of the peace and they have to travel 70 or 80 miles to do their job and see that justice is being served. There's no reason for that. It's just the incompetence of the Conservative or Reform government we have here in the province of Ontario. They're not doing their job and making sure that these justices of the peace are appointed.

Mrs Julia Munro (Durham-York): I just want to add a couple of comments to the debate today. I think that what we are looking at in this piece of legislation is a major step forward for us. As many members have expressed, there has been a long history of the success of unified courts. The fact that we've had these in existence in these communities has only served to demonstrate how important the need is in all our communities.

I have met with many people in my riding who have recognized the importance of extending and expanding the unified court system. All of us recognize the importance it places on children, the kind of emotional stress that children go through, and the fact that we are dragging people through two court systems instead of one obviously adds to the emotional stress, but also to the time and expense.

What we are waiting for, then, is obviously the fact that we need to have the federal government meet the needs of Ontario with new judicial appointments. Those will allow us to make maximum use of those limited judicial resources available and expand as broadly as possible.

I'm looking forward to the opportunity that this expansion will provide, particularly in high-growth areas of the province. It's important to note that the proposed changes are those that have been requested by the judiciary and they are fully supportive of the Unified Family Court expansion.

Mr Michael Brown: I appreciated very much the comments of my colleague the member for Windsor-Walkerville. As he canvassed the bill, I was particularly taken by his speaking about the kind of juxtaposition between the improvement of court services that we are ostensibly to see here and the reality in Ontario justice circles today.

I recognize that this court will issue support orders and those sorts of things as a result of some of the proceedings that occur before it. I want to come back to the Family Responsibility Office. The Family Responsibility Office has been an unmitigated disaster. We are told through the press that there is $1.2 billion that is uncollected through the Family Responsibility Office. That's $1.2 billion of either children's money and spouses' money or taxpayers' money that has been paid to support mostly women and children that is out there and is uncollected.

Last night I listened to one of the Durham Conservative members saying that over 50% of the calls to his office are about the Family Responsibility Office. That doesn't surprise me, because the same, I think, could be said of virtually any member in here. You guys don't understand that there's a problem that really needs to be solved, that's in the taxpayers' interest to solve, that's in everybody's interest to solve. You created much of the problem when you destroyed the regional offices. Let's get with the tour here. Don't come and tell us that a court's going to fix this, because it's not. Your administrative problems within the Family Responsibility Office are huge and must be fixed.

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Mr Wildman: I think there's no question that a government that purports to care about the administration of the family court system and care about the family should be doing far more than it is to ensure that the rights of women and of children are protected and that the administration of those systems that are set up to serve the family, to serve women and children, are carried out in such a way as to actually be effective.

The stories about the problems with the family support office since this government restructured it, which is a euphemism for saying it decimated it, are legion. The fact is, women and children are not getting, generally, the support payments that they are required to have, that the courts have indicated they should get, and in many cases, fathers who are interested and concerned about supporting their children are finding that the system is so skewed and messed up that even when they want to make the payments, they are not being deducted properly. They are being declared in arrears when they intend to make their payments and the payments are not getting to their children whom they want to assist with those payments.

This is a government that says they're in favour of the family. This is a government that is long on rhetoric when they say they care about children, but the facts of the case have been demonstrated by the cuts they have made to the very offices that are supposed to serve both the interests of children and of families. We know that this government is more interested in the bottom line than they are in protecting families.

The Acting Speaker: Member for Windsor-Walkerville, two minutes.

Mr Duncan: I'm pleased to have had the opportunity to participate in this debate. I noticed how, when the government members were responding, they didn't talk about the Family Responsibility Office and they didn't talk about 12-year-olds with guns.

Mr Michael Brown: I wonder why.

Mr Duncan: I'm not surprised they didn't, because they don't want to talk about that. They wanted to talk about it in Nickel Belt. They certainly did. They wanted to talk about 12-year-olds with guns in Nickel Belt, but they sure don't want to talk about that in Toronto. They don't want to talk about it in Windsor. They don't want to talk about it in London. They don't want to talk about it in Kitchener. They don't want to talk about it in Ottawa. But let me tell you, we're going to talk about it.

We're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about the Family Responsibility Office and what you've done to women and children across this province. We're going to talk about your cuts, the cuts that happened before this year, because we're not going to let you forget the first two and a half years of your administration. You're not going to catch up to those cuts. You're not going to catch up to the cuts to the special investigations unit. You're not going to make up for the cuts to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. That fund's been cut by $1.2 million since 1995.

What's this government's agenda, despite the crime commissioner and despite the overblown rhetoric? This government's agenda is about 12-year-olds and guns. It's about cuts to victims. It's not a crime and justice agenda. It's a cuts and tax cuts agenda. So I'm not surprised the government didn't talk about guns and 12-year-olds. I'm not surprised you didn't talk about the ongoing mess at the Family Responsibility Office. But be assured that while we support this bill, we're going to talk about those issues and we're going to talk about them in every community in this province. Thank you for the time today.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Wildman: I'd like to participate in this debate and point out that while we support the expansion of the family court system, we are concerned about some portions of this bill and we hope that this matter will go to committee for discussion and clause-by-clause amendment so that those matters can be properly dealt with.

I will speak very briefly. We are particularly concerned about the fact that this bill shifts the administration of Young Offenders Act matters to the exclusive jurisdiction of the provincial court. The family court jurisdiction over the young offenders cases in London, Kingston and Napanee will gradually be eliminated, this in the name of saving money and making use of more limited judicial resources.

As the government we established a new family court system in Ontario. We selected four communities where the family court could be expanded as part of the first phase. The courts province-wide expansion locations were Kingston, Napanee, Barrie and London. Matters under the Young Offenders Act were heard in family court in London, Kingston and Napanee. In Barrie they continue to be heard by the Provincial Division family judge, although this was supposed to change when an additional judicial appointment could be made to the family court.

The New Democratic Party reforms to the court system in Ontario were aimed at making our justice system more open and accessible and equitable. Young Offenders Act matters could be dealt with in the family court, taking into consideration the fact that many young offenders have family problems or come out of the system already. The emphasis should be on rehabilitation and finding solutions as opposed to simply locking kids up and throwing away the key, which seems to be the attitude of some members opposite.

The broad move of this government is to shift the focus on young offenders from rehabilitation to punishment. Everyone understands that offenders must be held accountable if they are found guilty of offences, but it doesn't help our society or those individuals or their families very much if we fail to make an effort to rehabilitate. As a matter of fact, it will cost society, the family and those individuals more in the future if we don't try to rehabilitate.

The family court has supports and experience with young people that adult courts just cannot have. So what's at stake here is the principle that young people need to be dealt with differently than adults. That of course applies when we see what this government has done. The suggestion that children in grade 6 should be able to shoot long guns under the supervision of teenagers I think is an indication of how ridiculous it sounds when this government then further says they care about children and they care about families and they want to protect the safety and security of children.

This is a government that talks a lot about law and order, but I don't think they really care about community safety because they have made cuts to the very social programs and to our education system that are destroying families and putting children at risk. I don't believe there's a single Ontario citizen who is safer now than they were three years ago. While crime rates are tending to go down, really dangerous criminals in this province are being ignored completely.

As I said, this government wants to focus on having young people held accountable, but where is the accountability of the government when one considers that this government has decimated social supports such as child care, children's mental health services, prevention programs and health services, as well as made significant cuts to education that can only mean more children are at risk?

More children are at risk of offending, more children are at risk of becoming involved with the judicial system, and to move the administration of the Young Offenders Act to the provincial court system exclusively away from the family court I believe is a step in the wrong direction. I hope we can deal with that in committee and I hope the matter will be dealt with in committee.

The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments? Further debate?

Mr Harnick has moved second reading of Bill 48. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour, please say "aye."

All those opposed, please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Shall the bill be ordered for third reading?

Mr Martiniuk: I would request that the bill be referred to the standing committee on finance and economic affairs.

The Acting Speaker: Agreed? Agreed.

It being 6 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 6:30 this evening.

The House adjourned at 1801.

Evening sitting reported in volume B.

27 octobre 1998